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