[liberated] Barbera of Uruguay
VENTURE INTO THE BUSH:
A literal, theoretical, and conceptual space where freedom is fought for and realized.
Barberá, Ana Josefa (1740?–1812), or Bar Bera, freedwoman and landowner
was born in Africa in the mid-eighteenth century and brought to the River Plate region as a slave at an unknown date. Once she was freed, she purchased her own land. Barberá then donated her property for the establishment of Tacuarembó, a city in northern Uruguay, in 1832. Her donation represents the only documented case of a person of African descent contributing land for the subsequent founding of a town or city.
The existing historical record refers to Barberá as a freedwoman or “morena libre.” Until the late 1790s, she was registered as residing in rural northern Uruguay, with the respective landowner’s permission. She settled at the intersection of the Tranqueras and Tacuarembó Chico rivers, a site that became known among locals as “el rincón de Tía Ana” (Aunt Ana’s Corner). In July 1804 in Montevideo, Barberá signed a commitment to officially purchase the plot of land, with an area of 16,000 cuadros de campo, or 39,500 acres, with the transaction being completed in 1808.
The Buenos Aires newspaper Gazeta Mercantil confirms the existence of Barberá’s homestead in 1800, indicating that one of the settlements overrun in that year’s indigenous raid by Charrúas belonged to “the parda Ana.” At her homestead in Tacuarembó Chico, Ana Barberá lived with her Paraguayan partner and spouse, Carlos Montiel, three enslaved persons, and some servants. Barberá’s home became a reference point in the expansive northern prairies, along with the nearby “casa de piedra de Ibarra,” which was frequented by the Blandengue cavalry officer José Gervasio Artigas, Uruguay’s hero and the most revered figure in its national pantheon. When Artigas assumed leadership of the revolution against Spain, he received the active support of area residents.
In 1811 the “Éxodo del pueblo oriental” occurred—in essence, the withdrawal of troops loyal to Artigas and others who had followed him from Montevideo to Salto and then to Ayuí. Most families accompanied the Uruguayan campaign, including Barberá with her family and slaves, all of whom appeared in the national registry created in December 1811. On 10 March 1812 Barberá, Montiel, and their three slaves crossed the Uruguay River at the western portion of the Salto Chico waterfall and camped in a wagon. Soon afterward, Barberá became very ill and was close to death. “Tía Ana” thus prepared her will, naming her husband and Friar Manuel Ubeda, founder of Trinidad de Porongos, the current capital of the departamento of Flores in the center of the country, as her beneficiary.
In her will, Barberá stated that in addition to other properties she owned (such as land in Montevideo), she possessed a homestead in Tacuarembó Chico with ranches, stockyards, cattle, and horses. According to the document, Barberá intended for a chantry to be established there “whose chaplain is required to (live) in said lands at Tacuarembó, celebrate Sundays for my soul, and to provide spiritual assistance to local residents so destitute of spiritual prosperity, with the nearest church a distant forty leagues away, and for which purpose a public oratory must be built” (Michoelsson, 2011). Shortly thereafter, in March 1812, Barberá died and was buried in the province of Entre Ríos near Salto Chico.
In 1822 her last will and testament was fulfilled, with the construction of an oratory chapel called Santa Ana del Tacuarembó Chico, near what is today referred to as Cerro de la Aldea, in the city of Tacuarembó. The building stood until 1825.
In April 1832 the city of Tacuarembó, originally San Fructuoso de Tacuarembó, was founded, meeting Barberá’s wish of populating those territories.
Bibliography
Michoelsson, Omar. “En el bicentenario de Artiguista (11a Nota): Don José Artigas y la Tia Ana.” El Avisador, 29 July 2011. http://www.avisador.com.uy/component/content/article/70-historia-viva/1589-en-el-bicentenario-artiguista-11o-nota-.html.
Palermo, Eduardo. Banda Norte: Una historia de la frontera oriental. Rivera, Uruguay: Yatay, 2001.
Palermo, Eduardo. Tierra esclavizada: El norte uruguayo en la primera mitad del siglo 19. Montevideo, Uruguay: Tierra Adentro, 2013.
THIS BIOGRAPHY WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN FOR THE Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography and later edited by Jada Similton to be uploaded to Enslaved.org.