10 - Anna Maria Lopes de Brito, Eighteenth-Century Minas Gerais (Brazil)

Summary

In 1760, Anna Maria Lopes de Brito, knowing that she was suffering from a life-threatening disease, made the necessary preparations for her death. Brito registered a will, where she identified herself as a native of the Coast of Mina, in Africa. She also revealed that her owner “mercifully” freed her and her husband, “for which reason they married each other,” and that the couple had built a modest estate through gold mining. Finally, Brito declared that, as a member of the black brotherhood of Our Lady of Rosario, her body would be buried in the brotherhood’s chapel, where masses would be celebrated for the benefit of her soul’s salvation. The records Anna Maria Lopes de Brito left behind reveal something of the life of a freed African woman in colonial Brazil’s slave and mining society. Brito’s freedom was marked by limitations she faced in her choice of life partner, occupation, and social relationships. Still, Brito used different legal resources available to her to secure in death some of the benefits freedom had to offer: the care of her community for her well-being in the afterlife, and the assurance that the fruits of her labor would continue to benefit her children.