ABSTRACT
This chapter is situated within this new research field and recognises the crucial role that literature has played in Latin America both as a source of inspiration for decolonial thinking, and in the unique way it can disclose features that illuminate a deeper understanding of the contradictions that define the socio-spatial history of Brazil. The mansion owner is Miranda, a businessman, whose Brazilian wife's dowry enables him to set up a prosperous wholesale fabric store. However, Joao Romao also starts as part of such a 'rabble', but becomes what Souza terms a 'Brazilian fighter', an individual who struggles to ascend economically and manages to have aspirations, however limited and even if restricted to the possession of goods. Aluísio Azevedo shows that the end of slavery did not signal the end of socio-spatial inequality in Brazil. Brazil is still subordinate to a form of economic colonialism, is ruled by a hegemonic patriarchal elite, and produces spaces mainly for profit.
