Esperança Garcia

Esperança Garcia was one of the first enslaved women to claim her rights in a court of law. She may have helped to draft the oldest document allegedly written by an enslaved woman, expressing wants, desires and expectations. Esperança was married and worked on the Fazenda dos Algodões (the Cotton Farm), a former Jesuit property in the hinterland of Piauí. Faced with threats of being sold or transferred from the farm, she wrote to the governor of Piauí stating that she already had two children and did not want to be away from friends and relatives. She admitted that she had already fled a few times to prevent her children from suffering “heavy thunderstorms and blows” or herself from becoming a “punching mattress.”