In some cases, such women were able to defend themselves from abuse, while in others they resorted to committing infanticide in order to protect their children from a life in captivity. For example, in the mid-eighteenth century in Nova Granada, in the State of São Paulo, Filipa attempted to end her children's lives. Although her motive is not clear, enslaved families were sometimes separated, with mothers having witnessed their children's physical punishment and facing the anguish of imagining them suffering such hardships. While Filipa's son survived his injuries, her daughter Catarina, aged five, did not. Filipa attempted to take her own life, revealing the desperation enslaved individuals could experience. In the criminal proceedings following the crime, Filipa argued that she had acted through love for her children and the fear of seeing her family separated (Soulodre-La France, 2002, pp. 87-100).  
Decades later, other episodes of infanticide in Barbacoa, Colombia, led to questions regarding the violence inherent in the slavery regime and how enslaved females could be so desperate as to kill their own children. In this respect,  
infanticide may be understood as a means of resistance to the regime, putting paid to the idea of cordial, tolerant or less violent enslaved societies (Echeverri, 2009, pp. 403-26; Araújo, op. cit.). The possibility of manumission in Spanish America or in Brazil and the access enslaved females had to this institution did not erase the constant fear that gripped them. Although manumission was a possibility for some enslaved persons in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, this depended on a master's goodwill and on the colonial laws.