Abstract
The aim of this article is to investigate the parallels between the legal debates of the 1850s on concrete circumstances involving individuals under coartación (which consisted in the gradual amortization of the amount corresponding to manumission) in Cuba and under conditional manumission (which concerned the so-called estado-livres, from the Latin statuliberi) in Brazil. Jurists understood differently the prerogatives of people who were in an intermediate condition between slavery and freedom, some regarding them as closer to slavery, others as closer to freedom. After exposing the origins of principles and essential norms, highlighting structural similarities, as well as particularities existing between the slave law in force in Brazil and in Cuba, the article turns to the arguments presented in the debates, explaining the articulation of different layers of time in the definition of the slavery legal framework in the mid-nineteenth century.
Keywords:
Slavery ; conditional manumission ; legal debates ; plural historical times; gradual self-purchase