Paying the Price of Freedom: Family and Labor among Lima’s Slaves, 1800-1854

In this volume, the author documents in detail the striving and ingenuity, the hard-won triumphs and bitter defeats of slaves who sought liberation in nineteenth-century urban Peru. Drawing on judicial, ecclesiastical, and notarial records--including the testimony of the slaves themselves--she uncovers the various strategies slaves invented to gain their freedom. The author pays particular attention to marriage relations and family life. Slaves used their family solidarity as a strategy, while slaveowners used the conflicts within families to prevent manumission. The author focuses also on gender relations between slaveowners and slaves, as well as between slaves.