Miquelina and Jose Gomes da Silva thus filed a new petition. More emphatic than before, they argued that she needed to be 'freed from the maltreatment and extermination that she fears'. ${ }^{10}$ She also demanded that she be emancipated because she was being treated as a slave, even though she still had several years to serve. The new argument rested on the fact that the last receipt for the payment of her services was signed by José Francisco Ribeiro at the request of his mother Rita Maria Joaquina, to whom Miquelina's services had never been entrusted. Therefore, since a new master who should not be taking advantage of her services appeared in the receipts, it was clear that the condition of slavery was being imposed, which reinforced the argument for her emancipation. This fact proved that Miquelina was being treated as a slave, since her employers were selling her services to anyone who was willing to pay for them.  
For almost two years, from April 1842 to January 1844, Miquelina was hired out for her services as a wet nurse. What the legal process does not show us is that being a wet nurse meant that Miquelina must have had a child, since  
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[^0]:    10 The original reads: 'para que fique segura de sevicias ou exterminio que receia.' Arquivo Nacional GIFI 6D 12.  
she needed to be able to breastfeed. Usually liberated African women who had children would try to free their children when filing petitions of emancipation. ${ }^{11}$ The fact that Miquelina did not mention a child during the legal process may indicate either that Miquelina was separated from her baby or that the child had died. Child mortality rates in Brazil were high during the nineteenth century, and the exploitation and hard work endured by mothers (Chalhoub, 1996), circumstances which seem to have been endured by most liberated African women, only increased these rates.