Esperanca Garcia was a slave who lived on a cotton farm run by Jesuit priests in Brazil - until the day she was separated from her husband and older children and taken, with her two little ones, to be the cook in another household. There her life became much, much harder. In desperation, and with extraordinary courage, Esperanca wrote a letter to the governor describing how she and her children were being mistreated and asking permission to return to the farm.
