Gregório Luiz

Gregório Luís worked at the Santana sugar cane mill, then owned by Manuel da Silva Ferreira, which was located on an old Jesuit farm and had around three hundred enslaved people. He was arrested as one of the leaders of the 1789 protests and one of the authors of the “Treaty of the Santana Sugar Cane Mill,” the best known collective text attributed to enslaved people. The rebels approached the farm manager saying they wanted “peace and not war,” but demanded conditions to regulate work and daily life. Gregório Luís was arrested and sent to jail in Salvador in 1806, and nothing more is known about him. We only know that he demanded his rights, and did so in writing.