Everyone laughed when a farmer paid only seven cents for a woman nearly two meters tall, whom other buyers considered useless. It was said that no job suited her, that her strength was misused, and that she would only bring him losses.
But Joaquim Lacerda didn’t see her like the others. Where the buyers saw a problem, he seemed to see something more: raw power, still aimless, but capable of becoming a weapon.
This woman’s name was Benedita. And this sale, which would bring yet another humiliation, would change her destiny.
A slave market in Vassouras, 1857
The scene takes place in February 1857 in the central square of Vassouras, in the interior of Rio de Janeiro. The Paraíba Valley then lived to the rhythm of coffee, dust, heat, and the violence of a system based on slavery.
That morning, men, women, and children were displayed on a wooden platform, treated like cattle before the eyes of the buyers. The auctioneer, a fat man with a curled mustache and a booming voice, announced
