La Esclava Blanca (The White Slave) is a Colombian Telenovela set between 1821 and 1843. Victoria Quintero was born as the daughter of Don Diego Quintero and his wife Maria; when a rival landowner burns their farm down and kills them, an infant Victoria is adopted by his slaves, who escape into the jungle and join a community of Maroons. When the community is recaptured 12 years later, Victoria escapes to Spain, embarking on a quest to return one day and free her adopted family.
- Abusive Parents: Nicolás is technically Miguel's birth father; doesn't stop him from treating him like garbage.
- Accidental Public Confession: Miguel only wins the trial by getting Jaime so angry that he lashes out and admits his guilt in the middle of the courtroom.
- All-Loving Hero: In a thoroughly dark World of Jerkass, two people standout, Remedios who remains loyal to Victoria and repeatedly persuades her to abandon her quest for vengeance and Felipe Restrepo, the white person most committed to the abolition of slavery.
- Ambiguously Gay: Alonso Marquez, the middle son of the general, is as gay coded as one could get away given the period.
- Arch-Enemy: Nicolás racks up quite a list the most prominent being Victoria, Miguel, Eugenia, and Felipe. Notably, all of them consider directly responsible for the death of those closest to them.
- Archnemesis Dad: Nicolás, the Big Bad, is Miguel's biological father. He really isn’t much better to Isabelita.
- Awful Wedded Life: Granados is so horrible that when Miguel and the others break in to torture him his wife asks if she can watch.
- Babies Ever After: Victoria and Miguel have a daughter at the end of the story.
- Beyond Redemption: Nicolas is ultimately this; notably both his daughter and his mother ultimately write him off in the end.
- Big Bad: Nicolás Parreño, the rival landowner who killed Victoria's family.
- The Big Guy: Trinidad. Notably he takes down Granados.
- Break the Cutie: Isabelita gets put through the wringer over the course of the show; at the same time, she does get much needed character development out of it.
- Broken Pedestal: Isabelita starts out idolizing her father.....by the end of the series she wants nothing more to do with him.
- The Brute: Granados.
- Bury Your Gays: Poor, poor Bunme (and possibly Alonso).
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Rueben is given 1,200 lashes.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Many of the white characters are horrifically racist, and even some of the more the sympathetic whites have bigotry that they need to grow out of.
- Domestic Abuse: Nicolás and Francisco both engage in it.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Pretty much the only redeeming qualities Jaime and Arturo Lopez have is that they care for each other.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Morales (the guy who burns Eden down) balks at killing a baby and instead lets one of the slaves take her away. Adela also becomes increasingly disgusted with her son's actions as he goes further off the deep end.
- Evil Is Bigger: Nicolás is the tallest character and by far the nastiest.
- Evil Matriarch: Adela is quite a nasty piece of work, and thoroughly oppressive to Isabelita and Miguel (though in his case they don’t know they’re related for much of the story).
- Fate Worse than Death: What happens to Nicolás in the end.
- False Flag Operation: When Nicolás has Eden burned to the ground, he frames the Quintero's slaves so that he convince people to keep slavery in effect.
- Freudian Excuse: Apparently Adela’s husband and Nicolás’s father was horribly abusive to both of them but by the time the audience learns they’ve both committed so many atrocities it’s worth no sympathy points.
- Jesus and his sister also have one in how their mother (a white woman) was beaten to death by her own father for having children with a black man.
- Hate Sink: Nicolás Parreño, serial embezzler, rapist, and murderer.
- Hot-Blooded: Granados and Jaime Lopez, to both their detriments.
- If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Why the slaves don't kill Granados. That said, they still give him 60 lashes and brand him.
- Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: There are multiple instances where Nicolás seems to display redeeming qualities.....only to brutally subvert them.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Miguel makes sure that Jaime doesn't get away with murdering Rosita; Nicolas is also sent to the mines after getting away with his crimes for two decades.
- Kick the Dog: Granados had no reason to engineer the death of Catalina Restrepo besides petty cruelty.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Nicolás ultimately gets sentenced to 30 years of hard labor, where he's subjected to the same treatment he inflicted on his slaves.
- Middle Child Syndrome: Inverted with the General’s children. Alonso, the middle son is the gentlest and most well-adjusted of the three. Though the general clearly preferred Joaquin the oldest, he has an incredible soft spot for Alonso and it’s the youngest, Gabriel, who’s the black sheep of the family.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Miguel only survives and becomes a symbol because Nicolas helped him fake his death.
- Noble Bigot: Victoria's biological father is relatively nice by slaveowner standards, but it's clear that at the end of the day he is still a slave owner (when Tomas asks to buy his wife and daughter's freedom he visibly hesitates to do so.)
- Not Me This Time: Nicolás is not only innocent in Catalina Restrepo’s murder, he in fact was strongly against it. Felipe blames him anyway and becomes one his archenemies.
- Pet the Dog: Nicolas DOES initially try to do right by Miguel, even helping him fake his death to save his life. Ultimately subverted in that Nicolas values the system of slavery more, and ultimately throws away any redeeming qualities.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Given that the antagonists are slave holders, this is kind of a given.
- Psychopathic Manchild: Jaime Lopez is the youngest of the conspirators murdering slaves, and easily the most immature to the point where Granados (himself a violent lunatic) looks down on him.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The Judge; while he is initially skeptical of Miguel's claims (and only humors them because the Governor's son vouches for him) he does ultimately have Jaime jailed when presented with clear proof of his guilt.
- Rich Bitch: The original Marquise De Bracamont is a thoroughly unpleasant person; her anger at learning about Victoria impersonating her is as much due to the fact that Victoria is a servant as it is the identity theft.
- Slowly Slipping Into Evil: Nicolas is a villain from the word go, but he does initially have some redeeming qualities (his relationship with a slave, trying to help Miguel). As the series progresses he looses those qualities until he finally tries to outright murder his son, which shows that he's beyond redemption.
- Sociopathic Soldier: Francisco Granados is an example of this.
- Sympathetic Slave Owner: Played with; while Victoria's father is relatively benevolent the show doesn't sugarcoat the fact that he is still a slave owner (while he's willing to give Tomas his freedom he's notably hesitant to let his wife and daughter go free as well). Granados' wife is also relatively nice, but even she ultimately comes to believe slavery needs to be abolished.
- Villainous Breakdown: Nicolás loses it when he's sentenced to 30 years of hard labor (The kind of punishment reserved for slaves).
- World of Jerkass: Justified since the series focuses on slave owners. The good guys themselves have been hardened by the horrors of slavery.
