Escrava Isaura or "Isaura the white slave girl" was an extremely popular brazilian soap opera of the late 1970s, that ran over 200 episodes long. Isaura, a squint-eyed white slave girl (played by Lucélia Santos) endured hard times before she was freed and finally married her star-crossed lover. Meanwhile she suffered a lot at the hands of Leoncio Almeida, landlord and main antagonist in the plot, who wanted to make her a concubine. She even became briefly enamoured to a humpback dwarf and almost married him to escape prostitution.

The series was noted for its extremely primitive, (often to the point of being ridiculous) scenery and rather mediocre acting. Yet, its emotional story created an incredibly loyal following all around the world, e.g. in South America, Eastern Europe and China. It was the first TV series allowed to air in China with a foreign actress in it. In Hungary, TV subscribers spontaneously collected app. 75,000 USD worth of money and sent it to the brazilian embassy to buy Isaura's freedom. The soap opera, released under the tile of "A slave's fortune" in the Eastern Bloc, created such a turmoil in Hungary that the communist regime actually had to contract Lucelia Santos to come to Europe and meet the people - so they could see she was not actually a slave.