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In 1824, Isabel Pérez came before the síndico procurador, Santiago's municipal official responsible for offering enslaved people legal counsel, asking to begin proceedings against her owner. 1 Rita Grillo, Pérez's enslaver, had recently transferred Pérez from an occupation where she could earn cash to a coffee plantation, where such lucrative opportunities were sorely absent. Pérez was a coartada, an enslaved woman who had paid part of her manumission price. For a few years, from that position, she had been able to live independently, hire herself out, and keep a portion of her wages, which she saved to one day pay the remaining manumission installments. As a coartada, Pérez had built a life for herself alongside a free man who, according to some rumors, was married. It was supposedly this romantic entanglement that set into motion the series of events leading to court action.According to the documents of this case, Grillo had apparently moved Pérez to the coffee plantation in order to protect her own and Pérez's moral standing in the community, as well as Pérez's best economic interests. Rumors about the romantic affair -"a criminal friendship" ("una criminal Amistad")had tarnishe

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published

2022

Language

EN