Maria Anastasia dos Santos

Brazilian abolitionist who founded the first Afro-Brazilian women's cooperative in 1857

Maria Anastasia dos Santos (1828-1899) was a former enslaved woman who became a leader in Brazil's abolition movement through her creation of the Casa da Mãe Preta cooperative in Rio de Janeiro. This women-led organization provided economic independence to freed Black women through textile production and food distribution networks. Dos Santos' innovative quilombola banking system used barter and credit systems to bypass exclusionary colonial financial institutions.

Her 1872 publication Strength in Unity argued for collective ownership models that prefigured modern cooperatives. The cooperative's original meeting hall in Valongo neighborhood is now a UNESCO heritage site. Dos Santos also secretly taught literacy to 300+ women using coded quilts that doubled as educational tools - some examples are displayed at the Museu Afro-Brasil. Her methods influenced later social movements like the quilombo communities, though her personal papers were lost during the 1889 Brazilian coup.