History Department Hosts Global History Lecture on Emancipation in Colombia
Weidensall Hall (Annie Bolenbaugh/the Gettysburgian)
By Brandon Fey, News Editor
The history department hosted Yesenia Barragan, a professor at Rutgers University, to give the annual Global History Lecture on Thursday. The lecture focused on Barragan’s book, “Freedom’s Captives: Slavery and Gradual Emancipation on the Colombian Black Pacific,” took place at 4:30 p.m. in the Joseph Theater.
Barragan was introduced by history professor Hannah Greenwald, who spoke about Barragan’s work in the 19th-century Americas and Pacific worlds.
She prefaced her lecture by stating that her book seeks to “reframe the history of the Americas by inserting Columnia into the narrative” in terms of the hemispheric process of emancipation. She explained that following the first wave of emancipation that took place in the United States in the early 1800s, the second wave was centered in South America. She said that Columbia, in particular, was internationally viewed as a model for emancipation throughout the rest of the century.
The lecture touched specifically on the complications surrounding Columbia’s 1821 “Free Womb Laws,” which declared that children born to an enslaved woman were born free, although they were to remain under the authority of their mothers’ masters until they reached the age of 18. Barragan described this as a “paradox of liberal freedom,” as children who were technically free, were still exploited by slaves.
Barragan highlighted this condition through the story of Magdalena, a free womb child who, despite being born free, was tortured by her mother’s master as a punishment, which left her permanently disabled.
She also explained the economic exploitation of these laws, as “free” African children could be sold for less than slaves but still be used for coerced labor.
In addition to her book, Barragan also spoke about her work organizing the Free Womb Project, an open-access digital collection of free womb laws in the Western Hemisphere from the 18th and 19th centuries.
