“Aged, and Blind”: Ma. Presence, a Former Enslaved Woman on the Mosquito Shore (Nicaragua)

Abstract

This article analyzes Ma. Presence's life story by implementing reading against the grain combined with critical fabulation to examine minutes of meetings held on the eve of the emancipation of slavery on the Mosquito Shore (1841) and a chapter in Charles N. Bell’s autobiography (1989). It aims to re-imagine and reconstruct Ma. Presence’s experience as an enslaved and a “free black woman”. Ma. Presence was captured into slavery in Africa as a little girl. She survived the middle passage and survived enslavement in Jamaica and Bluefields, where she worked until she was old and blind. Enslavers typified her as a discarded slave. Retelling the life of this “ordinary” black woman contributes to ongoing efforts to highlight black enslaved women’s experiences. Simultaneously, this paper contributes to a more extensive discussion on the collective memory of slavery, the enslavement of children, gender violence, sexual reproduction during enslavement, aging, disability, discarded enslaved people, and the transition to emancipation. It is argued that in a multicultural patriarchal web, black women's experiences as enslaved or free persons are marked by gendered violence, dislocation, dispossession (deprivation), and dehumanization. Nevertheless, they are strong evidence demonstrating black women's day-to-day resistance that contributed to their survival.