In 1848, an African man of Congo “nation” was transported from West Central Africa to Rio de Janeiro and then transferred to Minas Gerais in 1849.
After his owner died, he was sold in an auction to another slaveholder. Likewise, an African woman of Cabinda “nation” was brought from Africa to Rio de Janeiro in 1850 and then also transported to Minas Gerais.
Baptized in the Roman Catholic Church, the man was renamed Jacyntho and the woman Anna, and they got married. But despite being baptized in Minas Gerais, there were no baptism records, “surely to avoid knowledge of the fraud, with which the aforementioned priest proceeded, baptizing free African[s] as slaves.”1 This case was denounced in a letter signed by Brazilian Black abolitionist Luiz Gama. His complaint about fraud was a reference to the first law banning the African slave trade to Brazil in 1831, which gave the legal status of “free African” to any African person illegally introduced in the country as a slave after the law’s enactment.Despite their importance, daily resistance and rebellion often failed to liberate bondspeople, which is why during the entire era of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas, enslaved men, women, and even children had to find (and create) other paths to gain liberty. As noted in chapter 8, enslaved people could be successful in purchasing their freedom, especially in urban areas, even though manumission by purchase was much more common in Latin America than in the British West Indies, colonial North America, and the United States. Starting in the late eighteenth century with the end of the American War of Independence and after the rise of Haiti in 1804, the Northern states of the United States and newly independent countries in Latin America began to enact legislation establishing gradual emancipation and banning the slave trade from Africa. Meanwhile, through insurrections and massive flights, bondspeople, along with abolitionists, joined antislavery organizations.
As recent works show, as early as the late seventeenth century, West Central Africans such as Lourenço da Silva Mendonça appealed in court for the end of the slave trade.2 Historians have also demonstrated that Africans and their descendants were protagonists in this very long fight for the legal prohibition of the slave trade and slavery, which eventually culminated with the final abolition of slavery during the nineteenth century in the Americas.3 European powers used the end of the Atlantic slave trade and the consequent abolition of slavery in the Americas to justify the scramble for Africa that divided the continent. As European colonization evolved, slavery was banned in various parts of Africa as well. Nonetheless, in other parts of the continent, colonial powers introduced slavery-like labor regimes, which included not only forced labor for long hours under strict surveillance but also physical punishments.
A long fight that combined various forms of collective slave resistance and rebellions led to the gradual and then final legal abolition of slavery in the Americas. From an individual point of view, however, many men, women, and children in many countries were already freed when emancipation finally occurred. In several instances, these freedmen and freedwomen contributed to the organization of slave rebellions (as we saw in chapter 15), and many of them, such as Brazilian formerly enslaved Luiz Gama, also joined the abolitionist movement. While some enslaved women and men individually acquired their freedom, either through self-purchase or when their owners decided to emancipate them for a variety of reasons, a large majority remained in bondage as slavery started gradually being outlawed at the end of the eighteenth century. Despite these varied trajectories, in many ways, the paths of enslaved, freed, and free Africans and their descendants intertwined during the long age of emancipation.