In Latin America You Could Be Free: An African American History

Fifty years before the United States went to war over the issue, Chile abolished slavery. Colombia followed in 1821, and Mexico soon after. Black Americans took note. As plantation slavery terrorized their communities, Latin America emerged as the place they could be free.

Many have written about the Underground Railroad and northward migration to Canada, but for thousands of African Americans, freedom lay to the south. Abolitionists from Boston to San Antonio celebrated anti-slavery efforts in Latin America. Freed and fugitive slaves began to see the region as a viable place to migrate, a land where they could find stability, safety, and opportunity. Some went on their own initiative. Others were motivated by organized political movements, like a Lincoln-backed colony in Panama and hotly debated proposals for mass emigration to Central America.

Drawing on travelogues, runaway slave ads, and hundreds of other archival sources across the Americas, Yesenia Barragan rewrites conventional histories of slavery in the antebellum era to prove that emancipation was a hemispheric effort. Eloquent and cutting-edge, In Latin America You Could Be Free is a powerful account of how African Americans pursued freedom in the darkest of circumstances.