Iberians in the sugar producing regions of colonial Latin America and Brazil devoured dulces (sweets) that Afro-Hispanic women known as dulceras created. During the busiest hours of the day, dulceras roamed the streets of urban centers with platters of freshly made pastries, cakes, pies, and cookies for sale balanced on their heads. They produced delicious deserts from jellied guavas, lime, lemons, coconut, pineapple, mangoes, and delicious custards made with cocoanut-milk, among other sweet preparations. Dulceras most often worked for masters who sent them out to hawk their wares as part of what was called the jornal system. The system gave enslaved African women who came from societies in which women ran local food markets in Africa an opportunity to use their entrepreneurial skills with the understanding that they would give the majority of their earnings to their masters and keep say 25 cents on the dollar. These women had lucrative culinary skills that their owners needed and thus provided the enslaved person a degree of leverage within an oppressive relationship. Typically such enslaved women saved up enough money to purchase their manumission, or freedom, and that of their loved ones before others within slave societies throughout Latin America and Brazil.
