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Witnesses to Freedom: Memory and Testimony as Counterarchive in the South Atlantic World (Dr. John C. Marquez)

In 1794, fifteen enslaved descendants of an Angolan woman named Paula
collectively sued for their freedom in Rio de Janeiro. In their freedom suit,
which lasted sixteen-years and generated over six-hundred pages of court
record, Paula’s descendants claimed that she was living in Luanda, Angola as
a free woman when she was kidnapped, enslaved, and transported across the
Atlantic to Brazil in 1753. This talk focuses on one particularly unique aspect of
the trial record: the collection of witness testimony from Paula’s former kin and
community in Angola. This remarkable testimony—collected fifty years after
Paula’s enslavement, across the Atlantic Ocean, and some of which required
translation from Kimbundu to Portuguese—spurred a debate about what
constituted evidence of legal freedom in a colonial society shaped by
illegitimate enslavement, deathbed promises of freedom, and ambiguous
baptism registers. The talk argues that the memory and testimony of
witnesses in Angola formed a powerful counterarchive of Paula’s freedom
for her descendants engaged in litigation in Rio de Janeiro.

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