eprintid: 10118984 rev_number: 13 eprint_status: archive userid: 608 dir: disk0/10/11/89/84 datestamp: 2021-01-12 13:29:32 lastmod: 2021-03-31 06:10:15 status_changed: 2021-01-12 13:29:32 type: book_section metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Ireton, C title: Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico) ispublished: pub divisions: UCL divisions: A01 divisions: B03 divisions: C03 divisions: F28 note: This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. abstract: Margarita de Sossa’s freedom journey was defiant and entrepreneurial. In her early twenties, still enslaved in Portugal, she took possession of her body; after refusing to endure her owner’s sexual demands, he sold her, and she was transported to Mexico. There, she purchased her freedom with money earned as a healer and then conducted an enviable business as an innkeeper. Sossa’s biography provides striking insights into how she conceptualized freedom in terms that included – but was not limited to – legal manumission. Her transatlantic biography offers a rare insight into the life of a free black woman (and former slave) in late sixteenth-century Puebla, who sought to establish various degrees of freedom for herself. Whether she was refusing to acquiesce to an abusive owner, embracing entrepreneurship, marrying, purchasing her own slave property, or later using the courts to petition for divorce. Sossa continued to advocate on her own behalf. Her biography shows that obtaining legal manumission was not always equivalent to independence and autonomy, particularly if married to an abusive husband, or if financial successes inspired the envy of neighbors. date: 2020-09 date_type: published publisher: Cambridge University Press official_url: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108623957 oa_status: green full_text_type: pub language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 1827896 doi: 10.1017/9781108623957 isbn_13: 9781108623957 lyricists_name: Ireton, Chloe lyricists_id: CLIRE67 actors_name: Dewerpe, Marie actors_id: MDDEW97 actors_role: owner full_text_status: public place_of_pub: Cambridge, UK pagerange: 27-42 isbn: 1108623956 book_title: As If She Were Free A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas editors_name: Snyder, T editors_name: Seijas, T editors_name: Ball, E citation: Ireton, C; (2020) Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico). In: Snyder, T and Seijas, T and Ball, E, (eds.) As If She Were Free A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas. (pp. 27-42). Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK. Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10118984/1/Ireton_margarita_de_sossa_sixteenthcentury_puebla_de_los_angeles_new_spain_mexico.pdf