Saga of Little Missy

At 1886, Brazil was influenced by Republican to quit slavery of black people who was forced to work in coffee farm belonged to white lords. It was campaigned by educated youth in Araruna, a small town full of coffee farms. The hugest farm belonged to a very cruel land-owner named Coronel Ferreira (Rubens de Falco/Osmar Prado), which more well-known as Baron.

Sinha Moca (1986). Photo taken from http://teledramaturgia.com.br

Coronel lived in a mansion with his playboy alcoholic cousin named Aristides. In the house also lived a pretty black maid named Maria Das Dores (Dudu de Moraes). Once upon a time Das Dores got pregnant, and she deliveried a white baby named Rafael.

Then Aristides passed away. Coronel took care of Das Dores and his baby-boy in his mansion. A year later, Coronel married a beautiful lady named Candida (Elaine Cristina/Patrícia Pillar), whom later given him a daughter named Sinha Moça, which later had nickname Missy. Then, Missy (Lisandra Campos) and Rafael (Selton Mello) grew up together like siblings.

Baron was curious that Little Missy had fallen in love prematurely with Little Rafael. So he sold Das Dores and Rafael to the São Paulo. Then Missy begged Candida to send her to a school at São Paulo, so she could execute her hidden agenda to find Rafael.

The grown-up Missy (Lucélia Santos/Débora Falabella) couldn’t find Rafael. At her school, she learnt how slavery was intolerable to human rights. So she went home, and she wanted to ask Baron for giving freedom to his slaves.

Missy tried to beg Baron for allowing Adelaide to work as her maid. Photo taken from http://veja.abril.com

Missy dated a handsome lawyer named Rodolfo Fontes (Marcos Paulo/Danton Mello), a Republican who also wanted to stop slavery at Araruna. But he found out that it was so hard for approach Baron to set the slaves free, while he wanted to win Baron’s heart to let him marry Missy. So he pretended that he supported slavery.

Missy misunderstood Rodolfo’s manouvre and she fell back into Rafael (Raymundo de Souza/Eriberto Leão), who returned to Araruna with a new identity named Dimas, an educated guy who worked as a journalist in a newspaper of Augusto (Luis Carlos Arautin/Carlos Vereza). Actually Rafael was in undercover to Araruna coz actually he wanted to kill Missy’s dad.

This serial doesn’t only talk about Republican’s courage to fight the slavery which covered in awkward love story about Missy and Rodolfo. It also exposes other issues, such as girls’ effort to be prominent like men, but their way were inhibited by their own gender. A girl named Ana Texeira (Patrícia Pillar/Isis Valverde), which was forced by her own mom, Nina (Norma Blum/Gisele Fróes) to be veiled for the name of a Catholic saint, since she was a little girl and only might open it when she had already married Rodolfo.

The caste friction also happened to a white lawyer guy named Dr Jose Coutinho (Tato Gabus/Eduardo Pires), who wanted to marry Baron’s beautiful black slave named Adelaide (Solange Couto/Lucy Ramos). His dad (Ivan Mesquita/Orton Bastos) refused it coz shame of having a black daughter-in-law. While Adelaide had been engaged to a black slave named Justino (Antõnio Pompéo/Alexandre Moreno). Adelaide was stressed coz she loved the white Jose more than the black Justino.

Baron’s slaves were suffered coz they were tortured by a slave hunter (Tony Tornado). This hunter was a black who thought that he was a white. Baron freed one of his slave, Virginia “Bá” (Chica Xavier/Zezé Motta), to breastfeed Missy as Missy was a baby, and to provide enough breast-milk, Baron sold Bá’s baby-boy. Bá never knew that actually Baron kept the baby in slave village, grew him up and named him Bastião (Cosme dos Santos/Fabricio Boliveira), and employed him as his mansion’s servant to keep him close with Bá.

While Baron’s slaves were dying to be free, there were Justo (Grande Otelo/Gésio Amadeu) and Ruth (Jacyra Sampaio), ex-slaves who refused to live free and prefer serving the family of Rodolfo.

There are lotta grey characters here. Fool Frei Jose (Claudio Correa e Castro/Elias Gleizer) who defended to slave’s rights but afraid of Baron. Fulgencio (Gésio Amadeu/Sérgio Menezes), Baron’s slave who pretended being blind to trick the slave hunter. And Antero (Claudio Mamberti/Jackson Antunes) who betrayed Republican coz he didn’t wanna lose his job as Araruna’s sheriff.

The serial also mentioned typical issue of soap opera. Rodolfo’s brother, Ricardo (Daniel Dantas/Bruno Gagliasso), kept chasing Ana coz he thought Ana was beautiful beyond her veil. But after Ana got her cover opened up, Ricardo just got a crush on Dona Candida who was much older than him. Candida, was suffered under Baron’s pressure coz she couldn’t give him a son.

Rafael refused Missy’s love. He had got a crush on Juliana (Luciana Braga/Vanessa Giácomo), grand-daughter of Augusto who had been his shelter. The blue Missy, couldn’t understand Rafael’s refusal, coz Rafael kept his secret that actually he wasn’t biological son of Das Dores with Aristides. Instead, his biological father was Baron, and Baron really never noticed that actually he had already owned his dreamt son, and too bad that the son came up from a black woman..

The serial was made secondly at 1986, and played in Indonesisa about 1990 each Sunday afternoon. It was my favorite serial coz it’s fully loaded by political issue. Now, Sinha Moça/Little Missy had been remade for third time in 2006, and it was played on Indonesia in CT Channel, 7 PM, from Monday-Friday.