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Free Womb Law, Legal Asynchronies, and Migrations

Suing for an Enslaved Woman's Child in Nineteenth-Century Río de la Plata

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2020

Magdalena Candioti Open the ORCID record for Magdalena Candioti [Opens in a new window]
Magdalena Candioti*
Affiliation:
CONICET/Instituto Ravignani Universidad de Buenos AiresBuenos Aires, Argentina 25 de Mayo 217, 2° floor Universidad Nacional del LitoralSanta Fe, [email protected]
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Abstract

This article analyzes in depth the history of Petrona, an enslaved woman sold in Santa Fe (Argentina), sent to Buenos Aires and later possibly to Montevideo (Uruguay). By reconstructing her case, the article demonstrates how the legal status of enslaved persons was affected by the redefinitions of jurisdictions and by the forced or voluntary crossings between political units. This study also shows the circulation and uses of the Free Womb law in Argentina and Uruguay and traces legal experts’ debates over its meaning. At the same time, it reflects on the knowledge enslaved people had of those abolitionist norms and how they used them to resist forced relocations, attempt favorable migrations, or achieve full freedom. The article crosses analytical dimensions and historiographies—legal, social, and political— and articulates them by reflecting more broadly on these factors: the impact of the revolution of independence on enslaved persons’ lives, the scarce circulation of abolitionist public discourse in Río de la Plata, the gendered bias of the process, and the central yet untold uses of antislavery rhetoric in the national narratives.

Keywords

free womb lawabolitionRío de la Platalegal debatesslavery
Type
Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 73 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2020

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Footnotes

I am grateful especially to Alex Borucki, Cristiana Schettini Pereira, Carolina González Undurraga, Barbara Caletti, Ana Frega, Nicolás Duffau and Cecilia Wahren for their comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this article. Different aspects of the manuscript were discussed in meetings, among them Esclavitud con Libertad y Libertad con Esclavitud: Sujetos, República y Registros en América Colonial y Republicana (Facultad de Humanidades y Filosofía, Universidad de Chile, May, 2017); Trans-American Crossings: Enslaved Migrations within the Americas and Their Impacts on Slave Cultures and Societies (Omohundro Institute, John Carter Brown Library, Providence, June, 2018); Slave Subjectivities in the Iberian Worlds (Instituto Universitario de Lisboa, Lisbon, July, 2018); and both the seminar of the Núcleo de Historia Social y Cultural del Trabajo, IDAES, Universidad Nacional del San Martín, and the Seminario de Historia at the Universidad de San Andrés (both in Argentina), where I received valuable feedback. I would also like to thank the editorial board and the anonymous reviewers of The Americas.

References

1. Departamento de Estudios Etnográficos y Coloniales [hereafter DEEC), Santa Fe (Argentina), Escrituras Públicas, tomo 24.

2. On state formation in Argentina, see, among others, José Carlos Chiaramonte, “Acerca del origen del estado en el Río de la Plata luego de 1810,” Anuario del IEHS Prof. Juan C. Gross 10, 1995 [Anuario of the Instituto de Estudios Histórico-Sociales, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Universidad Nacional del Centro, Tandil, Argentina]; José Carlos Chiaramonte, Ciudades, provincias, estados: orígenes de la nación Argentina (1800–1846), (Buenos Aires: Ariel, 1997); Oszlak, Oscar, La formación del estado argentino: orden, progreso y organización nacional (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1991)Google Scholar; and Donghi, Tulio Halperin, Revolución y guerra. Formación de una élite dirigente en la Argentina criolla (Buenos Aires: Alianza Editorial, 1994)Google Scholar. On Uruguay, see Frega, Ana, , coord., Uruguay I. Revolucion, independencia y construcción del Estado (Montevideo: Editorial Planeta-MAPFRE, 2015)Google Scholar; Donghi, Tulio Halperín, Reforma y disolución de los imperios ibéricos (1750–1850), (Madrid: Alianza, 1985)Google Scholar; and Ribeiro, Ana, “De las independencias a los estados republicanos (1810–1850),” in De las independencias iberoamericanas a los estados nacionales (1810–1850), Frasquet, Ivana and Slemian, Andréa, eds. (Madrid and Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2009), 61–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. On gradual abolition in the Argentinean case, see Hebe Clementi, La abolición de la esclavitud en América Latina (Buenos Aires: La Pléyade, 1974); George Reid Andrews, Los afroargentinos de Buenos Aires, (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 1989), 58–68; Silvia Mallo and Ignacio Telesca, eds., ‘Negros de la Patria’. Los afrodescendientes en las luchas por la independencia en el antiguo Virreinato del Río de La Plata (Buenos Aires: Editorial SB, 2010); Magdalena Candioti, “Abolición gradual y libertades vigiladas en el Río de la Plata. La política de control de libertos de 1813,” Corpus: Archivos de la Alteridad Americana, 6:1 (2016), https://doi:0.4000/corpusarchivos.1567; Candioti, “El tiempo de los libertos. Conflictos y litigación en torno a la ley de vientre libre en el Río de la Plata (1813–1860),” História [São Paulo] 38 (2019), http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1980-4369e2019001; Paulina L. Alberto, “Liberta by Trade: Negotiating the Terms of Unfree Labor in Gradual Abolition Buenos Aires (1820s–30s),” Journal of Social History 52:3 (Spring 2019): 619–651, https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shy035; and Erika Edwards, “Mestizaje, Córdoba's Patria Chica: Beyond the Myth of Black Disappearance in Argentina,” African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 7:2 (June 2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2014.909120. On abolition in Uruguay, see Alex Borucki, Abolicionismo y tráfico de esclavos en Montevideo tras la fundación republicana (1829–1853) (Montevideo: Biblioteca Nacional, Universidad de la Republica, 2009). In fact, this book is a kind of exception, since Borucki's analysis establishes a constant dialogue between abolitionist policies on both sides of the estuary.

4. “Oriental” was the demonym used by the inhabitants of the so-called Oriental Province, in the eastern part of the Río de la Plata.

5. On the role of Defender of the Poor in colonial and early republican Buenos Aires, see Lucas Rebagliati, “Pobreza, caridad y justicia en Buenos Aires: los defensores de pobres (1776–1821)” (PhD diss [History]: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 2016).

6. On this kind of link between jurisdictional changes and the determinations of free and slave status in other contexts, see Ira Berlin, “Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American Society on British Mainland North America,” American Historical Review 85:1 (February 1980): 44–78; Rebecca Scott, “Paper Thin: Freedom and Re-enslavement in the Diaspora of the Haitian Revolution,” Law and History Review 29:4 (November 2011): 1061–1087; Martha Jones, “Time, Space, and Jurisdiction in Atlantic World Slavery: The Volunbrun Household in Gradual Emancipation New York,” Law and History Review 29:4 (November 2011): 1031–1060; Rebecca Scott and Jean Hebrard, Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press 2012); Ada Ferrer, “Haiti, Free Soil, and Antislavery in the Revolutionary Atlantic,” American Historical Review 117:1 (February 2012): 40–66; and Kerry Kennington, “Law, Geography, and Mobility: Suing for Freedom in Antebellum St. Louis,” Journal of Southern History, 80:3 (August 2014): 575–604.

7. The Free Womb law and the slave trade ban constituted (from the late eighteenth century in the United States through the Spanish American revolutions and the Cortes of Cádiz) the gradual path of abolition discussed and preferred by the elites throughout the Atlantic world. Free Womb laws particularly were thought of as a strategy capable of reconciling existing rights of property with the aspirations of the enslaved for emancipation. On gradual abolition in the United States of America, see, among others, Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780 (New York: Cornell University Press, 1998). On Spanish America, see Rebecca Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000); Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Slavery, Freedom, and Abolition in Latin America and the Atlantic World (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2011); and Alex Borucki, Abolicionismo y tráfico de esclavos. On the later case of Brazil, see Sidney Chalhoub, Visões da liberdade: uma história das últimas décadas da escravidão na Corte (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1990); Keila Grinberg, LIBERATA: a lei da ambiguidade as ações de liberdade da Corte de Apelação do Rio de Janeiro no século XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Centro Edelstein de Pesquisas Sociais, 2008); Beatriz Mamigonian, Africanos libres. A abolição do tráfico de escravos no Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2017); and Wlamyra de Albuquerque, O jogo da dissimulação. Abolição e cidadania no Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009).

8. Registro Oficial de Leyes de la República Argentina [hereafter RORA], Buenos Aires, Imprenta La República, 1879, 194.

9. On the principle of “free soil” established in other contexts, and its implications, see the dossier coordinated by Keila Grinberg in Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies 32:3 (2011); Sue Peabody, ‘There Are No Slaves in France’: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Sue Peabody, “La question raciale et le ‘sol libre de france’: l‘affaire Furcy,” Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 64:6 (2009): 1305 –1334; and Ada Ferrer, “Haiti, Free Soil, and Antislavery in the Revolutionary Atlantic,” American Historical Review 117:1 (February 2012): 40–66. In a similar way, this principle was considered to have been established from 1772 in Great Britain's jurisprudence. The Somerset case declared free a slave defended by a group of abolitionists; the slave was taken from Boston to England by his master and fled after two years. See David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1779–1823 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 470–520.

10. It is important to point out that the slave trade ban was effective in the port of Buenos Aires, but not in Montevideo, where ships and illegal traffic continued until the 1850s. See Borucki, From Shipmates to Soldiers: Emerging Black Identities in the Río de la Plata (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015), chapt. 1.

11. See Ana Frega, Alex Borucki, Karla Chagas, and Natalia Stalla, “Esclavitud y abolición en el Río de la Plata en tiempos de revolución y república,” Memoria del Simposio: La ruta del esclavo en el Río de la Plata: su historia y sus consecuencias (Montevideo: UNESCO, 2005).

12. On reclamations and pressures by Luso-Brazilian authorities, see Keila Grinberg, “Escravidão, alforria e direito no Brasil oitocentista: reflexões sobre a lei de 1831 e o ‘principio da liberdade‘ na fronteira sul do Impero brasileiro,” in Nação e cidadania no Impero: novos horizontes, José Murilo de Carvalho, org. (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilização Brasileira -Record Ltda., 2007), 274–275; and Joseph Younger, “‘Naturals of This Republic’: Slave Law, Sovereignty, and the Legal Politics of Citizenship in the Río de la Plata Borderlands,” Law and History Review 30:3 (November 2012): 1845–1864.

13. The chronicles of El Redactor de la Asamblea have gained relevance, since the assembly's records of the debate are lost.

14. El Redactor de la Asamblea 19, January 31, 1814, 73. Twenty years later, the commercial trading of those foreign citizens’ servants would be authorized, provided that a certain number of years of residence had passed prior to the trade. These rulings made the prohibition more flexible, but policies, such as the signing of a treaty with England banining the slave trade in 1839, reinforced the commitment to the end of the traffic. See “Tratado entre la Gran Bretaña y la Confederación Argentina para la abolición del tráfico de esclavos,” RORA, 1840, no. 2765, 36–53.

15. The decree held that it was“… as dishonorable as outrageous to mankind, that in a People walking with such tenacity and effort towards its freedom, children remain in slavery”RORA, tomo 1, 194.

16. For an analysis of the policy and its statistical impact, see Andrews, Los afroargentinos, 58–68. On the legal status, see Liliana Crespi, “Ni esclavo ni libre. El estatus del liberto en el Río de la Plata desde el periodo indiano al republicano,” in ‘Negros de la Patria,’ Mallo and Telesca, eds. For an analysis of the Regulation, and its logic and consequences, see Candioti, “Abolición gradual y libertades vigiladas.” For its judicial uses, see Alejandro Castro, “Un largo camino hacia la libertad. Problemas en torno a la situación de los libertos a partir de la sanción de la ley de libertad de vientres de 1813 y su acceso a la libertad. 1813–1833” (Licenciatura thesis: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 2009); and Candioti, “El tiempo de los libertos.” For an interesting reconstruction of a singular use of this figure and the negotiations around it, see Alberto, “Liberta by Trade.”

17. See Archivo General de la Nación Argentina [hereafter AGN A], Sala IX, 23-8-4, Administrative, File 30, doc. 1020, IX, 39-8-4, 1815, and 23-8-3, 1813. These documents are analyzed in Magdalena Candioti, “Altaneros y libertinos. Transformaciones del estatus jurídico de los afroporteños en la Buenos Aires revolucionaria,” Desarrollo Económico 50:198 (2010): 271–296.

18. For a detailed description of legislation on slavery in colonial law, see Manuel Lucena Salmoral, Los códigos negros de la América Hispana (Alcalá de Henares: Ediciones UNESCO/Universidad de Alcalá, 1996); Carolina González Undurraga, “Estudio introductorio,” Esclavos y esclavas demandando justicia, Chile, 1740–1823. Documentación judicial por carta de libertad y papel de venta, Introduction and transcription of sources by González Undurraga (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 2014); and Rebagliati, Pobreza, Caridad.

19. That was the opinion of the influential jurist José María Álvarez. See Gabriel Entin and Magdalena Candioti, “Liberté et dépendance pendant la révolution du Río de la Plata. Esclaves et affranchis dans la construction d'une citoyenneté politique (1810–1820),” Le mouvement social 250/1 (2015) : 71–91, https://doi.org/10.3917/lms.252.0071; and the section “Libertos and Patronage in the Rioplatense Juridical Debate,” in this article.

20. Indeed, the high mortality among freed babies during those years attracted the attention of the press (for example, La Gaceta de Buenos Aires 55, May 11, 1816, and La Prensa Argentina, 23, February 20, 1816). Some scholars have examined this demographic change without attributing it to the lack of masters’ care. See George Reid Andrews, Los afroargentinos; Marta Goldberg, “La población negra y mulata de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, 1810–1840,” Desarrollo Económico 16:61 (April-June 1976); and Florencia Guzmán, ¡Madres negras tenían que ser! Maternidad, emancipación y trabajo en tiempos de cambios y transformaciones (Buenos Aires, 1800–1830), Tempo | Niterói | Vol. 24 n. 3 | Sept./Dic. 2018: 451–473. It is possible to find signs of masters’ reluctance to take care of children no longer destined to be their slaves in some lawsuits. See AGN A, Sala IX, 23-8-4, Administrativos, leg. 30, exp. 1020, and Sala IX, 39-8-4, 1815 and AGN A, 23-8-3, 1813. “Altaneros y libertinos”, Candioti. But the impact of careleness on the part of patrons on freed babies’ mortality needs in-depth study, in demographic terms.

21. Lassaga Echague was one of the sons of Gabriel de Lassaga, a Basque-Navarrese who arrived in Santa Fe in 1760. He quickly integrated himself into the local elite by marrying Francisca Micaela Javiera Echagüe and Andía, a member of one of the oldest and richest families of the city. From the end of the colony to 1824, he held, repeatedly, positions in the cabildo such as procurador, alcalde de segundo voto (mayoral officer in charge of civil issues), and served as elector in several governmental elections. See the Archivo General de la Provincia de Santa Fe, Actas Capitulares, several volumes.

22. Judgment on accounts of the management of property belonging to the will of Simon Avechuco between don Gabriel de Lassaga and doña Micaela de Echague, DEEC, Expedientes Civiles, vol. 54, doc. 79, 1806; Gabriel Lassaga versus the Testament of Simon de Avechuco, DEEC, Expedientes Civiles, vol. 55, doc. 102, 1807; Gabriel Lassaga versus the Testament of Avechuco for money collection, DEEC, Expedientes Civiles, doc. 196, 1812. We are not interested here in reviewing the enormous conflicts that lasted for years between Lassaga, his aunt, and his cousins around this testament, nor in judging the good or bad actions of the executor. Here we pay attention only to the administration of the estates’ slaves.

23. There are no colonial censuses of population available, only a general register of the city, elaborated between December 1816 and January 1817, in republican times.

24. In Río de la Plata, the label “moreno” was a synonym of “black.” Both expression were used by authorities, but ‘moreno’ was more frequent in self-identifications than ‘black.’ Something similar occurred with the labels ‘pardo‘ and ‘mulato‘, with the first being the one colored populations used for self-identification. Pardo suggested mixed race, which could include diverse combinations of African, indigenous, and even European ancestry. On these classifications, see Judith Farberman and Silvia Ratto, coords., Historias mestizas en el Tucumán colonial y las pampas (siglos XVII-XIX) (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2009); and Florencia Guzmán, “Performatividad social y (sub)categorías coloniales. Mulatos, pardos, mestizos y criollos en tiempos de cambios, guerra y política, en el interior de la Argentina,” in Cartografías afrolatinoamericanas. Perspectivas situadas para análisis transfronterizos, Florencia Guzmán y Lea Geler, eds. (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2017), 57–83.

25. The great majority of Africans living in Santa Fe were enslaved persons. As in other parts of Spanish America, the term ‘criollo’ for the enslaved means born in the Americas. On the enslaved population in Santa Fe, see Magdalena Candioti, “Hacia una historia de la esclavitud y la abolición en la ciudad de Santa Fe, 1810–1853,” in Cartografías afrolatinoamericanas II. Perspectivas situadas desde la Argentina, Florencia Guzmán, Lea Geler, and Alejandro Frigerio, eds. (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2016).

26. In the inventories of goods and other property of the city, there are no records of large batches of slaves, except for the testamentary of the first governor of the province, who left around 50 slaves. Archivo de la Junta Provincial de Estudios Históricos (Santa Fe), Caja “Documentos de Francisco Antonio Candioti,” 054-0342-ARG-JPEH-AH-FAC.

27. Carlos Sempat Assadourian, “El tráfico de esclavos en Córdoba (1588–1610),” Cuadernos de Historia [Córdoba] 32 (1965); “El tráfico de esclavos en Córdoba: de Angola a Potosí, siglos XVI–XVII,” Cuadernos de Historia 36 (1966).

28. Borucki, From Shipmates to Soldiers.

29. From that census, of which information was kept for three out of the four existing districts, it is possible to learn that there were at least 46 Africans classified as Guinea, 48 as Angola, 1 as Mina, 1 as Mozambique and 1 as “African” without any specification. See Candioti, ”Hacia una historia”.

30. On the transformation of the labor market, see Jorge Gelman, “El mundo rural en transición,” in Nueva historia Argentina, tomo 3, Revolución, república, confederación, 1806–1852, Noemí Goldman, dir. (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2000); and Jonathan Brown, Historia socio-económica de la Argentina: 1776–1860. (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2002).

31. On militarization after the revolution, see Tulio Halperin Donghi, Revolución y guerra; Alejandro Rabinovich, “La militarización del Río de la Plata, 1810–1820, Elementos cuantitativos y conceptuales para un análisis,” Boletín del Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana “Dr. Emilio Ravignani” 37 (2012): 11–39. On blacks’ militarization, see Andrews, Los afroargentinos, chapt. 7; and Peter Blanchard, Under the Flags of Freedom: Slave Soldiers and the Wars of Independence in Spanish South America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008). For descriptions of the enslaved population in Buenos Aires, see Marta Goldberg and Silvia Mallo, “La población africana en Buenos Aires y su campaña. Formas de vida y de subsistencia (1750–1850),” Temas de África y Asia 2 (1993): 15–69; and Golberg and Mallo, “Trabajo y vida cotidiana de los africanos de Buenos Aires (1750–1850),” in Afroamérica, la tercera raíz Julián Andrés Gallego (ed.) (Madrid: UNESCO, 2005).

32. Notarial records show how these arrangements were put into paper once the purchase was completed. AGN A, Escribanías, several volumes.

33. See Andrews, Los afroargentinos; Lyman Johnson, Los talleres de la revolución (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2013); and Goldberg, “La población negra,” 75–99.

34. DEEC, Santa Fe, Escrituras Públicas, tomo 24. Jorge Gelman indicates the existence of Santa Fe slaves among the 33 declared by Rosas in 1826. Gelman found that from the middle of the next decade, many of them were registered as salaried employees on the same ranches, which were functioning almost without slaves by then. Jorge Gelman, “El fracaso de los sistemas coactivos de trabajo rural en Buenos Aires bajo el rosismo, algunas explicaciones preliminares,” Revista de Indias 59:215 (1999): 131–132.

35. The practice of selling free people as slaves was very common in the Americas before the gradual abolitionist laws. The particularity of the cases discussed here is that they affected particularly libertos so defined by the Free Womb law, that is, allegedly born after January 31, 1813.

36. Petrona was a very popular name at the time, and it was very common among enslaved women.

37. AGN A, Tribunal Civil, E–9, 1832–1833, Escobar, Simón, solicitando información de testigo para acreditar que una esclava es de su madre.

38. AGN A, Tribunal Civil, F–11, 4–1834 -1835; fol. 4, Fragueiro, Mariano, contra Torres, Lorenzo, por esclavas, sobre si la parda Isabel es o no liberta.

39. AGN A, Tribunal Civil, F–11, 4–1834 -1835, fol. 8.

40. AGN A. Tribunal Civil, H-3–19/3/1831, Don Mauricio Herrera reclamando un esclavo que le llevaron al cuartel de defensores, fol. 1v–2.

41. Agustina Barrachina, “Africanos y afrodescendientes en el Buenos Aires posrevolucionario: representaciones en la prensa (1830–1833),” Revista Binacional Brasil Argentina 7:1 (2018): 69–70, doi: https://doi.org/10.22481/rbba.v7i1.4063.

42. For a balanced view of the use of courts by slaves, see Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela Gross, “Comparative Studies of Law, Slavery, and Race in the Americas,” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 6 (2010): 469–485, doi:10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-102209-152924.

43. On that long presence, dating from colonial times, see Fabrício Prado, Edges of Empire: Atlantic Networks and Revolution in Bourbon Río de la Plata (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015). On the political organization in the Banda Oriental from 1810, see Ribeiro, De las independencias; and Inés Cuadro Cawen, “La crisis de los poderes locales. La construcción de una nueva estructura de poder institucional en la Provincia Oriental durante la guerra de independencia contra el Imperio del Brasil (1825–1828),” in Historia regional e independencia del Uruguay. Proceso histórico y revisión crítica de sus relatos, Ana Frega, coord. (Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, 2009).

44. Ana Frega, “Caminos de libertad en tiempos de revolución. Los esclavos en la Provincia Oriental Artiguista, 1815–1820,” in Seminario Estudios sobre la Cultura Afro-Rioplatense. Historia y Presente, Alex Borucki y Ana Frega, comps. (Montevideo: Publicaciones de la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación, 2004).

45. See Borucki, Abolitionism y tráfico de esclavos.

46. On Artigas and the Liga de los Pueblos Libres, see Ana Frega, “El artiguismo en la revolución del Río de la Plata. Algunas líneas de trabajo sobre ‘El sistema de los pueblos libres,’” in Nuevas miradas en torno al artiguismo, Ana Frega and Ariadna Islas, coords. (Montevideo: Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación, 2001). In fact, the Monterroso siblings were cousins of Artigas. I thank one of the reviewers for this piece of information.

47. Notwithstanding, it is true that Artigas did not promote immediate abolition, used forced recruitment of enslaved males for the war, and maintained the racial division of regiments. On the other hand, he did promote the right of blacks and free zambos to receive land. On these policies, see Ana Frega, Alex Borucki, Karla Chagas, and Natalia Stalla, “Esclavitud y abolición”; and Frega, “Caminos de libertad.”

48. On the fragile guarantee of freedom offered by documents, see Scott and Hebrard, Freedom Papers.

49. The law was actually issued in November 1821, and stated that “he government has been very surprised to know that greed still continues in the inhumane endeavor to make slaves those who by the laws of the country should be free.” As such, the law declared a prohibition on “the transfer of pregnant slaves to bordering countries and the departure of freedmen before their emancipation.” Registro Oficial de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, 1821, 131.

50. Ramón Díaz was born in Buenos Aires in 1796. In 1819, he was elected as representative of Luján before the Sala de Representantes and acted as such between 1821 and 1823. He was most likely editor of La lira Argentina, the first compilation of Argentine poetry, published in 1824—the same year in which Díaz died prematurely. Pedro Luis Barcia, in his preliminary study for the 1982 edition of La lira Argentina (Academia Argentina de Letras, Buenos Aires).

51. Acuerdos de la Honorable Junta de Representantes de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (1820–21), vol. 2 (Buenos Aires, 1933).

52. See Chiaramonte, Ciudades, provincias, estado.

53. Entre Ríos, another province bordering the Banda Oriental and the Luso-Brazilian empire, sanctioned a similar law (“Ley confirmando la prohibición del tráfico de esclavos” (Law confirming salve trade ban”. It established that “no slave woman can be taken to another [place] where there is no Freedmen's law. Owners who want to leave, must sell their slaves before [that].” The law added: “Masters, patrons of the freedman, cannot take them out as just said; in such case, the patronage will be returned to the government so it can use them and give them new patrons.” Recopilación de Leyes, Decretos y Acuerdos de Entre Ríos de la Provincia de Entre Ríos, tomo 1 (1821–1824), (Uruguay, Imprenta de la Voz del Pueblo, 1875): 160–162. The province of Córdoba would issue a similar law.

54. AGN A, Sala X, M-15, 19 1823, fol. 3.

55. See Guillermo Feliú Cruz, La abolición de la esclavitud en Chile: estudio histórico y social (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria Cormorán, 1947); “Regulando el fin de la esclavitud”, Candioti, ”. On Brazil, Visões da liberdade, Chalhoub; LIBERATA, Grinberg, Africanos libres, Mamigonian; O jogo da dissimulação, do Albuquerque,; and Celso Castilho and Camillia Cowling, “Bancando a liberdade, popularizando a política: abolicionismo e fundos locais de emancipação na década de 1880 no Brasil,” Afro-Ásia 47 (2013): 161–197.

56. Sidney Chalhoub, Machado de Assis, historiador (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2003),171–182, 266–269.

57. On Somellera as a disciple of Bentham, see Vicente Cutolo, “El primer profesor de derecho civil de las universidades de Buenos Aires y Montevideo,” preliminary study to Pedro Somellera, Appendix, “De los delitos” (On crimes), (Buenos Aires: Editorial Elche, 1958); Jonathan Harris, “Bernardino Rivadavia and Benthamite ‘Discipleship,’” Latin American Research Review 33:1 (1998): 129–149; Klaus Gallo, The Struggle for an Enlightened Republic: Buenos Aires and Rivadavia (London: ILAS, 2006); and Magdalena Candioti, Un maldito derecho. Leyes, justicia y revolución en la Buenos Aires republicana (1810–1830), (Buenos Aires: Didot, 2018).

58. Pedro Somellera, Principios de Derecho Civil, course presented at the Universidad de Buenos Aires in 1824 (Buenos Aires: Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales, 1939 [1824]), author's emphasis.

59. Somellera, Principios, 51, author's emphasis.

60. The kinds of controls black people suffered under led Sidney Chalhoub to emphasize the idea of an “structural precariousness of freedom” to describe what African and Afro- descendants suffered in Brazil. Chalhoub, “The Precariousness of Freedom in a Slave Society (Brazil in the Nineteenth Century ),” Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, IRSH 56 (2011), 405–439, doi:10.1017/S002085901100040X.

61. Somellera did not imagine himself as an abolitionist or a person especially concerned with slavery. In his autobiography, he made no reference to such questions.

62. On the relevance of Álvarez's thought as a source used to legitimize Río de la Plata's independence, see José Carlos Chiaramonte, Nación y estado en Iberoamérica. El lenguaje político en tiempos de las independencias (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2004).

63. José M. Álvarez, Instituciones del derecho real de Castilla y de Indias (Buenos Aires: Imprenta del Estado, 1834 [1818–1820]), 34.

64. Álvarez, Instituciones, 28.

65. Álvarez, Instituciones, 34.

66. Álvarez, Instituciones, 37, emphasis by author.

67. Álvarez, Instituciones, 37.

68. Conditional manumissions with forced mandates were widely used, but no patronage was explicitly established. On the Buenos Aires case, see Johnson, Lyman, “La manumisión de esclavos en Buenos Aires durante el virreinato,” Desarrollo Económico 16:63 (1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “La manumisión de esclavos en el Buenos Aires colonial: Un análisis ampliado,” Desarrollo Económico 17:68 (January-March 1978): 637–646; Johnson, Los talleres; Johnson, Lyman and Titiunik, Alejandro, “La manumisión de esclavos en Buenos Aires durante el Virreinato,” Desarrollo Económico 16:63 (1976): 333–348CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosal, Miguel Ángel, “Manumisiones de esclavos en el Buenos Aires del temprano siglo XVII,” Anuario de la Escuela de Historia Virtual 2:2 (2011)Google Scholar; Rosal, Miguel Ángel, Africanos y afrodescendientes en el Río de la Plata. Siglos XVIII–XIX (Buenos Aires: Dunken, 2009)Google Scholar; and Seoane, María Isabel, “La manumisión voluntaria expresa en la praxis notarial bonaerense durante el Período Federal (1829–1852),” Revista de Historia del Derecho 33 (2005): 327–390Google Scholar.

69. This Free Womb law was the second to be sanctioned in Spanish America, the first being the Chilean law of 1811. That law called “free” the children of enslaved women, and did not foresee any regulation of their free status. Later, in 1823, at the time of the total Chilean abolition, legislators would discuss the need to impose some controls on freedmen, as Argentineans had done. On the Chilean case and dialogues with Argentina and Colombia, see Candioti, “Regulando el fin de la esclavitud.”

70. Dalmacio Vélez Sarsfield would later be the author of the first Argentinean civil law code (1869).

71. Vélez Sarsfield clarified that the philanthropic treasury foreseen in the freedmen's Regulation, had not been organized, and that the conflicts around the patronato were being processed not before the police, but before the judiciary. Thanks to this judicialization, it is possible today to reconstruct the life of freedmen and the centrality of courts as a space of struggle over the scope of the freedom granted to freedmen.

72. AGN A, Tribunal Civil, 23, M-15, 1823.

73. AGN A, Tribunal Civil, 23, M-15, 1823, fol. 6; Mallo, “Los discursos.”

74. AGN A, Tribunal Civil, 23, M-15, 1823, fol. 6

75. Libro de Bautismos (mestizos, mulatos y negros), 1817–1853, Parroquia de Nuestra Señora de la Merced, Ciudad de Buenos Aires, fol. 12v, https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9396-XT93-Y?cc=1974184&wc=MDBK-D6D%3A311514201%2C316597501%2C316802401

76. I owe to Alex Borucki the information that Gervasio Cirilo was born on Artigas's birthday. Nevertheless, Borucki pointed out Gervasio was not a very popular way to refer to Artigas at the time. Personal communication.

77. Cisplatine was the name for this territory under Brazilian rule.

78. Martha Jones, “Time, Space, and Jurisdiction,” 1037.

79. El Argos de Buenos Aires 23, March 19, 1823. See also Mariana Lescano, “La representación del proceso de independencia de Brasil en la prensa porteña (1821–1825),” (Licenciatura thesis: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 2013).

80. The exception to that silence are a group of XIXth century theses to obtain the degree in Jurisprudence. This unpublished dissertations, I am working on, did problematize slavery and produced radical critics to it.

81. On ideas on slavery circulating in the courts, see Mallo, “La libertad.”

82. In the context of the wars between the Argentine Confederation and the Brazilian empire, the capture of enemy ships by private corsairs was not only allowed but encouraged by the Argentine government. As a result, a series of slave ships were captured and conducted to Patagones. On libertos in this situation, see Andrews, Los afroargentinos; and Crespi, Liliana, “Negros apresados en operaciones de corso durante la guerra con el Brasil (1825–1828),” Temas de África y Asia 2 (1993): 109–124Google Scholar.

83. On the kinds of contrasts presented by these two women as they tried to take control of their lives in a slave society (in this case, Brazil), see Lauderdale, Laura Graham, Caetana diz nao. Histórias de mulheres da sociedade escravista brasileira (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2005)Google Scholar.

84. Archivo General de la Provincia de Santa Fe, Actas de la Asamblea Nacional Constituyente, art. 15, 1853, 324.