11/26/2025
"The pregnant and malnourished slave was sold as dead weight, but they were surprised to learn who...
The June sun of 1856 beat down relentlessly on the dock of the port of São Félix, in the far reaches of Bahia, transforming the wooden planks into burning embers that seared the bare feet of those displayed there as mere merchandise. The acrid smell of freshly rolled ci**rs mingled with the salty, fetid stench of the Paraguaçu River, creating a suffocating atmosphere that seemed to crush the shoulders of every soul present. It was slave auction day, and the cries echoed through the Bahian morning like a funereal omen announcing sealed fates.
Among the bodies lined up on the wooden platform, one woman stood out for her alarming thinness: dark-skinned, with eyes as deep as dry wells, and trembling hands that instinctively protected a swollen belly that betrayed an advanced pregnancy. Her name was Josefa, and at 23, she seemed to carry the weight of three lifetimes of suffering on her shoulders. The welts from whippings on her back formed a cruel map of resistance and pain, each scar telling a silent story of punished rebellion.
The auctioneer, a stout man named Cavalcante, with a bushy mustache and a shrill voice, raised his greasy arm, pointing at Josefa with barely concealed disdain.
“Behold this piece, gentlemen buyers!” he announced with an ironic smile that revealed tobacco-stained teeth. “She’s suitable for light work, embroidery, weaving, housework. It comes with a bonus, as the offspring will be born in two months, according to the doctor. Two for the price of one, gentlemen!”
But the landowners present barely shook their heads, exchanging disapproving glances. Josefa coughed intermittently, a hoarse, worrying sound that echoed like a harbinger of imminent death. Her chapped lips were tinged with violet; everyone knew what that meant. The woman had ""the lung disease,"" galloping tuberculosis, and was so malnourished that it seemed unlikely she would survive childbirth.
Her former master, the feared Colonel Gonçalo Drumond, watched everything from afar, leaning on a silver-handled cane, under the generous shade of a cashew tree. He had decided to get rid of this slave before she died on his lands, tarnishing his reputation as an efficient administrator. But more than that, Gonçalo had urgent reasons to make Josefa de São Félix disappear, reasons he kept burning in his heart like hot coals. Each rejected offer increased the despair in the woman's sunken eyes; she knew she was being sold as ""dead weight,"" a cruel term for the unproductive, the disposable.
It was then that a firm voice, laden with undeniable moral authority, cut through the murmur of the plaza like a sharp blade slashing through cloth.
""Two hundred thousand reales for her.""
Everyone turned in horror, the silence spreading across the dock like a sudden wave, to see who had made such an absurdly generous offer for someone in such a deplorable state. It was Father Lourenço Bittencourt, a middle-aged man with impeccably combed gray hair and an immaculate black cassock, despite the heat. His dark brown eyes shone with a determination that Colonel Drumond immediately recognized as a threat. Something about that offer reeked of impending catastrophe, of secrets about to be unearthed.
The astonished auctioneer shouted three times. No one met the bid. The dock fell silent, broken only by the muffled sobs of other enslaved women. Josefa looked up at the man who had just bought her life. There was something disturbingly familiar about that serious face, something that made her heart, hardened by grief, skip a beat.
Father Lourenço approached and offered her his hand to help her down. “Come, my child,” he murmured, his voice hoarse with restrained emotion. “You are safe now. No one else will hurt you.”
When their fingers touched, an electric current of mutual recognition, though still hazy, passed between them.
To be continued…👇"