Some of the most innovative works in the field of Atlantic slavery in recent years focus on the geographic and conceptual frontiers of enslavement. Working within this historiographical framework, with the intention of furthering the discussion about the precariousness of freedom in nineteenth-century Brazil, we will consider here how cases that involved the enslavement of free people were criminalized and brought to court throughout the nineteenth century. The uneven results of these cases suggest that political choices limited both the application of Article 179 of the Criminal Code (which prohibited the enslavement of free people) and the law of November 7, 1831 (which prohibited the Atlantic slave trade).

Some of the most innovative works in the field of Atlantic slavery in recent years focus on the geographic and conceptual frontiers of enslavement. Working within this historiographical framework, with the intention of furthering the discussion about the precariousness of freedom in nineteenth-century Brazil, we will consider here how cases that involved the enslavement of free people were criminalized and brought to court throughout the nineteenth century. The uneven results of these cases suggest that political choices limited both the application of Article 179 of the Criminal Code (which prohibited the enslavement of free people) and the law of November 7, 1831 (which prohibited the Atlantic slave trade).

In the 1860’s, Candida manumitted Gabriela and gave her a letter of freedom. Armand nevertheless contested this manumission. He argued that married women were illegally incapable of giving manumission to their slaves without their husband’s consent. Faced with this resistance to her freedom, Gabriela resorted to the courts. She brought two lawsuits against Armand—a civil one and a criminal one, for the crime of reducing a free person to slavery. Gabriela lost both lawsuits. Judges accepted Armand’s argument that a married woman was legally incapable of manumitting a slave without the explicit authorization of her husband, who was the legal administrator of her property. Thus, Brazilian courts nullified Gabriela’s manumission because a married woman had granted her freedom. Gabriela’s judicial struggle was not unique. By analyzing Gabriela’s judicial trajectory, this chapter will address broader questions regarding enslaved women’s access to courts and the role of law in the outcome of judicial claims for freedom in a patriarchal society.

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.