Women in African Diaspora. Rioplatense black women (Río de la Plata) (1750-1840)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the position of the African slave woman —freedwoman, on the way
to obtain her manumission or free — in a period of time that goes from the boom to the decline
to the disappearance of slavery and its abolition. The demographic information for the city of
Buenos Aires is displayed together with the possible interpretation of it, for this purpose, the
population polls and church records of the time were studied, and the testimonies of various
travelers have been considerad. A thorough investigation on the jobs they performed and how
they managed to subsist, and how these variad throughout the period. Their juridical condition
is examinad and records from Buenos Aires and Montevideo are studied. Deeply rooted prejudices
of the society referring to this group are analyzed with information provided from difierent
sources including writers of the time.