Free African-Descended Women of Means in Xalapa ...

Capitalizing Subjects: Free African-Descended Women of Means in Xalapa, Veracruz during the Long Seventeenth Century

by

Danielle Terrazas Williams Department of History

Duke University

Date:_______________________ Approved:

___________________________

Pete Sigal, Supervisor

___________________________ Kathryn Burns

___________________________

John D. French

___________________________ David Barry Gaspar

___________________________

Ben Vinson, III

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor

of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School

of Duke University

2013

ABSTRACT

Capitalizing Subjects: Free African-Descended Women of Means in Xalapa, Veracruz during the Long Seventeenth Century

by Danielle Terrazas Williams

Department of History Duke University

Date:_______________________

Approved:

___________________________ Pete Sigal, Supervisor

___________________________

Kathryn Burns

___________________________ John D. French

___________________________

David Barry Gaspar

___________________________ Ben Vinson, III

An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial

fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of

History in the Graduate School of Duke University

2013

Copyright by Danielle Terrazas Williams

2013

iv

Abstract

“Capitalizing Subjects: Free African-Descended Women of Means in Xalapa,

Veracruz during the Long Seventeenth Century” explores the socioeconomic worlds of

free women of means. I find that they owned slaves, engaged in cross-caste relations,

managed their estates, maintained profitable social networks with other regional elites,

and attempted to secure the economic futures of their children. Through an examination

of notarial, ecclesiastical, and viceregal sources, I highlight the significant role this group

played in the local economy and social landscape. My work demonstrates that free

women of African descent engaged in specific types of economic endeavors that spoke to

their investments in particular kinds of capital (economic, social, and cultural) that

allowed them greater visibility and social legitimacy than previously documented. This

dissertation, further, challenges a historiography that has over-emphasized the roles of

race and gender in determining the lives of all people of African descent in colonial Latin

America.

v

Dedication

To my family in the United States and in Mexico.

vi

Table of Contents

Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iv

List of Charts ..................................................................................................................... vii

List of Maps ........................................................................................................................ x

List of Images .................................................................................................................... xi

Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... xii

Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1

Chapter One ...................................................................................................................... 58

Chapter Two .................................................................................................................... 147

Chapter Three .................................................................................................................. 211

Chapter Four ................................................................................................................... 273

Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 354

Biography ........................................................................................................................ 369

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List of Charts

1. 1 Overview of Marriage: 1724-1736 ............................................................................ 74

1. 2 Overview of Exogamy: 1724-1736 ............................................................................ 76

1. 3 Overview of Marriages: 1641-1702 ........................................................................... 85

1. 4 Both Spouses of Legitimate Birth: 1724-1736 ........................................................ 105

1. 5 Exogamy, AD non-HL Spouse with HL Spouse: 1724-1736 .................................. 107

1. 6 African-descended Legitimate Spouse with non-HL Spouse: 1724-1736 ............... 108

1. 7 Neither Spouse Designated as HL: 1724-1736 ........................................................ 109

1. 8 Confirmations and Legitimacy: 1642 ...................................................................... 113

1. 9 Baptisms and Legitimacy: 1641-1655 ..................................................................... 117

1. 10 Baptisms and Legitimacy: 1656-1669 ................................................................... 119


1. 12 Confirmations and Legitimacy: 1712 .................................................................... 121

1. 13 Confirmations and Legitimacy: 1726 .................................................................... 123

1. 14 Confirmations and Legitimacy: 1728 (partial) ...................................................... 124

1. 15 Confirmations and Legitimacy: 1736 (partial) ...................................................... 125

1. 16 Confirmations and Legitimacy: 1726, 1728 (partial), 1736 (partial) Combined

Totals ....................................................................................................................... 126


1. 18 Baptisms by Designation of Godparent and Gender of Child: 1641-1655 ............ 132


1. 20 Children with Godparents of African Descent: 1666-1689 ................................... 134

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1. 21 Children with Spanish Godparents: 1666-1689 ..................................................... 135

1. 22 Children with Godparents of Unknown Caste: 1666-1689 .................................... 136

1. 23 Children with Two Godparents of Different Designations: 1666-1689 ............ 137

1. 24 Children with Two Godparents of Different Designations: 1724-1732 ................ 138


2. 1 Demographic Profile: 1600-1625 ............................................................................ 149







2. 8 Vecina Status: 1600-1650 ........................................................................................ 159

2. 9 Vecina Status: 1651-1699 ........................................................................................ 160

2. 10 Vecina Status: 1700-1725 ...................................................................................... 160

2. 11 Marital Status: 1600-1650 ...................................................................................... 161

2. 12 Marital Status 1651-1699 ....................................................................................... 162

2. 13 Marital Status: 1700-1725 ...................................................................................... 163

2. 14 Primary Types of Business: 1600-1650 ................................................................. 165

2. 15 Primary Business Type: 1651-1699 ....................................................................... 166

2. 16 Primary Business Type: 1700-1725 ....................................................................... 167

2. 17 Marital Status and Primary Business Type: 1600-1650 ........................................ 168

ix

2. 18 Marital Status and Primary Business Type: 1651-1699 ........................................ 169

2. 19 Marital Status and Primary Business Type: 1700-1725 .................................... 170

x

List of Maps

Map 1: “Mexico and the central Veracruz triangle,”. ........................................................ 3

Map 2: “New Spain and Environs,”. ................................................................................ 45

Map 3: “Spanish lands in the province of Jalapa, ca. 1600,”. .......................................... 47

Map 4: “Spatial zones of Jalapa, ca. 1700,” .................................................................... 49

xi

List of Images

Image 1: Statue of Gaspar Yanga located in Yanga, Veracruz ....................................... 341

Image 2: Official Folk Dress of Yanga, Veracruz .......................................................... 343

xii

Acknowledgements

I would like to express the immense gratitude I have for the family members,

friends, colleagues, and mentors who supported me during my graduate work, but

especially my parents, godparents, brothers, and grandparents. A wide net of people

from all stages in my life offered constructive criticism, encouraging words, and joy to

my life as I took classes, gained mentors in two countries, and traveled the world for

research and conferences.

I would like to thank my advisor Pete Sigal for his unwavering confidence in me.

They say that the right advisor can make or break your experience as a doctoral student. I

knew from the beginning that he and I would work well together. I will always have

profound respect and appreciation for Pete and his thoughtful guidance and resolute

support of my choices. It made all the difference.

I cannot thank my entire dissertation committee enough for working with me on

this endeavor. John D. French helped to develop my understanding of Brazilian history

and broaden my conception of racial politics. Kathryn Burns tirelessly supported me

from the other side of tobacco road at UNC-Chapel Hill and instilled in me an endless

appreciation for notarial sources and the production of colonial knowledge. David Barry

Gaspar, whose undeniable contributions to the field of colonial history, inspired me to

complicate narratives of understudied subjects. Ben Vinson encouraged me to pursue

new possibilities and forge new paths in the field. I thank him for seeing my potential

xiii

and for supporting the earliest years of my career. As I move on to the book project, I

look forward to working with them all once again.

Adriana Naveda, my informal research advisor while I lived in Mexico, served as

my skeleton key to archives, special collections, and research centers. She was

instrumental in securing my affiliation with the Universidad Veracruzana and helping me

integrate into Mexico’s scholarly circles. Adriana remains a cherished mentor and friend

who helped me grow as a researcher but also as a person. Te agradezco mucho.

There are not enough ways to thank Reena Goldthree for the time and energy she

has expended being my mentor, my friend, and a consummate soror. At every major

stage in this process, Reena volunteered her skills to help me navigate the hectic seas of

Ph.D. life. She was, and continues to be, my sounding board and my beacon of light.

Thank you for being the generous scholar that you are.

In 2006, at LASA in Puerto Rico, Rachel Sarah O’Toole took me under her wing

and I know that I am better for it. Countless times I asked for her advice, a favor, or a

pep-talk and she was always there to oblige me and help steer the ship, introduce me to

other amazing scholars, and review my work over the years. Thank you for helping me

figure this thing out, Rachel.

For nearly a decade, Alfonsa Sequera served as my life raft. As one of the

archivists at La Unidad de Servicios Bibliotecarios y de Información (USBI) in Xalapa,

she and her team educated me on paleography, archival protocols, and how to survive the

monotony of searching for a needle in the haystack. For every poorly-scribbled, ink-

smudged, termite-eaten page of the notarial archive that I fought with and that she

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generously took time out of her day to walk me through decoding a collection she knew

expertly, I thank her.

Duke University was a wonderful place to call home for my graduate education.

In addition to the professors, the staff members at Graduate Student Affairs, namely Dean

Jacqueline Looney, Tomalei Vess, and Lana Bendavid, provided me with encouragement

and productive distractions while I was on campus. Thank you for creating a calming

space to relax and fellowship with other graduate students. All of your hard work was

greatly appreciated.

I would like to thank Dartmouth College for the dissertation writing fellowship

year to complete this project. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the Chair of the

Department of African and African-American Studies, Antonio Tillis. He ensured that I

stayed focused on my purpose, allowed me much needed flexibility, and offered

invaluable professional guidance. Additionally, I am grateful to the department’s

program coordinator, Adrienne Clay, for facilitating so many aspects of my transition to

Hanover and Dartmouth and for being gracious as I interrupted her workdays just to chat.

I will always be grateful to the staff of every institution, archive, and research

center that welcomed me and helped me to accomplish this project. In particular, I am

thankful for Robin Ennis, Cynthia Hoglen, Connie Blackmore and Natalie Hartman, but

also dozens of people who worked in various positions at the USBI-Xalapa, the Instituto

de Investigaciones Histórico-Sociales, CIESAS-Golfo, the Archivo General de las Indias,

the Archivo de la Nación, the municipal library of Yanga, Veracruz, and the Metropolitan

Cathedral of Xalapa. Thank you to Holly Ackerman, librarian for Latin American,

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Iberian and Latino Studies at Duke University, who was a joy to have as an instructor and

as a wellspring of knowledge for all of my rare book inquires.

To Angela Layne who reviewed and provided important feedback on dozens of

grant applications, chapter drafts, and anything else I needed her to review and she did on

short notice, thank you for the fresh and insightful eyes that you lent to me. To Alex

Martin, who contributed as my technical advisor, thank you for teaching me patience.

I would also like to acknowledge the support of María Cristina García,

Wahneema Lubiano, Kia Lilly Caldwell, María Elisa Velázquez Gutiérrez, Kathleen

Cheatham, Becky Johnson, Wacey Turner, Algernon Cargill, Jr., Helen Bailitz, Mario

Zúñiga Gutiérrez, Irasema Rosas Peralta, Malena Martínez Godínez, Kim Bowler, Zeb

Tortorici, Treva Lindsey, Shelby Grantham, Ariana Ochoa Camacho, my dissertation-

writing partner Larissa Hopkins, and especially all of the families who welcomed me into

their lives in Xalapa, Córdoba, Los Mangos, Mataclara, Cuitlahuac, Orizaba, and

Veracruz Port. They all made this journey possible and I remain grateful to have such a

wonderful group of people in my life and my heart.

Finally, this project was generously funded by a number of departments and

programs at Duke University, including: the History Department (Anne Firor Scott

Award), the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (Mellon Dissertation

Research Grant), the African and African American Studies Department (Travel Grant),

the Women’s Studies Program (Race and Gender Award), and the International Pre-

Dissertation Summer Research Travel Award and the Stern Dissertation Writing

Fellowship from the Graduate School. The support of a number of external fellowships

xvi

also assisted in the completion of this dissertation, including: the Foreign Language Area

Studies Fellowship (FLAS), the Mellon Fellowship for Dissertation Research in Original

Sources from the Council on Library and Information Resources of the Library of

Congress, the Marcus Garvey Foundation Research Fellowship, the Fulbright IIE

Fellowship, and Dartmouth College’s Thurgood Marshall Dissertation Fellowship.

1

Introduction

“Behold rich lands!” – Alonzo Hernandez Puertocarrero on the beaches of Veracruz

(1519)1

On March 8, 1679, Polonia de Ribas entered her last will and testament into

record at the offices of Alonso de Neira Claver, the royal notary public of Xalapa.2 The

will included information about Polonia’s family, possessions, debts to collect, and how

she wanted her estate distributed after her passing. She was well acquainted with the

appropriate processes and venues to ensure that such matters were officially

acknowledged. In the second half of the seventeenth century, Polonia demonstrated her

legal acumen by documenting half a dozen transactions with the notary public in Xalapa.

However, on March 14, 1679, just six days later, as she lay sick in bed, Polonia de Ribas

notarized one final act by commissioning an official carta de libertad (freedom card) for

one of her slaves.3 Polonia de Ribas was a slaveowner, and her final entry freed a fifty-

year-old man designated as a negro criollo4 named Gerónimo de Yrala. At first, this

might appear to be ordinary. Many slaveowners, regardless of gender, freed some or all

of their slaves believing it to be their final act of generosity. This manumission case is

remarkable for two reasons: 1) Polonia de Ribas was a wealthy free mulata and 2)

Gerónimo de Yrala was her brother.

1 Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico (New York: Grove Press,

1956), 83. 2 Archivo Notarial de Xalapa, La Unidad de Servicios Bibliotecarios y de Información,

Colecciones Especiales, Universidad Veracruzana, Xalapa, Veracruz (ANX), March 8, 1679, f 486vta - 489fte.

3 ANX, March 14, 1679, f 489fte - 490vta 4 During the early and mid-colonial period, the term “criollo” designated people of African

descent in the colonies, as opposed to someone born in African or Europe.

2

Polonia de Ribas, a woman of African descent, occupied an exceptional position

of influence and economic opportunity in late seventeenth-century Mexico, and she was

not alone. It was in the 1600s, when many African-descended people in Mexico labored

as slaves in fields and urban centers, that a new demographic of coloniality emerged: free

African-descended women of means. Although free African-descended people were

found throughout the Spanish colonies as early as the Conquest era, the seventeenth

century witnessed tremendous growth in their numbers. 5 As colonial Mexico’s

institutions took shape and local economies diversified, free women and men accessed

developing labor markets, demonstrated geographic mobility, and keyed into interracial

networks in order to secure their livelihoods. Free women employed strategies similar to

those of other people of means, but they also applied gendered strategies and found

themselves in circumstances specific to their race, such as having enslaved family

members. By virtue of their social markers, I argue that though free women encountered

challenges because of race, they also carefully negotiated legal avenues to their benefit

through their use of capital—economic, social, and cultural. In this study, I define

economic capital as financial clout, inclusive of both reputational wealth and actual

assets. Social capital describes the networks of people while cultural capital denotes

knowledge and awareness of customs and conventions.

Free women of African descent in Xalapa during the long seventeenth century

demonstrated their skill in managing all three forms of capital. Through their

5 Herman Bennett asserts that in New Spain there were significantly more free people of African descent by the mid-seventeenth century. He notes, “By 1646, the creole population, largely free and comprised of mulattos, numbered 116,529, whereas the predominantly African slave population totaled 35,089.” Herman Bennett, Colonial Blackness: A History of Afro-Mexico (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 27.

3

participation in the notarial and ecclesiastical worlds of record making, they staked

claims in both low and high interest endeavors. Xalapa’s notarial archives witnessed as

free women engaged in straightforward business, such as the registration of a legal

representative. However, free women also demanded greater recognition in realms that

were not seen as their spaces to occupy, such as when African-descended women and

their families demonstrated an interest in the public recognition of their claims of social

respectability and legitimacy.

Map 1: “Mexico and the central Veracruz triangle,” Patrick J. Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz: Race, Ethnicity, and Regional Development (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), xiv.

4

This work explores the socioeconomic worlds of free African-descended women

of means in one of colonial Mexico’s most important economic regions. Central

Veracruz, anchored by Veracruz Port,6 Córdoba, Orizaba, and Xalapa, served as the

primary entry point when the importation of Africans to Mexico increased markedly

between 1570 and 1610.7 Patrick J. Carroll describes this area of the colony as the

“heartland of New Spain’s sugar industry until nearly the end of the seventeenth

century.”8 The region relied on both free and enslaved African labor to invigorate the

colonial economy through agricultural development and international commerce that

battled bouts of retraction and experienced occasional expansion during the early- and

mid-colonial periods. Xalapa, the present-day capital of the state of Veracruz,

represented a major hub of regional influence, which included a diversity of enterprises,

although sugar cultivation dominated much of the region’s agricultural development.

Herbert Klein situates the primacy that enslaved Africans had in this industry when he

argue that “no American society seemed capable of exporting sugar except with use of

African slave workers.”9 More than a sugar-producing, resting stop for travelers on the

Camino Real, the elites and merchants of Xalapa often had connections with the center of

colonial authority, Mexico City. Córdoba and Orizaba were two of the largest sugar-

6 Veracruz State has had two “Ports of Veracruz.” The original Port of Veracruz, known as La

Antigua Ciudad de Veracruz (also known as “La Antigua”) in colonial documents (now called Antigua), was moved in 1595 to what is now the current Port of Veracruz, known in colonial documents as La Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz (or simply, “La Nueva”). The new port's deeper waters allowed for greater traffic by larger vessels.

7 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 80. 8 Patrick J. Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz: Race, Ethnicity, and Regional Development

(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), 20. 9 Herbert S. Klein, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1986), 66.

5

growing regions of Veracruz and helped fuel the economy of Mexico. Veracruz as the

major port of entry for transatlantic travel and trade in goods, including African slaves,

played an essential role in the development of the entire colony. In addition to being the

site of high economic traffic, Veracruz Port served as a strategic point of military

defense, often carried out by soldiers of African descent.

From these urban and rural spaces, free women of means emerged as important

social actors through their participation in the multiple economies in the region. While

Xalapa had the most well-established and well-documented African and African-

descended population in the region, the histories of Veracruz Port, Córdoba, and Orizaba

all played critical roles in contextualizing the cases that will be presented, cases about

women who had connections with family, friends, and business associates in these areas.

In this respect, Xalapa’s history was exceptional in comparision to that of the more rural

areas of Córdoba and Orizaba and the striking mix of coloniality in the Port.

My research on central Veracruz from 1580 to 1730 establishes that some free

women of African descent had profitable opportunities and significant wealth during this

period. Free women of African descent owned slaves, engaged in interracial affiliations,

managed their real estate, maintained profitable social networks with regional elites, and

worked skillfully to secure the economic futures of their children. My dissertation

highlights the significant role that women of African descent played as business owners,

slaveowners, and legal intermediaries for their family members and members of the

regional elite. Their involvement in these activities helped support the diversifying

economy of Xalapa that was fueled by increased transatlantic trade routes and

6

economically-established zones of agri-business. My work demonstrates that free

women engaged in specific types of economic endeavors, such as slave-owning,

patronage networking, and managing intergenerational resources that spoke to their

investment in particular kinds of social and cultural capital that allowed them increased

social mobility and social legitimacy.

Project Overview and Research Questions

My dissertation offers new approaches to interpreting sources on free women of

African descent who lived in Mexico during the colonial period. While I focus on

regional history, the sources allow me to address broader questions of slavery, racial

hierarchies, gender roles, familial configurations, patronage systems, the etiquette of

interracial interactions, and the economic influence and social mobility of free women.

The near absence of free women of African descent in the historiography, particularly in

narratives of the elite and other people of means, positions my research within the

growing body of literature that unequivocally demonstrates a much greater role for

people of African descent in the progression of Mexican history. By examining free

women’s economic influences, I also address how these women positioned multiple

identities, garnered social credibility, and claimed respectability. This work serves to

enhance the burgeoning conversation on African and African-descended people in

Mexico beyond the traditional narrative of slavery and domination. I demonstrate that

race did not always predetermine social status in seventeenth-century Mexico, although it

did influence the ways in which colonial subjects engaged one another and how they

interacted with colonial institutions.

7

The aforementioned Polonia de Ribas and all of the other women in this study

lived during the long seventeenth century and experienced life in Veracruz, a region of

the colony not unfamiliar with the African diaspora. What would become Veracruz State

witnessed the introduction of the majority of African-descended people into the colony

because of the importance of the Port of Veracruz as a gateway to the Atlantic World.

The central Veracruz region received a disproportionate number of enslaved Africans. In

the town of Xalapa, African-descended people existed in a society that depended on their

labor to invigorate the colonial economy. Although the population density of Africans

and African-descended people varied throughout Mexico, Veracruz was rare in that “by

1600 [African slaves] outnumbered Europeans in the region.”10 Even with greater

demographic representation, it was still exceptional that free women of African descent

emerged from the obscurity that cloaks the lives of so many colonial subjects and arrived

on the historical stage via notarial and ecclesiastical sources.11 The story of Polonia de

Ribas, merely excerpted here, was far more detailed and complex in the primary sources,

which provide much needed insight into the social and economic resources and

experiences of free African-descended women in seventeenth-century central Veracruz.

Through both quantitative and qualitative analyses, the following research

questions guide this project in assessing larger implications in the field: How were

African-descended women marked socially? What categories did they mobilize in

notarial documents? What kinds of social networks were available to them, and which

10 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 80.

11 For all of the collections examined in this study, both ecclesiastical and notarial, I went through each document and identified free people of African page by page.

8

avenues did free women pursue to secure their livelihoods? I also address how racialized

strategies and gendered narratives may have influenced the ways in which women of

means navigated colonial Veracruz. How did these women mobilize their multiple

identities to their benefit? By examining notarial and ecclesiastical archives, I focus on

how free women positioned themselves in society by the acquisition and manipulation of

social, cultural, and economic capital. I further explore how social markers, such as

legitimate birth, intergenerational wealth, and ownership of slaves and real estate,

influenced their ability to act as historical agents in seventeenth-century Xalapa.

Historiography

Over the last twenty years, the field of Afro-Mexican Studies has thrived. A wide

array of topics, subjects, and analytical frameworks has arisen to bring rich narratives of

Africans and their descendants to the fore of colonial Mexican history. The foundational

early contributions to the field, most notably Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán’s La Población

Negra, provided an overview of the history of Africans and their descendants in

Mexico.12 These works covered broad topics such as Spain’s involvement in the

transatlantic slave trade, demography, and the importance of the agricultural sector, but

they also touched on subjects that would later receive greater attention from scholars,

12 Joaquín Roncal, “The Negro Race in Mexico,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 24,

no. 3 (August 1944): 530-540; Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, La Población Negra (Mexico, D.F.: Ediciones Fuentes Cultural, 1946); Colin A. Palmer, Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico, 1570-1650 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976); Pierre L. Van Den Berghe, “The African Diaspora in Mexico, Brazil, and the United States,” Social Forces 54, no. 3 (March 1976): 530-545; Luis Querol y Roso, Luis. “Negros y mulatos de Nueva España: Historia de su alazamiento en 1612,” Anales de la Universidad de Valencia año 12, cuaderno 90 (1931-1932): 121-165; Ignacio Márquez Rodiles, Origen del comercio de esclavos negros en América y su presencia en México. Problemas Educativos de México. Suplemento 4 (Mexico: Casa Ramírez Editores, 1963).

9

subjects such as agency, cultural capital, marriage partner choice, and the consequences

of the Inquisition on the African-descended population.

Not surprisingly, slavery dominates the historiography of the African diaspora in

Mexico.13 While some works advanced the tradition of overarching discussions on

slavery,14 others examined specific labor sectors of slavery, including the involvement of

African slaves outside of agricultural labor, an area especially in need of further

development.15 The emphasis on slavery and the plantation economy, nonetheless, has

served as an important catalyst to discussions of agency and resistance among African-

descended populations in Mexico.

The history of uprisings, resistance movements, and counter cultures has

contributed greatly to our understanding of what constituted agency for colonial

subjects.16 Racialized anxiety about African-led plots of social disturbance (both real and

13 Bennett notes that the field has held slavery as the “defining” experience for Africans in the

Americas. He argues for more encompassing narratives. Bennett, Colonial Blackness, 5, 104. 14 For works that focus specifically on slavery, see: Robert L. Brady, “The Domestic Slave Trade

in Sixteenth Century Mexico,” The Americas 24, no. 3 (January 1968): 281-289; Peter Boyd-Bowman, “Negro Slaves in Early Colonial Mexico,” The Americas 26, no. 2 (October 1969): 134-151; Gerald Cardoso, Negro Slavery in the Sugar Plantations of Veracruz and Pernambuco, 1550-1680 (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1983); Adriana Naveda Chávez-Hita, Esclovos negros en las haciendas azucareas de Córdoba, Veracruz, 1690–1830 (Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana, Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, 1987); Dennis Nodin Valdés, “The Decline of Slavery in Mexico,” The Americas 44, no. 2 (October 1987): 167-194; Marie Luisa Herrera Casasús, Piezas de Indias: La Esclavitud Negro en Mexico (Veracruz: Instituto Veracruzano de Cultura, 1991).

15 Patricia Seed, “Social Dimensions of Race: Mexico City, 1753,” Hispanic American Historical Review 62, no. 4 (1982): 569-606 (includes a section on Black domestic servants); Gerald Cardoso, Negro Slavery in the Sugar Plantations; Frank T. Proctor, III, “Afro-Mexican Slave Labor in the Obrajes de Paños of New Spain, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” The Americas 60, no. 1 (July 2003): 33-58.

16 David M. Davidson, “Negro Slave Control and Resistance in Colonial Mexico, 1519-1650,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 46, no. 3 (August 1966): 235-253; Edgar Love, “Negro Resistance to Spanish Rule in Colonial Mexico,” Journal of Negro History 52, no. 2 (1967): 89-103; John Herbert Roper and Lolita G. Brockington, “Slave Revolt, Slave Debate: A Comparison,” Phylon 45, no. 2 (1984): 98-110; Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 90-101; Colin A. Palmer, Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico, 1570-1650 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 119-144; Adriana Naveda Chávez-Hita, Esclovos negros en las haciendas azucareas de Córdoba, Veracruz,1690–1830 (Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana, Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, 1987), 113-140; Jane Landers, “Cimarrón and Citizen: African

10

imagined) figures prominently in this branch of literature. Laura Lewis’ work on

witchcraft, Joan Cameron Bristol’s on “ritual practice,” and Bennett’s research on the

history of the Inquisition are notable contributions in the establishment of a more

developed historiography of resistance and individual agency.17 From riots in Mexico

City to smaller acts of defiance through involvement in the unsanctioned world of

witchcraft, these important works helped move the historiography into more nuanced

understandings of interracial interactions, colonial fears, and African agency.

While Slavery Studies has grown to include detailed personal profiles, fewer

scholars have turned their attention to Africans and their descendants who were not

enslaved and were not of the servant-sector classes in colonial Mexico. Contributions by

Ben Vinson and Matthew Restall to the history of African-descended militiamen and the

rights they and their communities demanded figure prominently in the historiography.18

Herman Bennett’s Colonial Blackness is one of the most recent contributions to

broadening the scope of diaspora studies for the Mexican context. Even more rare are

works that focus on free women as economic actors. The notable exception is the

Spanish-language monograph by María Elisa Velázquez about free and enslaved women

Ethnicity, Corporate Identity, and the Evolution of the Spanish Circum-Caribbean,” in Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives: Blacks in Colonial Latin America, Jane G. Landers and Barry M. Robinson, eds. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006): 111-146.

17 Laura Lewis, Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft, and Caste in Colonial Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003); Joan Cameron Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches: Afro-Mexican Ritual Practice in the Seventeenth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007); Herman L. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570-1640 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003).

18 Ben Vinson, III, “Race and Badge: Free-Colored Soldiers in the Colonial Mexican Militia,” The Americas 56, no. 4 (April 2000): 471-496; Matthew Restall, “Black Conquistadors: Armed Africans in Early Spanish America,” The Americas 57, no. 2 (October 2000): 171-205; Ben Vinson, Bearing Arms for His Majesty (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2004); Ben Vinson, III, “Articulating Space: The Free-Colored Military Establishment in Colonial Mexico From The Conquest to Independence,” Callaloo 27, no. 1 (2004): 150-171.

11

in Mexico City.19 Much of the literature that includes narratives of free women is limited

to the domestic/familial realm.20

While the field continues to develop a more encompassing historiographical

tradition on the history of free African-descended women,21 examining the literature of

other areas of the African diaspora in the Americas has proven instructive in creating

realms of possibility. For the early colonial period, the Caribbean provides some of the

most groundbreaking work in the field, including macro and micro-historical approaches

as well as focused biographical narratives.22 For the nineteenth century, Brazil and the

United States have produced strong traditions of women’s narratives and gender-focused

analyses.23 Notable examples in this vein are works on Brazil’s most well-known

colonial female subject of African descent, Chica da Silva (or Xica da Silva), whose story

and visage have been mobilized in historical works, novels, movies, theatrical

19 María Elisa Velázquez Gutiérrez, Mujeres de origen africano en la capital novohispana, siglos

XVII y XVIII (Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, UNAM, 2006). 20 Edgar F. Love, “Marriage Patterns of Persons of African Descent in a Colonial Mexico City

Parish,” The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 51, No. 1 (February 1971): 79-91; Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574-1821 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988); Karen Vieira Powers, Women in the Crucible of Conquest: The Gendered Genesis of Spanish American Society, 1500-1600 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005).

21 Other notable contributions that discuss on women of African descent in include: Frank ‘Trey’ Proctor III, “Gender and the Manumission of Slaves in New Spain,” Hispanic American Historical Review 86, no. 2 (2006): 309-336; Joan Cameron Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches: Afro-Mexican Ritual Practice in the Seventeenth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007).

22 David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine, eds. More than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the Americas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996); David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine, eds., Beyond Bondage: Free Women of Color in the Americas (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004).

23 A. J. R. Russell-Wood, “Women and Society in Colonial Brazil,” Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1 (May 1977): 1-34; Sandra Lauderdale Graham, Caetana Says No: Women’s Storites from a Brazilian Slave Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Gywn Campell, et al., eds. Women and Slavery: The Modern Atlantic, Volume 2 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008).

12

performances, and television productions.24 Historian Júnia Ferreira Furtado cites a letter

in which an unnamed member of a religious order stated that Chica da Silva had “lived in

the greatest ostentation, the lady of a large house,” and that she luxuriated “in the light of

nobility and great wealth.”25 As the consort of a chief judge with diamond contracts in

Brazil, the same member of the religious order stated that Chica was visited “by people of

the highest order, from the government and the judiciary.”26 Chica’s eighteenth-century

narrative testifies to the exceptional wealth that she managed, the illustrious reputation

she enjoyed, the respect she garnered, and the patrimony and social position that she

secured for her illegitimate children. Chica da Silva’s story has received unprecedented

attention, but this would not be the case for the vast majority of free women during

slavery in the Americas. For women who lived one hundred years earlier, no comparable

projects on the historical narratives of free women of means in Mexico existed until now.

The burgeoning importance of local regional history has challenged the field to

question the privileging of place. Mexico City, as the center of viceregal authority and

home to the most numerous population of African-descended people in Mexico,27 has

figured prominently in the historiography. While the archives of the capital provide a

wealth of documents and a diversity of experiences, Mexico City did not encapsulate the

24 Júnia Ferreira Furtado, Chica Da Silva: A Brazilian Slave of the Eighteenth Century

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), xix. Furtado notes that a 1975 film by Cacá Diegues entitled “Xica da Silva” that “reinforced, propagated, and amplified the myth” of Chica and “embodied the stereotype of licentiousness and sensuality always attributed to the black or mulatta female in the Brazilian popular imagination,” 12.

25 Ferreira Furtado, Chica da Silva, 130. 26 Ferreira Furtado, Chica da Silva, 130. 27 Bennett asserts, “By 1570, Mexico City was home to the largest African population in the

Americas.” He cites 9,000 persons of African descent compared to the 8,000 Spanish residents in the capital. Bennett, Colonial Blackness, 4-5.

13

“prototypical” experience of African-descended people in Spain’s most important colony.

Works focusing on regional history, such as those by Patrick Carroll, Adriana Naveda

Chávez-Hita, Jane Landers, and Kimberly Hanger,28 demonstrate that few places in the

Spanish empire replicated the environment of Mexico City and the experiences of its

residents. Regional Studies has offered the particularity of place that has been necessary

for discussion of a multiplicity of narratives. By decentering the narrative prominence of

Spain’s conquest of the Aztec empire and consequently de-centering the importance of

Mexico City, the emerging research into the experiences of Africans and their

descendants involved in the work of colony-building in seventeenth-century Mexico

fosters the depiction of a range of strategies utilized to carve out space for economic

mobility, cultural expression, and social legitimacy.

Not only were questions of agency being taken on by scholars, but works began to

address how social and cultural capital were accumulated and what types were being

acquired.29 Vinson focuses on military privileges and how access to the military elite

influenced the way African-descended men understood their rights as defenders of

colonial space. Bennett’s work pays particular attention to the courts’ involvement in the

private lives of colonial subjects, especially in cases of bigamy, blasphemy, and

28 Patrick Carroll, “Estudio socio-demográfico de personas de sangre negra en Jalapa, 1791,” Historia Mexicana 23, no. 1 (July-September 1973): 111-125; Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz; Kimberly S. Hanger, “Avenues to Freedom Open to New Orleans' Black Population, 1769-1779,” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Summer 1990): 237-264; Kimberly S. Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769-1803 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997); Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2000); Adriana Naveda Chávez-Hita, ed., Pardos, Mulatos y Libertos: Sexto Encuentro de Afromexicanistas (Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana, 2001); Cardoso, Negro Slavery in the Sugar Plantations (1983); Naveda Chávez-Hita, Esclavos negros en las haciendas azucareras de Córdoba (1987).

29 I define social capital as networks of people, while cultural capital is inclusive of types of knowledge used to access greater mobility, whether economic, social, or religious.

14

witchcraft.30 This colonial preoccupation with controlling a growing group of “cultural

interlopers” demonstrates the Church’s and the Crown’s anxiety about the racialized

other, an anxiety María Elena Martinez scrutinizes thoroughly in her work.31 Also

notable in this branch of research is the examination of the significant awareness of the

legal procedures and rhetoric that Africans and their descendants acquired. Bennett

writes, “Africans and their descendants demonstrated the acumen that enabled them to

navigate New Spain’s sixteenth-century cultural landscape.”32 Nicole Von Germeten’s

work on confraternities is another important contribution to the “agency through religious

structures” literature. Both projects engage with how cultural capital was transmitted and

which productions of knowledge African-descended people used to accomplish their own

goals.

Defining difference is one of the central interventions of my work and one with

which the historiography has had limited engagement. Most difference in the

historiography has focused on racial or caste distinctions, which has, of course,

contributed greatly to our understanding of how African-descended people interacted

with the Spanish population and has tilled particularly fertile ground for the seeding of

more focused work on Afro-indigenous relations.33 Matthew Restall’s edited collection

30Herman L. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole

Consciousness, 1570-1640 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 54. 31 Maria Elena Martinez, “The Black Blood of New Spain: Limpieza de Sangre, Racial Violence,

and Gendered Power in Early Colonial Mexico,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 3. (July 2004): 479-520; María Elena Martinez, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008).

32 Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico, 161. 33 Edgar F. Love, “Legal Restrictions on Afro-Indian Relations in Colonial Mexico,” The Journal

of Negro History, Vol. 55, No. 2 (April 1970): 131-139; John K. Chance, Race and Class in Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1978); Matthew Restall, Beyond Black and Red (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005); Matthew Restall, The Black Middle: Africans,

15

is one such welcome project, which features scholarship from the top of the field,

including Restall’s own work along with important contributions by Ben Vinson, Jane

Landers, and Kris Lane. An equally important contribution is Laura Lewis’s Hall of

Mirror, which takes on agency bestowed by the “unsanctioned realm” of witchcraft.34

Her work connects a vast array of colonial subjects through the management of

clandestine social and cultural capital. Although Lewis pays particular attention to

indigenous women and their role as diviners and healers, she incorporates the history of

African-descended women and their search for “other worldly assistance.” Lewis also

asserts that enslaved people would use witchcraft to empower themselves, attain freedom,

or to have power over their owners. African-descended women’s connections to

practitioners and knowledge of such practices allowed them agency that frustrated

colonial authorities and demonstrated the extent to which African-descended women

went to be self-determining.

One of the largest debates waged in the field has been about how to assess which

of two prominent lines of historiographical differences, caste (race) or class, more

prominently determined the lives of colonial subjects. Some scholars have argued that

the caste system, although fluid and variable at different times and places, remained an

organizing tool of colonial Mexico. 35 Others have addressed questions of racial

Mayas, and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2009).

34 Laura Lewis, Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft, and Caste in Colonial Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).

35 Laura Lewis explains, “… [Caste] in the colonial context made Spaniards attribute reason to themselves, weakness to Indians, and aggressiveness to blacks. These qualities became central to the politics of caste, and they were generated by, even as they maintained, processes of colonization.” Lewis, Hall of Mirrors, 24. Both Magali Carrera and Ilona Katzew argue that Mexico was still a highly race-conscious society as late as the end of the eighteenth century. Both employ a compelling use of art history

16

discrimination and social stratification to highlight the importance of race/caste as a

determining factor in one’s life conditions.36

The class-based argument contends that status positions, such as elite and

plebeian held greater social salience in colonial Mexico than did racial distinctions.

Susan Kellogg describes this shift as “an emerging trend [that] treats ‘subaltern’ people

as a relatively undifferentiated group.”37 In The Limits of Racial Domination, Cope

argues that the poverty of plebeians facilitated greater interaction among colonial subjects

of different racial backgrounds. He writes, “The existence of such impoverished

Spaniards diminished the social distances between whites and castas.”38 Cope concedes

that the caste system played a role in social hierarchies but insists that class dominated as

the social divider in very tangible ways, such as residential segregation.39 He takes an

even stronger stance by arguing that Mexico City’s socioeconomic structure in the late

seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries “militated against the development of a fully

techniques to make their argument. Magali M. Carrera, “Locating Race in Late Colonial Mexico,” Art Journal 57, no. 3 (Autumn 1998): 36-45; Magali Carrera, Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003); Ilona Katzew, Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). Ben Vinson argues most directly that free Blacks understood themselves as a community and often asserted and organized around a racialized corporate identity to secure material gain and navigate colonial law, specifically tribute exemption. Vinson, Bearing Arms for His Majesty, 4-5, 132-198; Also, Ben Vinson, “Free Colored Voices: Issues of Representation and Racial Identity in the Colonial Mexican Militia,” Journal of Negro History 79, no. 4 (1994): 170-182.

36 Jim F. Heathand Frederick M. Nunn, “Negroes and Discrimination in Colonial New Mexico: Don Pedro Bautista Pino’s Startling Statements of 1812 in Perspective,” Phylon 31, no. 4 (1970): 372-378; Martinez, “Black Blood of New Spain”; Seed, “Social Dimensions of Race”; Rodney Anderson, “Race and Social Stratification: A Comparison of Working-Class Spaniards, Indians, and Castas in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1821,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 68, no. 2 (May 1988): 209-243.

37 Susan Kellogg and Norma Angélica Castillo Palma, “Conflict and Cohabitation between Afro-Mexicans and Nahuas in Central Mexico,” in Beyond Black and Red, 71.

38 Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination, 21. 39 Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination, 32.

17

effective racial hierarchy.”40 He does not delineate, however, what a fully functional

racial hierarchy might look like by providing his reader with a counter example from the

Mexican context.

Patricia Seed urges scholars to push through the underlying false dichotomy in

order to address more fully the important categories of race and class. She writes,

So, the debate over caste and class resolves itself into the question: how closed must a system be before it is a caste system, how open before it is a class system? These arguments trivialize the discussion of race and class by reducing it to an argument over degrees.41

Seed’s argument leads me and other scholars to place other social markers beneath the

historical microscope.42 My work challenges how we take on the history of free African-

descended women of means and complicates our notions of subjects with particular

markers of difference who, at times, behaved in discernible patterns and other times when

they appeared to be “undifferentiated masses.”

The seventeenth century is often referred to as the “lost century” because of the

dearth of publications in the historiography. While many works on colonial Mexico

focus on the Conquest era as a time of rapid change and violence and on the eighteenth

century as the precursor to Mexican Independence, Bennett follows a burgeoning wave

40 Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination, 162. 41 Seed, “Social Dimensions of Race,” 602-603. 42 The scholarship of other areas of the African diaspora has been particularly instructive in

expanding the idea of differentiating African-descended populations. In colonial Saint-Domingue, for example, Susan M. Socolow argues that legal status, at times, trumped race as the most salient social signifier. She writes, “Legal condition was far more important than ethnicity in establishing social loyalties, and the gap between a free person of color and a slave was large.” Susan M. Socolow, “Economic Roles of the Free Women of Color of Cap Français,” in More than Chattel, 286.

18

that focuses on the importance of the seventeenth.43 He writes, “Temporality shaped

slavery…The ascendancy of freedom in the seventeenth century requires us to reexamine

New Spain’s neglected century.”44 In his 1975 field review, Charles Gibson writes,

At the most, seventeenth-century history seemed to express the realization or implementation of principles originating in the sixteenth. Hence, very little was done with the seventeenth century, beyond calling attention to our ignorance of it.45

We are now approaching the forty-year mark since Gibson made this assessment, and still

the seventeenth century has not yet escaped its peripheral place in the historiography,

especially with regard to the histories of African-descended people. My work

reconsiders the social dynamics of the seventeenth century and aims to bring the

seventeenth century into the historiographic fold as a période fondamentale in

understanding the colonial era.

My specific periodization of 1580 to 1730 frames the significance of the long-

seventeenth century. With the unifications of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns in

1580, Mexico became the largest importer of African slaves to the Americas, second only

to Brazil. Mexico maintained this advantageous economic position until the dissolution

of the unified crowns in 1640. The ascendancy of the Bourbons to the Spanish throne

after the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1713) had wide-ranging effects on the

remaining Spanish territories, including Mexico. For the central Veracruz region, the

43 More recent contributions emphasizing the richness of the seventeenth century include: Proctor,

‘Damned Notions of Liberty’: Slavery, Culture, and Power in Colonial Mexico, 1640-1769. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010); Joan Cameron Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches: Afro-Mexican Ritual Practice in the Seventeenth Century (2007).

44 Bennett, Colonial Blackness, 11. 45 Charles Gibson, “Writings on Colonial Mexico,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 55,

no. 2 (May 1975): 303.

19

introduction of designated trade sites (known as ferias) by the first Bourbon King of

Spain Philip V changed the scale of the economies, especially for Xalapa which hosted

its first in 1722.46 Ferias were not the only changes introduced by Bourbon rule, and the

consequences of the redirection of resources, the transatlantic politics, and colony-

focused policies distinguish most of the eighteen century from the previous 150 years of

the colony’s history. In the case of Xalapa, I specifically have chosen to end at 1730

because of greater changes brought by the Bourbon administration and the drastic decline

in cases noting African-descended women after this time period.

Terminology In Poblaciones y Culturas de Origen Africano en México, Catharine Good

Eshelman writes, “The objective is to develop a vocabulary and a useful conceptual tool

to elucidate the social complexity.”47 The question of terminology has remained

unresolved in the field of the African diaspora in Latin America with good cause. Over

the last three decades, the field has come to encompass a panorama of disciplines,

including history, anthropology, sociology, musicology, art, literature and even the

biomedical sciences. The diversity of academic areas yields an equally diverse field of

identifications for Africans and their descendants whose tenure in New Spain and

present-day Mexico spans nearly 500 hundred years. Early scholars followed the

terminological lead that Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán expounds in his foundational 1946 text,

La Población Negra. Although Aguirre Beltrán includes references to “cantidades de

46 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 52. 47 My translation, Catherine Good Eshelman, “Poblaciones y Culturas de Origen Africano en

Mexico,” in Poblaciones y culturas de origen africano en México, María Elisa Velázquez Gutiérrez and Ethel Correa Duró, eds. (Mexico, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2005), 146.

20

ébano” (quantities of ebony) and “la presencia del hombre de ébano” (the presence of the

man of ebony), Aguirre Beltrán consistently uses the Spanish term negro with regard to

the African diaspora in Mexico. In his chapter entitled “Caracteríticas Somáticas,”

Aguirre Beltrán provides the earliest scholarly articulation of the caste system in Mexico.

In his introductory chapters, he also offers a long discussion about the different African

nations identified throughout Mexico’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.

However, Aguirre Beltrán’s use of negro prevails throughout, and as the presumptive

“founder” of Afro-Mexican Studies, many scholars followed suit. Until, that is, there

appeared in the 1990s what seemed to be a break in the practice. As the field expanded

and more scholars entered it, largely from the United States and Mexico, new terms arose

in the literature. In my survey of Afro-Mexican historiography, which is largely

historical with some inclusions of anthropological studies, I found core trends and

“terminological epochs,” which at times overlap. They fall generally into four categories:

generational, disciplinal, epochal (modern vs. colonial) and linguistic (focusing on

differences in Spanish- and English-language literature).

Brief History of the Caste System

The growth in terminological variance in the field follows a similar trajectory of

terminological variance during the colonial era. It began with a few categories and

relative continuity, progressed to a rapid expansion of terminological options, and then

settled into a relatively stable set of categories but not necessarily stable with respect to

the meanings of these terms. To understand the Spanish colonial permutations of caste

identifications, one must first return to Iberia. The caste system of New Spain had its

21

roots in pre-conquest notions of “otherness” tainting the limpieza de sangre (purity of

blood) of “Old World” Spanish Christians. That limpieza de sangre did not emerge as a

colony-specific “project” forms a critical element in any examination of the social

anxieties manifested in colonial Mexico.

Historian Maria Elena Martinez argues that colonial discourses on race in New

Spain were cast from the same iron as those of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century concerns

about controlling and patrolling religious purity.48 She writes,

New Spain’s race, or caste, system was partly inspired by the Spanish concept of limpieza de sangre, which originally referred to the status or condition of having unsullied ‘Old Christian’ ancestry, free of Jewish, Muslim, and other heretical antecedents.49

As the colony ushered in the seventeenth century, limpieza de sangre shed most of its

religious associations and focused on racial connotations, for reasons to be discussed

below. Initially, Africans and indigenous groups had been considered a threat to blood

purity because of their status as “new” Christians. Then, as Martinez asserts, “[Limpieza

de sangre experienced] a discursive shift…[that] increasingly marked both native and

African ancestries as impure and generally saw mixture with either group in negative

terms.”50 However, she adds, “[I]t was black blood that was more frequently and

systematically construed as a stain on a lineage.”51

As two racialized “others,” how did it come to be that indigenous groups and

Africans and their descendants experienced limpieza de sangre so differently in New

48 Martinez, “Black Blood of New Spain,” 479-520. 49 Martinez, “Black Blood of New Spain,” 483. 50 Martinez, “Black Blood of New Spain,” 484. 51 Martinez, “Black Blood of New Spain,” 484.

22

Spain? It was believed that, through a few generations of interracial mixing with

Spaniards, often as few as three, indios could be “purified” and also become Spanish.

This process of whitening was visually represented in the casta paintings of the

eighteenth century. In a four-scene painting representing four generations in a family, the

indio heritage of a family was often lost by the final panel. In Casta Paintings, Ilona

Katzew writes, “The idea of purifying one’s blood back to white, with all its paradoxes

and intricate blood measuring methods, must have been common [by the seventeenth

century].”52 The belief that indigenous people could access “purity” stems partly from

their status previous to the Spanish conquest. Magali Carrera writes,

[Spaniards] acknowledged the existence of social and political hierarchy among the indigenous people and recognized…Indian nobles…In fact, following the logic of raza, Spaniards believed that Indian blood was unblemished by infidel blood and, this, was essentially a pure blood.53

However, theoretical purity was not extended to people of African descent. Unlike

indigenous people, Africans were deemed an “unfixable” population. In the early 1600’s,

Fray Prudencio de Sandoval asserted that people of African descent could not rid

themselves of their “negritude” even with “thousands” of white ancestors.54 Martinez

writes, “The growing association between black blood, slavery, and impurity can in part

52 Katzew, Casta Paintings, 49. 53 Carrera, Imagining Identity in New Spain, 12. 54 Martinez, “Black Blood of New Spain,” 485. And this is not to say that a few did not try by

attempting to buy their way out of their African heritage through “gracias al sacar” petitions. See, Ann Twinam, “Purchasing Whiteness: Conversations on the Essence of Pardo-ness and Mulatto-ness at the End of Empire,” in Imperial Subjects: Race and Identity in Colonial Latin America, Andrew B. Fisher and Matthew O’Hara, eds. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 140-165.

23

be attributed to the Iberians’ long history of linking blackness to both servitude and Islam

(because of the presence of black slaves in Muslim parts of the Iberian peninsula).”55

Colonial authorities found it challenging to categorize people of African descent,

because, as “tainted” people who could not completely “blanquearse,”56 they did not

easily fit into a three-race schema. In La Población Negra, Aguirre Beltrán writes,

During the first century of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the distinction between the different populations that were integrating was simple and its stratification logical: 1) Spanish conquerors and settlers, 2) vanquished indigenous groups, 3) imported enslaved Africans. Verifying the mixing among the three populations presented a problem with placing the offspring in any one of the three boxes…57

As many colonial documents attested, designating people by mixed-caste categories was

notoriously inconsistent. The caste system of the eighteenth century involved a wide

array of identifications for people of African heritage. Most commonly employed

throughout colonial Mexico were negro, mulato, and pardo, but a plethora of other

categories arose as the century progressed: morisco, coyote, lobo, trigueño, prieto,

cambujo, barcino, and canelo.58 In seventeenth-century Xalapa, however, this level of

terminological diversity did not exist.59

Spanish institutions, specifically ecclesiastical and notarial in this study, identified

55 Martinez, “Black Blood of New Spain,” 486. 56 To whiten oneself or one’s progeny through marriage and procreation with people of white

physical characteristics. 57 My translation, Aguirre Beltrán, La Población Negra, 153. 58 Álvaro Ochoa Serrano, Afrodescendientes: Sobre Piel Canela (Zamora: El Colegio de

Michoacán, 1997), 77. 59 Carroll notes, “As early as the first quarter of the seventeenth century Jalapans commonly

used the six racial terms defined in chapter 5, namely: white, Indian, negro, mestizo, mulatto, and pardo.” Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 113. My research in the notarial and parish archives of Xalapa corresponds with Carroll's findings. However, I have chosen not to translate these designations to English.

24

people of known or “visible” African descent by the following: negro, mulato, pardo and,

to a lesser extent, moreno. Although terminological definitions varied in colonial

Mexico, the most common interpretations of the most common categories are these:

negro or moreno denoted someone of African heritage who was not (or did not appear to

be) racially mixed; a mulato was someone of both Spanish and African heritage; and a

pardo was someone of African and indigenous heritage. However, someone of African

and indigenous descent could also be identified as mulato depending on whether that

person had a lighter skin tone.60 On a few occasions, the notary added origin information

regarding African kingdoms or regions. For instance, a mother of a free mulata was

categorized as from “Guinea.” Whether "Guinea" served as a signifier for all of Africa or

whether the woman was actually from this region of western Africa is unknown.

Additionally, some notaries made clarifications, stating, for instance, “This woman is

mulata but may appear to be negra.” Or, that a woman was a mulata blanca, perhaps a

descriptor that referred to someone almost indiscernibly of African descent but enough to

declare it, or to have it declared by a notary, or to have it be common public knowledge.

Most importantly, the archives of Veracruz revealed that notaries and religious officials

regularly identified claimants within the confines of the sistema de castas. Most of the

cases for this study involved women identified as mulatas. However, as the seventeenth

century came to a close, more and more women of African descent were being identified

as pardas. Although mulatas, and later pardas, represented the majority of cases

examined here, I also included the few cases involving free negras and morenas.

60 Gilberto Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, Siglo XVII (Xalapa, Veracruz, México:

Universidad Veracruzana, 1995), 113.

25

Sign of the Times: Early Scholars and Terminology

The literature on the African diaspora in Mexico yields an array of terminological

possibilities. However, this variance developed quite late in the historiography. In La

Población Negra, Aguirre Beltrán heavily employs negro as his encompassing term for

Africans and their descendants in New Spain. When discussing specific groups of castas,

he uses the designations found in archival materials, such as mulato, negro, and pardo.61

In El Negro Esclavo en Nueva España, Aguirre Beltrán reiterates his preference for negro

and la población negra as inclusive terms for his work. Aguirre Beltrán’s use of the

word negro must be placed in the context of other early twentieth-century studies on

Africans and people of African descent in Latin America. Early influential scholars, such

as Frank Tannenbaum (Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas, 1947), Gilberto

Freyre (Casa-Grande & Senzala, 1933), and Fernando Ortiz (Los Negros Esclavos,

1916), to name but a few, all relied on the vernacular of their time and place. For a

majority of the Spanish- and English-speaking scholars of the first half of the twentieth

century, this term was “negro” in Spanish or “Negro” or “negro” in English. Such

studies were groundbreaking in their own right, but none explicitly examined the racial

terminology they employed.

A twenty-year stretched between Aguirre Beltrán's work and the next widely

published and circulated pieces on the African diaspora in Mexico.62 From the 1960s to

61 It is of some importance that Aguirre Beltrán makes a distinction between the indios, mulatos,

and negros. He writes, “The free negros and mulatos did not constitute a true “caste” like the indios. Aguirre Beltrán, La Población Negra, 291. However, Aguirre Beltrán does not go on to define what a “true caste” was in the colonial Mexican context.

62 Davidson, “Negro Slave Control,” 235-253.

26

the late 1980s, a majority of the published material employed the term “Negro” or the

relatively new term, “black.” And, perhaps foreshadowing the popularity of the term

amongst later generations of scholars, Edgar F. Love experimented with the functionality

of “persons of African descent.”63 Although Love also uses “Negro,” the classification

“of African descent” makes a strong early appearance in this 1971 article. Of a sample of

three monographs since Aguirre Beltrán's seminal work, Colin Palmer decided on

“Black” (1976), whereas Gerald Cardoso (1983) went with “Negro” and Adriana Naveda

Chávez (1987) vacillated between “negros” and “esclavos africanos.” What is clear is

that very little terminological variation appeared in the literature in the fifty years

following the publication of La Población Negra.

By the 1990s, more foundational scholars had emerged, and the field began to

blossom, as did the terminology these scholars experimented with during this third wave.

Within a decade, the literature had gained more than a dozen important works, and it was

evident that the field was taking off in a new terminological direction. One of the most

recognizable additions to the literature during this time period was the term “Afro-

Mexican,” employed by Carroll (1991) and then in an article by Palmer (1994).

However, it was not the only addition. Scholars worked through a myriad of options

during the 1990s. In Blacks in Colonial Veracruz (1991), Carroll uses a half dozen

different terms: Afro-Mexicans, blacks, Afro-Veracruzanos, Africans, Afro-Jalapan,

Afro-casta, and even “black racial hybrids.” Ben Vinson's 1994 article introduced “free

63 Edgar F. Love, “Marriage Patterns of Persons of African Descent in a Colonial Mexico City

Parish,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 51, no. 1 (February 1971): 79-91.

27

colored,” a term he stood by in works published as late as 2004.64 Kimberly S. Hanger

largely uses “free black,” “free person of color,” and also the Spanish term “libre” (free

person) as inclusive designations for people of African descent in Spanish New Orleans

and occasionally uses untranslated casta labels from the colonial documents with which

she works.65 The use of translated and untranslated Spanish caste designations also

became more prevalent as seen in Hanger’s work on Spanish New Orleans.66 Although

the literature in Spanish seemed to prefer “negro” or “esclavo”67 (slave) as collective

terms, Fernando Winfield Capitaine brought some change with “la población africana y

sus descendientes” (the African population and their descendants) in 1992 and Luz María

Martinez Montiel also utilized the term “la presencia africana” (the African presence) in

1994 to bring greater terminological variety to Spanish-language literature.

The new millennium introduced more scholars, innovative research, and diverse

terminologies, but the field had not arrived at an agreement as to which terms were most

appropriate. In the last thirteen years, dozens of monographs, anthologies, articles, and

documentaries dedicated to some aspect of Afro-Mexican history and life have been

produced. Although there is no current consensus, there are clear terminological front-

runners. “Black” has gained in popularity since its early introduction.68 In Hall of

Mirrors, Laura Lewis also uses “black” as her dominant inclusive term, but she also uses

64 Vinson, “Articulating Space”; Vinson, Bearing Arms for His Majesty. 65 Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places (1997). 66 Kimberly Hanger uses the term black, but also transitions to colonial designations of morena but

also uses the English word mulatto. Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places (1997). 67 Herrera Casasús, Piezas de Indias (1991). 68 Favored by such scholars as Herman Bennett (2003 & 2009); Matthew Restall (2000, 2005,

2009), María Elena Martinez (2004); Theodore Vincent (1994, 2001); Martha Menchaca (2001); and Nicole Von Germeten (2006).

28

“mulatto” to refer to African-descended people collectively. 69 Lewis discusses

“blackness” and “mulattoesness” but does not specify who would belong to either of

these categories or what these categories signify.

Ben Vinson's 2004 contribution continued with his previous preferred

identifications, but for the first time, he included an explanation for his terminological

choices. He writes,

On a final note, this book uses the words “free-colored” and “black” interchangeably. These refer to the same racial groups, namely pardos, morenos, and mulatos. While many scholars have utilized various forms of nomenclature to refer to these groups in the past, free-colored is the preferred terminology here, and is the most used. It more faithfully captures the spirit of colonial referencing – pardos libres, morenos libres, and mulato libres...70

Vinson does not elaborate as to how “free-colored” more faithfully captures colonial

categories, but is one of few who broaches the question of the researcher's preference.

Nicole Von Germeten's 2007 monograph makes clear in the introduction that she is aware

of the terminological debate. She states, “This book uses racial labels throughout; such

usage must be consistent and have a theoretical and historical justification.”71 Von

Germeten offers some background for her choices. She writes,

I chose to use the more general term “Afromexican,” which does not appear in colonial documents, to refer to the group of people, both slave and free, of African or mixed racial heritage, who lived in New Spain from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. My purpose in using this term is to suggest that a diverse range of individuals of African descent contributed individually and collectively to many aspects of life in New

69 Frank T. Proctor also uses the translated terms of “black” and “mulatto” to refer broadly to

people of African descent. Proctor (2010). 70 Vinson, Bearing Arms for His Majesty, 6. 71Von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers, 4.

29

Spain through their own version of religious piety, especially in the seventeenth century…The term “Afromexican” connotes a fluid group and is meant to highlight the long-term presence of people of African ancestry and suggest that they influenced the development of Mexican religion and society…“Afromexican” captures these subtleties of meaning.72

Von Germeten further argues that racial labels should “be consistent and have theoretical

and historical justification.”73 I do not think that “consistency” necessarily has to be a

goal for the field, but her call for greater conversation regarding such choices should be

central as we situate our research.

Among Spanish-language scholars, the terms afrodescendientes, afromestizos,

and afromexicanos have also found traction.74 However, colonial terms, such as “negro”

and “mulato” are still prevalent among some Spanish-language writers. 75 A few

scholars, however, continue to experiment terminologically. In Castas, Feligresía, y

Ciudadanía en Yucatán, Melchor Campos García uses castas, vecinos de color,

afromestizo, moreno, africanos, negros, la población negra, la población de color, and

72 Von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers, 5. 73 Von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers, 4. 74 Adriana Naveda, “Presentación,” in Pardos, Mulatos y Libertos: Sexto Encuentro de

Afromexicanistas, Adriana Naveda Chávez-Hita, ed. (Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana, 2001), 9-14; Norma Angélica Castillo, “La pérdida de la población de origen africano en la región de Puebla: El cruce de la barrera del color por las inconsistencias de la categorías raciales: Análisis de la genealogías y conflictos interétnicos,” in Poblaciones y culturas de origen africano en México, 299-325; Luz Alejandra Cárdenas S., “Historia y Alteridad: Mujeres de origen africano en el Acapulco colonial,” in Poblaciones y culturas de origen africano en México, 327-334.

75 Juan M. de la Serna H. “Bregar y Liberar: Los esclavos de Querétaro en el siglo XVIII” in Pardos, Mulatos y Libertos: Sexto Encuentro de Afromexicanistas, 99-116; Ursula Camba Ludlow Imaginarios ambiguos, realidades contradictorias: conductas y representaciones de los negros y mulatos novohispanos, siglos XVI-XVII (Mexico, D.F.: El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Históricos, 2008); Nicolás Ngou-Mvé, “Historia de la Población Negra en México: Necesidad de un enfoque triangular” in Poblaciones y culturas de origen africano en México, 39-63; Blanca Lara Tenorio, “La integración de los negros en la naciente sociedad poblana 1570-1600,” in Poblaciones y culturas de origen africano en México, 285-297.

30

originarios de África.76 There also appears to be a preference among anthropologists for

“afro-mestizo,” although very little has been said as to why.

Anthologies have served to demonstrate the variety of terms among a cross-

section of disciplines and the various trends among established and newer scholars. In

Adriana Naveda's 2001 anthology Pardos, Mulatos y Libertos, she along with her

contributors employ a wide range of terms. However, a few scholars have obvious

terminological preferences. Naveda uses afromexicano, la cultura africana, la presencia

africana, afromestizos, africanos, and esclavos africanos. María Elisa Velásquez

Gutiérrez uses la población del origen africano, la población africana y su descendencia,

grupos de origen africano, and mujeres africanos with a strong preference for “de origen

africano.” Ben Vinson predominantly employs the term la población negra. Luz María

Martínez Montiel, an early scholar of Afro-Mexican studies, limits her terminological

usage to negro and la presencia africana in her piece, “Esclavitud y Capitalismo en

Ámerica,” perhaps because of the breadth of the project. Juan González Esponda uses la

población africana, la presencia africana, los negros esclavos, africanos, and la

población negra y afromestiza. While Juan M. De la Serna H. uses negro, la población

de color, and la población mulata, he notably uses the term esclavo as his inclusive term.

De la Serna H. explains his preference: “We know from experience that ethnic categories

like mulato, negro, pardo or morisco, were used as synonyms for ‘slave’.”77 De la Serna

H.'s suppositions have not held true for the archival materials that I have examined, but

76 Melchor Campos Garcia, Castas, Feligresía, y Ciudadanía en Yucatán: Los afromestizos bajo

el regimen constitucional espanol, 1750-1822 (Merida, Yucatan, Mexico: Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia, Universidad Autonoma de Yucatan, 2005).

77 My translation, Juan Manuel de la Serna Herrera, “Bregar and Liberar,” 107.

31

this is not to say that his depiction is not an accurate characterization of archives in

Querétaro.

The greatest terminological diversity among recent anthologies comes from María

Elisa Velázquez and Ethel Correa's Poblaciones y Culturas de Origen Africano de

México (2005). Although Colin Palmer's contribution was originally written in English

and later translated, it includes nearly a dozen different terms: la población africana de

México, esclavos africanos, la población negra, las culturas negras de México, el estudio

del pasado africano en este país, las culturas afromexicanas, los africanos, los negros,

poblaciones de origen africano, personas de origen africano. In her two contributions in

the collection, María Elisa Velázquez Gutiérrez has a clear preference for using terms

that describe origin, but she also includes an array of synonyms: la población africana, la

presencia y participación de los africanos en México, las africanas y sus descendientes,

los estudios sobre negras y mulatas, la presencia feminina de origen africano, las

mujeres de origen africano y sus descendientes, and la población de origen africano.

However, most scholars vacillated between using caste-specific categories and utilizing a

host of encompassing terms without describing why such terms worked for their

particular projects, whether theoretically or methodologically. The field had begun to

shift, and historians now increasingly challenge their own use of categories – perhaps a

late side effect of earlier scholarship that had questioned the idea of the rigidity of the

caste system.

Questioning the Caste System

No historian before R. Douglas Cope took to task the strict and stagnant

32

interpretation of the caste system in Mexico as fully as in his 1994 work, The Limits of

Racial Domination. The earliest division of the “two republics,” one of indios and the

other of españoles (and other castas), may have served juridical purposes, but the two

groups were never actually so divided. The same was true of the caste system. Cope

explores this fluidity through his research on plebeian spaces to counter the notion that

the caste system exclusively divided the races of colonial society. Cope argues, “In a

multiracial society such as colonial Mexico, ethnic identity itself became a prime point of

contention and confusion. Elite attempts at racial or ethnic categorizations met with

resistance as non-Spaniards pursued their own, often contradictory, ends: social mobility,

group solidarity, self definition.”78 If the caste system was an ill-defined and flexible

entity, then so too were the caste identifications that it produced. Cope writes,

[E]thnic status is not fixed permanently at birth, by official fiat, but constitutes a social identity that may be reaffirmed, modified, manipulated, or perhaps even rejected – all in a wide variety of contexts. In short, “the use of ethnic identity is free...flexible,” and strategic.79

The agency demonstrated and the strategies employed by castas complicated notions of

the institutional influence in the quotidian experience for colonial subjects in Mexico.

In theory, the caste system not only divided the races but ordered them

hierarchically. However, implementation of this invested societal ideal varied greatly

across the colony. Cope asserts,

Most significant, the racial and economic aspects of the Spanish-casta division were inconsistent. In reality, not all castas were relegated to the low-status occupations, nor did Spaniards hold solely prestigious

78 Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination, 5. 79 Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination, 5.

33

positions.80

Later scholars continued to challenge the efficacy of the caste system and the vast

disparity in how authorities employed it in different parts of the colony, as well as how its

meanings might have changed over time. Bennett argues, “Racial labels took on

meanings that were not necessarily shared throughout New Spain. The depositions from

people who had been familiar with each other for many years, if not a lifetime, suggest

that there was much ambiguity in the meaning of racial and ethnic labels.”81 Bennett

adds,

As has been evident throughout, social labels had an ambiguous quality. Though the sources often underscore a range of possibilities, these meanings never remained fixed nor were they employed beyond a given regulatory context.82

The lack of juridical uniformity across the vast expanse of New Spain created an array of

caste systems and an even greater variety of caste identifications that allowed for spaces

of negotiation and even arbitration when disputes arose. Importantly, regional

particularity has proven to be extremely relevant when discussing the caste system and

caste identifications.

One of the permutations of the caste system that Campos García finds in his work

of the Yucatan peninsula also holds true for Veracruz. He writes, “The designation of

moreno was in use from 1567 to 1700, but then disappeared as a status category of

entrants. However, the categories of mulato, pardo, and negro prevailed throughout the

80 Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination, 19. 81 Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico, 250. 82 Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico, 232.

34

colonial period.”83 During this early colonial period, there were some consistencies

throughout the colony. In Africans in Colonial Mexico, Herman Bennett writes, “Often

manifest in regulatory moments, the terms became symbolic markers that flourished

despite the ways in which they obscured the nuances of experience and diverse

meanings.”84 The seventeenth century was certainly a period of increased consolidation

of colonial administration and, by extension, the development of the caste system as an

administrative tool underlies this phenomenon.

In Afroméxico, Ben Vinson draws our attention to the silences caused by the

inconsistencies of or caste terminology in any archive. He asserts,

When the category was finally assigned, such as pardo or mulato, the bureaucrats never clarified these terms. In other words, the exact details of race and of the gendered mixture of race did not concern them so much, especially in the eighteenth century when lineage was very difficult to trace.85

During the seventeenth it was not unheard-of that newly arrived slaves and first- or

second-generation free people had some idea about their ancestry, although having such

information recorded in written documents was rare. That certain caste identifications

gained prevalence should not obscure the possibility of their functioning as placeholders,

ready to be inscribed with any number of meanings.

Herman Bennett posits an even wider colonial use of the term mulato. He argues,

“For many individuals, especially secular and ecclesiastical authorities, mulatto simply

83 My translation, Campos Garcia, Castas, Feligresía, y Ciudadanía en Yucatán, 21. 84 Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico, 198. 85 Vinson and Vaughn, Afroméxico, 31-32.

35

constituted a descriptive and juridical referent to transgression and impurity.”86 In the

late sixteenth century the usage of racialized placeholders is evident in the use of the term

“vagabundo,” or vagabond, as an inclusive term for free people of African descent who

were not tied to Spanish masters or employers. The questions regarding the

inconsistencies of the larger caste system have sparked greater debate about the function

of the terms scholars were and are still using. Fortunately, this has encouraged some

scholars to address explicitly the dilemma of terminological appropriateness, and it has

influenced others to call for action in the field of Afro-Diasporic Studies.

Taking Terms to Task

If the 1990s marked the advent of questioning the stability of the caste system and

by extension the categories that it produced, then the last thirteen years, 2000 to 2013,

witnessed direct interrogation of the terminology used by scholars. In Christian,

Blasphemers, and Witches (2007), Joan Cameron Bristol squarely addresses the issue of

terminology. She writes,

[T]o study them we must begin with the most basic set of questions. Who were Afro-Mexicans?…As we shall see, the category “Afro-Mexican” itself encompasses a great variety of individuals and experiences. Some Afro-Mexicans were Africans brought from West and West Central Africa to serve as slaves in Mexico, and some were born in Spain. Others were creoles, born and raised in New Spain and other parts of Spanish America. Some were labeled negros (blacks) and others mulatos (mulattoes), indicating mixed parentage. Many Afro-Mexicans were enslaved, yet large numbers were free by the end of the seventeenth century, and many individuals passed from slavery to freedom over the course of their lifetimes.87

86 Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico, 198. 87 Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches, 1-2.

36

Bristol was not the first to address the vast diversity of experiences that the term “Afro-

Mexican” encapsulates, but her work is indicative of a trend of publications in the field

that recognize the importance of what terminology does for our projects. In Afroméxico

(2004), Bobby Vaughn offers a cohesive discussion on terminological particularity in

what he see as the divide between the academic campus and the campo. He writes,

First, it is necessary to explain the racial, ethnic, and color terminology that I use in this paper to distinguish what is used by academics in Mexico and by the inhabitants of the Costa Chica. Contrary to the Mexican academy and popular convention, I prefer to use the terms indigenous and indigenous towns, instead of the word indio. In the Costa Chica, most Mexicans of African descent use the distasteful word indio. To refer to Mexicans of African descent, I use the terms “afromexicanos” and “negros” interchangeably, and, unless otherwise noted, my use of the term negro is a shorthand to refer to "afro-mexicanos" and does not suggest a particular skin color. Afro-Mexican, then, is roughly the equivalent to the local term “moreno” that is sometimes used by locals to refer to people of the entire ethnic community, regardless of color…By using the terms afromexicanos and negro, I diverge significantly from the conventions employed by the Mexican academy that prefers the term afromestizo.88

Vaughn highlights one of the core negotiations that take place for anthrolopologists:

How to address sensitively the local terms that people use to self-identify and also attend

to terminological trends in the academy.

Although the residents of the Costa Chica widely use the term moreno,

Vaughn decides to use afromexicano and negro as inclusive and interchangeable terms.

Scholars are now adding footnotes like Vaughn’s to discuss their choices, which I see as

a productive progression in the field. Catharine Good Eshelman urges others to

problematize the language we use to label groups. She writes, “The categorical diversity

88 Vinson and Vaughn, Afroméxico, 75.

37

that researchers use in different cases leads to other theoretical and methodological

problems. Using these concepts to study the African, we also deal with the lack of

consensus on their definitions.”89 And perhaps in a direct commentary towards the

previous years of generalizations of caste history, Good Eshelman argues,

The nomenclature that we use to analyze and describe social relations must be adapted to particular historical or current situations. For example, one can not assume that there are clear boundaries that separate a black, an Indian, a peasant or a worker. Nor can we assume that the social meaning of this designation is obvious…In particular, we must work with more flexible categories and formulate more open concepts…If the current categories and terminologies of our disciplines are to correlate with actual facts, we must create new terms of reference or redefine the existing ones.90

Terminological variation seems to have stabilized, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Where the field appears to be heading is greater awareness as to what kind of theoretical

or methodological work particular terminologies do for each scholar.

Terminology in this Study: What I Use and Why

I have deliberately chosen not to translate into English any of the caste

distinctions relating to African descent. I have also decided not to translate the modifiers

criollo and criolla, because changing these terms to “creole” may be misleading for some

audiences. Many people in the United States understand “creole” to denote someone of

89 My translation, Catharine Good Eshelman, “El Estudio Antropológico-histórico de la

Población de Origen Africano en México: Problemas Teóricos y Metodológicos,” in Poblaciones y culturas de origen africano en México, eds. María Velázquez Gutiérrez and Ethel Correa Duró (Mexico, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia), 144.

90 My translation, Good Eshelman, “El Estudio Antropológico-histórico de la Población de Origen Africano,” 146.

38

French and African ancestry, usually from Louisiana.91 “Creole” was also used to

designate someone of European descent born in the West Indies or Spanish America. In

Mexico, the term criollo had both geographically and culturally specific meanings. In the

early colonial period it referred to people of African descent born outside of Africa.92 It

later became a marker of Mexican authenticity, indiscriminate of race, as the conflict

between colony and metropole heightened in the early nineteenth century. As a point of

clarification, the caste of negro refers to people who were perceived to be of non-mixed

African ancestry or who had more prominent African physical characteristics. Its

translation into “black” is largely understood to be a more inclusive term for anyone of

African ancestry, including people of mixed heritage. However, to avoid confusion with

the limited use of the Spanish caste designation of negro in colonial Xalapa and the

inclusive English translation of “black,” all caste distinctions remain in their Spanish

form and are italicized, with the exception of direct quotations from secondary sources.

In addition, I employ the Spanish term casta descriptively. As “caste” is widely

accepted in the field as an acceptable translation that is distinct from other connotations,

such as the context of India, I have chosen to use the English form as a subject form.

Finally, I also use the term “Afro-casta” as an encompassing term to refer to people of

91 An extensive literature exists on the history of creole culture and history in Louisiana.

Important contributions include: Sybil Kein, Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana’s Free People of Color (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000); Virginia R. Domínguez, White by Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1986); Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992).

92 Lockhart asserts that before 1560, criollo referred to Africans almost exclusively and meant someone born outside of Africa. Which meant that Africans born in Spain, Portugal, and the colonies were all criollos. James Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 1532-1560: A Social History, 2nd edition (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 198.

39

African descent.93 In Xalapa, I found no substantive difference in the “notarial or

ecclesiastical lives” among castes of African descent and to collapse the terms negro,

moreno, pardo, and mulato, I use Afro-casta as a functional placeholder.

For this project, I primarily transition between the descriptions of descent (such as

African-descended, Africans and their descendants, and “of African descent”) and “Afro-

casta.” My usage does not presume that all African-descended people in colonial

Veracruz understood themselves as a cohesive group. I argue that my terminological

choices shed light on how incohesive and amorphous the caste system was. For instance,

sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish royal edicts that dictated restrictions against

Afro-castas were often written as “XYZ law prohibiting mulatos, pardos, negros,

morenos, and zambaigos from doing XYZ thing.”94 This amalgamation of all castes of

African descent was not uncommon in the colonial documents, and I use these variations

of descent to reference this history and those practices. When making specific references

to women, such as Polonia, I use their casta identification at least once and then often

transition to references to them as African-descended women.

I use the term “women of means” to designate women of African descent who

were in a position to register their business activities (whatever they may have been) with

the local notary or to be named as a principal actor or recipient in the notarized business

of another registrant. The cases I examine found such “women of means” to include

slave owners, landholders, business owners, and close friends and associates of

93 Patrick Carroll utilizes this the term “Afro-casta” in Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, among a

plethora of other terms to refer to people of African descent. Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz (1991). 94 See various examples in Recopilación de las Leyes de los Reinos de las Indias (Madrid, Spain:

Boix, 1841), Tomo Segundo, Título Quinto, Leyes I through XXIX, 320-325.

40

prominent families in Xalapa. However, I also include in this category “of means”

women who may have lacked economic capital but who had cultural or social capital.

The documents that I utilized in this study also attest to a few cases of

intergenerational wealth among free women of African descent. The methodological

decision to begin in the notarial archives allowed me to demarcate these women from

others who did not have the means to be principal actors in notarial transactions or who

did not have the legal acumen to navigate Spanish institutions. In this way, “women of

means” serves as a status placeholder materially, culturally, and socially. The wielding

of cultural capital implicit in these transactions also provided insight into the early

adaptability of free African-descended people in Xalapa. This study includes women

who were indisputably wealthy, but also women who were firmly of the middling

economic sector, and those whose lives barely made the historical radar because of a

scarcity of capital. The inclusive term “women of means,” as opposed to women with

wealth, provides the necessary breadth to survey this demographic as a whole and allows

a degree of depth with specific cases of free women of African descent.

My choices of Afro-casta and “of descent” beyond their function as inclusive

terms, also shed light on how inconsistent and incoherent the usage of caste terminology

was. Those identified as mulata were not necessarily women who had fair complexions

or whose parents were identified as an español and a negra (or a negro and an española).

Nor has there been significant evidence that mulatos, negros, pardos, and morenos (just

to name a few) were phenotypically distinct as “members” of that designation or that they

had significantly different life chances because they were labeled mulato instead of pardo

41

or any other caste designation for people of African descent. R. Douglas Cope asserts

that people of mixed heritage “and plebeians in general – knew little of their ancestry and

were uninterested in the complexities of the sistema de castas.”95 In his work on

seventeenth-century Mexico, Frank Proctor argues that such differences were contextual

“but did not necessarily demarcate mutually exclusive racial identities.”96 Where such

differences between people of African descent may have been perceptible were in niche,

numerically-limiting establishments, such as the militia.97 I believe that “of African

descent” allows for a more general discussion of race, especially during the colonial era

when the boundaries of “Mexico” did not yet exist as we know them today and not all

people in this study were born within the boundaries of colonial Mexico.

Both inclusive and purposefully nebulous, “of African descent” allows for more

flexibility to speak about the myriad of racial profiles that were encompassed by unstable

categories such as negro, mulato, pardo, and moreno. For people not born in the

colonies, I have noted their ethnic group or, in the rare cases where it is noted in the

sources, kingdom affiliations. A final note: My preference for terminologies “of

descent” also speaks to my support for and appreciation of the works and histories of the

African Diaspora in Latin America. People of African descent in Spanish-speaking

countries are demanding visibility and scholars the world over are flocking to African

Diaspora Studies. By adopting “of African descent” as a unifying language, I believe the

95 Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination, 78. 96 Proctor, Damned Notions of Liberty, 61. 97 Ben Vinson notes a few cases where free mulatos were integrated into regular Spanish militias,

while pardos and morenos were kept apart in their own militias. However, Vinson also notes that aggression towards militiamen of African descent affected mulatos as it did pardos and morenos. Vinson, Bearing Arms for His Majesty, 207.

42

field adopts the both/and orientation, as opposed to either/or, that we need to appreciate

the national particularity of these histories along with the wider implications of historical

and contemporary movements (cultural, social, political, linguistic, and geographic) of

people of African descent in the Americas and the Caribbean.

The field continues to suffer from the same linguistic schizophrenia that prospered

throughout the colonial era. We are the inheritors of a language system that our forebears

propagated and struggled with in the documents they produced and reproduced

throughout the colony. Perhaps scholars will never agree on a term or set of terms to

describe Africans and their descendants in New Spain as subjects and later as Mexican

citizens. However, I look forward to greater debate and open discussion about why such

words for particular scholars are useful and how they see such terms advancing the

understanding of the complexity of life for people of African descent in Mexico, in

particular, and Latin America, more broadly.

Background: The African Diaspora in Mexico and the Development of Xalapa, Veracruz

On April 22, 1519, Hernando Cortés walked on the balmy, tropical beaches of an

unfamiliar coast. A man named Alonzo Hernández Puertocarrero turned to Cortés and

exclaimed, “Behold rich lands! May you know how to govern them well.”98 On that

day, the voyagers began the work to found a Spanish town on that land with a name

inspired by its wealth of beauty, Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz or “Rich Town of the True

Cross.” Onto these same rich lands would disembark free and enslaved Africans and

98 Díaz del Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 83.

43

African-descended people to serve in auxiliary roles during the Spanish Conquest of the

Americas.99 More than one hundred thousand would make it to the shores of Veracruz

and the colonial era bore witness to the contestation of power and competition of

resources among new actors. Africans, Spaniards, diverse indigenous groups, criollos,

peninsulares, crown officials, and slave-holders all found themselves negotiating the

terms of their interactions in a constantly shifting environment influenced by local,

regional, colony-wide, and transatlantic events.

While more than a few African-descended men would join the conquest efforts

alongside Spanish conquistadors, and others would serve as “involuntary colonists,”100

labor motivated the Spanish Crown to encourage large-scale importation of African men,

women, and children. In 1522, the Spanish Monarch Charles V granted the first

monopolistic trading licenses to transport 4,000 Africans to the Americas over four

years. 101 The first Crown-sponsored importation was only partially successful as

approximately 2,500 Africans were introduced to Spanish-owned territories, with an

unknown number arriving in colonial Mexico, specifically.102 King Charles V later

granted more licenses as Spanish colonies required more robust labor pools. However,

Mexico’s reliance on indigenous labor predominated in many areas of the colony for

most of the sixteenth century, even after dramatic population decreases.

In 1519, it is estimated that the indigenous population in New Spain numbered

99 Klein, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean,1-20; Landers, Black Society in

Spanish Florida, 7-9; Restall, “Black Conquistadors,” 188. 100 Matthew Restall’s description. Restall, “Black Conquistadors,” 172. 101 María Guadalupe Chavez Carbajal, “La gran negritud en Michoacán, época colonial,” in

Presencia Africana en México, Luz María Martinez Montiel, ed. (Mexico, D.F.: Dirección General de Publicaciones del Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1994), 84.

102 Chavez Carbajal, “La gran negritud en Michoacán,” 84-85.

44

between fifteen and twenty-five million.103 By 1548, these numbers had fallen to a

dismal 6.3 million.104 Less than fifty years later, New Spain counted barely 1.3 million

indigenous people.105 In Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, Patrick Carroll writes, “When

Cortés landed on the coast of Mexico in 1519, he brought with him an unwanted ally.”106

This “ally” was smallpox and it swept through the indigenous population with such

ferocity that soon thousands of indigenous people had succumbed to the disease.107 With

no previous exposure to European diseases, indigenous people all over the colony fell

victim to less severe maladies such as influenza, measles, mumps, and chickenpox.108

More virulent diseases and conditions such as typhoid, yellow fever, and dysentery

devastated indigenous groups and Spaniards alike.109

In 1542, the Crown abolished indigenous slavery110 but still instituted their

coerced labor through the allocation of encomiendas, and later repartimientos as “tribute”

to their Spanish colonizers. The abolishment of indigenous slavery helped slow the

drastic population decline of indigenous, but it also precipitated greater interest in

enslaved African labor. While Spain had a long history of interactions with Africans,111

and King Charles V had begun to issue slave licenses to large-scale traders, it was not

until the unification of the Spanish and Portuguese Crowns in 1580 that Spain’s

103 Russell Menard and Stuart Schwartz, “Why African Slavery? Labor Force Transitions in Brazil, Mexico, and the Carolina Lowcountry,” in Slavery in the Americas, ed. Wolfgang Binder (Wurzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1993), 98.

104 Menard and Schwartz, “Why African Slavery,” 98. 105 Menard and Schwartz, “Why African Slavery,” 98. 106 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 7. 107 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 7. 108 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 8. 109 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 7. 110 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 43. 111 Ruth Pike, “Sevillian Society in the Sixteenth Century: Slaves and Freedmen,” Hispanic

American Historical Review, Vol. 47, No. 3 (1967): 344-59.

45

involvement in the transatlantic slave trade solidified and thousands of Africans were

transported to the Spanish empire by mostly Portuguese traders. Most would be relocated

to predominantly agricultural areas or high-population cities, such as Mexico City,

Puebla, the mines of Zacatecas, the coastal areas of Oaxaca, and the semi-rural zones of

Veracruz.

Map 2: “New Spain and Environs,” Laura Lewis, Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft, and Caste in Colonial Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003),

xvi.

46

The actual number of enslaved Africans brought to the colony is still greatly

debated. Aguirre Beltrán posits that by 1646, there were 151,618 people of African

descent in New Spain.112 For a shorter time frame (1595 to 1622), Colin Palmer

estimates that 110,525 people of African descent were shipped to Mexico.113 Bennett

asserts that between 1595 and 1640, approximately 75,000 “West-Central Africans,”

specifically, arrived in Mexico.114 An exact number may never be possible to discern

because many of the figures come from records taken at slave ports in West Africa

instead of when vessels docked on the coasts of New Spain. Obvious statistical problems

arise because as many as twelve to fifteen percent of slaves died during the traumatic

Middle Passage.115 In addition, these numbers do not take into account the number of

slaves shipped illegally via the clandestine markets.116 However, census records from the

seventeenth century indicate that “African immigration was quantitatively greater than

whites prior to 1700.”117

Most of those who would enter Mexico would first experience the sights, sounds,

and heat of the ports of Veracruz, first through Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, then La

Antigua Ciudad de Veracruz, and finally and primarily though the port established in La

Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz.118 Starting from La Nueva, the Camino Real would lead

112 Aguirre Beltrán, La población negra, 219. 113 Palmer, Slaves of the White God, 28. 114 Bennett, Colonial Blackness, 71. 115 Douglas Richmond, “The Legacy of African Slavery in Colonial Mexico, 1519-1810,” Journal

of Popular Culture, 35, no. 2 (Fall 2001): 4. 116 Palmer, Slaves of the White God, 30. 117 Richmond, “The Legacy of African Slavery in Colonial Mexico,” 3. 118 The short hand for these cities were often designated in colonial documents as “Villa Rica,”

“La Antigua” or “La Antigua Veracruz,” “La Nueva” or “La Nueva Ciudad.”

47

merchants, slaves, free people, and Atlantic goods to the seat of viceregal power in

Mexico City.

Map 3: “Spanish lands in the province of Jalapa, ca. 1600,” Patrick J. Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz: Race, Ethnicity, and Regional Development (Austin:

University of Texas Press, 1991), 13.

48

Along the Camino Real lay Xalapa. Unlike some of the Spanish settlements in

the central Veracruz region, Xalapa had been a populated area for centuries when Cortés

first traversed it in 1519. Indigenous communities that resided in the three “barrios” of

Xallapan, Techacapan and Xallitic constituted the area what would be known as

Xalapa.119 The famed conquistador quickly recognized Xalapa’s potential as an attractive

resting stop and “refueling” post for New Spain's travelers and traders. Through the early

colonial period, indigenous people continued to reside in these three neighborhoods, but

the newly arrived conquerors selected the barrio of Xallapan as the Spanish center.120

With the forced and voluntary assistance of the indigenous population, Xallapan soon

became home to the principal public plaza and the majority of the living quarters for

Spanish residents. It was also the area through which the Camino Real flowed in and out

of the town.121 Its more fixed population consisted of its initial founding indigenous

groups, migratory indios, Spaniards born in the colony, peninsulares, mestizos, and

people of African descent, both free and enslaved, along with the sporadic appearance of

subjects from the Philippines.

119 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 15. 120 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 16. 121 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 16.

49

Map 4: “Spatial zones of Jalapa, ca. 1700,” Patrick J. Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz: Race, Ethnicity, and Regional Development (Austin: University of Texas

Press, 1991), 104.

The jurisdiction of Xalapa was unique during the colonial era in that it mirrored

the larger trajectory of the colony and was affected by transatlantic politics and policies

50

in ways that would be unexpected for a population the size of Xalapa’s. The drastic

decline in Xalapa’s indigenous population is one such example. While indigenous people

helped build many of the principal buildings of Xalapa, including the Monastery of San

Francisco and the Royal House of Spanish Justice (la Casa Real de la Justicia Española)

in the sixteenth century,122 they would be devastated in numbers comparable to those

witnessed in Mexico City. In 1519, under the Triple Alliance control headed by

Moctezuma, Xalapa had 51,609 indigenous residents. By 1569, that number had fallen to

6,268.123 Nearly 88% of indigenous people in the jurisdiction of Xalapa had perished in

half a century. Just eleven years later, nearly a thousand more indigenous people lost

their lives, leaving the population at 5,431 residents in 1580.124 In 1580, which marked

the start of the mass importation of African slaves to Mexico, the indigenous population

in Xalapa was only 10% of its 1519 pre-Spanish size. Xalapa, like other towns

devastated by population decline, needed labor for its diversified industries, and Africans

would fill this need starting in the long seventeenth century.

Xalapa’s non-indigenous population size is less certain. Based on parish

sources,125 Gilberto Bermúdez Gorrochotegui has compiled estimates for Xalapa’s five

primary populations (indigenous, españoles, mulatos, mestizos, and negros) over the

course of the seventeenth century.126 For the purpose of this study, I have collapsed his

mulato and negro population data to better depict the African-descended population

122 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 16. 123 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 43. 124 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 45. 125 Xalapa’s parish was not established until 1641. Thus, all extant church records date from this

time period forward. 126 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 123.

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compared with the sizes of others. Bermúdez Gorrochotegui estimates that between 1641

and 1650, there were 936 indigenous in Xalapa, 250 españoles, 139 people of African

descent (50 mulatos and 89 negros), and 66 mestizos. Between 1671 and 1680, he

estimates an indigenous population of 1,837, 455 españoles, 375 residents of African

descent (264 mulatos and 111 negros), and 166 mestizos. By the last decade of the

seventeenth century (1691 - 1700), Bermúdez Gorrochotegui posits 2,487 indigenous

living in the jurisdiction of Xalapa, 659 españoles, 542 people of African descent (417

mulatos and 125 negros), and just 247 mestizos. While the indigenous population slowly

recuperated, the Spanish and African-descended populations experienced dynamic

growth, as did Xalapa’s economy.

Xalapa’s main source of agricultural production was sugar, as it was for much of

the central Veracruz region. Xalapa and its sister town of Córdoba in central Veracruz

comprised two out of three of colonial Mexico’s largest sugar-producing regions.127 Due

in part to Crown gifts of land, indigenous tribute labor, and the influx of the African labor

pool, the first haciendas in the jurisdiction of Xalapa were built between 1580 and

1620.128 Some of Xalapa’s earliest agricultural sites were San Miguel de Almolonga,

Nuestra Señora de la Concepción (La Concha), Nuestra Señora del Rosario, Tenampa,

San Sebastian Maxtlatlan, La Limpia Concepción de Nuestra Señora (El Chico), Lencero,

Nuestra Señora del Socorro (Las Animas), Lucas Martín, San José Zoncuantla, Nuestra

Señora de los Remedios (Pacho), San Pedro Buenavista (La Orduña), and la Santísima

127 Proctor notes the third primary sugar-producing as “central New Spain (largely Morelos).”

Proctor, Damned Notions of Liberty, 16. 128 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 148.

52

Trinidad (El Grande).129 Most of these largely focused on sugar cultivation and cattle

ranching, with a lesser investment in the cultivation of corn.130 Those involved in the

sugar trade would benefit handsomely during these early years of cultivation as the

demand for sugar in the world increased and the price rose steeply between 1540 and

1600.131 Hundreds of people, both free and enslaved, lived on or worked at these

ingenios and a few of these sugar-producing plantations and extraction mills would

reappear in the narratives of free African-descended women.

However, as a way station between two important economic centers (Veracruz

Port and Mexico City), Xalapa’s residents also took part in commerce-centered

businesses, such as venta (inn) and recuas (pack train business) ownership. Free women

were among those who found these businesses to be profitable. The Venta del Rio was

owned by a free African-descended woman while the Venta de la Riconada was managed

by another. Between 1560 and 1600, Spanish settlers received land grants from New

Spain’s viceroy to develop pastures for maintenance of both large and small ranch

animals, most importantly oxen and mules.132 One scholar argues that these land grants,

which placed large swaths of agrarian land under Spanish ownership, “created the base

for the future latifundia.”133 Mules, oxen, horses, and cattle were in high demand by all

levels of sugar cultivation and production, farming, and most importantly by a growing

129 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 148-149. 130 Ranching and sugar production occupied the interest of early Spanish residents of Xalapa.

Gorrochetgui asserts, “In the early years of the colonial period, few Spaniards were interested in the agricultural business because they preferred to labor in commercial activities and attend to the travelers in the inns built near the Camino Real.” Historia de Jalapa, 239.

131 Fernando Winfield Capitaine, Esclavos y Libertos en Veracruz (Xalapa, Veracruz: Editora de Gobierno del Estado de Veracruz, 2009), 59.

132 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 243. 133 My translation, Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 243.

53

transportation business.134 The recuas employed arrieros (muleteers) who moved cargo

and people with trains of mules along the Camino Real to Mexico City, Puebla, Orizaba,

and back to the Port of Veracruz.135 Both venta and recua owners served as instrumental

members of Xalapa’s development as both an agricultural region and a commerce-

friendly hub equipped to welcome and accommodate the business of travelers who would

bring greater economic opportunities to the relatively small colonial town.

The region was not always home to an easy flow of transatlantic import and

export, nor were Africans and their descendants compliant as they witnessed the

atrocities of slavery. Xalapa’s location in this narrative positions people of African

descent in an unusual environment in Mexico and in the central Veracruz region. Xalapa

had free and even wealthy people of African descent as early as the late sixteenth century.

Córdoba, on the other hand, was founded in 1617 in response to continued attacks on

travelers by maroons who had escaped from nearby plantations. The Spanish settlement

was meant to offer travelers greater security from maroon activity and a sojourn between

the port and the next Spanish town. Patrick Carroll notes that African-descended people

in Córdoba comprised nearly a fifth of the district’s population as a result of late reliance

on enslaved labor, beginning around 1700.136 My examination of Córdoba’s notarial

records indicates that the vast majority of these women and men of African descent were

not free. And while there were likely smaller groups of people who were living as

maroons in the shadows, the most well-documented maroon settlement was led by

134 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 249 135 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 147. 136 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 93.

54

Gaspar Yanga who founded the community sometime in 1580.137 Yanga and his fellow

escaped slaves fought off numerous attempts by the Royal Spanish War Party to

dismantle and re-enslave the community.

Viceroy Rodrigo Pacheco y Osorio, Marquez of Cerralvo, finally relented and

settled for a truce and signed a treaty with Yanga’s group. By October 3, 1631, Yanga’s

stronghold resulted in the establishment of the first free town of the Americas and was

christened San Lorenzo de Cerralvo, later San Lorenzo de los Negros, and now simply

Yanga. While Spanish troops were ultimately unsuccessful in defeating Yanga, colonial

authorities had experience in dealing with uprisings led by African-descended people. In

the sixteenth century, Mexico witnessed major revolts by people of African in 1537,

1546, and 1570 along with any number of smaller uprisings.138 Maroon resistance

provides the most vivid testament to the unrest brewing among the colony’s population of

African descent,139 and Xalapa was not immune to slave revolt. On June 10, 1725, the

notarial offices documented a revolt that had occurred in the jurisdiction at the ingenio

San Miguel Almolonga.140 According to a legal motion recorded a month later on July 3,

there had been an insurrection and two Spanish vecinos of nearby Naolinco had been

“gravely injured.” The perpetrators of the rebellion were identified as “negros” and

“other aggressors.” The criminal case’s resolution was not documented in the notarial

137 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 91. 138 Love, “Legal Restrictions on Afro-Indian Relations in Colonial Mexico,” 131; see also, Roper

and Brockington, “Slave Revolt, Slave Debate,” 99. 139 Palmer, Slaves of the White God, 119-44; Love, “Negro Resistance to Spanish Rule in Colonial

Mexico”; Davidson, “Negro Slave Control”; Patrick J. Carroll, “Mandinga: The Evolution of a Mexican Runaway Slave Community, 1735-1827,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 19, No. 4 (October 1977): 488-505; Richard Price, Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas, 2nd edition (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1979).

140 ANX, July 3, 1725, f 691fte - 692fte.

55

records, but with the high number of enslaved people in Xalapa since the early sixteenth

century, it was likely not the only incidence of slave uprising. Even with slave repression

in the region and in the air in nearby sugar mills, free women of African descent arose in

Xalapa beginning at the dawn of the long seventeenth century.

Chapter Outline

Chapter One analyzes patterns of marriage choice, familial configurations, and

godparentage. This chapter also analyzes the signficance of exogamy, the social currency

of religious legitimacy, stability of family structures, and interracial interaction. An

examination of local parish records uncovers diverse configurations of family life among

free African-descended women. The choices of free African-descended families for

godparents would also vary, but important trends arose according to particular family

configurations.

Chapter Two delves into notarial sources by first providing a demographic profile

of the free women who engaged in a wide range of matters, and it introduces us to some

of the more intimate, familial concerns of African-descended women. Demographic

information on people of African descent in the historiography has often focused on men,

especially when addressing mainstream economic involvement. Like many colonial

women of any racial background, they would outlive some of their children. Others

would live to fulfill their parental duty and offer respectable dowries for their daughters.

This chapter will also reveals how free women of African descent with wealth shared

familial preoccupations very similar to those of both Spanish and other mixed-race

women. Beyond the immediate family, women of African descent established

56

connections to the local and regional Spanish elite, enabling them to enjoy greater social

mobility as well as access to patronage systems not available to many of their enslaved or

less economically stable brethren.

Chapter Three focuses on cases more centered on economic activities and

examines how these women engaged with certain types of economies that spoke to their

investment in particular types of social and cultural capital. It also delves into economic

contributions and analyzes consumption. I examine economic prospects, debt,

intergenerational wealth, and business ownership. I take on the task of discussing

consumption through an examination of wills, poderes, and bills of sale registered in the

notarial archive.

Finally, Chapter Four explores the lives of free women who owned slaves. For

African-descended women who gained their freedom, at least some of them saw slavery

as a means to establish a new subjectivity, that of slaveowner. Free women found slavery

to be a worthwhile economic venture, especially in Veracruz, where the use of enslaved

African labor was intrinsically tied to the development of the local economy. While they

engaged in slave-owning as a viable economic actvity, they may have also engaged in

performative acts of slave-owning that would lend them a social legitimacy that was not

otherwise accessible to them as women of African descent. This chapter also takes on

questions of identity and the intersection of gender politics as it relates to female

slaveownership.

The diversity of experiences had by free people of African descent is vivid,

compelling, and, sometimes, perplexing. While I build from important contributions to

57

the historiography, no other single monograph focuses exclusively on free women of

African descent in colonial Mexico. The narratives that unfold challenge traditional

interpretations of familial configurations, expand our understanding of legal acumen, and

problematize economic investment as a way to understand different forms of capital and

social legitimacy. This project on gendered and racially-negotiated strategies of free

women aims to contribute to the growing debates of understudied historical actors and

serve as a contribution towards developing a historiographical engagement with the

nearly 500-year history of Africans and their descendants in colonial and contemporary

Mexico. We begin with the cornerstone of colonial life—the family.

58

Chapter One

African-descended Families and Interracial Kinship

Historians have long debated the politics of marriage choice.1 Whether such

bonds were forged by perceived religious or familial obligations, sexual desire, or

genuine affinity, the institution of marriage remains fertile ground for socio-cultural

inquiry.2 In colonial Mexico, where Crown and Church vied for governance over their

diverse subjects, marriage and its administration was intrinsically part of the public

domain. Richard Boyer writes, “However self-contained married life, it nevertheless

connected to society at every turn.”3 As a Christian sacrament, it also marked for adults

an important step into social and religious integration – an expression and progression of

one's public identity. For colonial subjects of African descent, marriage may have

represented an entrée into legitimate social spaces. As a core organizing institution,

marriage could define life chances, shape social networks, and influence one’s economic

prospects along with those of future children. Securing an advantageous extended family

of in-laws, patrons, and business associates through sanctioned affective ties was a

1 There is an incredible wealth of literature on marriage that cannot possibly be addressed here.

For important contributions to historiography on marriage in the Spanish Empire, see: Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico; Ramón Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1948 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991); Richard Boyer, Lives of the Bigamists: Marriage, Family, and Community in Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995); María Emma Mannarelli, Private Passions and Public Sins: Men and Women in Seventeenth-Century Lima (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007); Asunción Lavrin, ed, Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989); Silvia M. Arrom, “Marriage Patterns in Mexico City, 1811,” Journal of Family History, Vol. 3 (Winter 1978): 378-391; Silvia Marina Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 1790-1857 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985).

2 For a discussion of how the Church tried to regulate sexuality through ecclesiastical courts, see Boyer, Lives of the Bigamists; Bennett, Colonial Blackness, 23-57.

3 Boyer, Lives of the Bigamists, 142.

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preoccupation for much of the population, not just for Spanish elites.4 With high rates of

illegitimacy throughout the colony among all subjects of the Spanish Crown,5 marriage

and the public acknowledgment that it involved offered people of African descent social

legitimacy.6

In this chapter, I examine the politics of marriage and discuss how marriage

partner choice shaped social interactions and the familial configurations of Africans and

their descendants in colonial Veracruz. For this study, I reviewed nearly one hundred

years of documentation dating from 1641 to 1736 housed in the Metropolitan Cathedral

of Xalapa. I focused on the parish archive records documenting three religious rites of

passage: baptism, confirmation, and marriage.7 The data in this chapter suggest that the

conventional wisdom about marriage choice is incomplete and that people of African

descent, especially free people, demonstrated considerations of status, legitimacy, and the

notion of the respectable family not previously documented in colonial Mexico.

4 George Reid Andrew argues, “In both Spanish America and Brazil, white and free black society

alike was structured around the fundamental building block of the extended family. No members of colonial society could hope to make their way upward without support and assistance from family networks, and family ties and connections were even more necessary for members of a small, disadvantaged group battling for a place in society. Even more important than cementing one’s individual social and economic position was strengthening the position of the family, which was achieved by securing the education, advantageous marriage and inheritance of one's children.” George Reid Andrews, Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 46.

5 Ann Twinam asserts that illegitimacy was often tied to being of mixed ancestry. However, she clarifies,“[I]llegitimacy was not solely confined to the racially mixed, for the white population also produced its own significant portion of offspring stigmatized by their birth.” Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets, 10.

6 James Lockhart notes that in Peru, “Successful freedmen were particularly anxious to enjoy the respectability conferred by marriage; most prominent free black men were married, usually to free black women, or less often, to black slave women or Indian women.” Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 217.

7 Unfortunately, few of the collections that I reviewed were complete. A fire in the church consumed a number of important sacrament books. The collection’s subsequent relocation and then return to the Metropolitan Cathedral resulted in the loss or misplacement of several tomes. The passage of close to 400 years and the lack of funds to properly preserve the collections have also devastated these rich sources.

60

Much of the historiography posits that race primarily determined marriage choice

among African-descended people and that exogamy reflected attempts to move away

from an African racial designation towards a Spanish (white) one.8 However, I argue that

people of African descent did not always concern themselves with the pursuit of

blanqueamiento (whitening oneself or one’s progeny). My research has found that

African-descended people understood and were invested in Spanish ideals of

respectability and mobilized towards the concept through their efforts to establish claims

to social legitimacy. Through the sanctioned religious activities of baptisms,

confirmations, and marriages, African-descended people demonstrated their interest in

fulfilling the role of a Catholic parishioner. In addition, marriage records demonstrate

that women and men of African descent emphasized their interest in developing lineages

of status by marrying other people of legitimate birth.

Few studies have included people of African descent in the dialogue of marriage

choice in colonial Mexico, but these few have made significant strides towards exploring

this neglected subject. Ben Vinson examines exogamy in Puebla among free men of

African descent in the militia. He notes that the data initially appear to confirm an

interest in “racial ascension.”9 However, Vinson argues for a broader examination of

records, both public and private, to assess how militiamen referred to themselves and

8 Important discussions about whitening or “passing” in colonial Spanish America include: Ann

Twinam, “Purchasing Whiteness: Conversation on the Essence of Pardo-ness and Mulatto-ness at the End of Empire,” in Imperial Subjects, 141-166; Twinam, “The Etiology of Racial Passing: Constructions of Informal and Official ‘Whiteness’ in Colonial Spanish America,” New World Orders, Violence, Sanction, and Authority in the Early Modern Americas,” John Smolenski and Thomas J. Humphrey eds. (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005): 249-272; Ilona Katzew, Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth Century Mexico (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 44-46. Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination, 75-78.

9 Vinson, Bearing Arms for His Majesty, 129.

61

how others discussed them in order to consider possible investments in the whitening

process.10 He notes that a man marked publicly as a member of an African-majority

organization likely widened his pool of potential partners, but also narrowed his options

if the goal was to “whiten” oneself through marriage to a Spanish woman, as “militia

status limited the ascent of his racial climb.”11 For Vinson’s work, militia status served

as a determining social marker in marriage choice for both men who sought Spanish

wives and those interested in other options.

Frank Proctor reassesses Patrick Carroll’s marriage choice data for Xalapa

through the conditional kappa, or the measurement of endogamy in the entire racial

group.12 Proctor’s analysis finds that greater endogamy existed in Xalapa when African-

descended caste designations are collapsed into one racial category. Later in this chapter,

I also employ this methodology but analyze only the marriages of free people of African

descent, excluding all slaves except those married to free people of African descent.

Neither Carroll’s work nor Proctor’s reassessment specifically differentiates the slave or

free status of the African-descended couples in the data they analyze, a social marker that

serves as a distinct category among marriage patterns in my work.

The examination of how marriage socially marked colonial subjects figures

prominently in the historiography. Patricia Seed scrutinizes the Church's involvement in

marriage choice and the changing notion of respectability due to capitalism, but she also

addresses how involvement in the institution of marriage demonstrated a level of cultural

10 Vinson, Bearing Arms for His Majesty 129. 11 Vinson, Bearing Arms for His Majesty, 129. 12 Proctor, Damned Notions of Liberty, 65-67.

62

capital that had been acquired by those involved in the conflict cases she examines. Seed

asserts,

Since marriage was a ceremony intimately integrated into Catholic doctrine and Hispanic culture, the aspirants to church marriage who appear in the prenuptial conflicts therefore represent the most thoroughly Hispanicized and catechized of the blacks and castas, rather than those castas tied closely to the Indian communities or recent arrivals from Africa who retained their own ideas about marriage.13

Still, as Herman Bennett has demonstrated, many newcomers to Spanish institutions

(both indigenous and people of African descent) quickly realized that certain institutions

and statuses, including marriage, allowed for greater personal benefit and freedom.

Bennett writes, “As Christians, [people of African descent] acquired an understanding of

the obligations and rights they invoked to effect changes in their lives.”14 They also

appeared to understand the value of legitimacy claims, according to Bennett. He argues,

“Individuals used legitimate son and daughter (hijo/a legítimo/a) as a juxtaposition that

signified moral status.”15 While those less acculturated to Spanish norms were less likely

to involve themselves with Spanish institutions, including marriage through the Church,

many subjects took note of social expectations, even if they did not adhere to them fully.

Bennett finds evidence of such investments in legitimate labels in eighteenth-century

Michoacán and, in this chapter, I explore the importance of legitimacy for African-

descended families during the long seventeenth century in Xalapa.

Seed and Bennett scrutinize how the notion of “free will,” a core value in the

Catholic tradition of marriage administration, shaped marriage partner choice. Bennett

13 Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico, 26. 14 Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico, 130. 15 Bennett, Colonial Blackness, 184.

63

notes that while it was not universally welcomed, interracial unions were not explicitly

prohibited,

Though alarmed by interracial sex and especially by racial exogamy, neither the Crown nor the Church banned such behavior. In keeping with Christian law, the Crown did not decree endogamy. Such a practice would have violated free will, both a Christian belief and a widely held Iberian norm.16

However, Seed calls into question the Church’s stance that it “does not marry statuses but

unites wills.”17 Seed found that when exogamy involved a Spanish man and a non-

Spanish woman, the Church “formally retained its commitment to unite wills rather than

marry ranks.”18 However, when the exogamous union involved a Spanish woman and a

non-Spanish groom, “church officials carefully questioned them about their intentions.”19

Endogamy was never officially decreed, but through the racialized language of “status,”

the Church could continue to influence the politics of marriage and family when

confronted with cases of objectionable exogamy.

Ramón Gutiérrez asserts that the Church, far from a neutral institution,

understood marriage as a civil matter with potentially adverse material repercussions if

the “wrong” families were united. He writes,

The Church abused the principle of marital freedom when children were joined in matrimony against parental wishes. The clergy had the right to define the rites that constituted matrimony, but had to recognize that marriage was also a civil contract that legitimized progeny, created inheritances and property rights, and was the basis for the accession of honors.20

16 Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico, 45. 17 Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico, 121. 18 Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico, 148. 19 Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico, 149. 20 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 316.

64

Both Seed and Gutiérrez see the Royal Pragmatic on Marriage, issued by King Charles

III in 1776 and instituted in 1778, as an important political moment as the Crown

“expanded the role of the civil judiciary in private life.”21 According to the Royal

Pragmatic, the Crown deemed it unlawful to unite unequals legitimately. It also ordered

that petitioners of marriage under the age of twenty-five required parental consent,

granting parents a stronger legal foothold in dictating marriage partner choice and

consequently in managing the family’s resources. Gutiérrez notes that the decree

reinforced the notion that “wide status disparities between marital candidates were

detrimental to the economic prosperity of honorable families and to their social

exclusivity.”22

The extent to which the Marriage Pragmatic and the Church influenced marriage

patterns is still up for debate. Seed cites the second half of the seventeenth century as the

advent of greater “competition” between Crown and Church.23 She also notes that by

1740 the Catholic Church had backed away from interfering in the decisions of heads of

families regarding their children’s choice of marriage partners and from arbitrating pre-

nuptial conflicts.24 Without the clergy’s intervention into disputes and its protection of

the free will of applicants, Seed argues, marriage choice in the eighteenth century became

increasingly determined within a capitalistic framework of familial honor, often

dependent on the family's financial state or its public reputation.

Gutiérrez, however, argues that the arrival of the Royal Pragmatic to Spanish

21 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 317. 22 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 315. 23 Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico, 162. 24 Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico, 186.

65

legal culture did not drastically diminish free will and independence in the eighteenth

century. He writes, “As early as 1776, when King Charles III issued the Royal Pragmatic

on Marriage, he had complained about those ‘blind passions of youth,’ the egalitarian and

individualistic ideology of romantic love.”25 Gutiérrez finds that in late-eighteenth-

century New Mexico, “[Y]oung men and women were being swept away by love and

began choosing marital partners on the basis of affect and desire, at times forsaking

family name, honor, and patrimony.”26 Herman Bennett also establishes that the clergy

continued to support the principle of free will in marriages, even among diverse

populations that sought to contract exogamous unions.27 He proposes that location may

have influenced how the Church involved itself in parental disapproval of intended

marriage partners. Bennett writes,

In urban areas, as the colonial state withdrew from its alliance with the Catholic Church, the clergy may have been interested in cultivating support among elite patricians. In rural areas – especially zones with large black, Indian, mulatto, and mestizo populations – the clergy may have felt that preserving a social order premised on Christian matrimony was a more pressing problem.28

My work ends before King Charles III granted parents greater sovereignty over their

progeny’s spousal options, but these debates of patriarchal influence and familial control

of private life inform my analysis of marriage choice among women and men of African

descent in Xalapa, especially in cases that suggest a strong investment by legitimate

families to unite with other legitimate families.

25 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 330. 26 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 330. 27 Bennett, Colonial Blackness, 198. 28 Bennett, Colonial Blackness, 198.

66

Bennett problematizes “free will” for the African-descended population by

arguing that marriage served as a colonizing tool of the Spanish Crown. He contends,

But instead of subjecting persons of African descent to greater military vigilance, [King] Charles attempted to rectify the situation through marriage. In the Spanish monarch's eyes, ‘the grand remedy’ would be to command ‘the negros that come here from now on and those that are here now’ to contract marriage. Matrimony, according to the king, represented an effective way to curb seditious behavior threatening the common wealth. As a Christian sacrament, matrimony was the instrument through which Castilian officials tried to impose orthodoxy on its new subject population.29

This desire to police and “domesticate” Africans and their descendants in New Spain

involved continuous negotiation. In the late 1500s, the Spanish Crown grew increasingly

uneasy about the growing number of free and “untethered” Africans in New Spain. As a

result, the Spanish king and the viceroy of New Spain ordered Spanish authorities to

maintain a vigilant eye on the activities of legally free people.

Viceroy Martín Enriquez was the fourth viceroy of New Spain (1568-1580) and

the sixth of the viceroyalty of Peru (1581-1583). In “Portrait of an American Viceroy:

Martín Enriquez, 1568-1583,” Phillip Wayne Power argues that Viceroy Enriquez “must

be ranked among the most effective, intelligent, and conscientious governors sent to this

hemisphere by Spanish monarchs.”30 Viceroy Enriquez’ letter to the king of Spain

articulates anxiety about, rather than assurance of, his ability to handle a rising colonial

“problem.” The viceroy wrote,

29 Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico, 44. 30 Philip Wayne Powell, “Portrait of an American Viceroy: Martín Enriquez, 1568-1583,” The

Americas 14, no. 1 (July 1957): 1.

67

This [increase in mulatos] is becoming a worst state and if God and our Majesty do not remedy it, I fear that this land will go to hell [and] as free people, they do what they want. Very few of them apply themselves to jobs and almost none of them cultivate the land. Instead they guard their earnings and wander freely wherever they may be.31

To curtail greater vagabondage, curfew ordinances were issued that attempted to restrict

the geographic mobility of free people of African descent.32 Spanish authorities had

become so concerned that a 1612 decree prohibited African-descended people from

attending funerals in groups larger than eight, limiting attendance to just four women and

four men.33 Bennett's assertion that the institution of marriage served as another device

intended to control the colonial body, and by extension colonial sexuality, fits well into

the greater narrative of the anxieties expressed by Spanish authorities. Julia Tuñón

Pablo, however, argues that the Crown's preoccupation with marriage reflected its interest

in the repopulation of the colonies after the great decline in the sixteenth century, which

resulted in vast labor shortages.34 While a diminished labor pool certainly concerned the

Crown, so did the possibility of a labor pool that could not be organized or coerced to

fulfill the goals of the king.

Most scholars have discussed marriage choice of African-descended people in

Mexico through quantitative data analysis. In Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, Patrick

Carroll briefly examines the marriage patterns of Africans and their descendants. He

writes, “Marriage offers one of the best means of correlating race and social rank.

31 My translation, excerpt of Viceroy Martín Enriquez’ letter. Aguirre Beltrán, La población

negra, 183. 32 Lewis, Hall of Mirrors, 22. 33 Palmer, Slaves of the White God, 180. 34 Julia Tuñón Pablos, Women in Mexico: A Past Unveiled (Austin: University of Texas Press,

1999), 23.

68

Spouses entered into extended personal contacts that impacted not only on their own

immediate status within the community but also upon their future children's standing as

well.”35 One's marriage choice, and conversely one's lack of marital ties, affected one's

social capital by developing or closing off patronage ties through the extended family,

which could affect the social and economic mobility of one's children.

Countless factors dictated marriage choice, but statistical studies on marriage

demonstrate the importance of particularity. While I do not share the conclusions of

Edgar Love's 1971 article on marriage choice, his research based on records of the Santa

Veracruz parish in Mexico City allows for some comparative work with Seed's.

According to Love's data, from records dating between 1646 and 1746, there were 2,378

marriages involving people of African descent in the Santa Veracruz parish. Of these

marriages, 74.60% involved at least one free person of African descent and 1,120 cases

(47.10%) document that both husband and wife were free.36 Love notes that of the free

couples of African descent, most were identified as mulatos (54.50%) and that men from

this group most often married mulatas, followed by mestizas and indias.37 Love notes

that free mulato men married thirty-nine Spanish women but does not specify the number

of mestiza and india spouses.38 Love also finds significant caste-specific exogamy

among mulatas. His data cites that a majority of free mulata women (291 of 516)39

married mulato men (59.02%), but adds that mulata women also married 122 mestizos

35 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 120. 36 Love, “Marriage Patterns,” 87. 37 Love, “Marriage Patterns,” 87. 38 Love, “Marriage Patterns,” 87. 39 While Love cites 516 partners, only 493 spouses are accounted for in his discussion of the data.

My percentages of his data are based on a total of 493 partners.

69

(24.75%), 45 castizos (9.13%), 22 moriscos (4.46%), and 13 negros (2.64%).40 By

collapsing the mulato and negro caste categories, endogamy is as high as 61.66%.

Notably, free mulata women married exogamously 38.34% of the time between 1646 and

1746 in the Santa Veracruz parish.

Seed, whose primary body of research is based on records from Mexico City,

asserts, “[M]arriage between racial groups remained rare during the first two centuries of

Spanish rule in Mexico.” 41 Love’s research demonstrates that exogamy figured

prominently among free mulatos who contracted marriage at Mexico City’s Santa

Veracruz parish, nearly 40% among free mulata women alone. The viceregal capital of

New Spain, Mexico City, accounted for incredible diversity: economic, racial,

geographic, cultural, and linguistic. It did not, however, account for all of the

experiences of the colony, and Love’s data sample highlights the importance of regional

and also parish, caste, and free status specificity.

The historiography continues to develop in the field of colonial African diaspora

studies in Mexico, but scholars have taken on marriage choice with the broader Mexican

population. Subversion has arisen in many works, including that of Richard Boyer and

Steve J. Stern, who work with records of violence, while Seed examines prenuptial

disputes, and Gutiérrez scrutinizes cultural conflict between Pueblo Indians and Spanish

colonials. The diversity of interpretative lenses and methodological approaches pose new

questions about free will, familial influences, and the politics of choice. Seed writes,

“Passions, or the emotions prompting human actions, are tricky issues for the

40 Love, “Marriage Patterns,” 88. 41 Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico, 25.

70

historian.”42 For African-descended people in Xalapa, marriage choice was influenced

by more than economic considerations or generalities about racial antipathy. While

desire is nearly impossible to interpret from an official document, I demonstrate that

conclusions based on notions of “marrying up or down” the caste system must be

reconsidered.

Marriage Choice

In a survey of marital records from early eighteenth-century parish collections,43

ninety-four cases involved at least one person of African descent. One of the most

distinguishing characteristics about the documents is that two caste designations

dominated the records, pardo and mulato. No other Afro-casta designation was cited in

the 1724-1736 parish marriage logs. While my research of seventeenth-century notarial

records yields greater usage of the term mulato (including a number of people cited as

moreno and negro), the parish records of the early eighteenth century see a stark reversal.

Of the 134 individuals of African descent involved in ninety-four marriages, only ten

people (7.46%) were assigned the caste of mulato while 124 people (92.54%) were

designated as pardos. This shift in percentages, however, does not necessarily represent

a change in the racial make-up of Xalapa's African-descended population.

It is difficult to surmise how much of this greater usage of the term pardo

reflected a population shift, a socio-cultural preference for the term, or the whimsy of a

particular parish recorder. It has been well established that caste identifications were

42 Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico, 55. 43 Archivo Eclesiastico de la Parroquia del Sagrario, Iglesia del Sagrada Corazón, Xalapa,

Veracruz (AEP), Matrimonios Caja 2, Libro 4 (1724 – 1736).

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notoriously unstable, which is why it is impossible to use the data to make a claim that

pardos were more likely to marry than mulatos. Or, that more people of African descent

were having children with more indigenous people and therefore creating a greater pardo

population in Xalapa. A more likely explanation for this data, as I discuss below, is that

parish priests and notaries took some license when assigning casta labels.

According to popular understandings of the caste system as found in trends across

the archival landscape but also in the graphic representation of racial exogamy in the

eighteenth-century casta paintings, there was a sense of “science” to caste designations, a

colonial logic that assigned categories based primarily on phenotype and purported

lineage. A negra was generally found to describe a woman not of mixed-race heritage.

Colonial record keepers also utilized the term morena as a synonymous descriptor of

negra but not always. A mulata was a woman likely of Spanish and African descent. A

parda was believed to be a woman of indigenous and African descent. However, mulata

and parda terms were often conflated, as was the parallel usage of the term morena for

parda. Researchers have found that terms fell in and out of preference in the same cities,

in the same parishes, and sometimes in the same logbooks, rendering Afro-casta

designations as functional placeholders for discussing people of African descent.

A cursory examination of other parish documents in Xalapa, specifically the

confirmation and baptismal records, reveals these inconsistencies of casta designation.

For instance, in 1642, two mulata sisters named Polonia and María were confirmed in the

presence of their father, an enslaved negro, and their mother, an india.44 According to

44 AEP, Libro de Confirmaciones, 1642.

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the caste system of designations, both girls should have been categorized as pardas,

women of African and indigenous descent. Likewise, on December 21, 1674, Josepha

and Joseph Ramires baptized their son Francisco in Xalapa.45 While both Josepha and

Joseph are designated as free pardos in the baptism record, their son is cited as a mulato

(someone of Spanish and African descent). These “miscalculations” signal to many

historians the lack of diligence employed in cataloguing the heritage of people of

differing backgrounds. Additionally, few scholars have yet to identify significant trends

that differentiate the life chances of mulatos and pardos,46 a situation that supports my

decision to collapse the data for people of African descent and compartmentalize by caste

only when the body of data allows for the establishment of significant patterns.

Of note is that the surviving documents intrinsically undercount the number of

marriage cases because of other inconsistencies of the parish record keepers, principally

the decision (or carelessness) not to include caste designations for some people of

African descent. Such was the case of Sebastiana de Rivas y de Irala, a woman of

African descent, whose mother Polonia de Rivas was cited as a mulata and her

grandmother as a negra from “Guinea.” Sebastiana’s mother’s designation as a mulata

was documented in a number of notarial entries in Xalapa during the mid- and late-

45 AEP, Bautizos Caja 1, Libro 1 (1666-1689), December 21, 1674. 46 Vinson cites evidence of intra-racial disunity that signals an acute awareness of casta difference

between mulatos and pardos militiamen as they competed for militia-conferred privileges. Vinson, Bearing Arms for His Majesty, 202. In his work on colonial Igualapa, Vinson examines how non-African descended groups articulated their understanding of the various casta categories. He notes that estate owners often referenced pardos, morenos, and mulatos with terms that indicated an undifferentiated population, such as “esa gente,” “nación,” “clase,” and “aquella gente.” He writes, “Underlying [the estate owners’] actions was a specific conceptualization of the free-colored population as a homogenous cultural group.” Ben Vinson, III, “The Racial Profile of a Rural Mexican Province in the ‘Costa Chica’: Igualapa in 1791,” The Americas 57, no. 2 (October 2000): 276.

73

seventeenth century. On July 28, 1671, Sebastiana and her Spanish husband Phelipe de

Santiago Falcón baptized their son Juan. A Spanish woman named Francisca de Orduña

Castillo served as Juan’s godmother. Nowhere in the entry was Sebastiana’s heritage as

the daughter of a mulata noted. I corroborated her African heritage only through a record

in the notarial archive. If I had not already done research on her family lineage, I would

not have known from the church records that she was of African descent since she was

not identified with a casta designation in these records. This was also the case for

Sebastiana’s brother Juan de Ribas when he served as the godfather for a mulata girl

named Josefa on April 16, 1670. In his work on racial identities and caste designation in

Pátzcuaro, Mexico, Aaron Althouse finds that there was a significant number of people

not labeled, and he notes that some priests “simply did not bother to record [racial

identifications].”47 Althouse adds,

Interestingly, such record-keeping methods were not exclusive to a particular priest, as the same priest might at one point record the marriage partners and their race, the godparents and their race, all three witnesses to the marriage, and even the names and racial status of the marrying couple’s parents, and at another juncture omit all but the names of the bride and groom.48

This may have also been the case in Xalapa as documented not only in marriage records,

but in all of the ecclesiastical records I reviewed.

For extant parish archives that document hundreds, not thousands, of baptisms,

confirmations, marriages, and deaths of Xalapa’s population of African descent, the

possibility that dozens of records were not designated as those of mulatos, pardos,

47 Aaron P. Althouse, “Contested Mestizos, Alleged Mulattos: Racial Identity and Caste Hierarchy

in Eighteenth Century Patzcuaro, Mexico,” The Americas 62, no. 2 (October 2005), 163. 48 Althouse, “Contested Mestizos, Alleged Mulattos,”163.

74

negros, or morenos, would significantly modify the demographic landscape that the

archives offer and alter the perception of the level of inter/intra casta and racial

interaction experienced by African-descended people. Not only is it is likely that this

demographic is undercounted, but also, Xalapa’s relatively smaller collection of archives

would not have offered the enticing plethora of records available to scholars of Mexico

City, such as Love and Seed. Xalapa, nonetheless, represented an important hub in the

history of the development of the region and the colony as a whole, and its smaller

population in comparison to that of the viceregal capital does not reduce the importance

of examining that population closely.

Exogamy

Exogamy was a significant feature of colonial life for African-descended people

in Xalapa for the length of the long seventeenth century.49

1. 1 Overview of Marriage: 1724-1736

49 The term “African-descended” is abbreviated to “AD” in all charts. When gender designations go un-specified as to race/caste in the legend, they are to be understood to refer to African-descended women and men.

75

Of ninety-four marriages recorded from January 30, 1724 until February 2, 1736, forty-

seven were exogamous, accounting for 50% of those married in the twelve year period

catalogued.50 Nearly as many African-descended women (24) as men (23) decided to

marry outside of the Afro-casta population. An additional seven cases involved four men

and three women of African descent marrying individuals of unknown caste.51 Although

exogamy was certainly prevalent during the years studied, the records document forty

endogamous unions (42.55%) between people of African descent. Most of these cases

involved pardo-parda unions (35 or 87.50%) with only two unions (5%) documented

between a mulato groom and a mulata bride. Again, that the records demonstrate such a

high incidence of “intra-caste” marriages among pardo/parda couples may have more to

do with a shift towards greater usage of the term “pardo/parda” to describe people of

African descent by the parish recorder instead of evidence that mulatos (people of

purported African and Spanish descent) experienced a negative population growth or that

mulato and mulata people were least likely to be married in Xalapa. This is even clearer

when marriage choice is examined with regard to the scarcity of cases involving inter-

Afro-casta unions.

Of the ninety-four marriages during twelve years, only three mulata women

married pardo men, accounting for 7.50% of Afro-casta endogamous unions. This low

percentage may have signaled that mulata women demonstrated a discriminating aversion

towards men of a “lower caste” because they were either culturally, ethnically, or racially

50 AEP, Matrimonios Caja 2, Libro 4, January 30, 1724 - February 2, 1736. 51 Only eight cases involved people without caste designation. While this appears to be uncommon

in the Xalapa parish marital records, it is incredibly common of the confirmation and baptismal records.

76

more closely tied to indigenous or Afro-casta social life. As mulatas who were partially

of Spanish descent, this may have demonstrated their preference to remain single instead

of marrying a pardo man. However, not a single parda woman married a man designated

as a mulato; someone with a supposedly “higher” casta designation. In addition to the

three mulata women who married the three pardo men, only one other mulata woman

appears in the marriage records, and she married an español. The four mulato men who

married non-Afro casta women included unions with two mestiza brides, one española,

and one india. With only eight mulato men and five mulata women involved in

endogamous and exogamous unions between 1724 and 1736, I have included them as

part of the undifferentiated categories of people of African descent in the below analysis.

1. 2 Overview of Exogamy: 1724-1736

With an incidence rate of 50%, exogamy proved to be a strong characteristic of

77

marriage among people of African descent. How we come to explain what exogamy

means as a social phenomenon, however, may lead us to a number of interpretations. The

first equates high exogamy rates with greater social interaction among colonial subjects.

More than just a casual arrangement or clandestine encounter, the process of petitioning

even an uncontested marriage was not a simple act. The betrothed couples had to first

prove that not a single canonical impediment, varying from lack of consent to bigamy,

existed to contract the marriage. After such matters were verified and any ecclesiastical

dispensation was properly granted, the marriage banns were proclaimed in three

consecutive Sundays in order to publicize the impending marriage with the implicit

purpose of allowing enough time to pass in the event a witness existed to dispute the

validity of such a union. Only after the three-week period could a couple be then

married.52 For those women and men of African descent who married Spanish, mestizo

and indigenous partners, the process allowed for public acknowledgment of racial

boundaries being crossed through a legitimizing colonial institution.

Among Xalapa’s twenty-four women of African descent who married

exogamously, only one woman was cited as a mulata and the other twenty-three women

were designated as pardas. The twenty-three spouses of parda women included two

indios, eight españoles, and thirteen mestizos. With the inclusion of the sole mulata

woman who married an español, the totals change only minimally for women of African

descent who married non-African descended men: two indios, nine españoles, and

thirteen mestizos. Of the twenty-three men of African descent involved in exogamous

52 Marysa Navarro and Virginia Sanchez Korrol, Women in Latin American and the Caribbean

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 44.

78

relationships, four were cited as mulatos and nineteen as pardos. The nineteen pardo

men, much like the parda women, married more mestizas (13) than any other group, with

only four men marrying españolas and two men marrying indias. As aforementioned,

pardo men married three mulata women, unlike the parda women who married no

mulato men during this time period. By collapsing pardo/mulato categories, African-

descended men married fifteen mestizas, five españolas, and three indias. In addition to

these women, men of African descent married four women who had no identifiable casta

or ethnic label in the marriage records.

Rarely did people of African descent marry men and women labeled as indios.

The first marriage between an African-descended man and an india was contracted in

1726 with the other two couples following in 1729 and then in 1730. The two marriages

of African-descended women and indio men took place in 1726 and the second one

occurred three years later in 1729. According to demographic profiles assembled by

Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, the indigenous population living in Xalapa had decreased from

2,377 to 1,376 inhabitants during 1580 and 1609. This drastic decline within a thirty-

year period demonstrates that the indigenous population had experienced a negative

growth rate of 42%, which it very slowly recovered from over the course of the next two

centuries.53 Even by 1791, the population of Xalapa counted only 2,378 españoles, 1,181

pardos, 925 mestizos, 500 castizos, and 2,310 indios.54 With an indio population still

likely larger than that of African-descent in the seventeenth and early eighteenth

centuries, we would expect greater social interaction between the two groups that resulted

53 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 50. 54 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 51.

79

in more marital ties.

Edgar Love asserts that Afro-indigenous unions were common in Mexico City

and argues that “strategic production” played a role in such exogamous unions. A

viceregal edict articulates the fear of such mixed-race progeny. It reads, “Prohibit negros

and mulatos from marrying Indians…there are so many mulatos because the negros

marry the Indian women knowing that their children will be free.”55 New Spain practiced

the principle of vientre libre (literally “free womb”) manumission in which the child

followed the status of the mother.56 While this may have accounted for some percentage

of mixed race people, “such children,” Frank Proctor argues, “were also born free without

the formality of marriage.”57 Love’s assessment of vientre libre likely did not play a role

in formal exogamous couplings of these two groups as there were few actual marriages

documented between Afro-castas and indigenous people, especially given Xalapa’s large

free population of African descent. The sample of Afro-indigenous marriages may

suggest other more status-inclined interests, at least for African-descended women.

Of note is the “type” of indio men whom African-descended women married.

The first woman in the 1724-1736 collection was a free parda named Magdalena Lucero

who married on June 18, 1726. She was the legitimate daughter of Francisca de Vargas

and the late Antonio Lucero. Magdalena’s indio spouse was named Theodoro Joseph and

he was the legitimate son of Don Melchor Gaspar and the late Francisca Hernándes.

Both Magdalena and Theodoro were cited as having been born and raised in Xalapa. The

55 My translation, Archivo General de las Indias, Seville, Spain (AGI), Mexico, 19, n. 125 (1574). 56 Love, “Marriage Patterns,” 88. 57 Proctor, Damned Notions of Liberty, 60.

80

second parda-indio marriage took place on October 6, 1729, between María Salomé, the

legitimate daughter of María de la Asunción and Pedro Días, both pardos, and Miguel de

los Santos, an indio and the legitimate son of Don Juan Francisco and Ysabel María. The

two women of African descent married indio men who were from legitimate families and

with some form of Spanish-recognition since they both claimed titles as dons, which may

indicate that they were current or former leaders in their indigenous groups or the

descendants of these early caciques. The india women whom the African-descended

men married likely came from slightly different socio-economic circumstances according

to some of the language used in the marriage contracts.

The first marriage between an African-descended man and an india woman in the

1724-1736 collection took place on September 1, 1726, and involved a free pardo man

named Nicolas Francisco who had been legitimately born in Oaxaca to Francisco Juan

and Floriana María. Francisco’s wife was an india named María de la Encarnación and

her familial background is left unresolved. While she is noted as an india, María is said

to have been raised “in the house” of Ynes Lópes, a vague descriptor most often tied to

children who were orphaned and raised by a non-family member. The second Afro-

casta–india marriage took place on March 15, 1728, and involved Juan Anttonio López, a

free pardo from the town of Tepeaca and the legitimate son of Miguel Francisco and

María Jacoba, both deceased. His wife, Michaela de la Cruz, was noted as an india and

vecina of Xalapa, but nothing about her parents was recorded. The only other piece of

information about her that was documented by the church recorder was that she was a

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widow of Santiago Alvero, whose caste was not identified.58

The final marriage of this category was dated on September 18, 1730, and

involved Christóval de Peña, a free mulato shoemaker and widower of María de la Rosa.

His bride was María Francisca a thirty-year-old india woman who had never married

before. María is noted as the “hija” of Manuel Alonzo and Epolonia María, but no

specification was included to determine whether she was an hija legítima (legitimate

daughter) or an hija natural (child out of wed-lock). While both African-descended

women married indio men who were legitimate and from titled families, the three india

women who married African-descended men had neither cited legitimacy or access to

public claims to “honorable” birth as children of dons or doñas.

While no Spanish dons or doñas married people of African descent, titled men

and women59 served in two other capacities in wedding entries: as witnesses and

ceremonial madrinas and padrinos (godparents). Of the ninety-four marriages contracted

between 1724 and 1736, eighteen unions had either a don or a doña who served as a

witness (19.15%). An additional eight marriages included people noted as dons and

doñas who served as marital godparents (8.51%). While the two women married indio

men from “don-families” accounted for all cases of titled spouses in this collection, the

presence of dons and doñas in twenty-four unions indicate that close relationships

between people of African descent and españoles existed in supportive capacities nearly

as often as they did as marital partners.

58 Often times in Xalapa’s parish archives, if someone was a widow or a widower, their deceased

spouse was named in lieu of citing the marriage petitioner’s parents. 59 For an insightful discussion of titles and how they were assigned to individuals in colonial

Spanish America, see Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 38-45.

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Other than the 1724-1736 sample, the only other marriage records are found in

two mixed collections labeled “Entierros, Casamientos, y Bautizos” (ECB), which cover

the years between 1641 and 1702 in books labeled as Caja 1, Libro 1 and Caja 1, Libro

3.60 While these two collections cover more years than the previous sample, they are less

complete. The first page of Caja 1 of the ECB collection reads, “This book was formed

by various loose pages that contain baptisms, marriages, and burials from distinct years

and dates that could not be coordinated because of its antiquity.”61 A similar forewarning

does not accompany Caja 2, but an examination of pagination reveals that the data has

substantial gaps. For example, a marriage record dated August 13, 1696, is then

interrupted by seventeen pages of missing documents before the records resume for a

marriage on February 25, 1702. Libro 1 has fewer missing pages (only four), but the

gaps in years that recorded marriages indicate that the loose sheets were subsequently

numbered and may have more missing pages for which cannot be accurately accounted.

In the two books of Caja 1 of the ECB collection that documented sixty-one years of

marriages, only thirty-six unions of at least one person of stated African descent have

survived. While a significantly smaller sample than the 1724-1736 collection, the details

offered in the 1641-1702 entries offer important information about the African-descended

population in Xalapa.

The first marked difference in the earlier collection is the terminological

preference for the term mulato compared with the eighteen-century preference for the

60 AEP, “Entierros, Casamientos y Bautizos” Collection, Caja 1, Libro 1 (1641-1646) and Libro 3

(1647-1655). 61 AEP, ECB Collection, Caja 1, Libro 1 (1641-1646).

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casta category of pardo and parda, with rare usage of mulato and mulata. Between 1641

and 1655 (Caja 1, Libro 1), the only two categories used to describe people of African

descent are negro (two people) and mulato (fifteen people). No pardos were cited. The

proceedings years of 1656 through 1702 (Caja 1, Libro 3), witnessed a shift that

documented seventeen spouses described as mulato/mulata and seventeen more identified

as pardo/parda, and only one person noted as a negro. This gradual predominance of the

usage of the term pardo in conjunction with the limited number of affective ties with

indio men and women in all of the marriage collections indicate that parish recorders had

a significant hand in shaping archival information with casta categories that did not

reflect, with any demographic specificity, the African-descended population in Xalapa.

Mobile Partners

Beyond terminological preferences, the earlier cases offer clues about significant

geographic mobility by men and women of African descent who married between 1641

and 1702. Nearly one third of spouses of African descent were not born in Xalapa. This

migratory group included eight men and two women who hailed from Puebla de los

Angeles, La Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz, La Antigua Ciudad de Veracruz, and Mexico

City. One case cited that a free mulato man named Miguel de la Cruz, who was

originally from Guatemala, had moved to Xalapa where he married a mulata slave named

Cathalina Martín on February 20, 1642. Unfortunately, by the early eighteenth century,

few marital cases stated where the applicants had been born, usually only stating that they

were vecinos or residentes of Xalapa or lived nearby within its jurisdiction. Between

1724 and 1736, nearly 20% of spouses of African descent were born out of the

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jurisdiction of Xalapa. Although this group’s percentage had shrunk, likely due to

population stabilization before the ferias introduced more outsiders, the number of places

that African-descended spouses hailed from had increased significantly. While a few still

came from Mexico City, Puebla, La Nueva and La Antigua, and Guatemala, the eighteen

transplants now counted home locations of such places as Oaxaca City, Perote, Tepeaca,

Hualingo, Tezuitlan, and Hilotepec.

The occurrence of such a high number of spouses from distant locals reflects the

prominence of mobility and transportation in Xalapa. Women and men came from all

over the region, and a few people arrived from towns and cities further afar in the colony,

and landed in the way-station to take advantage of the profits earned in the pack train

business, sugar production, and various other trading markets. Some African-descended

people would stay for the economic opportunities. A few probably stayed because of the

lure of an attractive spouse and a more open society that would allow for greater

interracial social networks.

Seventeenth-Century Cases

The incomplete marriage collection from 1641 to 1702 offers some insight into

Xalapa’s early tendency towards endogamy that gradually progressed towards exogamy

at the turn of the century.

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1. 3 Overview of Marriages: 1641-1702

Of the thirty-six unions, half (50%) were endogamous. Ten marriages (27.78%) were

exogamous and eight unions (22.22%) involved a partner of African descent and a spouse

of undisclosed racial or caste designation. Of the ten exogamous couples, an equal

number of African-descended women and men married people who were not of African

descent. The spouses of the five women of African descent included two mestizos, one

castizo, and two españoles. The five exogamous relationships involving men of African

descent included one india, two castizas, and two españolas. It is statistically difficult to

compare this smaller and obviously incomplete sample with the larger data set.

Fortunately, these ten cases are of the more detailed variety. By scrutinizing the ten

exogamous cases for partner details, this set may offer more information about the “type”

of people with whom African-descended women and men affiliated themselves through

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the bonds of marriage.

The first seventeenth-century case of exogamy among African descendants in the

ecclesiastical archives was recorded on March 21, 1642. The bride, Luisa de Solis, was

identified as a free mulata, and she worked “in the service” of a man named Pedro

Serrano. By the time she married, Luisa was a vecina of Xalapa, but she had been born

in La Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz and raised as an orphan by the charity of the Church.

Her husband, Juan de Castro, was a castizo62 born and raised in Xalapa. No information

was documented about his employer, but it was noted that he also was an orphan raised

by the Church. The couple had no stated familial ties, perhaps freeing them from the

pressure that some families exerted on the marriage choices of their children. They knew

at least three españoles: Pedro Serrano, Alonso Gonsales, and Antonio de Castro, who

were their fellow vecinos and served as their witnesses.

Asking españoles to serve as witnesses to marriages involving African-descended

people was not an uncommon experience as documented in the 1724-1736 collection.

Between 1641 and 1702, 61.11% of exogamous relationships included at least one

witness who was either cited as, or implied to be63 español. It is of some note that while

Luisa de Solis and Juan de Castro differed in race, they were, as people who both lacked

documented familial support and perhaps the life chances that accompanied familial

networks of other mulatos and castizos, “equals.”

The second case of exogamy occurred a year later on July 20, 1643, between Juan

62 A castiza was someone of purported español and mestiza (or española and mestizo) parentage. 63 The inference is drawn from the inclusion of the don or doña designation. While two indios

were cited with don-titles, it was more likely for Spanish men to carry such titles in the seventeenth century.

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de León and Juana Pinto. Their marriage also appeared to unite “equals” but likely those

with greater opportunities. Juan was a free mulato and the son of español Diego Beges

and mulata Luisa de Leon, both deceased at the time of the marriage contract. Juan had

been raised in La Antigua Ciudad de Veracruz, but when he married he was noted as a

vecino of Coatepec, which belonged to the jurisdiction of Xalapa. His wife Juana was a

castiza and the legitimate daughter of Cosmo Pinto, an español, and Cathalina Ximenes,

a mestiza. Juana was also noted as a vecina of and residente at the Ingenio de San Pedro,

a prominent sugar refinery located on the outskirts of Coatepec under the political

administration of Xalapa.

The Ingenio de San Pedro had substantial holdings, and on March 27, 1631, a

poder registered in the notarial office by the founder’s son, Diego de Orduña Loyando,

and grandson, Antonio de Orduña, established the scale of the business. The sugar

refinery included houses of fine masonry with tiled roofs, various machines for sugar

extraction, collection, and storage, along with living quarters, and houses designated for

“negros and indios,” all on 559 hectares of land for sugar cultivation, which boasted

production capabilities as high as 2,000 “cartloads” of sugar cane.64 In comparison with

other prominent operational ingenios in seventeenth-century Xalapa, San Pedro had

seven sugar boilers, while Almolonga, La Concha, San José Zoncuantla, and Nuestra

Señora de los Remedios all had only two.65 Historian Bermúdez Gorrochotegui adds that

San Pedro “was one of the two largest ingenios in the jurisdiction of Jalapa, given its

64 ANX, March 27, 1631, f. 518vta - 520 fte. 65 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 214.

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ability for great sugar production and its wealth.”66 By 1646, the Ingenio de San Pedro

and its adjoining properties were valued at the astronomical price of 230,000 pesos de

oro común.67 As a couple who lived in relatively close proximity to one another in the

town of Coatepec, Juan de León’s and Juana Pinto’s families may have known each

other, especially if Juan or his Spanish father had worked at San Pedro or was affiliated

with the same social circles as the influential Orduña family that owned the refinery

where Juana and her family lived.

Some cases of exogamy are more difficult to frame possibilities of the social

world in which the couple existed when people from disparate backgrounds were joined

in holy matrimony. On February 2, 1646, Juan de la Cruz married Pasquala Ramíres. He

was a mestizo who lived in the jurisdiction of La Antigua Ciudad de Veracruz. Juan was

the legitimate son of Francisco Lópes and Juana de la Cruz. Pasquala was a free mulata

born and raised in Xalapa, and her late mother was a negra slave owned by a man named

Andrés Ramíres. Their witnesses included three Spaniards, one of whom held the

distinction of don. The couple did not share any obvious commonalities. The record

even alludes to the possibility that at the time of the marriage, Juan and Pasquala did not

even live in the same city.

Some couples had inferential links to one another. Alonso Esquibel and Ana de

Buesto married on October 4, 1650. Alonso was an español who was born and raised in

Xalapa but did not know his parents. The entry did not specify whether he was raised by

the Church or whether he was adopted by another family. Ana was also born and raised

66 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 214. 67 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 216.

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in Xalapa, but unlike Alonso, she was the legitimate daughter of free mulata Clara

Ordones and español Pedro de la Crus. All three of their witnesses were españoles.

Their status as native residents of Xalapa and their common Spanish heritage may have

allowed them social spaces in which they could have interacted, but it appears irregular

that an orphan, even a Spanish one, would have had access to Ana de Buesto’s circle,

which included her legitimate family of español and mulato members.

The exogamous case that followed on June 9, 1654, between Christóval Figueroa

and Francisca de Yepes made more “social sense.” Christóval was a free mulato born in

Puebla de los Angeles but was already a vecino of Xalapa when he married. He was the

legitimate son of Xpóval de Figeroa and Isavel de Medina, both deceased. It is noted that

Christóval owned a recua, a transportation business. His bride Francisca was an

española, born and raised in Xalapa, and the legitimate daughter of Francisco Muños and

Magdalena Días. This was not Francisca’s first marriage; she was cited as the widow of

Lazaro Gonsales. The couple had two Spanish witnesses, both vecinos of Xalapa. While

Christóval was not born in Xalapa, as a man in the transportation business at mid-century,

before the boom in recuas, it is probable that he was a relatively well-known man in

Xalapan society. Transporters were much in demand in the way-station post by the

seventeenth century but not yet as numerous as they would become by the eighteenth

century with the advent of the ferias. Although his marriage contract notes that he was

already a recua owner by 1654, he did not appear before the notary of Xalapa with any

business to register.

Between 1621 and 1660, twenty-six people were registered as recua owners or

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arrieros (transportation workers), Christóval Figueroa did not appear on this list.

However, Christóval did make his debut on the list of the nineteen transportation workers

and owners found between 1661 and 1699.68 Francisca, her parents, and even perhaps

her late first husband, would have been aware of Christóval or his social circle, which

likely included members of the relatively small social world of transporters who

generated significant profits in the recua business and were public figures. It would not,

therefore, be surprising that a Spanish family with a legitimate daughter chose to unite

with a mulato recua owner from the archbishopric center, Puebla de los Angeles.

The sixth exogamous case took place on June 16, 1659, and united people of a

shared life experience. Diego de la Crus, a mulato, married Angelina María, an india.

Both were born in Xalapa. Both were widowed from indigenous partners. The couple

had two español witnesses, but Angelina and Diego seem to have established more

intimate ties to the indigenous community. The next three entries for exogamous couples

offered no assistance in discerning the couples’ economic opportunities, social circles, or

even whether they were living as permanent residents in Xalapa when they married. On

May 28, 1670, a free mulato named Joseph de los Santos married an española named

Phelipa de Orlachea. Both were identified as legitimately born. However, not even the

two witnesses had identifying markers, just their names having been recorded. None of

the remaining exogamous contracts contained any specific details about the witnesses,

and even information about the betrothed became scarce. On January 21, 1672, Francisca

Servantes, a free mulata raised by a single mother, married an español widower named

68 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 276-277.

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Francisco Peres. The exogamous relationship that was next recorded had even less to

offer: It simply noted the date as December 15, 1694, and mentioned that the groom,

Juan de los Ramos, was a mulato and his bride, Antonia Pérez, was a castiza.

The final case of exogamy in this collection was recorded on June 5, 1702, and

recalls the cases with economic allusions, but it also had misrepresented or poorly

documented biographical information about the couple. The bride was a parda named

Juana María who was not identified specifically as a legitimate daughter but whose

mother and father were both named. Her husband, Miguel de los Santos, was cited as a

mestizo and an hijo natural, or illegitimate child, who was raised by a single mother.

Miguel was also noted as a “sirviente” (servant) at the Ingenio Pacho, also known as the

Ingenio Nuestra Señora de los Remedios.

The Ingenio Pacho was founded as a site for sugar cultivation and processing in

1592 on the road towards Coatepec in the jurisdiction of Xalapa.69 When it was sold in

1698 to Licenciado Miguel Pérez de Medina, the ingenio fetched 7,762 pesos de oro

común and 4 reales.70 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui comments that while it was free of

mortgage and debt, the ingenio had suffered great losses, including, he writes, that of “its

equipment, slaves, and cattle.”71 Economic crisis and the lack of commercial investment

available led the new owner to rent out the lands to members of the surrounding

indigenous communities. Bermúdez Gorrochotegui notes, “It was preferable to rent the

69 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 195. 70 8 reales accounted for 1 peso de oro común. 71 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 206.

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land and obtain some benefit than to keep them idle and unproductive.”72 As the Ingenio

Pacho was no longer being utilized as a unified sugar refinery by the time Miguel de los

Santos was working on it, he may have been a minor wage earner on a smaller farming

plot. Miguel’s designation as “sirviente” on rented land indicates that his economic

prospects were probably not extensive. His wife’s profile noted only that she was raised

in a two-parent household and made no allusion to her family’s financial footing in

Xalapa and its environs.

The only other detail of interest about this couple is that in the body of the entry,

Juana María is clearly documented as a parda. However, in the margin of the document

adjacent to their entry, both Miguel and Juana María are described as mestizos. As

workers on land rented to indigenous groups, perhaps the couple intended to pass

themselves off as both being mestizos as a strategy to overcome potential social barriers

raised by their being an exogamous couple living and working with indigenous groups.

Both Miguel and Juana María were labeled as castas with some indigenous background.

Miguel, as a mestizo, would have been of purported Spanish and indigenous heritage and

Juana María of indigenous and African descent as a parda. Ingenio Pacho was located in

the jurisdiction of Xalapa, but its more rural environment may not have been as socially

open as Xalapa “proper” for interracial couples, such as Miguel and Juana María. If they

had been the ones to assert the mestizo designation, they may have done so as a practice

to diminish their casta differences as they may have done with workers of the Ingenio

Pacho.

72 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 206.

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Or, perhaps Juana María had a fair complexion and ambiguous features and this

was the ecclesiastical equivalent of the notarial practice of qualifying casta designations:

“She looks like a mestiza even though she is a parda.” Or perhaps this was a

miscalculation of the record keeper and the contradictory information denotes his own

confusion about how best to categorize a mixed-race couple, which should not have been

the case given that Xalapa’s parish had witnessed exogamous marriages since 1642.

There is always, however, the possibility that a novice record keeper muddled the

documenting of this interracial relationship.

The exclusion of data on non-identifiable spouses is unfortunate. Between 1641

and 1702, the cases with unidentifiable castes of partners accounted for a fifth of all

marriages involving African-descended people and nearly a tenth between 1724 and

1736. These marriages may have slightly shifted the percentages of the categories but

probably did not significantly alter the trends found in the collections examined. What

the data suggests is that exogamy had a strong rate among African descendants in Xalapa.

Exogamy held a steady rate between 30% and 50% over the course of nearly one hundred

years. These percentages indicate that the level of social interaction between indigenous

groups, mestizos, españoles, and people of African descent had stabilized by the mid-

seventeenth century. This is corroborated by the context that Xalapa, founded in the

early sixteenth century, had had free people of African descent integrated into various

labor systems since at least the late sixteenth century, unlike the agriculture-intensive

markets of Córdoba. One of the earliest notarial cases in Xalapa involved a free negra

named Beatriz de Porras who had contracted to work as a cook at the inn the Venta de

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Plan del Rio.73 By 1586, there were even documented free women with wealth. Half a

century of social and economic encounters had likely solidified the terms of interracial

interactions by the 1640s, especially given that by that time the influx from the Port of

Veracruz of newly-arrived Africans, mostly enslaved, had slowed. This gradual increase

and stabilization of exogamous couples positions Xalapa as a socially “open” society that

not only allowed for casual interaction between people of different racial backgrounds

but also the benefit of enjoying the Church’s full sanction of exogamous marriages.

High exogamy rates, it is important to note, were not commonplace in every

corner of the Spanish empire. Endogamy abounded throughout the colonies even as late

as the early nineteenth century.74 Some areas did not witness high rates of marital

exogamy until the later colonial and independence eras. By 1810 in Argentina, writes

Jeffrey Shuman, “Eighty-seven percent of spouses were of the same race. In 1827, that

percentage had declined to 73%.”75 Vinson’s work on late eighteenth-century African-

descended marriage patterns in Pacific Coast communities of Mexico finds that

endogamy continued to be a prominent feature. From a 1791 census record, Vinson

establishes that the majority of free people of African descent in coastal Igualapa married

other people of African descent. The endogamy rate among “free colored civilians” was

73 ANX, December 29, 1584, f 185fte-185vta. 74 Frank Proctor contends that while numerous historians posit that African-descended people

sought out indigenous and mestizo partners, he argues that endogamous marriage “was more typical” in Mexico City. Proctor, Damned Notions of Liberty, 40. He found that before 1650, only 11 out of 185 African-descended spouses chose partners not of African descent, resulting in an exogamous rate of 5.95%. Between 1660 and 1749, Proctor established that African-descended men contracted endogamous marriage 70% of the time and African-descended women did at the rate of 80%. Proctor, Damned Notions of Liberty, 62.

75 Jeffrey M. Shumway, “‘The purity of my blood cannot put food on my table’: Changing Attitudes Towards Interracial Marriage in Nineteenth-Century Buenos Aires,” The Americas 58, no. 2 (October 2001): 212.

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91% while the rate for “free colored militiamen” was 94%.76 Vinson notes that relative

isolation and greater concentration of African-descended people in what he describes as

“subcommunities” influenced such a significant endogamous marriage pattern. 77

However, Xalapa's African-descended population was one of the oldest, boasting free

people with wealth for at least one hundred years by the time exogamy had reached the

rate of 50% in 1736. Greater social interaction, a hallmark of Xalapa since its inception

as a Spanish post between Mexico City and Veracruz, played an important factor in the

high exogamy rate.

High incidences of exogamy have often been interpreted by scholars to signify a

group's interest in escaping their caste identification or their desire to whiten (blanquear)

their families.78 Some scholars have argued that economic considerations motivated

African-descended people to seek marriage partners outside of their race. This

perspective figures prominently in Edgar Love's work on marriage choice among

African-descended people in Mexico City. He posits that the high occurrence of African-

descended men marrying indigenous women indicated a trend of utilizing the “free

womb” laws that made emancipation matrilineal, thereby ensuring that bride and child

would be part of free society. However, this same “goal” to procreate with free

indigenous women to have free children could have also been accomplished by marrying

free women of African descent. Mexico City counted a large number of free urban

women and men. The conclusion that men strategized to this degree regarding their

76 Vinson, “Racial Profile of Rural Mexican Province,” 279-280. 77 Vinson, “Racial Profile of Rural Mexican Province,” 278. 78 Literally, to whiten or lighten oneself, one’s family, or their future progeny through marriage.

Usually by avoiding marriage or sexual partners with darker skin or with less European features.

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choice of india marriage partner leaves the women involved without any agency in the

matter.79 Indigenous women would have also had family interests and investments in

marriage partner choice and they, and likely the greater indigenous community, would

have objected to accepting African-descended male partners who consciously sought out

india brides for the benefit of their “free wombs.”

Others have argued that exogamy represented a group's “preference” for another

group. And it is precisely this question of consciousness where the historiography

positions marriage choice as over-determined by race and strategically considered

primarily via the caste system. In order to offer a more nuanced interpretation of

exogamy we must be willing to examine understudied variables of difference and

similarity that may have allowed the couple to have met, established the relationship, and

be married without a single impediment, including objections from one’s family. Few

scholars have taken on this task. Colonial Latin Americanist Rebecca Earle writes,

“Marriage and sexuality are now rightly considered core topics within colonial history.

Far less attention has been paid to charting the history of love. Often the concept is

conspicuous primarily by its absence.”80 If we continue to couch these issues as

intellectual untouchables, we miss sight of the “disorder and violent passions of youth”

that so concerned the Crown and that compelled King Charles III to issue a Royal

Pragmatic in 1776 aimed to “avoid the abuse of contracting marriages between

79 Paul Loken also posits that enslaved African-descended men specifically sought out free brides,

mostly indigenous women, to take advantage of their “free wombs.” Loken, “Marriage as Slave Emancipation in 17th Century Guatemala,” The Americas 58, no. 2 (October 2001): 175-200.

80 Rebecca Earle, “Letters and Love in Colonial Spanish America,” The Americas 62, no. 1 (2005): 20.

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unequals.”81 Because marriage involved a multitude of factors (both rational and

emotional) as well as outside influences, we must continue to examine other

methodological approaches that do not rely exclusively on race as the sole explanatory

device in high or low incidences of exogamy.

Not all men of African descent specifically sought españolas and mestizas as

status symbols; some of these women were their socio-economic equals. Importantly,

there are no records that attest to, for example that, Juan the mulato had the option to

court and then marry one india, one negra, one mulata, one parda, one mestiza, one

española, and he chose the española above all other options available to him due to his

“preference” or desire to blanquearse. Perhaps Juan the mulato had to “settle” for an

española because there were few pardas, negras, and mulatas in his town. Or, none of

these African-descended women found Juan to be an ideal marriage partner. Just as this

example is highly speculative regarding Juan the mulato's marriage prospects, this is

often the framework proffered to explain why Spanish men would choose to marry

women of African descent. Spanish men are positioned as having to marry negra and

mulata women because there existed a scarcity of “ideal” Spanish and mestiza women.82

These explanations are based on defining social interactions by a driving

81 Earle, “Letters and Love in Colonial Spanish America,” 22. 82 Vinson notes that due to the significantly larger African-descended population in Igualapa,

“white and mestizo males had difficulty in maintaining high endogamy rates given the dearth in females form their castes.” He adds, “Hence, exogamy was indeed a prevalent force in Igualapa. However, rather than greatly affecting free-colored marriages, as we might normally expect, the province’s demographic imbalances meant that whites and mestizos would be forced to seek spouses from among the darker hues.” Ben Vinson, III, “Racial Profile of a Rural Mexican Province,” 280. Jake Frederick specifically notes that among subjects in colonial Teziutlán, “For mestizo men there was a clear preference for marrying ‘up’”. Jake Frederick, “Without Impediment: Crossing Racial Boundaries in Colonial Mexico,” The Americas 67, no. 4 (April 2011): 511.

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preoccupation with the caste system and maintaining racial difference, which may have

been the case with Mexico City’s most elite Spanish families. However, long-

established, highly-integrated towns, such as Xalapa, proved less invested in enforcing

strict social and familial isolation on the basis of casta identifications. In the chapters

that follow, free African-descended women in Xalapa are seen as colonial subjects of

means who negotiated various business relationships and certainly could not be

categorized as “social pariahs.”83 The free African-descended families who lived in the

jurisdiction of Xalapa documented in this chapter demonstrate high percentages of

exogamy and significant rates of affiliations with other racial groups through kinship ties

that are overlooked when specific social markers in addition to race are not applied in the

analyses. Not all variables can be accounted for: Maybe Juan’s española wife had been

the only woman to impress his mother? Or maybe the española was the best cook of his

marriage prospects? Indeed, a survey of marriage records demonstrates that documents

varied in the type of information recorded, a situation that does not easily lend itself to

standardizing an analysis of socially salient markers in various collections. While record

keepers may have employed details and labels inconsistently, I argue that even so these

details offer important clues into assessing other, non-racial preoccupations of colonial

subjects.

During the early colonial period, Spanish and African men had few options for

sexual partners other than indigenous women, accounting for the high percentage of

mestizo and pardo children born out of wedlock. However, exogamy signified a different

83 Ilona Katzew asserts, “Being identified as black or as a descendant from blacks in the sistema de

castas was tantamount to being a social pariah.” Katzew, Casta Paintings, 46.

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level of investment. Scholars have established that there was little social pressure on

early Spanish and African men to legitimize their sexual relationships with indigenous

and African-descended women.84 If fathers had established substantive relationships

with their illegitimate children they could, and some did, offer financial assistance,

provide for training or job opportunities, and include them among their legitimate

children in the last will and testament. Nor did these men have to be lawfully married to

their mulata, negra, parda and india consorts in order to provide for their economic well-

being. Of interracial but unmarried unions, Jane Landers asserts,

Even in the cases involving concubinage, the law and community consensus protected [Spanish men’s] widows and heirs, and the church often interceded “paternally” on behalf of mothers of African descent. Many men left substantial property to their common-law wives and natural children, and the community respected the desires of the deceased, as well as the rights of the bereaved.85

As such, exogamy cannot be explained away as an obligatory act performed by the

couple since illicit interracial relationships were subjected to so little social pressure.

Recent studies have begun to search for non-race-based explanations for trends of

endogamy and exogamy among African-descended groups. Robert Schwaller’s explores

Afro-indigenous relations in late-sixteenth century Mexico and asserts, “In general, rural

areas probably represented the most important venue for the formation of African-

indigenous unions.” 86 Schwaller further argues that even exploitive relationships

84 Aguirre Beltran, La Poblacion Negra, 255. Christopher Lutz and Matthew Restall, discuss the

paucity of marriages between Mayas and “mulattos.” Although, they add, there were “informal unions.” Christopher Lutz and Matthew Restall “Wolves and Sheep?: Black-Maya Relations in Colonial Guatemala and Yucatan,” in Beyond Black and Red, 203.

85 Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 150. 86 Robert C. Schwaller, “‘Mulata, Hija de Negro y India’: Afro-Indigenous Mulatos in Early

Colonial Mexico,” Journal of Social History, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Spring 2011): 896.

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between the two groups could be mitigated by geographic isolation. He writes, “While

Africans were frequently employed as overseers or managers of native labor, the harsher

rural environment necessitates a greater degree of mutual cooperation and friendship.”87

Spatial proximity and relative seclusion, then, figure as prominent determining factors

that helped facilitate affective relations that could lead to marital bonds between

indigenous groups and African-descended populations.

In his work on mid-eighteenth-century Teziutlan in northern Veracruz, Jake

Frederick examines how marriage choice reflects cultural mores or preferences. He urges

the scholars of the field to consider statistical probabilities of the specific community

when analyzing marriage patterns. Frederick writes,

The fact that all of the pardos in the sample married exogamously is likely a result of the fact that the Afro-Mexican population of Tezuitlan was apparently quite small, thus reducing the likelihood that pardos would find acceptable partners among such a small group.88

While he notes that other studies have concluded that “Spaniards avoided Afro-Mexican

partners,”89 he adds that the lack of marriages between Spaniards and pardos did not

necessarily reflect social barriers between the two or a specific aversion in Tezuitlan.

Frederick writes, “[T]he simple fact of the relative rarity of pardos in the area could very

well have meant that Spaniards were unlikely to find a pardo with whom they felt a close

affective bond.” 90 And while greater frequency of interracial unions is often

characterized as an aspect of the lower social echelons “because the economic stakes

87 Schwaller, “Mulata, Hija de Negro y India,” 896. 88 Frederick, “Without Impediment,” 510. 89 Frederick, “Without Impediment,” 512. 90 Frederick, “Without Impediment,” 512.

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were lower and left more room for sentiment,”91 Xalapa's particular social landscape

would likely account for exogamy between people of means, and it is this demographic

that the historiography does not account for when data is based solely on casta

identifications recorded in marriage contracts.

Unlike rich notarial records that documented economic prospects or the vivid, and

sometimes salacious inquisitorial records, marriage records on their own rarely offer

details about the individuals involved in the sacrament. I examined marriage records in

all extant files for the seventeenth and early eighteenth century in parish archives of

Xalapa,92 and all were documented in near identical form as follows: Name of groom,

caste/slave status, name of owner (if slave), legitimacy of birth, name(s) of parents, and

identification of vecino status. The same corresponding information for the bride would

then be followed by the names of the two or three witnesses along with their vecino status

and occasionally their casta designation. Sometimes the ages of the people involved

were included, but most times they were not. A widow was usually identified along with

the name of her deceased spouse. Occasionally people were identified as having been

born and raised in a particular location. An example of a relatively more detailed entry

was provided when, on June 22, 1727, an español man married a free parda. His part of

the entry reads: Pedro Rangel, an español, a natural and vecino of the “Castillo93 of San

Juan de Ulúa,” resident of Xalapa, legitimate son of Joseph Rangel and Sebastiana

91 Navarro and Sanchez Korrol, Women in Latin American and the Caribbean, 51. 92 AEP, ECB Collection, Caja 1, Casamientos Libro 1 (1641-1646); AEP, ECB Collection, Caja 1,

Matrimonios Libro 3 (1647-1655); AEP, ECB, Caja 2, Matrimonios Libro 4 1656-1702; and AEP, ECB, Matrimonios Caja 2, Libro 4 (1724-1736).

93 Castillo literally means castle, but San Juan de Ulúa functioned as an island fortress or military post located off the shore of the Port of Veracruz (La Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz).

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Fernándes, who were also vecinos of the fort. His wife’s part of the entry reads: Phelipa

de la Trinidad Juares, free parda, natural 94 and vecina of Xalapa, hija natural

(illegitimate daughter) of Pasquala Peres Juares, a vecina of Xalapa. Their witnesses

were cited as Don Juan Ricardo de Gusman and Don Juan Batista de Arroya (a vecino of

Xalapa).

A few inferences can be made regarding this couple. The Spanish husband was

born and raised in La Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz, where the Fort of San Juan de Ulúa is

located. He and his father may have been militiamen or they may have been common

laborers at the fort. Phelipa was raised by a single mother in Xalapa but nothing in the

entry indicates how she sustained herself before meeting Pedro Rangel. The two “dons”

who served as witnesses might have been associates of Phelipa, as she, not Pedro, was the

one born in Xalapa. In addition, many titled men served as witnesses for people of

African descent in ecclesiastical records, almost 20% of the time in marriage records

alone. On October 20, 1732, when Thomas Juachín Bázquez, a twenty-two-year-old free

pardo, sought to marry Bonifacia Josepha, a fifteen-year-old free parda, Don Juan de

Campos served as one of the three witnesses to the marriage contract.

Even with more “detailed” entries such as the union between Phelipa de la

Trinidad Juares and Pedro Rangel, their specific socio-economic backgrounds are

impossible to confirm from the marriage collections. Perhaps Phelipa was a wealthy free

parda and Pedro was the son of legitimate parents well positioned in La Nueva Ciudad de

94 A natural had three meanings in the colonial archives of Xalapa. The first described an indigenous person, ie. The naturales who lived in the peripheries of Xalapa. The second meaning generally denoted birthplace, ie. Phelipa was a natural of Xalapa but later moved and became a vecina of Puebla. The third referred to illegitimacy. If a child was designated as an “hijo natural” or “naturally born,” she was born out of wedlock.

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Veracruz. When exogamy involved people of African descent, assumptions are usually

about “marrying up” or “climbing the social ladder” through marital partners, when the

only available information is the casta designation documented by the parish recorder.

Phelipa and Pedro are on the more detailed spectrum of marriage records; most standard

entries provide much less information about the intended spouses. On December 15,

1694, the matrimony of one couple was recorded with the following information: Juan

de los Ramos was a mulato, his wife was a castiza named Anttonia Pérez, and they had

two male witnesses of unstated caste named Domingo de Olivera and Sebastian Días de

Acosta. Such marriage records provided only limited information about the residency,

occupation, financial prospects, or business connections of the parties named because

most marriage records only incidentally included glimpses into the personal lives of the

bride and groom. Such documents were not designed to do more than that.

Exogamous couples in Xalapa followed similar tendencies found in other studies

when race is the only factor accounted for as an element of difference. When people of

African descent married non-Afro-castas, they decidedly married mestizos. Other

scholars have established this coupling pattern among informal relationships and among

sanctioned unions in the late colonial period, but no other study has found this to be the

case for marriage in the earlier stages of Mexico’s colonial development. While mestizo

partners accounted for the greatest number of exogamous spouses in Xalapa, African-

descended women married Spanish men three times as often as African-descended men

married Spanish women. Few women and men of African descent married people from

the large indigenous population in the jurisdiction, which mirrors other areas of New

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Spain during the long seventeenth century.95 Even as my contribution to the early

colonial historiography mirrors some of the marriage patterns of later-colonial studies,

these parameters of difference and similarity, thus far, have focused on race and caste.

The reasoning for such limitations is usually based on the postulation that someone of

African descent was of the lower classes, likely illegitimate, and lacked wealth and social

connections. The constraints of the marriage records do not always offer clues about all

of these elements, but I believe that the notion that the Church united equals is found in

other ways beyond race that require our attention.

Legitimacy

In The Secret History of Gender, Stern argues that colonial subjects of African

descent were targeted as “symbols of licentiousness, people who lacked lineage and

respect for social order.”96 Licentious may have been what others thoughts of African-

descended people, but their investments in approximating Spanish ideals, especially

regarding religious duty and spiritual commitment, demonstrates that people of African

descent valued the measures of orderliness. A reconsideration of the criteria of social

status demonstrates legitimacy to have acted as a significant variable for marriage choice

among people of African descent in colonial Xalapa.

Between 1724 and 1736, 188 individuals were involved in marriages with at least

one person of African descent. Only one free person, a mulata woman, married a slave, a

95 Gutiérrez notes that between 1694 and 1739, indigenous exogamy accounted for only 5% of marriages. This rate would increase drastically to 20% between 1760 and 1790, Gutierrez argues, because of greater social mobility that resulted from the Bourbon Reforms. However, Gutierrez notes that only 5% of marriages were classified by race between 1694 and 1759, which may skew the 5% down. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 328.

96 Stern, The Secret History of Gender, 213.

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mulato man. Interestingly enough, the free mulata was an hija legítima, or daughter of

married parents, a child born in-wedlock. Of the ninety-four marriages, sixty-eight

couples (72.34%) involved at least one person of legitimate birth, establishing that a

significant percentage of people who married in the early eighteenth century came from

legitimately born families of African descent.

1. 4 Both Spouses of Legitimate Birth: 1724-1736

Of the ninety-four couples, thirty-four of them (36.17%) involved cases where

both spouses were hijos legítimos.97 Of these all-hijo legítimo marriages, people of

African descent more often (52.94%) married other hijos legítmos of African descent

than hijo legítimos of other classifications, namely mestizos (26.47%), españoles

(14.71%), indios (2.94%), or those not identified by caste (2.94%). While the Church

claimed to unite wills, with more than one third of all marriages involving two people of

legitimate birth, it was also uniting statuses. Being an hijo legítimo did not seal one's

97 I have shortened the term “hijo legítimo” to “HL” in all charts presented in this study. Additionally, the abbreviation “AD” in all charts refers to people of African descent.

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position in society, but it did offer a modicum of social legitimacy at a time when being

legitimate held some currency and it seems to have made a difference in marital choices

in a colony with widespread illegitimacy among all subjects.

Although there were fewer women in New Spain during the early period of the

colonial era, and honor tied to virtuous women was a long-held Iberian notion,

illegitimacy was prevalent. Patricia Seed writes, “Spanish women in the New World

followed their European cousins, having extraordinary high numbers of births outside of

marriage, significantly higher than even their European counterparts.”98 Seed tracks the

change in tide by the eighteenth century when parents made more public efforts to

strongly influence the marriage choices of their children, efforts that flew in the face of

the Church's stance of free-will unions. Perhaps what we see here is evidence of this

growing trend among people of African descent in Xalapa. Parents of African-descended

legitimate children may have encouraged them to associate more with other legitimate

families and thus would have established a social circle of potential mates who were also

hijos legítimos.

98 Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico, 63.

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1. 5 Exogamy, AD non-HL Spouse with HL Spouse: 1724-1736

Few people (10 cases) of not of African descent who were specifically cited as

hijos legítimos married people of African descent who were not acknowledged hijos

legítimos by the parish record keeper. Three legitimately born Spanish men and three

mestizo men married African-descended women who were not designated as legitimate.

Only two legitimate Spanish women and two legitimate mestizas married men of African

descent who were not specified as having been born to parents legitimately united in the

Church. I believe these cases may evidence a larger trend that if people were going to

cross caste boundaries, they were more likely to do so with their peers, in this case

legitimacy based on whether one's parents were married or not.

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1. 6 African-descended Legitimate Spouse with non-HL Spouse: 1724-1736

While legitimately born African-descended women and men found many of their

marriage partners with other hijo legítimos,99 they also married a number of non-hijos

legítimos. Of the ninety-four marriages, twenty-four (25.53%) involved African-

descended hijos legítimos with people not designated with that stated parental status.

African-descended hijos legítimos married twelve (50%) African descended partners who

were not hijos legítimos, but married nine people not of African descent (37.50%) who

were not hijos legítimos and three individuals (12.50%) who did not have a designated

caste in the record. Compared to the mere nine cases of non-African hijos legítimos who

married African-descended non-hijos legítimos, people of African descent appear to be a

bit less discriminating when it came to marrying people who were not of African descent

and who were not specifically cited as hijos legítmos.

99 Of the 58 marriages involving people of African descent who were legitimate, 34 marriages

(58.62%) involved people who both claimed legitimate birth.

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1. 7 Neither Spouse Designated as HL: 1724-1736

While being a legitimate son or daughter increased one's chances of marrying a

legitimate spouse, twenty-six marriages (27.66%) involved unions in which neither

spouse was stated of legitimate birth. Of these twenty-six unions, ten (38.46%) involved

both spouses of African descent, thirteen (50%) involved at least one person of non-

African descent, and three cases (11.54%) involved at least one person of non-stated

caste. In The Limits of Racial Domination, Cope argues that as plebeians, poverty

facilitated greater interaction between Afro-castas, Spaniards, and indigenous groups.

He writes, “The existence of such impoverished Spaniards diminished the social

distances between whites and castas.”100 Cope’s assessment of plebeian society in

Mexico City certainly may explain the lack of caste-based marriage preference amongst

people from illegitimate heritage. The absence of cited legitimate parents also may have

allowed for greater personal choice in marital partners. However, it is important to

remember that just as legitimacy did not intrinsically mean social and economic well-

100 Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination, 21.

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being, illegitimacy did not necessarily equate with poverty or life as a social pariah.

Unfortunately, the nature of the ecclesiastical documents limits the details of the lives of

those who had one or more of the four sacraments recorded and documented by clergy.

Identifying markers such as the occupations of the entrants or their neighborhoods in

Xalapa were not cited. The vast majority of the records merely stated the date, name of

the person (sometimes just the given name), a caste designation, “associative characters”

(e.g., godparents or witnesses), and whether the entrants and associative actors were

vecinos or not. I found that in some baptismal records, godparents were specifically cited

as feligreses, or parishioners. At times, entrants were cited as living at a specific sugar

refinery, but no specifics were included to indicate social or economic status, with the

exception of being cited as a slave. However, in a time when inter-generational wealth

was rare and social legitimacy was a site often negotiated through virtue of the family,

protecting one’s public reputation of honor certainly found traction among many colonial

subjects.

The importance of legitimacy among elite families is well-documented. 101

Patricia Seed notes that families who objected to their child’s proposed spouse used an

indirect approach to address racial concerns that “focused on illegitimacy, a specter

rooted in a centuries-old Mexican tradition of miscegenation.”102 Seed adds, “Because in

the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries liaisons between the races occurred

predominantly outside of marriage, being of racially mixed parentage usually meant

101 For an indepth discussion of preoccupations with blood purity, see: Martinez, Genealogical

Fictions (2008); For elite concerns of legitimacy across Spanish America, see: Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets (1999).

102 Seed, To Love Honor and Obey in Colonial Mexico, 215.

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being illegitimate.”103 While illegitimacy may have become “synonymous for being

racially mixed”104 in other areas of the colony, women and men of African descent in

Xalapa understood the cultural currency of legitimacy, demonstrated by the trend of

legitimately born people marrying one another at higher percentages.

Afro-Casta Families in Xalapa

Some scholars have found evidence that families of African descent in Mexico

suffered from poor treatment in the popular imagination of other colonists. Seed writes,

“[I]t was normatively believed that pregnancy outside of marriage was the province of

black and casta women, while it was similarly believed that virginity was the rule among

Spanish women.”105 While this discourse may have held true in some areas of the

colony, it was not universally evidenced. In the case of Xalapa, during the mid-colonial

period, African-descended people were highly concerned with legitimacy and

demonstrated their investment in Hispanic cultural norms through attempts at preserving

the “honorable family.” In my review of the seventeenth-century and early-eighteenth-

century confirmation records of Xalapa housed in the city's Metropolitan Cathedral,

religious as well as social identities were placed in the historical record and reveal new

narratives of African-descended families. While I have reviewed baptismal records in

order to discuss aspects of family life, I found that confirmation records documented

more accurately the strength of the family over time.

The Church firmly recognized the baptismal record’s prominence by utilizing it as

103 Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico, 215. 104 Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico, 215. 105 Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico, 97.

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the “principal record of family lineage.”106 The production of documentation, however,

is key in understanding the importance that the baptisms and confirmations hold for this

project. Church protocols stipulated that children should be baptized by their third day of

life. Twinam argues that cases in Mexico held fairly close to these regulations with most

children being baptized by the fifth day.107 There was greater variation from the three-

day expectation in Xalapa, although the majority of children with cited ages were less

than two weeks old when they were baptized. On February 18, 1650, parents Juan

Hernándes and María Lópes baptized the “eldest” recorded baby in all collections

reviewed for this study. The mulato child was named Joseph and he was forty-seven

days old at the time of his baptism. Confirmations, on the other hand, took place

sometime between seven and ten years of age, documenting that a two-parent household

had persisted past the first few days of a child’s life.

For the following data analyses of confirmation and baptism records, I have

developed a key code for charts to represent the six designations of children found in the

parish records. A legitimate child was noted as an “hijo legítimo” (HL), a child raised by

the charity of the church was an said to have been raised “de la iglesia” (DLI), and an

orphaned child was said to have “padres desconocidos” (DKP). All children without

documented claims to legitimacy with one parent cited only were labeled with the code

(HN) to refer to hijos naturales. While children born out of wedlock and raised by two

parents would have been considered “hijos naturales,” I have decided to label them as

(HN2) to distinguish them as hijos naturales raised in a two-parent household although

106 Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets, 135. 107 Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets, 130.

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lacking the specific distinction of legitimacy.

1. 8 Confirmations and Legitimacy: 1642

The 1642 Libro de Confirmaciones included 108 children of African descent who

had been confirmed.108 Nearly half (47.22%) were children born to legitimately married

parents. This large percentage of hijos legítimos contradicts much of the information we

have had concerning African-descended families. Nine (9.09%) confirmed children were

cited as “hijos de la iglesia,” or children raised by the charity of the Church. Twenty-two

(20.37%) were classified as children who did not know their fathers. An additional

sixteen children (14.82%) were not classified as hijos legítimos but had both parents

listed in the record. Ten children (9.26%) are specifically cited as orphaned children. If

we collapse the illegitimate categories, 54.54% of children were not raised by parents


114

legally united by the tenets of the Church. Seed found similar illegitimacy rates for

children of African descent in baptism records of the central parish of Mexico City during

the second half of the seventeenth century.109 However, by collapsing the legitimate

category with the category of children with both parents cited, the number of African-

descended children in two-parent households accounts for 62.04% of the confirmations in

1642.

Stern explores the various reasons that unmarried relationships, which he refers to

as “consensual unions,” were commonplace among plebeian subjects. He writes, “The

fragile economic and institutional support of plebeian marriage brought knotty dilemmas

to prospective sexual partners, especially women.”110 Stern cites the economic burden

experienced by poor Mexico City residents that may have influenced lower rates of

sanctioned unions. He argues, “Marriage fees and celebrations imposed expenses

difficult to finance, and formal marriage implied potentially unwelcome economic,

social, and institutional obligations and entanglements.”111 In eighteenth-century New

Mexico, Gutiérrez notes, residents accused priests of charging exorbitant fees to perform

marriages, perhaps offering a rationalization for dodging marriage as determined by the

Catholic Church.112

Stern asserts that the lack of a religious sanction did not always mark the people

involved in consensual unions as infamous. He writes, “From these considerations and

their social negotiation there emerged a culture of respectable consensual union among

109 Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico, 26. 110 Stern, The Secret History of Gender, 270. 111 Stern, The Secret History of Gender, 271. 112 Gutiérrez asserts that such claims were unfounded since fees were set “on the basis of

established fee schedules.” Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 312.

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persons too poor to marry.” 113 Gutiérrez argues both an economic and cultural

explanation for Church-sanctioned marriages. He writes, “If one had no property to

transmit to legal heirs, if one did not cherish the cultural ideals of Spanish society, if one

valued Pueblo or nomadic Indian conceptions about the meaning of the marital bond,

then there was little reason for entertaining a sacramental Christian marriage.”114

Richard Boyer’s examination of bigamy demonstrates that those prosecuted as

bigamists were not intentionally subversive of the Catholic Church’s mandates. As

Boyer attests, “We should see [bigamists], then, not as people bent on disorder but as

wanting to fit in and settle in.”115 People became involved in bigamous relationships

because of long-term separations from their families, unsatisfying lawful marriages, or

coercion. The bigamous marriage, then, was an approximation of the ideal of a lawfully

united couple. Had the offending parties remained unmarried, Boyer asserts, the

Inquisitorial Courts would not have prosecuted them as bigamists, although they would

have been guilty of barraganía. Boyer describes barraganía as “a long-term and stable

arrangement…an informal union deeply rooted in Hispanic popular culture and accepted

to a degree in the Siete Partidas.”116

The socio-cultural landscape that allowed for tempered acceptance of barraganía

but that punished those who married their cohabitating partner, albeit with disregard to

the existence of a first spouse, Boyer writes, “emphasizes the coexistence of toleration

113 Stern, The Secret History of Gender, 271. 114 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, 333. 115 Boyer, Lives of the Bigamists, 32. 116 Boyer, Lives of the Bigamists, 32.

116

and prohibition.”117 While a two-parent family could not claim legitimate birth for their

children, they appeared to make them as legitimate as possible through the social opening

of tolerance. Unmarried couples of African descent (those “guilty” of barraganía) raised

families together, baptized and confirmed their progeny, and approximated the religious

ideal by fulfilling their obligations as parents of Catholic children, even if the couple did

not feel compelled to legitimate their relationship through the Church.

The consensual unions documented in the confirmation records of Xalapa, in

particular, demonstrate that mothers and fathers in such relationships were committed to

the idea of the family unit for at least the first seven years of their children’s lives, the age

at which most children were confirmed. Perhaps poverty proved prohibitive to these

families or perhaps these women and men wanted to avoid “institutional obligations” but

still felt compelled to ensure that their children were initiated into religious life through

baptism and confirmed as members of the Church.

I argue that legitimacy served as a socially salient marker for African-descended

families, but by collapsing categories I found that two-thirds of children were raised in

two-parent households even though they were not all religiously sanctioned,

demonstrating that some colonial subjects fulfilled an important Catholic rite of passage

by marrying and some found ways to approximate the ideal. Distinctively for Xalapa, the

47.22% legitimacy rate among confirmed children was only a starting point for people of

African descent, and more lawfully married couples appeared in the archives.

The baptism records that chronicle the years 1641 to 1669 confirm this growing

117 Boyer, Lives of the Bigamists, 32.

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trend in legitimacy. The two aforementioned ECB Collections were knowingly

incomplete when contemporaries compiled them. I have combined data from Caja 1,

Libro 1 (1641-1646) with Caja 1, Libro 3 (1646-1655) to analyze trends in the first half

of the seventeenth century and then compared that data with the results of my analysis of

baptism records in Caja 2, Libro 4, which includes documents from 1656 to 1669.

1. 9 Baptisms and Legitimacy: 1641-1655

Between 1641 and 1655, seventy-seven children of African descent were

baptized. Legitimacy as found in baptism records during the mid-seventeenth century

differed somewhat from what was established by the 1642 confirmation records (47.22%)

with the percentage of baptisms of legitimate children at 41.56% between 1641 and 1655.

However, by adding the two children who were confirmed in the presence of both of their

parents, but not specifically cited as hijos legítimos, the number of children being raised

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in two-parent household climbs to 44.16%. Slightly more children, thirty-five kids

(45.46%), were cited with only their mothers at the time of confirmation. Of these single

mothers who baptized children, fifteen were noted as enslaved and twenty were cited as

libres (free women). The significant number of enslaved in this category skews the

perception of African-descended families in Xalapa, as enslaved families could be

separated at the will of their owners. In addition, some of these enslaved “single

mothers” could have also been the victims of sexual violence from owners that resulted in

pregnancy. As such their lack of a “sanctioned family” must be understood with regard

to their limited agency to construct one.118 Only 5.19% of children were designated as

being raised by the charity of the Church with an equal number of children who had

“unknown parents” but not specifically cited as being raised “de la iglesia.”

118 While this study focuses on free people of African descent, I included (and specifically

differentiate) cases of enslaved women because their children were not specifically cited as enslaved and some newborns were granted freedom and lived with their still enslaved families.

119


The two books of Caja 1 (1641-1655) document fourteen years of baptisms in

which seventy-seven children of African descent received that sacrament. Libro 4 of

Caja 2 documents thirteen years from 1656 to 1669 and yielded cases of sixty-six

baptized children from which a drastic turn of events in legitimacy rates is witnessed.

While the legitimacy rate held strong at 41.56% between 1641 and 1655, it plummeted to

21.21% between 1656 and 1669. Even when two-parent households not identified as

legitimate are included in the legitimate family category, the combined categories only

account for 31.82% of children baptized. Free single mothers baptized 21.21% of

children and enslaved mothers baptized children 30.30% of the time. Children raised by

the charity of the Church had declined to 3.07%. However, the category of unknown

parents (DKP) accounted for 13.64% of children baptized.

120


The final surviving baptism collection for the seventeenth century, labeled

“Libros de Baptismos,” documents a recovery of legitimacy rates.119 Between 1666 and

1689, 183 children were baptized. Of these 183 children, 33.88% of them were

legitimately born. Another 7.65% of baptized children received the sacrament with both

parents cited as present but not designated as legitimate. If the two categories are

combined, 41.53% of children were raised in a two-parent household at least until they

were baptized. Children with only their free mothers cited in the records accounted for

27.32% of the baptisms. Enslaved single mothers baptized an additional 23.50% of

children. The category of children considered charges “de la iglesia” disappeared and

likely replaced with the language of “padres desconocidos” (DKP),120 which accounted

119 AEP, Libro de Bautizos Caja 1, Libro 1, 1666-1689. 120 Unknown parents.

121

for 7.65% of baptized children.


No surviving baptism or confirmation records were available to close out the

seventeenth century; a twenty-three-year gap of legitimacy data is the result. The 1712

book of confirmation records resumes the work and the results demonstrate a significant

upswing in legitimacy among mulato and pardo families but also some interesting

categorical shifts among illegitimate children at the dawn of the eighteenth century. Of

the 175 children documented in the 1712 Libro de Confirmaciones,121 63.43% involved

parents confirming their legitimate children of African descent. In seventy years,

families of African descent who had their children confirmed had increased their

legitimacy rates by more than 30%, significantly higher than what Seed found, which is


122

the only other study on legitimacy/illegitimacy rates among people of African descent in

Mexico during the same relative time frame. Only 1.14% of the cases involved orphaned

children. Cases involving children not specified as hijos legítimos but that had two

parents cited accounted for 1.72% of the data. Children who did not have a cited father

accounted for 2.28% of entries, which represents a significant decrease in single-parent

households when compared to the 20.37% of fatherless children confirmed in 1642.

Beyond the striking increase in legitimacy among Afro-casta families and the

decrease of absent fathers in 1712 is the conspicuous jump in cases of children raised by

the charity of the Church. It seems as though this seventy-year gap period between the

two confirmation books of 1642 and 1712 witnessed a bifurcation in social labels: either

a child came from a two-parent home of married individuals or they were being raised by

the Church with little or no contact or knowledge of their biological parents. Of the 175

cases of confirmations of African-descended children, 31.43% involved children

classified as “hijos de la iglesia,” almost four times as many cases than in 1642. The

relatively low percentage of cited orphans for 1712 (1.14%) compared to the higher

percentage of orphans in 1642 (9.26%), may have more to do with a terminological shift

by the parish notaries than an actual social trend among Afro-casta families. It appears

that by 1712, the parish sacrament recorder may have begun to use the terminology “de la

iglesia” to define all orphaned children instead of differentiating them with “de la

iglesia” and “padres desconocidos,” literally unknown parents (orphans). It is possible

that the number of orphaned children drastically decreased in this seventy-year time

frame. However, it is more likely that the pattern took such a significant turn because of

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an official’s preference for the language to refer to parentless children. Terminological

preferences, whether individual (i.e. the parish recorder) or group (Xalapan society at-

large) shed light on some of the patterns I found in the next set of confirmation books that

I reviewed.


The 1726 book of confirmations recorded a total of sixty-three children.122

Significantly, only 11.11% percentage of children are listed as hijos legítimos. Notably,

two-parent households not cited as legitimately formed accounted for 47.62% of cases of

confirmed children. By combining the two categories, the percentage of children raised

in two-parent households climbs to 58.63%, slightly less than in previous years but much

closer than the drastic shift to 11.11% legitimacy. There was an increase in the cases of


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absent fathers, a total of 11.11% of sixty-three cases. Nearly a third of children (30.16%)

were cited as not having any parents, children with “padres desconocidos.” However,

not a single child was classified as having been raised by the Church unlike the 31.43%

of the 1712 sample.

1. 14 Confirmations and Legitimacy: 1728 (partial)

The partial confirmation collections of 1728 and 1736 also evidence a growing

trend of children not specifically classified in terms of legitimacy. Of the thirty-four

surviving cases from 1728, 8.82% involved children raised by the Church. Orphaned

children represented 2.94% of the cases and a paltry 2.94% of children were specifically

cited as coming from legitimately married parents, the lowest rate of legitimacy recorded,

even given the smaller sample size. However, 85.30% of children confirmed had both

parents cited in the records but were not designated as legitimate families.

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1. 15 Confirmations and Legitimacy: 1736 (partial)

For the 1736 partial collection, only thirteen cases have survived the test of time.

Orphaned children comprised 30.77% of these cases and two-parent families not cited as

legitimate confirmed 69.23% of children. No children were noted as having been raised

by the church. Nor were any children classified as being raised in a single-parent

household or specifically cited as a legitimate child.

126

1. 16 Confirmations and Legitimacy: 1726, 1728 (partial), 1736 (partial) Combined Totals

When the data is collapsed for 1726, 1728, and 1736, these trends become more

pronounced. Of the 110 confirmation cases, a mere 7.27% of children came from

legitimate unions. Another 61.82% of children were confirmed by both parents but were

not cited as legitimate. More than one fifth (21.82%) of children had no parents to speak

of at the time of confirmation. Children of single mothers made up 6.36% of the 110

cases and just 2.73% of children were raised by the Church. This trend towards not

classifying children in terms of legitimacy has a number of possible explanations. We

can posit that the parish recorder was careless, which is possible considering the

inconsistencies found in all of the ecclesiastical records. However, this seems unlikely

given the high percentages involved. It may be possible that the parish recorders no

127

longer considered legitimacy as a salient socio-religious label and therefore stopped

recording it in the confirmation books, which would explain the increased number of

unclassified children. The lack of classifications in a world preoccupied by classifying

may then have an explanation written into the fabric of society or cultural codes of

notarial record keeping that is not explicit in the surviving records. Kathryn Burns urges

historians to engage with these “chessboards” of notarial documents and attempt to

decipher such practices. She writes,

To get the most from our sources, then, we need to go into the archive – not just literally, but figuratively, getting into the rules and gambits that contoured the ways people made documents. Happily, the rules aren't hard to find. They are hidden in plain sight, in the modern editions of legal codes and classics.123

The silences in these records may indicate less of a need or desire to proclaim one's

legitimacy, either because it was a more expected status or, conversely, the least likely

status and only stated in exceptional cases. However, since the percentages were

gradually increasing for cited legitimate children up until the 1726 confirmation records,

it is hard to conceive that fourteen years later the desire for documented legitimacy would

have fallen off so dramatically from the rate of 63.43% witnessed in 1712.

Given these trends, I argue that legitimacy may have become a rule rather than an

exception by the early 1700s in Xalapa and so therefore did not have to be stated

explicitly in this type of documentation. The high number of people entering legitimate

unions in Xalapa who also came from legitimate families in the early 1700s also

evidences this growing trend. A smaller baptism sample chronicling records from

123 Kathryn Burns, Into the Archive: Writing and Power in Colonial Peru (Durham: Duke

University Press, 2010), 124.

128

January 1, 1724 to March 27, 1732 appears to corroborate my theory.124


Forty-four children of African descent, twenty girls and twenty-four boys, were

baptized in this twelve-year period that overlaps with the incomplete 1726, 1728, and

1736 confirmation records. Of these forty-four children, 25% of them were born to

legitimately married parents, which first seems to correspond with the data that signals a

drop in legitimacy but far and away from the legitimacy rate of 2.94% in 1728 and 0% in

1736. However, when combined with the twenty-two children who were baptized with

two parents cited but not specifically designated as legitimate, the percentage of children

in a two-parent household at the time of baptism climbs to 75%, the largest percentage

documented in nearly one hundred years of Xalapa’s parish archives. Children baptized

with only their mothers present represented 13.64% and those raised by the charity of the

124 AEP, Bautizos Caja 2, Libro 6 (1724-1732).

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Church accounted for 11.36%.

Xalapa's comparatively “old” population of African descent, a presence since at

least the second half of the sixteenth century, demonstrated greater levels of Spanish

acculturation through their participation in fulfilling their religious obligations to marry

in the Church and baptize and confirm their children. These higher rates of children born

“in wed-lock”, especially the growth in legitimately born children over the course of the

century evidences greater approximation to Spanish ideals, including those regarding

respectability and social legitimacy, which I believe influenced the contours of marriage

choice and familial stability among Africans and their descendants. In addition to these

trends, the ecclesiastical records of Xalapa offer another way to examine the forms of

families through the webs of fictive kin documented through the Catholic practice of

godparentage.

Godparentage

Godparents were, and continue to be, prominent features of the Catholic tradition.

The role of the godparent was to serve as the baptized child’s spiritual sponsor and offer

instruction in the tenets of the Church. Godparents could be men or women, free or

enslaved, and be of any racial or caste background.125 They could be friends or family

members, excepting the mother or father of the baptized child. With the responsibility of

religious instruction, the godparent had to meet certain requirements. The proposed

125 Proctor discusses the role of godparents for enslaved children. While he notes that Spanish

godparents were prevalent, Proctor clarifies that rarely did they play a role in the manumission of the godchild. “Gender and the Manumission of Slaves in New Spain.” Hispanic American Historical Review 86, no. 2 (2006): 325-326.

130

godparent had to be as least sixteen years old and had to have been confirmed in the

Catholic Church, received Eucharist, exhibited “to be in harmony” with the faith, and

demonstrated his or her commitment to the religious community, such as regular mass

attendance. The colonial baptism records of Xalapa often include the specification of

“feligres” (parishioner) after the godparents identifying information, demonstrating the

importance of how the godparent was known in the community. Additionally, and

similar to the vetting of marriage choice by the Catholic Church, priests had to establish

that the godparents had not a single canonical impediment that would exclude the

person’s participation as a spiritual counselor for a newly initiated member of the flock.

Two godparents were preferred, a man and a woman, but canonical law only required one

(either man or woman). The acceptance of this responsibility sealed a sacred covenant

between the godparent, the parents, and the baptized child.

The choice of godparents was an important consideration for a variety of reasons.

Baptism represented the child’s incorporation into the religious fold and a worthy

godparent would see that the child moved on to be confirmed and then fulfill all other

Catholic sacraments in his or her lifetime. It was not uncommon, however, that

godparents were chosen to augment a family’s social capital and strengthen patronage

ties to colonial subjects with greater influence, wealth, or status. Whether they were

“proper” sponsors committed to the spiritual development of a new member of the faith,

a choice that reflected less religiously tied investments, or a mix of both, godparents

formed part of an intentional extension of a family that was supposed to include spiritual

support but could also include social benefits and a buffer for families living more

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precarious socio-economic lives. In the following, I examine the pattern of godparents to

assess how the African-descended population configured their chosen families and how

these decisions changed over time in the integrated spaces of Xalapa.

The extant baptism books in Xalapa’s parish archives record nearly a century of

African-descended family history. Some of the information, namely legitimacy, has been

utilized already in this chapter. Baptism records are unique because of the social

expectations embedded in them. Unlike the chosen members of other sacraments, such

as the witnesses to a marriage, godparents alluded to greater intimate ties, or the desire

for such connections. To begin to understand the shape of interracial social interactions,

we return to the data collapsed from Libros 1 and 3 from Caja 1 of the “Entierros,

Casamientos, y Bautizos” (ECB) Collection, documenting baptisms from 1641 to 1655.

These are the earliest available cases of baptism in Xalapa and they document significant

interracial interactions through godparentage.126

126 For the following charts, the Spanish term madrina (godmother) is abbreviated to “mad.” The

Spanish term padrino (godfather) is abbreviated to “pad.” The term “set” refers to cases in which a child had two sponsors (one godmother and one godfather).

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1. 18 Baptisms by Designation of Godparent and Gender of Child: 1641-1655

Of the seventy-five children with cited godparents in the Caja 1 baptism records,

82.67% of African-descended children had Spanish godparents. Spanish women served

as godparents more often (60%) than Spanish men (40%) among single-sponsor

baptisms.127 Children with two godparents with at least one cited as Spanish accounted

for 30.67% of all children baptized between 1641 and 1655. Adults of African descent

were godparents to 10.67% children, serving an equal number of boys and girls. Notably,

no African-descended men were cited as any of the single-sponsor godparents in this

category. However, most children (62.50%) with godparents of African descent had two

godparents. And while no mestizos served as godparents to any boys of African descent,

one mestiza was the madrina to a girl of African descent and another case found one

127 Proctor also finds that Spanish women served as sponsors more often than Spanish men,

“Gender and the Manumission of Slaves in New Spain,” 323-326.

133

mestizo was padrino to another African-descended girl, which account for only 2.67% of

baptisms. Three girls had godparents without a designated caste/race, which only

accounted for 4% of baptisms in this collection.


The collection that follows, Caja 2 Libro 4 of “Entierros, Casamientos, y

Bautizos,” documented the baptism of sixty-six children in sixty-five entries128 between

1656 and 1669. A few new patterns arose in the choices parents made in selecting

godparents, but some trends persisted. Spanish godparents once again predominated,

accounting for 68.18% of all recorded sponsors for African-descended children. Almost

twice as many Spanish women served as single-sponsor godparents than Spanish men,

although most children (40%) in this category had two-godparents. Few children, only

128 One entry documented the baptism of two siblings.

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three girls, had godparents of African descent (4.55%). Of these three girls, one had a

godparent pair that included a madrina specifically cited as an enslaved woman with a

padrino that was not identified as a slave. Two girls had mestizo godparents (3.03%) and

one boy had a castiza godmother (1.55%). The number of unknown caste/race

godparents increased significantly, accounting for 22.73% of madrinas and padrinos

recorded.

By the end of the seventeenth century, significantly more children were being

baptized. A total of 183 children of African descent were baptized, 106 girls and 77

boys, between December 6, 1666 and February 15, 1689.129 Of these 183 boys and girls,

180 of them had identifiable godparents.130 Among godparents for these 180 children,

stark differentials by both race and gender persisted.

1. 20 Children with Godparents of African Descent: 1666-1689

129 AEP, Bautizos Caja 1, Libro 1 (1666-1689). 130 Two girls and one boy had either incomplete entries that excluded the identities of the

godparents or the deteriorated condition of the book precluded the discernment of the names of the godparents.

135

Only nineteen (10.56%) African-descended children had godparents of African

descent. Half of these children had godparents who were specifically identified as both

being of African descent. African-descended women and men served as single-sponsor

godparents for the same number of children. It is important to note that two of these kids

had godparents who were enslaved; a rarity for free families. The first child had an

enslaved madrina and a padrino not identified by caste. The second child had a free

madrina of African descent but an enslaved padrino.

Only one mestizo ever served as a godfather, he was the padrino to a girl of

African descent. No indios were named as godparents to children of African descent

between the 1666 and 1689.

1. 21 Children with Spanish Godparents: 1666-1689

136

The most significant pattern from this numerically larger collection was that a

plurality of African-descended kids (60 or 33.33%) continued to be baptized with at least

one Spanish godparent. Of these children, thirty-six girls and twenty-four boys had

Spanish godparents. Most children (69.05%) who had a single-sponsor Spanish

godparent had a Spanish madrina. A total of nineteen girls and ten boys had only

Spanish madrinas. The second largest category of Spanish godparents included cases

that involved both a madrina and padrino who were both identified as españoles, which

accounted for 30%. Ten girls and eight boys had two Spanish sponsors. Spanish

godfathers accounted for 21.67% of the cases with single-Spanish sponsors, with more

girls (seven) than boys (six) as their godchildren.

While the majority of children (51.11%) had at least one godparent with cited

caste or race designation between 1666 and 1689, a statistically significant amount of

children did not.

1. 22 Children with Godparents of Unknown Caste: 1666-1689

137

Of the 180 children with identifiable godparents, eighty-eight or 48.89% had godparents

named in their records but were of unknown caste/race. Forty-two girls and forty-six

boys had godparents of unknown race/casta identification. Most of these children

(52.27%) still had a two-godparent baptism with twenty-one girls and twenty-five boys in

this category. Madrinas once again dominated in the single-godparent category serving

as sponsors to thirty-one children (35.23%), which included eighteen girls and thirteen

boys. Single-godparent padrinos accounted for only 12.50% of unknown caste/race

godparents, serving as sponsors to three girls and eight boys of African descent.

1. 23 Children with Two Godparents of Different Designations: 1666-1689

138

For the 1666-1689 collection of baptisms, twelve children of African descent

(6.67%) had godparents not of the same race. Only one case identified the race of both

sponsors, which involved one girl of African descent with a godmother of African

descent and a Spanish godfather. Including this case, Spanish godparents served as

sponsors more often (83.33%) to children of African descent. Only three godparents of

African descent appeared in this category, the previously cited godmother along with one

other African-descended godmother with a godfather of unknown caste and an additional

case of an African-descended godfather with a godmother of unknown caste.

The final baptism collection chronicled baptisms from January 1, 1724, to March

27, 1732, and documented forty-four children but only forty-one had

identified/identifiable godparents, which included nineteen girls and twenty-two boys.131

1. 24 Children with Two Godparents of Different Designations: 1724-1732

131 AEP, Bautizos, Caja 2, Libro 6 (1724-1732).

139


The racial background of the godparents follows similar patterns to the previous

collections. A low number of African-descended people served as godparents, only two

(4.88%). These two were African-descended madrinas who were sponsors to two girls of

African descent. Spanish godparents account for 19.51% of sponsors and Spanish

madrinas accounted for most of these cases. For the first time in the baptism records,

more boys (7) than girls (1) had Spanish godparents. The lack of race/casta designations

obscures the majority of information that this final collection may have yielded as

75.61% of godparents were not specifically identified as español, castizo, mestizo, indio

or a casta of African descent.

Of the 363 children who were baptized with named godparents between 1641 and

1732, a total of 37.46% of them had godparents not identified with race or casta, which

140

considering the predominance of Spanish godparents over a century, it is likely that the

majority of this unknown group would have also reflected Spanish-sponsor dominance.

As there were so few members of this unknown group in the earlier cases (only three

documented between 1641 and 1655), colonial record keepers have shown to exclude

information when it belongs to dominant cultural norms. Perhaps a few of these

unknown race/casta godparents were of African descent. However, it is clear that even

when this group is taken into account along with the proportionate representation, very

few people of African descent were godparents of African-descended children, usually

accounting for 10% or less of the baptisms.

When godparents of African descent were chosen, they were most often free

people. Only three cases of enslaved godparents were found in the five baptism books

examined. Enslaved godparents, while not canonically disqualified from serving as

sponsors, may have been considered less desirable because the clergy may have not seen

slaves as living “in harmony” with the tenets of the Church. If African-descended

parents hoped to establish an economically advantageous relationship with their

children’s sponsor, enslaved godparents with few resources would not have posed as

ideal candidates. While some slaveowners followed the instruction of the Church and

ensured that their slaves had access to religious instruction and the time to hear mass,

some slaveowners found such religious obligations as distractions to the greater interest

in profit generation that slaves could produce.132 I also argue that the inherent instability

of slavery may have also marked enslaved people as less desirable godparents for free

132 Cardoso, Negro Slavery in the Sugar Plantations of Veracruz and Pernambuco, 183-184.

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families. As unfree people, such godparents would not have had the same opportunity for

unrestricted geographic mobility to assist with the spiritual development of a child who

may not have lived near them. Nor would many slaves have much financial capital to

offer the godchild and family. Although, some enslaved godparents may have had both

cultural and social capital to contribute.

Other than the large percentage of Spaniards, it is striking that only a handful of

mestizos (6) and castizos (1) were ever documented as sponsors to African-descended

children. The restrictive life of slavery can account for the low participation rate of

enslaved African-descended godparents, but the low representation of people designated

as mestizos and castizos may be explained in one of two ways. The first is that perhaps

castizos were indifferent in forming godparent-relationships with African descended

families. The lack of opportunity or interest in developing affective ties to African-

descended people through godparentage cannot be true for mestizos, since they

represented most of the exogamous partners involving people of African descent

discussed in this chapter. High mestizo-Afro-casta exogamy along with mestizo

“aversion” to godparentage for African-descended children during the same time period

is too incongruent. The most plausible explanation for the lack of mestizo and castizo

godparents would be that the two groups were likely “passing” as Spaniards or not being

identified and subsequently counted in the unknown caste/race group. With an increasing

mestizo population in seventeenth-century Xalapa and clear contact with African-

descended people as evidenced by the number of marriages between the two groups, it is

clear that if mestizo men and mestiza women were not just obscured by clerical error,

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then they would likely soon serve as godparents to African-descended children based on

demography alone. As mestizos began to outnumber Spaniards in the eighteenth century

in Xalapa, statistically they would probably serve more often as sponsors if the exogamy

rate also remained steady into the mid-eighteenth century as it did in the early part of the

century.

Conclusion

The seventeenth century has been characterized as the “Age of Integration.”133

The sixteenth century witnessed exploration, war, Spanish settlement, population

decimation, and the establishment of the administrative arms of the Crown and the

Church in Mexico. The advent of the mid-colonial period found that the colony’s diverse

population began to settle into their new environments and greater interaction among

Spaniards, Afro-castas, and indigenous peoples followed. Xalapa’s diverse families of

African descent exemplified this wave of integration in the formal stages of religious

identity. Exogamy, mostly with mestizo partners, influenced the interracial milieu in

Xalapa since the earliest recorded marriages and steadily increased throughout the

seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Legitimacy figured more prominently than

previously believed, demonstrating that even during the early and middle stages of the

colonial period, people of African descent strived to reproduce, or at least approximate,

Spanish socio-religious expectations in their own families. For those couples not (yet)

married, they still presented themselves as a united front for the important religious

133 Juan Gonzalez Esponda, Negros, Pardos y Mulatos: Otra Historia Que Contar (Tuxtla

Gutierrez, Chiapas: Gobierno del Estado de Chiapas, 2002), 69.

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milestones of their children. The high incidences of Spanish godparents evidence robust

interracial contact. While Spaniards did marry people of African descent, albeit to a

lesser degree than mestizo and mestiza partners, españoles appeared frequently alongside

African-descended parents during baptisms. Interestingly, gender divided Spanish

involvement in the religious lives of African-descended people. While Spanish men

served more often than woman as official witnesses of Afro-casta weddings, the

predominance of Spanish women serving as godmothers alludes to the possibility that

they were more likely to perform a more sustained role as interracial social mediators

than Spanish men.134

The structured monotony of the ecclesiastical archive occasionally provides rich

details about the relationships and lives of African-descended people who sought to fulfill

their religious duties through one of the sacraments. Many children enjoyed the social

legitimacy of being born to married parents. Others enjoyed a two-parent household in

which the potential for economic security was greater. Single motherhood existed but in

lower numbers than previously documented. However, a number of children of African

descent had been abandoned and their fates left to the discretion of the Church. Extended

family may have adopted some of the children designated as those “without known

parents.” African-descended families included extended members that served as fictive

kin, spiritual advisors, and advantageous patrons. The diversity of experiences of their

families and the multiple configurations offer more insight into the socially open

134 Proctor research in San Luis Potosí and Guanajuato, Mexico corroborates this pattern. He found that between 1652 and 1749, Spanish women served as godmothers to enslaved children 30% of the time. Proctor, “La familia y comunidad esclava en San Luis Potosí y Guanajuato, México,” in La ruta de la esclavitud en Africa y América Latina, ed. Rina Caceres (San Jose, Costa Rica: Editorial de la Universidad de Costa Rica, 2001), 240-250.

144

environment in which they lived, raised families, and attempted to sustain work and

safeguard multi-generational wealth.

This chapter also highlights the significance of divorcing race from serving as the

“always already” indicator of socio-economic status. People of African descent in

Xalapa had wealth, sometimes by way of three generations of careful asset management.

The notion that marrying Spanish partners, even if they were poor, was the way to greater

social mobility cannot be substantiated in Xalapa, where free people of means had the

opportunity to marry other free people of means. These theories are based on records

that, by and large, do not offer evidence about the contracting bride and groom’s

economic prospects. The infrequent inclusion of notes regarding professions precludes

assumptions about the economic backgrounds of those contracting marriage. I argue that

other signifiers offer more salient information about marital choice, such as legitimacy of

families, geographic proximity, and shared life experiences, such as that of the couple

who had both suffered the loss of their indigenous spouses.

“Youthful passions” were rarely expressed in marriage logbooks, but the patterns

analyzed here intend to redirect methodological approaches of marriage records. The

focus on violence, elite disputes, interventions by the Crown and the Church, and notions

of plebeian indifference have enriched our understanding of gendered strategies, familial

expectations, and the challenges of patriarchy. I argue that for a greater examination of

marriage partner choice among people of African descent, we must call upon these

spectacular displays of interposition in addition to quotidian details recorded by parish

priests.

145

My examination of legitimacy rates among marriage partners attempts to

highlight the importance of non-race based signifiers that held social currency in colonial

Mexico. I do not posit that the legitimacy signifier alone explains how and why people

joined in holy matrimony, but I argue that legitimacy, geographic proximity, age, race,

perceived class, honorific titles, and other signifiers must be considered when the

documents allow for this exploration, which they do not always permit. Parish record

keeping largely involved routinized productions of documentation of baptisms,

confirmations, marriages, and burials. And yet, these collections signal preferences and

discrepancies in the type of information that clerics requested and recorded from

petitioners. Inconsistency may thwart our current efforts in quantifying and ordering

subject matter into “statistically relevant” data, but the inconsistent social markers may

prove to be the small determining factors that united couples. In line with these efforts to

open up what we understand as socially salient, Rachel O’Toole argues that “other factors

may have deterred rural inhabitants from formalizing their unions, such as lack of clergy,

high marriage fees, and difficulties in obtaining permission from slave owners.”135

Instead of relying on the sole explanatory device of race, O’Toole argues that matters of

practicality may have inhibited and deterred greater formalized unions between people of

different racial backgrounds. In his examination of Afro-indigenous marriages in

seventeenth century Guatemala, Paul Loken cites shared workspaces as an important

variable that influenced exogamy.136

135 Rachel Sarah O’Toole, “‘In a War against the Spanish’: Andean Protection and African

Resistance on the Northern Peruvian Coast,” The Americas 63, no. 1 (July 2006): 36. 136 Loken, “Marriage as Slave Emancipation in 17th Century Guatemala,” 176.

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For the collections examined here, legitimacy served as a primary designation that

arose in the records almost as often as casta identifications. However, as has been

demonstrated by the disparate information found on exogamy in Mexico City by Seed

and Love, even parishes in the same city could have vastly different recordings of social

phenomena. Baptism records in the same parish archive of Xalapa across less than a

century demonstrated variant recording practices. I proffer that in order to fully explore

marriage choice, there is a need for the development of flexible, multi-variable models of

analyses. My investigation has demonstrated the salience of the legitimate-illegitimate

divide among free African-descended people in Xalapa during the long seventeenth

century, but other markers must be examined to determine whether they influenced

marriage partner choice and shaped the families of free people of African descent.

In the following chapter, we begin to explore the role of free African-descended

women in the social landscape of Xalapa through their negotiation of more intimate and

familial concerns and challenges. For these stories, we turn to the stage of colonial truth-

making, the office of the notary public.

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Chapter Two

Notarial Presence

The Church’s insistence on documenting and intervening in its flock’s religious

milestones meant that most colonial subjects would have some primary or secondary

knowledge of the conventions involved. For instance, even if Juana the free negra never

served as a madrina, she likely knew someone who had. The notarial archive was unique

in that one could live a lifetime of lawful activities without the necessity of the notary’s

workshop of record keepers. Kathryn Burns writes, “For most people…a close encounter

with a notary was unusual and bound up with a major turning point of some

kind…Putting people's important, even intimate, business in legal language was the

notary's everyday job, his bread and butter.”1 We know that different castes, economic

groups, and genders could be baptized, confirmed, married, and given extreme unction if

they had fulfilled the other requirements of the Church. Fewer people would have the

occasion to register a transaction or become a secondary actor in notarial business, and

doing so marked most of these free people as individuals of means. The majority of the

notarial records documented the transference of property and goods, including implied

resources through the request for legal representation. The registration of business with

the notarial office also involved fees, 2 further demonstrating that people had the

economic resources to guarantee their various arrangements and that they understood and

1 Burns, Into the Archive, 26-27. 2 Burns notes that the Spanish Crown set fees for notarial services in order to avoid extreme

abuses by the notaries. Burns, Into the Archive, 28. While there were standardized aranceles (fee tables), Burns notes that they are rare finds. One cabildo arancel that she found for Potosi noted fees from 4 tomines (one half peso de oro común) for one page, depending on the type of document requested. Burns, Into the Archive, 181.

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valued the legitimizing power of the notariate.

Potentially, anyone could request the services of the notary, but there is some

inferential evidence that only certain types of free women of African descent did. Before

proceeding to the intimate and business matters of the notarial archive, I present a

demographic profile of the business involving free women of African descent during the

long seventeenth century. While free women engaged in a number of ventures, their

demographic representation in Xalapa is small because of their exceptional economic

opportunities and the relatively small general population as compared to that of Mexico

City or Puebla. As such, the profile is not a traditional analysis measuring statistical

significance, because we do not have an accurate total population for Xalapa or for

African-descended women and men. In addition, the population estimates cited

previously do not differentiate between free people of African descent and those still

enslaved. While the numbers cannot speak directly to representations of the general

populace because of the lack of contextualizing data, they may suggest patterns of

behavior that require more focused examination. With further research in the central

Veracruz region to develop a more substantive sample size, more in-depth analysis may

be possible. Until then, I present the following preliminary profile to begin the work of

identifying socially salient markers that may have influenced the lives of free women of

African descent.3

3 I reviewed the following for the data and cases examined in this chapter: ANX, Protocolos 1578-

1594, Protocolos 1600-1617, Protocolos 1617-1651, Protocolos 1651-1674, Protocolos 1675-1699, Protocolos 1700-1706, Protocolos 1707-1712, Protocolos 1713-1719, Protocolos 1720-1725.

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Gender and Caste Representation

The first half of the seventeenth century witnessed both free women and men as

active agents in notarized arrangements.

2. 1 Demographic Profile: 1600-1625

Between 1600 and 1625, twenty-five individuals of African descent registered business.

Women represented the majority of cases (16), while men registered less than half (9) of

all cases. During this early period, far more morenas (11) than mulatas (5) conducted

business.4 Not a single negra or parda registered business with the notary. All of the

nine men were mulatos. Business registered during the second quarter of the seventeenth

century began to reflect the greater Afro-casta diversity of designations found in Xalapa.

It also reflected increased opportunities for people of African descent, as their presence in

4 I have chosen to differentiate by caste here to show the change overtime with usage of casta

designations in Xalapa.

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the notarial sources grew by 75%.


Between 1626 and 1650, forty-four free Afro-castas, including twenty women

and twenty-four men, and one couple of African descent registered with the notarial

office. The twenty women who went to the notarial offices included nine mulatas, seven

morenas, two negras, and two pardas. The twenty-four men comprised similar

representations of casta differentiation, including eleven mulatos, two morenos, four

negros, and seven pardos. The one couple who registered jointly were noted as a negra

wife and negro husband.

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When the data is collapsed for the first half of the century, free women and men

demonstrate near parity of exposure to the notarial offices with thirty-six (51.43%)

women and thirty-three (47.14%) men along with the one couple cited (1.43%). Most

women were recorded as mulata (14) or morena (18), whereas most men were designated

as mulato (20) or pardo (7). As the next half of the seventeenth century demonstrates,

most of these casta trends would persist.

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Between 1651 and 1674, the notarial offices saw fewer people of African descent.

Only twenty-nine such people registered business—seven women and twenty-two men.

All women were cited as mulatas (7), whereas the caste designations of the twenty-two

men who conducted business included seventeen mulatos and five pardos.

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By the end of the seventeenth century, those of African descent found in the

notarial archive had increased by 25% from the previous quarter-century. Between 1675

and 1699 fifty-five individuals (thirty-five men and twenty women) and two couples of

African descent were cited. A shift towards the usage of pardo had also taken place. The

majority of women (12) were designated as pardas, with only four mulatas, two morenas,

one negra, and one unspecified 5 Afro-casta woman cited. Men found a closer

representation between pardos (16) and mulatos (14), with just four negros and one

unspecified Afro-casta man conducting business at the escribanía. The two couples

included a negra wife and negro husband and a free mulata woman and a free mulato

man.

5 I designated people as “unspecified Afro-casta” if they had no caste label but I had identified

their parents as people of African descent.

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The collapsed data demonstrates that the second half of the century saw

significantly fewer free women seeking the services of the notarial offices, nearly 40%

less. From 1651 to 1699, a total of eighty-four individuals of African-descent, twenty-

seven women and fifty-seven men, and two couples notarized business. Most women

were identified as mulatas (11) or pardas (12) and men as either mulatos (31) or pardos

(21).

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The overall number of African-descended people who notarized business at the

dawn of the eighteenth century dropped markedly to only thirty-five individuals and one

couple. Although there was greater gender parity between 1700 and 1725, with eighteen

women (14 pardas, 3 mulatas, and 1 negra) and seventeen men (14 pardos and 3

mulatos) as well as one mulata-mulato couple, the decrease in representation of people of

African descent by the early eighteenth century is telling, as is the decrease in the number

of cases registered by them, particularly those by free women.

In an examination of cases registered by free women during the entirety of the

eighteenth century, the numbers fall dramatically after 1720. Between 1700 and 1710,

free women of African descent registered thirteen cases in the notarial offices of Xalapa.

Between 1711 and 1720, the number of cases had decreased to eleven. For every

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subsequent decade of the eighteenth century, there were no more than four cases each.

The last twenty years of the century had a solitary case for the 1780s and the 1790s. The

decline of cases either brought by free women or involving them as secondary actors

becomes more pronounced when the eighteenth century is divided at mid-century.

Approximately 78% of all cases relating to free women of African descent during the

eighteenth century took place between 1700 and 1750. When the data is sectioned off to

account for the parameters of this study’s primary periodization of focus, 60% of all

cases involving free women of African descent in the eighteenth century took place

between 1700 and 1730. Of these cases, 89% took place during the first two decades of

the eighteenth century.

The ecclesiastical archives corroborate the growing absence of free African-

descended people during this same time frame. The lax practices assigning casta

designations by record keepers can account for some of the discrepancies. The concept

of “racial drift” might also explain why free women of African descent began to fade

from the baptism, confirmation, and marriage records of Xalapa.6 Unlike the rites of

passage, notarial activity was an exceptional encounter, but the dearth of free women

contracting business after 1720 is conspicuous. However, it might correspond to greater

problems of Atlantic trade during the eighteenth century. For much of the long

seventeenth century, the economy of Xalapa depended on external factors. Starting from

its Spanish founding, Xalapa depended on the investment of capital from local and trans-

6 Robert McCaa defines “racial drift” as “the disagreement in racial classification between census and marriage book” that he examined for his work on marriage choice in colonial Mexico. The discrepancies that I found in notarial and parish archives indicates that racial drift might have also occurred, intentionally or accidently, in Xalapa. McCaa, “Calidad, Clase, and Marriage in Colonial Mexico: The Case of Parral, 1788-1790,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 64, no. 3 (August 1984), 480.

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Atlantic merchants, wealthy colonial officials, and well-financed clergy from Veracruz

Port, Puebla, Mexico City, and even as far as Manila.7 Xalapa’s proximity to the port

meant that some of its prosperity was tied to maritime commerce, dependent on the

importation of goods from Spain, Cuba, and Peru as well as the exportation of products

produced in the central Veracruz region, principally sugar. The reforms that arrived with

the ascension of the House of Bourbon to the Spanish throne after the War of Spanish

Succession in 1713 also had effects that reverberated in Xalapa.

The first Bourbon King of Spain, Philip V, soon realized the value of Xalapa’s

strategic location for economic growth. In 1718, King Philip V selected Xalapa and

Portobello as Spanish America’s largest trade-fair (feria) sites.8 Great merchants and

landed-elites, along with petty seller and transportation workers, flooded Xalapa when

the ferias began. Of the wealth they poured into the trading post, Patrick Carroll writes,

“Jalapa’s streets may not have been paved with gold, but they were often stacked with

silver.”9 Carroll also notes that after the first feria in 1722, “the village of Jalapa became

a clearing house for goods from three continents.”10 Everything from silver bars, silk,

porcelain, firearms, vanilla, spices, and books could be found crowding the streets of the

principal plaza of Xalapa, but it was not to last for long. Optimistic officials had planned

the ferias to last for three months every two years. However, Xalapa’s economy suffered

when not a single feria was celebrated from 1736 to 1756.11 Five more ferias took place

in Xalapa before ending completely in 1776. Xalapa’s economy recovered during this

7 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Xalapa, 303-304. 8 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 52. 9 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 53. 10 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 52. 11 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 53.

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time period, but free women in notarial life would not. Only two cases were registered in

the 1750s, an additional two during the 1760s, and four cases between 1770 and 1780.

The slippages of racial descriptors, the newly-implemented Bourbon economic reforms

along with the inconsistency of the feria presence in Xalapa provide important

circumstantial conditions that might have affected free women’s ability to continue the

kind of notarial presence in the eighteenth century that they had established in the

seventeenth.

This data demonstrates key patterns in notarial engagement by free people of

African descent. Near gender parity is found over 125 years of notarial documents, with

the exception of the period between 1651 and 1675, when a mere seven women

registered business. The increased usage of the terms mulato and pardo corresponds to

the data found in the parish archives of Xalapa, albeit on a significantly smaller scale.

The demographic profile also documents the decline in the representation of free African-

descended women by the eighteenth century. Perhaps Bourbon-spurred financial

investment and the attraction of more “outsiders” to Xalapa consequently shifted the

demography of economic players in the region. Gender and differentiations based on

racial heritage were the most consistent markers but other labels also served as edifying

markers in the analysis of the activity of free women.

Vecinas and Outsiders

While people living in cities or central towns had greater access to notarial offices

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that were centrally located in main plazas,12 at least for the first half of the seventeenth

century, free women traveled from slightly further away than a few blocks from the town

square to register business.

2. 8 Vecina Status: 1600-1650

Of the eighteen women with identifiable vecina-status, only seven lived in Xalapa

“proper.” The eleven women who were not vecinas but who had cited “home towns”

lived at nearby inns, such as the Venta del Rio, the Venta de Los Naranjos, and the Venta

de la Riconada, and at sugar ingenios, including Nuestra Señora de los Remedios and San

Pedro Buenavista. One woman was cited as living in nearby Coatepec, located in

Xalapa’s administrative jurisdiction, and two other women hailed from La Antigua

Ciudad de Veracruz. This type of geographic mobility by free women of means nearly

disappeared by the second half of the seventeenth century.

12 Burns, Into the Archive, 26.

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Between 1651 and 1699, fourteen women were cited with specific vecina-

statuses. Of these fourteen, all but two free African-descended women lived in Xalapa.

The non-vecinas included one woman who was a vecina of La Antigua while the other

lived in La Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz.


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From 1700 to 1725, of the fifteen women with a cited vecina status, every single

one called Xalapa’s town limits home. In the new century, the women of means had

decided to establish their primary residential affiliation with Xalapa, instead of its more

agricultural and rural periphery, perhaps wanting to stake a claim in the wealth brought

by greater Atlantic trade and the establishment of the economic boom brought by the

ferias.

Marital Status

The distribution of women by marital status during the first half of the

seventeenth century highlights an important aspect of women’s ability to navigate

colonial institutions.

2. 11 Marital Status: 1600-1650

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From 1600 to 1651, only six women of African descent were ever documented as married

when they registered with the notarial offices. However, three other women were

identified as widows. The rest of the women were cited without spouses, accounting for

50% of all cases concerning free women during this time period.

2. 12 Marital Status 1651-1699

From 1651 to 1699, more married women (11) came into purview of the notarial

authorities while women without cited husbands still accounted for nearly half (10) of the

cases. Only one widowed woman of African descent appeared before the notary public

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in the later half of the seventeenth century.

2. 13 Marital Status: 1700-1725

From 1700 to 1725, twenty-four free women of African descent appeared before

the notarial authorities, including eight married women, eleven women without a cited

spouse, and five widows. One woman was cited in two entries, in which she was married

and later cited as a widow during this time frame. Married women likely most often

deferred to their husbands to conduct official business, which may explain why free

single women were more highly represented in these documents.

As we will see, this would not always be the case, but such gendered divisions of

labor and notions of who qualified as the legitimate head of household likely influenced

the numbers found here. The pattern of document production in Xalapa finds that

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documents initiated by women often had references to a spouse, if only in passing. For

example, “María, wife of José,” might have inherited a piece of land that she (and the

notary) considered her sole property, but her husband’s name was still documented. The

job of the escribano was not to investigate, verify, and then notarize the marital status of

his clients, but it was included on a number of occasions when clarifying that a wife had

the permission of her husband to conduct business. Other times, it seemed to be cited

incidentally. For those women who were not cited with spouses, representing half or

more of all cases, it would appear that being free from the male supervision of a husband

allowed them greater economic opportunities in their notarial lives.

Types of Notarial Business

From 1600 to 1725, free women of African descent engaged or were cited in

primarily seven types of notarial business: the registration of a poder, the sale and

purchase of real estate, the sale and purchase of slaves, manumission, and the registration

of a will (or codicil). Free women of African descent filed a plethora of other types of

business with Xalapa’s notary public, but I have chosen to focus on these seven types of

activities because they most frequently appeared during the long seventeenth century.

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2. 14 Primary Types of Business: 1600-1650

From 1600 to 1650, seven free women registered poderes,13 but most women were

involved in the buying and selling of land and slaves. Five women sold property and two

women purchased land. Five women also sold slaves and an additional five women

bought slaves. Only two women were involved in manumission cases that involved

themselves or stated family members. Not a single woman of African descent entered a

will or codicil at the notarial offices.

13 A poder was an act to provide another with permission to serve as one’s legal proxy.

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2. 15 Primary Business Type: 1651-1699

The second half of the seventeenth century (1651-1699) saw slightly less activity

by women in these seven categories. Only six women registered poderes. Four sold

properties and another three bought tracts of land. One woman sold her slave, and no

free woman purchased a slave in this period, perhaps indicating increased economic

instability, a situation in which high value “commodities” were less likely to be

relinquished. However, questions of freedom were more prevalent. There were five

registered cases of manumission, one woman helping to free her husband and two

African-descended slaveowners freeing four of their slaves. For the first and only time in

the seventeenth century, a woman of African descent filed a last will and testament with

the notary. A sick twelve-year-old girl of African descent also made a declaration “in the

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form of a will,” which I also included in the will and codicil category.

2. 16 Primary Business Type: 1700-1725

The final period examined (1700-1725) saw increased activity at the notarial

offices by free women of African descent. During the first quarter of the eighteenth

century, five women required poderes, ten sold real estate, three bought property, and

two sold slaves. Not a single woman purchased a slave. Only one manumission

involving a free woman of African descent took place. During this twenty-five year

period at the dawn of a new century, three women registered wills and codicils. Of note

is free women’s active participation in Xalapa’s real estate market. With such

involvement in property and the slave trade, it is striking that only three free women

registered wills hoping to protect their assets and ensure that they were properly

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distributed when they passed away.

Multi-Variant Analysis: Gender, Marital Status, and Primary Business Type

Between 1600 and 1725, free women of African descent registered seventy-one

cases of primary business types with the notary.

2. 17 Marital Status and Primary Business Type: 1600-1650

From 1600 to 1650, twenty-six primary business cases were registered. Of these twenty-

six, 46.15% involved free “unattached women” of African descent. Most of these cases

dealt with the purchase (two cases) or sale of their slaves (five cases). Two “unattached

women” each required a poder, one woman sold one piece of property, and bought one

tract of land. One single mother even secured freedom for herself and her daughter

through a loan. Cases involving free married women during this time accounted for

34.62% of primary business activity, most involved the purchase of a slave (three cases)

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or the assignment of a poder (three cases). The remaining cases involved the sale of one

property, the purchase of another, and a wife’s assistance in the manumission of her

husband. Widowed women were minimally represented (19.23%) during the first half of

the seventeenth century. Their activity was limited to two cases of assigning poderes and

three cases of selling their properties.


Between 1651 and 1699, markedly different results were found using marital

status. During this period, free women without cited spouses were responsible for all five

cases of manumission recorded, which accounted for 50% of activity by “unattached

women” among the seven primary business types. “Unattached women” also purchased

two properties and registered two wills, and, in one remarkable case, a free woman had a

poder assigned to her. Married women accounted for 33.33% of cases in the latter half of

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the seventeenth century, but registered fewer types of primary cases: three poderes, two

sales of property, one purchase of property, and one sale of a slave. Once again,

widowed women accounted for less than a fifth of all cases, registering two poderes and

selling two pieces of property.


Finally, between 1700 and 1725, the registered cases indicate greater parity

among women of all marital statuses. Women without cited spouses accounted for

33.33% of cases with most matters (50%) involving the sale of real estate. The other half

of cases brought by unattached women included one poder, one purchase of a slave, one

purchase of real estate, and one manumission of a family member. Married women

accounted for 37.59% of early eighteenth-century cases and they followed suit with

similar patterns of notarial activity. Married women found that selling their properties,

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whether because of serious necessity or as measured business decisions, provided

immediate profits. Married women also purchased nearly as many properties as they

sold. They also required the distribution of three poderes so that their assigned agents

could conduct business on their behalf. Testaments of married women for this period

reflected the same single entry pattern as the previous two intervals examined. The

number of cases involving free widowed women finally increased, representing 29.17%

of cases between 1700 and 1725. Widowed women, too, sold property as their principal

activity among the seven types of primary business surveyed. Their other activities

included the issuance of one poder, the sale of one slave, and the registration of two

wills, highlighting the increased diversity in the types of primary business in which they

engaged compared to the limited activity documented in the previous 100 years.

The multi-variant analysis of a small sample does not establish definitive patterns

for free women, but it provides suggestions about the ways in which women of different

marital statuses and means found themselves before notaries and their assistants. The

sale of property figured prominently for unattached, married, and widowed women, as

did the need for a legal agent through the bestowals of poderes issued exclusively to men

with the single exception of a Spanish man who requested a free woman as his

apoderada.14 Single women were the most likely to register primary business types and

widowed women the least. No women registered wills or codicils in the first half of the

seventeenth century, while single women in the latter half of the seventeenth century

accounted for all wills and codicils registered by African-descended women. Widowed

14 One who is empowered to serve as a legal representative for another through the registration of

a notarial poder, a legal proxy.

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women took this place when they registered two wills of free African-descended women.

While only one single woman registered a will between 1700 and 1725. Notably, only

free “unattached women” manumitted their slaves or assisted in the manumission of a

family member from 1651 to 1725, after half a century between 1600 and 1650 when one

married woman accounted for the solitary case of manumission involving free women.

As already mentioned, this small notarial pool likely cannot speak to greater trends in the

colony, nor does it provide statistically relevant data, but the cases may provide

instructive categories for further studies on free women of African descent in colonial

Mexico and indicate how best to subject their business interactions to multi-variant

applications.

The Intimate Public Life: Private concerns in Notarial Records

Ecclesiastical records of families paint a picture that is far more quantifiable than

the demographic profile based on notarial records. Variations of marriage partners can be

assessed. Legitimacy can be calculated and trends in godparentage can be established

mathematically. While parish archives document that Spanish women and men served as

godparents to African-descended children, they do not offer any clues as to how these

relationships were initiated. Was a negro father employed by the Spanish doña who was

his daughter’s madrina? Did a parda woman conduct business with a mostly mestizo-

clientele and find her groom among these connections? The notarial archives of Xalapa

offer rich sources that assist in rebuilding the social worlds of African-descended people

in the mid-colonial period. And while the notarial collections examined in this study

supplement the statistical analysis, they do not always corroborate the demographic

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landscape formed by data collected from the ecclesiastical archives. The most striking

example is that while marriage records evidence high levels of exogamy, the notarial

archive reveals a much different story. In 139 years of records (1586 to 1725), only a

handful of exogamous couples registered business with the notarial offices, distorting the

depiction of interracial relationships in Xalapa. What notarial records do contribute are

gradations of the lives of women of African descent as they left traces or lengthy trails of

themselves in public records that documented business but occasionally captured private

trepidations about life, family, and economic security.

The Pursuit of Liberty

The notarial records I reviewed chronicle the lives of free women of African

descent from 1586 to 1725.15 In this section, I explore the more intimate and familial

concerns of women. Women of African descent appeared in notarial records that

registered a wide variety of personal and business dealings. Some women notarized very

straightforward bills of purchase. For instance, María García and her husband Juan

Godínez, both free mulatos, bought a house and a plot of land for thirty-five pesos de oro

común that measured fifty square varas.16 However, many of the notarial entries that

dealt with more personal affairs were centered on slavery. Free women continued to find

themselves confronted with the tragedy of negotiating their own free lives with the

tenuous existence that their loved ones experienced as enslaved people, as was the case of

15 Archivo Notarial de Xalapa, La Unidad de Servicios Bibliotecarios y de Información (USBI), Colecciones Especiales, Universidad Veracruzana, Xalapa, Veracruz (ANX), Protocolos 1578-1594, Protocolos 1600-1617, Protocolos 1617-1651, Protocolos 1651-1674, Protocolos 1675-1699, Protocolos 1700-1706, Protocolos 1707-1712, Protocolos 1713-1719, Protocolos 1720-1725.

16 ANX, September 30, 1681, f 31vta - 32 bis fte. The measurement of a “vara” fluctuated with time and place. It roughly measured less than one meter, ~0.84 meters.

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a free negra named Micaela and her enslaved mulata criolla daughter Bernarda.17

Bernarda was the slave of Don Antonio de Orduña Loyando, the alcalde mayor18

of Xalapa. The notarial entry cites that she had been born in his parents’ home. Don

Antonio’s parents had bequeathed Bernarda to him and she had served as his slave since

he inherited her. Don Antonio was the owner of the sugar ingenio San Pedro Buena

Vista, the same prominent refinery discussed in the previous chapter. By 1657, when

Don Antonio registered her manumission card with the notarial offices, Bernarda was

“twenty-four or twenty-five” years old. The entry reads, “For just causes that move me

and the good service that she has provided me, I promised to give her freedom…I grant

her freedom so that she may have it today and onward and that she may spend no more

time in servitude.”19 Bernarda’s mother, Micaela, had also been Don Antonio’s slave at

one point, but documents do not specify when she was freed or whether she had bought

her freedom or if Don Antonio freed her without monetary compensation. As a free

mother, Micaela likely felt incredible gratitude that her daughter Bernarda was no longer

a slave. And as Bernarda’s manumission did not stipulate that she had to reimburse Don

Antonio for her value, Micaela and Bernarda both must have also been relieved that

Bernarda’s freedom did not cost them the insurmountable debt and annual payments that

would drain some African-descended families of any spare peso de oro común.

17 ANX, January 17, 1657, f 157fte - 157vta. 18 The alcalde mayor was an “Official appointed by the provincial governor to administer a district

composed of one or more towns and their countryside. The chief political and military officer in the district who presided over the cabildo meetings with a tie-breaking vote. He had judicial responsibility on a local or district level. Local chief magistrate and administrative officer of a province. Equivalent of a corregidor. Deputy governor.” Ophelia Marquez and Lillian Ramos Navarro Wold, eds. “Compilation of Colonial Spanish Terms and Document Related Phrases,” Accessed January 19, 2013, http://www.somosprimos.com/spanishterms/spanishterms.htm.

19 ANX, January 17, 1657, f 157fte - 157vta.

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Even non-compensatory manumissions came with a price of cultural capital that

tested whether free women had the legal knowledge to navigate estate law. Catalina20 de

Morales was a free mulata and vecina of Xalapa.21 She was also the mother of two

mulata daughters, Lucia de Vergara and Juana Moran Betancourt. Both Lucia and Juana

were slaves. Catalina was cited as the “madre legítima” (legitimate mother) of Lucia and

Juana, but the name of her husband or their father was never provided. Nor is Catalina

described as a widow. From the proceedings that she initiated, it does not appear that

being a woman without a sanctioned male relationship prevented her from utilizing the

legal system. On December 29, 1661, Catalina de Morales went before Alcalde Mayor

Don Antonio de Orduña Loyando to affirm an arrangement made between her and

Licenciado Juan de Bera Betancourt, a former beneficiado of the town of Tlacolulan in

the jurisdiction of Xalapa. Before the beneficiado had passed away, he included a

specific clause in his last will and testament that ordered his executors to follow through

with his intentions for Catalina de Morales’ two daughters. Catalina’s petition declared,

Per a clause in his last will and testament and by virtue of a poder granted to Don Alonso Gutierres de Cevallos and Diego de Bera Betancourt, his executors, [Licenciado Juan de Bera Betancourt wanted Catalina’s] mulata daughters to serve in the convent of the discalced nuns in the city of [Puebla] de Los Angeles. [And in the event] that they were not received through the doors, they should be conceded their liberty.

Catalina’s case before the alcalde mayor stated that her daughters Lucia and Juana had

not been admitted “[f]or it was against their constitutions.”

20 Also spelled “Cathalina” in the two-page petition. 21ANX, December 29, 1661, f 419fte - 419vta.

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It is unclear whether Catalina was referring to the constitutions of the convent of

Puebla or those of her daughters. While the petition does not document the name of the

convent, is it likely the Discalced Carmelite convent of San José in Puebla that was

founded in 1604.22 The convent was no stranger to women of African descent. In

Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches, Joan Cameron Bristol provides an extensive

profile of the exceptional case of an enslaved woman in this same convent named Juana

Esperanza de San Alberto, who would become a “nun revered for her piety.”23 Bristol

notes that Juana had been bequeathed to the convent as a child and had been there for

sixty-eight years as a servant when she fell ill in 1678.24 Juana Esperanza de San

Alberto’s chronology is important because that would mean that when Catalina’s two

mulata daughters, Lucia de Vergara and Juana Moran Betancourt, arrived in Puebla to be

received by the nuns, the convent had already had at least one highly lauded servant of

African descent for more than half a century. This is not to say that the discalced nuns of

the convent welcomed other women of African descent into their religious community as

servants. Bristol poignantly notes that the early biographers25 of Juana Esperanza

couched her life in “the language of exceptionalism [which] allowed her biographers to

assert that Esperanza was not representative of the spiritual potential of black women.”26

Bristol further notes that biographers positioned Esperanza’s story as that of a woman

22 Elizabeth Teresa Howe, Education and Women in the Early Modern Hispanic World

(Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2008), 86-87. 23 Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches, 24. 24 Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches, 23. 25 Joan Cameron Bristol provides an excellent summary of the function of “early modern vidas” or

biographies of men and women with exceptional religious experiences. Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches, 48-62.

26 Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches, 53.

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who succeeded in overcoming the “base qualities” of her African heritage to achieve

remarkable piety.27 While Catalina’s daughters might have been unruly or disrespectful

servants and viewed enslavement at a convent as against their “constitutions,” the nuns in

charge of the convent might have also decided it was against their constitutions to accept

more African-descended women since they were considered to have “base qualities.” As

the story of Juana Esperanza suggests, her contemporaries believed that it was truly

extraordinary for women of African descent to prevail over such perceived innate hurdles

to join a religious community. Perhaps this discrimination also included the choice of

servants at the Discalced Carmelite convent of San José, all the better for Catalina and

her two daughters.

Catalina’s defense of her daughters’ liberty did not rest on their mere rejection

from the convent; she called upon the influencing power of her patron’s right as a

slaveowner to dictate how and when his “goods” were dispersed. She further argued that

her daughters should, per the last will and testament of the beneficiado, “enjoy the

aforementioned liberty as they should enjoy the will of their aforementioned

slaveowner.” In the petition, Catalina stated that she had in her possession an edict by the

bishop and procedural documents from the vicar of the convent. With her daughters’

liberty at stake, Catalina de Morales arrived before the notarial authorities well-prepared,

not only with the language to make her case, but also with the documentation to secure

her family’s well-being. Most families of African descent, however, needed more than

paperwork to secure the freedom of their loved ones.

27 Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches, 54.

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Most people owed debt in colonial Xalapa, but not for all of the same reasons

found in cases involving African-descended families. One single mother of African

descent named Antonia de Sánchez relied on her three adult children to secure her

liberty.28 Juana Pascuala, a free mulata, and her two brothers, Christóbal Romero y

Gregorio Romero, took on considerable debt in order to free their mother. The

documents did not specify the residency of her brothers, but Juana Pascuala was a vecina

of Xalapa. And while Christóbal and Gregorio could sign their own names, Juana

Pascuala, who did not sign at the end of the four-page file, was the primary initiator of

the notarial case. All three were responsible for paying off a large debt of 252 pesos de

oro común to Juan Guerrero Basques, a vecino of La Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz. The

debt agreement noted that their mother Antonia had been the slave of Juan Bravo de

Alarcón, a vecino of Xalapa. There had been a lawsuit and a lien against the goods and

properties, which included slaves, that remained from Juan Bravo’s estate after his death.

Juan Guerrero Basques acted as administrator of Juan Bravo de Alarcón’s assets. The

documents read, “We are obligated to pay Juan Guerrero Basques…or to whom he

designates as a representative.” Fortunately for Antonia Sánchez’ family, Juana,

Christóbal, and Gregorio arranged for a nine-year payment plan with Juan Guerrero

Basques. The extended time frame for the settlement of the 252-peso de oro común debt

and the status of Antonia’s three adult children, provided optimal circumstances to allow

the family to remove their mother from enslavement and gradually to accumulate funds

for the planned installments.


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In the case of free morena Juana de la Cruz and her moreno husband Francisco

Camacho, the couple was saddled with a debt of 100 pesos de oro común owed to Juan

Martín de Abreo when they decided to purchase Francisco’s freedom.29 The entry,

registered on November 7, 1641, lacks biographical information for Juana, but a few

details about her husband were included in the purchase agreement. Francisco was

described as being approximately fifty years of age and originally from Palm Island of

the Canary Islands, located near the Northwest coast of mainland Africa.30 Juana and

Francisco became long-time residents of the central Veracruz region, but before they

could continue with their lives, they had to consider this debt, which would loom large

for them since it was cited as being due on April 7, 1642, giving the couple a mere six-

month window to raise the money. At first, this might appear to be an insurmountable

feat for Juana and newly-freed Francisco to accomplish. However, 100 pesos de oro

común was significantly below market value for an enslaved adult man, barring physical

disability or advanced age.

The low cost might have indicated a more personal relationship with Juan Martín

de Abreo, Francisco’s former slaveowner, or even perhaps an outside interest that

influenced his decision. Juan Martín de Abreo’s notarial life reveals little about his

relationships with the slaves who he owned, but we do have biographical details about his

life in Xalapa. Juan worked as a goods merchant in Xalapa from at least the 1620s and

consequently had business ties to many members of the jurisdiction’s elite. While he

owned slaves, he involved himself primarily in the trade of highly-desired foodstuffs,

29 ANX, November 7, 1641, f 211vta - 212vta. 30 ANX, November 7, 1641, f 210vta - 211fte.

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such as wine and oil.31 In 1621, he even rented a space for a store from the religious

brotherhood who ran the Hospital of Nuestra Señora de Convalescientes, a store located

conveniently a block away from the hospital.32 By 1638, Juan Martín de Abreo had

purchased a recua, perhaps to cut out the middleman-costs of having to hire arrieros

when his shipments of goods arrived from the port of Veracruz or Mexico City.33 In

November 1641, the same month and year as Francisco Camacho’s manumission, Juan’s

wife María Rodrígues finally appeared in his notarial records. By June 5, 1944, Juan

Martín de Abreo had passed away as his wife María was noted as a widow.34

Juan Martín de Abreo’s original manumission declaration for Francisco Camacho

was not located, precluding us from examining the language used when he agreed to

allow Francisco to purchase his freedom. However, perhaps the notarial appearance of

Juan’s wife, which coincided with Francisco’s case, moved him to decide to allow his

slave to live freely with his wife Juana de la Cruz. Fortunately, the recorded narrative of

the moreno couple did not end with indebtedness to Juan Martín de Abreo. They might

not have been the wealthiest couple of African descent in the seventeenth century but still

they demonstrated financial competency.

Seventeen years after the debt entry for the 100 pesos de oro común to Juan

Martín de Abreo, Juana de la Cruz and Francisco Camacho reappeared in the notarial

record, this time with a few notable additions to their entries and some evidence of

31 ANX, July 8, 1620 f 285vta - 286fte. 32 ANX, October 21, 1621, f 315vta - 316vta. 33 ANX, June 23, 1638, f 29vta - 30fte. 34 ANX, June 5, 1944, f 468fte - 468vta.

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upward mobility.35 At this point, both Juana and Francisco were described as free

negros, instead of morenos as they had been designated in the earlier notarial entry. By

1658, they must have opted to live closer to the coast, because they were described as

both vecinos of La Antigua Ciudad de Veracruz. During that time, the couple likely

needed someone to manage their affairs in Xalapa because they were no longer full-time

residents. They might also have required an agent because of their advanced years.

Although we do not know the age of Juana, Francisco Camacho would have been

approximately sixty-seven years old when he issued a poder to a vecino of Xalapa named

Bartolomé de Oliveros to serve as the couple’s legal proxy. Bartolomé was charged with

selling a plot of land that belonged to both Juana and Francisco. He eventually sold the

property for the price of twenty pesos de oro común. While the cost indicates a smaller

property than most others documented in the notarial archive, the record demonstrates

that the couple were landowners. Juana de la Cruz and Francisco Camacho, whether

morenos or negros, began their notarial life as many other people of African descent did

in the colonies, with the purchase of the liberty of a spouse. Francisco’s freedom resulted

in their being responsible for a debt five times greater than the house they would later

sell, but Juana and Francisco always appeared together in notarial transactions and they

always expressed their property as joint, shared goods. Their entries all demonstrate that

years of hard work, or luck, brought them economic opportunities in Xalapa and in La

Antigua Ciudad de Veracruz.

35 ANX, March 22, 1658, f 218fte - 218vta.

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Some women had resources to assist their husbands when freedom could be

purchased. Other women benefitted from advantageous patron-client relations that might

be important as they negotiated life with an enslaved spouse. On August 3, 1678, a

notarial entry documented that free mulata Antonia Hernándes was married to a negro

named Lorenzo Hernándes, a slave of Licenciado Don Juan de Bañuelos Cabessa de

Vaca, a cura beneficiado of Xalapa.36 A notarized document fourteen years later

indicates that while Don Juan de Bañuelos Cabessa de Vaca was her husband’s

slaveowner, the cura beneficiado was Antonia’s committed patron.37 On February 17,

1692, the licenciado registered a five-page codicil that included some twelve new clauses

to his will. The first addendum reads, “Firstly, I want, and it is my will, that to Antonia

Hernándes, parda libre who has served [me] and lives in my company…that over the

course of her life…she be given 30 pesos each year.” Antonia was not the only

beneficiary of African descent in the amended will. A free pardo named Miguel

Bañuelos received a one-time gift of twenty pesos de oro común. The licenciado also

instructed his executors to distribute thirty pesos de oro común to a free negra named

Juana Rodríguez Bañuelos and to her two mulato sons, Francisco and Juan, so that the

amount could be shared by all three. Antonia received the largest amount and Don Juan

de Bañuelos Cabessa de Vaca’s instruction that she be financially supported for the rest

of her days alludes to a much more invested relationship than that had by Juana

Rodríguez Bañuelos, who received only a ten-peso de oro común gift.

36 ANX, August 3, 1678, f 464vta - 465fte. 37 ANX, February 17, 1692, f 503fte - 505fte.

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No note is made of Antonia’s husband, Francisco, in Don Juan de Bañuelos

Cabessa de Vaca’s addendum. It is unclear whether Francisco was free by that time and

living and worked with his wife “in the company” of the cleric. Or, perhaps Francisco

was still enslaved or even already deceased. If he were still alive and not yet freed,

Antonia’s yearly stipend from Don Juan de Bañuelos Cabessa de Vaca could have helped

finance Francisco’s purchase from whoever inherited him as part of the licenciado’s

estate. Whatever circumstances Francisco faced, Antonia had her husband’s slaveowner

to thank for the financial security that she would benefit from for the rest of her life. The

knowledge that even if she never found another job, was too sick to work, or too old to

labor, thirty pesos de oro común would be distributed to her every year must have

comforted Antonia immeasurably.

Because of her limited notarial footprint, it is unknown whether Antonia urged

her benefactor to free her husband or whether the couple had to devise a plan to pay for

his freedom with the money she would inherit. Antonia’s case is left unresolved, but at

least one woman had to take a more active role when the freedom of her husband was at

stake. Catalina Perdomo was a free negra and the legitimate wife of Antonio de Yebra,

an enslaved negro.38 Both were vecinos of Xalapa. Unfortunately, Antonio de Yebra had

become involved in some unspecified legal trouble, and on April 26, 1693, his case was

pending before the Real Justicia of La Antigua Ciudad de Veracruz. Antonio required a

fiscal insurer and so his wife Catalina acted as his fiadora. Catalina’s implied resources

are not documented anywhere in the notarial archive, but she must have had some cash,

38 ANX, April 26, 1693, f 618vta - 619vta. In the documents, her name was also spelled

“Chatalina Perdomo.”

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goods, or real property to demonstrate that she was financially solvent enough to serve as

Antonio’s fiador. A matter concerning the Real Justicia in La Antigua Ciudad de

Veracruz may have warranted a more sizeable down payment than a thirty-peso home,

which suggest that Catalina may have owned a particularly desirable tract of land or had

a very profitable business.

Antonio’s legal troubles clearly jeopardized his life with his free wife. He was

identified as an enslaved man in the records, so perhaps he was being punished and sold

to another owner. Specifics regarding the legal proceedings were not included in this

entry but Catalina’s determination to see that her husband was not sold away is clear in

the case material registered. The notarial order specified that in the event that Antonio

were to be sentenced to slavery he should not be handed over to an unknown owner.

Instead, a vecina of Xalapa named Doña Ana de Lara had authorized Capitán Don

Francisco de Arriaga to act in her stead and pay the cost of Antonio’s value to the

intended slave owner if he were to be sold. Doña Ana must have had quite a bit of

disposable income if she was willing to pay an undetermined sum of money for

Antonio’s freedom. Doña Ana de Lara’s relationship to Catalina Perdomo and Antonio

de Yerba was not specified and this case was her only entrée into the notarial archive.

Having a wealthy Spanish patroness along with a wife who had the resources to be a

financial backer likely protected Antonio from the tragic fate of being shipped away from

his free wife and their life in Xalapa.

Not all enslaved husbands were as fortunate to have such women in their lives.

On November 23, 1694, a free mulata named Gertrudis witnessed what many of the

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African diaspora in colonial Spanish American would have to experience, the insecurity

of having an enslaved spouse owned by a powerful and wealthy español.39 Gertrudis’

thirty-three year old mulato husband Nicolas was the slave of the alcalde mayor of

Xalapa, Capitan Don Juan Francisco de Herrera. The notarial entry states that Capitan

Don Juan Francisco sold Nicolas for 300 pesos de oro común to Capitan Don Juan de

Santiago, a vecino of Puebla de los Angeles. And with a simple property purchase

agreement between the two men, Gertrudis had to consider what she would do when her

husband, a slave, was transferred over to his new owner in Puebla. Would this free

mulata petition the Church to intervene on her behalf as others did?40 If Gertrudis had

been an active presence in the religious community, she might have publicly established

herself as a faithful Catholic who could call upon a cleric to protect her right to a

conjugal life with her husband. Herman Bennett asserts, “Appeals to matrimony or the

maintenance of a Christian marriage energized the clergy to act swiftly on behalf of the

supplicants.”41 However, as a free woman, the priest might have advised her to relocate

to preserve the conjugality of her marriage, which would provide a well-meaning cleric

with the means to uphold the Church’s stance on protecting a Catholic sacrament but also

sidestep the possibility of offending powerful Spanish patrons.

As a relatively young man with no apparent disfigurements, according to the bill

of sale, Nicolas would likely serve at least another twenty years before his slaveowner

would consider a non-compensatory manumission. If Capitán Don Juan de Santiago

39 ANX, November 23, 1694, f 135vta - 136fte. 40 Herman Bennett discusses cases in which men and women of African descent petitioned priests

to prevent slaveowners from selling their spouses. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico, 128-130. 41 Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico, 128.

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wanted Nicolas’ full purchasing price, would Gertrudis have the resources to buy her

husband’s freedom? With a recent valuation at 300 pesos de oro común, it would likely

take her a considerable amount of time before that was a possibility if she did not own

personal property or a private business. Would she be forced to uproot her life to follow

her husband if she could not buy his freedom? Given that the notarial entry did not

document last names for either her or her husband, Gertrudis was likely not in a position

economically to purchase Nicolas’ liberty immediately. Nor did Gertrudis appear to have

the social capital to call upon a wealthy patroness as Catalina Perdomo did in the

previous case. Without any noted resources and without any other further notarial entries

documenting her life, Gertrudis probably believed that she had no recourse to challenge

the decisions of the alcalde mayor of Xalapa or a capitán-don of Puebla.

The insecurity of having enslaved family members is a prominent narrative in

Xalapa’s notarial archive. As witnessed with Gertrudis, not all women of African

descent had families they could rely on to purchase their freedom or altruistic fellow

vecinas to intervene with a substantial financial contribution to save an imprisoned

spouse. Sometimes assistance came from unexpected places because of connections

made and sustained over great distances. On February 10, 1620, a recua owner named

Jerónimo de la Vega from Puebla de los Angeles notarized that he owed 500 pesos de oro

común to a regidor42 from Mexico city named Luis Pacho Mejía who paid for the liberty

42 A regidor is described as “City councilman, whose most important duties in the sixteenth

century, dealt with supervising foodstuffs and the distribution of public lands. He was appointed directly by the King and his duration of office was five years. His salary was 1,800 or 2,000 pesos in gold annually.” Ophelia Marquez and Lillian Ramos Navarro Wold, eds. “Compilation of Colonial Spanish Terms and Document Related Phrases,” Accessed January 19, 2013, http://www.somosprimos.com/spanishterms/spanishterms.htm.

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of an enslaved morena named Ana Zavala and her six- (or seven-) year-old mulata

daughter, Ananina.43 Two days later, Ana Zavala registered her first entry as a free

woman with the notary public.44 Ana was cited as the former slave of Contador Alonso

de Villanueva and his wife Doña María de Zavala. The case notes that she and her

daughter lived at the ingenio Nuestra Señora de los Remedios in the jurisdiction of

Xalapa. Ana’s entry sheds more light on some of the circumstances that would have

precipitated a recua owner from Puebla to have obligated a regidor from Mexico City to

pay for her and her daughter’s freedom. The first clarification establishes that Jerónimo’s

“gift” was actually a loan. The notarized document outlines that repayment of the loan

was to be made in the following manner: Ana had to make the first payment of 125 pesos

de oro común in exactly one year’s time and make 125-peso de oro común payments on

the same date in the three subsequent years.

As a newly free woman with a child to care for, Ana Zavala would face

tremendous sacrifices to collect such an amount in a four-year time span. She likely

would not even have the resources to piece together the money for the first payment.

Ana noted in the entry that Jerónimo made the loan because of their “amistad,” or

friendship. As a recua owner in Puebla, Jerónimo might have met Ana while he

conducted transportation business in Xalapa. Ana was the slave of a doña and a Crown

treasury official, so Jerónimo might have had a contract with them and had the

opportunity to know Ana incidentally. Whatever the terms of their friendship, it was

likely not as intimate as it would initially appear. A 500-peso de oro común debt with a

43 ANX, February 10, 1620, f 256fte - 256vta. 44 ANX, February 12, 1620, f 258vta - 259vta.

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four-year deadline was a hardship that would test the “amistad” of even two great

Shakespearean lovers.

Blended Families, Legitimate Birth, and Rightful Claims

As was discussed in the previous chapter, children of African descent were born

to legitimate parents at rates as high as 63%,45 socially marking them and their families as

more closely approximating Spanish ideals. If we include boys and girls living in two-

parent households with the percentage of legitimately united parents, the data suggests

that by the early eighteenth century, 88%46 of children of African descent, lived at the

time of confirmation in a home with both their mother and father, which likely meant

greater opportunities for the children’s upward economic mobility. Still, we know that

“good” or “stable” homes were not always the ones where both parents resided, not even

if they were married under the tenets of the Catholic Church. Gertrudis del Barrio, a free

parda, was the legitimate daughter of Francisco del Barrio and Feliciana Hernández.47

However, Francisco and Feliciana did not raise Gertrudis and they were not designated as

deceased in the notarial archive. Fortunately for Gertrudis, she was not relegated to the

life of a begging orphaned child or taken in as a charge of a parish where she would

likely have had to work as a slave even though she was born free. A widow named Juana

de Orantes, with no cited ties to Francisco or Feliciana, raised Gertrudis and, from the

available notarial records, always treated Gertrudis as her own daughter.

A few details about the life of Juana de Orantes’ are divulged in the notarial

45 Legitimacy rate for Xalapa as recorded in the 1712 confirmation records. 46 Data based on the 1728 confirmation records. 47 ANX, December 22, 1708, f 167vta - 169fte.

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documents. Juana is cited as a vecina of Xalapa. She was married but her husband,

Antonio de los Santos, had already passed away when her notarial life began. Juana and

Antonio never had any children and did not designate any other biological heirs. A

Spanish woman named Juana de Orantes appeared in the parish archives on August 25,

1668 to serve as godmother for a mulata girl named Luisa whose mother was a free

morena named Ageda María.48 Juana’s spouse was not cited in the baptism entry and

Juana was not designated as an española in the notarial case, so it is uncertain if it is the

same woman as in the notarial record. If the two women were one and the same, then

Juana had more than one connection to the free African-descended population in Xalapa.

On December 12, 1708, Juana de Orantes donated a plot of land and a house to

her adopted daughter Gertrudis. The property was centrally located on Calle Real

towards the main public plaza, and the plot measured thirty-five varas in the front and

forty-five towards the back. The stipulation in the transfer of property was that Getrudis

del Barrio was to pay for Juana de Orantes’ burial when she passed away. Gertrudis did

not hold on to Juana’s donation for very long. Five years later, Gertrudis appeared before

the notary public to sell it.49 She found a buyer, Juan Joseph Rincón, and was able to turn

her adopted mother’s generosity into a profit of thirty-seven pesos de oro común. The

sale agreement noted that Gertrudis had begun to start her own family, having married a

man of unstated caste or race named Manuel Francisco. However, by at least 1713, she

too was a widow. Juana de Orantes, on the other hand, was still alive. The selling of the

house after her husband’s death might have been a way for Gertrudis to raise some

48 AEP, Bautizos Caja 1, 1666-1689, Libro 1, August 25, 1668. 49 ANX, February 2, 1713, f 81vta - 83fte.

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liquidity, but she may also not have needed it any longer and sought out the familiar

companionship of her adopted mother. Gertrudis may have moved in again with Juana,

mother and daughter together again under one roof, living out their days as widows. A

home bounded not by legitimately tied parents, but by the generosity of a woman who

shared her life and her wealth with a free parda girl who needed her.

Gertrudis was adopted and still was able to claim legitimacy through her absent,

but married, parents. She was also able to enjoy a life of relative economic comfort,

which is what most parents sought out for their children. One woman of African descent

in Xalapa was determined to accomplish economic stability not for her child but through

him. In 1641, Teresa López, a free morena, took decisive action to secure her economic

well-being by claiming her rights as a mother through the proper legal channels.50 Teresa

López was the legitimate wife of Spaniard Bartolomé de Betancourt. She and her

husband resided at the sugar refinery Nuestra Señora de los Remedios in the jurisdiction

of Xalapa. Before she married Bartolomé de Betancourt, Teresa López had a relationship

with a man named Andrés Domínguez. She did not specify whether the relationship was

serious or casual, but it did result in the birth of her son, Miguel Domínguez.51 Miguel

was labeled as an hijo natural in the documents, signaling that whether Teresa and

Andrés were in a committed, loving relationship or not, they were not lawfully married in

the Catholic Church. In addition, the records identify Teresa’s son as a mestizo even

though she is clearly designated as a woman of African descent.

Miguel’s father, Andrés Domínguez, apparently did not initially believe that

50 ANX, November 8, 1641, f 217fte - 218fte 51 ANX, December 6, 1643, f 428vta - 430vta.

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Miguel was his child, as it was noted that paternity was not acknowledged until Andrés

was dying. However, as the child was eventually legally recognized, young Miguel

Domínguez was due his part of his biological father’s inheritance. Before it could be

claimed on his behalf, Miguel had passed away at roughly the age of three. Infant and

childhood mortality rates were high throughout the seventeenth century, and a toddler’s

early passing was not uncommon. According to death records in Xalapa’s parish archive,

a number of young children passed away without any noted explanation in the early

1700s. On August, 29, 1704, María de la Asunsión and Gregorio Albares, both free

pardos, buried their one-year-old hija legítima Francisca without a note from the parish

recorder regarding possible cause of death.52 Some parents had even less time with their

children. On September 2, 1705, newborn Clara was only 24 days old when she passed

away without a stated cause.53

Baby Miguel might have also succumbed to one of the many pestilences and

deadly fevers ushered into Xalapa by the constant stream of travelers from Mexico City

or the Port of Veracruz. Burial records from the parish archive evidence that an outbreak

of illnesses occurred in the Port in the mid-seventeenth century. In the summer of 1650,

the parish of Xalapa buried three free mulato men within days each other. The parish

record keeper noted that the men had died of the “mal pestilente de Veracruz,” or “bad

pestilence from Veracruz Port.” The first man, Juan Alonso, a vecino of Mexico City,

died on July 24, 1650.54 The second man, Lorenso Martín, from Puebla de los Angeles,

52 AEP, ECB Collection, Entierros Caja 1, Libro 1, August, 29, 1704. 53 AEP, ECB Collection, Entierros Caja 1, Libro 1, September 2, 1705. 54 AEP, ECB Collection, Entierros Caja 1, Libro 1, July 29, 1650, f 262fte-262vta.

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died five days after Juan Alonso.55 A few days later on August 2, 1650, Diego de Perea

from Mexico City passed away from the same bad pestilence from Veracruz.56 None of

the men appear to have known either of the others, but they were all in the same business.

Juan and Lorenso were both noted as arrieros (but not of the same companies), and

Diego was cited as a recua employee. They may have died of completely unrelated

causes, but the rhetoric of Xalapa’s clergy makes it clear that they believed that men in

the transportation business were once again bringing the “mal pestilente” from the humid

and disease-ridden Port of Veracruz.

Whatever the ailment was that claimed the life of three-year-old Miguel, Teresa

López knew her rights and the legal implications of the deaths of both her son’s father

and the child. On November 8, 1641, with the approval of her husband Bartolomé de

Betancourt, Teresa López took her case to probably the most powerful man whom she

knew and signed over a poder to Licenciado Gabriel de Pantoja, a lawyer of the Real

Audiencia of New Spain, the highest tribunal of the Spanish Crown in the viceroyalty.

She charged him with traveling to the city of Puebla de Los Angeles in order to confront

the executors of her son’s father’s will and have them hand over what was rightfully hers;

all money, goods, or property that would have been bequeathed to her deceased son,

Miguel Domínguez. She argued that as his mother, it was now legally hers to claim, and

Teresa López seemed to know that choosing someone of Licenciado Gabriel de Pantoja’s

stature would ensure that legal proceedings would run smoothly and in her favor. Her

55 AEP, ECB Collection, Entierros Caja 1, Libro 1, July 24, 1650, f 263fte. 56 AEP, ECB Collection, Entierros Caja 1, Libro 1, August 2, 1650, f 264fte.

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strategy seemed to have been successful, but only partially so, because a few months

later, she returned to the notarial offices to issue a poder in order to claim the rest of the

inheritance.57 On February 8, 1642, Teresa López bestowed her representative authority

to Licenciado Andrés Juarez de Arce to travel to Puebla de Los Angeles and “judicially

request and recover all goods, furniture, real property, and other things” left by her son’s

father.

Teresa López could not be accused of being insufficiently litigious. She

continued to pursue the executors until they complied fully and turned over everything

they owed her from the estate. On December 6, 1643, Teresa López temporarily

suspended the poder issued to Licenciado Andrés Juarez de Arce and issued a final poder

regarding this matter, this time to her legitimate husband, Bartolomé de Betancourt.58

Perhaps displeased with how her two previous representatives served in her legal stead,

Teresa López might have felt more confident with her husband, a Spanish man who

would directly benefit from the matter, to resolve finally the inheritance dispute and

claim the “pesos de oro común” that had not yet been transferred to her. Although the

final result of this poder is not documented in the notarial archive, Teresa López’

determination over more than two years of legal action in order to collect her late son’s

rightful inheritance leads one to believe that she pursued the executors living in Puebla de

Los Angeles from her residence in Xalapa via legal representation until she and her

husband had accounted for every last peso.

Teresa López did not have to establish that she was in a lawful relationship with

57 ANX, February 8, 1642, f 249vta - 251fte. 58 ANX, December 6, 1643, f 428vta - 430vta.

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Andrés Domínguez in order to lay claim to her son’s rightful inheritance because Andrés

freely admitted before a notary that he acknowledged Miguel as his own, even if he did

so on his deathbed. Some legal matters were far more complex and required the

participation of many more actors. María de la Candelária, a free parda, was one of the

most active widows of African descent found in the seventeenth-century notarial archives

of Xalapa, and she was not even a resident of the jurisdiction but a vecina of La Nueva

Ciudad de Veracruz.59 María and her late husband Diego Ordóñez had had five children

– Francisca, Juana, María, Mariana, and Joseph, all of whom were designated as

legitimately born. In one month’s time, the widow María was named as the primary

agent or secondary actor to six pieces of notarial business. Five of these took place on

March 30, 1685, perhaps because María was trying to avoid multiple trips to Xalapa.

María’s husband Diego Ordóñez left a substantial estate to her and to his children.

María, who served as the administrator of Diego’s assets for her four daughters, first

issued a poder to her son Joseph, who was over the age of twenty-five, so that in her

name he could sell his late father’s acres of land and livestock grazing sites located on the

edge of Xalapa’s borders.60 The documents noted that Diego Ordóñez had received these

lands as a generous donation from Doña Luisa Ordóñez, the widow of Manuel Rodríguez

de Amaya, but did not specify the relationship between the two.

The next four entries registered on March 30, 1685, dealt with a much more

personal family matter concerning María de la Candelária and her husband Diego

Ordóñez. The first of these cases involved the solicitation of Señor Capitán Don Andrés

59 ANX, March 30, 1685, f 238fte - 239fte. 60 ANX, March 30, 1685, f 238fte - 239fte.

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García de la Peña, the alcalde ordinario of La Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz, to authenticate

the legitimacy of her five children with Diego. The document reads in the first person,

“[W]e appear here…to establish and ascertain…that between me, María de Candelária,

and Diego Ordóñez, my deceased husband, we had and procreated legitimate children,

Francisca, Juana, María, Mariana, and the aforementioned Joseph. And as legitimate

children, any reales or goods that may have been left [by Diego], correspond and belong

to them.” The statement concludes with, “We ask for justice [in this matter].”

The next three entries involved the presentation of witnesses who claimed to attest

to the validity of María de la Candelária’s declaration that she was the lawful wife of

Diego Ordóñez and that all of her children were legítimos. María and Joseph presented

Francisco Maldonado before the notarial offices to testify on their behalf.61 Francisco, a

free pardo and a vecino, testified that he had known Diego and María for more than thirty

years. Francisco declared that he had “seen them legally married” and that all five

children were hijos legítimos. He might have meant that he had seen the couple “act”

legally married and not that he attended an actual wedding ceremony. María and Joseph

also presented Manuel de Ortega, another free pardo.62 Manuel asserted that he knew

María and that he had seen her in a “married life” with Diego Ordóñez. He stated that he

knew them to have five legitimate children, whom he saw María and Diego care for and

feed. Francisco nor Manual testified that they had been listening to mass when María and

Joseph’s impending nuptials had been announced three Sundays in a row prior to the

wedding. Neither man noted that they had enjoyed the festivities that followed but both

61 ANX, March 30, 1685, f 241fte. 62 ANX, March 30, 1685, f 242vta.

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confirmed that María and Diego had lived a “married life” and “acted” as if they were

lawfully joined together by the Church, and for some couples that was enough for others

to believe that the couple was legitimate. Steve Stern argues, “The key point in

determining social respectability and quasi-marital obligation outside formal marriage

was intention and appearance rather than marriage itself.”63 The notarial authorities, and

likely María and Joseph, must have understood the inherent ambiguity of the statements

offered by Francisco and Manuel, and the apparent need for someone who could offer

more definitive testimony with regard to the legitimacy of María and Diego’s

relationship.

A third witness called to testify was Licenciado Don Juan Sánchez de Tovar, a

presbítero and vecino of Xalapa. Licenciado Don Juan Sánchez de Tovar asserted that he

knew both María de Candelária and Diego Ordóñez. His testimony reads, “[I knew that]

they were married and velados according to the order of our Holy Church. Because I saw

them in a married life, they had legitimate children.” When the presbítero named all five

children, he added that Joseph was present in Xalapa and that Mariana was in Mexico

City at the time of the entry. When he cited María, he casually added, “who was taken

prisoner by the enemy.” The archivists and paleographers at the Universidad

Veracruzana - Xalapa campus believe that “the enemy” refers to the infamous pirate

Lorencillo, who held La Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz hostage for nearly two weeks in May

1683.64

63 Stern, The Secret History of Gender, 271. 64 For a more detailed account of the 1683 pirate attack on Veracruz, see David F. Marley Sack of

Veracruz Sack of Veracruz and Pirates: The Great Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor, Ontario, Canada:

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Not only had María Candelária provided an unassailable witness who would have

known if María and Diego had followed the proper protocol of a religious union, the

presbítero assisted her enterprise for restitution of her rights by calling on the power of

recent memory. Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn de Graaf, or Lorencillo, was a native of

Holland who had been recruited by a Spanish fleet bound for the American colonies.65 In

a few short years, the Dutch buccaneer made a name for himself by terrorizing the

Caribbean, overtaking important vessels and demanding ransom from what was believed

to be an incredible sacking of Veracruz Port. On May 17, 1683, Lorencillo approached

the port of Veracruz bent on what would become one of Mexico’s “most alarming raids

of the century.”66 Pirates overtook the port’s island fortress, San Juan de Ulúa, ransacked

and looted elite homes, and rounded up officials and their families while others hid in

fear for their lives. For nearly two weeks, the residents of Veracruz lived in fear that

their beloved city would be left in shambles or, worse, that they would all be murdered.

In the middle of this, we find the innocent, unmarried (virginal?) daughter of

María de la Candelária and her legitimate husband Diego Ordóñez. The narrative aside

about “the enemy” offered by Licenciado Don Juan Sánchez de Tovar would have

elicited a visceral response from people all over the region, and perhaps across the

colony. That a widowed woman petitioning for “justice” in a private family matter had

also been victimized by the hated scoundrel Lorencillo, who had devastated the lives of

thousands in Veracruz Port just two years prior, positioned María as a thoroughly Netherlandic Press, 1993). For a history of pirating and buccaneering in the Golf Coast region, see Juan Juarez Moreno, Corsarios y Piratas en Veracruz y Campeche (Sevilla, Spain: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos de Sevilla, 1972).

65 Marley, Sack of Veracruz, 8. 66 Vinson, “Articulating Space,” 159

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aggrieved mother. Through careful selection of the witnesses she called upon, María had

skillfully orchestrated a narrative that featured her as the archetype of the pitiable female

protagonist. As further investigation into her notarial life reveals, María de la Candelária

was far from destitute.

On April 26, 1685, Joseph went on his mother’s behalf to register the final entry

in the notarial archive by the Candelária-Ordóñez family. 67 With María de la

Candelária’s permission, he sold a significant combination of properties in the

jurisdiction of Xalapa to Francisco Hernández, a vecino of the town of Ixhuacán de los

Reyes.68 For 400 pesos de oro común, the Candelária-Ordóñez family relinquished two

grazing areas for smaller animals, such as sheep or pigs. The first was located on the

outskirts of Chiltoyac and measured three acres. The second was located about a league

and a half from Ixhuacán and two leagues from Xalapa and measured two acres. The

second pasture also had the advantage of being located near the Joloatl River.

Importantly, this entry finally explains how Diego Ordóñez had received these lands.

The March 30, 1685 documents cited only that Doña Luisa Ordóñez had given Diego

some properties. The April 26, 1865 bill of sale specifies that Doña Luisa Ordóñez was

Diego’s wealthy and generous aunt.

This additional information suggests that María de la Candelária might have had

more in common with Teresa López than initially revealed. Both women had to gather a

whole team of legal representatives and witnesses to prove that they had rightful claims

to the relationships in their lives, whether sanctioned or unsanctioned. Not only were

67 ANX, April 26, 1685, f 242fte - 243fte. 68 ANX, April 26, 1685, f 242fte - 243fte.

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María and Teresa pursuing public acknowledgements for their children, but they also

wanted the right to access the financial holdings of the wealthy men with whom they had

relationships. María might have wanted to bring in three witnesses, one a presbítero, to

prove that she was still an upstanding colonial subject who wanted to ensure that her

children continued to enjoy unquestioned legitimacy for potential material benefits later

in life. Although more widely documented among the Spanish elite, 69 African-

descended women also understood legitimacy as socially important. However, it was

more probable that María de la Candelária was suddenly motivated to prove that her adult

children were legitimate so that she could access the land that her husband had inherited.

Whether African-descended women were the legitimate wives or lovers, the men’s

families, who had greater cited economic opportunities, likely were not as welcoming to

the mulatas and pardas who sought legal redress that would yield them money and

properties and perhaps some confirmation as to their social status.

Religious Expression

Legal proceedings to confirm one’s legitimate rights were not the only public

demonstrations that united public and private concerns. Free women of African descent

were active in religious life, demonstrated by their presence as godmothers more often

than free men were named as godfathers. However, some free women of means found

more public ways to express their religious convictions. María Godínez was a free

69 Twinam discusses the specific consequences and benefits of legitimacy among elites. Twinam,

Public Lives, Private Secrets, 46-47.

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morena (sometimes noted as a free parda) and homeowner in Xalapa.70 She must have

been fairly well settled economically because at some point in the late seventeenth

century, María had established a capellanía.71 A capellanía was a private chapel founded

by individuals, often so that masses could be said for their souls. It required a principal

sum of money or the value of the property was assessed to determine the amount that

would yield its 5% annual interest. This interest would then be used to pay the cost of the

cleric who would administer mass at the chapel. On October 22, 1691, the Bachiller

Manuel del Posso, who was the vicar and ecclesiastical judge of the ingenio La Santísima

Trinidad, was cited as the administrator of María Godínez’ capellanía. Bachiller del

Posso also mentioned in the notarial case that in addition to María’s chapel, he managed

the capellanía founded by Don Francisco de Leiva Irasi, the corregidor (district

magistrate) and lieutenant general of Veracruz. Don Francisco’s chapel was founded

with an initial investment of 1,000 pesos de oro común, while María financed her

capellanía with 400 pesos de oro comun. Others in Xalapa endowed their capellanías

with principal sums between 500 and 3,000 pesos de oro común, marking them as elite

religious endeavors.72 María Godínez’ chapel may not have been as generously backed

as the lieutenant general’s, but she sought to demonstrate her religious identity and her

economic standing through the investment in a chapel where masses could be said for her

spiritual fortification by a well-connected cleric.

70 ANX, January 31, 1693, f 584vta - 587fte. 71 ANX, October 22, 1691, f 445vta - 447vta. 72 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 408.

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A modest display of religious commitment by one young woman demonstrates

that even those who could not afford to finance their own chapels were still concerned

about the welfare of their eternal souls in relation to the consecration offered by particular

religious properties. On March 6, 1668, a twelve-year-old mulata named Ana Ruiz had a

unique reason for visiting the notarial offices.73 She was the hija natural of Ana María, a

vecina of Xalapa. In a notarial declaration that served as her last will and testament, Ana

Ruiz made a somber request as she lay sick in bed. The notary’s dictation reads, “She

said that it was her wish that God…rid her of her illness or that her body be buried in the

Church of the Señor San Francisco.” Ana’s request referred to burial at the Monastery of

San Francisco, an appeal often found in wills of Xalapa’s elite. Bermúdez Gorrochotegui

notes, “Before dying, Spaniards of a certain heritage and lineage ordered their relatives to

have their bodies enterred preferably inside the interior of the church of the Convent of

San Francisco.”74 Ana Ruiz’s resources and financial standing are unclear. Ana named

her mother as her sole heir and tenedora of whatever goods she might have had. She was

“of a certain heritage” as a mulata but she included no details about her resources to

determine whether she was truly a woman of means or merely a sick parishioner with one

last favor to ask of her religious leaders. Ana may have been short on funds, and likely

on hope too, but she was clear on the expectation that as a Catholic she had the right to

request that the sanctity of her interred body be respected and laid to rest where she had

indicated. In an examination of the existing, but largely incomplete, burial records for

Xalapa during the seventeenth century, I found no record for Ana Ruiz, precluding us

73 ANX, March 6, 1668, f 139vta - 140fte. 74 My translation, Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 408.

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from knowing whether the twelve-year old got the final rest that she wanted at the

cemetery of the Monastery of San Francisco.

Protecting Womanhood

Protecting familial honor through the sexual purity of the female body figures

conspicuously in the historiography of women75 but also in the regulatory edicts issued

by the Spanish Crown and his colonial proxies.76 The safeguarding of a woman’s

virginity was often posited as an elite Spanish cultural norm, one in which the entire

family was invested and in which men of the family took pride and on which they based

their honor.77 The price of losing that honor before marriage could be the stigmatization

of families, which would challenge their ability to find ideal marriage partners for eligible

75 There has been significant work on questions related to preoccupation with female sexuality, the

politics of an honorable woman, and social consequences of breaching the codes of respectability. Many of these narratives are based in familial concerns of the maintenance of an idealized public reputation garnered through the virtue of womanhood. While colonial edicts do appear, attempts at controlling women and their bodies through Church and community self-regulation predominated. See: Mannarelli, Private Passions and Public Sins, 97-126; Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets, 59-88; Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico, 102-108; Richard Boyer, Lives of the Bigamists, 109-164.

76 Julia Tuñón Pablos notes early royal concerns regarding the “type” of woman authorities would allow to travel to New Spain, She writes, “A 1554 royal letter ordered officials of the House of Trade in Seville to see that ‘women be obliged to provide information on their cleanliness, as men [must do], and not to let any [women] through without express permission”; it also prohibited the departure of gypsies and persons of ‘loose morals’.” Julia Tuñón Pablos, Women in Mexico: Past Unveiled, 24. Of the viceroyalty of Peru, María Emma Mannarelli describes early seventeenth-century efforts to control women’s behavior. She writes, “In his 1604 report to his successor, the viceroy Luis de Velasco (1595-1603), complained about the behavior of Lima’s women. The ‘laziness and abundance of luxuries’ were, by his account, a breeding ground for female sexuality. He requested permission to build a house of retreat where ‘wicked and insolent’ women could be kept. This would serve to intimidate other women and keep them from behaving in disgraceful ways.” María Emma Mannarelli, Private Passions and Public Sins, 101. Importantly, Robert Slenes argues that in the case of enslaved African-descended women in the Brazilian historiography, “The image of slave promiscuity was drawn from an uncritical reading of nineteenth century accounts left by Europeans travellers and well-to-do Brazilians…Their distortion of the experience of slave women was particularly severe.” Robert W. Slenes, “Black Homes, White Homilies: Perceptions of the Slave Family and of Slave Women in Nineteenth-Century Brazil,” in More than Chattel, 126-146. I argue that the same could be said of the Mexican historiography when African-descended people are posited as people who did not share Spanish ideals of the family and female respectability.

77 Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey, 66. For a more in-depth discussion of female honor and social hierarchies, see María Emma Mannarelli, Private Passions and Public Sins, 97-126.

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daughters and challenge their claims of respectability.78 How seriously families took

their responsibility of safeguarding the virginity of female family members may have

depended on the family’s wealth or social rank.79 What one case in Xalapa demonstrates

is that the preoccupation with virginity was not the sole domain of the Spanish elite. On

January 19, 1702, a man named Juan Verdugo sat in the public jail of Xalapa.80 He

called upon a fiador named Andrés de Castro to front the seventy pesos de oro común he

needed to make bail. His crime? Juan had “deflowered” a mulata woman named

Bernabela. In Private Passions and Public Sins, María Emma Mannarelli argues,

“Sexual relations outside of marriage were considered a serious offense. Virginity

nevertheless had a price that varied according to who the deflowered woman was.”81 The

social price might have been a loss of public reputation, but the courts also decided to

exact a price on the male offender, which began with the large sum of seventy pesos de

oro común.

Imprisonment of the male “delinquent” was also a common course of action by

local police in response to allegations that a man had broken his promise to marry a

woman after wooing her with his “solemn word” in order to begin a sexual relationship.

Patricia Seed notes that a local jail was not the only threat of punishment possible. She

writes, “Offenders were given the opportunity to marry or be sent to the Philippines to

work on His Majesty’s fortresses, a severe punishment for breaching the code of

78 Twinam discusses the importance of “public persona” tied to women’s bodies. Her examination

of the practice of private pregnancies to guard against negative social effects, most directly speaks to this issue. Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets, 60-73.

79 Mannarelli, Private Passions and Public Sins, 106. 80 ANX, January 19, 1702, f 138fte - 138vta. 81 Mannarelli, Private Passions and Public Sins, 106.

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honor.”82 Fines against the men would later be more common as a compensatory option

to a forced marriage.83 Although this notarial entry did not specify that this was a case of

broken promises, it certainly has many of the characteristics that easily fit with the

narratives of women who became sexually involved with men who had no intention of

fulfilling the engagement promise. With the need for seventy pesos de oro común and a

fiador, perhaps Juan Verdugo began to calculate the costly mistake he had made in

besmirching Bernabela’s honorable status as a virgin.

The lack of information on Bernabela tells its own story. Bernabela had neither a

cited last name nor age, but she was identified as a vecina, so she was likely an adult at

the time that Juan’s fiador was notarized. Not having a last name might have indicated

that Bernabela was of limited means. In a case of lost virginity and possible familial

shame, the exclusion of her surname might have been done purposely to protect her

identity and preserve the honor of her family.84 Additionally, Bernabela status as a

mulata makes this an exceptional case. While Seed asserts that African-descended and

indigenous people did not “share the Spanish reverence for virginity,” Bernabela and her

family must have comprised the demographic of “mixed persons” who Seed notes as

people who had “assimilated or inherited Spanish ideas about social respectability.”85

Given the exorbitant bail, twice the price of houses in Xalapa, her family or the judge

82 Seed, “Marriage Promises and the Value of a Woman’s Testimony in Colonial Mexico,” Signs

13, no. 2 (Winter, 1988), 260. 83 Seed, “Marriage Promises,” 267. 84 Twinam discusses the practices of protecting the identity of women who had given birth to

illegitimate children to preserve the public reputations of their families and of themselves. Twinam, Private Lives, Public Secrets, 63-64. Also, Seed, “Marriage Promises and the Value of a Woman’s Testimony in Colonial Mexico,” 256.

85 Seed, “Marriage Promises,” 255.

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understood a serious crime had taken place and held Juan accountable for the offense

against Bernabela and the potential public infamy he had invoked against her unnamed

family.

Familial honor was on the line even when marriage proposals accompanied the

loss of virginity. In Xalapa, African-descended families sought to defend their daughters

through the legal system as Spanish families did. On July 20, 1716, a vecino of Xalapa

named Alberto Fernández found himself imprisoned in the city’s public jail.86 He too

required a fiador and asked a free pardo named Bartolomé Bustillos to pay for bail,

although it was not indicated in the documents for how much it was set. Alberto was

being held in jail because he had begun an “illicit friendship” with a parda named María

de la Higuera, a vecina of Xalapa. The entry notes that Alberto had given María “his

word” that they would be married, and he was “convinced” that he would follow through

with the engagement. However, he had been imprisoned for not fulfilling his promise to

María and her family.87 Seed establishes that by the early eighteenth century, written

promises and the extended valuation of literacy changed the way a woman’s testimony

that her paramour had secured the relationship with “his word” was respected. However,

for much of the seventeenth century, which is the primary focus in her article, Seed

argues, “Speaking and doing were synonymous, and words were widely regarded as

86 ANX, July 20, 1716, f 376vta - 377fte. 87 Dyer establishes that a broken promise to marry was considered a crime perpetrated against the

woman involved. Abigail Dyer, “Seduction by Promise of Marriage: Law, Sex, and Culture in Seventeenth-Century Spain,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 34, no. 2 (Summer, 2003), 443.

206

deeds.”88 Verbal agreements during the seventeenth century in New Spain carried the

weight of documented commitments and breach of such contracts had consequences.

Alberto and María likely had started a sexual relationship with one another, but

his promise of marriage meant there was less risk of the liaison’s damaging María’s

honor or that of her family.89 Alberto may have decided to rescind outright his

commitment to fulfill his promise to make María an honorable woman after enjoying an

“illicit friendship” with her, or perhaps his ardor for her simply cooled. As a result,

María and her family demanded a legal remedy, which was their obligation. Richard

Boyer writes,

Relatives had a duty to protect their women’s honor when it looked as if a suitor wanted to enjoy her sexual favors without following through with marriage. In so doing they protected their own honor, for the behavior of daughters, sisters, or cousins reflected on the honor of fathers, brothers, cousins, and uncles.90

Whether Alberto’s crime was understood as one committed against María or the entire

De la Higuera family, he was punished with incarceration for not complying with the

verbal agreement he made that allowed him to satisfy a more carnal interest that

jeopardized María and her family’s social standing. Both Bernabela and María (and

importantly, their families) understood themselves as people who had honor to lose when

unsanctioned sexual relationships were discovered, men left promises unfulfilled, and

women (and their families) demanded the legitimization of sexual relations. Remarkably,

88 Seed, “Marriage Promises,” 256. 89 Dyer, “Seduction by Promise of Marriage,” 444. 90 Boyers, Lives of the Bigamists, 89.

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the courts of Xalapa agreed with the aggrieved women in these cases and recognized

them as members of respectable families who deserved justice when honor was at stake.

Conclusion

This chapter began with a demographic profile of free women of African descent,

including a multi-variant analysis of registered businesses, and ended the chapter with

personal matters that made it to the notary’s door, sometimes by way of the involvement

of third parties. While the sample size was small, the result of examining the notarial

activities of free women suggests a high level of diversity among business interests and

socially salient markers. Free African-descended women who were single, married, and

widowed bought and sold homes, purchased tracts of lands, enslaved women and men,

and requested legal representatives. Throughout the early- and mid-seventeenth century,

most of these women would be designated as mulatas, as would most men of African

descent found in the notarial archives of Xalapa be designated as mulatos. As the long

seventeenth century advanced, the categories used to describe African-descended women

and men would open up to include the terms parda and pardo, with limited appearances

by people described as negra or negro, which is corroborated by the parish records

examined in the previous chapter. Interestingly, the data on vecina status suggests that

free women of means initially lived in the agricultural periphery and gradually became

more closely tied to Xalapa “proper” by the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth

centuries, demonstrating their geographic mobility and possibly their aspirations to be

closer to greater economic opportunities that funneled in and out of the town on the

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Camino Real. By working with a larger sample size and multi-variant analyses that

analyze the perennial categories of race and gender in addition to under-examined

markers, we can develop a more complex understanding of free women’s personal

relationships, business connections, and economic opportunities.

In addition to the economic opportunities found in the profile that will be

discussed in Chapter 3, African-descended women also revealed personal matters to

Xalapa’s escribanos that demonstrated the strength of support found in families of

African descent. Free women with enslaved family members faced the harsh realities of

drained resources after freeing a loved one or when they realized the debt had to be

settled in a matter of a few short months. Important patrons, allies, and friends (and

sometimes just luck) aided in the process of securing freedom for oneself or enslaved

parents, husbands, or children. African-descended family members even took out loans

with wealthy vecinos or made payment plans with slaveowners if they did not have

access to immediate liquidity. However, not all were successful and the notarial archive

bore witness to at least one free woman who apparently lacked the economic and social

capital of financial security and important associates to prevent her husband from being

sold away by a wealthy and politically important slaveowner. While most of the free

women with newly freed family members examined here did not reappear again in the

notarial archive, the ones who did demonstrate that while free family life had its

challenges, some free woman were able to move on from servitude to the comforts of

relative financial security in one lifetime.

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As the previous chapter documented on a larger scale but that this chapter

reinforced, African-descended people understood the social price and benefit of

legitimacy. The ability to claim legitimate birth and legitimate birthrights for oneself or

for one’s children might have made the difference in the loss or gain of economic capital.

The notarial records demonstrate that free women understood well these consequences

and, by soliciting witnesses to testify to their claims of legitimacy, attempted to ensure

that their interests were not compromised. Free women also found ways to assert a

legitimate public persona beyond the family. The right to express religiosity through

investments in chapel endowments marked socioeconomic status and one’s public

commitment to the Church. The investments in ideas of belonging to a religious

community, such as the young woman who asked to be buried in the monastery’s

cemetery, also made space for free women of African descent, wealthy or not, to imagine

themselves as members of a whole, a parishioner of the Church.

For the cases of tarnished reputation through the loss of virginity, the

imprisonment of the male offenders allowed women and their family members to position

themselves as people of honor and respectability that demanded criminal redress.

Criminal courts took the claims of African-descended women who had been

“deflowered” seriously and followed up on such cases by arresting the offending men,

demonstrating that free women and their families were seen as honorable enough to be

viewed as victims of a social crime. The more intimate cases examined here allow a brief

glimpse into the personal lives of free women and offer clues as to how free African-

descended women positioned themselves and how authorities in Xalapa allowed them to

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be located in relation to slavery. They also allowed women of African descent to

reaffirm their investment in legitimate families and female respectability. In the

following chapter, I will examine how access to economic capital affected the ways in

which free women of African descent could shape their narratives for notarial authorities

and influence how they mobilized both cultural and social capital to produce their

notarial truths.

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Chapter Three

Social Credibility and Capital

Throughout the colonial era, women of African descent made an indelible mark

on the social landscape of central Veracruz. However, as actors who worked to secure

their own financial footing along with that of their families, free pardas, mulatas,

morenas, and negras also engaged in a number of economic activities that resulted in

their involvement with a cross-section of society. As colonial Mexico’s governing bodies

took shape and local economies diversified to include transatlantic trade, elaborate

transportation businesses, varied agricultural and mining ventures, and real estate

investments, free women of African descent began to access developing labor markets,

demonstrate greater geographic mobility, and key into social networks and patronage

systems not available to many of their enslaved or less economically stable brethren.

Historian María Elisa Velázquez argues that free women of African descent “had, to a

certain degree, a greater ability to choose for whom they worked in addition to [greater]

mobility, which many other women of the viceroyalty lacked, including women of more

substantial economic resources who were dedicated [only] to family life.”1 This relative

autonomy, denied to wealthier Spanish women, allowed free Afro-casta women to make

significant contributions to the local economy in a number of occupations and by a

variety of investments.

1 My translation, Velázquez Gutiérrez, Mujeres de origen africano, 174.

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Few works on the African diaspora in Mexico specifically address the economic

influence of women of African descent outside of slave labor.2 The scarce references to

African-descended women’s labor tend to focus on their capacity as caregivers for

Spanish families, petty sellers of goods in town squares, or actors in various informal

markets. To date, only Velázquez Gutiérrez’ full-length monograph, Mujeres de origen

africano en la capital novohispana, provides an expansive examination of the economic

lives of women of African descent in New Spain, focusing on the viceregal capital of

Mexico City. She writes, “Despite many formally coercive laws, cultural exchange,

bonding and various social alliances enabled mechanisms for promotion and upward

mobility.”3 It was precisely these factors in Xalapa, Veracruz that allowed some women

of African descent to improve their life chances. Velázquez Gutiérrez posits that in

Mexico City during the mid-eighteenth century 60% of mulatas and 88% of negras

worked in various domestic and urban industries.4 While we do not have sufficient

occupational data for women of African descent who lived in Xalapa, notarial

2 The historiography on the economic activities of free women is much more developed for the

United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean. Important contributions include: Susan Socolow, “Economic Roles of the Free Women of Color of Cap Français,” in More than Chattel, 279-280; David P. Geggus, “Slave and Free Colored Women in Saint Domingue,” in More than Chattel, 259-278; Higgins, Licentious Liberty, 43-88; Hanger, “Landlords, Shopkeepers, Farmers, and Slave-Owners,” in More than Chattel, 219-236; B.J. Barickman and Martha Few, “Ana Paulinha de Quierós, Joaquina da Costa, and Their Neighbors: Free Women of Color as Household Heads in Rural Bahia (Brazil), 1835,” in More than Chattel, 179-188; Mary C. Karasch, “Free Women of Color in Central Brazil, 1779-1832,” in More than Chattel, 237-270; Adele Logan Alexander, Ambiguous Lives: Free Women of Color in Rural Georgia, 1789-1879 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1991); Ferreira Furtado, Chica da Silva (2009); Whittington B. Johnson, “Free African-American Women in Savannah, 1800-1860: Affluence and Autonomy Amid Adversity,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 76, no. 2 (Summer 1992): 260-283; Thomas Ingersoll, “Free Blacks in a Slave Society: New Orleans, 1718-1812,” The Williams and Mary Quarterly 48, no. 2 (April 1991): 173-200.

3 My translation, Velázquez Gutiérrez, Mujeres de origen africano, 106. 4 This data is based on a 1753 Mexico City census. Velázquez Gutiérrez, Mujeres de origen

africano, 175.

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transactions document their employment in sugar ingenios, inns, private residences, and

their own businesses.

Socio-economic mobility made way for women of African descent to claim a

level of social credibility that is reflected in the choices they made, the rights and

protections they demanded, and the capital they invested in for themselves and their

families. This did not go uncontested in every jurisdiction of the viceroyalty of New

Spain. In Mexico City, authorities attempted to curb the possibilities that some free men

and women had begun to enjoy because of their successful economic ventures. One

ordinance threatened to punish any free man or woman of African descent with a public

whipping of 200 lashes if they did not work with “known masters.”5 The declaration

further stated that such punishment was necessary to “prevent damages that may be

caused by having their own [trade] houses that imitate those of the Spaniards.”

Velázquez Gutiérrez clarifies that such juridical forays into regulation through public

ordinance were often unsuccessful and few African-descended people likely ever

experienced repercussions, as was the case for many ordinances during the seventeenth

century. However, she adds that the lack of enforcement did not impede colonial

officials from reiterating their anxieties. Eleven years after the threat of public violence,

another ordinance was issued reasserting the necessity of forcing free people to work

with known masters and not in their own businesses. According to viceregal authorities,

arrangements had to be made to stimulate enforcement and their frustration with their

5 My translation, Silvio Zavala, Ordenanzas del trabajo, siglos XVI y XVII (Mexico: Elede, 1947),

223.

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inability to control the colony’s African-descended population was evident. One

seventeenth-century viceregal ordinance reads,

To avoid the inconveniences that may result by freeing them…because as vicious and badly inclined people who live with little Christian education and who assist escaped slaves hiding them for long periods of time and committing many other excesses and offenses…the ordinances have not been observed and kept and as a result there are more of these types of people and an escalation in disorderliness.6

The disorder here may have read as a contemporary cultural code of increased

debauchery, but it may have also alluded to the anxiety of a disrupted colonial order

wrought by free men and women whom the Spanish Crown did not unequivocally regard

as independent and self-determining subjects.

The vast majority of women and men in seventeenth-century Xalapa, regardless

of race, would never live to realize personally the economic advantages of the more

fortunate individuals and families profiled in this chapter. While Velázquez Gutiérrez

outlines other challenges free and enslaved women encountered in various economic

undertakings, she asserts, “It was not always an obstacle to be slave, African, and a

woman in order to garner the recognition of certain social sectors and to have economic

and social opportunities in the viceregal capital.”7 Free women employed a number of

economic strategies to ensure their livelihoods. At times, African-descended women

contracted work arrangements and purchased and sold their real property that included

both minor plots of land and impressively large estates. Other times, they brokered

6 Silvio Zavala, Ordenanzas del trabajo, siglos XVI y XVII (Mexico: Elede, 1947), 227. 7 Velázquez Gutiérrez, Mujeres de origen africano, 32.

215

important business deals and maintained profitable social networks that included the local

and regional elite.

Free women of African descent issued poderes, settled debts, registered wills,

fashioned their own “notarial truth,” secured the freedom and livelihoods of their family

members, or engaged, as consumers, in one of the region’s biggest sources of economic

development, slavery. The cases that will be discussed demonstrate the litigiousness,

determination, and shrewdness expressed by these women throughout sanctioned avenues

of economic engagement that delivered a cross-section of Xalapa’s economic elite in

sometimes temporarily or permanently obscured ways. I present free women of African

descent as negotiating, with varying degrees of success, the complexity of economic

influence and challenging social spaces. Some struggled with debt that threatened their

freedom, while others reaped the benefits and privileges of intergenerational wealth and

inheritance. Left as widows, some free women of African descent skillfully found ways

to sustain themselves financially by either selling off their late husbands’ businesses or

making their assets income-generating by renting out their properties. Whether it was

arranging for an apprenticeship or a dowry of 100 pesos de oro común (or even 1,000

pesos de oro común), they did what they could to give the next generation the best

economic start that they could afford. One discerning mulata even attempted to re-write

her own history, seemingly to cement her economic position in Xalapa. In the following

chapter, I address some of these tactics, discuss free women’s successes, and examine the

particular challenges that they and their families encountered on the journey to financial

security that eluded most subjects of New Spain. I focus on four types of notarial

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engagement: inheritance, social networks translating to personal net worth, gendered

strategies, and the management of wealth through notarial truth. Moreover, I analyze

how these economic ventures spoke to particular investments in social and cultural

capital that empowered free African-descended women with the legitimacy that shaped

their lives and those of their progeny.

The Heirs of Privilege

In an unpredictable economy dependent on crops and fair-weather seas for

merchants to bring goods from Spain, Africa, and the Caribbean into the port of

Veracruz, the notarial archive recorded many women of African descent investing in the

relatively more stable economy of real estate.8 Most women were second- or sometimes

third-generation landowners and enjoyed the privilege of a healthy inheritance from

family members who had been long-time property owners in the region. Of all the types

of business recorded with the notary public, free women of African descent appeared in

matters primarily of real estate management over the course of the long seventeenth

century. Land and houses served as significant factors in intergenerational wealth among

African-descended women. Notably, no notarial entry documented a free woman

inheriting a business from her parents or bequeathing one to her children. Property gifted

by relatives, on the other hand, offered an heir the financial leverage, potential rental

8 Land and home ownership have long been characteristic activities of economically mobile free

African-descended women throughout the Americas and the Caribbean during the colonial period. Of women in Cap Français, Socolow writes, “Widows of successful free black and mulatto artisans showed a special penchant for investing in expensive real estate.” Socolow, “Economic Roles of the Free Women of Color of Cap Français,” in More than Chattel, 283. In “Slave and Free Colored Women in Saint Domingue,” David P. Geggus writes, “Women landowners varied from solitary ex-slaves living in ramshackle cabins on an acre of land to the proprietors of coffee plantations with large families and forty or more slaves.” Geggus, “Slave and Free Colored Women in Saint Domingue,” in More than Chattel, 270.

217

income, and means to generate high yields of revenue when selling the land, or just a part

of it, made economic sense. Whether the property was small or grand, the inheritance of

land offered free women opportunities for geographic mobility and increased acquisition

of capital, economic, social, and cultural.

The case of free pardos Ana de la Cruz and Francisco Hernández demonstrates

the awareness of the value of intergenerational wealth, but it also establishes that

sometimes the heirs were not as forward thinking as their parents had been. Ana and

Francisco attempted to secure the financial well being of their three legitimate pardo

children, Salvador Hernández, Theresa Hernández and Olaya Hernández.9 Ana and her

husband Francisco were both from the province of Xalapa and had accumulated some

real estate that they would later bequeath to all three of their children. On October 16,

1713, when Ana and Francisco had already passed away, the three heirs sold a thirty vara

by seventy-eight vara piece of land to Juana Francisca de Villa for thirty pesos de oro

común. Salvador Hernández signed his own name at the end of the notarial document,

and it appears as though the notary signed for both Theresa and Olaya. Approximately

two weeks later, Salvador, Theresa, and Olaya sold another piece of their inheritance, a

property measuring twenty by seventy-eight varas, to Juan de los Santos, a vecino of

Xalapa, for twenty pesos de oro común. 10 And while the first sale named both Theresa

and Olaya and had their names as “signatories” with the other stakeholders and witnesses,

the second bill of sale named them, but only Salvador Hernández appeared as a signatory

and seemingly in his own hand. Ana and Francisco left their son and two daughters at

9 ANX, October 16, 1713, f 91fte - 92vta. 10 ANX, October 31, 1713, f 94vta - 95vta.

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least 200 varas of land, which they sold for an unimpressive gain of fifty pesos de oro

común. Split evenly among the three siblings, the money would have left each with not

quite enough to purchase smaller plots on which to build their houses.

If the two sales they registered alluded only to larger, more profitable holdings,

then Ana de la Cruz and Francisco Hernández’ gift of second generation landownership

to Theresa, Olaya, and a possibly literate Salvador offered greater social mobility and a

continued buffer from the taxing physical labor of agricultural work and the societal risks

that women without economic means endured. However, if Theresa and Olaya were left

with only slightly more than sixteen pesos de oro común with no other resources

available to them, then choosing to relinquish two properties with their brother in order to

divide evenly the inheritance may have proved disastrous for women who generally did

not have access to higher-paying, skilled labor professions that would have been

available to their brother Francisco. Women had to be much more circumspect when

selling off land. However, a third party, such as a male sibling, may have influenced the

decision to liquidate the real estate at a lower market rate because of an urgent need for

funds.

A woman of greater means, of course, had the privilege to sell off property at will

knowing that she had more than she would need. Free parda Jacinta Domínguez fit that

bill. Jacinta had a Spanish husband named Nicolas Fernández, but it was her first

husband who had provided her with the property that would position her well above

subsistence.11 When Jacinta decided to sell a piece of property that she had inherited

11 ANX, April 18, 1684, f 178vta - 180fte.

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from her late first husband Don Francisco de los Santos, she did so with Nicolas’

licencia, or permission. Jacinta’s transaction was much more significant than the profits

of fifty-pesos de oro común garnered by the Hernández siblings, and perhaps citing her

husband’s approval facilitated the sale. Jacinta’s late first husband Don Francisco de los

Santos had passed away by at least 1671, when the division of his estate had been settled

upon.12 His two legitimate children received a small monetary allowance, his son

Nicolas de los Santos received 100 pesos de oro común and his daughter Juana de los

Santos inherited roughly 127 pesos de oro común. Jacinta, on the other hand, inherited a

large home made of stone and wood with a tiled roof. When she later sold it thirteen

years later to Juan Lorenzo Velázquez in 1684, she parted with it for the astonishing price

of 500 pesos de oro común, sixteen times the price of most homes sold in Xalapa.

This exceptional residence was not Jacinta Domínguez’ only property. Before she

sold the larger estate to Juan Lorenzo Velázquez in 1684, Jacinta had agreed to rent him a

house and a store in 1675.13 The house and store were made of stone, and the roofs were

tiled. They were also centrally located in Xalapa. Her contract with Juan Lorenzo had

stipulated that he would take occupancy of the properties on February 1, 1676, for a

period of nine years at twenty-six pesos de oro común per year, proving once again that

Jacinta was a dynamic real estate owner. Most other homes in Xalapa could be

purchased outright at nearly the same amount that Jacinta had rented this commercial-

residential property, but she shrewdly decided to lease it to a deep-pocketed vecino and

establish a long-term agreement that would maintain for her a high rental income.

12 ANX, July 22, 1671, f 390fte - 391vta. 13 ANX, December 16, 1675, f 133fte - 134fte.

220

Jacinta Domínguez’ notarial history was not always so simple. On August 27,

1676, Jacinta found herself in a legal dispute over a much smaller piece of land from her

first husband’s estate.14 According to this entry, Xalapa’s treasurer Gaspar de los Reyes

purchased in 1658 from Francisco Camacho and his wife Juana de la Cruz, both free

negros, a parcel of land on behalf of Don Francisco de los Santos. The plot was priced at

only twenty pesos de oro común. Don Francisco de los Santos later constructed houses

on it, where he resided until he died. Jacinta Domínguez and her two children were the

intended inheritors, but they encountered a legal snag. Gaspar de los Reyes was still the

legal owner of the land even though he apparently never lived on the property and merely

had made the sale transaction for Don Francisco de los Santos. By 1676, when she

wanted to sell the property along with the houses, Jacinta could not legally do so. The

problem of ownership was left unresolved, but Jacinta Domínguez certainly did not suffer

terribly from it as she owned other properties and enjoyed incredible profits by selling off

her home for 500 pesos de oro común and renting out a store in Xalapa’s bustling centro.

Inherited land was not always properly safeguarded through legally recognized

agreements, and such missteps could jeopardize the heir’s stake in the property. María

Pacheco, a free parda and vecina of Xalapa, was a second-generation landowner.15 She

had been lawfully married to Luis de la Cruz. However, at some point before 1707, Luis

passed away, and by the time that María Pacheco registered business with the notary

public, she had already remarried to a free pardo named Antonio de la Cruz. Unlike

14 ANX, August 27, 1676, f 163vta - 164vta. 15 ANX, August 17, 1707, f 64fte - 65fte.

221

Jacinta Domínguez, María Pacheco came into property by the generosity of her mother,

María Magdalena, a free mulata who had owned a piece of property near the Convent of

Señor San Francisco in Xalapa. Measuring 197 ½ varas long and 108 varas wide, it was

one of the largest single plots registered by a woman of African descent in Xalapa. María

Magdalena had bequeathed this sizeable property to her daughter María Pacheco. With

the “licencia” of her husband, María Pacheco made a trip to the notarial offices on

August 17, 1707, because of a critical oversight by her mother. María Magdalena had

originally purchased the land from a man named Pedro de la Cruz, and while she had

some form of declaration performed by a man named Francisco Gomes, an official deed

was never issued to her. María Magdalena and Pedro de la Cruz may have been friends

who did not find it necessary to legitimize this transfer of property through a more legal

avenue or perhaps they simply forgot to finalize the paperwork.

By 1707, María Magdalena had already passed away, and the responsibility of

confirming ownership fell on her daughter, who acknowledged her stake in this matter.

María Pacheco declared, “I am the sole inheritor and I want and accept the inheritance.”

The entry stated that she was in the process of selling the property to a fellow vecino,

Diego Vázquez de Ochoa, for fifty-two pesos de oro común and four reales. Neither

María Pacheco nor her husband Antonio de la Cruz could sign their own names to the

notarial documents, but they appeared steadfast in their desire to settle the matter of

proprietorship so that they could move forward with the sale. And while María Pacheco

visited the notarial offices because of an economic motivation, she may also have wanted

to reaffirm legally her position as her mother’s sole heir.

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The notarial authorities must have believed María Pacheco’s story regarding the

deal made by her mother and Pedro de la Cruz, because she was granted official

ownership and sold the property to Diego Vázquez de Ochoa on the same day. The deal

from August 17, 1707, is revisited with greater detail in the 1713 notarial case of

Gertrudis Jácome, the widow of Diego Vázquez de Ochoa.16 Gertrudis decided to sell

this same property that she had inherited from her husband, all 197 varas by 108 varas.

The 1713 sale agreement described the property as including a house and a barn. And

while María Pacheco only received fifty-two pesos de oro común for the property,

Gertrudis Jácome was able to sell it for seventy pesos de oro común and four reales just

six years later. Perhaps it was not María Pacheco’s wisest move to sell such a valuable

inheritance in 1707, but maybe she and her husband were looking to downsize or

liquidate their assets. Less than a year later, on May 10, 1708, María Pacheco and her

husband Antonio de la Cruz decided to make another, albeit smaller, investment in land.17

The pardo couple purchased for twenty-one pesos de oro común a vacant plot of land

located in the neighborhood of Techacapa, a plot fifty-six and three-quarter varas by

fifty-four varas—half the size of the property inherited from María’s mother.

Some women had more at stake than a solitary property valued at fifty-two pesos

de oro común; some had large properties, and even substantial fortunes, to safeguard. On

March 17, 1707, a free parda named Agustina de Acosta registered her last will and

testament.18 Agustina, born and raised in Xalapa, was the legitimate daughter of Antonio

16 ANX, October 30, 1713, f 93vta - 94vta. 17 ANX, May 10, 1708, f 106fte - 107fte. 18 ANX, March 17, 1707, f 22fte - 24fte.

223

de Acosta Clemente and María de Salazar Romero. Agustina was also the legitimate

wife of Juan Manuel de León and noted that upon contracting the marriage, neither party

had any wealth, and that before meeting Juan, she had a daughter out of wedlock named

María de la Candelária who lived in La Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz. Agustina declared

that the house in which she lived was not owned by her but by her daughter. The will

also noted that she and her daughter were slaveowners, albeit modest ones. Agustina and

her daughter María owned three negro slaves: a female slave named María de Guadalupe

who was with her daughter but belonged to her, and two male slaves named Antonio and

Juan Gerónimo who were in her service but belonged to her daughter María. Agustina

declared that she owned a house located near the Hermitage of Santiago and had later

bought the land but was never given a deed for the property. Agustina had appointed

both her daughter and her husband Juan Manuel de León as executors of her will but

declared, “All of the stated possessions that I have will belong to the aforementioned

María de la Candelária, my daughter.”

Fortunately for María de Candelária, her mother was diligent about organizing her

affairs because just two months later Agustina de Acosta made certain that there would

be little debate about her rights to the property she had purchased.19 On May 21, 1707, a

woman named María de la Trinidad appeared before the notary to resolve the matter of

the missing deed on behalf of her grandfather Diego de Moral, who had originally sold

Agustina the empty lot below the Santiago hermitage. Diego de Moral was noted as a

19 ANX, May 21, 1707, f 36fte - 38vta.

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cacique20 and principal of the “naturales,” or indigenous people of Xalapa. According to

the entry, the undeveloped plot measured 60 by 120 varas, a significant piece of property.

María de la Trinidad acknowledged that Agustina had purchased the land from her

grandfather and that the deed “which she now has requested” had not been given to

Agustina. Agustina had purchased the 180-vara property, which included entrances and

exits, at the bargain price of a mere twenty pesos de oro común. It must have been a

bitter sweet visit to the notary public for María de la Trinidad to affirm her grandfather’s

deal with Agustina de Acosta, losing such a large piece of property for such a paltry

return.

While a twenty-pesos de oro común house would appear to communicate an

image of a less economically established family, Agustina de Acosta and her husband

Juan Manuel de León must have had another, more lavish home given the stately manor

their daughter María de la Candelária enjoyed as a single woman.21 On December 20,

1702, María de la Candelária had purchased from fellow vecino Domingo de Olivera a

house measuring fifty-four by fifty-two varas, a relatively smaller lot in comparison to

the property that her mother Agustina had bought. However, María’s estate consisted of

masonry pillars and walls of stone and mud – all materials of high cost rarely seen in

descriptions of houses in seventeenth-century Xalapa. María de la Candelária, the

illegitimate daughter of a free parda mother, paid a staggering 200 pesos de oro común

for the estate. Agustina’s 1707 will stated that María lived in La Nueva Ciudad de

Veracruz, and as it was cited as her primary residence, she likely owned property in the

20 A cacique was a chieftain, noble, or untitled leader from an indigenous community. 21 ANX, December 20, 1702, f207fte - 207vta.

225

Port too. Given this information, María de la Candelária’s extravagant 200-peso de oro

común home was, in all likelihood, her “country” abode and sojourn away from the heat,

humidity, and chaos of the Port of Veracruz. The family’s total assets cannot be

determined from the available documents, but suffice it to say that this Xalapa-Veracruz

family lived well above the average Xalapan, regardless of race.

The notarial archive also bore witness to the more complex legal lives of women

of African descent determined to defend their financial well-being and that of their loved

ones. Ana de la Cruz, initially referred to as a mulata in 1694 and a decade later referred

to as a parda, was the legitimate wife of Juan Jacinto. Ana began her notarial history

while Juan was still alive and she served as her family’s representative when on

September 22, 1694, she registered her first piece of business.22 She granted a poder to

Miguel Jerónimo López de Ontanar, a vecino of Xalapa, to appear before the justices of

Xalapa and request the lifting of a hold that had been placed on Ana and Juan’s assets.

By March 11, 1704, Ana was a widow but one left with what appears to be a farm, which

means that apoderado Miguel Jerónimo López de Ontanar must have been at least

partially successful in restoring the couple’s rights to their assets.23 In the 1704 entry,

Ana de la Cruz declared that she owned several houses, seven oxen, four cows, four

calves, eight mares, a sorrel horse, an “old mule,” seven pieces of unspecified cattle, four

turkeys, and three chickens. In addition to the stable of livestock, Ana added that she had

leased a few of the houses on her property to some of the religious fathers of the

Monastery of San Francisco.

22 ANX, September 22, 1694, f 39vta - 40vta. 23 ANX, March 11, 1704, f 289fte - 291vta.

226

Ana served as her family’s legal proxy in the initial reclamation of goods and

property, but the estate was named jointly with her husband. After his death, Ana

assumed accountability for her well-stocked farm of animals that likely yielded her some

revenue, as most were pack train animals that could be hired out for seasonal work or

sold in the transportation markets of Xalapa. The houses that Ana de la Cruz rented to

the monastery would have also have proved significant for this widowed woman. While

she had an adopted daughter, Ana de la Cruz could not afford to assume that someone

else would provide for her in her advanced years. However, as she had sought protection

of her interests even before her husband had passed and had secured leases with a

religious institution that would likely continue to need boarding houses for its members,

Ana de la Cruz had made important decisions to mitigate her future future as a widowed

woman.

Not all free people of African descent had the funds to bequeath real estate to

their children in order to ease their progeny’s economic transition to adulthood.

Whatever they might have lacked in economic capital, children of African descent

benefitted from the cultural and social capital of their free mothers. Arranging for early

education in trades that would accept boys of African descent represented one of the most

important investments outside of property ownership that a mother could make for her

son. María de Jesús, a free morena, was the mother and “legal administrator” for her

twelve-year-old son Gregorio de la Cruz, a free pardo.24 On September 30, 1689, María

went before Don Francisco Miguel de Campo, the lieutenant general of the province,

24 ANX, September 30, 1689, f 361vta - 363fte.

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instead of a notary public because there was not one present in the jurisdiction according

to Don Francisco. He served as the acting judge when María de Jesús wanted to

document legally a four-and-a-half year apprenticeship that she had arranged for

Gregorio. María contracted with a master shoemaker named Hipólito de Amaya and they

had agreed that Gregorio would live in Hipólito’s house while he taught Gregorio shoe-

making and repair. María added that Hipólito stated that he would provide her son with

meals and clean clothing. Hipólito also assumed the responsibility of paying for the cost

of any medical care that Gregorio might need. When Gregorio eventually completed the

apprenticeship, Hipólito was to provide him with a proper suit with pants, a doublet, two

shirts, a hat, one pair of shoes, and a set of the tools of the trade.

It was further stipulated that if Gregorio de la Cruz absconded from Hipólito de

Amaya’s guardianship before he completed the term of the agreement, Hipólito was

charged with finding and bringing back the boy from whereever he might be. However,

María agreed to reimburse Hipólito for the trouble of having to search for and retrieve

Gregorio. If Hipólito decided to dismiss Gregorio before the end of the four-and-half-

year residency, he was obligated to place him with another master shoemaker. Hipólito

affirmed in the first person in the same document that he agreed to all of the stipulations

outlined by María. Neither party could sign their own names, but María de Jesús had

made an important decision that would likely save her son Gregorio from the arduous

unskilled labor of cutting cane in the sugar fields of Xalapa’s agricultural periphery. In

Mexico City, many guilds and skilled worker societies barred people of African descent

from membership, ultimately handicapping free people’s ability to obtain the most stable

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jobs and highest paying positions.25 As a shoemaker, Gregorio would have greater

opportunities available to him in order to earn a higher wage. If he ever achieved the

level of master zapatero, perhaps he would have purchased a shop and taken on his own

apprentices in his later years, grateful to his mother María de Jesús for her foresight and

planning.

But Gregorio was still under the legal guardianship of his mother, and he may not

have appreciated fully the weight of María’s choice to remove him from the home, send

him off with a man who was not a family member, and subject him to endless days of

thankless labor as a new apprentice. As a young man who was not quite independent and

now subject to a master shoemaker, he may even have decided to abscond for a day or

two before seizure and punishment by Hipólito or his mother’s rebuke for costing her

money for the retrieval. Unlike children of landowning parents, Gregorio benefitted from

the cultural capital that came with his mother’s appreciation for early education and

training in a field that would yield reliable work in the future. Even as a single mother,

María de Jesús had the social capital to pass onto Gregorio a network of tradesmen in

order to contract the arrangement with Hipólito. And it is precisely this social capital

reflected in the grids of association that proved indispensable for free women of African

descent as they navigated colonial Xalapa.

Capitalizing Connections

A diverse group of friends, acquaintances, and business partners proved to be a

formula for successful strides towards economic viability across all sectors of colonial

25 Palmer, Slaves of the White God, 180.

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Mexico. Free women of African descent arrived on the stage of the notarial archive

through cases that demonstrated their particular preoccupations with questions of social

legitimacy as women and as people of African descent. As has been witnessed by the

previous cases discussed, archival footprints were often incomplete and unresolved,

resulting in rich narratives that have been obscured because documents were destroyed,

lost, or irreparably damaged by the passage of time. Due to the scarcity of sources on

free women of African descent in the early colonial period, notions of female “place”

have misinterpreted their social networks. In addition, free women of African descent

had less opportunity to reveal their economic histories in notarial sources, and

assumptions based on master-slave relations carried over to free women, even if they had

been free for three generations.26 In order to move beyond such postulations, the

historiography must reposition free women as legitimate social actors with economic

interests that did not always result from the graces of others but instead from thoughtful

26 Kimberly Hanger notes how free women were negatively implicated by virtue of their gender,

race and status. She writes, “The free black women who engaged in sexual relationships with white men, and even those who did not, were often condemned as ‘lewd,’ ‘lascivious,’ and ‘licentious’ in New Orleans and throughout the Americas.” Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 97. Hanger notes that perceptions of free women as “always already” immoral was prevalent in eighteenth-century Spanish New Orleans, “One late-eighteenth-century observer of New Orleans lifestyles, Claude C. Robin, denounced the many white men who were tempted to ‘form liaisons with these lascivious, coarse, and lavish [libre] women’ and subsequently were ‘ruined.’ He blamed the women for such sinful practices, however, as did physician Paul Alliot, who believed that free black women inspired ‘such lust through their bearing, their gestures, and their dress, that many quite well-to-do persons are ruined in pleasing them.” Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 97-98. For other colonial conceptions of African and African-descended women, see: Barbara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1990), 11-22; Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 12-49; Robert Olwell, “ ‘Loose, Idle and Disorderly’: Slave Women in the Eighteenth-Century Charleston Marketplace,” in More than Chattel, 97-109; Susan Socolow, “Economic Roles of the Free Women of Color of Cap Français,” More than Chattel, 279-280; Henrice Altink, “Deviant and Dangerous: Proslavery Representations of Jamaican Slave Women’s Sexuality, ca. 1780-1834,” in Women and Slavery: The Modern Atlantic, 209-230; Hilary McD. Beckles, “Freeing Slavery: Gender Paradigms in the Social History of Caribbean Slavery,” in Slavery, Freedom and Gender, Brian L. Moore eds et al. (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2003), 212-213.

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management of social networks within the realm of social respectability. The case of

Isabel López serves as such a poignant reminder.

Isabel López was a free mulata and widow at the beginning of the seventeenth

century. On March 3, 1605, she decided not to take on the full responsibility of

managing all of her economic affairs and issued a power of legal representation to Pedro

Calderón, the owner of an inn named the Venta de la Hoya.27 Isabel granted Pedro

Calderón full authority to represent her “in all civil and legal disputes” in order to settle

matters regarding any goods, furniture, and real property.28 Free women appeared in the

notarial archive to conduct a wide array of business, but they often appeared when they

registered a poder, a form of legal representation to act on another’s behalf. Free women

requested poderes to allow their family members or trusted confidants to conduct

business for them. Many wealthy people preferred to assign poderes to family members

for the care and discretion that they carefully cultivated to protect one another’s public

reputations. However, sometimes the risk of assigning a poder to a non-family member

was required because of the apoderado’s particular expertise and influence, or simply

because of a lack of trusted family members. Imprudence could be mitigated if the

apoderado was selected from an inner circle of trusted confidantes. Unfortunately, Isabel

López did not personally register another piece of business with the notary, so her

notarial silence might have precluded us from knowing fully why a free mulata with

implied resources sought out legal representation and why she chose Pedro Calderón, a

prominent businessman from Xalapa.

27 ANX, March 3, 1605, f 329fte - 329vta. 28 ANX, March 3, 1605, f 329fte - 329vta

231

According to notarized bills of sale and purchase, Pedro Calderón was an active

slaveowner. In 1601, he purchased both a negro slave, between eighteen and twenty

years old, named Manuel from the “nation of Angola,” and a negra slave, about the same

age, named Magdalena from the “nation of Congo.”29 He paid 400 pesos de oro común

for each slave, a price reflecting the era of costly slave investment. A few years later in

1607, he sold his twenty-eight-year-old negra slave María to Mexico City resident

Francisco Martín Espejel.30 A year later, he sold two more of his slaves, this time a

mother and her son, for a gain of 650 pesos de oro común.31 In 1609, it appears as

though Pedro Calderón intended to retire when he sold the Venta de la Hoya to his son-

in-law for 500 pesos de oro común.32 And while the archive also reveals that Pedro

Calderón was married to Ana Díaz, had a daughter,33 sold another one of his male

slaves,34 and a number of his mules,35 nothing more is ever mentioned of Isabel López,

the mulata who entrusted him with her legal power of representation in the 1605 poder.

Most of what could have been discerned from the relationships free women

developed with people of all sectors of society is shrouded in notarial silence when a

poder was unaccompanied with a specific request or if only one piece of business was

registered by them. However, by examining the notarial footprints of those tangentially

tied to the primary agent, connections among all parties can sometimes be illuminated. In

the case of Isabel López, the “why” may never be able to be answerable without the

29 ANX, June 20, 1601, f 51vta - 52fte. 30 ANX, January 14, 1607, f 463vta - 464fte. 31 ANX, February 20, 1608, f 544vta - 545vta. 32 ANX, August 3, 1609, f 156fte - 156va. 33 ANX, May 10, 1611, f 215fte - 215vta. 34 ANX, March 18, 1614, f 413fte - 414fte. 35 ANX, August 26, 1615, f 435vta - 436fte.

232

discovery of more documents, but “how” she may have known Pedro Calderón is within

reach because of a solitary transaction by a third party recorded in the notarial archive.

Isabel’s poder noted that she was a free mulata who was legitimately married to

Francisco de Sea until his death.

As the poder was the only case naming her as a primary actor or recipient and the

only time Pedro Calderón ever served as an apoderado, how Isabel López could have

known Pedro Calderón, her legal representative, might have fallen prey to sordid

assumptions about Spanish benefactors and their mulata beneficiaries, a narrative not

supported by any other available evidence in this particular context. Isabel López’ status

as a widow offers a different narrative. On January 12, 1603, Isabel’s husband, Francisco

de Sea, took over the purchase contract of a man named Urbán de Pineda, who had

bought the inn the Venta de Las Vigas for the price of 320 pesos de oro común.36

Francisco’s notarized contract for the inn not only reveals that he owned a business,

which his wife Isabel likely inherited, but also, since they had the disposable income of

320 pesos de oro común, that they were a fairly wealthy family.

Both Isabel’s husband and her legal representative Pedro Calderón owned

boarding facilities in the same town. Francisco purchased his inn in 1603 and Pedro had

purchased the Venta de la Hoya just a few years earlier on June 4, 1599.37 It is also of

some importance that Francisco de Sea was never identified with any family history or

racial background. If he were Spanish, it would be very likely that two Spanish family

men of means from Xalapa who both owned inns during the same years would have

36 ANX, January 12, 1603, f 156vta - 157fte.

37 ANX, June 4, 1599, f 530vta bis - 532fte.

233

known each other as social peers and/or economic competitors. Their relationship was

likely more amicable considering that Francisco de Sea’s wife sought Pedro’s assistance

in the legal domain. Had it not been for Francisco de Sea’s only entry in the notarial

archive documenting his purchase of the Venta de Las Vigas two years before his wife

authorized a poder to Pedro Calderón, there would be no evidentiary lead as to why a free

mulata widow of means would have known a wealthy Spanish slaveowner and business

owner. While this seemingly limited case divulges few specifics of the financial holdings

of free mulata Isabel López, it offers a poignant reminder about the importance of

expanding the realm of possibilities when working with scarce source material and

examining the lives of under-researched demographics. More specifically, it steers us

away from the unsubstantiated narrative that most free women of African descent likely

acquiesced to illicit sexual relationships for their financial security and social standing.38

As there were multiple entry points for women of African descent to attain wealth, the

mediated (we must remember that most subjects of New Spain could not read or write—

Isabel could not sign her own name) notarial footprint suggests a much more complex

reality.

With the additional information regarding her husband’s deal, Isabel López is no

longer a widow with indeterminate economic status; she is a woman of economic

38 Conjectures about Spanish men and their African-descended beneficiaries as concubines was a

narrative that even some contemporary African-descended women were painfully aware of and offended by. Kimberly Hanger notes a case in which a free parda named Maria Cofignie (Coffiny) living in Spanish New Orleans was brought up on charges in May 1795 for insulting the daughter of a white captain after an altercation in which the free woman’s son was harassed and threatened by the girl and other white neighbors. Cofignie had apparently scolded the captain’s daughter with scathing remarks that rebuked racialized and gendered stereotypes of the time, stating, “Just because they are white, believe that we [libres] are made to be scorned, spurned, and slighted. I am free and I am as worthy as you are; I have not earned my freedom on my back." Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 149.

234

privilege, or at least she was while her husband was alive and able to make such

substantial business investments. If her husband had not decided to purchase an inn (an

expensive business at that!), Isabel’s economic standing would be less determinable and

her relationship to her apoderado more ambiguous. While women employed specific

gendered strategies, free women of means were considered by others to be reliable

business associates and knowledgeable brokers of cultural and economic capital. The

notarial archive even witnessed how they served in capacities usually occupied by

Spanish men.

Women of African descent sought out prominent members of Xalapan society

when they could to serve as their legal representatives, though this was more common

when they had no cited husband or male children and the business required travel outside

of the jurisdiction. Ursula de Villanueva, a free parda and the widow of Xpóval

Hernández, was a resident of the sugar ingenio San Pedro Buenavista.39 Ursula and

Xpóval had five daughters, María, Agueda, Juana, Antonia, and Magdalena López. On

January 8, 1642, Ursula de Villanueva issued a poder to her fellow vecino Francisco de

Orduña Castillo. Francisco was the administrator of the ingenio San Pedro Buenavista,

his uncle’s property. Ursula charged Francisco with “selling at the price that he saw fit

some properties located in La Antigua Ciudad de Veracruz that remained after the death

of María López, the maternal grandmother of my husband, which were bequeathed to

him and the other heirs.” This poder reveals that Ursula de Villanueva had married a

man whose family members were, at the very least, third generation landowners in the


235

region. None of the primary figures in this case lived in La Antigua, but Francisco

succeeded in accomplishing the task of finding a buyer in less than a year’s time. He sold

one of the properties on October 6, 1642, to Sargento Manuel de Riveros, a vecino of La

Antigua Ciudad de Veracruz, for thirty pesos de oro común.40

It would appear that Ursula had chosen well when deciding on whom to bestow a

poder, even if the choice resulted more from convenience than thoughtful strategy.

Francisco de Orduña Castillo happened to reside at the same ingenio as Ursula but he was

also a member of Xalapa’s elite agricultural families. His connections, along with those

of his ingenio-owning uncle, must have facilitated his ability to serve as an effective

broker for property outside of Xalapa’s jurisdiction. Coincidence of residency favored

Ursula in her search for an apoderado. However, she must have also realized the

advantages of choosing an agent with a recognizable family business and who likely had

a wide social network of potential buyers. And given that a mere ten months had passed

from the original issuance of the poder and the sale of the property, Ursula de Villanueva

reaped the benefits of having a “neighbor” willing to sell property on her behalf in a

jurisdiction more than seventy-five kilometers away from her home on the ingenio.

While widowed women like Isabel López and Ursula Villanueva sought out

representation, at least one of Xalapa’s most influential and wealthy Spanish residents

trusted the business savvy of a free woman of African descent to represent him on an

important business matter. On December 22, 1664, the well-connected and highly visible

Licenciado Pedro de Yrala documented his choice for legal representative. The poder

40 ANX, October 6, 1642, f 337fte - 337vta.

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reads,

I, the Licenciado Pedro de Yrala, cura beneficiado for his Majesty of this district of Xalapa, grant and give my poder to assign and transfer, with proper cause and as required, to Polonia de Ribas, free mulata and my vecina of this town, so that in my name and representing my person she may request, receive, and charge Joseph Cogollos y Zarate, owner of the inn La Venta de Lencero and administrator of the refinery named Nuestra Señora de los Remedios of this jurisdiction that used to be owned by the Regidor Luis Pacho Mexia. [Joseph Cogollos y Zarate] owes me 257 pesos de oro común and 2 tomines according to a decision made in my favor before the present notary.41

Pedro de Yrala, a prominent figure in Xalapa, would have had an expansive social circle

from which to choose and appoint a business proxy, which he often did because of the

number of business dealings in which he involved himself. In 1641, Licenciado Pedro de

Yrala granted his poder to Sargento Manuel Viveros, a resident of La Antigua Ciudad de

Veracruz, in order to lease property he had in that city.42 He also had available to him a

number of eminent family members, such as his brother, Bachiller José de Goitia, whom

he did call upon to represent him through a poder issued in 1637 in order to conduct

business for him in Puebla de Los Angeles.43 Pedro de Yrala could also have appointed

his nephew, Don Joseph Seballos y Burgos, owner of the sugar refinery Nuestra Señora

del Rosario, with whom he was close and to whom he had donated a considerable amount

of his belongings, including real property, jewels, silver, and slaves.44 Choosing a

distinguished local man, such as Sargento Manuel Viveros to carry out his wishes in La

Antigua and asking his brother to conduct business on his behalf in their hometown of

41 ANX, December 22, 1664, f 117fte - 118vta. 42 ANX, December 31, 1642, f 230vta - 231fte. 43 ANX, December 16, 1637, f 16vta - 17fte. 44 ANX, January 18, 1655, f 65fte - 66fte.

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Puebla de Los Angeles, all demonstrate very logical and strategic actions. Given his past

history of choosing prominent Spanish men as apoderados, why, then, entrust free

mulata, Polonia de Ribas? This is where the mundane, formulaic processes of notarial

“truth-making” provide greater qualitative explanations than might be expected.

A poder was an official document used to corroborate verbal agreements,

substantiate rights and authority, and record intended legal actions. People notarized

business dealings for fear of dispute and to ensure that third parties and witnesses attested

to the validity of statements provided. Colonial subjects usually did not take the time and

incur the cost of registering mere business errands or impromptu transference of small,

immaterial goods with the notary public. With the knowledge of its function, the notarial

archive serves as an additional witness and offers testimony that suggests that Pedro de

Yrala purposefully and thoughtfully appointed Polonia de Ribas to manage the business

transaction with Joseph Cogollos y Zarate, business owner and administrator of one of

Xalapa’s main sugar refineries. With houses valued at approximately thirty pesos de oro

común during the same time period in Xalapa, the debt of 257 pesos de oro común and 2

tomines was considerable.

Pedro de Yrala could have chosen from any number of Spanish men from

Xalapan society, including the affluent ones in his own family, but he did not. He

entrusted a free mulata to do the job for him, to collect a large sum of money from a

prominent Spaniard. Not because she was the only person he had available to him and

was therefore his reluctant substitute legal agent. Nor was it the case that Pedro de Yrala

sent Polonia de Ribas on a casual errand to pick up a parcel full of notes from Joseph de

238

Cogollos y Zarate’s home. Sometimes legal proxies were unsuccessful at collecting fully

on debts, which could lead to costly and lengthy processes of choosing new agents and

dispatching them again. Pedro de Yrala either knew with confidence that Polonia de

Ribas had some influence over Joseph de Cogollos y Zarate or that she was a resolute

mediator and shrewd negotiator who would ensure that the matter would be resolved in

one visit. What we can discern from this case is that Polonia de Ribas, a free mulata,

held the regard of one member of Xalapa’s elite. Polonia de Ribas found herself attached

to a poder that not only spoke to her network of formidable economic associates but also

to her position as a highly esteemed and trusted confidante of one of Xalapa’s influential

power brokers, clearly marking Polonia de Ribas as a member of Pedro de Yrala’s inner

circle.

Not all matters of debt were settled so dully by sending over a wealthy free

mulata apoderada to collect on a financial liability. One late seventeenth-century

married couple of African descent experienced just how serious some were about

repayment.45 A notarial entry for March 16, 1679, describes the tenuous situation debt

had put the couple in when they could not gather sufficient funds together. Ana María, a

free mulata criolla of the sugar ingenio Pacho, was the legitimate wife of Sebastian de la

Cruz, a free negro criollo of the sugar ingenio Mastlatlan. Both were vecinos of Xalapa.

The entry noted that Sebastian was being held in prison because of an unpaid debt to

mulato recua owner Cristóbal de Figueroa for 236 pesos de oro común and 4 tomines. It

is not specified for how long Sebastian was held in custody, nor is there any information

45 ANX, March 16, 1679, f 492fte - 493vta.

239

as to how the debt was initially incurred. However, with a price tag that substantial, two

explanations are possible. The first is that Ana and Sebastian had purchased an

impressive estate or business, possibly an inn or a recua, and then defaulted on payment.

The second possibility is that one of the spouses paid for the freedom of the other and

then attempted to dodge their financial obligation. Although, 236 pesos de oro común

would have been a markedly low value for an adult slave of either gender. That Cristóbal

de Figueroa sought legal action and had Sebastian imprisoned likely meant that the

couple had little in the way of disposable income to make a purchase as significant as a

large estate or a new business.

What the notarial entry does reveal is that what Ana and Sebastian may have

lacked in economic capital, they made up for in social capital. Fortunately for Ana and

her husband Sebastian, a vecino from La Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz, Capitán Don Juan

Francisco de Herrera, came to their financial rescue and paid their debt. In exchange for

the liquidation of the monies owed to Cristóbal de Figueroa, Ana and Sebastian agreed to

pay off their new debt of the same amount to Don Juan Francisco by working in his

“personal service” until the debt was paid off. Their monthly compensation for labor was

set at three pesos de oro común each. If Ana Maria and Sebastian de la Cruz had no other

income prospects, given this rate, it would have taken the couple more than three years to

reimburse Don Juan Francisco de Herrera if they handed over all six pesos de oro común

every single month. If they needed at least half of their joint earnings to pay for their

living expenses, the couple faced more than six and a half years of indentured servitude

together to resolve the debt, a steep price to pay. However, Ana María and Sebastian

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were noted as “owing their gratefulness to [Don Juan],” demonstrating that the couple

likely preferred a paid labor agreement to the continued imprisonment of a loved one.

Despite the misfortune of the free mulata and (temporarily less free?) negro

couple, some debt cases favored free women of African descent. The free parda Isabel

Bautista had the good fortune of a fellow vecino’s honoring his financial obligation to

her.46 Juan de Olmedo’s May 1, 1710, last will and testament declared that he owed

eighteen reales to Isabel and that he wanted the funds to come from the liquidation of his

estate. Juan de Olmedo was the legitimate son of Juan de Olmedo and María Rodríguez,

and he was lawfully married to Isabel León. His will outlined that he was indebted to the

Alférez Sebastian de Flores (two pesos de oro común) to the Captain Bonefacio De

Castro (six reales), and to the estate of the late Don Juan de Medina (twelve reales).

Juan de Olmedo was by no means destitute; he owned two houses and a plot of land.

Additionally, at the time of the registration of his will, his son-in-law Juan Rodríguez

owed him 200 pesos de oro común for the eight mules he had sold him, likely the passing

on of a family pack train business. He was owed another seventy pesos de oro común by

a vecino named Sebastian de Flores and four pesos de oro común and two tomines by

Lorenzo Chacala. Juan was clearly adept at managing his resources, because he owed

very little at the time the will was registered, just eleven pesos de oro común. While Juan

de Olmedo had assets and substantial sums due to him, it is curious that his “largest”

single debt holder was the free parda Isabel Bautista, among other, smaller amounts

owed to titled men. Unfortunately, Juan de Olmedo’s will served as the only notarial

46 ANX, May 1, 1710, f 319fte - 322fte.

241

appearance by Isabel and the documents do not specify the reason for the eighteen reales

owed to her. Whatever her financial situation, Isabel Bautista legally benefitted from

Juan de Olmedo’s stated indebtedness to her in his will if Isabel ever had to confront his

executors for the repayment.

Executing a will that owed but a few pesos de oro común to a free woman of

African descent likely did not cause an undue burden to the heirs of Juan de Olmedo’s

estate, but what about items or debts of greater value? A free negra named María de

Jesús appeared to be less confident as to how the inheritors of her benefactor would

honor previous agreements, and she sought to have them legally preserved.47 On January

17, 1720, Fernando de Orduña Castillo, a vecino of La Antigua Ciudad de Veracruz,

made a visit to the notary public of Xalapa. Serving as the executor and heir of his

father’s estate, Fernando declared that his father Juan de Orduña Castillo had indeed

bequeathed a plot of land measuring seventy-five by sixty varas to María de Jesús

because she was “devoted and had labored in his house.” The declaration further stated

that María de Jesús had been the one to request this documentation. However, Fernando

did not dispute María’s claim to the property and noted that he and his brother, Juan

Pantaleón de Orduña, had acknowledged her entitlement to the property in documents

that they had produced on March 16, 1717, in front of witnesses. Fernando did not state

whether the 1717 settlement had been properly notarized. It was likely that he had

overlooked that process, and María de Jesús subsequently insisted on having the donation

officially recognized by authorities. While the property value was not estimated by Juan

47 ANX, January 1, 1720, f 22vta - 23vta.

242

de Orduña Castillo or his sons, a different property sold on January 30, 1717, measuring

twenty-five by forty varas, less than half the size of María de Jesús’ inherited plot, was

valued at twenty-nine pesos de oro común.48 Another plot of land registered on August

5, 1720, that measured twenty-five by thirty varas was sold for twenty-five pesos de oro

común.49 If María de Jesús’ plot was of approximately the same estimated value per vara

of land (roughly 0.45 pesos de oro común per vara), then it was likely valued at around

sixty pesos de oro común. With such an expansive piece of land at stake, María de Jesús

reaffirmed her rights by ensuring that the heirs of Juan de Orduña Castillo declared

before the notary public that all 135 varas belonged to her, free and clear.

Some women could count on wealthy Spanish patrons and patronesses to follow

through with promises to free an imprisoned spouse, pay owed debts, and legally

acknowledge donations. However, other free women of African descent skillfully

managed their finances, conducted business with the local elite, but lived more

economically privileged lives when they could leverage their social connections into

profitable business deals. Gerónima de Barrios was a free parda and the widow of

Bartolomé de Guevara.50 She was a vecina of La Antigua Ciudad de Veracruz but had

connections to the province of Xalapa. Gerónima owned tierras and a solar51 in the town

of the Xilotepeque “and below on the borders where the indios congregate in the town of

San Andrés.” On April 16, 1644, she sold these properties to Don Joseph Seballos y

Burgos, resident of the ingenio Nuestra Señora de la Concepción in the jurisdiction of

48 ANX, January 30, 1717, f 457fte - 459fte. 49 ANX, August 5, 1720, f 87fte - 88vta. 50 ANX, April 16, 1644, f 459fte - 459vta. 51 A solar was a piece of land intended for the development of a house. Unlike “tierras” which

was more generally designated for agricultural development.

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Xalapa.

Gerónima and Don Joseph agreed upon sixty pesos de oro común. Gerónima’s

notarial case files do not specify when she purchased the “lands,” how much they

measured, or how much she had originally paid for them. She might not have purchased

them at all as many families of African descent left their children sizeable tracts of land.

Whether later generations of landowners who had the fortune of inheriting their

properties could manage them and make the lands profitable were challenges that would

test their pecuniary skills. Gerónima de Barrios’ sale agreement notes that she had

provided Don Joseph Seballos y Burgos with the titles to the properties because he had

already given her the money. Discerningly surrendering her deeds only after she had

been paid, Gerónima avoided the hassle of reaffirming rights years later as other women

profiled here had to confront.

Gendering the Economy

In addition to the demonstration of commercial skill, the concepts of esteem and

status appeared as frequently throughout many cases brought before the notary public of

Xalapa by free women of African descent. By examining the gendered approaches to

economy demonstrated by these women, we take into account how African-descended

women experienced gender as a classed phenomenon. Perhaps a poor woman might not

spend the time and energy to ensure that her family was firmly planted on the plane of

legitimacy. With so few resources, a woman of the popular classes would likely not have

the money to hire a lawyer to verify such a “non-essential” concern for her family who

labored in the sugar cane fields or sold odd supplies to travelers entering the center of

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Xalapa. However, the benefactors of intergenerational wealth in the early eighteenth

century had parents and grandparents who had witnessed the colony at the upswing of

development by the mid-1600s and during its greater economic diversification and

stabilization at the turn of the century. The cultural capital that could be passed on to

them during that time reflected greater proximity to Spanish social and cultural norms.

But what about the classed gender concerns during the more frontier period of Xalapa’s

history? One of the earliest poderes registered by a woman of African descent tied in

preoccupations with social status, legitimacy, and wealth that were only tangentially

revealed.

On July 11, 1586, a woman described as “de color negra”52 named Ana de

Arriaga issued a poder to Juan Ruiz, a procurador53 in Puebla de Los Angeles.54 She

requested that he represent her before an ecclesiastical tribunal to resolve the matter of

the legitimacy of her marriage to Jordan Pérez, a Portuguese man. The guardian of the

Monastery of San Francisco had officiated their nuptials and Ana de Arriaga wanted

absolute confirmation that her marriage was valid. Sometime between 1531 and 1534,

Franciscan friars founded the Monastery of San Francisco in Xalapa to minister to the

indigenous communities in the area and to care for the travelers who passed away on

their journeys to and from Veracruz Port and Mexico City.55 And while it was the oldest

religious institution in Xalapa, Ana de Arriaga must have dreaded an unforeseen

discrepancy in her marriage contract with Jordan Pérez and sent for clarification from all

52 Literally, “of black color.” 53 A procurador was an attorney, distinct from an apoderado who did not have to have any legal

education to serve as a lawful proxy. 54 ANX, July 11, 1586, 366fte - 366vta. 55 Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, 357.

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the way to the top of the religious power structure in her region. Guaranteeing the

validity of one’s marriage preoccupied families of elite circles across the Spanish-

American colonies.56 Confirmations were not overly common, but families that feared an

unforeseen canonical impediment that might interfere with the legitimacy of their

children or the forfeiture of dowries and inheritances deemed them necessary. Ana de

Arriaga did not state specifically why she or her family requested the confirmation, but

the poder did reveal some of her family’s background that situates Ana’s petition in the

same realm as those of other elites.

Ana de Arriaga’s mother, Beatriz de Arriaga, was noted as the “mujer”57 of Pedro

Rodríguez de Alcazar. Ana’s parents are noted as living at the Venta de Aguilar in

Xalapa. Ana also had a brother named Tomás Rodrígues de Alcazar.58 None of Ana de

Arriaga’s family members were designated by caste. While Ana had only one notarial

entry and her father is only ever superficially mentioned, her mother Beatriz de Arriaga

made a few notable trips to the notary public. Beatriz de Arriaga was a fairly well-to-do

woman in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, which explains her

daughter’s concern regarding legitimacy and the lengths to which Ana de Arriaga was

willing to go in order to prove that her marriage to her Portuguese groom, Jordan Pérez,

was lawful in the eyes of the Church and Xalapan society.

Beatriz Arriaga went to the notary public on January 20, 1592, to register two

56 Ann Twinam discusses the importance of legitimate ancestry and the lengths to which elite

families were willing to prove legitimacy, purchase it through gracias al sacar petitions to the Crown, or “pass” as legitimate children or a legitimately united couple. Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets (1999), especially 35-58, 126-215.

57 The entry does not does not specifiy if she was the mujer legítima or if Ana de Arriaga was an hija legítima.

58 ANX, September 2, 1600, f 6vta - 7vta.

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pieces of business, which reveal much more about her personal life and economic

position. While her daughter’s 1586 entry mentioned only that her parents lived at the

Venta de Aguilar, both entries six years later noted that Beatriz de Arriaga was actually

the owner. The first entry involved the granting of a poder to her son Tomás so that he

could purchase a negro slave.59 The poder did not specify whether Beatriz owned other

slaves at the time, but it was likely that she had either slaves or employed staff to help her

run the inn. The second entry was a general poder that she issued to her son in order to

collect on any debts that others might have owed her.60

Not until a January 9, 1597, entry did Beatriz de Arriaga offer a fuller picture of

her wealth.61 Unfortunately, when the entry was registered Pedro Rodríguez de Alcazar

had passed away and Beatriz was a widow. She still could count on her son Tomás to

assist her, and on this occasion the two cataloged her property. They created an

inventory, which included land and goods left to her by her late husband, in order to

figure out how it would be apportioned. The first item listed in her estate was the Venta

de Aguilar and it was estimated to be valued at 1,000 pesos de oro común, her highest-

valued single asset. According to the inventory, Beatriz de Arriaga was also the owner of

a number of slaves, which accounted for the majority of her personal property wealth as

the value of her slaves totaled 1,700 pesos de oro común. She owned a negra named

Joana valued at 450 pesos de oro común, two of Joana’s children described as a mulato

and a negro (200 pesos de oro común), a negra named Isabel (350 pesos de oro común),

59 ANX, January 20, 1592, f 390fte. 60 ANX, January 20, 1592, f 390vta - 391fte. 61 ANX, January 9, 1597, f 143fte - 146vta.

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two of Isabel’s children described as mulatos (200 pesos de oro común), and a negro

named Diego valued at 500 pesos de oro común.

Beatriz’ household items further disclose just how wealthy she and her family

were and perhaps the level of comfort and privilege in which Ana de Arriaga had grown

up and into which her Portuguese husband had married. Her collection included a

number of items of silver, including a 100-peso de oro común silver casserole dish. She

owned a set of twenty bed sheets and ten sleeping mats valued at 120 pesos de oro

común. Beatriz also had a collection of jewelry, which included gold rings and a rosary

valued at forty pesos de oro común. With most monthly salaries for unskilled workers

hovering around seven pesos de oro común in Xalapa, such items were well out of reach

for the average vecino demonstrating the lavish lifestyle that Beatriz de Arriaga had

enjoyed and likely afforded her two children.

Along with material wealth, Beatriz de Arriaga and her husband Pedro Rodríguez

de Alcazar had also accumulated a sizeable debt. To nineteen individuals, they owed a

total of 540 pesos de oro común, usually totaling less than thirty pesos de oro común for

each financial commitment.62 However, the couple owed 112 pesos de oro común to the

aforementioned member of Xalapa’s elite, Pedro de Yrala. By 1600, Beatriz Arriaga was

referred to as “señora Arriaga,” which accounted for the only time in a review of 150

years of notarial documents in Xalapa that a woman with a family of African descent was

cited as such.63 She was also still in considerable debt to Pedro de Yrala; the entry notes

62 The original notarial tally sheet says 541 pesos de oro común, but the individual entries only

account for 540 pesos de oro común. 63 ANX, no date specified, sometime between May 27 and July 11, 1600, f 4fte.

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that this time she owed him ninety pesos de oro común. The case was later marked as

canceled, perhaps because an agreement could not be reached between Beatriz and Pedro

regarding the terms of the repayment or perhaps, as was common, there was a dispute

about how much was owed. Debt plagued nearly every level of the social echelon in

colonial Mexico. Even the wealthy Beatriz de Arriaga had reimbursements to manage.

However, they did not appear to affect her or her family adversely because her assets

were valued at more than she owed. Beatriz’ largest liability was to Pedro de Yrala and

the two elites may have decided to resolve the question of the ninety pesos de oro común

amicably outside the purview of the notary public, as many did. Considering the status of

both individuals, it is possible that Pedro de Yrala actually canceled the ninety-pesos de

oro común debt as a favor to Beatriz and her family.

Later that year on September 2, 1600, Beatriz de Arriaga returned to the notarial

offices with her son, Tomás Rodrígues, and served as his fiadora.64 Beatriz’ ability to act

as a fiadora decidedly placed her amidst Xalapa’s economically stable members. The

poder cites that Tomás needed his mother Beatriz to cosign a rather large debt of 115

pesos de oro común. If Tomás defaulted on the amount, the courts would have obligated

Beatriz to pay the debt or have a lien placed on her assets until items could be liquidated.

Only wealthier colonial subjects could afford to put their possessions and economic

reputations up for collateral in such large transactions and Beatriz could. She was

probably motivated by the prospects of growing her family’s wealth by investing in her

son’s new business enterprise. Tomás had accrued the 115 pesos de oro común debt

64 ANX, September 2, 1600, f 6vta - 7vta.

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when he purchased from the muleteer Jerónimo de Vega two transport horses and one

mule with all of its gear. It would appear that Tomás intended to profit from the

burgeoning transportation market that would become a mainstay business venture for

many throughout the seventeenth century in Xalapa. Tomás was not the only family

member looking to invest. On November 14, 1601, Beatriz de Arriaga continued to

expand her family’s holdings by purchasing a piece of land on the Camino Real of

Xalapa from Bartolomé Martín, owner of the Venta de Los Naranjos, for which she paid

thirty pesos de oro común.65

Ana de Arriaga, her mother Beatriz de Arriaga, her father Pedro Rodríguez de

Alcazar, and her brother Tomás Rodríguez formed a nuclear family of considerable

wealth and opportunity. And while Ana did not even know how to sign her name, her

petition to establish the validity of her marriage reflected an upbringing accordant with

her family’s wealth. Ana de Arriaga’s mother Beatriz had successfully embedded her

family into a higher echelon of society. Through the one poder that Ana registered, we

know nothing of how Ana de Arriaga, a negra, and her Portuguese husband Jordan Pérez

made a living or how this interracial couple navigated colonial Xalapa. Her mother

Beatriz de Arriaga, never identified as a casta, left a much more accessible historical trail

in the archive as she sought to secure her personal economic position as well as her

family’s legacy through continued engagement with local markets and the regional elite –

a legacy certain to affirm the marital legitimacy expected of the daughter of a wealthy

family.

65 ANX, November 14, 1601, f 69vta - 70fte. (This date is approximated by surrounding entries

because the second page where the date would be is deteriorated.)

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Gendered conventions permeate the language of notarial documents, as do the

contradictions that they present. Many appear to be rhetorical devices, while others

appear to have influenced how free women understood their autonomy and how colonial

authorities acknowledged their agency. For instance, the citation of having acquired the

“licencia” of one’s husband in order to conduct business has been witnessed in some of

the cases already profiled in this chapter. However, the inclusion of the “licencia clause”

was not consistently found in cases filed by women, not surprisingly, as some notaries

were not known for their strict adherence to uniformity. Free African-descended women

Jacinta Domíngues and Theodora Diáñez both cited that they conducted business with

their husband’s licencia. Other women had to provide their husbands with the legal right

to represent them through a poder. In 1671, Sebastiana de Rivas y de Irala, the daughter

of the wealthy free mulata Polonia de Ribas, went to the notarial offices to issue a poder

to her Spanish husband, Phelipe de Santiago Falcón.66 The poder was a general order

granting Phelipe the right to “request, receive, and charge…the persons who may owe

[Sebastiana] pesos, silver, jewels, slaves and other things.” The poder also included the

declaration that Phelipe would represent Sebastiana in all civil and criminal matters,

standard language for a general poder. Only a person of means would have issued a

general poder to have such high-valued items claimed on one’s behalf, situating the

wealth that Sebastiana alluded to as separate from her husband’s. Sebastiana’s mother

and at least one of her sisters were slaveowners who owned jewelry, so it is within the

realm of possibility that she too owned such luxury items worth hundreds of pesos de oro

66 ANX, August 10, 1671, f 394fte.

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común or that others might be indebted to her because she made loans to other members

of Xalapa’s society.

Sebastiana’s inferred wealth is important here as is her decision to elect her

husband. Even though they were married, Phelipe de Santiago Falcón was not

Sebastiana’s de facto representative, nor could he act on his wife’s behalf without an

official poder; he needed her licencia. Sebastiana had to declare him formally as an

assigned administrator of her affairs, which demonstrates not often-cited norms of

Spanish legal culture that allowed women forms of legally recognized autonomy in their

marriages. The choice of Phelipe was not particularly of note as many subjects preferred

the confidences forged by familiar ties to the risks of giving an outsider access to the

private details of one’s financial standing or any pending civil and criminal litigation that

might tarnish their public reputations. Permission as a rhetorical device may have also

been a possibility considering that women who held closest to socially acceptable gender

norms, especially among elite circles, were more likely to find more sympathetic ears to

hear their cases. Of course, the preservation of gender norms, social legitimacy,

confirmation of religious adherence and piety, along with the wealth of the family

combined to offer a time-tested narrative that women of African descent employed.

As discussed previously, many women continued to benefit from the families’

seventeenth-century investments in real estate. How their interests were reflected in how

they managed their properties is rarely revealed. One eighteenth-century woman found a

way to make her public religious identity, and perhaps some familial strife, well known

as she oversaw the distribution of her wealth. On March 8, 1708, Manuela Martín went

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to the notary public to sell a piece of land to Felipe Rodríguez.67 The piece of land was

not grand; it measured sixty-four varas in front and only six varas towards the back. It

was located in front of Xalapa’s main church and the Convent of San Francisco. With

her husband Manuel de los Santos’ licencia, Manuela sold the property for the “just

price” of twenty pesos de oro común. Unlike many bills of sale, Manuela’s included

some biographical information. The document reads, “I speak as the legitimate daughter

and heir of Miguel de la Cruz and Catharina Martín, both free pardos…who were from

Xalapa but are now deceased.” Manuela’s parents had purchased the land in 1672 from

Antonia de la Rey, the widow of Manuel de Rojas, making Manuela Martín’s pardo

family second-generation property owners in Xalapa, which is not remarkable given that

100 years earlier, people of African descent also owned property in town.

Nineteen years later, Manuela Martín returned to the notary to make arrangements

regarding her remaining property.68 She declared that her only assets were a piece of

land and a small house made of wood that she had inherited. She also noted that she had

not made a last will and testament because she had no descendants. Without children to

inherit her property, Manuela decided to bequeath everything to the Cofradía de Nuestra

Señora de la Piedad, a confraternity in Xalapa.

Confraternities were religious lay organizations that focused on charitable works

open to all races. Since the sixteenth century in New Spain, religious leaders encouraged

African-descended people’s participation in and organization of cofradías. 69

67 ANX, March 8, 1708, f 95fte - 97fte. 68 ANX, October 16, 1727, f 49vta - 50fte. 69 Von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers, 17.

253

Confraternities provided members with space to express their religiosity by participating

in feast day processions and sponsoring the maintenance of altars dedicated to saints.

Manuela Martín did not specify that she was a member of this particular cofradía, but she

likely was active in the confraternity given the donation. In Black Blood Brothers, Nicole

Von Germeten finds that women served as active members of confraternities and

constituted the major donors to the lay organizations.70 Manuela was not the only free

woman of means to join a cofradía in Xalapa. The free mulata Polonia de Ribas was a

member of two cofradías, Santo Nombre de Jesús and Animas de Purgatorio, both

founded in Xalapa’s parish.71 Confraternities served as mutual aid societies and required

an economic commitment from members. Polonia admitted in her will that she had not

yet paid her yearly dues of three pesos de oro común for each and requested that her

executors ensure that both confraternities were paid from her possessions. These lay

organizations also conferred some of the benefits of membership post-mortem. Polonia

gently noted in her will, “I charge the leaders of the cofradía to fulfill their obligation

with my burial and the masses [said for my soul].” While Polonia gave to her lay

organizations, she also guaranteed that her children also received part of her estate.

Interestingly enough, Manuela Martín left absolutely nothing to her husband who

was still very much alive. She was not legally required to bequeath her belongings to her

husband and as Manuela had no children to maintain with an inheritance or dowry, she

exercised her right to donate her estate to a confraternity. The decision of two wealthy

70 Von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers, 11. For a more detailed examination of African-

descended women’s involvement in confraternities, see Von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers, 41-70. 71 ANX, March 8, 1679, f 486vta - 489fte.

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free women to affiliate with cofradías might have also reflected their investment in

asserting respectable public identities. Von Germeten writes, “[Women of African

descent] relied on their labor in confraternities to provide them with respect and authority

in life and tangible benefits for their survivors after their death.”72 Manuela’s choice

demonstrates her determination to be self-governing and signals the ways in which free

women of means performed their religious identities and sought out organizations that

affirmed one’s respectability through public displays of support for Christian institutions.

Male relatives and acquaintances sometimes represented free mulatas, pardas,

negras, and morenas on legal matters, but women continued to serve as significant actors

in legal procedures, as was the case of the free parda Theodora Diáñez.73 Theodora and

her husband Juan Manuel, a free negro, were vecinos of La Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz,

but found themselves in need of representation in Xalapa. On July 21, 1714, Theodora

granted a poder to Juan Manuel’s uncle, Miguel de Morales, who was a vecino of Xalapa,

in order to conduct business for her in the city. Theodora intended to sell a piece of

property located in Xalapa that she had inherited from her father, Gonzalo Diáñez. The

records confirm that her father Gonzalo had inherited the land from his father Gerardo

Diáñez, making Theodora Diáñez a third-generation landowner.

And while she was the sole beneficiary, Theodora Diáñez gave her poder to

Miguel de Morales with the expressed “licencia” of her husband Juan Manuel. She

affirmed in seemingly formulaic language that she “had not been forced by her husband

or by anyone else in her husband’s name” to grant this poder and that she did so by “her

72 Von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers, 42. 73 ANX, August 3, 1714, f 146vta - 150fte.

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own free will.” By August 3, 1714, Miguel de Morales had found a buyer for Theodora’s

larger property holdings. The buyer was none other than Capitán Pedro Zapata de

Ezquerra, the alcalde mayor and war captain of the province of Xalapa and Jalacingo.

The sale meant that Theodora would relinquish a substantial portion of her inheritance –

half of the Ingenio Viejo and its lands valued at the high price of 200 pesos de oro

común. The bill of sale stated that Capitán Pedro had already paid sixty pesos de oro

común and that the balance, 140 pesos de oro común, would be forthcoming in two

installments with the first due in six months and the second at the end of the following six

months.

Theodora’s assertion that her husband Juan Manuel nor anyone else had coerced

her is significant because it was not standard notarial language found in other bills of sale

by women of African descent. She was selling a much more expensive piece of property

than most women and her buyer was a powerful persona in Xalapan society, both

militarily and likely economically since he could afford to make such large land

purchases. Theodora Diáñez, the notary public, or perhaps even the buyer Captain Pedro

Zapata de Ezquerra, wanted to clarify that she had come to the decision wholly on her

own to avoid possible dispute of land ownership after the paperwork was finalized. The

notion of “free will” permeated Spanish legal culture and was a defining characteristic of

ecclesiastical protocols. In addition, the patriarchal Spanish legal system categorized

women as a protected class. Jane Landers writes, “Castile’s thirteenth-century legal

code, the Siete Partidas, classified women along with children, invalids, and delinquents

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as in need of supervision but also deserving of familial and societal protection.”74 Juan

Manuel may have influenced Theodora, as any spouse would have wanted to express an

opinion on how high-valued property was to be bought or sold. What is significant in

this case is that the convention of the licencia was elaborated upon and Theodora Diáñez

was given voice to assert independence through a gendered legal convention meant to

protect women’s choice from outside abuses. A key aspect of Theodora Diáñez’ story is

that she was a third-generation landowner, who likely had acquired a property-rights

education from members of her own family. The couple did not live in Xalapa, but they

may have left further traces in other archives in the region that, with further research,

might substantiate that Theodora was the primary initiator of real estate matters in her

family. Without further records, we are left with only a fleeting glimpse into how a free

woman of African descent declared her experience with and knowledge of the legal

system that offered safeguards for women perceived as fragile and easily persuaded.

The Value of Notarial Truths

Many of the women discussed here obtained the resolution they sought without

any documented legal dispute of the events or agreements they presented, but not all

women were so fortunate. Kathryn Burns asserts that the job of the notary was to

“discipline the messy particulars of their [clients’] business into approved legal forms.”75

Sometimes the messiness of reality seeped into official documents to garner sympathy.

Sometimes the messiness was a kind of notarial truth aimed at the maintenance of social

74 Landers, Black Society in Spanish America, 137 75 Burns, Into the Archive, 68.

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legitimacy with just enough despair to sway the opinion of a judge or notary. The

balancing act of preserving one’s public persona as one of good repute with the desire to

garner legal consideration through tempered pity was a socially dangerous game to play.

However, if the stakes of remunerative gain were high enough, it may have been well

worth it economically to lose just a bit of one’s social respectability. At least one woman

had to divulge some unfortunate financial hardships that her family had been

experiencing, but she then backed up these admissions with a team of influential contacts

that formed a line for her credibility defense.

Juana Fernández, a free parda, was lawfully married to Martín Bentura, and the

two first appeared before the notary public when she granted him her poder on November

22, 1659.76 Martín was not Juana’s first husband. They were virtual newlyweds with

about a year of marriage under their belts when the poder was issued. Juana had been

previously married to Francisco Sánchez, who had passed away. Juana’s poder allowed

Martín to represent her before the alcalde mayor of Xalapa to see that her endowed

dowry and other belongings were protected and that she was granted ownership of them

under the terms of the last will and testament registered by her first husband Francisco.77

According to Spanish family law,

The property which a woman brought into marriage as a dowry remained legally hers and could not be alienated without her permission. The husband had the right to administer the dowry, but he had the duty to

76 ANX, November 22, 1659, f 368fte - 368vta. 77 For a more detailed discussion of women’s rights to their personal property and their dowries,

see Asunción Lavrin and Edith Courturier, “Dowries and Wills: A View of Women’s Socioeconomic Role in Colonial Guadalajara and Puebla, 1640-1790,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 59, no. 2 (May, 1979): 280-304.

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return its value on the dissolution of the marriage or to make provisions for its restitution in his own will.78

Juana and Francisco had five children and since all were still minors, she used the legal

avenues available to her to protect her assets so that she and her new husband could care

for the their large family. Validating the claim to her dowry would have proven essential.

The more intimate and sobering family part of the poder cites the need to liquidate the

assets in order to feed the children. While Martín Bentura signed his name with such

flourish that he may have been literate, the notary documented that Juana Fernández did

not know how to sign her name.

Juana Fernández and Martín Bentura’s second notarial entry came on September

23, 1660, when Martín appeared before Don Antonio Rosel y Lugo, the alcalde mayor of

Xalapa.79 The couple needed to prove that Juana’s first husband Francisco Sánchez had

indeed lawfully made the appropriate addendum in his will that allocated to Juana all that

belonged to her. In Juana’s name, through the aforementioned poder, Martín Bentura

presented his first witness, Miguel de Quintana. Miguel was an español and vecino of

Xalapa. He was also the alguacil mayor80 of the province; a nearly unassailable witness

that Juana and Martín had the fortune of knowing. Miguel swore that he served as a

primary witness when Francisco Sánchez, who was sick in bed but within full capacity of

reason, signed the documents protecting the legal rights of his wife, Juana.

78 Lavrin and Courturier, “Dowries and Wills,” 282-283. 79 ANX, September 23, 1660, f 369vta - 370fte. 80 An alguacil mayor was the equivalent of a local sheriff or a chief constable with a vote as a city

councilman in the town council when the office was purchased for a life-term. In other areas of the Spanish empire, the alguacil mayor was an annually elected position by the town council and was not permitted to vote at council meetings.

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On the same day of Miguel de Quintana’s testimony, Martín presented his second

witness, Antonio de Acosta Clemente, another español and vecino of Xalapa.81 Antonio

confirmed Miguel’s narrative, stating that sometime in September 1658, he witnessed

Francisco Sánchez sign the documents with his own hand and in good judgment even

though he was ill. This testimony also revealed that Francisco Sánchez was on his

deathbed in September 1658. In November 1659, Juana noted that she and Martín had

been married for about a year, which means that Juana had a fairly short mourning period

before she moved on from her late first husband and married Martín Bentura. However,

as a widowed mother of five, she likely wasted no time in considering new suitors, if only

for her economic welfare. Four days after the first two witnesses appeared before the

alcalde mayor, Juana and Martín presented one final witness in this case, Juan Jacinto

Romero, a vecino of the ingenio named Chico, located on the outskirts of the city but still

within the jurisdiction of Xalapa.82 Juan Jacinto stated that while he was not present at

the signing, as the other two men had been, he knew of the written agreement and that

Francisco Sánchez had made it while he was still mentally competent to do so.

The personal finances of Juana Fernández and Martín Bentura are not revealed in

any of their notarial entries. It is unclear whether the stated urgency to settle the affairs

of her first husband in order to feed their five children reflected a period of destitution or

the creation of a “notarial truth” to win the sympathies of those that might be able to

secure her greater economic holdings. She also drew from an influential social network

to testify on her behalf, lending her social credibility before authorities. Juana even had

81 ANX, September 23, 1660, f 370fte - 371fte. 82 ANX, September 27, 1660, f 371fte - 371vta.

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the ability to have someone who was not present at the principal affair in contestation to

testify to events he supposedly knew to be true. Juana Fernández’ engagement with the

notary demonstrates her knowledge of key aspects of notarial truth-making. The first

involved the possible benefits of an affective narrative: a widow left with five children to

raise, trying to provide for them and their hungry bellies, albeit with a new husband. In

her examination of notarial entries by women in colonial Cuzco, Peru, Burns asserts that

“when availing themselves of legal forms of protest against ‘bad patriarchs,’ women

(through their chosen notaries) seem to have gone in for a saturated femininity, the most

concentrated possible version.”83 Jane Landers also notes the gendered approaches

utilized by women of African descent in Spanish Florida, “In a community which

operated within the idiom of family, women frequently referred to themselves as mothers

and made references to their children. If they were sick, widowed, or abandoned, they

made sure to mention it.”84 The devout widowed mother, who happened to be remarried

at the time of the entry, was a notarial “character” that was legible for officials as were

the socially indisputable witnesses to said widow’s truth claims.

The roles played by well-known, politically important, or economically influential

witnesses serve as determining factors that, in this case, change the tone of a plea of a

widowed woman of African descent in need of assistance. Juana claimed some level of

poverty when she admitted to her inability to provide even basic necessities for her

children, but she certainly was not without means to fight for the compensation she

believed rightfully belonged to her. Juana shrewdly assembled her social capital, which

83 Burns, Into the Archive, 113. 84 Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 138.

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included a group of individuals to vouch for her legal status as the rightful administrator

of her late husband’s estate, a tactic employed to bolster her social credibility before

notarial authorities. She also skillfully employed notions of gender that would have been

recognizable for Spanish authorities. Juana Fernández called upon widely held cultural

codes of masculine duty and fatherly responsibility to the economic security of one’s

family and especially to one’s children.85 Even Spanish families cited the rhetoric of the

“abandoned mother” living in “abject poverty” to their advantage.86 The importance of

positioning oneself as the virtuous but aggrieved widowed mother, instead of the

materialistic newly-wed, cannot be understated. Juana’s notarial fashioning, whether an

accurate description of her indigence or an exaggeration, was a familiar, and sympathetic

argument for the men who would decide the validity of her case, and she was wise to

employ it as elite women had also done. And while the ultimate resolution of the case

was not registered, or perhaps was lost, Juana Fernández exhibited that she was savvy

enough to call upon the gendered strategies that would likely provide her the settlement

she sought from her late first husband’s contested will and the social legitimacy she

would have gained by the impressive social capital she called upon to testify on her

behalf.

The refashioning of identities was probably more common than can be assessed

through an examination of mediated sources. Not always a complete fabrication, a

85 Stern discusses how women understood obedience in relation to patriarchal duty as a type of

“social pact,” in which men held a responsibility to fulfill their roles as protectors and providers. Stern, The Secret History of Gender, 70-111. For a discussion of how capital and the dawn of capitalism influenced the juridical position of patriarchy, see Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico, 134, 234-237.

86 Twinam offers cases in which illegitimate children of dons and doñas described living in “the worst extreme of poverty…lacking a thousand necessities…and without comfort.” Twinam Public Lives, Private Secrets, 175.

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notarial truth could be mobilized to fix details of one’s earlier life, especially if it was less

documented because of a lack of resources. However, literacy may have played the

culprit in the foiling of Mariana Rodríguez’ adapted life history. Mariana was lawfully

married to Miguel Jiménez Carralero, and both were free mulatos. And unlike the

couples who sold off plots of land for thirty to sixty pesos de oro común, Mariana and

Miguel had to protect property, goods, and cash worth thousands of pesos de oro

común.87 Miguel and Mariana had dozens of primary initiator or secondary receiver

entries in the notarial archive, chronicling their prominence in Xalapan society. Miguel

was an hijo natural, or illegitimate son, of Juan Martínez Carralero and Magdalena de la

Cruz and was born in Acatzingo. By 1712, when he registered his will, both of his

parents were deceased. The wealthy couple had not always enjoyed material comfort.

The second clause of Miguel’s will reads,

I declare that I am married, according to the dictates of our mother Church, to Mariana Rodríguez, mulata…and when we contracted the aforementioned marriage, she did not bring a dowry nor did I have any wealth…And in the said time that we have been married, we have acquired a fortune totaling eleven thousand pesos, more or less, in the pack train business, slaves, real property, furniture, and jewelry.

Miguel was the owner of an extensive recua, or pack train business, with more than 200

mules. He must have been incredibly successfully in contracting business, which his

significant fortune reflected. And like many businessmen, he had a lengthy list of debts

and collections outlined in the will. Trusting his wife’s abilities, Miguel declared

Mariana along with Licenciado Manuel de Pozo, a presbítero, the executors of his debts

and assets. He also named Mariana as the sole beneficiary of his estate. Significantly,

87 ANX, February 24, 1712, f 504fte - 509vta.

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Miguel Jiménez Carralero could sign his own name at the end of the will and in a style

that denoted literacy.

Mariana and Miguel also owned quite a few slaves, which is not surprising

considering his 200-mule transport business. Miguel claimed a total of thirteen slaves88

in his will: Antonio Arroyo (negro), Manuel de Ortega (negro congo), Joseph (son of

Catarina de Yralla), Juan Joseph (negro congo), Baltazar (mulato prieto), Joseph (mulato

prieto), Paula and Gregoria and Domingo (three children, negros), Manuel (mulato), Juan

Antonio (mulato prieto, who did not belong to Miguel but that he presented to his wife),89

Francisco (negro), and Juan (mulato). He also noted that in addition to his thirteen

slaves, he had in his house an additional negro slave named Juan Pachupin who did not

belong to him (likely a hired-out slave). Throughout the early part of the eighteenth

century, the couple had owned several other slaves. On November 3, 1701, Miguel

purchased a mulato criollo named Joaquín for 400 pesos de oro común.90 Five years

later, he sold Joaquín, by then twenty-seven years old, to Christóbal de Yáñez de Vera, a

vecino of the city of Tlaxcala.91 Miguel Jiménez Carralero did not lose on his investment

of Joaquín as he recouped all 400 pesos de oro común in the sale. On October 30, 1709,

Miguel purchased a twenty-three-year-old mulato named Cayetano from a Mexico City

merchant, but less than a year later, he was ready to sell him.92 For 315 pesos de oro

común, he sold Cayetano to a fellow Xalapa vecina named María González.

88 I counted only twelve slaves. 89 The will is vague as to whether he owned Juan Antonio and had only recently presented his wife

with the gift of this particular slave. Or, whether Juan Antonio was in his employ as a slave and separately owned by his wife, Mariana Rodríguez.

90 ANX, November 3, 1701, f 119fte - 120fte. 91 ANX, January 21, 1706, f 444vta - 444vta bis. 92 ANX, May 21, 1710, f 327vta - 329vta.

264

Miguel dictated in his will that he and Mariana had no children. However, they

were still parents. For nearly seventeen years, the mulato couple cared for an orphan girl

in their home named Gertrudis Josepha, whom he referred to as “mi niña” (my girl).

Through his will, he demonstrated the closeness of this relationship by ordering that

1,000 pesos de oro común be given to her from his assets. The aforementioned Ana de la

Cruz with the farm did not have any biological children either, but she and her husband

too raised a young girl as their adopted daughter, Juana Teresa, who was only twelve at

the time of the will. A day later, Ana de la Cruz made an addendum to her will regarding

Juana Teresa.93 She clarified that the 100 pesos de oro común that she had intended to

leave Juana Teresa should be given to the girl when she married. It further stipulated that

if Juana Teresa was not married by the time that she was twenty-five years old, the 100

pesos de oro común should be given to her to do with them as she pleased. Ana also

instructed her two executors, Miguel Jerónimo López de Otanar and Don Antonio

Cardeña, to sell her properties after her death to pay for the costs of her altar and to use

the remainder of the profits to pay for masses performed for her soul. By May 18, 1704,

just two months after she had entered her will into public record, Ana de la Cruz had

passed away.94 Ana’s final notarial entry on that date was registered on her behalf by her

two executors reiterating the changes she had made on March 12 concerning Juana

Teresa’s inheritance and the assets listed in the original will along with an inventory of

debts owed.

Ana de la Cruz’ total wealth is difficult to quantify because her estate was not

93 ANX, March 12, 1704, f 291vta - 292vta. 94 ANX, May 18, 1704, f 299vta - 301fte.

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itemized and valued, but she was clearly of means and had a source of income from

renting out her houses to the religious community. She also attempted to provide for the

future of her adopted daughter with 100 pesos de oro común, not the grand gesture of

1,000 pesos de oro común bestowed by Mariana Rodríguez and Miguel Jiménez

Carralero to their adopted daughter, but Ana de la Cruz provided a valuable dowry

necessary for Juana Teresa to “marry well,” perhaps into an equally wealthy family of

African or Spanish descent.

Miguel’s generosity extended out to members of his wife Mariana’s biological

family. On March 28, 1707, Miguel donated a piece of land measuring twenty-one varas

by fifty-six varas to Mariana’s sister, Micaela Rodríguez.95 Micaela was certainly not

destitute. She was the wife of Sargento Don Alférez Sebastian de la Higuera, a soldier in

the militia and named amongst other influential men of Xalapan society in a petition to

request funding from Señor Don José Sarmiento Valladares, the viceroy of New Spain.96

Miguel noted in the documents that he made this gift to Micaela for favors and services

that she had done for him. Likely, it was a good-will gift between two wealthy families

to solidify bonds.

On January 30, 1720, Miguel Jiménez Carralero returned to the notarial archive to

make changes to his will.97 He declared that he owned the house in which he lived, but

this time he stated that he owned only eighty-two mules and five slaves. He owned a

piece of land in front of the primary residence, where his nephew Tomás de Figueroa had

95 ANX, March 28, 1707, f 24fte - 25fte. 96 ANX, January 2, 1697, f 332fte - 332vta. 97 ANX, January 30, 1720, f 26fte - 27vta.

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constructed a house. He also made changes to the executor list. While his wife Mariana

remained, the presbítero was replaced with Tomás de Figueroa. He bade his executors to

order as many masses as they could for his soul after his passing, a typical request made

by wealthier colonial subjects. Miguel Jiménez Carralero must have not been long for

the world because by February 26, 1720, just a few weeks later, Mariana Rodríguez was

cited as a widow.98 The following month, Mariana sold three of her slaves, the three

children, Paula, Gregoria, and Domingo, for 750 pesos de oro común, perhaps to raise

liquidity to pay off the debt left by her husband. She later sold a smaller piece of

property, measuring thirteen varas by forty varas, to Joseph de Castro for thirteen pesos

de oro común.99 On the same day, Mariana and Tomás also sold fifty-four rigged mules

and two houses to fellow recua owner Alférez Juan José Rincón for 2,460 pesos de oro

común.100 Alférez Juan José must have been a very wealthy man because they agreed to

a short one-year contract to pay off this tremendous debt. A year later, Mariana and

Tomás were once again in business with Alférez Juan José.101 This time, they sold him a

twenty-seven-year-old mulato blanco102 slave named Juan Jiménez for 300 pesos de oro

común. On June 10, 1723, Mariana and Tomás sold another slave named Joseph for 350

pesos de oro común to Alférez Jerónimo de Acosta.103 After only five business deals,

Mariana Rodríguez had amassed 3,873 pesos de oro común from the sale of assets

bequeathed to her, a small fortune for a widowed woman. If she had decided to live

98 ANX, February 26, 1720, f 32vta - 33vta. 99 ANX, April 10, 1725, f 676fte - 677fte. 100 ANX, February 26, 1720, f 32vta - 33vta. 101 ANX, March 11, 1721, f 136vta - 137vta. 102 A mulato blanco was probably a mulato with features that could allow him to “pass” for

Spanish but who was of purported African descent. 103 ANX, June 10, 1723, f 458vta - 459fte.

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“modestly” and spend only twenty pesos de oro común a month (more than twice the

average unskilled male worker’s salary) and had not accumulated any further debt,

Mariana could have lived on this amount alone for more than sixteen years.

On September 9, 1725, Mariana Rodríguez, the widow of one of Xalapa’s most

wealthy men of African descent, registered her last will and testament.104 Her own

parents are finally revealed as Agueda Hernández and Juan Rodríguez. Five years after

her husband Miguel’s death, she possessed only half of his estate. As she lay sick in bed,

she disclosed that for about the last year and a half, the house that she was living in was

leased from Andre Coto for a monthly rent of six pesos de oro común. However, at six

pesos de oro común a month, it must have been a fairly large home given that many

houses in Xalapa during this period were sold for thirty pesos de oro común. She named

as sole heir to her estate her twenty-five-year old unmarried niece Melchora de los Reyes.

The most fascinating twist in Mariana Rodríguez’ notarial life is the biographical

license that she took in her final entry. In his 1712 will, Miguel Jiménez Carralero

clearly stated that when he married Mariana, she had no dowry to offer, and that he was

not of means either. Miguel seemed to want to affirm that his current wealth belied an

important truth about his relationship with his wife: the two contracted the marriage from

humble beginnings and with no financial gain to be had by either partner at the time. In

Mariana’s 1725 will, she revised a bit of her own history by asserting that when she

married Miguel, she brought with her 100 pesos de oro común. This major alteration by

Mariana (100 pesos de oro común was a considerable amount of money) was a notarial

104 ANX, September 9, 1725, f 701vta - 703fte.

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narrative that better suited the station in life that she and her husband had accomplished

over the years. Perhaps she had forgotten that her husband had already notarized that

neither party brought noteworthy assets to the marriage. Or, perhaps Miguel was the one

who took creative license and attempted to construct his own notarial truth as a self-made

man who built a mule business from nothing, without the resources of a wealthy spouse

or her family, and would leave this world a wealthy man because of his own herculean

efforts. Kimberly Hanger asserts, “Like [free people of African descent] throughout the

Americas, the majority earned their liberty and whatever property they acquired

themselves rather than benefited from the generosity of individual masters.”105 We do

not know how far removed from slavery Mariana or Miguel were nor do we know whose

notarial narrative was closer to the truth. What we can examine are the gendered

investments in both narratives that were imbibed with classed understandings of self-

sufficient men and respectable women with dowries.

Mariana Rodríguez and Miguel Jiménez Carralero were free mulatos who owned

land, a profitable transport business, and slave. They also managed business

relationships with elite members of society from Xalapa, Veracruz, and even Mexico

City. The two had worked to create a life of luxury that they shared with their adopted

daughter and other family members. Mariana Rodríguez may have refused to let her

husband mar their social status with his notarial truth of their modest beginnings given

her current position in Xalapa society, and declared a notarized “corrective” in her own

will to affirm her rank in the public record. Mariana Rodríguez took on the expected

105 Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 170.

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notarial narrative of a wealthy landowner and lady of many economic resources, even if

she had to refashion the earlier years.

Conclusion

Free women of African descent documented a multitude of business

arrangements, allowing previews into certain aspects of their private lives through the

structured style of the notarial entry. The notarial documents dictate the types of

information available to illustrate the business lives of free women of African descent,

with both the benefits and limitations of that particular archive. Kathryn Burns argues

that notarial records are not merely cold summaries of everyday business but pieces of an

elaborate slice of colonial life composed of legal etiquette, social relations, business and

personal ventures and other myriad configurations of colonial subjects and their

activities.106 The formulaic nature of these elements offers the historian a sense of false

assurance because of the standardization and inclusion of mundane features of people’s

“legal lives.” As seen in the details divulged in the cases discussed, the notarial archive

is also home to sources as diverse, emotional, and intimate as those belonging to the more

“colorful” archives of criminal cases and inquisitorial records. With them, I offer a

glimpse into the tapestry of economic challenges and triumphs that women of African

descent experienced in Xalapa and how these notarial interactions articulated

preoccupations with respectability.

The case of Mariana Rodríguez and her declaration of having a dowry of 100

106 Kathryn Burns, “Notaries, Truth, and Consequences.” The American Historical Review 110, no

2 (2005), 351-352.

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pesos de oro común at the time of marriage speaks most directly to the desire for social

credibility that is dispersed throughout all of their journeys towards economic solvency.

Dowries attempted to safeguard young girls from less than desirable marriages. A trade

education was arranged with the hope of upward social mobility. Generational wealth

needed to be established through legal measures. Married women demanded that their

nuptials be verified before the proper authorities. Poor women were made “of means”

through a manipulation of their personal history. All of these cases address the ways in

which economy played not only a role in financial status but also in the types of social

respectability that these historical actors strove for and that had been denied to many

people of African descent. Free women of African descent of means in Xalapa were not

like the cloistered Spanish women of the most elite families. Whether they were single,

married, or widowed, free women proved active participants in the care of their assets,

large and small. Male members of families played important roles in the notarial lives of

women when they served as apoderados, as did unrelated male confidantes. The archive

demonstrates that women established profitable networks that included generous

patronesses, politicians, religious leaders, military personnel, and business administrators.

The cultivation of such advantageous social capital and the acquisition of invaluable

cultural capital provided African-descended women with the means to claim legitimacy

through economic endeavors.

Strikingly, free women of African descent who were unrelated did not engage

with one another in any of these economic endeavors. Daughters inherited goods and

property from their mothers. But outside of sanguineous ties, there appeared to be few

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economic interactions between free women of means of African descent. According to

the notarial records, free African-descended women conducted business almost

exclusively with men. No unsettled debts to other women declared. No poderes issued

to other women. Not a single piece of property purchased from another woman of

African descent. The parish archives allude to fairly even gender ratios among the

population of African descent and yet the notarial archive is wont to tell another story.

Burns argues, “Documents of all kinds – contracts, wills, legal petitions, and depositions

– were crucial to obtaining justice, and the making of valid documents was the exclusive

province of the notary.”107 This goal of “obtaining justice” is the differentiating factor

between the notarial archive and most of the ecclesiastical archive.108 The emphasis on

resolution, I argue, contributes to the theater of truth-making. Free women may have

engaged one another to a much greater degree than can be revealed by such sources.

They may have co-owned commercial properties, worked for one another in various

businesses, and served as each other’s informal fiadores – all beyond the offices of the

notary public.

The notarial archive documented business, but it was also a theater, and the

performers knew their roles to varying degrees. I have argued throughout this chapter

that free women’s economic investment demonstrated an interest in particular kinds of

social and cultural capital to garner social legitimacy. I posit that free women of means,

perhaps not needing to use one another as actors in legitimizing theater, may have

107 Burns, Into the Archive, 24. 108 Twinam discusses how baptismal records were fraught with social agendas that obscured

paternity and even maternity in the case of private pregnancies. Twinam, Public Lives, 130-138.

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foregone the performances and interacted with one another in economically meaningful

ways outside of the sanctioned realm of the notarial offices. The notarial office could

not, and was not designed to, capture all economies, but it did happen to capture an array

of relationships. Burns notes that “documents were made by people in relationships” and

affected by the power imbalances among those participating in the production.109 By

parsing out the specific imbalances of such relationships, the investments of the

performances can be better understood. No other form of documented activity better

coalesces to address such questions of economic interest and theater than slave-owning,

which is the focus of my final chapter.

109 Burns, Into the Archive, 126.

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Chapter Four

Slaveowners

Slave ownership among people of African descent offers a complicated narrative

to parse out.1 Unlike the cooks, spinners, weavers, food purveyors, laundresses, and

house servants of the colonies, women of African descent who owned slaves carried with

them a social marker that identified their economic status as one that firmly placed them

above the challenges of subsistence. As slaveowners, free women of African descent in

Xalapa established alliances and business connections with other people of the same

class, regardless of race or caste. Inge Dornan argues that the omission of the narratives

of slave-owning women in the U.S. “has led to a distorted picture of the relationship

between women and slavery in the colonial era.”2 Dornan adds, “The surviving sources

indicate that there was very little public or private debate regarding women’s ability to

manage their slaves.”3 In the case of colonial Mexico, where the Spanish Crown never

prohibited its subjects of African descent from owning African and African-descended

1 Important contribution to these efforts in the historiography include: Frederick P. Bowser, The

African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524-1640 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974); William F. Sharp, Slavery on the Spanish Frontier: The Colombian Choco, 1680-1810 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976); Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974); John Hope Franklin, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1943); Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roark, Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974); Larry Koger, Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1985); Carter G. Woodson, ed., Free Negro Owners of Slaves in the United States in 1830 (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1924); Loren Schweninger, Black Property Owners in the South, 1790-1915 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991); Inge Dornan, “Masterful Women: Colonial Women Slaveholders in the Urban Low Country,” Journal of American Studies 39, no. 3 (2005): 383-402.

2 Dornan, “Masterful Women,” 402. 3 Dornan, “Masterful Women,” 400.

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slaves, an elite group of female slaveowners emerged.4 Their experiences during the long

seventeenth century reshape how we imagine free women’s relationship to slavery and

slave-owning for the Mexican context. As slaveowners, they benefitted from tangible

and intangible advantages, as many others did. While the economic lives of free women

discussed in the previous chapter offer important insights into how women navigated

society, the status marker of slaveowner uniquely encapsulates, perhaps more than any

other social marker, the experiences of free women with wealth in seventeenth-century

Mexico.

Slave-owning was not a venture accessible to all. With the average cost of a slave

at 400 pesos de oro común in the central Veracruz region throughout the long seventeenth

century, purchasing slaves was a steep, and therefore exclusive, economic undertaking.

For an elite set of free women, being a slaveowner represented a status that offered them

financial security, an entrée into greater social networks, and, in turn, greater social

legitimacy. Sugar ingenio owners who had dozens or hundreds of slaves to work their

substantial properties were more likely to have access to financial credit because of the

collateral they possessed. Slaveowners with just a few slaves bore a higher economic

burden due to the initial financial investment followed by the long-term maintenance of

“personal service”5 slaves. Only people with financial backers, profitable family ties, or

4 Female slaveowners were prominent features in other colonies during the long-seventeenth

century. From the Brazilian context, Higgins notes, “Women who were former slaves were 70 percent of all the women slaveholders listed in 1720…They did not often directly compete with White men in the more alluring and lucrative gold-mining sector of the economy, which had first attracted free immigrants to the [jurisdiction].” Higgins, Licentious Liberty, 82.

5 Here, I differentiate between personal-service slaves and those purchased specifically to work in designated large-scale industries, such as sugar production or the transportation business. Lockhart uses

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particularly well-honed pecuniary skills could engage in slave ownership during Xalapa’s

economically unstable long seventeenth century.

Slaveowner as a status or social marker provided free African-descended women

with new gateways to the free social world. Free people in Mexico, much like other

colonial subjects who could afford it, bought and sold slaves. Women and men of

African descent who owned slaves found slavery to be a worthwhile economic venture,

especially in Veracruz, where the use of enslaved African labor was intrinsically tied to

the development of the local economy. In a review of nearly 150 years of Xalapa’s

notarial history (1580 to 1725), I found that the elite group of slaveowners consisted of

less than a dozen people who were marked as free women of African descent. An

examination of notarial documents from Córdoba dating from 1635 to 1730 yielded only

one case, and documents from Orizaba dating from 1585 to 1730 did not yield a single

case of slave ownership by a free woman of African descent.6 And while this may appear

to be an extremely low occurrence of slave ownership by free women, we must

remember that these records account only for women who, for whatever reason,

registered slave ownership with the notary and do not account for those who did not need

notarial services.

the term “personal servant,” but states, “Personal service was indeed the role most closely associated with blacks in the minds of the Spaniards.” Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 198.

6 Archivo Notarial de Córdoba, USBI, Colecciones Especiales, Universidad Veracruzana, Xalapa, Veracruz (ANC), Protocolos 1635-1694, Protocolos 1693-1706, Protocolos 1707-1715, Protocolos 1716-1725, Protocolos 1726 - 1746; Archivo Notarial de Orizaba, USBI, Colecciones Especiales, Universidad Veracruzana, Xalapa, Veracruz (ANORZ), Protocolos 1585-1643, Protocolos 1644-1683, Protocolos 1684-1700, Protocolos 1702-1709, Protocolos 1710-1720, Protocolos 1721-1726, Protocolos 1727-1730.

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The intentional or inadvertent obfuscation of racial identifications by notaries or

registrants, in addition to lost documents, would also lead to the under reporting of

women of African descent as slaveowners. In a case that will be discussed later in the

chapter, the free parda Petrona de Arauz was not identified by caste designation in every

document in which she appeared. Only after tracing her family history and tracking

down all of her notarial entries was I able to discern that it was the same free parda who

was no longer identified as such in later documentation. Owning slaves socially marked

these women as substantial economic actors, and as so marked, this elite group of women

would not have escaped the radar of colonial officials, their economic peers, or other

people of African descent.

Racialized Fears and the Lawful Subject

Spanish authorities expended an inordinate amount of time preoccupied by the

activities of the varied populations of their colonies, regardless of how small the

demographic. In 1574, Martín Enriquez, the Viceroy of New Spain, expressed concern

about a growing “problem” in the colony. Viceroy Enriquez wrote, “The grand number

of free mulatos is multiplying and these people are bellicose and not inclined to work.”7

He cautioned colonial officials against these unemployed free mulatos, warning the

colony’s administrators to “avoid a great danger.”8 Joan Cameron Bristol notes that

colonial authorities urged that free African-descended people be more strongly tied to

structured labor markets to avoid the disruption that could be wrought by vagabondage.

7 AGI, Mexico, 19, n. 125 (1574). 8 AGI, Mexico, 19, n. 125 (1574).

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Bristol adds as an aside that these orders did not specify whether women were also the

intended targets of such anti-vagabond decrees.9 However, in the imaginations of

colonial officials in the Americas, vagabondage left the proverbial door open for greater

lawlessness,10 which translated into the fear of violent and economically “dangerous”

maroons.11

Whether free or enslaved, people of African descent caused great anxiety for

Spanish officials, both in the colony and the metropole.12 According to an edict by

Viceroy Martín Enriquez, colonial officials feared the war-like characteristics of its free

population but also the dangers inherent in sloth and cross-caste unions. Spanish

9 Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches, 102. 10 Laura Lewis offers an overview of colonial notions of free, “untethered” people of African of

descent. Laura Lewis, Hall of Mirrors,78-80. Vagabondage created great concern in many societies not just those with populations of people of African descent. Michel Foucault cites a French judge who, in 1764, “…demanded that these useless and dangerous people should be ‘acquired by the state and that they should belong to it as slaves to their masters…A vagabond is infinitely more dangerous for society [than a wolf].” Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 88.

11 The historiography of maroon communities and escaped slaves is particularly rich from the Caribbean and Brazil. Some notable contributions across the Americas include: Jane Landers, “Maroon Women in Colonial Spanish America: Case Studies in the Circum-Caribbean from the Sixteenth through the Eighteenth Centuries,” in Beyond Bondage, 3-18. David Barry. Bondmen & Rebels: A Case Study of Master-Slave Relations in Antigua (Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1985); Richard Price, ed. Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1979); Stuart B. Schwartz, Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels: Reconsidering Brazilian Slavery (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992); Mavis C. Campbell, The Maroons of Jamaica: 1655-1796 (Granby, MA: Bergin & Garvey, 1988); Barbara Klamon Kopytoff, “The Early Political Development of Jamaican Maroon Societies,” The William and Mary Quarterly 35, no. 2 (April 1978); Carey Robinson, The Iron Thorn: The Defeat of the British by the Jamaican Maroons (Kingston, Jamaica: 1993); Bev Carey, The Maroon Story: The Authentic and Original History of the Maroons in the History of Jamaica, 1490-1880 (St. Andrew, Jamaica: Agouti Press, 1997); Thomas Flory, “Fugitive Slaves and Free Society: The Case of Brazil”, The Journal of Negro History 64, no. 2 (Spring 1979): 116-130; David M. Davidson, “Negro Slave Control and resistance in Colonial Mexico, 1519-1650,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 46, No. 3 (Aug., 1966): 235-253; Patrick J. Carroll, “Mandinga: The Evolution of a Mexican Runaway Slave Community, 1735-1827,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 19, no. 4 (October, 1977): 488-505; Octaviano Corro R., Los Cimarrones en Veracruz y la fundación de Amapa (México: Imprenta Comerical Veracruz, 1951).

12 With regard to racial anxiety, Rachel O’Toole notes that distinctions between African-descended and indigenous people began to dissolve in late-seventeenth-century Peru. However, she argues, “Nonetheless, viceregal authorities focused on blacks as a more likely cause for disorder.” O’Toole, Bound Lives, 33.

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authorities belabored the idea of a looming African threat or “grande peligro,” as

Viceroy Enriquez described and that others expressed in edicts, decrees, and anecdotal

stories throughout the colonial era.

By 1570, approximately 23,000 Africans and African-descended people existed

across the expansive territories of New Spain.13 At the height of the slave trade in the

seventeenth century, the colony’s population already consisted of more than 150,000

African and African-descended people.14 The free population had steadily increased by

the late 1600s, but free people of African descent did not represent a majority in any of

the high population density regions of Mexico during the sixteenth century.

Nevertheless, the possibility of increased vagrancy due to a growing free population

prompted the viceroy to express his concerns publicly. On the opposite end of the

spectrum, authorities aspired for control of their colonial apparatus and attempted to

create hard lines against activities in which African-descended people could participate.

Discriminatory practices were most apparent in two sectors, the notary public and the

clergy. As notaries held the responsibility of creating official documents and maintaining

the daily operation of colonial orderliness, only Spaniards could serve in these

positions.15 As “instruments of the early modern archive,”16 Spaniards were particularly

13 Aguirre Beltrán, La Población Negra, 210. 14 This number is based on data by Aguirre Beltrán in La Población Negra, 219. I collapsed the

“Africano” and “Afromestizo” categories for the year 1646 to yield a population count of 151,618. This data is compiled from information on populations in only seven juridical demarcations: Mexico, Tlaxcala, Michoacan, Nueva Galicia, Yucatán, and Chiapas. The population of Africans and African-descended people is likely higher because high Afro-casta population areas such as Veracruz were not accounted for in the sample. Ben Vinson questions the exactness of Beltran’s number due to questions of methodology but concurs that “as indicators of general trends, he seems accurate.” Vinson, Bearing Arms for His Majesty, 143.

15 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 113. 16 Burns, Into the Archive, 39.

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occupied with the possibility of “infiltration.” Kathryn Burns cites a 1588 case in which

a Spanish priest stationed in the Andes expressed concern about who had access to such

systems of knowledge. The priest wrote that indigenous people who spoke Spanish

attempted “to penetrate our usages, the better to resist us.” Priests also served in the

capacity of arbiters of truth and order, which made theirs a prized occupation for a

privileged Spanish set.17

The Catholic Church prohibited African-descended people from entering religious

orders on more prejudicial grounds. In 1739, Pope Clemente XII powerfully reaffirmed

the Church’s position “holding that the mestizos and mulattoes were ‘individuals

generally despised by society, unworthy of holding public office and of directing the

spiritual life of others.’”18 Discriminatory notions about the inability of African-

descended people to serve as religious ministers served to perpetuate stereotypes of their

racial inferiority. Regardless of how small the demographic, Spanish authorities invested

time in attempting to monitor and regulate the perceived “deviant” or “unsanctioned”

behavior of people of African descent. Neither the Crown nor the viceroy of New Spain

ever communicated a similar apprehension about people of African descent involved in

the lucrative business of slave-owning, probably because they behaved as other

slaveowners did. From the context of Spanish Florida, Jane Landers writes,

It does not appear that black slaveowners had a relationship with their slaves that was significantly different than that between a white owner and a slave. They rented out and sold slaves and posted them as bonds. Like

17 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 113. 18 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 19.

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white slaveowners, black masters sometimes assisted slaves to become free and sometimes opposed their manumission.19

While untethered mulatos, pardos, morenos, and negros represented unpredictability and

possible sources of colonial instability, a commitment to the colony’s economic structure

symbolized a level of acculturation that Spanish authorities hoped would be the case for

all of their subjects.20 This appears to have been particularly true for slave ownership.21

Kimberly Hanger poignantly asserts, “Ownership of black slaves fostered free black

identification with white society and thus dissipated white fears of racial collusion.”22

Hanger’s assessment may be accurate for Spanish New Orleans, but I take on the

challenge of attempting to parse out what slave-owning meant for African-descended

women in colonial Xalapa.

Rare Gifts: Becoming a Slaveowner through Donations

Notarial documents reveal that women of African descent entered the slave

economy predominantly through three different patterns: donations, “acknowledged

19 Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 94. 20 There is a well-established historiography of the function of cultural intermediaries in colonial

Spanish America. During the Conquest Era, free and enslaved Africans assisted Spanish conquistadores in numerous expeditions. In the early colonial period, they served as interlocutors between Spanish and indigenous communities in addition to serving in a more formalized capacity as militiamen for the colony’s defense. For more in depth examinations of intermediaries, see: Matthew Restall, The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2009); Matthew Restall, ed. Beyond Black and Red: African-Native Relations in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005); Ben Vinson, Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2004); Matthew Restall, “Black Conquistadors: Armed Africans in Early Spanish America,” The Americas 57, no.2 (October, 2000), 171-205; Nicole Von Germeten, “Colonial Middle Men? Mulatto Identity in New Spain’s Confraternities,” in Black Mexico, 136-154; Laura Lewis, Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft, and Caste in Colonial Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).

21 Of the eighteenth-century Brazilian context, Furtado notes, “Owning slaves was an essential mechanism in the pursuit of insertion into the world of the free where a disdain for work and for living by one’s own graft reigned supreme.” Ferreira Furtado, Chica da Silva, 146.

22 Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 70.

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family” inheritance, and individual industry. While not a widespread practice, donating

slaves was not uncommon in Xalapa. Approximately 33% (12 of 36 cases) of all

property donations registered with the notary public by people who were not identified as

being of African descent between 1617 and 169923 involved the transfer of human chattel

to family members, individuals, or religious entities. In 1640, Licenciado Don Alvaro de

Samano y Quinones, the clerk, presbítero, vecino of Mexico City, and resident of the

ingenio of San Miguel de Almolonga in the jurisdiction of Xalapa donated his part of the

sugar mill, including all slaves, to his brother Capitán Don Juan de Samano y Quiñones,

the alcalde mayor of Xalapa.24 In 1688, Capitán Don Antonio de Orduña Loyando also

donated his sugar ingenio, San Pedro Buenavista, to his only daughter, Doña Juana Josefa

de Orduña y Sousa. The notarial record notes a donation of all land, supplies, and slaves

belonging to San Pedro Buenavista, effectively making Doña Juana a wealthy slaveowner

if she had not already been one.25

In 1663, Don Fernando Ruiz de Cordova y Arrellano, the owner of the hacienda

San Sebastian Maxtlatlan, donated a fifteen-year-old mulato slave named Simón to Doña

María de Vargas Matamoros.26 Doña María was the daughter of a fairly wealthy family;

her mother was also noted as a doña. In addition to titles, a number of Xalapan residents

were indebted to her deceased father, Cristóbal Martín Matamoros, monies that were

collected on her behalf and that of the other inheritors.27 In 1693, slave owner Doña

María de la O. Palacios donated a seven-year-old negro slave to the cofradía of Nuestra

23 No individual property donations were cited between 1600 and 1616. 24 ANX, March 18, 1640, f 119fte - 124vta. 25 ANX, July 28, 1688, f 320fte - 321fte. 26 ANX, September 14, 1663, f 42vta - 44fte. 27 ANX, August 21, 1646, f 317fte - 317vta.

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Senora del Rosario in Puebla de Los Angeles, so that he would serve in perpetuity in their

capilla.28 Doña María also did quite well by her family. She married her doña title-

holding daughter to a fellow don.29 She was also wealthy enough to buy her don-son-in-

law an impressive house for the hefty price of 150 pesos de oro común.30 From

expensive property to titled men and women,31 these cases highlight the class exclusivity

of Spanish subjects donating slaves. It was ostensibly an elite activity, the transference of

expensive and in-demand commodities that directly contributed to one’s material wealth

and economic security.

In 1655, Polonia de Ribas became the only woman of African descent to receive a

documented slave donation in Xalapa from someone not specifically cited as a family

member.32 This donation represents a uniquely class-based notarial entry that depicts the

complicated juxtaposition of slave ownership, family, and identity. On February 25,

1655, Don Joseph Seballos y Burgos donated two slaves to free mulata Polonia de Ribas,

her half-brothers, Juan and Gerónimo de Yrala. At the time of the donation, Juan and

Gerónimo were twenty-five and twenty years old, respectively. Both men were identified

as negros criollos.33 The notarial records document that Juan and Gerónimo had been

slaves on the Tenampa hacienda, the same sugar hacienda where their mother had

28 ANX, December 7, 1691, f 474vta - 476fte. 29 ANX, May 16, 1691, f414fte - 415vta. 30 ANX, August 11, 1694, f 22fte - 23fte. 31 The designations “don” and “doña” were bestowed on people far more discriminately during the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By the late eighteenth century, Twinam cites the case of a Spaniard in Cuba who requested a noble title for services to the crown instead of accepting only the acknowledgement of “don” because “…all the Spanish who lived there and had means” were addressed as such. Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets, 363. Twinam also outlines the reputational value that “don/doña” held for illegitimately born Spaniards and the lengths to which they would go to assert their public personas via titles. Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets, 3-5.

32 ANX, February 25, 1655, f 69vta - 70fte. 33 Men of African descent born in the colonies.

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worked as an enslaved laborer. The owner of the Tenampa hacienda was Pedro de Yrala,

the wealthy uncle of Don Joseph Seballos y Burgos and the same Pedro de Yrala who

made earlier appearances in the lives of other women profiled here. A closer

examination of both men is necessary to consider this unique donation case.

Pedro de Yrala was born in Puebla de los Angeles to Doña Catalina Pérez Molero

and Pedro de Yrala, both residents of Puebla. Pedro de Yrala was the owner of the

hacienda where at least three of Polonia’s family members were enslaved in San Antonio

de Huastusco, and he was also a man of distinction in Xalapa. His birth date is unknown

but by 1637 he was a resident at a sugar refinery in Xalapa and held the title of

bachiller34 and was a priest.35 As the years passed, he adeptly increased his visibility and

his titles. In 1643, he was cited as the “cura beneficiado36 of Jalapa, for his Majesty.”37

As cura beneficiado, Pedro de Yrala held a formal title amongst diocesan parish priests,

which allowed him certain privileges and required of him greater responsibilities. The

title gave him “head priest” status, a position without term restrictions.38 He would have

also “held the parish as a benefice or quasi-feudal property,”39 which allowed him access

to “parish income, labor, and provisions permitted by law or custom,”40 making him a

34 A bachiller is defined as a “holder of a bachelor's degree. Less common and more prestigious in

the sixteenth century than at present. The honorific title of a secular priest.” Ophelia Marquez and Lillian Ramos Navarro Wold, eds. “Compilation of Colonial Spanish Terms and Document Related Phrases,” Accessed January 19, 2013, http://www.somosprimos.com/spanishterms/spanishterms.htm.

35 ANX, December 16, 1637, f 16vta - 17fte. 36 A cura beneficiado was a “Secular priest subordinate to a bishop.” Ophelia Marquez and Lillian

Ramos Navarro Wold, eds. “Compilation of Colonial Spanish Terms and Document Related Phrases,” Accessed January 19, 2013, http://www.somosprimos.com/spanishterms/spanishterms.htm.

37 ANX, December 29, 1643, f 425fe - 426fte. 38 William B. Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred: Priests and Parishioners in Eighteenth-Century

Mexico (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996), 79. 39 Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred, 79. 40 Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred, 79.

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central figure in Xalapa’s religious life. While a titled man of a religious order, Pedro de

Yrala had inherited from his mother a considerable estate, the sugar hacienda named

Tenampa. He was also the owner of a number of slaves.41 In addition to owning

Tenampa and conducting other business in the region, by 1660, Licenciado Pedro de

Yrala increased his prestige in Xalapa when he found a seat as an ecclesiastical judge,42

which was a common ascension of duties for curas beneficiados.43

Don Joseph, Pedro de Yrala’s nephew, came from a well-established family in the

jurisdiction of Xalapa and was a wealthy man in his own right. In Xalapa, he owned at

least two sugar refineries, the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción44 and the Nuestra Señora

del Rosario,45 and an unspecified mill called El Molino del Río Frío.46 Additionally, Don

Joseph owned a sugar mill named La Natividad de Nuestra Señora and a cattle ranch

called La Palmilla, both located in the jurisdiction of La Antigua Ciudad de Veracruz.47

He also conducted business in La Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz and Mexico City. By 1655,

Don Joseph was identified as the justicia mayor of Xalapa, a chief magistrate appointed

by the viceroy.48 It is no wonder that between 1617 and 1661, Don Joseph’s notarial

activities are documented in more than sixty entries. Why, then, did he donate two

slaves, still expensive commodities during the long seventeenth century, to a mulata

woman with no cited connection to him?

41 ANX, December 14, 1643, f 433fte - 437fte. 42 ANX, June 14, 1660, f 348vta - 349vta. 43 Taylor, Magistrates of the Sacred, 79. 44 ANX, April 19, 1642, f 270fte -270vta. 45 ANX, January 19, 1655, f 66vta - 67vta. 46 ANX, February 13, 1642, f 285fte - 285vta. 47 ANX, December 14, 1643, f 433fte - 437fte. 48 ANX, December 31, 1655, f 95vta.

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On January 18, 1655, Pedro de Yrala donated to Don Joseph all of his goods,

furniture, silver, jewelry, slaves, debts, rights, and actions.49 This donation explains how

Don Joseph owned slaves previously owned by Pedro de Yrala and how the two men

knew each other for this donation to take place. These tangential actors explain how

Polonia de Ribas came into possession of her half-brothers, Juan and Gerónimo, but not

why. Another piece of this puzzle does not appear for another nine years. As we recall

from Chapter 3, Pedro de Yrala had issued a poder to Polonia in order to retrieve a

substantial sum of 257 pesos de oro común from Joseph Cogollos y Zarate, the owner of

an inn and manager of a sugar refinery in Xalapa’s environs. Polonia’s involvement in

the business affairs of Pedro de Yrala establishes that at least since 1655, she was a

trusted confidante of his. However, Polonia’s further entanglements with Pedro’s family

necessitate further inquiry into the life history of this enterprising free woman.

Polonia de Ribas was born in San Antonio Huatusco (now Huatusco). It is

located in central Veracruz and is one of the oldest Spanish towns in the region, dating its

founding to Cortés’ visit in 1521. By at least 1655, Polonia was a resident of Coatepec in

the jurisdiction of Xalapa. Polonia’s date of birth is unknown. I posit that Polonia was

likely in her fifties when she submitted her last will and testament in 1679. When she

received the donation of her enslaved brothers in 1655, she was not noted as being a

mother but was legally acknowledged as an adult since no guardian was cited, which

likely placed Polonia in her mid-twenties.50 At the time of the will, her children were

49 ANX, January 18, 1655, f 65fte - 66fte. 50 Laura Lewis notes that the legal age of consent for women under Spanish law was 25 years of

age. Lewis, Hall of Mirrors, 60.

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adults and at least two had been married with young children. Given that twenty-four

years had passed between the donation and the will, I believe that fifty years of age is a

fair approximation. The notarial entries offer a few clues about Polonia’s heritage.

Polonia’s mother, Clara Lópes, was cited as a negra born in “Guinea.” Clara had also

been a slave for some unspecified amount of time at Pedro de Yrala’s sugar hacienda,

also located in San Antonio Huatusco. She did not remain a slave in perpetuity because

on November 17, 1643, Don Joseph Seballos y Burgos granted a woman named Clara

López a carta de libertad (freedom card) when she was approximately sixty years of

age.51 Clara López was not a particularly unique name, but she was noted as a negra

from “Berbesi,”52 which would have made her a bozal53 and likely the same woman

Polonia described as a negra bozal from “Guinea,” given that Don Joseph was the owner.

It is uncertain when she passed away, but Clara López was noted as deceased in Polonia

de Ribas’ 1679 last will and testament.

Although information on Polonia’s father is lacking, she did reveal more about

her family in her last will and testament. In this entry, Polonia cited that she had four

daughters named Sebastiana, Josefa, Micaela, and Melchora de Yrala and a son, Juan de

Ribas. Through her last will and testament, it becomes clear that Polonia de Ribas was a

fairly wealthy woman. When her daughter Melchora later married Diego de Villar, a

Spaniard from Xalapa who relocated to the Port of Veracruz, Polonia provided her

51 ANX, December 17, 1643, f 426fte - 427fte. 52 Berbesi loosely referred to groups of Africans who lived near the Guinea rivers, now known as

the western Niger River. Other groups in this area included Biafara, Mandinga, and Jelof. Rolando Mellafe, Negro Slavery in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).

53 An unhispanicized person of African descent. Usually assigned to someone born in Africa or who had not yet learned the Spanish language or had not yet become acculturated to Spanish customs.

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daughter with a substantial dowry. The dowry included 3,000 pesos de oro común worth

of slaves, jewelry, oxen, reales, clothing, and other items of value. In comparison, Doña

Aldonza Antonia de Neyra Claver, the legitimate daughter of a “doña-mother” and the

notary public of Xalapa, brought with her only 653 pesos de oro común in items when

she married Don Diego de Arce y Tovar.54 Likewise, Doña Agustina de Orduña Castillo,

the legitimate daughter of don-doña parents could only offer her “don spouse” 846 pesos

de oro común, which included one female slave, clothing, jewels, and other goods.55

However, some don-doña families in Xalapa could provide staggeringly exorbitant

dowries. When vecina Doña Juana Josefa Orduña Loyando y Sousa, the legitimate

daughter of don-doña parents, married Don Juan Velázquez de la Cadena from Mexico

City, her family offered a dowry of 30,000 pesos de oro común in cash, slaves, and other

goods.56 However, the family did not have the total amount available and Doña Juana

Josefa’s family still owed 23,274 pesos de oro común and 6 reales when the matter was

registered at the notary public’s office with a note that the balance would be charged a

5% interest rate each year it was not paid in full. Dowries made for serious

considerations in titled-families, but so did they for a few untitled free women of African

descent as they attempted to secure the best possible marriage prospects for their

daughters.

In addition to the 3,000-peso de oro común dowry for her daughter, Polonia also

cited among her personal belongings and property one modest house and a medium-sized

54 ANX, May 11, 1682, f 59fte - 62vta. 55 ANX, November 2, 1683, f 133vta -135vta. 56 ANX, March 29, 1669, f 204vta - 208vta.

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pine box with a lock and key (probably a chest). Her final notarial entry reveals Polonia's

financial literacy. In the first-person narrative, it reads, in a formulaic statement for

testaments, “I declare that I do not owe anything to anyone…my conscience is free and

clear.” As a single mother of five children who knew how to manage her finances,

Polonia de Ribas certainly proved to be a fiscally responsible woman. Polonia was also a

woman never described as a widow nor did she ever identify the father (or fathers) of her

children. However, Polonia’s family tree and network of associates extended out in a

complex narrative, one that included distinguished members of Xalapan society, which

may illuminate how an “unattached” woman of African descent negotiated her life

chances.

From at least 1655 until her death in 1679, Polonia de Ribas was a slaveowner.

And much like other slaveowners, Polonia was open to the idea of manumission.57 In

1675, Polonia freed her half-brother Juan de Yrala after twenty years laboring as her

slave.58 In 1676, she freed one of her slaves, a negro criollo named Diego de Yrala (no

relation).59 The documents state that Polonia’s love for Juan and his loyal service moved

her to free him. Polonia cited the same “for love and loyalty” rhetoric found throughout

manumission records. However, it was not until she was on her deathbed in 1679 that

Polonia freed her other half-brother, Gerónimo de Yrala. At that point Gerónimo was in

57 Frank Proctor explores the juridical origins of manumission and examines how the freeing of

slaves served as fertile ground for contestation. Proctor, Damned Notions of Liberty, 152-185. Higgins discusses the anxiety of increased numbers of free people in Brazil, which led Governor Dom Pedro de Almeida to state in 1719 that the mining region would be a “land being populated by free blacks, who like brutes, do not maintain the good order of the community. In a short time this land could fall into the hands of the blacks.” Higgins, Licentious Liberty, 151-152.

58 ANX, February 16, 1675, f 77vta - 78vta. 59ANX, September 2, 1676, f 164vta - 165vta.

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his mid-forties, married with children, and living and working at a sugar refinery in

Xalapa as Polonia's hired-out slave. Although Polonia acknowledged Gerónimo de Yrala

as her brother, she declared him as her slave among her other goods and property, which

is emphasized by the order in which both brothers appear in the will. In the paragraph

preceding her mention of Gerónimo, Polonia noted that she owned a house, a chest, and

had some borrowed dishes. Gerónimo and Diego are mentioned in the following two

paragraphs and the immediately subsequent paragraph states that Capitán Don Antonio

de Orduña Loyando and the deceased Capitán Don Joseph de Seballos y Burgos owed

unspecified debts to her with instructions that such monies should be collected and

distributed to her executors. The order of their cited manumissions, in between other

goods and property and reminders of debt-collection, may indicate how unexceptional

owning her half-brothers was for Polonia or the escribanos in the notarial office.

The paragraph relating to Gerónimo reads like most other clauses offering

freedom to slaves in wills and testaments, “I declare that among my belongings is

Gerónimo de Irala, negro criollo, my slave, who is the son of Clara López, my deceased

mother, for whose respect and for other causes it is my will…that my executors provide

him with a liberty card.” Markedly, the instruction to free Diego de Irala, who is not

noted as her family member, offers language that would be more expected in the

manumission of Gerónimo. The will reads,

I declare that to Diego de Irala, my negro slave, I have given and granted liberty before the present notary…and I declare that he has always aided and supported me with much love and by his own will from La Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz, where he is presently and has been working to assist me.

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While “love” and “free will” were common rhetorical devices used by slaveowners in

manumission cases in Xalapa, they were reserved for her slave Diego in the Port of

Veracruz and not her brother Gerónimo. Unlike the understanding of love as an

expression of affection or intimacy, this notarial “love” was meant to express a sense of

loyalty experienced by the slaveowner. If Polonia believed that Diego had “dutifully”

fulfilled his obligation with “much love,” his manumission was her expression of the

recognition of such loyalty. In his manumission entry, Diego was also noted as a man of

thirty years of age who had been “born and raised” in Polonia’s house.60 Polonia may

have also owned Diego’s wife since Polonia included personal information about the

woman in the manumission case, adding that her named was Catalina and that she was a

negra from Guinea. The distinctions in the manumission descriptions in her will and in

Diego’s carta de libertad allude to how Polonia de Ribas understood herself as a

generous but grateful slave owner and as a person who owned her family members with

noted indifference. The apathetic tone regarding her half-brother may have also been

affected by his status as a hired-out slave and not living with her and being bonded by the

intimacy experienced by slaveowners with slaves living in closer proximity or “born and

raised” in the slaveowner’s home.61

That Polonia made use of her slaves as hired-out workers is also telling. In the

context of Spanish New Orleans, Hanger writes, “Both free men and women augmented

60 ANX, September 2, 1676, f 164vta -165vta 61 Higgins highlights the importance of physical proximity to develop the intimacy between slave

and slaveowner that could lead to manumission. Higgins, Licentious Liberty, 47-48, 52.

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their incomes by hiring out skilled slaves.”62 Manumission records evidence a similar

trend with Polonia. At least two of her slaves, Gerónimo de Yrala and Diego de Yrala,

worked in Xalapa and Veracruz Port, respectively, as Polonia’s “hired out” labor. Both

men also lived at their work sites and were married with children. James Lockhart

describes a similar situation for Peru, in which “[m]any or most of these blacks [in the

agricultural industry] were without any direct Spanish supervision.”63 For African-

descended people involved in ranching and herding, Lockhart asserts, “most

characteristic were the lone blacks living deep in the country, far from the Spaniards, in

charge of several cows, goats, or pigs.”64 Lockhart notes the “extraordinary trust” of

absentee Spanish owners since slaves would have “infinite opportunities to run away.”65

Some scholarship outside of the Mexican context argues that hired-out slaves freed slave-

owning women from the burden of supervising their slaves’ activities but others argue

that women managed their slaves as others did.66

62 Hanger, “Landowners, Shopkeepers, Farmers, and Slaveowners,” 225-226. 63 Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 210-211. 64 Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 211. 65 Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 212. 66 Writing about white women slaveowners in the U.S. South, Inge Dornan argues, “[Hiring out]

enabled them to receive from their slaves’ work at the same time as it extricated them from a great deal of the practical side of slave management. Unlike women who employed their slaves in their own businesses, or female planters who put their slaves to work in their households and fields, urban women slaveholders who hired out their slaves did not have to supervise their slaves’ work.” Dornan, “Masterful Women,” 390. Dornan argues that hiring out slaves also excused women from having to mete out punishment, an option he theorizes that was more ideal for women who owned adult male slaves. Dornan, “Masterful Women,” 391. Dornan later clarifies that slaveowners ruthlessly abused their slaves when they saw fit, regardless of the gender of the owner. Dornan, “Masterful Women,” 399. He writes, “The evidence suggests that women slaveholders generally conformed to contemporary notions regarding the management of slaves and differed little from their male peers in [disciplining their slaves].” Dornan, “Masterful Women,” 400. U.S. historian Koger writes, “In many instances, black slaveowners were no different from white slave masters. They both exploited the labor of slaves to extract a profit and used their slaves as commodities.” Koger, Black Slaveowners, 94. Evidence from the Brazilian context demonstrates the similarity of behaviors exhibited by Portuguese slave owners and African-descended women. Kathleen Higgins cites a case of a

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Outside of Spanish America, there is evidence that offers possible explanations

for the actions of African-descended slaveowners. The problem that then arises is

whether such assessments hold true for slaveowners of African descent in colonial

Mexico. Did the practice of hiring out slaves allow free African-descended women to

enjoy economic and social advantages while simultaneously shielding them from having

to face the reality of actively perpetuating a system that bore witness to incalculable

atrocities against other people of African descent? Did African-descended women who

owned slaves prefer the distant participation of hiring-out their slaves to avoid meting out

corporal punishment? Slaveowner absenteeism or hired-out slaves who lived “nearly

free” was commonplace in many slave societies in the Americas.67 Perhaps this was the

case for Diego de Irala and his family while Polonia enjoyed the benefits of absentee

slave-owning. Where Polonia de Ribas’ story complicates the historiography is on the

subject of owning family members as slaves.

While many scholars agree that free people of African descent understood slavery

as a profitable economic endeavor, at least in other parts of the Americas, this narrative

drastically changes in the case of owning family members.68 What reason could have

motivated Polonia de Ribas’ decision to keep her brothers as slaves for more than twenty free woman of African descent named Roza de Azevedo who had enough resources to buy “property and thirty slaves valued at twenty thousand cruzados.” Higgins, Licentious Liberty, 54.

67 Lockhart describes the privileges of slaves who were owned by temporarily absent slaveowners in Peru. One shipmaster’s female slave had keys to the house, “received visitors and guarded the chest [her slaveowner] kept in his bedroom, full of gold, silver, and papers.” Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 205. For Brazil, Higgins notes that nearly 75% of the slaves in jurisdiction “did not live in the town boundaries of Sabará, and for many of those living both inside and outside town, personal contact with their masters was limited.” Higgins, Licentious Liberty, 47.

68 Of the Spanish Louisiana context, Hanger writes, “[F]ree blacks often could afford to purchase their slave relatives and free them with few constraints, and thus they did not need to hold them as slaves.” Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 225. Similarly in the United States, Koger argues that, “After the freed slaves purchased their kinsfolk, they manumitted their loved ones.” Koger, Black Slaveowners, 44.

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years before finally freeing one in 1675 and the other as she lay dying in 1679? For the

United States, Carter G. Woodson argues for what would later be referred to as the

“philanthropy” or “benevolence” thesis. Woodson’s theory of benevolent slave-owning

posits that free African Americans purchased family and friends and kept them as slaves

in order to preserve family ties and protect them from the insecurity of “free” life – a

supposition taken up by other scholars.69 Woodson’s logic rests on the condition that

many U.S. states and territories had enacted laws impeding manumission in ways that

made freeing an enslaved family member once they were with family-owners a less

desirable option.

Free Africans and their descendants in colonial Mexico were also confronted with

various types of projects to restrict their freedom. As historian Laura Lewis writes,

“Legislation controlled their spatial and temporal movements, for all blacks and

mulattoes were forbidden from holding dances ‘in the plazas and streets,’ gathering in

groups of ‘more than three,’ and going out at night.”70 Men were prohibited from

carrying firearms unless they had filed a petition and had it approved by local Spanish

authorities.71 Regardless of the disparate level of enforcement of such restrictions across

69 In David L. Lightner and Alexander M. Ragan’s “Were African Americans Slaveholders

Benevolent or Exploitative? A Quantitative Approach,” they provide a succinct summary of scholars who have re-asserted Woodson’s philanthropy theory, 537. Notably, they include some of the early foundational books on slavery, including Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974); John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (New York: Knopf, 1967); James Oakes, James, The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (New York: Norton, 1998); Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (New York: Vintage Books, 1989).

70 Lewis, Hall of Mirrors, 22. 71 Lewis, Hall of Mirrors, 22.

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the colony, free men and women were also required to meet their financial obligations

and pay all due tribute.72

And while some subjects endeavored to dodge paying their tributary obligation,73

many free people continued to navigate hurdles that affected their social and economic

prospects. But could these hurdles have driven Polonia de Ribas to maintain her own

family members in slavery? Was it possible that Polonia de Ribas merely understood her

two half-brothers as chattel even though they were cited as her brothers in every single

document in which they appeared together? Could these status-based considerations

trump acknowledged blood ties? The historiography on the Spanish empire has remained

largely silent on this rare practice. Kimberly Hanger notes a case of a free pardo man in

Spanish New Orleans who purchased his enslaved son but did not manumit him for

another twenty years.74 Unfortunately, Hanger does not offer any conjectures as to why

this father would not provide his son with a freedom card and kept him from enjoying the

legal status of a free man. In a later piece, Hanger briefly addresses the topic of African-

descended people owning family members, “As long as slave prices remained low, free

people of color who could afford bondspersons used them. In addition, free blacks often

could afford to purchase their slave relatives and free them with few constraints, and thus

they did not need to hold them as slaves.”75 There has been some evidence of this in the

U.S. (and perhaps in Spanish New Orleans too) due to restrictive manumission laws, but

no similarly prohibitive codes existed in colonial Mexico.

72 Palmer, Slaves of the White God, 183. 73 Ben Vinson asserts that pardos and mulatos employed a corporate identity strategy historically

tied to military service to avoid paying tribute. Vinson, Bearing Arms for His Majesty, 164-166. 74 Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 34. 75 Hanger, “Landowners, Shopkeepers, Farmers, and Slaveowners,” 225

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As the historiography of African-descended slaveowners has developed,

historians working on other American colonies began to challenge the “benevolence”

theory. U.S. historian Calvin D. Wilson warns against drawing the perceived conclusion

that those who owned their own family members as slaves did so for altruistic reasons.76

While the philanthropy theory may apply to their initial purchase, it seems as though

some family members in the U.S. South also understood the value of leverage that slave

ownership offered them in familial disputes. This type of exploitative power play may

explain how Polonia was able to maintain two adult male siblings as her slaves for

approximately twenty years. If they feared that their sister could sell them to a traveling

negrero,77 then Polonia would have accomplished the slaveowner’s perennial goal of

balancing the threat of retribution for disobedience with the goal of continued

productivity. As at least one of her brothers had a wife and children, the cost of losing

them due to insubordination to his sister-owner likely motivated him to continue what

would be a long tenure.

Polonia de Ribas hired out one of her brothers in a way that might have allowed

him to live nearly free with his family (there is no suggestion that Polonia owned his wife

or children). However, she did the same for an unrelated slave, Diego de Yrala. This

76 Wilson cites a few cases in which African-descended people owned family members. He

discusses a particularly interesting case of an African American woman named Dilsey Pope from Georgia who owned her husband. Her husband had offended her and as retaliation, Pope sold him to another slaveowner. Another woman named Fanny Canady of Kentucky owned her husband and had threatened to sell him “down the river,” a common warning directed towards unruly slaves by white slaveowners. In North Carolina, a mother and son pulled together their resources to buy the freedom of their husband/father. As punishment for having criticized his son, the son sold his own father to a slave trader with his farewell being, “…the old man had gone to the corn fields about New Orleans where they might learn him some manners.” Calvin D. Wilson, “Negroes Who Owned Slaves,” Popular Science Monthly 81 (November, 1912): 485.

77 A slave merchant.

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decision implies that economic considerations or reasons of practicality, rather than a

familial connection, motivated Polonia’s actions. While some scholars do not allow for

the possibility that “exploitative” slavery was possible among slaveowners who

possessed family, Polonia de Ribas’ case indicates that for at least one woman of African

descent in seventeenth-century Xalapa, there was no conflict. There is nothing in the

documents that indicates that this familial connection “meant” anything to Polonia other

than a detail that she documented for some unknown reason. Perhaps the notary or his

assistant even had to remind her to mention this information.

When she freed her first brother Juan de Yrala in 1675, Polonia cited two reasons

for his manumission: 1) his good service and 2) the love she had for him. However,

stating one’s love for the slave they were to manumit and citing their loyal service were

two of the most common tropes in the genre of manumission cases. With no further

qualitative evidence to describe the conditions of Juan de Yrala’s enslavement, the

documents beg the question, did being a slaveowner trump familial considerations in a

way that aligned Polonia de Ribas so closely to Spanish elites in Xalapa that not even her

own family members “mattered” anymore? Even if she never physically abused Juan and

Gerónimo de Yrala, they were nevertheless her slaves for more than two decades. If

there were no abuses, did she merely keep them as slaves to secure her place among

Xalapa’s elites? There is evidence across the Americas that slaveowners, especially

urban dwellers, owned slaves as performative displays of wealth and social legitimacy,

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and Mexico was no exception. 78 Herman Bennett writes, “In Mexico City, [slaves]

represented both labor and symbols of the status of their owners.”79 If this was the case

for Polonia, perhaps she kept her brothers as a way to claim social legitimacy in the

colonial order. Perhaps the slaveowner status shielded Polonia and offered her the social

legitimacy often denied to women of African descent as public and economic actors. If

asserting and maintaining one’s status as slaveowner offered the possibility for greater

social legitimacy, it is not surprising then that Polonia de Ribas, a mulata single mother

of five children, held fast to her title and refused to relinquish her slaves, even family

members, until she lay sick on her death bed.

Polonia de Ribas’ declarations to the notary were the mediated final versions of

drafts of information that she offered to notarial authorities. Echoes of her “voice” exists,

but her truth may no longer be accessible. Of the notarial sieving process, Kathryn Burns

78 Of the early colonial Peru context, James Lockhart writes, “No encomendero felt happy until he

owned a large house, land, livestock, and – most to the point here – black servants. Most Spaniards could not hope to achieve this goal in its entirety, but they aimed at least for two essentials, a house (which could be rented) and blacks.” Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 205. In Chica da Silva, Ferreira Furtado writes of the Brazilian context, “Once living in free society, with no way of going back, their only chance of diminishing the social exclusion and stigma of their origins was to avail of precisely the mechanisms the whites used for their survival and promotion. The first of these mechanisms was to purchase a slave, which enabled the owner to remove herself from the world of work. For the freedwoman who registered wills in Tejuco in the eighteenth century, slaves were not only their main source of wealth but also of social affirmation.” Ferriera Furtado, Chica da Silva, 147. Also from the colonial Brazilian milieu, Kathleen Higgins addresses this specific gendered concern for free female slaveowners. She writes, “[In] assuming the role of slaveholders, [formerly enslaved women] undoubtedly protected themselves and their families from any threat of re-enslavement that freeborn colonists may have posed. The best proof to others that one was no longer a slave or enslaveable was surely to become a master.” Higgins, Licentious Liberty, 85. In Black Masters, Michael Johnson and James Roark study the history of one free African American family in the antebellum U.S. South and legitimacy and social viability often arise in their narrative. Johnson and Roark write, “…nothing was more lucrative, more respectable, and more patriotic than owning slaves.” My emphasis, Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roark, Black Masters (New York: 1984), 143. The influencing power of status symbols cannot be dismissed among slaveowners of African descent. U.S. historian R. Halliburton Jr. argues, “The free black could elevate his status to a greater degree by owning slaves than in any other way – and status was desired.” R. Halliburton Jr., “Free Black Owners of Slaves: A Reappraisal of the Woodson Thesis,” The South Carolina Historical Magazine, 76, no. 3 (Jul., 1975), 137.

79 Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico, 18.

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writes, “Words got to paper through a complicated relay process, one that might involve

several people and considerable filtering and rewriting.”80 Burns emphasizes that this

method operated to make legible the chaotic nature of interpersonal interactions. She

asserts, “This was, after all, what people paid notaries to do for them: discipline the

messy particulars of their business into the approved legal forms.”81 I add that what

qualified as “messy particulars” and “unnecessary information” was left to the discretion

of the members of notarial office. Even with all of its standardization and pretense of

strict uniformity,82 local custom and individual notaries dictated important variations. In

Polonia’s case, the distinct language used in the manumissions of her brother and an

unrelated slave may have been Polonia’s, or her notarial intermediary’s, indication that

there was a valued difference between the two men. As a woman who had to appear

before the notarial authorities at least three times before her will was registered, Polonia

may have also developed the cultural capital to negotiate her words carefully to craft the

most advantageous narrative. Whether it would have been monetarily significant due to

debts owed to her or publicly beneficial to her because it aided in the performativity of a

slaveowner, the narrative that would finally reach the bound protocolos merged both

personal and public interests.

80 Burns, Into the Archive, 94. 81 Burns, Into the Archive, 68. 82 Burns, Into the Archive, 68.

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The documents do not reveal if definitively she was a benevolent or a strategic

slaveowner engaging in the “theater” of respectability,83 or whether she saw beyond

caste, race, and blood ties and primarily understood herself as a slaveowner among many

others who owned slaves in colonial Xalapa. What the documents allow us to know is

that she was a single woman with a large family to support. Being marked as a mulata

did not seem to inhibit her ability to provide for her children and see them to adulthood

and eventually married. Polonia existed in a circle of elites who owned slaves and made

business transactions with others in the region. At the time of her will, at least two elite

Spanish men owed her money. In many regards, she behaved as they did. There is no

indication in the available documents that she was ever raised with them, as she was a

free woman, and they were slaves on an ingenio until they were about twenty years old.

Polonia de Ribas may have never identified with them in a familial sense and could have

treated them as she did her other slaves, which according to the documentation, she very

likely did. What can be gleaned from these highly mediated sources is Polonia’s

relationship to the notarial archive, her role in notarial truth-making.

Identifying Polonia’s role in this process makes her not only a woman in an

exceptional and unlikely position of power but also an active agent in her own notarial

truth. In her last will and testament, Polonia was described as a “mulata libre soltera,” an

unwed free mulata. Even though it is later noted in the same document that she had

83 For the Brazilian context, Mariana L. R. Dantas discusses the dual benefit of slave owning. She writes, “Because owning slaves allowed [people of African descent] to avoid the types of labor usually associated with slavery, it marked more publicly their transition from property to property holder, improving the general perception of their quality.” Mariana L. R. Dantas, “Humble Slaves and Loyal Vassals,” in Imperial Subjects, 126.

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children, Polonia must have had some reason to exclude the identity of her children’s

father(s). Why, then, would a free woman of means not divulge the identity of her

children’s father(s)? If these missing fathers were men who could not be publicly

acknowledged because she did not have the right to do so or if they were men not suitable

for her to name given her relatively high social status, then Polonia had successfully

fashioned a notarial life as a self-made free woman of African descent in Xalapan

society.84

The absence of two fathers, hers and her children’s, indicates that Polonia did not

need them to gain social legitimacy for herself or her children. She was a financially

stable slaveowner and someone well connected to the Xalapan Spanish elite. Polonia had

amassed wealth, navigated the notarial system, reared all five of her hijos naturales, and

managed at least three slaves all without an acknowledged familial patriarch. The

notarial truth that is fashioned by or for Polonia is quite remarkable. According to her

notarial history, Polonia de Ribas came from humble beginnings as the daughter of an

enslaved African woman. Her position as a woman of means was aided by her ownership

of slaves, including her enslaved siblings. By her twenties, she was a slaveowner and

would later serve as an apoderada85 in her thirties. As she lay in bed, she offered a

concluding act of benediction as a prototypical “benevolent” slaveowner and freed one of

her brothers. Polonia’s notarial life was exceptional, whether personally constructed or

84 Many children who were cited as “illegitimate” had biological fathers, including Spanish ones,

who were acknowledged publicly in Xalapa’s parish records. This was especially evident among the confirmation and baptism collections already examined in this study.

85 A woman who has been appointed as the legal representative for another by way of notarial poder.

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influenced by the interests of the notarial offices, but much of it also followed the same

narrative path as other slaveowners in Xalapa.

Multi-generational Slaveowners

Polonia’s donation case appears to be unique. It was even quite rare for elite

Spanish women to have such social cache independent of men. Still, other women of

African descent became slaveowners. The case of free parda María Yañez, who freed

her forty-year-old negra slave named María Yañez, is an example of a woman of African

descent coming to own a slave through an inheritance. María Yañez “the slaveowner”

noted in this manumission entry that she had inherited María “the slave” from her

deceased grandfather, Francisco Pérez Romero.86 Of course, that the slaveowner and the

slave had the same name is curious. It is possible that María “the slaveowner” and María

“the slave” were related. However, slaves and slaveowners often shared surnames and

María was and continues to be a common Spanish first name. Without more sources to

contextualize either the slaveowner or the slave, it is difficult to discern the relationship

between the two beyond the master-slave narrative. What is most important in the case

of this slaveowner is that María Yañez inherited at least one of her slaves from an

acknowledged male relative.

The case of slaveowner María Yañez and her grandfather Francisco Pérez

Romero, a wealthy vecino of Xalapa, further demonstrates that slave donations were an

elite activity. While few details are offered about the life of free parda and slaveowner

María Yañez, more than twenty notarial entries document the lives of her relatives living

86 ANX, October 6, 1686, f 305vta - 306fte.

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in Xalapa. Her grandparents Francisco Pérez Romero and Juana Martín de la Hinojosa

were both born in La Villa de Ayamonte in the Kingdom of Castile and migrated to New

Spain to become vecinos of Xalapa, likely around the turn of the seventeenth century.87

Their two sons, Juan Jacinto Romero and Fernando Yañez Matamoros, also lived and

conducted business in the jurisdiction of Xalapa.88 Fernando Yañez Matamoros owned at

least one slave in his lifetime, 89 making María Yañez at least a third-generation

slaveowner. Through her last will and testament, the free mulata Polonia de Ribas also

ensured that at least one of her children would be a slaveowner by providing her daughter

Melchora with a dowry that included slaves, making her family at least second-

generation slaveowners.

María Yañez’ grandfather, Francisco Pérez Romero, was a long-time resident of

Xalapa and owned homes valued at 240 pesos de oro común as early as 1606.90 He was

also a slaveowner at a time when slave prices were at their highest. In 1606, he

purchased a negro slave named Pedro “from the nation of Angola” for 530 pesos de oro

común.91 Later that same year, he purchased three more Angolan slaves named Pedro,

Antonio, and Felipe for 380 pesos de oro común each.92 In 1608, Francisco Pérez

Romero purchased a forty-year-old negra slave named Isabel Zape for 400 pesos de oro

común.93 In 1608, Francisco Pérez Romero made a definitive move to incorporate

himself into the regional economy. On August 31, he purchased the sugar ingenio

87 ANX, June 24, 1657, f 176fte - 178fte. 88 ANX, July 9, 1661, f 254fte - 255vta. 89 ANX, June 17, 1673, f 38vta - 39fte. 90 ANX, July 29, 1606, f 289fte - 290fte. 91 ANX, March 31, 1606, f 379vta - 380fte. 92 ANX, October 12, 1606, f 446vta - 447vta. 93 ANX, June 23, 1608, f 575vta - 576fte.

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Nuestra Señora del Socorro, one of the principal mills of the region, from the Spaniard

Baltazar Vázquez de Herrera for the price of 40,000 pesos de oro común. This expansive

estate, located in Xalatengo, included fields to grow sugar cane, houses, 94 four

“caballerías” of land (~425 acres), an area for larger cattle (~4,337 acres), a site for

smaller cattle (~1,927 acres), a house for grinding (likely a mill) which included a press,

three copper kettles, three water pumps, a distributing or sorting machine, 260

wagonloads of cane planted in an area called La Vega, thirty wagonloads of cane planted

near the main houses of the ingenio, twenty-five draught oxen, two wagons with all

equipment included, five iron grills, four horses, twenty-two mattocks, ten axes, 600

forms of clay, twenty negros esclavos, and an inn with all of its houses and belongings

called Xalatengo, located near the sugar mill.95

Seemingly in need of a greater workforce than the slaves he already owned and

the twenty that came with his recent acquisition, Francisco Pérez Romero purchased eight

additional slaves on March 16, 1609: seven men and one woman at the price of 425 pesos

de oro común each.96 However, his interests reached further than his slaves and newly

acquired plantation. In 1611, Francisco Pérez Romero contracted a tutor, Francisco

Fernández, for a yearly salary of 200 pesos de oro común to teach his children how to

read and write, and to instruct them in the Christian doctrine.97 Literacy rates varied

greatly but were generally low, even among the colonial elite in the early seventeenth

94 ANX, August 31, 1608, f 490vta - 493vta. 95 ANX, August 31, 1608, f 487fte - 490vta. 96 ANX, March 16, 1609, f 72fte - 72vta. 97 ANX, June 17, 1611, f 207vta.

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century.98 By arranging for an instructor, Francisco Pérez Romero ensured that his two

sons would be members of this privileged class of literate colonial subjects. Significantly

fewer women had the opportunity to learn how to read and write, regardless of the

resources of their families. In the 1686 manumission case, the notary public specifically

states, “[María Yañez the slaveowner] did not sign because she said that she did not know

how.”99 Although she had a wealthy Spanish grandfather, María Yañez did not enjoy the

privilege of literacy. Women were rarely formally educated outside the confines of a

convent.100 However, at least two of her male family members received some instruction,

which demonstrates the investment in cultural capital that likely benefitted María as she

negotiated the legal etiquettes of selling her slaves.

The acquisition and long-term maintenance of wealth challenged even the most

economically resilient families throughout the seventeenth century. In his study of the

elite of Mexico City during the late colonial period, John E. Kicza identifies a mere 100

families who had the assets to qualify as members of what he describes as the “Great

Families.”101 Kicza eliminates all but the most impressive wealth managers in the colony

98 Kathryn Burns writes, “Most Spaniards could not read or write and did not know the inner

workings of the legal system.” Burns, Into the Archive, 23. 99 ANX, October 6, 1686, f 306fte. 100 Kathryn Burns discusses the importance of convents in the education of españolas and

mestizas. Burns, Colonial Habits, 27-37. She notes that girls were instructed on a variety of “good manners” dictated by normative gendered Spanish behavior, which “probably included everything from prayer to stitchery, perhaps literacy.” Burns, Colonial Habits, 27. Some women of African descent who had been donated to the religious order could have been indirectly exposed to the same convent education. Joan Cameron Bristol discusses the case of an enslaved African woman named Juana Esperanza de San Alberto who belonged to a convent who demonstrated an acute awareness of the value of religious cultural capital. So much so that Juana requested that she receive the habit on her deathbed and received permission from Puebla’s bishop for the allowance because she demonstrated years of piety. Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches, 23-62.

101 John E. Kicza, “The Great Families of Mexico: Elite Maintenance and Business Practices in Late Colonial Mexico City,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 62, no. 3, (August, 1982), 432.

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with a daunting criterion for Great Family-membership set at “possessions valued at more

than a million pesos de oro común or very nearly so.”102 Outside of Mexico City, only

about a dozen other families in the colony could compete with the enormous fortunes

accumulated, managed, and sustained by the Great Families who reigned from the heart

of New Spain.103 According to Kicza, one of the defining characteristics of this exclusive

group of economically advantaged families was the diversification of their financial

activities.

María Yañez’ Spanish grandfather, Francisco Pérez Romero seemed to aspire to

Kicza’s definition of “Great Families” but encountered difficulties that many in the

colony’s relative periphery experienced. Francisco Pérez Romero established himself

with other prominent members of society by serving as an active member of the Cofradía

de las Ánimas del Purgatorio by at least 1615, a cofradía that also counted as members

the alcalde mayor of Xalapa, Don Fernando Cortés de Monroy, and a number of

diputados, mayordomos, and capitanes.104 He must have found it challenging to raise

further liquidity in order to make the ingenio that he had purchased in 1608 fully

operational. Nearly six years passed before he requested a special license from the

viceroy of New Spain, Diego Fernández de Córdoba. The license granted Francisco

Pérez Romero the right to cultivate sugar cane on his property, which, it is noted, would

be worked by indigenous laborers.105 For what purpose he planned to use the slaves he

purchased in previous years or the twenty that had come with the plantation is left

102 Kicza, “The Great Families of Mexico,” 432. 103 Kicza, “The Great Families of Mexico,” 432. 104 ANX, December 26, 1615, f 717fte - 717vta. 105 ANX, August 26, 1614, f 321fte - 321vta.

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unanswered if they were not going to work the land alongside indigenous workers.

According to the notarial archive, he only sold one slave, a fourteen-year-old negra

named Francisca, for 400 pesos de oro común in 1619.106 And only once did he ever

agree to manumit a slave. In 1619, Francisco Pérez Romero and his wife Juana Martín de

la Hinojosa granted fifty-year-old negra Isabel “from the land of Zapa” a carta de

libertad after eleven years in their service because “she served them so well and with so

much love.” However, the freedom card was not a gift. Isabel “from Zapa” paid

Francisco and Juana 300 pesos de oro común for her freedom.107

Of course, this is not the same as the manumission without requisite payment that

his granddaughter María Yañez conceded to her slave sixty-seven years later. However,

according to her virtual absence in the notarial archive excluding the one entry discussed

here, María Yañez also did not have the responsibility found in her grandfather’s notarial

life to pay off a 40,000-peso debt for an ingenio or to feed and clothe more than two-

dozen slaves.

María Yañez materially benefitted from a generous grandfather, a man she could

legally claim, when he made the rare donation of a slave that she later manumitted. And

like many other epistemological roads that end unceremoniously in an archive that

creates pervasive silences, this manumission case provided María Yañez’ only mark on

the historical record. Unlike the “associative beneficiaries,” 108 María Yañez and

Polonia's daughter Melchora were slaveowners best described as “acknowledged-family”

106 ANX, November 13, 1619, f 247vta - 248vta. 107 ANX, November 23, 1619, f 251fte - 252vta. 108 I describe associative beneficiaries are all those who have no cited or legally acknowledged

familial connection to the benefactor.

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beneficiaries, as both women came into the ownership of slaves through legitimate family

ties that were publicly recognized by the notary. This type of intergenerational

slaveownership allowed for greater social legitimacy for people of African descent. The

status firmly placed them among other subjects who were long-time sponsors of slavery,

unquestionably in the dominant fold and far removed from the maroons that disrupted

commerce on the Camino Real.

These cases also redirect “exceptional cases” to the normativity of slaveholding

practices found among people of non-African descent. Because of limited opportunities

to work outside of the home in trade positions and the high price of slaves, many female

slaveowners, regardless of race, acquired slaves through bequeathment, donation, or

dowry offered by an acknowledged family member. While many women of various

castes owned property and businesses in seventeenth-century Xalapa, familial support

continued to be a key identifier amongst free people of means. Whether from an

acknowledged family member or an unrelated benefactor, the donation of a slave was a

rare gift from which many in the colonial social order would reap significant benefits.

The donation of even one slave could change one’s life chances. With an average value

at 400 pesos de oro común throughout the long seventeenth century, a slave donated to a

free woman of African descent meant that she had a source of long-term earning

potential. Or, if after the donation, she decided to sell the slave, the profits would amount

to the value of thirteen modest houses and would be nearly seven times as much as the

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average laborer earned in a month.109 Donations, then, resulted in a windfall for women

who may have had limited options for gainful employment.

Entrepreneurial Slaveowners

Some free women slaveowners fell outside of these two types of recipients of

associate and familial benefactors. The cases of María Nuñez and María López highlight

the existence of women who were enterprising slaveowners of African descent in Xalapa

during the long seventeenth century. María Nuñez represents the earliest case of a free

female slaveowner of African descent in Xalapa’s notarial archive. She registered

business at the notarial offices six times between 1609 and 1615. María’s executors also

registered two posthumous pieces of business on her behalf in 1631. Little evidence of

María Nuñez' personal or family life is revealed in her notarial documents. She does,

however, mention that she was lawfully married to Vicente Rodrígues but does not add

any identifying information about him, such as age, occupation, caste, or legal status.110

María Nuñez eventually managed her own business, but she was first cited in the notarial

archives because of her interest in buying and selling slaves. On March 16, 1609, she

bought a negro slave named Francisco for 460 pesos de oro común.111 With the aid of a

fiador, she had a year to pay off the debt to the slave seller Andrés Moreira. The need for

a financial backer did not mark her negatively as the need for one was common among all

economic groups. Even the wealthiest subjects of New Spain lacked liquidity in the

109 The average home with a small plot cost 30 pesos de oro común. Average monthly salary of a

laborer based on 5 pesos de oro común a month. 110 ANX, July 10, 1609, f 149vta - 150fte. 111 ANX, March 16, 1609, f 74fte - 74vta.

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early- and mid- colonial periods. Kathryn Burns aptly describes the Spanish American

colonies as “perpetually cash poor.”112 Most people had to rely on their financial

reputations and personal relationships, hence the financier.

Three months later, María Nuñez purchased an inn named the Venta del Río from

Melchor de la Bazares for 400 pesos de oro común.113 The purchase included all houses

and storage areas of the Venta del Río and carried a price tag ten times greater than the

average parcel of land bought by most residents of Xalapa. María Nuñez not only

became a business owner but was now the dueña114 of a substantial property. Instead of

keeping the inn, she decided to make the property immediately profitable. The very next

month on July 10, 1609, she sold the Venta del Río to a man named Juan Gallegos for

550 pesos de oro común.115 María and Juan agreed on installment payments, probably

because Juan Gallegos also lacked cash on hand. He may have also realized that he was

in over his head with the new business. Just a few years later on May 31, 1613, Juan

Gallego sold the Venta del Río for the same price to a man named Pedro Ruiz, also a

vecino of the jurisdiction of Xalapa.116 Not until 1615 did María Nuñez make another

large purchase: two slaves, a mother and her son, for 550 pesos de oro común.117 She

purchased the slaves through a slave seller from Xalapa named Capitán Jorge Veneciano.

The entry also notes that at least by 1615 she was a resident of the Venta del Río even

112 Burns, Into the Archive, 100. 113 ANX, June 10, 1609, f 149vta - 150fte. 114 Owner. 115 ANX, July 10, 1609, f 150vta - 151fte. 116 ANX, May 31, 1613, f 318vta - 319vta. 117 ANX, April 17, 1615, f 342fte - 343fte.

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though she was no longer the owner. The same 1615 entry reveals that María Nuñez was

a widow, her husband Vicente Rodrígues having died.

It would take another sixteen years for María Nuñez to reappear in the notarial

archive, this time represented by Licenciado Jerónimo Gisberto, priest and vicar of the

sugar refinery Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, located in the jurisdiction of Xalapa. On

January 31, 1631, on María’s behalf, Licenciado Gisberto sold a 34-year-old negra slave

named Isabel to a man named Alonso Gaitán for 350 pesos de oro común. 118

Unfortunately, by April 27, 1631, Licenciado Gisberto was taking care of all of María

Nuñez’ affairs because at some point in those short months, she had passed away.119 The

April entry specifically cites her as deceased and Licenciado Gisberto as charged with

seeing that funds were allocated to pay for masses for her soul and that of her second

husband, Pedro Ruiz. This is the same Pedro Ruiz who had purchased the Venta del Río

in 1613 from the man that María Nuñez had sold it to in 1609.

Not until this 1631 entry is her second marriage disclosed, which demonstrates

that the notarial archive chronicled business lives and only sometimes inadvertently

included more personal details about its entrants. Because she never left the Venta del

Río, the two likely met on the same property she had previously owned for just a month.

So while she was no longer the sole owner of the Venta del Río, she had found a way,

either purposefully or coincidentally, to become the next best thing, wife of the owner.

Finally, Licenciado Gisberto proved himself to have been a wise choice for a

loyal and diligent executor of María Nunez’ will. On July 8, 1631, he collected on a debt

118 ANX, January 31, 1631, f 497fte - 498fte. 119 ANX, April 27, 1631, f 522fte - 523fte.

311

of sixty-three pesos de oro común owed to María’s estate.120 In this final posthumous

entry, María Nuñez was cited as having become the innkeeper of the Venta del Río

before her death – her final occupation after serving as the previous owner and buying

and selling slaves for more than twenty years in the jurisdiction of Xalapa. María Nuñez

was an active contributor to the local economy. She was an employee, briefly a business

owner, and once again an innkeeper until the end of her days. Throughout that time, she

was a slaveowner, and a busy one at that. Not all slaveowners had the fortune to be

absent supervisors of their slaves’ industry. Some, such as the free parda María Nuñez,

had to manage greater responsibility by also working as primary owners or salaried

employees of other economic ventures.

Although there is no evidence that María Nuñez knew her, María López was most

certainly her peer in Xalapa as another slave-owning woman of African descent who

lived during the early seventeenth century. María López, described as “de color

morena,” lived in a few different locations in and around Xalapa for the two years she

registered business at the notarial office, from 1609 to 1610. In March of 1609, María

López was noted as an innkeeper, like María Nuñez, though López was at the inn the

Venta de la Riconada, where she was also a resident.121 On March 16, 1609, she

purchased a negro slave from Capitán Andrés Moreira for 460 pesos de oro común,

which happens to be the same price María Nuñez paid for a male slave when she did

business with the same Capitán Andrés Moreira.122 The costly price tag of 460 pesos de

120 ANX, July 8, 1631, f 536vta - 537fte. 121 ANX, March 16, 1609, f 86vta - 87vta. 122 ANX, March 16, 1609, f 86vta - 87vta.

312

oro común likely represented the market value at the time. María López and Capitán

Andrés agreed on a financial arrangement that gave María a year to pay the debt. Since a

fiador is never mentioned, this allowance demonstrates a certain familiarity between

Capitán Andrés Moreira and María López and the credibility of her financial reputation.

The following day on March 17, 1609, María López commissioned a man named Juan de

Sosa del Castillo, a resident of Xalapa, to sell for her a negro slave named Juan, who was

described as a bozal.123 She noted in the entry that Juan de Sosa del Castillo should sell

Juan “the bozal”124 at a price he deemed fit, an indication of María López’ trust in his

ability to bargain and ensure that her best interests were served.

Juan de Sosa del Castillo appeared again two months later on May 15, 1609, to

finalize another agreement on María López’ behalf. Acting as her business manager, he

registered the paperwork verifying a debt owed by María López to Mateo Jorge for

another slave purchase. María López had purchased a negra slave named Lucrecia from

“the nation of Angola” for 420 pesos de oro común and had only six months to pay off

the debt to Mateo Jorge.125 With 880 pesos de oro común in debt by midyear, María

López did not reappear until 1610, perhaps occupied by raising liquidity before she

decided once again to buy and sell slaves, which she did starting in the spring of 1610.

On April 21, 1610, María López made headway in securing more funds by selling a

twenty-five-year-old negra slave named Esperanza “from the land of the Bran”126 for a

123 ANX, March 17, 1609, f 92fte - 92vta. 124 An unhispanicized person of African descent. Usually assigned to someone born in Africa or

who had not yet learned the Spanish language or had not yet become acculturated to Spanish customs. 125 ANX, May 15, 1609, f 101fte - 101vta. 126 According to Rachel O’Toole, the designation of “bran” suggested “origins in Guinea-Bissau.”

O’Toole, Bound Lives, 15.

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significant profit of 600 pesos de oro común.127 In this transaction, María López is noted

as the “vendedora,” or seller, of the inn. That same day she also granted to Francisco

Hernández Franco, a man from La Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz, the authority to represent

her in selling another negra slave of hers named Ana López (no cited relation).128 The

price that Francisco sold Ana López for is not recorded in later documents, but even if

she were sold at the low market price of 300 pesos de oro común, María López would

have made enough in these two sales to cover her debts from 1609 for the purchase of the

two male slaves. María López registered a third piece of business on April 16, 1610, in

which she finally revoked the representative power she had granted to Juan de Sosa del

Castillo a year earlier, perhaps because she was no longer in need of his services.129 On

April 22, 1610, now a resident of Xalapa proper, María López continued to sell her

slaves. She maintained her business relationship with Francisco Hernándes by selling

him a twenty-five-year-old negra slave named María “from the Angola nation” for 325

pesos de oro común, significantly lower than the market price.130

In María López’ notarial life, she owned at least six slaves and had business

connections to men in Xalapa, its agricultural environs, and La Nueva Ciudad de

Veracruz. Although the notarial archive only documented two years of her very involved

business life, María López, a woman “de color morena,” who was never identified as

married, widowed, or a mother, made her way in Xalapa by actively engaging in the

regional slave trade at a time when more people of African descent than not were still

127 ANX, April 21, 1610, f 17fte - 17vta. 128 ANX, April 21, 1610, f 18fte - 18vta. 129 ANX, April 21, 1610, f 19fte - 19vta. 130 ANX, April 22, 1610, f 19vta - 20fte.

314

enslaved or scraping by as a free person, making her not only exceptional by caste but

also savvy as a business person.

Not until the late 1600s does another well-documented and enterprising slave-

owning woman of African descent appear in the notarial archive of Xalapa, a free parda

and vecina of Xalapa named Petrona de Arauz. Fifteen notarial entries involve Petrona,

who was also one of the few women who left a distinct enough archival footprint to parse

out both her business and personal life. Petrona de Arauz had various social markers that

would have provided her with social legitimacy. The first is that she was legally married

to Pedro de Licona, a man who left few details about his life in the notarial archive.

However, one entry provides some biographical information about his life and the

possible economic circumstances of his slave-owning wife, Petrona de Arauz.

Pedro de Licona was a free mulato, and while he was noted as being a resident of

Xalapa, he had only recently moved to the jurisdiction.131 In his only notarial entry dated

January 21, 1679, Pedro de Licona was noted as having arrived in Xalapa from Veracruz

Port only three years prior. The case that Pedro de Licona registered dealt with a matter

of stolen personal property. Pedro had left a macho de carga, or transport mule, in the

care of Juan López Ruiz Matamoros, a vecino of Xalapa, and owner of a cattle ranch.

The mule had been stolen but found on the day of the notarial entry to be in the

possession of an indio ladino132 named José Hernández, who was also a vecino of Xalapa

working at a local mill. The two men were able to resolve the dispute amicably when

José agreed to pay Pedro the value of the mule. Pedro de Lincona may have been an

131 ANX, January 21, 1679, f 480fte - 481fte. 132 A Hispanicized person of indigenous descent.

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owner of a recua or perhaps he rented his mule out to arrieros in need of pack animals

with “fresh legs.” The theft, then, was a serious matter but resolved fairly uneventfully.

Pedro de Licona’s notarial life was short-lived, because by at least 1691, he had

passed away, making Petrona de Arauz a widow.133 Even without her husband, Petrona

conducted high-value business in Xalapa. In her first notarial entry, dated May 25, 1691,

Petrona de Arauz purchased a substantial piece of land from fellow vecinos of Xalapa

Lucas Díaz de la Cueva and his wife, Josefa del Espíritu Santo.134 With a price tag of

sixty pesos de oro común, Petrona made a significant purchase of property that measured

approximately eighty-two by seventy-eight varas. And while the real estate was larger

than average, the actual materials used in construction of the house were seemingly more

humble. The notarial purchase agreement described the house as made of wood, with

enclosures made from branches and clay, and a straw-covered roof. However, when

compared with materials used in other homes documented in the notarial archive in the

late seventeenth century, it is difficult to ascertain whether Petrona’s home was as modest

as it might appear at first glance.

In a review of twenty four houses with physical descriptions documented in the

notarial archive from 1675 until the end of the seventeenth century, thirteen were

described as having tiled roofs, eight had palm leaf roofs, and three had roofs made from

straw. Straw appears to have been the least common material used, perhaps because it

was cheaper. But straw was also used in more expensive homes. On July 22, 1697,

Doña Isabel de Neira sold her straw-roofed house in Naolinco for 220 pesos de oro

133 ANX, May 25, 1691, f 417vta - 419fte. 134 ANX, May 25, 1691, f 417vta - 419fte

316

común; more than three times the price of Petrona’s home.135 Similarly, in 1697, a house

made with branches and clay sold for 250 pesos de oro común.136 Petrona’s home of

sixty pesos de oro común was made with wood, which reveals less about the type of

home we can imagine because in 1684 a home made of wood and stone sold for 1,250

pesos de oro común.137 While Petrona’s house and property were not the grand estate

that sold for 1,250 pesos de oro común, it is difficult to tell from the building materials

how elaborate her home was in comparison to others in the jurisdiction of Xalapa at the

end of the seventeenth century. We do know that it was valued at sixty pesos de oro

común, still double that of most homes in the jurisdiction at the same time. And while

the house was not constructed with more durable materials, such as tile and stone, its

prime location on the street of the main public plaza headed towards Mexico City

increased its desirability and property value.

Fourteen years passed before Petrona de Arauz appeared again. While she had

fallen silent in her notarial life, she forged ahead with other economic activities. In that

course of time, Petrona de Arauz had become a slaveowner. While the available

documents do not offer information regarding how many slaves she owned, she likely

had more than two because in 1706, she granted a poder to Don Francisco García de

Mendoza to sell one of her slaves, a fourteen-year-old negra criolla named María

Josefa.138 Petrona had originally purchased María Josefa in October of 1701 from Don

Ignacio de Herrera Loza, a vecino from La Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz. Don Francisco,

135 ANX, July 12, 1697, f 406fte - 408fte. 136 ANX, February 26, 1697, f 392fte - 393vta. 137 ANX, February 6, 1684, f 162vta - 166fte. 138 ANX, January 12, 1706, f 444fte - 444vta.

317

the man she charged with selling the slave María Josefa, was also a vecino from La

Nueva Ciudad de la Veracruz. Like many other residents of Xalapa, Petrona de Arauz

established business connections with merchants, landowners, and transient businessmen

from one of the colony’s most economically significant ports.

It was a sound financial consideration for Petrona to sell her slave considering the

amount of debt she would incur in years to come. In March of 1709, Petrona de Arauz

granted a poder general to Blas Fernández Álvarez in order to represent her on all civil

and criminal cases that she might have had.139 Four months later, it appears as though

Petrona would need him for a more specific matter than the general legal proxy indicated.

In July 1709, she found herself indebted to the descendants of Juan de Thormes.140

Alférez Sebastian de Flores Moreno, the executor for Juan de Thormes’ family, noted

that Petrona had borrowed 500 pesos de oro común and 8 reales and that she had two

years to pay off the debt. Instead of using a financier, she put up her house in Xalapa,

located on the Camino Real, as collateral. Considering the large sum of 500 pesos de oro

común and 8 reales, it seems extraordinary that Petrona de Arauz was not required to

offer a fiador. And while she bought her 1691 home for sixty pesos de oro común, how

could Petrona de Arauz’ house have been sufficient collateral for the executor of the

inheritors of Juan de Thormes? The first reason is deduced from her family history and

the second is not revealed until more than a decade later.

Petrona de Arauz is noted as a widow who had been lawfully married to Pedro de

Licona in nearly every document in which she appears since 1691. However, we do not

139 ANX, March 14, 1709, f 193fte - 194vta. 140 ANX, July 19, 1709, f 244fte - 245fte.

318

learn that she had a son until a 1716 document, which states that he was a minor child at

the time.141 This child must have resulted from an unsanctified union that never resulted

in a second legal marriage as she continued to be referred to as the widow of Pedro de

Licona. However, the liaison must have been of some substance, given the courtesy

extended by the man’s family in later years. Petrona de Arauz’ son was none other than

Juan Joseph de Thormes, the acknowledged but illegitimate child of the merchant Juan de

Thormes whose family offered Petrona de Arauz the 500-peso de oro común loan. Her

relationship to Juan de Thormes and her status as the mother of his child provide a

reasonable explanation as to why she did not need to provide a fiador to his family.

However, it should not be presumed that other members of Juan de Thormes’ family felt

affinity towards Petrona de Arauz just because she bore his illegitimate child. Although

widowed and then again left to fend for herself after her child’s father also dies, Petrona

de Arauz was certainly not short of opportunities and means. The years that followed

demonstrate a woman with resources and well-positioned acquaintances. Petrona’s

notarial trail documents a women who navigated her social world to her benefit and to

that of her hijo natural, Juan Joseph de Thormes.

Between 1709 and 1710, Petrona de Arauz must have expanded her social circle,

because she once again sought out legal representation, this time from someone of greater

social status. On July 23, 1710, Petrona granted a poder general to Capitán Diego

Rosado, a vecino from Mexico City.142 While many people established connections with

the regional elite of central Veracruz, especially with those in the Port of Veracruz, the

141 ANX, August 13, 1716, f 401fte - 401vta. 142 ANX, July 23, 1710, f 353fte - 354fte.

319

ability to claim as confidantes people of real or perceived influence from the heart of

New Spain’s seat of power. She may have intended to conduct business with someone in

Mexico City and depended on Capitán Diego Rosado to represent her interests.

However, Petrona did not enter another piece of business with the notarial offices that

would verify any new acquisitions or transactions for another two years, which suggests

that perhaps she registered her legal representative, Capitán Diego Rosado, as a

performative act to substantiate her own social position. If Petrona de Arauz had no

definitive business to contract or debts to collect on, she may have used the authoritative

power bestowed upon the notary to direct her own notarial truth.

Petrona de Arauz re-entered notarial life on March 2, 1712, when she sold off a

portion of her estate, the same one located on the Camino Real that she used for collateral

in 1709.143 She sold a piece of her estate to Pedro de Flandes and Diego Méndez, both

from the same region, for fifty pesos de oro común. However, the bill of sale describes

the property as measuring twenty-five by twenty-five varas, whose solar was free of any

mortgage or any other financial lien. And while fifty varas, or approximately one-quarter

of her 1709 estate, was a significant sale, Petrona de Arauz may have been facing

pressure to pay off the loan she had acquired from Juan de Thormes’ family, or perhaps

she needed to raise funds for the maintenance of the 146 varas of land that remained in

her ownership.

Another four years passed before Petrona de Arauz reappeared. If selling part of

her property implied that she had fallen on more precarious economic times, her next

143 ANX, March 2, 1712, f 502fte -503vta.

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entry marked a change for the better in her finances. It also reveals more about her

personal life than her routine business transactions divulge. On August 13, 1716, Petrona

received 414 pesos de oro común and 4 reales from Doña Gertrudis de la Gala y

Thormes, the widow of Alférez Sebastián de Flores Moreno.144 Doña Gertrudis had

taken up the responsibility bestowed on her late-husband to administer the estate of Juan

de Thormes, father of Petrona’s son Juan Joseph de Thormes. As Juan Joseph de

Thormes was still a minor in 1716, Petrona de Arauz received the funds on his behalf.

The record also states that funds came with a specially mortgaged house and since the

documents could not be located for the house, Petrona received the aforementioned

quantity as a deposit. She was to save it with the obligation to provide for the minor

child with the returns that accrued to him each year at the rate of 5% during the time that

she had him in her custody or, during this time period serve as administrator of the goods

remaining in the aforementioned mortgaged house.

For three years, her notarial path lay dormant. On August 23, 1719, Petrona de

Arauz returned to the notarial offices to register the sale of a piece of her property to José

de Aguilar for thirty pesos de oro común.145 The solar, measuring thirty by twenty-five

varas, belonged to a larger part of her property. After more than fourteen years of

notarial history, Petrona de Arauz’ next notarial entry finally revealed the scope of her

financial holdings. The previous year’s sale alluded to a larger property but failed to

provide any further details about the land’s size or degree of development. On August

31, 1720, Petrona de Arauz decided to grant her son, Juan Joseph de Thormes a generous

144 ANX, August 13, 1716, f 401fte - 401vta. 145 ANX, August 23, 1719, f 732fte - 733fte.

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gift.146 The documents mention that her son had requested an undisclosed quantity in

order to buy a home. Instead, Petrona de Arauz presented him with a house and some

land located on the Camino Real. The entire property measured more than 80 varas in

the front and an expansive 116 varas that stretched behind the house. With such a vast

estate, it seems improbable that Petrona de Arauz would not own more slaves beyond the

one she purchased in 1701 and later sold in 1706. A property of that size would have

required a considerable amount of maintenance, but no other notarial documents

involving Pertona de Arauz cite any other slaves that she may have owned or any

employed seasonal or full-time wage laborers.

Given the description of the property and its location, this lavish donation must be

the same estate that Petrona de Arauz purchased in 1691. The original 1691 property

measured roughly eighty-one varas in the front and seventy-eight varas in the back.

Throughout the years, she had sold pieces of it, perhaps to raise funds during economic

downturns. In 1712, she sold fifty varas and in 1719, she sold another fifty-five varas.

However, Petrona de Arauz, a widowed free parda who had raised a child on her own,

found a way to recuperate her losses and increase her 1691 estate by 27% by the time she

donated it to her son Juan Joseph de Thormes in 1720, twenty-nine years later. And

while Kicza would not have classified her as “wealthy,” given his demanding

benchmarks, Petrona de Arauz maintained an enviable property for nearly thirty years of

her life, expanded it, and passed it on to her child, proving her strengths as a

146 ANX, August 31, 1720, f 93vta - 96fte.

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conscientious landowner who created intergenerational wealth during a time of great

economic change in the region.

Petrona de Arauz’ son, Juan Joseph de Thormes, entered only sparse clues in the

notarial archive to provide evidence of how his mother’s financial abilities assisted her

progeny and later generations. On December 31, 1721, Juan Joseph de Thormes granted

permission to Capitán Juan Rodríguez de Tejada and Don Manuel de Santibáñez, both

vecinos of Puebla, for them to prepare his last will and testament.147 While he had two

men from Puebla compose the documents, Juan Joseph de Thormes named as executors

of his will two people closer to “home” – his wife Juana Rosa de la Higuera and his

mother Petrona de Arauz. He also named his three legitimate minor children as his

principal inheritors: Gaspar Joseph, age three; Francisco, age two; and a daughter named

María, only a year old at the time. Something may have occurred that prevented the last

will and testament from being drawn up, because two years later, Juan Joseph de

Thormes once again returned to the notary public to request that his will be prepared. On

December 11, 1723, he granted a poder to his friend and “teniente de caballos,”148 José

Pérez de Arellano and Capitán Bartolomé de Castro, both vecinos from the jurisdiction of

Xalapa, to arrange for a will.149 The orders of the will had not changed; his wife and

mother Petrona de Arauz remained as executors and his children as inheritors. Juan

Joseph probably realized that choosing men from Puebla complicated the process of

having his will written and notarized. Perhaps the men from Puebla had become

147 ANX, December 31, 1721, f 231vta - 233fte. 148 The caballería was a military division of cavalrymen. A teniente de caballos or caballería was

the presiding officer of this defensive arm. 149 ANX, December 11, 1723, f 505vta - 506vta.

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unavailable, failed to carry out their responsibilities to the satisfaction of Juan Joseph de

Thormes, or he simply preferred men of closer physical proximity, and perhaps greater

familiarity, to execute this personal matter.

It is unclear how much wealth Juan Joseph de Thormes had generated in his

lifetime, but the 1720 donation of the land by his mother made him the title owner of a

sizeable property. However, later documents reveal that Petrona de Arauz generous

donation of land to her son had become an overwhelming responsibility. On September

2, 1724, a mere four years after taking custody of the land, Juan Joseph de Thormes and

Petrona de Arauz arrived at the notarial offices to relieve him of the onus of managing

property that he could no longer sustain.150 Juan Joseph de Thormes and his mother

conceded that because the donation was so immense and that he would have to maintain

and sustain the property throughout his entire life, and finding that doing so would be

impossible, they both determined to transfer, revoke, and cancel a part of the initial

donation. For nearly thirty years, Petrona de Arauz managed this estate and her son

could not bear the burden of responsibility for four years. Juan Joseph de Thormes

acknowledged his shortcomings, and instead of forfeiting the property through

mismanagement or debt, he and his mother decided to relieve him of most of its

administration and ownership. The decision to remove Joseph as sole proprietor of the

estate may have also resulted from a familial dispute. Petrona de Arauz may have, as

punishment, reclaimed her property before it was lost in the incapable hands of her son.

150 ANX, September 2, 1724, f 596fte - 598fte.

324

After she rectified her short lapse in judgment, Petrona de Arauz did not

contribute to the notarial archive for another six years until she once again returned to the

profitable business of selling her real estate, which seems to have been her perennial

source of income. On May 2, 1730, Petrona sold to Lucas de Olachea, a vecino of

Xalapa, a plot of land located near the main public plaza.151 It was a significant property

that measured twenty-five varas by thirty-six varas, which she was able to sell for the

extravagant price of 270 pesos de oro común.

Unfortunately, the 1730 case closes the chapter on the notarial life of the free

parda Petrona de Arauz. From slave-owning, property management, and familial

obligations, Petrona de Arauz had encountered a vast array of subjects in the thirty-nine

years in which the notarial archive documented her life. Most of her revenue appears to

have been derived from the astute acquisition of some of Xalapa’s most sought-after

properties. As a landowner, Petrona de Arauz’ involvement in the slave economy is

“logical.” That is to say, that a widowed woman with a large estate probably experienced

the need to have at least one slave girl to assist her with chores. Petrona de Arauz

purchased nine-year-old María Josefa, whom she eventually sold, likely for this very

purpose. When Petrona sold María Josefa five years later when she had reached the age

of fourteen and likely sold for a high price, it was possibly due to economic

considerations and the need to raise liquidity for further investment in real estate.

Petrona de Arauz lived an exceptional notarial life as a free parda and widow at

the dawn of the eighteenth century. Petrona outlived her mulato husband Pedro de

151 ANX, May 2, 1730, f 107vta - 109fte.

325

Licona. She later engaged in an illicit relationship with a Spanish man, which resulted in

the birth of her hijo natural, Juan Joseph de Thormes. And while Petrona was noted as

not even knowing how to sign her own name,152 she maintained seemingly endless

properties from which she continuously profited. She lived a privileged life not only

because of her advantageous economic dealings, but also because Petrona de Arauz and

her family immortalized their saga through more than a dozen trips to the notarial offices

of Xalapa.

Familial Disruptions

Most people, regardless of caste or status, would not have continued or sequential

years of engagement with the notary public that would allow us to reconstruct more

developed histories of their public and private lives as seen with Polonia de Ribas and

Petrona de Arauz. Most subjects of some means would have only fleeting experiences

with the organizing apparatuses of New Spain. On November 12, 1710, the free parda

María Rodríguez, vecina of Xalapa, granted a poder to Don Juan Miguel de Monsava.153

María Rodríguez entrusted Don Juan Miguel, a vecino from La Nueva Ciudad de la

Veracruz, to sell a slave on her behalf. María’s slave, a fifteen year-old named Joseph,

was described as a mulato prieto who had been raised in María Rodríguez’ home.

Joseph’s mother, María Ysavel, was also María Rodríguez’ slave. As this poder was

María Rodríguez’ only notarial footprint, very little can be discerned about her economic

status, family history, or her history of slave ownership. She was the owner of at least

152 ANX, July 19, 1709, f 244fte - 245fte. 153 ANX, November 12, 1710, f 381vta - 382vta.

326

two slaves, a mother and a son. And while Joseph would not have been considered a

minor as a fifteen-year old, his owner María Rodríguez had plans to sell him off and

disrupt his familial ties. There were no other documents regarding María Rodríguez in

the notarial archive that would verify whether Don Juan Miguel de Monsava sold Joseph

or for how much. And while we know she was a slaveowner, we know nothing about her

personal life: Was she married? Did she have children? Did she manage other

businesses? And so María Rodríguez’ life remains an open-ended story, like that of

many others who registered only one point of business in the public domain.

However, in comparison to other towns in the central Veracruz region, Xalapa

was home to a considerable number of free women with the means to purchase and then

economically support their own slaves. For this project, I reviewed all of the notarial

holdings from Córdoba housed in the USBI Special Collections from 1635 to 1732.154 In

that time, only one woman of African descent was a documented slaveowner, a free

parda named Theresa Francisca Hernándes.155 Theresa, the legitimate wife of Francisco

de Soto, a free pardo, was a vecina of San Antonio de Huastuco. However, on August 3,

1714, Theresa went to the notary public of Córdoba to register business. Theresa

intended to sell her three-year-old mulato slave named Baltasar. Baltasar was born and

had been raised in Theresa’s house because his mother, Andrea, had also been her slave.

At some point, Theresa sold Andrea to Capitán Don Juan Joseph Fernandes and Baltasar

remained with Theresa. This case is particularly telling, as no other case of slave-owning

women of African descent involved the sale of a minor child without the mother.

154 I had intended to review all documents until 1735, but the years 1733-1735 were missing. 155 ANC, August 3, 1714, f 2133vta - 2135fte.

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Theresa Francisca Hernándes no longer had ownership of his mother and so therefore

could not sell mother and child as a pair, as others did according to the records of the

notarial archives of Xalapa.

At the dawn of the seventeenth century, when the transatlantic slave trade was at

its height, few patterns arose in cases of the separation of minor children156 from their

parents.157 After reviewing nearly 700 documents relating to slaves from 1600 to 1620 in

Xalapa’s notarial collection, I found only thirty-three cases of this phenomenon. When

minor children were sold off, 48% of the time they were accompanied by at least their

mothers, if not by their mother and other siblings.158 Slaveowners or professional slave

sellers sold off slightly more than half of all minor children (52%) unaccompanied by a

stated family member. This data may include sales in which the slaveowner had

previously purchased the mother (perhaps only a short time before) but then decided later

to purchase the woman’s child. This, of course, is speculation, but a factor that must be

considered given incomplete archival collections and using documents not meant to

speak to the familial structures of enslaved people.

156 I define “minor child” as children twelve years old and younger. Many times the ages children

or young adults had to be estimated and the record would read, “Twelve years old, more or less.” The “more or less” rhetorical device often signaled a shift in life cycles that was culturally established and that indicated that the age-range/life cycle age, and not accuracy, was significant because many enslaved people did not have exact birth dates recorded. Twelve as a marker of “adulthood” is also established in the U.S. historiography regarding when children joined their parents, kin, and fellow slaves in primary duties of production. Twinam corroborates for the Mexican context by establishing that adulthood was marked at age 10. Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets, 181.

157 I define “minor child” as children twelve years old and younger. Many times the ages children or young adults had to be estimated and the record would read, “Twelve years old, more or less.” The “more or less” rhetorical device often signaled a shift in life cycles that was culturally established and that indicated that the age-range/life cycle age, and not accuracy, was significant because many enslaved people did not have exact birth dates recorded. Twinam corroborates by establishing that adulthood was marked at age 10. Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets, 181.

158 As an important aside, I did not find a single case during this period in which a father was sold with a minor children.

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What the data does reveal is that among nearly 700 slave-related cases recorded

between 1600 and 1620 in the notarial archive of Xalapa, only seventeen children were

ever separated from their mothers during a period of great influx of slaves to the central

Veracruz region. These seventeen minors sold by themselves had varying characteristics

that leave few clues as to why children so young would have been sold away when they

did not yet have the same capacity to work as adults. Boys represented the majority of

these cases (12).159 Only five cases of girls were documented. The youngest, a two-year-

old girl named Catalina, was sold by her owner, Catalina de Villafuerte, for 100 pesos de

oro común in 1605 to Juan Díaz Matamoros.160 We do know that slaveowners who

bought slightly older minors paid about half of the market price for adult slaves. In 1601,

eight-year-old Isabel was sold for 250 pesos de oro común to Don Juan Ochoa de Lejalde

Reynoso.161 Eleven-year-old Catalina de San Juan also was sold for 250 pesos de oro

común to Juan Rodrígues by a mercader de negros (slave trader).162 In 1610, twelve-

year-old María was sold to Diego González for 225 pesos de oro común.163 Catalina

Villafuerte must have needed the income, because only a year after she had sold two-

year-old Catalina for 100 pesos de oro común, she sold ten-year-old Magdalena, a negra,

for 300 pesos de oro común.164

159 However, boys were also more likely to be imported than girls during the early years of high

slave importation. Herbert S. Klein, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 169

160 ANX, April 8, 1605, f 330fte - 330vta. 161 ANX, October 25, 1601, f 68fte - 69fte. 162 ANX, July 29, 1617, f 682fte - 682vta. 163 ANX, June 2, 1610, f 28fte - 28vta. 164 ANX, October 24, 1606, f 449vta - 450vta.

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The twelve boys were assigned similar valuations. The youngest boy, Juan, was

only twenty months old when he was sold in 1618 for 150 pesos de oro común.165 In

1616, seven-year old Domingo was sold for a mere 130 pesos de oro común.166 The sale

prices of eight boys between the ages of ten and twelve, varied between 200 and 290

pesos de oro común.167 Only one ten-year old sold for less than 200 pesos de oro común.

Francisco de la Nieves held the dubious honor of being sold for a piddling 150 pesos de

oro común, the same amount as the twenty-two-month-old Juan. Perhaps Francisco had a

physical defect, or perhaps he was a difficult child and his owner had grown tired of his

defiance.168 One young boy, ten or twelve years old, was sold with a woman who was

not identified as his mother for the total price of 675 pesos de oro común.169 Because

they were sold together without differentiating the two in the sale, it is unclear what his

market value would have been had he been sold by himself. Blas Duarte, a slave

merchant from La Nueva Ciudad de Veracuz, sold three of the eight twelve-year-old boys

– Francisco, Gaspar, and Vicente, all noted as being “recién llegado” (recently arrived) or

“recién venido” (recently came) from “Guinea.” If they had indeed just arrived from

Africa, they may have lost their mothers to disease or exhaustion during the Middle

Passage. However, twelve years of age was considered near “adulthood” and buying a

165 ANX, May 12, 1618, f 604fte - 604vta. 166 ANX, August 23, 1616, f 538fte - 539fte. 167 Sebastian, age 10, sold for 200 pesos de oro común, ANX, July 8, 1604, f 278fte - 278vta.

Jose, age 10 or 12, sold for 200 pesos de oro común, ANX, May 26, 1610, f 26vta - 27vta. Juan, age 12, sold for 230 pesos de oro común, ANX, August 31, 1611, f 236fte - 237fte. Pedro, age 10, sold for 250 pesos de oro común, ANX, November 22, 1612, f 290fte - 291vta. Alvaro, age 10, sold for 225 pesos de oro común, ANX, October 1, 1617, f 569fte - 569vta. Francisco, age 12, sold for 290 pesos de oro común, ANX September 28, 1617, f 696fte - 697vta. Gaspar, age 12, sold for 270 pesos de oro común, ANX, September 28, 1617, f 698fte - 698vta. Vicente, approx. age 13, sold for 260 pesos de oro común, September 1, 1617, f 704vta - 705vta.

168 ANX, July 15, 1609, f 153fte - 154vta. 169 ANX, November 17, 1604, f 302vta - 303fte.

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boy of this age probably depended on his level of maturity and physical strength. It was

certainly not a common practice.

During the period of Spain’s significant involvement in the transatlantic slave

trade, only seventeen children in Xalapa ever parted ways with their mothers – twelve

boys and five girls. If I lower the threshold age to eight and younger, then only four

minors were ever sold without their mothers between 1600 and 1620. These children

included two boys (ages twenty months and seven years) and two girls (ages two years

and eight years). By lowering the age range of “minor child,” the paucity of cases

demonstrates how exceptional it was to buy or attempt to sell children because the

percentages shift drastically from minor children being sold by themselves only 20% of

the time and with their mothers at least 80% of the time, instead of the nearly 50% split

when ten- and twelve-years-olds were included.170

Clues in the notarial archive of Xalapa suggest that such a practice was judicially

frowned upon. Of the sixteen cases in which minor children were sold with their

mothers, one case sheds light on what colonial authorities may have thought about selling

children. On April 11, 1607, the General Judge for the property of the deceased in

Xalapa, Licenciado Antonio Rodríguez, charged his subordinate, Justice of Commissary

Alonso Ordóñez, to carry out his order regarding the property of the late Bartolomé

González.171 Justice Ordóñez was to sell five of González’ slaves, two men (Pedro and

170 Patrick Carroll argues, “Until the eighteen century children were often separated from their

parents in this manner.” Carroll cites three cases: one in 1635, the second in 1641, and the final case in 1667. Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 84. I found this not to be the case in the early-seventeenth-century Xalapa. Including Carroll’s three cited cases, only seven children under the age of 10 were ever sold away from both their mother and father in the entirety of the seventeenth century.

171 ANX, April 11, 1607, f 477fte - 478fte.

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Manuel), two women (María and Lussia) and a child (Antón), to the ingenio owner

Francisco de Orduña all for the price of 1,850 pesos de oro común. General Judge

Antonio Rodríguez included a specific instruction to Justice Ordóñez with regard to

Antón, ordering that because Antón was a “niño” (boy), he should not be sold from his

mother María and that where she went he was to accompany her. Unfortunately, Antón’s

age has become the victim of the passage of time; the page is torn away at the top left

corner where his age had been documented.

Perhaps economic desperation led slaveowners to sell a child. The notarial

archive suggests that these cases were rare in Xalapa even during the peak of the

importation of African slaves. The one case of Antón and María also demonstrates that at

least one high judge in the jurisdiction found it to be illogical, perhaps even distasteful, to

sell a young child away from his mother as the free parda Theresa Francisca Hernándes

did 100 years later in Córdoba. Many free women sold both male and female slaves and

purchased them when they could afford to take on the responsibility and risk that slave-

owning entailed. However, Theresa’s case is unique in demonstrating an instance in

which free women also acted outside of the expected, normative behavior for

slaveowners. Rarely were minors sold away from their mothers in Xalapa. Even justices

thought to intervene when it became a possibility, such as the declaration that Antón and

his mother be sold together to prevent their separation. This cultural code may have been

much more pervasive in Xalapa than in Córdoba. While the two towns were both

situated in the central Veracruz region, they were distinctly founded and subsequently

developed on two very different paths with regard to slavery and free people of African

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descent.172 Selling slave children without their mothers was not common in Xalapa,

which stresses the importance of jurisdictional specificity if a free woman near Córdoba,

but not a single free woman in Xalapa, sold a minor.

Free Men of African Descent and Slave-owning

The cases discussed offer singular displays of women who knew how to manage

skillfully their assets and their social circles. These cases are indeed exceptional during

the long-seventeenth century among people of African descent.173 After reviewing

materials for all free men of African descent residing or conducting business in Xalapa

during the seventeenth-century, I found only three men cited as slaveowners.174 The

three cases offer three different types of slaveowner business. The first appeared before

the notary on April 21, 1618. Tomás Rodríguez, a mulato libre and vecino of Xalapa,

sold a slave to Diego Hernández del Hierro, a beneficiado of the district of Tlaculula.175

Tomás’ slave was a fifteen-year-old named Gabriel, a mulato criollo born in Xalapa.

Tomás sold Gabriel to beneficiado for 350 pesos de oro común. The second case

involved the purchase of a slave. On May 17, 1620, a free mulato and vecino of Xalapa

named Andrés Ramírez bought a twenty-year-old negra slave named Catalina,

172 For an in-depth examination of the history of Africans in Córdoba, see: Naveda, Esclavos

negros en las haciendas azucareras de Córdoba. 173 Higgins finds that African-descended female slaveowners outnumbered men of African descent

in eighteenth-century Sabará, Brazil. She ties this phenomenon to the high manumission rates of women compared to enslaved men. Higgins, Licentious Liberty, 82-83.

174 During the era of Spanish control of New Orleans, Kimberly Hanger establishes that African-descended women slaveowners also outnumbered male slaveowners of African descent. She writes, “Why female purchasers were so prevalent in the early years of Spanish rule is not clear; perhaps they had access to greater cash or credit resources than males did.” Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 72. Further research on African-descended men’s economic opportunities must be carried out to see whether this was also the case for Xalapa.

175 ANX, April 21, 1618, f 598vta - 599fte.

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purportedly from Angola.176 Andrés purchased Catalina from a widow named Isabel de

Maya, a resident of Xalapa, for 300 pesos de oro común.

The third and final case of a free man of African descent in Xalapa owning slaves

involves a more complicated story of family. On June 19, 1645, Juan Biafara, a free

negro and vecino of La Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz, bought a negra slave woman named

Magdalena for 360 pesos de oro común from a fellow vecino named Bernardo

Antonio.177 Nearly six months later, in January of 1646, Juan Biafara returned to the

notarial offices to register a trade he had contracted with Xalapa resident, Capitán Don

Sebastian de la Higuerra Matamoros.178 Juan agreed to hand over the aforementioned

Magdalena, in return for the freedom of one of Don Sebastian’s slaves, a forty-year-old

negra criolla named Leonor.179 Don Sebastian issued the carta de libertad to Leonor and

the matter was settled. The notarial authorities also noted an important detail about

Leonor: she was the wife of Pedro Biafara, Juan Biafara’s brother. It would appear as

though a family of African descent worked diligently to reunite. The two entries

registered in Xalapa were the only pieces of notarial evidence that Juan Biafara and his

brother left likely because they were not vecinos or residents of the jurisdiction but of La

Nueva Ciudad de Veracruz. As such, it is unclear whether Juan sacrificed his one and

only slave, Magdalena, for his brother – or whether Juan Biafara bought the slave six

176 ANX, May 17, 1620, f 275vta - 276fte. 177 ANX, January 10, 1646, f 576fte - 576vta. 178 ANX, January 23, 1646, f 573fte - 573vta. 179 It is difficult to assess how common a practice this was. Hanger notes a case in which a sixty-

year-old female slave provided a young male slave to her owner in exchange for her own freedom. However, she asserts, “Although the practice of substituting one slave for another in order to obtain freedom was rare in New Orleans, it was customary in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and occasionally found in other American slave societies.” Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 44.

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months previously with the specific purpose of trading Magdalena for the freedom of his

brother’s wife.

Either option demonstrates a tremendous financial sacrifice on Juan Biafara’s

part. To put it into perspective, if Juan Biafara earned even the relatively high monthly

salary of ten pesos de oro común and was able to save three pesos de oro común a month

in order to buy a slave, then it still would have taken him a decade to accumulate the 360

pesos de oro común to purchase Magdalena in order to free his sister-in-law, Leonor.

Even if Juan and Pedro Biafara both earned thirty pesos de oro común a month and

collectively saved twenty pesos de oro común a month, together it still would have taken

them a year and half to save enough to buy a slave and make the trade with Capitán Don

Sebastian de la Higuerra Matamoros. This case demonstrates the complexity of identity

highlighted by the cases of women that I profiled in this chapter. The narrative of free

people going to great lengths to secure the freedom of their family members, including

pulling together economic resources available to any and all members, is well-established

in the historiography of slavery. However, in the case of Juan Biafara, he both

perpetuated a system of involuntary servitude through his ownership of a slave while he

acknowledged the detriment of slavery to his own family in the enslavement of his

brother’s wife. The Biafara family’s predicament exemplifies the many ways in which

people of African descent had constantly to negotiate the tension of their identities both

as slaveowners and as women and men often intimately tied to slavery as family

members of enslaved laborers or as formerly enslaved people themselves.

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Conclusion

Slave-owning accorded free women of African descent in Xalapa the opportunity

to access a greater cross section of society. As they bought and sold slaves, they

interacted with professional slave traders from the Port, ingenio owners in the agricultural

peripheries of the jurisdiction, and elite and more modest slave owners in Xalapa.

Examining the practices of these women reveals how they understood and positioned

themselves as members of a particular slice of the populace, that of slave owners. Some

of the women were first-generation slaveowners while others benefitted from multi-

generational involvement in the slave market. Owning slaves formed part of a broader

repertoire of elite activities in which free women engaged, including owning expensive

properties, managing their businesses, and offering dowries to their daughters. Being a

woman of African descent and being a slaveowner in the seventeenth-century were not

mutually exclusive identities, and the silences from colonial authorities regarding free

women owning slaves suggest that this phenomenon posed little or no threat to accepted

normative behavior. Few people of African descent partook in this economic activity,

which may have also influenced the near indifference that Spaniards expressed, at least

legally, towards this demographic. Xalapa was home to free women of African descent

who had owned slaves since the turn of the seventeenth century. This long history, along

with their limited numbers, created an environment in which free women enjoyed

significant opportunities in trade, business, and property ownership that enriched their

economic standing and social status.

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Questions of economy motivated many of their activities as slave owners, such as

in the cases in which women sold slaves to invest in more real estate. Rarely did they

engage in socially unacceptable slave-owning practices, such as selling away minor

children. In many ways, free African-descended women demonstrated patterns similar to

those of Spanish elites who owned slaves and property. Women of African descent

acquired slaves as many others did: through donations, familial inheritances, and personal

purchase from acquaintances or regional slave traders. Some women owned separate

businesses that generated the economic capital that allowed them to continue to

participate in the slave trade. A few had advantageous patrons. How some women of

African descent came to be slaveowners will remain shrouded in the shadows of the

archives. Notarial documents divulged only what they legally needed to and only

incidentally disclosed the nature of personal relationships and life experiences. However,

not all choices regarding their slaves appeared to be mobilized by purely economic

considerations, and these instances of variation documented by the notary public

communicate how both race and gender influenced the decisions of free women.

In “The Evidence of Experience,” Joan Scott astutely argues, “[Historians must]

take as their project not the reproduction and transmission of knowledge said to be

arrived at through experience, but the analysis of the production of that knowledge

itself.”180 An examination of the production of notarial knowledge reveals that free

women of African descent who owned slaves worked within a prescribed narrative to

gain legal recognition of their public lives. Nonetheless, they had access to an apparatus

180 Joan W. Scott, “The Evidence of Experience,” Critical Inquiry 17, no. 4 (Summer, 1991), 797.

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of truth-making to establish their own social legitimacy. From these documents alone, it

is challenging to deduce whether these women understood themselves as part of a larger

community of African-descended people of means, because casta categories were

assigned at the discretion of the notary public or his subordinates. The notarial footprints

that we do have access to, however, indicate that free women of African descent managed

the social markers of people of means and mirrored many elite preoccupations.

Slave-owning women of African descent were not merely colonial subjects being

acted upon but actors who found avenues to assert their own self-fashioned notarial lives

within the constraints of familiar formulae and tropes. They were not only forced into

“orderly” subjects through the regimen of notarial procedure; they made themselves

socially legible through the inclusion and exclusion of elements of their life stories and

tailored their own notarial truths. María Yañez ensured to include that it was her

grandfather who had provided her with the female slave that she intended to free. The

detail of her grandfather’s name allowed for greater examination of a man who was a

wealthy Spaniard and a long-time resident of Xalapa, a detail that the notary public likely

knew when he registered this information in María’s case.181 Importantly, the inclusion

of this detail allowed María Yañez to claim her own social space by publicly identifying

her familial benefactor and aligning herself with a source of economic influence and

social legitimacy. In the case of María Nuñez, she noted that she was legitimately

married to Vicente Rodrígues but offered nothing in the way of identifying markers for

181 Burns discusses the importance of having a notary be familiar with the population of their

jurisdiction. She asserts, “Notaries were required to certify that they knew the people whose business they recorded.” Burns, Into the Archive, 27.

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him that would allow her to claim greater social legitimacy beyond the legitimacy of

marriage. Unlike María Yañez, María Nuñez was a slaveowner and a well-established

business owner, a business that is never referred to as a shared operation with her spouse.

María Nuñez claimed legitimacy through her economic activities, as did Petrona de

Arauz, a widow and single-mother of an hijo natural, who owned slaves and land and

negotiated the financially fraught relationship with her son’s Spanish family.

Although only a “kind of truth,” free women who owned slaves made sense of

their own unlikely position of power in seventeenth-century Xalapa. They exercised the

ability to be self-determining through slave ownership in ways that most subjects would

not because of their lack of economic resources and exclusion from certain professions

and trades. They also experienced as slaveowners the power to determine the life

chances of other people. The case of the central protagonist, Polonia de Ribas, brings this

to the fore. As a woman of African descent who had neither husband nor legitimate

familial ties to claim, Polonia found social legitimacy through slave-owning. Polonia

owned a modest home and had no cited business other than hiring out her slaves. While

at least two of her slaves were her siblings, she held fast to the title of slaveowner. Not

manumitting slaves at peak-production years ensured that she would have fairly reliable

income if she had long-term contracts for the slaves.

Polonia’s decisions are economically understandable, but there remains a sense of

the “theater” of respectability in her case because of the familial connection to her slaves.

Although only a “kind of truth,” free women of African descent who owned slaves

offered the notary and his assistants only a fleeting glimpse into a world that was in

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constant negotiation. These exceptional women engaged with as many as diverse actors

as New Spain had to offer and pushed agendas that highlighted questions of respectability

and social legitimacy when such matters were perceived to be the domain of the Spanish

elite. The free African-descended women who owned slaves during the long seventeenth

century in Xalapa demonstrate that they too deserve our consideration in this

historiographical discussion but with greater attention to how race influenced their

approaches in asserting and having legitimated their concerns about their finances, their

families, and their own social statuses. More than just a financial consideration, free

African-descended slaveowners, by virtue of their participation in the institution, could

position themselves as loyal subjects of the Crown in the theater of respectability, an

opportunity that might explain why our protagonist, Polonia de Ribas, engaged in slave-

owning practices rarely discussed in the historiography of colonial Spanish America.

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Conclusion

Mexico holds the distinction of laying claim to the first free town of the

Americas, Yanga. Long-time residents of the small central Veracruz town beam with

pride when they speak of their beloved founder, the African maroon leader Gaspar

Yanga, more commonly referred to as “El Negro Yanga.” While the town of Yanga is

not the original site of the maroon settlement that Yanga and his fellow escaped slaves

defended against Spanish troops (it was relocated from the mountainous terrain to the

Camino Real), it nonetheless serves as a source of esteem for the families who have lived

in the area for generations. A short walk from the town’s square, the municipality

founded a park dedicated to Gaspar Yanga with a statue of his “likeness.” Yanga stands

proudly with shackles and broken chains on his left wrist as he holds a palo of sugar cane

as his right hand lifts a machete defiantly in the air.

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Image 1: Statue of Gaspar Yanga located in Yanga, Veracruz

The commemoration below the statue reads, “ ‘El Yanga’ black African, precursor to the

freedom of black slaves, founded this town of San Lorenzo Cerralvo (today Yanga) by

the power granted by Viceroy of New Spain Don Rodrigo Osorio, Marquez de Cerralvo,

on October 3, 1631.” The statue was unveiled on August 10, 1976 and the final

engraving of the tribute boasts what all visitors to the town see from banners and

welcome signs: Yanga, “First Free Town of America.”

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Yanga’s narrative looms large in the region. A grand revolt in which enslaved

people fled their plantation, scavenged for survival, and spent years on defensive action

against Spanish-led troops set on dismantling their hard earned conclave of maroons that

had grown to include audacious women and men and even their families. In recent years,

Yanga has captured national and international recognition as it continues to celebrate

more than 400 years as “The First Free Town of the Americas.”1 Yanga’s annual

carnaval festivities, which have grown tremendously since its first congregation in 1976

organized by the town’s youth, have garnered notoriety as a lively destination for early

August.2 The municipality has made efforts to steer daytime activities to more cultural

and educational events, including symposia of national and international scholars

presenting on a wide range of topics from the history of “El Negro Yanga” to health care

concerns in a town surrounded by sugar cane for nearly four hundred years.

1 Leticia Sánchez, “Yanga: 400 años de independencia,” Milenio, January 6, 2009; Alfredo Grande

Solís, “Arranca la remodelación de la plaza Negro Yanga,” Esto, January 24, 2008; Jorge Hernández Delfín, “Primer Festival de la Danza, en Yanga,” El Sol de Córdoba, September 23, 2008; Melchor Peredo, “Los Muros Tienen la Palabra,” Diario de Xalapa, April 20, 2010; Julieta Riveroll, “Revela escritorio historia Mexicana,” Reforma, June 9, 2007; Charles Henry C. Rowell, “ ‘El Primer Libertador de Las Americas’/The First Libertator of the Americas,” Callaloo 31, no. 1 (2008): 1-11. There have been some lively disputes about whether Yanga can claim this recognition as the first free town or whether it belongs to the town of San Basilio in Colombia. The debate centers on documents that declare Yanga a Spanish town in 1630 while other documents record 1631. José Alfredo Grande Solís, “El primer pueblo libre de América,” El Sol de Córdoba, January 4, 2010.

2 Carnaval de Yanga’s first iteration took place on August 10, 1976. A group of youths from Yanga, among them Beatríz Mendoza Díaz, Soledad Mendoza Díaz, Marcela Mendoza Díaz, Jorge Martinez Díaz, María de Jesús Morales Martinez, Antonio Aguilar, Ubaldo Gordillo Trujillo, Miriam Páez, León Díaz Villagómez, and Raul Nava, organized a costume party and then decided that since the costumes turned out so well and it was the feast day of the Patron Saint of San Lorenzo, they also coordinated a parade through the streets of Yanga, effectively starting the tradition of Carnaval de Yanga.

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Image 2: Official Folk Dress of Yanga, Veracruz

While certainly not as incorporated into the national imaginary as Cortés or La

Malinche, Gaspar Yanga claimed a space for his story to be recorded by his

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contemporaries, so much so that he is now commemorated through poetry,3 public works,

murals, academic colloquia, and even t-shirts and coffee mugs. Yanga’s accomplishment

was singular in the early seventeenth century. His group succeeded in securing freedom

and receiving official viceregal recognition by confronting the expected social order and

by negotiating for a legally sanctioned space by way of a treaty.

Yanga’s story embodies the experiences of free people who did not seek to

displace the Spanish social structure but chose to disrupt it when necessary, usually when

conditions became extraordinarily untenable for enslaved people. The recognition of

Yanga’s maroon settlement as a free town was exceptional, but the negotiation that

followed was not and had more in common with the more quotidian experiences of free

women of African descent less than 200 kilometers away in Xalapa. Yet their stories

have not yet become such a central component of local, regional, and national memory.

This dissertation has sought to begin to correct this imbalance, to make a series of

exceptional free women, beginning with Polonia de Rivas, a memorialized symbol.

Scholars have highlighted the turmoil of slave insurrections and maroons in

eastern central Veracruz compared with the relative tranquility found in Xalapa.4

However, I see these as two manifestations of negotiation in the same system. While free

women made less dramatic entrances onto the notarial stage, their concerns and

3 In 2004, Alfonso Mendoza Sánchez, Yanga’s local poet laureate, self-published his collection of

poems dedicated to the town and its founder. Alfonso Mendoza Sánchez, Poesías, cuentos y relatos de mi pueblo Yanga, Mexico: Registro Público del Derecho de Autor, 2004. On September 1, 2012, the organizers of a cultural event held in Yanga called, “Soy El Pueblo que No Conoces” (“I am the Town that You Do Not Know”), honored Alfonso Mendoza Sánchez for his contributions in uplifting Yanga through poetry.

4 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 93-111; Proctor, Damned Notions of Liberty, 14-17; Adriana Naveda Chávez-Hita, Esclavos en las haciendas azucareras de Córdoba, 113-146.

345

preoccupations were no less fraught and in many senses paralleled those of the residents

of Yanga. The people living in the maroon settlement-turned-sanctioned town presented

themselves as self-determining but not dramatically subversive. On March 24, 1608,

Yanga’s group outlined the conditions of a peace treaty that was presented by Fray

Balthasar de Morales to Viceroy Luis de Velasco II.5

Yanga and other leaders stipulated that in order for a treaty to be reached, they

had eleven conditions. Fourth among these was that no Spaniard be allowed to live or

stay in the town, with the exception of market days, and that the new location of the town

be of their choosing. They further stated that only Franciscan friars would be allowed to

minister in the town’s church and demanded the right to form a town council. Yanga and

the other maroons appeared very aware that such demands also required them to fulfill

Crown-centered obligations. The treaty also included terms that reimagined the former

slaves as the most loyal vassals who would pay tribute, return escaped slaves to their

owners, attend mass, and defend the lands of the colony “whenever Your Majesty has

need of [us].”6 That Yanga and his group likely owned slaves too and offered to track

down and return slaves of other owners in the region is not remarkable given that, as Jane

Landers argues, “the institution of slavery in Africa would suggest that Mexican maroons

would have no qualms about enslaving non-kin.”7 Like the women discussed in this

work, Yanga and his followers accepted the enslavement of other people of African

descent. Slavery, in other words, was an acknowledged norm for many free people of

5 Landers, “Cimarrón and Citizen: African Ethnicity, Corporate Identity, and the Evolution of Free Black Towns in the Spanish Circum-Caribbean,” in Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives, Jane G. Landers and Barry M. Robinson, eds. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006), 133.

6 Landers, “Cimarrón and Citizen,” 133-134. 7 Landers, “Cimarrón and Citizen,” 127.

346

means, even for those who had spent three decades fighting for their autonomy as a

maroon community.

Free women of African descent in Xalapa also aspired to the role of good and

loyal subject through slave-owning, involvement in other regional economies,

participation in the Church’s rites of passage, and the establishment of legitimate

families. Chapter One examined family as captured by parish record keepers that tell a

strikingly different story than previously documented. We know that the elaborate caste

system failed to maintain the color line. The large mixed-race population in the

seventeenth century confirms this inability to prevent interracial affairs. However, high

rates of exogamous marriage had not been documented previously, demonstrating more

substantive interracial engagement in Xalapa than in other seventeenth-century sites with

a significant population of African descent.

Further, by first examining race to explore marriage partner choice, it became

clear that a racial analysis alone was far too limiting. The most significant trend outside

of race indicated that partners legitimately born to married parents often married one

another. The majority (nearly 62%) of all marriages involving African-descended people

in the early eighteenth century counted at least one partner of legitimate birth. In addition

to the prevalence of racial and legitimacy markers in the marriage records, I found

anecdotal evidence that suggests that factors such as shared life experiences, geographic

proximity, social networks, and economic mobility influenced marriage choice partners.

As standardized parish records do not offer the colorful disputes of marriage contracts

that document familial and betrothed disapproval of an intended spouse, we must still

347

broaden the scope of what qualified as important social markers. While racial

designations likely influenced marriage choice in Xalapa, so did other categories of

difference and similarity. Other factors, which were only rarely documented in the

records examined in this study, such as age, occupation, and status as a feligres

(pashioner), may prove to be rewarding lines of exploration in other archives.

Families of African descent in the seventeenth century also demonstrated

significant investment in religious acculturation by attending to the baptisms and

confirmations of their children. The data that I present establishes that African-

descended children were often born to parents united through legitimate marriage. It is

also of note that even for families not united by the dictates of the Church, most children

were still being raised by two parents, perhaps along with other kin. Trends in

godparentage allow us to see that the vast majority of children were baptized by Spanish

sponsors, most of them women. While Xalapa’s indigenous population had declined by

nearly 90%, they still remained the numerical majority in the jurisdiction, with Spaniards

and African-descended people comprising the second and third largest demographics.

Yet few African-descended people contracted marriage with indigenous partners. Rarely

did indigenous women men serve as godparents for children of African descent. This

may mark racial antipathy, though there may be another plausible explanation. Most of

the indigenous majority lived in the agricultural periphery in the jurisdiction of Xalapa,8

while most of the Spanish and African-descended vecinos and transient residents lived

closer to the town’s square or the Camino Real. The limited experiences documented

8 Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 8-14.

348

between indigenous people and people of African descent do not allow for the creation of

an imagined landscape in which free, economically privileged women, engaged in the

same social spaces as indigenous people to have occasion to later marry or become

involved in child-rearing through the religious instruction of godchildren. Through

marriage and the development of connections through godparentage, free people of

African descent formed varied groups of fictive kin and wide social networks that

included people from across Xalapa’s diverse landscape.

In Chapters Two and Three, we witnessed some of these patterns of interracial

associations extended out to the business realm. Notably, the primary notarial and social

networks of free women of means did not involve indigenous people, and for the most

part did not involve other people of African descent to whom they were not related.

Rather, these business circles were primarily made up of Spaniards. Free women were

active notarial actors, documenting both upsetting circumstances and enviable life

chances. For the women who had enslaved husbands or children, perhaps heartache

would pain them, but so would the debt they would become saddled with if they were

able to negotiate the purchase of freedom cards for their loved ones. Other women

owned properties and managed them well enough to pass them on to their children who

either continued the success or failed and had to sell the house or tract of land for a

pittance.

Free women with wealth were an elite group and they most often behaved as all

other people with wealth did: by requiring the assistance of apoderados to conduct

business for them, offering their daughters attractive dowries, and serving as financial

349

insurers for their family members. They and the local institutions also negotiated the

terms of their existence by circumventing some rules and completing ignoring others.

For instance, free women of African descent in Xalapa appeared to disregard some of the

sumptuary laws of which they were likely in violation. Law 28 from the Recopilación de

las Leyes de Indias reads,

No negra or mulata woman, free or slave, can wear gold, pearls, or silk. But, if the free negra or mulata were married to an español man, she may wear gold earrings with pearls, a choker, and velvet on the hem of the skirt. They cannot wear crepe mantles or mantles of any other fabric, except for capes that fall just below the waist. The penalty for violating this law will result in the removal and forfeiture of the gold jewelry, silk dresses, and mantel.9

A few of the women profiled throughout this work cited owning jewelry in the dowries

they offered their daughters or in their wills. By legally acknowledging their finery with

the notary, free African-descended women (and the notary himself) ignored a royal order

that was supposedly distributed widely in the colony.10 This suggests a broader social

structure that too ignored some of the race-based decrees of the time.

As women who owned jewelry, as well as homes, land, and slaves with

connections to the local and regional elite, they likely unknowingly violated viceregal

edicts. Xalapa’s residents probably did not question their rights to such finery because of

their capital, both economic and social. In Chapter Four, we explored the ways that

slave-owning affirmed these statuses. As high-cost and highly valued commodities, free

9 Spain, Recopilación de las Leyes de los Reinos de las Indias, Seventh Book, Fifth Title, Ley

XXVIII, 325. 10 Much like other decrees, it is unknown how often they became common knowledge for everday

colonial subjects, but officials in the notarial office should have been well-versed in such matters. María Elisa Velázquez notes that such sumptuary laws situated women as “juridically determined by the social rank of their spouse,” but adds, “…in practice, these laws were rarely enforced.” Velázquez Gutiérrez, Mujeres de origen africano, 337.

350

women who bought and sold slaves staked a claim in one of the region’s profitable

economic activities. This social marker also differentiated them from the enslaved

population and offered social legitimacy that the freedom fighters of Yanga also sought.

This is the history of free women of African descent in colonial Xalapa. Some of

their stories chronicled the more truthful happenings of this group (purchasing a slave or

requesting the issuance of a poder). Other narratives appear to be more embellished.

The differences between the two are not always clear. Did the young woman of African

descent, raised and effectively adopted by an unrelated Spanish woman, really have

legitimately married parents? Or did she claim these absent parents to assert social

legitimacy? Did Polonia treat her half-brothers as she did her other slaves? The “notarial

truth” says that Polonia was indifferent to owning members of her own family as slaves.

However, the slaveowning practices in other parts of colonial Mexico demonstrated that

owners were invested in the spectacle and socio-economic status that slaves represented.

These kind of truths, legitimated through the notarial office, are important not necessarily

because of the truthfulness, but to witness how colonial subjects, both free women and

notaries, understood the importance of positionality. We know that some elite members

of Spanish America even attempted to forge documents and provide false witnesses to

alter their life stories to vie for claims to a legitimate heritage.11 As we witnessed here,

one free African-descended woman refused to allow her notarial truth to include any

reference to the more modest beginnings that her husband had already declared. While

this practice is largely seen as an elite phenomenon, we must consider that perhaps free

11 Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets, 273-275.

351

people of means, whether of the middling or wealthy sectors, felt the societal pressure to

present and have legitimized the narratives that best served the story they wanted

chronicled.

Free men may have taken more visible roles in the conquest era, but both women

and men played integral roles in the years that followed as Spain attempted to secure its

newly acquired American territories.12 Little is known about the everyday lives of

colonial subjects, regardless of race or status. Free people of African descent left an even

smaller archival footprint than most. Restall importantly notes that, “Some black

conquistadors only made it into the historical record either because they were killed in

notable battles…or they killed a notable native ruler…”13 Cases of free African-

descended women demonstrate their ability to navigate multiple identities in which race

and gender shifted in meaning. Through their stories, I looked to re-examine colonial

narratives of women, from which free women of African descent have largely been

excluded from the historiography but certainly not from the array of surviving historical

records that documented their complex lives.

This project began with a woman named Polonia de Ribas. I found the first

reference to her a decade before I realized that she would become my muse. As I

returned to the archives year after year, I uncovered more and more about a woman who

seemed completely out of place as a well-connected, wealthy, slave-owning mulata in

Xalapa. Polonia served as my initial protagonist, but I began to find other “Polonias.” I

12 Klein, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1-20; Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870 (New York: 1997), 25-86; Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 7-9. Ruth Pike, “Sevillian Society in the Sixteenth Century: Slaves and Freedmen,” Hispanic American Historical Review 47 (1967): 344-59.

13 Restall, “Black Conquistadors,” 192.

352

delved into the lives of these women who were most apparently marked socially by race

and gender, but also by multiple other identifiers. Their economic capital removed them

from the Spanish king’s idea of the loathed African vagabond “sin oficio.”14 These

women were integrated into various economies and well positioned with the social capital

they gained through their affiliations across class and race.

Census data from 1646 counted more than 150,000 free and enslaved Africans

and African descendants in Mexico.15 By 1810, the number of free people of African

descent alone had ballooned to 624,000, accounting for approximately ten percent of the

colony’s population.16 With more than half a million subjects and nearly three hundred

years of colonial history available in varying degrees across the colony left to uncover,

and likely equally as many stories to parse out, the field is ripe to broaden the

historiography, develop innovative methodologies, and apply new theoretical approaches.

This project sought to examine and challenge traditional narratives of racial

hierarchies, gendered mobility, and the navigation of interracial interactions during the

early and mid-colonial period of central Veracruz. Both the quantitative and qualitative

data demonstrate that analyses based on race alone are insufficient. For women of means

who navigated myriad social circles, managed wealth, and maintained connections with

elites, capital shaped their lives. Importantly, this capital was not limited to economic

opportunities. Awareness of different systems of knowledge and expectations (cultural

capital) and development of networks of people (social capital), which counted Afro-

14 Without a job. 15 Aguirre Beltran, La población negra, 214-219. 16 Aguirre Beltran, La población negra, 232-234.

353

castas, Spaniards, mestizos, and a few indigenous people, shaped the experiences of

African-descended women in substantial and subtle ways. The ecclesiastical and notarial

records attest to interests in establishing and maintaining claims of respectability and

legitimacy, much in the same way that Gaspar Yanga and his flock did as they sought

official recognition from the viceroy of New Spain.

By focusing on capital-owning and capitalizing free women of African descent,

this dissertation serves as my “contribution to the personalization of black history in

Spanish America,”17 with the hope that understudied subjects are brought into the

national imaginary. Perhaps Polonia de Ribas’s story does not carry the sensationalism

of Gaspar Yanga’s valiant efforts, but in order to understand the complex formations of

race and status in Mexico, my muse must become our memory.

17 Restall’s description of Peter Gerhard’s work on Juan Garrido. Restall, “Black Conquistadors,”

171-172.

354

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Biography

Danielle Terrazas Williams was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.

She attended Cornell University and earned a B.A. in Afro-Mexican Studies as a College

Scholar in May 2005 and earned an M.A. in History (January 2008) from Duke

University. Starting in Fall 2013, Danielle Terrazas Williams will begin a post-doctoral

fellowship at Princeton University.

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