Various studies describe how enslaved females were sexually abused in societies under slavery regimes. In Jamaica, for example, farmer Thomas Thistlewood kept a daily diary with details of his everyday rape and abuse of his female slave (Burnard, 2004). Despite the image of cordial race relations in Brazil perpetuated by Gilberto Freire, evidence suggests that girls and women were sexually exploited over the course of years. In exceptional cases, such as that of Chica da Silva in Minas Gerais or Rousalie Poulard, enslaved in Santo Domingo and Louisiana, the women were able to gain their freedom and attain social mobility (Ferreira, 2009; Scott and Hébrard, 2012). ${ }^{4}$ Once freed, some consolidated their status as vendors, selling fruit and vegetables in metropoles and becoming women with enslaved persons of their own. In most cases, however, abusive relations between masters  
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[^0]:    4 For research highlighting the sexual abuse of female slaves in Brazil, see Mott, 1993; Grinberg, 1994; Araújo, 2015, pp. 568-85.  
and their female slaves were not recorded in historical documents, yet were still maintained over the course of years or decades. Records reveal the cruelty of the sexual abuse that masters of enslaved females perpetrated against their captives, whether in Lima or Havana, Spanish America, New England, Northern United States or even in the valley of the Paraíba River in Brazil, or Kingston, Jamaica (Barrantes, 2016, pp. 77-79; Warren, 2007, pp. 1031-49; Graham, 2002).