In the case of Pata Seca, the absence of detailed information about the women associated with his alleged reproductive role is especially striking.
If many children were born through relationships shaped by an enslaver's demands, those pregnancies would have involved women whose bodies and choices were also subject to coercive power.
The physical consequences of pregnancy and childbirth would have been borne by them.
So would much of the everyday responsibility of caring for their children, often under exhausting working conditions.
Enslaved mothers could face the fear of separation from their children. They might have to work while pregnant, care for infants with limited resources, or endure circumstances in which decisions about their families were controlled by other people.
These experiences were not identical for every woman or every plantation.
Nevertheless, the institution of slavery created conditions in which intimate family life was profoundly vulnerable to the demands of owners.
