Paper short abstract:

Gender and abolitionist rhetoric in Cuba, Brazil and the Atlantic World.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines abolitionist rhetoric and its links to the actions of enslaved women during gradual emancipation in the last two slaveholding territories of the Americas: Brazil and Cuba. A set of gendered rhetorical strategies, developed in earlier Atlantic abolitionist campaigns, was adopted and adapted by abolitionists in Brazil, Cuba and Spain (which in this period retained its colonial hold over Cuba). Organizations and individuals aimed at emotive responses from elite audiences and readerships, generating sympathy for slaves as fellow human beings. The most effective means of indicating the universality of humanity was by evoking the rights of motherhood, depicted as essential to womanhood independently of race or legal status. Meanwhile, as each country adopted "free womb" legislation in the 1870s, enslaved women positioned themselves at the forefront of legal struggles for freedom. The rhetoric of their legal and official petitions, "translated" through the pens of scribes and representatives, both drew on and helped to reformulate broader abolitionist gendered positionings.