# 'I am not a slave'  
Miquelina and Jose Gomes da Silva, her legal representative, tried every possible argument to gain her emancipation. They used proof of payments in which she was described as a slave to prove that her status as a liberated African was not being respected. They proved that she had been given, as only an enslaved person could be, to a third party who was not responsible for her. Miquelina's conditions during the nine years she was under guardianship in Brazil were far from what was stipulated by the laws and regulations under which liberated Africans were supposed to be allowed to live.  
Being treated as a slave was something that a liberated African tried to avoid. Even though the work and living arrangements were very similar for these two  
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[^0]:    12 'Announcements' (Annuncios), Jornal do Commércio (Rio de Janeiro), 30 June 1848.  
categories of person, a liberated African had the possibility of emancipation after completing the period of 14 years of service. That became clear in 1853, with a decree stating that any liberated African under the guardianship of a private employer and having fulfilled 14 years of service could file a request for emancipation. Once the time of service was proved, a letter of emancipation was to be given. ${ }^{13}$ After this decree, it is possible to find numerous requests for emancipation made by liberated Africans in the 1850s and the 1860s. ${ }^{14}$ Miquelina's case shows a level of interpretation of the judicial system that one sees in the case of other liberated Africans only after this decree.  
In 1844, using the Charter of 1818, Miquelina and her representative built a case based on the ideas of freedom and slavery. Miquelina's trajectory allows us to perceive the different meanings that labour could have for employers and liberated Africans, also allowing us to observe that the struggles for freedom ran deeper than we know. Her trajectory demonstrates that there is still much work to be done in order to understand the experiences of liberated Africans in Brazil.