3 research outputs found
Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico)
Margarita de Sossa’s freedom journey was defiant and entrepreneurial. In her early twenties, still enslaved in Portugal, she took possession of her body; after refusing to endure her owner’s sexual demands, he sold her, and she was transported to Mexico. There, she purchased her freedom with money earned as a healer and then conducted an enviable business as an innkeeper. Sossa’s biography provides striking insights into how she conceptualized freedom in terms that included – but was not limited to – legal manumission. Her transatlantic biography offers a rare insight into the life of a free black woman (and former slave) in late sixteenth-century Puebla, who sought to establish various degrees of freedom for herself. Whether she was refusing to acquiesce to an abusive owner, embracing entrepreneurship, marrying, purchasing her own slave property, or later using the courts to petition for divorce. Sossa continued to advocate on her own behalf. Her biography shows that obtaining legal manumission was not always equivalent to independence and autonomy, particularly if married to an abusive husband, or if financial successes inspired the envy of neighbors
María Remedios del Valle, Nineteenth-Century Argentina
The Argentine government, under the recommendation of various advocacy groups and historians agreed upon November 8 because the day commemorates the death of María Remedios del Valle, an African descendant, otherwise known as the "Capitana" and the "Mother of the Nation", who died on November 8, 1847. First a nurse and later conferred as a captain by General Manuel Belgrano during the wars of independence, the government noted that Remedios del Valle represented thousands of Afro descendants that fought for our country. For her efforts on the battlefield, her fellow soldiers granted her the honor of being known as "the Mother of the Nation". María Remedios de Valle story provides a means to explain the more familial and civic efforts of women. She is remembered as the "Mother of the Nation," and this title reflects the larger role of women and in particular women of African descent in the republic. But irony cannot be underestimated. Remedios del Valle, a black female heroine is the mother of a white nation. How is that possible? To test answers to this question, we propose to delve into the history and the symbolism of María Remedios del Valle.Fil: Guzman, Maria Florencia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana "Dr. Emilio Ravignani". Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana "Dr. Emilio Ravignani"; ArgentinaFil: Edwards, Erika Denise. No especifíca
Juana María Álvarez, Eighteenth-Century New Granada (Colombia)
One of the few avenues for women to achieve freedom from slavery in the Kingdom of New Granada was to be manumitted by slaveholders. Only ten percent of the enslaved population in New Granada’s central region (state of Cundinamarca) gained their liberty through this legal action. Eufemia Álvarez was part of that small group, as her master Don Juan Álvarez voluntarily manumitted her in the mid eighteenth century. Consequently, her daughter Juana María Álvarez was born in freedom, even if both of them remained servants in Don Juan Álvarez’s household in Guaduas—a rural town that was part of the Royal Road from Honda to Santa Fe. In 1758, Juana María suffered re-enslavement when she was sold and taken to Quito, away from her family. Juana María resorted to the appellate court in Honda to re-claim her freedom and petition for her own protection as well as her daughter’s. Juana María’s biography emerges from legal documents, which record her struggle—and ultimately, her failure—to legitimate her freedom, despite having been voluntarily manumitted by the original slaveholder. Read against the grain, her life serves as a critique of a legal system that failed to protect freed women