Description
The text “Women enslaved in actions of freedom - Recife Oitocentista - 1870 - 1885”
aims to build the narrative of the protagonism of enslaved women who sought the judicial
arena as a strategy of resistance in the search for their rights and freedoms. The research
started with freedom actions based on Law 2,040 of September 28, 1871. The purchase
of manumission, customary law, then legalized, now has the possibility of mediation for
tensions and conflicts with the landlord. The fragments and traces left in four arbitration
actions by the enslaved women Rofina, Silvéria, Luiza and Benedicta were the guiding
threads for unveiling the clashes that involved the slave agency and the movements
around abolition in the port city scenario that “smelled of slavery” The research was based
on the documentary collection of freedom actions stored in the Memorial of Justice of the
State of Pernambuco, confronted with advertisements and news published in periodicals
of the time, Diario de Pernambuco, Jornal do Recife and The Province-Organ of the
Liberal Party and the recent historiography, allowing us to follow, nominally, real life
characters, for the construction of a narrative beyond the space of judicialization,
contemplating the transformations that left the city with abolitionist airs.