Untold Story Of Pata Seca: Forced To Breed Over 200 Black Slave Children
This is Pata Seca, a breeding slave who had more than 200 children. He was picked by his enslaver because he was strong, tall, powerful, and had excellent genetic traits. But that didn’t stop him from fighting for his freedom and for what he thought was right. He led slave revolts, rebelled against plantation owners, and did his best to educate some of his children on how to survive. This is the story of a legendary man who has seen it all.
For 350 years, slavery was the core of Brazil’s economy. About 40 percent of the 10 million enslaved Africans brought to the New World were taken to Brazil. For centuries, every African who came here came as a slave. Slaves were so crucial to the economy that they did all the work, everything, while the white Brazilians did nothing. This country was also the last in the Americas to abolish slavery. When the government abolished the international slave trade in the country in 1850, the demand for black labor was still strong. If enslaved women didn’t bear enough children to replace old and dying workers, the Brazilian economy would have collapsed; the slave society would have crumbled.
To get more slaves, enslaved Africans were forced to procreate. This slave breeding system worked as a factory. Enslaved Africans gave birth to more babies who would be born as slaves so they could work on plantations or any job as free labor. Sometimes slave breeders were used; at other times, slave owners would force the women to make more slaves. One such breeding slave was Roque Jose Florencio, also known as Pata Seca. He was born in 1828 and was forced to father around 249 children with different women. This made him a direct ancestor to about 30 percent of the population of Santa Eudoxia, Sao Carlos. One of his granddaughters, Maria Magdalena Florencio Florentino, can be seen holding his death certificate in one of the local newspapers. Here is what she said:
“It’s a true story, it’s not a legend. Roque Jose Florencio was bought by a farmer from Sao Carlos, state of Sao Paulo, and chosen to be an escravo reprodutor [stud slave breeder] in the Santa Eudoxia District. He had more than 200 children and died at 130 years of age.”
This was written on February 17, 1958. It shows that Pata Seca passed away because his heart stopped working; he had myocarditis, heart failure, senility, and sclerosis. The number of kids he had was written in an old book from the Fazenda Grangi, but the family says they have no official records about any of them and are searching for his children online.
Here is how it all started: Roque Jose Florencio was born in 1828 in Sorocaba, Sao Paulo. This was by the turn of the 19th century when Brazil was still a Portuguese colony. Most of the people who lived there were of European descent; some were German, others were Italian and Spanish. There was a considerable Dutch influence along the northeastern coast. As you might already know, slavery was still going strong, especially with the slaves of African origin. Dutch slave traders brought about 600,000 enslaved Africans to the New World; that’s five to six percent of the total number of the transatlantic slave trade.
Roque was a powerful man with a muscular physique, but he too was one of the many unfortunate black people who got kidnapped. There is no record of his parents or siblings; that is because he was separated from them at a very young age. He never saw or heard from them again. His owner forced him to work as a field laborer and a slave breeder. Roque was very strong and more than seven feet tall. He was very charismatic, intelligent, and brave. People called him “Pata Seca,” which means “dry foot” in Portuguese. Now, there are different speculations as to where he got that nickname. Some say he was called that way because he could walk barefoot on the hot soil and feel no pain. Others claim he had a skin condition which made his feet very dry. A more interesting theory suggests that he earned that nickname because everywhere he went, he would leave no traces behind, making it difficult for his captors to track him down.
When Pata Seca was captured, he was taken to the Villa Sorocaba and sold to Visconde da Cunha Bueno. This white man owned a plantation that produced coffee and lived a relatively lavish life. At the time, a popular superstition was that a tall and robust man could father more male babies. Male slaves were critical for hard labor. While enslaved, he had no choice but to have unprotected sex with countless enslaved women. He had to produce more enslaved children to survive in bondage. The children would then be sold as commodities on the slave market.
Children born into these relationships were often kept under the watchful eye of their masters. White women and men often took the children away from their parents and brought them to the big house. At first, they used them as servants who carried out domestic chores and worked long hours. This way, the masters controlled what the children ate; they wanted to make sure the children would be fit to carry out different tasks when they grew up. Many of these children would later be used as potential slave breeders, especially the boys, just as their parents were forced to reproduce. This was very traumatic, but it was a massive part of an enslaved person’s life to become the perfect breeding tool.
Pata Seca was fed well and received careful health checks. His family says he fathered a mind-blowing 249 children with different women. Many of them were born into slavery because they could produce so many children; his owners treated him relatively well. He became an invaluable and indispensable tool. Here was a family member of Pata Seca holding his picture. Even though Pata Seca suffered as a slave, he still loved his kids. He taught them essential skills like reading, fighting, and staying alive. Many of those children became leaders of communities of black slaves who resisted the slave regime. Pata Seca too rebelled against plantation owners and led slave revolts. There are not many documents to prove that, but oral stories from locals and his ancestors say that he spent many years of his life fighting for freedom.
During the first half of the 19th century, Brazil witnessed many conspiracies and slave revolts, mainly across the sugar plantations. Collective slave resistance did happen before in Brazil, but slaves had never demonstrated such military capability as they did between the years of 1807 and 1835. Prosperity from sugar plantations in the region lasted until the early 1820s, but then everything changed when the area suffered social violence, economic downturns, and natural disasters. The economy depended on slave labor and foreign markets. In 1822, Brazil became independent. This meant there were new political trends, and in Bahia, a state of Brazil, during the 1820s and 1830s, there were a lot of protests, revolt by the military, and uprisings against the Portuguese. The Portuguese soldiers held their ground for about a year, but these events were so common that they shook the nation.
This made things even worse for the sugar industry. This was also a time when Bahia faced severe droughts. Lots of people left the countryside and went to the cities of Reconcavo and Salvador. In March 1834, the leaders in the town of Cachoeira said that the price of manioc flour, an essential food for many people, became extremely high, and many had died because of hunger. Food prices went up a lot due to high inflation. Of course, food storage made the slave diet a million times worse. In 1845, historical records of a planter show the white man shamelessly confessed that slaves are badly fed, worse clothed, and worked so hard that their lives do not exceed six years. This kind of treatment fueled countless slave rebellions in the region because so many people died.
White slave owners often forced their slaves to give birth to more babies and replenish their labor force, but there was one thing they missed: the massive influx of Africans, both enslaved and free people, in the late 18th and early 19th century created a sizable black majority in the Brazilian population. This is where the tables turned. Black people started planning large-scale revolts. They would form quilombos across Brazil, which were communities organized by fugitive slaves. Quilombos were found in remote places and usually had less than 100 people who lived off farming and raiding. The biggest and well-known ones were Palmares, which became like its own little country by the 1690s; it had around 20,000 people living there. It was successful because they had a lot of suitable land for farming, and they also took slaves from Portuguese farms to help them thrive. Pata Seca once led a revolt that helped escaped slaves find refuge in one of these communities in the region of Pernambuco. Back then, Pernambuco used to be the fifth biggest producer of sugarcane in Brazil.
Other than breeding, Pata Seca was also responsible for caring for the horses and transporting correspondence from the farm to the city and back. It was then, when he was working as a courier, that he met his wife. He was on his way to pick up some letters in Sao Carlos when he saw a young, thin woman constantly sweeping the area. One day he proposed to the girl, and when she said yes, he helped her onto a horse and they went to the farm. They got married, and Pata Seca was given 20 bushels of land as a gift. After having more than 200 kids in the slave quarters, he decided to create his own family with Palmyra, and together they had nine.
There’s not much information about Palmyra except that she was a skilled healer and she regularly took care of the sick and injured. She was a good and fair woman who took good care of her children; she was an excellent mother and a great wife. I mean, they both lived in such dark times that even the simplicities of life proved to be invaluable. Pata Seca had seen it all; he was alive when slavery was abolished in 1888 and when the Republic was established in 1889. He saw plenty of presidents and dictators fall, two world wars, and many social movements. Everyone seemed to like him locally. Pata Seca was religious and often organized parties to honor Sao Joao [Saint John], and he always welcomed guests warmly.
Magdalena is proud to share her grandfather’s story. She said that ever since she was a little girl, she heard a lot about his stories:
“Ever since she was a little girl, she heard a lot about his stories; how Pata stood up for what was right and how he was always wearing a white shirt and standing tall.”
Her grandfather made it a habit to keep the area around the farm’s house clean, which was surrounded by mango trees. Uncle Zé was the one who prepared the coffee. As usual, breakfast was cornmeal cooked with lard and black coffee. He would bring the coffee to Palmyra, who unfortunately lost her sight due to complications from one of her childbirths. For lunch, he usually had rice with beans with pork rinds or chicken. When it was time to sleep, he would rest in a bed made of a corn straw mattress. Interestingly, it was from this bed that a nail fell and injured his foot. Magdalena said he got an infection. These remedies from the slave quarters—smoke, urine, and alcohol—a girl took care of it, but she went to Rio Preto and got it worse. Pata was taken to Santa Casa in Sao Carlos. He lived a long life and passed away in February 1958 at the age of 130, just three months after being part of the city’s birthday parade as the oldest man in the area.
The only picture of the family’s patriarch is from this very parade. After years of searching, Magdalena discovered that an old friend of her grandfather had the photo. Eventually, the friend’s relative found the picture in his wallet. Today, the photo proudly sits on the shelf in Magdalena’s house where anyone can see it. She keeps souvenirs behind the door, including the old house keys and a nail like the one that caused her grandfather’s foot injury. In the kitchen, she follows the same recipe to make rapadura. According to her, her grandfather lived a longer life because, unlike many other slaves, he lived in the main house and had better food.
A lot happened during Pata Seca’s lifetime. From 1864 to 1870, Pata also saw the Paraguayan War, also known as The War of the Triple Alliance. It was the bloodiest conflict in Latin American history. About two-thirds of Paraguay’s population died during the battles, including around 90 percent of its men. Brazil transitioned from a monarchy to a republic in 1889, establishing the first Brazilian Republic. Pata was also alive during the coffee export boom from the late 19th to the early 20th century; in fact, coffee accounted for 63 percent of the country’s exports, making it a lucrative business. One other thing—you’ve seen the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, right? Since Pata was born in 1828 and died in 1958, he was there when this colossal statue was built.
But there is more. Pata saw the Revolution of 1930. After losing the president election in 1930, Getulio Vargas, the governor of Rio Grande do Sul, led a military uprising that changed the government of Brazil. This rebellion started in Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul, a state in the southern part of Brazil. The revolution happened partly because the Sao Paulo state had been controlling Brazil a lot since the monarchy fell in 1889.
A few years before Pata died, Brazil hosted and won the FIFA World Cup in 1950. I mean, he saw Brazil change from the slavery era to a modern-day nation with stunning beaches, diverse cities, rainforests, and incredibly popular tourist attractions. Pata died of old age; his heart had given up and he passed quietly in his bed. Plenty of friends and family members were there to support him and pay tribute with prayers and songs. They lamented his loss and paid their respects at his funeral. His remains are in Santa Eudoxia Cemetery, where his loved ones erected a monument in his honor.
The problem is the only living record of this man comes from his descendants. He was born at a time when there was not enough evidence or birth certificates that he lived for 130 years. The oldest verified person to have ever lived is Jeanne Calment, who was 122 years old. Black people back then were not considered even humans and very few lived a long time. If Pata indeed lived that long as the locals and his family say, that he would have broken their record easily. The thing is, there is a huge possibility that Pata could have fathered that many children. He was forced to have unprotected sex with many different women on a daily basis. So when you do that your whole life, you can have more than 200 kids. But there is also a possibility he could have contracted a bunch of diseases, many of which there is no record of.
As you can see, much of Pata Seca’s life remains a mystery. He was born in a period that was just unbelievably cruel and disgusting. There were things that happened that we couldn’t even fathom, and just because there are no official documents to prove that, it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Pata’s descendants and many locals who knew him say he was a well-known slave, someone with power and enormous height. This made him a favorable candidate as a breeding slave. Pata Seca spent most of his life in slavery, but he also lived to see slavery abolished. He outlived many of the people he knew and saw Brazil change from a nation dependent on slave labor to a modern-day society we know today.
