“Entirely Free and Subjects”: Labyrinths of Freedom and Unfreedom in Chocó, Colombia, 1821–52

On October 31, 1831, an Afro-Colombian woman named Clara Eredia paid 200 patacones to free her enslaved sister, Maria de la Cruz, who labored for years in Quibdó, a frontier town and capital of the Pacific Coastal province of Chocó, Colombia. However, that same day, the newly freed Maria de la Cruz stated that she now owed 200 patacones to her sister for her freedom. Given that she lacked prior capital or “properties to guarantee [the payment],” Maria was “obliged to satisfy it by laboring in the mines” alongside Clara, or, alternatively, Maria could “acquire a slave for her sister.” Meanwhile, in March of 1838, a slave-owner named Marselo Cordova began legal proceedings against his slave’s two children who had been born after the Law of the Free Womb of 1821, a law making newly born children of enslaved mothers legally “free” though they were obliged to serve as apprentices for their mothers’ masters until they reached a certain age. In his initial declaration, Cordova claimed the children were both “entirely free and subjects,” and that he was owed special treatment given that he was “the father who had raised them.” This paper examines the various labyrinths of freedom and unfreedom enslaved and free black households faced during the gradual abolition of slavery (1821-1852) in the historic heart of Colombia’s gold-mining region of Chocó. In particular, I examine how enslaved people utilized extensive family relations for their emancipatory strategies, which at times created complicated relationships of debt, in addition to analyzing the precarious, tenuous status of children born after the Law of the Free Womb. Beyond showing how “freedom was no fixed condition but a constantly moving target” (Fields 1985: 193), I argue that these contestations were central to the multiple struggles over social sovereignty that erupted in post-independence Colombia.