Time and Wages in Coerced Labor: Black Women’s Legal Agency in Late-19th Century Havana (1880-1886)

The critical juncture of slavery abolition in Cuba was marked by independency uprisings, and imperial re-articulations. Within this context, thousands of formerly enslaved men and women coped with renewed forms of coercion, inscribed in the intersection of race and gender. This article focuses on the resourceful use of the law by formerly enslaved women (renamed patrocinadas in 1880) to liberate themselves from the forced apprenticeship known as patronato, enforced alongside the abolition law. An in-depth examination of two files from the Miscelánea de Expedientes fund held at the Cuban National Archive underscores how Black women struggled to secure wages, living arrangements, and family time. Their petitions extended beyond liberation, redefining labor and care boundaries, asserting what could not be done with their lives, bodies, and labor power. By connecting micro-cases with broader statistical data, the article stresses the persistent agency of patrocinadas in the Habanero context, contributing to a deeper understanding of their central role in the abolition process, and their legacy in shaping post-emancipation labor rights struggles.