Women in

Colonial Latin America

1526 to 1806

Texts and Contexts

Edited, with an Introduction, by

Nora E. Jaffary and Jane E. Mangan
Women in Colonial Latin
America, 1526 to 1806

Texts and Contexts

For Ann
Women in Colonial Latin
America, 1526 to 1806

Texts and Contexts

Edited, with an Introduction, by

Nora E. Jaffary and Jane E. Mangan

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

Indianapolis/Cambridge
Copyright © 2018 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

21 20 19 18 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

For further information, please address

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
P.O. Box 44937
Indianapolis, Indiana 46244-0937

www.hackettpublishing.com

Cover design by Rick Todhunter
Interior design by Elizabeth L. Wilson
Composition by Aptara, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jaffary, Nora E., 1968- editor. | Mangan, Jane E., 1969- editor.
Title: Women in Colonial Latin America, 1526 to 1806 : texts and contexts /
edited, with an introduction, by Nora E. Jaffary and Jane E. Mangan.
Description: Indianapolis, Indiana : Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., [2018] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018009234| ISBN 9781624667503 (pbk.) |
ISBN 9781624667510 (cloth)
Subjects: LCSH: Women—Latin America—History. | Women—Latin
America—History—Sources. | Latin America—History—To 1830. | Latin
America—History—To 1830—Sources.
Classification: LCC HQ1460.5 .W627 2018 | DDC 305.4098—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018009234

Adobe PDF ebook ISBN: 978-1-62466-752-7

 Contents

List of Maps vii

Acknowledgments viii
Introduction xi

1. Grant of Tacuba by Hernán Cortés to Isabel Moctezuma,

Firstborn Daughter of Moctezuma II and Her Last Will and
Testament (Mexico City, 1526, 1550) 1

2. Beatríz, India’s, Lawsuit for Freedom from Slavery

(Castile, Spain, 1558–1574)
Introduction and Translation by Nancy E. van Deusen 14

3. Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata,

1598 and 1658) 30

4. Midwife Francisca Díaz’s Petition to Return to Mexico

(Seville, 1566) 51

5. Life and Love in Women’s Letters to Spouses

(Spain and Mexico, 1567–1576) 60

6. Mothers and Wives in Labor Agreements

(Arequipa, 1590; La Plata, 1602; and Potosí, 1571 and 1659) 77

7. Criminal Complaint by Angela de Palacios on

Behalf of Her Daughter, Leonor Arias (Potosí, 1584) 84

8. Bárbara López, India, Accuses Her Husband of Abuse

(Santa Fe, 1612) 95

9. Sor Ana’s Travel Excerpt from Mexico to Manila

(Mexico and Manila, 1620)
Introduction and Translation by Sarah E. Owens 103

10. The Spiritual Diary of an Afro–Peruvian Mystic,

Úrsula de Jesús (Lima, 1647–1661)
Translation by Nancy E. van Deusen 115

v
 Contents

11. Isabel Hernández, Midwife and Healer, Appears before

the Inquisition (Mexico, 1652) 128

12. Don Juan de Vargas y Orellana Accuses His Wife doña

Francisca de Marquina of Abortion (Potosí, 1703) 145

13. Founding Corpus Christi, a Convent for Indigenous

Women (Mexico City, 1723) 154

14. An African Woman Petitions for Freedom in a Colonial

Brazilian Mining Town (Vila Rica, 1766)
Introduction and Translation by Mariana Dantas 165

15. Isabel Victoria García Sues the Hacienda del Trapiche

over Land Ownership (Pamplona, Colombia, 1777) 180

16. Between Heaven and Earth: Thereza de Jesús Maria Jozé’s

Last Will and Testament (Cachoeira, Bahia, 1777)
Introduction and Translation by Caroline Garriott 193

17. Natividad, Negra, Sues Her Owner for Freedom (Lima, 1792) 205

18. A Colonial Cross-Dresser (Mexico, 1796) 214

19. Ana Gallum, Freed Slave and Property Owner (Florida, 1801)
Introduction and Translation by Jane Landers 224

20. A Female Slave Owner’s Abuse of an Enslaved Woman

(Neiva, Colombia, 1803) 240

21. María del Carmen Ventura’s Criminal Trial for Infanticide

(Zacualtipan, Mexico, 1806) 250

Glossary 265

Bibliography 273

Index 283
 List of Maps

1. Locations Featured in Documents x

2. Transatlantic & Transpacific Journeys xvi

3. Letters Sent between Spouses and Lovers 63

4. Itinerary of María del Carmen Ventura 261

vii
 Acknowledgments

Preparing this book was at once easy and difficult. First came the material.
(Easy!) Twenty years of archival research has allowed for the accumulation
of a cache of intriguing case studies, a few of which I am happy to have
had the chance to reproduce here; and twenty years of teaching has shaped
my thinking about how to help students approach such stories. Next came
the collaboration. The expertise and the companionship that my co-editor,
Jane Mangan, brought to this project also made it easy. Previously, I had
only admired Jane’s research and pedagogical accomplishments from afar so
it was a privilege and a pleasure to learn from her up close as we worked
together on this book. The efficient staff at Hackett, particularly our editor,
Rick Todhunter, and copy editor Simone Payment also eased the process,
­
as did the scholars who either contributed several of the following chap-
ters (Mariana Dantas, Caroline Garriott, Jane Landers, Sarah E. Owens,
­
and Nancy E. van Deusen) or who generously shared their source materials
(Bianca Premo) with us when we came asking. Jane and I are grateful to
Hackett’s anonymous readers who helped us improve our document choices
and our framing of these texts, and to several historians who also shaped both
choices (Allyson Poska, Lupe García, Zeb Tortorici, and Tamar Herzog).
Research assistants Ana Fasold-Berges and Frida Osorio facilitated some of
our translations and, many years ago, José Manuel Vázquez Ruiz assisted with
a paleographic transcription. I thank the support of Concordia University
and my departmental colleagues. As always, I also thank my family, especially
my partner, Ed Osowski, whose steady material, emotional, and intellectual
support makes my work on such projects possible.
The difficult part of this book, for me, was its timing. My mother, Ann
Jaffary, became critically ill and then died unexpectedly while Jane and I
were in the midst of preparing our penultimate manuscript for submission.
Reading women’s wills and considering how women in the past had used
such documents to shape their legacies, care for their offspring, and attend
to their own spiritual well-being became poignant for me in this period in a
way it never had before. Although my mother was, in totality, like none of
the women whose lives are recorded in this collection, shades of her show up
in many of them. Like her, these women showed themselves at various times
to be vulnerable, dutiful, protective, forthright, intrepid, self-interested, and
outrageous. So, to the memory of Ann Jaffary, a great teacher, mother, and
friend, I dedicate this volume.

NEJ
 Acknowledgments

In addition to our editor and fellow historians whom Nora thanks above,
I am grateful to Davidson College for institutional support as well as stu-
dent input. Thanks to the Boswell Faculty Fellowship, I was able to travel to
Montreal to work face-to-face with Nora on translations and editing. Closer
­
to home, I am deeply indebted to my fall 2017 Race, Sex, and Power in Latin
America class—Lalyz Anchondo, Ruben Barajas Ruíz, Max Bazin, Emma
Blake, María Bravo, Alexa Cole, Cassandra Harding, Daniel Hierro, Alisha
Kendrick, Gina Martinez, Aukse Praniviciute, Natalie Skowlund, and Saadia

­
Timpton. These Davidson College students commented on numerous chap-
ters. Their insightful questions and good humor helped shape several chapter
introductions from the perspective of the audience Nora and I most hope to
reach with this book. Finally, I am grateful to Nora for inviting me to col-
laborate with her. Nora’s leadership, organization, and encouragement made
the work of this book mostly easy and definitely fun. The challenges of the
past year could easily have thrown us off course, but Nora’s fortitude and
commitment kept the project on track and made a lasting impression on me
of how to embrace life’s tough moments with integrity.

JEM

ix
 Map 1: Locations Featured in Documents

Seville
Carmona
Fernandina
St. Augustine Alcala de los
St. John’s River Gazules
Jalapa
Mexico City
Manila Tacuba. Tlaxcala Senegal
Zacualtipan Pamplona
Sante Fe
Ghana
San Sebastian
de la Plata
Lima
Cochoeira
Arequipa
Vila Rica do Ouro Preto
La Plata
Valley of Anti

Megan Rohrer | 2017 2500 0 2500 5000 7500 GADM | Robinson Projection
Kilometers
 Introduction

Women in Colonial Latin America, 1526 to 1806: Texts and Contexts presents
scholars and students with a much-needed collection of primary sources in
translation. With a view to depicting the diversity of women’s experiences, we
have selected twenty-one episodes about individual women’s lives that span
the colonial period. These texts, most of which have never been translated
or published before, document the lives of women of European, indigenous,
African, and mixed-race descent from Spain, Mexico, the Andes, Spanish
Florida, Colombia, and Brazil. The texts reveal the experiences of elite and
plebeian women in both urban and rural settings. Every case study will enliven
readers’ encounters with colonial Latin American women’s history through
the inherent interest each tale holds. The selected episodes range from the
details of the last will and testament of a mid-sixteenth-century indigenous
market woman to the criminal trial of a prostitute of Spanish descent in early
nineteenth-century Mexico exonerated for the crime of infanticide in 1806.
The documents depict the internal contradictions and complexities of women’s
lives that will challenge students and scholars to move beyond superficial
glosses of women’s past experiences.
The materials in this collection are ordered chronologically but also con-
ceived of thematically in terms of their framing devices. Each documentary
chapter is preceded by an introduction that situates the source temporally
and geographically and that highlights interpretive or linguistic challenges
the texts present. In our translations, we have modernized punctuation and
sentence breaks because the original sentences were often so long that they
were difficult to easily comprehend. For clarity, we have also normally mod-
ernized capitalization, spelling, and prose. In the many judicial cases included
here, we have maintained contemporary scribes’ common practice of rendering
witness testimony in the third person.
Chapter introductions also invite students, scholars, and instructors to
consider possible interpretive questions applicable to each reading. Along
with suggestions for further reading, each chapter is also followed by a list
of central themes treated in the source, facilitating cross-comparative dis-
cussions. The identified themes treated in these texts, central to both the
historical record and to current scholarship treating the history of colonial
Latin American women are: the family, labor, law, migration and mobility,
property, race and ethnicity, religion, sexuality and gender, and slavery.

xi
 Introduction

Historiographic Overview

The nine themes we focus on have evolved over time in the historiography
on Latin American women and now overlap; each theme informs the others
in recent scholarship. While select works appeared earlier, scholars continue
to view two volumes edited by Asunción Lavrin as the seminal works on
women in colonial Latin America: Latin American Women: Historical Perspec-
tives (1978) and Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America (1989).1
The former, the first volume of its kind, included several chapters on women
in the colonial era and treated such topics as ethnicity, economy, class, reli-
gion, the press, and women’s participation in the independence movements.
Sexuality and Marriage asked how institutions such as the church, the crown,
and the courts affected norms for women’s behavior as well as how women
and men resisted those norms. Since its publication, multiple scholars have
studied the themes of marriage and sexuality with increasing attention to
behaviors outside the norms articulated by colonial institutions.
A recent collection on sexuality edited by Zeb Tortorici invited Asunción
Lavrin to comment on the shift in the field between then and now.2 Lavrin
celebrated recent work in which historians “open up to topics that appeared
threatening decades ago,” including analysis of same-sex relations, bestial-
ity, and masturbation.3 Two essays in Tortorici’s volume, by Chad Black
and Tortorici and by Ronaldo Vainfas, use Inquisition cases against women
for same-sex relations in order to explore institutional and cultural attitudes
around lesbian sexuality. The work of Pete Sigal on sexuality in colonial
Yucatán has established an important subfield on male homosexuality.4 The
case of Gregoria La Macho, featured in Chapter 18 of this volume, offers
students a primary source through which to engage in these newer trends in
historiography.
In addition to the “deviant” topics that seemed out of bounds for Lavrin
and her generation, scholars have enriched our understanding of heterosexu-
ality, marriage, and family in the colonial era. Family patterns and practices

1. Asunción Lavrin, ed., Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives (Westport, CT: Green-
wood Press, 1978); and Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1989).
2. Zeb Tortorici, ed., Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America (Oakland:
University of California Press, 2016).
­
3. Tortorici, xii.
4. See Pete Sigal, From Moon Goddesses to Virgins: The Colonization of Yucatecan Maya Sexual
­
Desire (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000); The Flower and the Scorpion: Sexuality
and Ritual in Early Nahua Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); and Pete
Sigal, ed., Infamous Desire, Male Homosexuality in Colonial Latin America (Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 2003).
­
 Introduction

influenced choices about work and housing; they shaped realities with regard
to economic status and experiences of material culture. As relationships
changed, through birth and death or through new marriages and extramari-
tal relationships, women and men redistributed their resources. Attachments
and emotions accompanied the interactions between women and their chil-
dren, their siblings, their parents, and their spouses or partners. Thus, while
legal documents represent a majority of the documents in this collection, we
frequently see that issues of family are woven into legal documents in terms of
both their original causes and the relations between the actors of a given legal
drama. Indeed, one could argue that family serves as a foundational theme in
a majority of studies on women in the colonial era.
The subject of families in colonial Mexico enjoyed popularity in the 1990s
and early 2000s.5 Historians of colonial Brazil offer detailed analysis of family
structure and kin networks especially among women of Portuguese descent,
which the will of Thereza de Jesús Maria Jozé in Chapter 16 allows students
to analyze.6 The experience of children within families and society moved to
the foreground of social history, too.7 Alongside these studies of normative
family, work on bigamy and illegitimacy emerged to reveal the many histori-
cal actors who made choices outside of institutional norms.8 For example,
such woman as doña Francisca de Marquina (Chapter 12) might elect to alter
her domestic circumstances by seeking an ecclesiastical divorce. Moreover,
although legal and community norms discouraged violence, it, too, was part
of the fabric of couples’ and families’ relationships as the spousal abuse case
in Chapter 8 illustrates.9

5. The work of Pilar Gonzalbo is especially important in this regard. See Gonzalbo, Familias
iberoamericanos historia, identidad, y conflictos (Mexico, DF: El Colegio de México, Centro de
Estudios Históricos, 2001).
6. Alida C. Metcalf, Family and Frontier in Colonial Brazil, Santana de Parnaíba, 1580–1822
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005). Muriel Nazzari, Disappearance of the Dowry:
Women, Families and Social Change in São Paulo, Brazil, 1600–1900 (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1991).
7. In particular see the work by Bianca Premo, Children of the Father King: Youth, Authority
and Legal Minority in Colonial Peru (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).
8. Other examples include Richard Boyer, Lives of the Bigamists: Marriage, Family, and Com-
munity 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, trans. Sidney Evans and Meredith D. Dodge (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 2007); and Ann Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality and
Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999).
9. See Nicole von Germeten, Violent Delights, Violent Ends: Sex, Race and Honor in Colonial
Cartagena de Indias (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, Press, 2013) as well as Steve J.
Stern, The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).

xiii
 Introduction

Scholarship on colonial women has also revealed the significant changes

in indigenous families and households due to the transition between the pre-
Columbian and colonial eras. For example, practices of polygamy and trial
marriage came under attack by the church in ways that upended traditions
that marked women’s lives.10 If family structures and households shifted, so
too did women’s networks for childbirth and childrearing, for marital sup-
port, and for domestic economies of sustenance.11 These works collectively
suggest that although the informal practices around family often went unre-
corded in legal sources, the institution of the family powerfully shaped women’s
lives and society at large.
If families have emerged as an important topic in the field of colonial Latin
American women’s history, religious institutions stand out as an equally
important place to study women in colonial society. Histories of conven-
tual life illuminate cloistered existence as well as the politics of convents in
society.12 The founding of a convent for indigenous women, documented in
Chapter 13, highlights these politics. Yet these works also reveal that nuns
did not always behave predictably. Nuns were busy workers as Kathryn Burns
has shown, even running banks out of their convents.13 Further, women’s
religious practice could present in ways that threatened colonial norms.14
The writing of female religious, exemplified by Sor (Sister) Ana in Chapter 9
of this volume, was a significant literary force in the early modern Iberian
world and one that often addressed the issue of empire.15 As Chapter 10 in

10. For these topics generally, see the discussion in Susan Kellogg, Weaving the Past: A History of
Latin America’s Indigenous Women from the Prehispanic Period to the Present (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005), 71–81. On trial marriage in the Andes, see Ward Stavig, The World of
Túpac Amaru: Conflict, Community, and Identity in Colonial Peru (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1999), 24–27 and for Mexico, see Deborah Kanter, Hijos del Pueblo: Gender, Family and
Community in Rural Mexico, 1730–1850 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008), 83–84.
11. On networks, see Kanter, Hijos del Pueblo, Chapters 3 and 4 as well as Jane E. Mangan,
Transatlantic Obligation: Creating the Bonds of Family in Colonial Era Peru and Spain (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2016), especially Chapter 5.
12. Asunción Lavrín, Brides of Christ: Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2008).
­
13. Kathryn Burns, Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).
­
14. Nora E. Jaffary, False Mystics: Deviant Orthodoxy in Colonial Mexico (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 2004); Margaret Chowning, Rebellious Nuns: The Troubled History of a
Mexican Convent 1752–1863 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
15. Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau, Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works (Albu-
querque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989; rev. 2010); Kathryn Joy McKnight, The
Mystic of Tunja: The Writings of Madre Castillo, 1671–1742 (Amherst: University of Mas-
sachusetts Press, 1997); María de San José, Kathleen Ann Myers, and Amanda Powell, A Wild
Country Out in the Garden: The Spiritual Journals of a Colonial Mexican Nun (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1999).
 Introduction

this volume illustrates, spiritual biography could also serve as an important

vehicle of expression for oppressed women of color like Úrsula de Jesús.16
These mystic writings alternately reinforced and contested women’s role
within religious patriarchy. Historians of women have made excellent use of
the copious records of religious institutions to reframe this subfield over the
past twenty years.
Both religion and family are topics that readers might associate with fixed
locations, such as the church or the home. Yet, in the context of the Euro-
pean expansion, the fall of indigenous empires, and the slave trade, migration
and mobility prove to be significant themes for understanding how women
experienced colonial life. Such was the case for a number of women whose
lives are treated in the present volume (see Map 2). Ida Altman’s pioneering
research examined the centrality of women and families to Iberian expan-
sion.17 Karen Powers delved into the subject of mobility within the Andes
for indigenous families adapting to, and resisting, colonial rule.18 A sizeable
literature exists with regard to the capture and forced migration of enslaved
Africans in the Atlantic slave trade, with works on the circum-Caribbean
especially illuminating for the case of Spanish empire.19 Primary sources of
the era reflect the pervasive nature of mobility and migration as students
will note in several chapters that follow, including Chapter 5, which features
letters sent between spouses and lovers in Spain and Mexico, as well as Chap-
ter 19, which focuses on the financial and social status of the former slave
Ana Gallum.
Turning an eye to colonial legal records has been equally fruitful for
unearthing women’s experience in the colonial world. As the many legal
sources in this book reveal, women initiated cases, served as witnesses,
appeared as victims, and sought redress.20 They also sought to obtain or

16. Nancy van Deusen, The Souls of Purgatory: The Spiritual Diary of an Afro-Peruvian Mystic,
Ursula de Jesús (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2004) and Mónica Díaz, Indigenous
Writings from the Convent: Negotiating Ethnic Autonomy in Colonial Mexico (Tucson: University
of Arizona Press, 2010).
17. See both Ida Altman, Emigrants and Society: Extremadura and America in the Sixteenth
Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), and Altman, Transatlantic Ties in
the Spanish Empire: Brihuega, Spain and Puebla, Mexico, 1560–1620 (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2000).
18. Karen Powers, Andean Journeys: Migration, Ethnogenesis, and the State in Colonial Quito
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995).
19. See, for example, Daniel L. Schafer, Anna Madgigine, Jai Kingsley: African Princess, Florida
Slave, Plantation Slaveowner (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003).
20. For a primary source collection devoted exclusively to women and the law in New Mexico,
see Linda Tigges, ed., and J. Richard Salazar, trans., Spanish Colonial Women and the Law:
Complaints, Lawsuits, and Criminal Behavior; Documents from the Spanish Colonial Archives of
New Mexico, 1697–1749 (Santa Fe, NM: Sunstone Press, 2016). On women and the law in the

xv
 Introduction

Map 2:Transatlantic & Transpacific Journeys

N

Talavera
Carmona

Seville
St. Augustine

Mexico City
Senegal
Malacateco
Key
Francisca Díaz
Beatriz
Slave

Note: Francisca Díaz travels from Talavera to Mexico City; Mexico City to Seville; and then Seville to Mexico City.
750 0 750 1500 2250
Kilometers

Toledo

Cadiz
Port of Bolinao Veracruz
Acapulco

Key
1000 0 3000
Sor Ana de Cristo
Kilometers

N Cuernavaca
Veracruz Toledo
Port of Bolinao
Mexico City Seville
Manila Acapulco Cadiz
0 300 km 0 300 km 0 300 km

Megan Rohrer | 2017 GADM | Robinson Projection

protect real estate and other valuables in their wills and in other notarial
and judicial texts. Students can compare four such wills in Chapter 3 of this
volume. Some studies have focused on particular demographics within the

northern Spanish borderlands, see Susan M. Deeds, “Double Jeopardy: Indian Women in Jesuit
Missions of Nueva Vizcaya,” in Indian Women of Early Mexico, ed. Susan Schroeder, Stephanie
Wood, and Robert Haskett (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 255–72.
 Introduction

colonial population or particular legal trends based on legal innovation or

cultural shifts. For example, when the New Laws of 1542 outlawed enslave-
ment of indigenous peoples, this legal change led to a groundswell of cases by
enslaved indigenous men and women, such as occurred in the lawsuit initi-
ated by Beatríz, india (indigenous woman), presented in Chapter 2.21 The
varied and persistent legal strategies of enslaved Afro–Latin American women
seeking freedom or protecting family and property have been studied across
the colonial era; Chapters 15 and 17 contain detailed examples of two such
women, one in Colombia and one in Peru, both from the late colonial era, a
period in which recent scholarship has particularly focused.22
Within the field of women’s history, the issues of race and ethnicity have
served as significant areas of historical investigation. Early publications in
colonial women’s history tended to focus exclusively either on pre-Columbian
indigenous women or women of European descent.23 Thus, scholars exam-
ined indigenous women as a group to analyze how their lives changed with the
arrival of the Spanish. Some works were influenced by feminist anthropology
of the 1970s insofar as they followed a model of declension relative to wom-
en’s status in society before and after European conquest in the Americas.24

­
More recent scholarship has instead approached this history by examining
women’s experiences across ethnic divisions and by re-envisioning, as Camila
­
Townsend does in her historical biography of the indigenous interpreter
Malintzin, the complexity of Mesoamerican indigenous women’s experience
of conquest.25 In this volume, Chapter 1 offers a primary source insight to the
experience of an indigenous woman who was a contemporary of Malintzin.
Other works on Mexico have helped to paint a full picture of indigenous
women’s legal status, marriage choices, and crime.26 Latin American women’s

21. Nancy E. van Deusen, Global Indios: The Indigenous Struggle for Justice in Sixteenth-Century
­
Spain (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015).
22. Michelle A. McKinley, Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization in
Colonial Lima, 1600–1700 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Bianca Premo,
The Enlightenment on Trial: Ordinary Litigants and Colonialism in the Spanish Empire (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
23. See, for instance, María Rostworowski, La Mujer en la época prehispánica (Lima: Instituto
de Estudios Peruanos, 1988).
24. Irene Marsha Silverblatt, Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and
Colonial Peru (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987).
25. Camilla Townsend, Maltinzin’s Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006).
26. Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett, eds., Indian Women of Early
Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997); Kellogg, Weaving the Past; Lisa Sousa,
The Woman Who Turned Into a Jaguar, and Other Narratives of Native Women in Archives of
Colonial Mexico (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017); and Kanter, Hijos del Pueblo.

xvii
 Introduction

history could not be fully addressed without critical attention to ethnic

identity.27
Indigenous women’s history of labor also developed into a significant
topic. It will come as little surprise that the majority of women in colonial
Latin America worked, whether for their own subsistence or for other mas-
ters. More recently, historians have delved into this subject in ways that rev-
olutionized what we know about how women worked in colonial society.
Through this work we see how women shaped society, as Karen Graubart
argued with regard to indigenous women’s labor patterns under coloniza-
tion in Peru.28 Studies from the late 1970s on market women’s labor in cities
spawned in-depth analyses that highlighted the varied types of work women
did in urban versus rural areas.29 Some women’s work, especially as healers,
positioned them for social control within their communities.30 Several chap-
ters in this volume, including Chapters 4 and 11, which treat midwifery, and
Chapter 6, which addresses domestic labor, highlight examples of women’s
colonial-era paid labor.
Women’s history, while long addressing the history of women’s labor, was
somewhat slower to engage with the experiences of Afro–Latin American
women, both free and enslaved. Initial publications studied marriage (and
its absence) to examine the idea of community formation.31 Among enslaved
men and women, for whom marriage was often an impossibility, the for-
mation of community and kin networks outside of marriage has proven to
be a fruitful area of study.32 A rich primary source that explores this issue
by examining the experiences of the Afro–Brazilian woman Rita de Souza

27. One of the most influential works on the subject of how race and gender inform each other
is María Elena Martínez, Geneological Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in
Colonial Mexico (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008).
28. Karen B. Graubart, With Our Labor and Sweat, Indigenous Women and the Formation of
Colonial Society in Peru, 1550–1700 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007).
29. Elinor Burkett, “Indian Women and White Society: The Case of Sixteenth-Century
Peru,” in Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives, ed. Asunción Lavrin (Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1978), 101–28; Kimberly Gauderman, Women’s Lives in Colonial Quito:
Gender, Law and Economy in Colonial Spanish America (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press,
2003); Jane E. Mangan, Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Urban Economy in Colonial
Potosí (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005).
30. See Martha Few, Women Who Live Evil Lives: Gender, Religion and the Politics of Power in
Colonial Guatemala (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002), as well as Joan Cameron
Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches: Afro-Mexican Ritual Practice in the Seventeenth
Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007).
31. Herman L. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity and Afro-Creole
Consciousness, 1570–1640 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003).
32. The work of Rachel O’Toole offers in-depth analysis of enslaved women and men’s net-
works in Trujillo, Peru. See O’Toole, Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in
Colonial Peru (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012).
 Introduction

Lobo is presented in Chapter 14. The legal strategies that enslaved women
employed, especially when they attempted to seek manumission, is a critical
topic within the field of Afro–Latin American women’s history.33 Often these
works highlighted the violent discrimination Afro-descended women faced in
such contexts, as exemplified in Chapters 17 and 20. Simultaneously, the field
expanded our historical understanding of enslaved women’s resistance, such
as strategies for manumission or purchasing freedom, that existed alongside
oppression.
The rich and varied history of colonial women in Latin America is united
by a set of key issues that can be traced in part back to the questions posed
by Asunción Lavrin’s first edited volume. How did women experience
Latin American institutions (government and church) relative to men? The
implicit power structure therein is colonial patriarchy. Historians writing in
the decades since Lavrin have offered myriad answers to the question of how
patriarchy affected women’s lives and, in particular, have complicated the
narrative by increasing attention to class, race, and sexuality. The collective
body of work reveals inherent tension in the absolute power of institutions
and the negotiations by women in their day-to-day lives. The documents
in this reader offer students a first-hand account of the ongoing actions by
women to claim degrees of autonomy for themselves throughout the colonial
world.

Apprehending Women’s History through Legal Sources

The majority of the texts included here are drawn from legal settings. Legal
records constitute the most comprehensive sources by which women’s experi-
ences in colonial Latin America (the period between 1492 and the comple-
tion of the revolutions of independence in 1825) can be reconstructed. While
such sources are central to the reconstruction of women’s history across the
West in the Early Modern period, using such material is particularly appro-
priate in the Latin American context because of the extent to which the law
constituted Iberia’s overseas empires in the colonial period.34 By “the law” we
refer, first, to the many layers of legislation issued at all levels of government in
Spain and Spanish America, all the way from the lofty proclamations Spanish

33. McKinley, Fractional Freedoms; María Eugenia Chaves, “Slave Women’s Strategies for
Freedom and the Late Spanish Colonial State,” in Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in
Latin America, ed. Elizabeth Dore and Maxine Molyneux (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2000), 108–26.
34. Both Kathryn Burns, Into the Archive: Writing and Power in Colonial Peru (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2010) and Angel Rama, The Lettered City (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 1996), make this argument.

xix
 Introduction

monarchs issued in their reales cédulas (royal decrees) down to the minute
administrative matters treated by the resolutions of cabildos (city councils).
Second, we refer to the application of law in judicial contexts—ecclesiastical,
civil, and criminal courts—and third to the enormous body of extra-judicial
legal transactions by which elites and commoners, through the intercessions
of notaries, organized and officiated their public and private lives.
In the Latin American context, the law, as opposed to other entities (the
military, the church, the entrepreneurial population, or peninsular elites)
orchestrated Iberia’s claims to its overseas empire to an exceptional degree.
As several researchers in the past fifteen years have also demonstrated, Span-
ish America is also unique in terms of the dramatic extent to which the
non-European populations as well as women enthusiastically and effectively
embraced the rights and privileges the law afforded them. Within ten years
of the conquest, indigenous communities began using legal channels to peti-
tion the crown, and eventually the Real Audiencias (the central district courts
in Spanish American viceroyalties) as well as to local magistrates for redress
of fiscal, political, and personal grievances.35 Enslaved Africans, both male
and female, used the protection of the law to secure their rights to personal
property, to limit corporal punishment, and to regulate their rights to self-

­
purchase. Women in Latin America used the law to address domestic vio-
lence, to secure legal separation from husbands who were not fulfilling their
financial or physical obligations, and to arrange for the distribution of their
possessions to their heirs. Indeed, Bianca Premo has recently argued that it
was through the venue of tribunals that marginalized Latin Americans—
women, those enslaved, and indigenous people—constructed the Enlightenment
by using courts as a means to redress social and legal injustice.36
The law was central to the lives of colonial Latin Americans, but legal
sources present various kinds of interpretive challenges to those of us trying to
apprehend the past through such materials. What kinds of experiences of the
law can historians access? What kinds of materials are contained in the texts
themselves and what problems do these texts present? Judicial cases often
document the experiences of women who came to the attention of judicial
authorities because they were exceptional in some way, or because they took
exception to colonial institutions and conventions. The very contrariness of
such women lends itself to the suggestion that colonial-era women were, as a

35. See, for example, Steve J. Stern, Peru’s Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Con-
quest: Huamanga to 1640 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993); Brian P. Owensby,
Empire of Law and Indian Justice in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
2008); Graubart, With Our Labor and Sweat; María Elena Díaz, The Virgin, the King, and the
Royal Slaves of El Cobre: Negotiating Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670–1780 (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2002).
36. Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial.
 Introduction

rule, fearless troublemakers or unrepentant deviants. Students encountering

only these kinds of sources might be forgiven for formulating the impression
that the women of colonial Latin America should best be understood as a
collection of defiant rabble rousers.
­
Contributing to this impression, historians of women have uncovered
substantial evidence in the past two decades of the ways that the law and
legal processes empowered Spanish American women, particularly when their
positions were compared with women from other European countries. For
one thing, patria potestad (the legal right of the fathers to determine the fis-
cal and legal contours of those under their protection) notwithstanding, in
Iberian law, women had the independent right to inherit, own, and bequeath
property. Second, regulations governing inheritance did not discriminate
between men and women as was the case for other European powers. Legiti-
macy and the degree of blood relationship to the deceased, rather than sex,
determined inheritance rights. Finally, within marriage, at least theoretically,
women retained independent financial control of their own assets, consist-
ing of the dowry and the arras. Dowries were financial gifts their families
presented to their daughters at marriage, which husbands were permitted
to manage. The arras was a lump sum gift representing a maximum of 10
percent of his personal wealth that a groom often presented to his bride at
marriage as a symbol of estimation in which he held the union. The value of
both items along with accumulated interest was returned to women, at the
time of death or legal separation from their husbands. They bequeathed such
wealth independently to their heirs. In recognition of these practices, Spanish
and Spanish American women did not always relinquish their own surnames
at marriage.37
Furthermore, widows and single women over the age of twenty-five
enjoyed legal rights identical to those of men to make contracts, litigate,
and administer their own property.38 But even married women may have
exercised such rights more often than the law would suggest at first reading.
Both Kathryn Burns and Karen Gauderman have also observed that although
the law may have declared that married women could not act independently
of their husbands in legal or fiscal matters, women frequently circumvented
such restrictions. Burns suggests that women may have acted autonomously
despite the law’s official restrictions. While she describes frequently located

37. For more on women and the law in colonial Latin America, see Silvia Marina Arrom, The
Women of Mexico City, 1790–1857 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985), Chapter 2;
Matthew C. Mirow, Latin American Law: A History of Private Law and Institutions in Spanish
America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), Chapter 5.
38. Susan Migden Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 9–10; Gauderman, Women’s Lives, 27, 30.

xxi
 Introduction

cases in which women represented themselves in legal transactions, she has

never found emancipatory documents suggesting they had obtained permis-
sion from their husbands or fathers to do so.39 Further, Gauderman found
that women who had not obtained licenses from their husbands to engage in
independent commercial transactions occasionally legitimated their actions
through retroactive licenses obtained from their husbands. If a husband
refused to grant such a license, Gauderman reports, “the courts could compel
them him through fines and imprisonment, and if this were not sufficient,
the judge alone could grant the woman a license.”40 Judicial documents also
document the extent to which both Habsburg and Bourbon legal practices
offered sometimes surprising protections, or occasionally, useful indifference,
to the legal plights of colonial women.
The impression that the law empowered colonial Latin American women
who effectively defied their subordination to men usefully counters an oppo-
site portrait of women’s status that emphasizes the lawful victimization of
women in colonial contexts.41 Women’s legally subordinate status is sug-
gested by some elements of Spanish law: married women and female minors
could not by law initiate legal or contractual proceedings without the permis-
sion of their husbands or fathers. Women, like children, were also limited in
their personal and fiscal decisions by the legal and social concept of patria
potestad, literally, the power of the father to govern the minors of his house-
hold. This power, according to the Siete Partidas, the thirteenth-century code
that remained the most important foundational legal philosophy governing
the law in the colonial era, defined patria potestad as “the power fathers had
over their children,” and withheld such power from mothers, and women,
like servants and slaves, ideally remained under the authority of male heads
of household.42 Further, the legal privileges that men held over their wives
is apparent in Spanish and Spanish American regulations concerning adul-
tery. Although the law theoretically supported women’s suits for legal separa-
tion from husbands who engaged in wanton adultery, men who caught their
wives in flagrante delicto, were lawfully empowered, depending on the code

39. Kathryn Burns, “Forms of Authority: Women’s Legal Representations in Mid-Colonial

Quito,” in Women, Texts, and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World, eds. Marta V.
Vicente and Luis R. Corteguera (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003), 149.
40. Gauderman, Women’s Lives, 41.
41. This is the thesis Karen Vieira Powers advances in Women in the Crucible of Conquest: The
Gendered Genesis of Spanish American Society, 1500–1600 (Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 2005).
42. See Premo, Children of the Father King, 25–27.
 Introduction

consulted, to either murder both parties, or to murder the man alone, while
turning the wife over to judicial authorities for punishment.43
The document choices in this collection reveal that Spanish American
law, like the social context in which it developed, served at once to empower
women and to inhibit them. A binary model that casts women alternatively as
victims or rebels does not accurately convey their experiences or social realities
as they operated to achieve their goals amongst networks of allies (and oppo-
nents) of both sexes. We attempt to offer a more nuanced portrait of women’s
experiences within the colonial legal system with our documentary selections
in two ways. We hope to provide an indication of the range of women’s colo-
nial experiences—from the extraordinary to the representative—through our
selections of notarial in addition to judicial records because the former type
of documentation helps create a more representative model of experiences
common to many women’s lives. Such sources contain such social historical
matters as details of family relations, property holdings, and governance, but
can also be used to understand more esoteric issues, including for instance the
assessment of individuals’ articulations of their connections to both European
and indigenous cultural, material, and spiritual realms.44 Second, we hope
students and scholars will be able to use these materials to better understand
both the specific mechanisms by which women used the law to their own
advantage, and those circumstances in which the law disadvantaged women,
or was powerless to assist them.

Reading Strategies and Interpretive Questions

We close with a discussion of four interpretive strategies and five broad

interpretive questions through which the following source selections may be
apprehended. First, tracking texts for various kinds of omissions—temporal
­
delays, unexplained gaps of information, or matters left unsaid—is a useful
strategy for the interpretation of any kind of historical documentation. Read-
ers, for instance, might consider the meaning of significant lapses in time
occurring between different stages of a judicial case. What might account

43. Some sources of Castilian law, including the Fuero de Cuenca and the Fuero de Sepúlveda,
empowered men to kill both parties. The Siete Partidas, however, limited the husband to
the right only to kill the man who had challenged his honor. Albrecht Classen and Connie
Scarborough, eds., Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: Mental-
Historical Investigations of Basic Human Problems and Social Responses (Göttingen, Germany:
Hubert & Co., 2012), 231.
44. Karen B. Graubart, “Catalina de Agüero: A Mediating Life,” in Native Wills from the Colo-
nial Americas: Dead Giveaways in a New World, ed. Jonathan Truitt and Mark Christensen
(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015), 21.

xxiii
 Introduction

for such lapses? Do they reveal something about the behavior or motivations
of the historical subjects under study, or might they be indicative of bureau-
cratic or institutional practices? Documentary omissions can also assume
other guises, including issues that appear important in one portion of a case
or to one party, that are subsequently neglected by others. If various wit-
nesses concentrate in their testimony on one issue, what might it mean if this
matter did not feature in a judge’s assessment of a case? Another revealing
type of omission involves those matters that historical subjects, whether state
officials, or humble commoners, considered so commonplace that they did
not merit comment in the text. What do the texts collected here reveal about
the kinds of practical, spiritual, cultural, or legal knowledge were of such an
uncontested nature that they required no explanation in the documentary
record? What sorts of attitudes, beliefs, laws, or behaviors were so accepted
that they literally went “without saying”?
A second interpretive strategy involves tracing aberrations and deviations
from documentary templates. Legal sources, whether notarial or judicial, share
the attribute of adhering to formulaic patterns of procedure and language. In
various passages within individual types of documents, lengthy sections of
text follow a standardized “boilerplate” template. These include such legal
formulas as the text of the oaths to which witnesses before the Inquisition
must adhere, the standardized questions to which witnesses testifying as to a
subject’s character before the Casa de la Contratación in migratory application
decision must respond, the standardized profession of Christian piety which
precedes notarized wills witnesses. Although useful historical information can
be extracted from the texts of such “boilerplate” standards and their usages,
the appearance of irregularities from standardized language or procedure can
be particularly revealing because they normally indicate matters historical
subjects felt particularly compelled to modify in some way.45 Although read-
ers unfamiliar with the standardized templates that structure many legal texts
will find it challenging to detect all modifications to individual documents,
in some cases the modification of language, procedure, or intent is made
apparent within the source entries themselves because, as occurs in the 1806
infanticide trial of María del Carmen Ventura, a subject within the record
itself calls attention to the nonstandard legal procedure undertaken.
A third strategy, closely related to those of tracking for omissions and
exceptions, involves closely reading texts for internal contradictions. Where
do different voices or documents dating from different dates contain internal
contradictions with one another? What do we make of it when two different
witnesses provide contradictory evidence to a judge or notary? Which party
do we believe and why, and why does it matter?

45. This is a strategy Burns advocates in Into the Archive, 125.

 Introduction

This strategy of searching for internal contradiction raises a final issue

central to the task of interpreting historical documentation: the evaluation
of reliable narrators and sources. One approach to trying to extract reliable
information from judicial texts is to focus on the incidental rather than the
intentional information such sources contain. When historians study judicial
documents, particularly criminal trials, we are tempted to adopt the point
of view of the judges who first collected and analyzed such materials. We
read denunciations and defenses that recount stories of violent and dramatic
crimes and it is hard not to form conclusions about the likelihood of defen-
dants’ guilt or innocence in these trials. However, approaching the examina-
tion of judicial documents from the same point of view as judges, with the
objective of ascertaining the guilt or innocence of defendants and plaintiffs,
is fraught with difficulties, including our forced reliance on that portion of
materials and information that survives in the preserved archival record of
a given case, complicated by our distance of several hundred years’ removal
from the events themselves. All parties, including the agents of the courts
themselves, have agendas they are pursuing in court cases and especially as
latter-day consumers of these records, we are likely to misunderstand or
misapprehend all parties’ undeclared objectives.
­
Rather than assuming that the central conclusions that can be drawn
from judicial records concern the judgement of guilt or innocence of defen-
dants, it may make more sense to focus on the incidental information con-
tained in such records. Kathryn Burns discusses her use of this strategy in
her discussion about a theft trial from late seventeenth-century Cuzco where
instead of focusing on the “whodunit” aspect of the trial, she concentrated
on incidental evidence about the social and economic lives of her historical
subjects that details from the transcript allowed her to glimpse. Among these
was her observation that the two Inca nobility allegedly robbed during a party
they hosted had left Cuzco during the court’s investigation into the case to
pick potatoes. This surprising revelation was in no way germane to under-
standing who was responsible for the theft, but in Burns’ terms, was one that
“helps flesh out our sense of what it meant to belong to Cuzco’s nobility at
that time.”46
Whereas three decades ago the history of colonial Latin American women
was a tiny subfield, it is now a major field with a rich diversity of subjects and
methods. This book offers an important selection of the sources that serve as
the primary ingredients of historical analysis for this field. To study the pri-
mary source documents in systematic fashion, we highlight five salient points
of this scholarship for scholars and students to use as a set of guiding concepts
that interconnect these materials.

46. Burns, Into the Archive, 137.

xxv
 Introduction

different class and ethnic categories. Case studies in this volume allow read-
ers to examine instances in which women acted as informers and witnesses
against other women.
Fifth, how did women and men interact? A prominent characteristic of his-
torical scholarship on women in colonial Latin America is that it frequently
analyzes women in relationship with or in comparison to men. Therefore,
readers will find that as much as they can identify about women within these
documents, there is also much to be learned in them about men. Male figures
are significant in each document, and this lets readers contemplate the kinds
of relationships that existed between men and women who lived within a
patriarchal society. Some relationships might conform to expectations, but
we expect others might surprise readers. Use this as a tool, then, to examine
how women and men related to one another within the different frameworks
of kin, employment, state, and religious power that connected them. Ulti-
mately, the contemplation of these primary sources allows for a deeper under-
standing of how women navigated the whole of colonial society, including
their encounters and relations with men.

xxvii
 1

Grant of Tacuba by Hernán Cortés to

Isabel Moctezuma, Firstborn Daughter
of Moctezuma II and Her Last Will and
Testament (Mexico City, 1526, 1550)

The Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire of south-central Mexico dramati-

cally transformed the life of the woman whom the Spanish knew as Isabel
Moctezuma. She was the eldest legitimate daughter of Moctezuma II, the
reigning Aztec emperor at the time of Hernán Cortés’ 1519 invasion of
Mexico. In recognition of her status, his personal debt to her father, and
the enormity of the pre-Columbian wealth controlled by her dynastic line,
Cortés granted her the largest and wealthiest encomienda (grant of indigenous
tribute and labor) in the Valley of Mexico in the mid-sixteenth century. His
1526 creation of this encomienda is reproduced in its entirety in the first
document below. Isabel Moctezuma, like many other indigenous women of
the conquest-era nobility, played a central role in the consolidation of Span-
­
ish power in the aftermath of conquest, but also demonstrated a remarkable
capacity for adaptation to a dramatically new cultural and political landscape.
Evidence of her generation’s capacity for adaptation is apparent in the second
document included here, her last will and testament, composed in 1550.
Isabel Moctezuma was born in 1509 or 1510. Before reaching the age of
eleven, her parents had already arranged for her to marry her father’s pre-
sumed successor, Atlixcatl, but this union never occurred. Subsequent to
Cortés’ imprisonment of the emperor Moctezuma, Isabel1 had been married
to the last two leaders of the Aztec empire, first to her uncle Cuitláhuac,
who died from smallpox, and then to her cousin, Cuauhtémoc. The Spanish
captured and later tortured the latter during their final assault on the Aztec
capital on August 13, 1521. Cortés took Cuauhtémoc with him on his 1524
voyage of conquest into Honduras and ordered him executed there the fol-
lowing year. Upon his capture, Cuauhtémoc pleaded that the Spanish treat
his wife and her female attendants with the respect due their station. His

1. Although the editors generally refer to all historical subjects by their surnames, in this chap-
ter we use Isabel’s Christian name in order to distinguish her from her more widely known
father, the emperor Moctezuma II.

1
 1 • Grant of Tacuba by Hernán Cortés to Isabel Moctezuma

plea, and that of her father, may have influenced Cortés’ treatment of Isabel.2
Aside from partially honoring his promises to Moctezuma respecting Isabel’s
future finances, Cortés used Isabel for his own purposes. Willingly or not, she
bore him a daughter; and subsequently, he arranged marriages for her to a
succession of his political allies. When Cortés returned to Mexico City from
Honduras, he moved Isabel to a house where his other concubines lived; she
may have been living there at the moment he designated the encomienda of
the town of Tacuba to her.
The encomienda of Tacuba (a community about five miles west of Tenoch-
titlan–Mexico City) that Cortés designated to Isabel on the eve of her wed-
ding to Alonso de Grado, although a fraction of Moctezuma II’s original
holdings, was extensive. By the mid-sixteenth century, it had become the
largest encomienda in the central valley because every other such grant origi-
nally of greater size had escheated to the crown.3 Its wealth, and the Spanish
crown’s unusual continued acknowledgment of its legitimacy, ensured that
the Spanish and eventually the republican Mexican state would continue to
pay Isabel’s descendants’ benefits from the grant until 1933, the year the chief
historian in Mexico’s National Archive certified the transcribed copy of the
original encomienda consulted for the present translation. During her life-
time, Isabel herself attempted to increase her own claim to wealth, and those
of her heirs, particularly her female descendants. In one probanza (petition)
that Isabel submitted to the Spanish state in an attempt to expand her claim
to those lands she should have inherited from her father, historian Pedro
Carrasco uncovered her assertion that “if there were no males who were close
relations and most worthy, females could succeed to the rulership.”4
In 1528, Isabel gave birth to her first child, a daughter, fathered by Cortés,
whom she named Leonor Cortés Moctezuma. Cortés did not formally legiti-
mize Leonor as he did Martín Cortés, the son borne him by Malintzín, the
indigenous woman who served as his primary translator and advisor during
the wars of conquest, but he did recognize Leonor as his daughter. Cortés
arranged for Leonor to be raised in the home of Juan Gutiérrez de Altamirano,
an aide and cousin by marriage of Cortés, whose household also undertook to

2. As acknowledgment for his capture of New Spain, King Charles V had awarded Cortés
with the title repartidor (distributor of Indians as vassals), capitán general (supreme military
commander), and governor of New Spain. It was in the former capacity that Cortés awarded
Isabel her encomienda.
3. Donald E. Chipman, Moctezuma’s Children: Aztec Royalty under Spanish Rule, 1520–1700
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 65.
4. Pedro Carrasco, “Royal Marriages in Ancient Mexico,” cited in Robert Haskett, “Activist
or Adulteress? The Life and Struggle of doña Josefa María of Tepoztlan,” in Indian Women of
Early Mexico, ed. Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 160.
 1 • Grant of Tacuba by Hernán Cortés to Isabel Moctezuma

raise his son with Malintzín. Leonor and Martín both lived in the Altamirano
household, located three blocks south of the main plaza in the capital city.
Gutiérrez de Altamirano served subsequently as executor of Isabel’s estate and
administrator of the conqueror’s estate as well.
We know little about the relationship Isabel might have had with her
estranged daughter. As Anna Lanyon suggests may have been the case for
Malintzín and her son Martín, Isabel might have occasionally glimpsed her
daughter at public events or market days on Mexico’s large central square.5
By the time of Isabel’s death, Leonor had already been married for nearly a
year to conquistador (conqueror) Juan de Tolsá, an unsuccessful silver baron
of the Zacatecas region. Isabel must have at least kept track of the develop-
ment of her life, however. For although Isabel did not mention Leonor in her
first articulation of her will, translated below, she did make some provision
for her daughter in an unofficial supplement. Diego de Isla, the scribe who
recorded Isabel’s will, declared that she had testified to her three executors on
her deathbed that Leonor was to receive one fifth of the monies remaining
from a lump sum of six hundred pesos that she had set aside from her estate
to pay for her funeral and masses.6
As Cortés discussed in the Tacuba grant, after Cuauhtémoc’s execution,
he arranged for a new marital alliance for Isabel in 1526 to one of his military
followers, Alonso de Grado, who died of unknown causes six months later.
And while she was pregnant with Leonor in 1527 or 1528, Cortés arranged
for her marriage to her fourth spouse, Spaniard Pedro Gallego de Andrade,
who died allegedly of poisoning shortly after their wedding. Isabel then spent
nearly four years as a widow until 1530 when she married Juan Cano, a
conquistador who had originally sailed to Mexico with Pánfilo de Narváez’s
defeated expedition against Cortés, but who later joined forces with Cortés
­
and became a prosperous encomendero (holder of an encomienda). Isabel
shared the remaining twenty years of her short life with Cano. Although
she had borne no children to any of her first three spouses, she gave birth to
one son, Juan Andrade Moctezuma, with Pedro Gallego de Andrade, and
had an additional five children—Pedro, Gonzalo, Juan, Isabel, and Catalina
Cano Moctezuma—with her last husband. Details of the fortunes of all her
children, and some indication of the relationship she had with them, are
indicated in her will and testament below.
Almost immediately after her death, Isabel’s heirs, and, in particular, her
widower, Juan Cano, along with Diego Arias de Sotelo, son-in-law of her

5. Anna Lanyon, The New World of Martin Cortés (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press,
2003), 12.
6. Chipman, Moctezuma’s Children, 68.

3
 1 • Grant of Tacuba by Hernán Cortés to Isabel Moctezuma

illegitimate daughter,7 Leonor Moctezuma Cortés, contested Isabel’s desig-

nation in her will of her first-born son, Juan de Andrade, as the principal
inheritor of the Tacuba encomienda. The lawsuit that itself endured for eighty
years after her death, eventually designated Juan Cano, her widower, along
with her first-born son, Juan de Andrade Moctezuma, and their heirs, as
equal claimants to her wealth (rather than privileging Juan de Andrade as
the principal recipient as she had originally indicated was her desire). The
suit, however, dismissed the claims of descendants of Leonor, her illegitimate
daughter by Hernán Córtes.8
No texts that women themselves authored survive from the first years of
the Spanish conquest of Mexico, so historians are forced to draw conclusions
about their experiences and perspectives from others’ recordings, such as the
1526 encomienda grant in which Cortés characteristically presented his own
and others’ actions in terms chosen to reflect himself in the best possible light.
Cortés presents his granting of the encomienda as an act of generous obliga-
tion. But in what ways did he and his class of allies stand to benefit from the
creation of this grant? What might we observe from these texts about both
the opportunities and the restrictions on indigenous women’s personal, eco-
nomic, and legal lives in this setting? We can assume Isabel’s will embodied
many of her own wishes and decisions. What evidence do we see of how
she was able to exercise her will, and in what ways was she hindered from
doing so? Our own era takes as sacrosanct the notion of amorous ties between
spouses and between parents and offspring. Are there indications that Isabel’s
context afforded individuals opportunities for such personal affection? Both
of Isabel’s daughters, doña (lady) Isabel and doña Catalina eventually became
nuns. Although she willed the bulk of her estate to her eldest son, what finan-
cial provision does Isabel try to make for her daughters? Should we conclude
anything from this? Finally, how do the choices Isabel made in her will com-
pare to those of other, non-elite, indigenous women made in the first century
after conquest in the Andes presented in Chapter 3? Does Isabel, like Ana
Copana, seem to have remained strongly connected to pre-Columbian mate-
rial culture? Does she seem to have had the same relationship as Copana to
Catholic spirituality? What might explain these similarities and differences?

7. Leonor, because she was born outside of wedlock and because her father did not acknowl-
edge her, was classified as “illegitimate.” Illegitimate children were distinct from “natural chil-
dren,” offspring born outside of marriage to fathers who recognized them and to parents of
consensual relationships who were not legally impeded from marrying one another.
8. Juan Cano, her last husband, also launched a lawsuit four years prior to Isabel’s death to
recuperate land, houses, and other valuable assets that should have formed part of the patri-
mony she inherited from her father. See Anastasya Kalyuta, “La casa y hacienda de un señor
mexica Un estudio analítico de la ‘Información de doña Isabel de Moctezuma,’” Anuario de
Estudios Americanos 65:2 (2008), 13–37.
 1 • Grant of Tacuba by Hernán Cortés to Isabel Moctezuma

1.1 Grant of Tacuba, Made by don Hernán Cortés to

doña Isabel Moctezuma and Her Heirs (1526)9

“REAL CEDULA,” certified copy of that which Hernán Cortés granted to

Isabel Moctezuma. Luis Sierra Horcasitas

Mexico, 22 December 1933

[Luis Sierra Horcasitas, director of Mexico’s Archivo General de la
Nación wrote to Luis González Obregón, head of the institution’s historians’
division, to say he required a certified copy of the Real Cédula (Royal Decree)
by Hernán Cortés granting the town of Tacuba and its surrounding area
to doña Isabel de Moctezuma. The following is the certified copy González
Obregón provided. The reference to the stamped paper that Obregón used
indicates he based his version on an eighteenth-century transcription of the
­
original sixteenth-century text.]
[A seal at the top of the document reads] “Carolus IV. D, G, Hiapanier Rex” A
cross. Un quartillo.10 1793 and 1794.
Whereas, at the time that I, don Hernán Cortés, Captain-General and
Governor of this New Spain and its provinces for His Majesty, came to these
lands with a number of ships and people to pacify and populate it and to
bring its people under the dominion and service of the Imperial Crown of
His Majesty, as has been done, I had news of a great Señor (Lord) called
­
Moctezuma residing in the great City of Tenochtitlan, who was Señor of it
­
and of all the surrounding provinces and lands. I made my arrival known to
him through some messengers in order that he should obey me in the name
of His Majesty so that he should offer himself as his vassal. He welcomed my
arrival and to better demonstrate his great zeal and will to serve His Majesty
and to obey that which through me in his Royal name was ordered, he showed
me much love and commanded that in all places that the Spaniards would
travel on their way to this city we should be very well received and be given
all that was necessary for us, as was always done, and much more as well. And
to this city we came and I and all in my company were well received.

9. GD 122 Archivo de Buscas y Traslado de Tierras, vol. 63, exp. 54, fs. 778–788. Año: 1933.
Copia certificada de la real cédula que concedió Hernán Cortés a Isabel Moctezuma, expedida
a Luis Sierra Horcasitas. The original reads don “Fernando” Cortés. Fernando and Hernando
are both variants of the more commonly used name Hernán, which for consistency’s sake has
been used throughout this translation.
10. Like almost all legal documents, this one is written on sealed (stamped) paper, here with
a cost of one quartillo, one fourth of a real, which, in turn, was worth one eighth of one peso.

5
 1 • Grant of Tacuba by Hernán Cortés to Isabel Moctezuma

[Cortés then explained that Moctezuma had consented to be imprisoned

by Cortés whom Cortés claims he was anxious to obey. He described how, with
Moctezuma’s aid, he pacified the central territory of the Aztec empire, and
maintained good relations with the indigenous population until Pánfilo de
Narváez, emissary sent by Cuba’s governor Diego Velázquez, arrived to arrest
Cortés for his unauthorized invasion of Mexico. Narváez’s arrest, so claimed
Cortés, provoked a rebellion against the Spanish and against Moctezuma who
died in the uprising. Having received a mortal wound, Cortés asserted that
Moctezuma requested that he should settle his final affairs.]
He begged me and entreated me earnestly saying that if he died from
this wound, out of respect for the depth of his love and desire to please me,
I should take it as my duty to take charge of his three daughters, and that I
should have them baptized and taught our doctrine, because he knew that it
was very good. After I had conquered this city, I had [the three daughters]
baptized and named. I named the one who is the eldest, his legitimate heir,
doña Isabel, and the other two doña María and doña Mariana. And when
he was dying from his head wound, he turned to me and called to me and
begged me with great affection, saying that if he died, I should watch over
his daughters, saying that they were the most valuable jewels that he was
giving me, and that I should divide among them the property that he left,
remembering especially the eldest one whom he loved very much, and that if
by the will of God he escaped from the illness, and had victory in this siege,
that he would show me even more fully his desire to serve His Majesty and
give me stronger proofs of the love that he had for me. Besides this, he also
wished me to relate to His Majesty how he had left his daughters in my care
and to entreat him in Moctezuma’s name to command me to watch over
them and keep them in my protection and administration since he was such
a great servant and vassal of His Majesty, and always had great favor for the
Spaniards as I had seen and see, and because of the love that he had for them,
he had been so badly treated, although he did not regret it. Even in his own
tongue he said (among other reasons) that he charged me with conscience in
this matter.
Wherefore, in acknowledgment of the many services that the Señor Moct-
ezuma has performed for His Majesty, the good offices that during his life
he performed for me, and for the good treatment he gave to the Spaniards
in my company in His Royal name, and the goodwill that he showed in his
Royal service since without a doubt he played no part in the uprising which
his brother alone instigated in this city, and his hope that he would be a great
help in keeping the land always very peaceful and that the naturales (natives)
would learn to understand us and would voluntarily serve His Majesty with
great sums of pesos of gold, jewels, and other things, which on account of
 1 • Grant of Tacuba by Hernán Cortés to Isabel Moctezuma

the coming of Narváez and his own brother’s insurrection had been lost, and
considering also that God Our Señor and His Majesty are greatly served by
the planting of our Holy Religion in these lands, which each day is growing
in influence, and so that the daughters of Moctezuma and the other señores
and principales (principal indigenous leaders), and other people native to this
New Spain are shown the greatest demonstration of the doctrine as possible,
so that they will desist from the idolatry that until now they have followed,
and will be brought to the true knowledge of our Holy Catholic Faith, espe-
cially the children of the principales like Señor Moctezuma, and for all of this
and so that the conscience of His Majesty and my own will be released in his
Royal name, I judged it best to concede his plea. I took to my house his three
daughters to ensure that they should receive the best treatment and accom-
modation possible, administering and teaching them the commandments of
our Holy Catholic Faith, and the other good customs of Christians, so that
with greater goodwill and love they would serve God Our Señor, and know
the Articles of the faith, and so that the other naturales would take them as
an example.
It seemed best to me, considering the rank of the person of doña Isabel,
who is the legitimate heir of Señor Moctezuma, and the one with whom I had
been most urgently charged, and whose age required that she would have a
companion, to give her for a husband and spouse to a person of honor and
nobility, who has served His Majesty in my company since the beginning of
our journey to these lands, who has fulfilled for me and in the name of His
Majesty highly honorable duties and offices such as treasurer and Lieuten-
ant-Governor, and many others, and in these offices had been judged very
capable, and in the present is serving in the office of Visitador General11 of
all the indios (indians) of this New Spain. His name is Alonso Grado; he is a
native of Alcántara. To doña Isabel I promise and give in dowry and arras12
and her descendants in the name of His Majesty and as his Governor and
Captain General of these lands, and so that by right of her patrimony and
legitimacy belongs to her, the Lordship and naturales of the town of Tacuba
that has one hundred and twenty houses, and Yetebeque, its estate which has
forty houses,13 and Ixquiluca, another estate that has another one hundred

11. This was a crown-appointed inspector of a colonial jurisdiction.

12. An arras was a financial gift not larger than 10 percent of the husband’s assets that a groom
pledged to his bride to demonstrate her value to him. Its value was to be given to widows from
their husbands’ estates, and along with their dowries were also protected from claims by their
husbands’ financial creditors whether before or after death.
13. The AGN’s 1933 transcription here reads “Esteveyules su estancia.” William Prescott’s
transcription of the document reads “y Yeteve, que es estancia.” The AGN also produced a
second transcription of this document, published in the Boletín in October 1995 in which the

7
 1 • Grant of Tacuba by Hernán Cortés to Isabel Moctezuma

and twenty houses, and Chimalpan another estate that has forty houses, and
Chapulmoloyan that has another forty houses, and Aescapulaltongo that has
twenty houses, and Jilotzingo with forty houses, and another estate that is
called Ocoyacaque, and another called Caltepeque, and other called Jalasco,
and another estate that is called Huatusco, and another called Duotepeque,
and another that is called Tasalaque, all of which amounts in total to one
thousand two hundred and forty houses. These estates and towns are subject
to the town of Tacuba and to its señor. I give this property in the name of
His Majesty in dowry and arras to doña Isabel so that she may have, hold,
and enjoy it by right of inheritance, for now and forevermore, with the title
of Señora (Lady) of the town and the rest herein contained. This I give in the
name of His Majesty to fulfill his royal duty and my own in his name. By this
order, I declare that this property will never be taken away from her by any
means nor at any time. And as further guarantee of this, I promise and certify
in the name of His Majesty and I beg that His Majesty will be pleased to
confirm the grant to doña Isabel and her heirs and successors, of the town of
Tacuba and the rest herein contained and the other estates and subject towns
that are in the possession of some Spaniards; and they should not have been
given them until His Majesty learned if he would be served by this.
I hereby declare to be null and void any cédula (decree) de encomienda or
donation I may have given to any person granting them privileges in the town
of Tacuba and the other properties herein contained and I declare that in the
name of His Majesty I revoke them, and restore them to doña Isabel so that
she may have them as her own, and so that by law they belong to her;14 and
I command to all people, residents and inhabitants of New Spain that all its
occupants and citizens should understand and receive doña Isabel as Lady of
the town of Tacuba with its estates, and that nothing should impede nor hin-
der her from this, under pain of [a fine of] five hundred pesos of gold for the
Exchequer of His Majesty. Dated the 27th day of June, 1526. Don Hernando
Cortés. By order of the Governor of my Señor, Alonso Valiente. This is a copy
that I certify. Contadoria General de Retases de México 29 of May 1796.

Juan Ordoñez,[Signature]

property is described as “Yetebeque su estancia.” The editors have adopted this most recent
interpretation and the spellings used in the Boletín’s transcriptions of the other locales listed.
14. Donald Chipman notes that just a few years earlier, Cortés had granted Tacuba in enco-
mienda to one of his officials, Pedro Almíndez de Chrino, inspector-overseer charged with
securing the king’s share of metals, Moctezuma’s Children, 46, 49.
 1 • Grant of Tacuba by Hernán Cortés to Isabel Moctezuma

1.2 Last Will and Testament of Isabel Moctezuma (1551)15

In the name of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three people
in one true God who lives and reigns forever and ever, and in honor, glory,
and praise of Our Lady the Virgin Mary who is my Lady and defender. To
whomever may see this power of attorney know that I, doña Isabel Moct-
ezuma, legitimate wife of Juan Cano my señor and husband, resident of this
great city of Tenochtitlan-México of this New Spain, being sick in body with
the illness that God our lord has seen fit to visit upon me, and in sound
mind and judgement and natural understanding, with license and author-
ity and express consent that I request of Juan Cano, my señor and husband,
who if by this act the law allows consent in order that I, for myself, cre-
ate and decree this power of attorney according to what it contains. And I,
Juan Cano, who am present, grant and acknowledge that I give and concede
license and authority to you doña Isabel, my wife, as you have asked me, and
I promise and pledge to do this unwaveringly, and not to revoke, reclaim or
contradict it either [when I am] with sound judgement or without it under
explicit obligation that for it I make of my possessions, and I request that
those present accept this, my license and authority of faith. And I, the present
notary, attest that Juan Cano gave and granted authority to doña Isabel, his
wife, to make and frame this document in my presence and in that of the wit-
nesses signed below. And I, doña Isabel, accept and receive and declare this is
so, and state that because I am very afflicted by the illness that I have, and by
its severity, that I cannot specifically make and order my will and last wishes
in their entirety and because I have communicated that it is my will that
for my soul, my goods will be made and disposed with the señores licenciado
(holder of a licentiate degree),16 Juan Altamirano and Andrés de Tapia and
Alonso de Bazán, residents of this city who are present. I grant and know that
I freely give and grant all my power according to all that I have and by right
all that I possess to you three together, señores licenciado Juan Altamirano and
Andrés de Tapia and Alonso de Bazán, so that you can execute my will and
last wishes according to and in the form and manner that they wish and judge
to be good, that through them my will shall be executed. From this moment
onward, I grant, approve and desire that [their judgement] will be validated
and fulfilled as if I myself did ordain it. In this way, I give them such will and
power that I have and as required by law in such matters, and this document

15. Reproduced in “Documentos inéditos,” Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación, México
Cuarta serie (Otoño, 1995), 197–202.
16. Licenciado/licenciados is inconsistently pluralized in the text—in both the AGN’s transcrip-
tion and the transcription reproduced in the Boletín. The inconsistencies are reproduced in
this translation as well.

9
 1 • Grant of Tacuba by Hernán Cortés to Isabel Moctezuma

can be and must be recognized with its incidental and dependent annexes and
clauses in its free and general administration.
I wish and it is my will that when it pleases God, our Señor, to take me
from this present life that my body will be buried in the church and mon-
astery of San Agustín in this city in the place where Juan Cano my señor
judges best, and to fulfill and execute my testament, commands, clauses and
bequests that the señores licenciado Juan Altamirano and Andrés Tapia and
Alonso de Bazán for me and in the name and by right of this power [of attor-
ney] will execute and order. I give, name and designate them as my executors
and grant all three together and each one separately my power of attorney so
that they can access and sell my goods as needed to pay for the bequests and
pious works that are included in the will. I also declare and command that
it is my will that all the slaves17 and Indios, both male and female, naturales
of this land, that Juan Cano my husband and I hold as our own, for the por-
tion of them which is mine, should be freed from all service and duties and
from captivity, and as free people they can do what they want and I order
that they be freed. And I also wish and order and it is my will that the señores
licenciado Juan Altamirano, and Andrés de Tapia, and Alonso de Bazán in
this my testament in my name and by virtue of this power [of attorney] can
arrange and dispose of my goods for the masses and good works, and alms
and penances for my soul and conscience, according to manner and form and
in other things that they judge to be good, because I have communicated and
spoken with them about this, and they can spend and dispose of one fifth of
the value of all my goods on the abovementioned matters, and can fulfill any
other order or orders to any person or persons that they judge fit, because I
have indicated my will to them in this matter.
I also declare that I wish and order that all that it appears that I owe in
debts and in salaries to my servants and other things that they judge should
be done for the discharge of my soul and conscience the señores licenciados
Juan Altamirano, and Andrés de Tapia, and Alonso de Bazán, I order them
through my testament that they do, pay and discharge. And I also declare
that I confess that at the time that I married with Juan Cano my señor and
husband I did not have personal property,18 nor property nor any money,
except the Indians and towns, and that señor Juan Cano at that time had
some cows and money, I do not know how much. I also declare and order
that I revoke and annul any bond given to any person for anything of any

17. Although there was a substantial population of African slaves in Mexico by the mid-
sixteenth century, Donald Chipman, Moctezuma’s Children, 64, assumes those to which Isabel
referred here were all indigenous.
18. Isabel Moctezuma might have more specifically meant she did not possess any furniture;
the phrase she uses is bienes muebles (movable property) as opposed to real estate.
 1 • Grant of Tacuba by Hernán Cortés to Isabel Moctezuma

value any other testaments or codicils, or clauses, or orders, or bequests that

until now I have made and ordered, open or closed in any way and any clause
contained in them, or outside them either written or spoken, or if I as here
expressed in their clauses word for word,19 and give power fulfilled to the
señores licenciados Juan Altamirano and Andrés de Tapia and Alonso de Bazán
so that they can revoke and will revoke any such testaments, codicils, clauses
and bequests that they judge by my deeds and orders before this my power [of
attorney], because I wish and it is my will that they are invalid and should be
worth nothing in and of themselves and I wish and order that the testament

­
that the señores licenciados Juan Altamirano and Andrés de Tapia and Alsonso
se Bazán by virtue of this my power [of attorney] make and order and the
clauses in it contained are validated by my testament and last wishes and will
be complied with and kept according to what they order and command.
I also declare that insomuch as Juan Cano my señor and husband and I
own some precious textiles and bed linens, and beds, from these lands and
from Castile and rugs and carpets and cushions and embossed and engraved
skins (guademecíes) and pillows and handkerchiefs (paños de manos), and work
tools, and clothing for myself, all of which I wish and order should go to
doña Isabel and doña Catalina, my legitimate daughters by Juan Cano my
husband, and I wish that these goods not be sold in an auction as goods of
mine at the time of my death, nor should these goods be divided but rather
should only be for doña Isabel and doña Catalina, my daughters. And that if
it appears to be a good idea to Juan Cano, my señor, to sell these goods either
in or outside of a public auction as he wishes, he can sell them as he sees fit,
and once he has sold them, I order that one third of the goods be given to
doña Isabel and doña Catalina, my daughters to improve their situations. I
also wish and declare that it is my will that the town of Tacuba should remain
with me and I give it and order it given to Juan de Andrada, my legitimate
son by Pedro Gallego, my legitimate husband, because it is mine, since I have
had and have it, I wish and it is my will that Juan de Andrada, my legitimate
son, should have and possess it and after him, his heirs and successors forev-
ermore. I also declare that it should be understood that I leave the town of
Tacuba and its subjects to Juan de Andrada, my son, except for the towns of
Cuyoacaque and Capuluaque, y Cuapanoaya, and Tepebaxuca, because these
four towns along with those that are subject to them, I give and order that it
is my will that Gonzalo Cano, my legitimate son by Juan Cano, my husband,
should have and inherit them, for himself and his successors forevermore,
with the qualification that if either Juan de Andrada or Gonzalo Cano, my
legitimate sons dies in this life without leaving legitimate children born of
legitimate marriage, in this case my legitimate son with Juan Cano, Pedro

19. “De verbo ad verbum” in the original.

11
 1 • Grant of Tacuba by Hernán Cortés to Isabel Moctezuma

Cano, will inherit that which was given to Juan de Andrada. And if Gon-
zalo Cano should die in this way, that is without legitimate children born of
legitimate marriage, Juan Cano my legitimate son by Juan Cano my husband
should have and inherit the indicated towns that I order he should have for
himself and for his heirs and successors forevermore.
And I pray that his majesty be served to confirm and approve and take
as good that which I leave ordered in these two clauses and decrees to my
children in remuneration for the great sum that is owed to me as the legiti-
mate daughter and heir of Moctezuma my father, who was señor of this New
Spain, and this was given to me in compensation for that which was owed,
fulfilled, and paid to my father. This power [of attorney] and orders within it
and the testament that by virtue of it are ordered the señores el licenciado Juan
Altamirano and Andrés de Tapia and Alonso de Bazán with the remainder of
my goods I leave and name and institute as my legitimate and universal heirs
Pedro Cano and Gonzalo and Juan Cano and doña Isabel and doña Catalina,
my legitimate children by Juan Cano my señor and husband and Juan de
Andrade my legitimate son by Pedro Gallego my legitimate husband, to hold
and inherit, save for the grant worth one third that is ordered to doña Isabel
and doña Catalina my daughters; the rest to be divided among them equally.
I also declare that inasmuch as I have begged his majesty to make me a grant
of the lands that remain and were based on and owned by Moctezuma my
father, I wish and order and it is my will that if his majesty sees fit to issue
me the grant, doña Isabel and doña Catalina, my daughters with Juan Cano,
will have and inherit them without any of my sons placing any embargo or
impediment on them because I give to them and order by right of improve-
ment (por vía de mejora) one third of all my goods, and I do this in their favor
in the best legal way that I can and must, in testament of which I confer this
document in the manner and form that I said before to the present notary
and witnesses inscribed below, by which before them was read de verbo ad
verbum,20 that which is done and executed in the City of Mexico, which
resides in the Royal Audience of his majesty, being inside its walls on the 11
of July the year of the birth of our Señor Jesus Christ 1550.
Witnesses who were present, and for this reason specially called and
requested, were father fray Juan Cruzate, prior of the monastery of San
Agustín and fray Gregorio de Salazar, and fray Luis de Esobaleda, and fray
Luis de Carranza, professor friars in the monastery of San Agustín and Her-
nando Mateo Carillo and Juan Altamirano citizens and residents of this city,
and because I do not know how to write myself on my behalf at my request
signed Fray Juan Cruzate, Fray Gregorio de Salazar, Fray Luis de Cabeceda,
Fray Luis de Carranza and Hernán Mateo Carillo and Juan Altamirano. One

20. Word for word.

 1 • Grant of Tacuba by Hernán Cortés to Isabel Moctezuma

copy was made and corrected and certified with the original residing in the
City of Mexico on the 12 of December 1551. [This is followed by a list of
other witnesses.]

Suggested Reading

Chipman, Donald E. Moctezuma’s Children: Aztec Royalty under Spanish Rule, 1520–
1700. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.
Lanyon, Anna. The New World of Martin Cortés. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press,
2003.
Schroeder, Susan, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett, eds. Indian Women of Early
Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
Townsend, Camila. Malintzin’s Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006.

Document Themes
• Family
• Law
• Property
• Race and ethnicity
• Religion

13
 2

Beatríz, India’s, Lawsuit for Freedom from

Slavery (Castile, Spain, 1558–1574)

Introduction and Translation by Nancy E. van Deusen

What might have motivated Beatríz, an india (indigenous woman), to appear

in 1558 before the tribunal of the House of Trade (Casa de la Contratación),
located in Seville, Spain, to petition for her own and her daughter’s free-
dom from slavery? Perhaps it was the fact that her daughter, Catalina
(b. 1540)—one of five children whose fathers were never mentioned in the
court documents—had been branded recently by their owner, Juan Cansino,
­
a vecino (resident) and magistrate of the town of Carmona.1 One of the issues
to be resolved in the lawsuit was why Beatríz had refrained from approaching
royal authorities after the passage of the 1542 New Laws, which in principle
granted freedom to those indios whose masters could not provide legal docu-
mentation to prove bondage. Unlike dozens of other litigants attempting to
prove their status as free indios before Spanish legal tribunals, Beatríz had
waited sixteen years.2
Born around 1496, Beatríz claimed she had been born in the Spanish-
controlled territory of Mexico (which became part of the viceroyalty of New
Spain in 1535) and had been brought illegally and involuntarily to Portugal
and then to Spain where she entered the Cansino household around 1530.
Her master, Juan Cansino, maintained that she was an india from Portu-
guese territories where, by law, indios were not free from slavery. At play
was whether Beatríz was from a place, alternately referred to as Malagueta,
Malaqueta, Manacata, or Malacata, depending on whether witnesses claimed
that it was located in Mexico, South America, or Africa.3 Although demon-
strating the location of her place of origin was key to winning emancipation
for Beatríz and other enslaved indios, witnesses could also rely on physical

1. Carmona is twenty-two miles east of Seville.

2. Spanish archival repositories include at least 127 lawsuits filed between 1530 and 1585
by men and women labeled as “indios” and their masters. This figure may be a false positive
because we do not know about the dozens, if not hundreds of other indios who, for a variety of
reasons, failed to sue for their freedom.
3. Because different witnesses spelled the location differently, these inconsistencies have been
maintained in this translation.
 2 • Beatríz, India’s, Lawsuit for Freedom from Slavery

descriptions and a knowledge of an indigenous language to bolster a case.

The problem with claiming knowledge of indigenous languages, however,
was that most slaves brought to Castile had come as children and could not
recall their native tongue. It was also problematic because indigenous lan-
guage experts interrogated litigants in the more common indigenous lan-
guages like “the Mexican language” (read: Nahuatl), or Guaraní (for the Rio
de la Plata area), when, in fact, hundreds if not thousands of other languages
and dialects were spoken throughout Spanish and Portuguese America in the
sixteenth century.
During Beatríz’s lifetime, the enslavement of people categorized as indios
in Spanish and Portuguese America was ubiquitous. In many places, the
numbers of indio slaves outnumbered Africans forced into bondage and
transported to America. Indeed, the forced removal and sale of native Ameri-
can peoples, most of whom were children, was one of the mainstays of the
colonial economy before 1550. Many were permanently relocated in places
far from their homelands. One could find Taíno people from the Greater
Antilles islands in Lima, Peru, or Brazilian Tupinambá Indians in Honduras.
Several thousand indio slave children like Beatríz also crossed the Atlantic
and lived their lives in Portugal or Spain. As scholars have shown, despite the
passage of the New Laws, the enslavement of indios in the Spanish-claimed
territories of the Western hemisphere continued, albeit in smaller numbers,
well into the seventeenth, eighteenth, and some historians argue, into the
nineteenth century.4 It is a history that, until recently, has been forgotten.
But the fragmented and circumscribed stories of upheaval and relocation
found in court cases such as Beatríz’s allow us to reconstitute that history of
violence, loss, and survival.
In Spain, freedom lawsuits could be heard before authorities in the House
of Trade or by the appellate body, the Council of the Indies.5 The New
Laws and subsequent legislation afforded procuradores (legal representatives)
to indio complainants (those initiating lawsuits) or defendants (the parties
against whom lawsuits were leveraged) and waived the court costs for indios.
Generally, authorities of the House of Trade reviewed legal complaints filed
by disgruntled slave owners who resented the fact that two Crown inspec-
tions in 1543 and 1549 had freed more than one hundred slaves because
masters could not provide documents showing legal acquisition of their slaves
in Spanish America. House of Trade officials also considered relaciones (legal
accounts) filed by indios whose masters had refused to free them after the pas-
sage of the New Laws of 1542. More than fifty-five percent of litigants were

4. Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016).
5. In the House of Trade, cases were reviewed by a presiding judge and three officials.

15
 2 • Beatríz, India’s, Lawsuit for Freedom from Slavery

women like Beatríz or her daughter, Catalina, who were concerned that slave
status not pass to their children. After authorities had interviewed witnesses on
behalf of litigants and defendants, they determined whether a case could pro-
ceed. Because slave litigants were required to remain in masters’ households for
the duration of the lawsuit—unless they could prove severe mistreatment—they
were sometimes beaten, illegally branded, or intimidated into making false
statements that favored slave owners. Masters like Juan Cansino also pun-
ished litigious and “rebellious” female slaves by selling or branding their chil-
dren. For these and other reasons, some slaves persisted, but others desisted.
Many of the cases remained incomplete or ended abruptly. Of those cases
that reached completion, however, 95 percent were freed. But, even then,
slave owners might appeal the case before the appellate body, the Council
of the Indies, although these appeals were generally unsuccessful. In light of
these statistics, it is unusual that Beatríz and her daughter Catalina would lose
both the initial lawsuit and appeal. In fact, it was only when the Council of
the Indies decided to review the appeal that the matter was finally resolved in
favor of Beatríz and her offspring.
Freedom lawsuits are valuable historical documents for several reasons.
They provide insights into the hopes and experiences of little-known per-
sonages, especially women. But they can be tricky to analyze. We some-
times think that lawsuits reveal the truth but in fact, they tend to show
how claimants and defendants, witnesses, lawyers, and magistrates all con-
structed believable and sometimes contradictory “truths” in a legal locus.
What kinds of strategies, particularly involving gendered constructions, did
litigants and witnesses utilize in this case? Where do we see inconsisten-
cies contained in witness depositions that illustrate defendant and claimant
efforts to manipulate laws or achieve desired judicial rulings? This case also
presents telling evidence about contemporary constructions of indigenous
identity. Witnesses’ identification of indios as imperial subjects of either the
Portuguese or Spanish territories was often a thorny and subjective pro-
cess. How did defendants characterize indios? What sorts of physical, cul-
tural, and geographical referents did they use and for what purpose? Witness
depositions, as this case demonstrates, were active sites of power, which
manifested in participants’ choice of language and narrative construction.
Evidence was deployed strategically, and sometimes incompatibly, to craft
believable narratives about the identities of indios meant to influence the
final ruling. Lawsuits are of interest to students and scholars not so much
because they allow us to discern the truthfulness of the events they portray
but because they provide us with an opportunity to analyze how and why
litigants, defendants, and deponents employed particular gendered and dis-
criminatory characterizations to invent or reinforce plausible truths about
past and present experiences.
 2 • Beatríz, India’s, Lawsuit for Freedom from Slavery

2.1 Demand of Beatríz, India, from the City of Mexico in

New Spain, [before the House of Trade], 17 May, 15586

I state that for more than twenty years, Juan Cansino, vecino (citizen and resi-
dent) and magistrate of the village of Carmona has had me and my six children
captive in the said village, and he has sold one of them. As [Cansino is] the
magistrate and favored [one] in the village of Carmona I have not been able to
pursue justice, even though I and my children are free, in conformity with the
royal provision of His Majesty [the New Laws of 1542]. He has and continues
to treat me and my children poorly, [and has] branded one of them on the face
as you can see because it is this young woman [Catalina] whom I have brought
with me here. I beg that your majesty, in conformity with the royal decree [the
New Laws of 1542] that addresses the freedom of the indios, order that I and
my children be freed. One of them named Simón [was the one] the said Juan
Cansino sold. I ask that your Majesty look for him and bring him here, as well
as my other children so that they can all be freed. And may your lord order
that Juan Cansino appear [before the judges]. For the crime he has commit-
ted of having hidden me and having kept me and my children captive when
we are free and for having branded my daughter, [I request] that his lordship
condemn him with the greatest and gravest penalties that must by law be done
and that I and my children be paid for all the service we have rendered since
the day His Majesty declared the indios to be free. I plead for justice.7
[In order for the judges to determine whether there were legal grounds to
pursue the case, and more specifically, whether there was evidence that she was
an india from the global territories claimed by Spain, they asked Beatríz to
bring in witnesses, one of whom was Beatríz, the wife of Juan Vázquez:]

2.2 Testimony of Beatríz,8 Wife of Juan Vázquez,

Indio and Blind Man, 25 August 15589

Witness, Beatríz, wife of Juan Vázquez, blind man, and vecina of Seville.10
I have known [the complainant, Beatríz] in Carmona and in Seville since
the Empress died [May 1539], which was a long time ago—I do not know

6. Archive of the Indies (Seville, Spain), Justicia, 908, n. 1.

7. “Demand of Beatríz, india,” 17/V/1558.
8. In a later deposition she was called “Ysabel,” 23r [image 91].
9. “Deposition, Beatríz, wife of Juan Vázquez, blind indio,” 10r–11r.
10. Beatríz’s (the witness who was also called “Ysabel,” not the complainant) husband, also
testified.

17
 2 • Beatríz, India’s, Lawsuit for Freedom from Slavery

how many years.11 Because this witness is from Mexico, this witness takes Beat-
ríz to be an india, natural 12 of Malacata, which is in the province of New Spain.
Given that the language of Mexico is distinct from that of Malacata, they know
very well who is from Mexico and who is from Malacata because they do not
speak the same language, just as Castilians recognize Portuguese and Flemish

­
and other naciones13 by their aspects but do not speak the same language.
And so it is the same for this witness. I do not speak the language of Malacata
but recognize in the aspect and manner of Beatríz that she is an india from
Malacata. It is the same with a Castilian who knows a Portuguese and because
the husband of this witness knows the language of Malacata and he has said
to this witness that she [Beatríz] is native of there [Malacata] and because a
long time ago when this witness was speaking and conversing with Beatríz,
she told her [the witness] that she is from Malacata that is in the province of
New Spain. She told me this while we were in Carmona. [The witness then
explained that she had previously known Beatríz in Seville, and reiterated that
Beatríz had always told her she was from Malacata. She confirmed that Beatríz
had five children, including Catalina.] She did not sign because she does not
know how to write and she does not know her exact age except that it seems
to her that when the Empress died she was a girl of around fifteen years old,
more or less.

Francisco de Almonte, notary of his majesty.

2.3 Confession of Beatríz, India, 9 September 1558

Having seen the lawsuit, Señor Licenciado (licenciate) Salgado Correa ordered
Beatríz to appear and she took the oath as required by law before God and
the Holy Mary on the sign of the cross and under it she was asked and
answered in the following way. Asked her name and where she is from: She
said she was named Beatríz and that she is a natural (someone who belongs
to or is an original inhabitant of a place or broader “culture”) of Malaqueta
in New Spain, in the province of Mexico. Asked when she came to this

11. Isabella of Portugal (1503–1539), was Holy Roman Empress and married to king Charles V
of Spain.
12. As an adjective, natural could modify india as the “natural” state of the person; as a noun
it could mean “originally from,” or “place of origin.” In this instance it means that Beatríz is
from Malacata.
13. Nación was an abstract grouping based on place of origin (Flemish, Genoese, Castilian),
“type” of group (Arab or Moor, black or negro and indio), residence, or imperial affinity.
 2 • Beatríz, India’s, Lawsuit for Freedom from Slavery

land, and who brought her, she said that around twenty-seven or twenty-
eight years ago [circa 1530] a Portuguese captain named Antonio Correa
brought her and gave her to a merchant who bought her and came to sell
her in Carmona to Juan Cansino, her master. The merchant was a Castilian
and sold her when they brought her and she was [still] a girl who had only
given birth one time in Portugal. It could be around twenty-four years ago
that she was sold to Juan Cansino and [since then] has been in his house-
hold in the village of Carmona where she has raised her children. [It was]
there [that] she gave birth to the ones she has had. Asked if she knows or
can understand the Mexican tongue of the province of New Spain she said
“no.” Asked if she is from the land of Maligueta [sic] of the Indies of the
king of Portugal she said, “no.” Asked for what reason she did not demand
her freedom [before], as [she is doing] now, she said that she did not know
that she could demand her freedom until Juan Cansino [gave her a] certain
mistreatment, a beating with a stick. Being informed that the king, our
Señor ordered that the indios be freed, she came to demand [her freedom].
Asked which witnesses know her and know her place of origin she said the
blind indio and his wife, [but that] she does not have more witnesses, and
that this is the truth. She did not sign because she does not know how to
write.
[On 10 September, the judges of the House of Trade determined that the
case would proceed. Authorities notified Beatríz’s owner, Juan Cansino in person
on 19 September, and gave him six days to make a statement before the judges.]

2.4 Juan Cansino’s Declaration, 30 September 155814

Asked if he knows Beatríz, he said yes because he has [legally] possessed her
as his captive slave for about twenty-eight or twenty-nine years. Asked how
many children Beatríz has had since she has been in his poder, he says she has
had and procreated four children; one named Catalina, and another called
Tomás, and another called Isabel, and another called Juan and all of them
are at present in his household and under his poder. Catalina is nineteen
or twenty years old, Tomás sixteen, Isabel, fourteen or fifteen, Juan ten or
twelve. In addition, when she came under this declarant’s authority she had
another son named Simón. This deponent bought Simón at the same time
he bought Beatríz and five or six years ago Juan de la Vega, a vecino of this
village of Carmona, a relative of mine, and on this declarant’s behalf, sold

14. 14r–16v.

19
 2 • Beatríz, India’s, Lawsuit for Freedom from Slavery

Simón to a vecino of Seville. [Here Cansino provides further details about this
sale, and then explained that his father-in-law, Hernán Peréz, since deceased,
had bought Beatríz and Simón in Carmona and had given both slaves to him
(Cansino) as part of the dowry of his wife, Peréz’s daughter, at the time of
their marriage.] Asked about Beatríz’s place of origin and of which nación
(nation) he has understood her to be until now, [Cansino] said that he has
always taken her to be an Arab, the daughter of a Moor (moro; Muslim
inhabitants of the Mediterranean), because Beatríz has always said that she
was the daughter of a Moor and that she was raised in Portugal. And of this
Portuguese nation they gave her and her son to this deponent and that is
how I received her. I have never taken her to be an india from the Indies of
his Majesty [the king of Spain], nor have I heard it said nor has Beatríz said
that until now.
Asked if this witness ordered Catalina to be branded with the brands that
she has on her face and what barber branded her, he said that it might be two
years ago more or less that this witness ordered the branding of Catalina on
her face. He does not know the name of the barber who branded her, except
that he was a young man who lived near the slaughterhouse of this city and
he does not know if he would know him now even if he saw him. He ordered
[Catalina] to be branded because she ran away many times and because she
robbed a sack of coins from him and a gold-plated silver necklace and much
wheat and many other things and jewels and cheeses and wool and wine
and everything she could get, she and her mother and her children and like-
wise the said Simon whom he sold had robbed this witness of many things.
Because of this, and because he was very disobedient, he sold him. He did not
brand any of her other children.
Asked if Beatríz has told Cansino while under his authority that she is free
and that they should let her and her children be free because they are free,
Cansino said that about a year ago, Beatríz started saying she was an india in
his house, but that before she had always said she was an india from the Indies
of Portugal and that she had been raised in Portugal. Now she says she is from
the Indies of His Majesty [the king of Spain]. [Cansino finished by reiterating
the claims he had already made.]
[Next, during the questioning of witnesses, several indios and others
testified on behalf of Beatríz. Among other questions, witnesses were asked
­
whether Beatríz was an india natural of Malacata, which is next to Chusipila
and in the province of New Spain of the Indies of his Majesty, which indio
language was spoken in that province, and why they believed that Beatríz was
an india of Malacata.]15

15. “Interrogatory of Beatríz,” 9/XI/1558, 2 pieça, 21v–22r.

 2 • Beatríz, India’s, Lawsuit for Freedom from Slavery

2.5 Deposition of Catalina Hernández, India16

The witness Catalina Hernández said she was an india and natural of the Rio
de la Plata province and that she was raised in San Juan de Puerto Rico and
Margarita until she was brought to Spain. She is the widow of Gonçalo Veles.
To the first question she said she has known Juan Cansino for around
twenty-two years, and Beatríz, india, since her children Catalina, Simón, Ysabel,
Tomas, Juan and Diego were born because this witness was in the village of
Carmona with her husband the entire twenty-two years until her husband
died, around three years ago. Then this witness went to Baeça and from there
to this city [of Seville].
She said that she is approximately fifty-seven years old and that Beatríz is
the cousin of this witness, the daughter of a sister of this witness’s mother but
that even this [fact], would not deter her from telling the truth and that no
one has said or begged her to lie or given her money or promised her money
and that she tells only the truth.
To the third question she said that she knows that Beatríz, on her father’s
side is from Margarita, and on her mother’s side from Puerto Rico, so she is
an india of the Indies of His majesty on both sides. Asked how she knows
this, she said because when this witness was brought from the province of the
Rio de la Plata, where she was born, to Puerto Rico, the mother of Beatríz
(this witness’s aunt) who was born and raised in Puerto Rico [was there],
and this witness was there too from that time onward. And while being in
Puerto Rico, Beatríz’s father came from Margarita and then married [Beatríz’s
mother] and while in Puerto Rico, she became pregnant with Beatríz. And
while pregnant, she then went with her husband to Margarita because that
is where he was from. And they brought this witness with them. And while
they were in Margarita, the mother of Beatríz gave birth to her and raised
her until she was around fourteen, when she and this witness were taken to
Spain. I was older [than she] and the Christians [had] killed Beatríz’s father
and when they brought us, Beatríz’s mother, who was still alive, stayed there
alive [in Margarita].
She was later asked where Margarita is and she said it is near Lima, in Peru.
Asked the names of Beatríz’s father and mother, she said Santiago and
Juana.
They were brought to Spain around twenty-seven years ago and at the
time, Beatríz was about fourteen years old and this witness was about thirty
years old.
Asked who brought her from Margarita to Spain, she said the barber,
Diego Sánchez, who lives in this city [Seville] next to the House of Trade

16. 2 pieça, 24v–27v.

21
 2 • Beatríz, India’s, Lawsuit for Freedom from Slavery

and his wife, Elvira Hernández, now deceased. And more than forty india
women lived together [on the ship] and they were on Terceira Island [in
the Azores] for three years. At the end of those three years, one night while
embarking on a ship to come to Castile, they came and carried off Beatríz
and a young brother of this witness. And they took them to who knows
where, but it was said that the barber, Diego Sánchez, had sold them. And
this witness was brought to this city. And because this witness cried when
she saw Beatríz and her brother taken off the ship, her master Diego Sánchez
whipped her.
Asked if Beatríz speaks or understands the Mexican language of the indios,
she said that she speaks the language of Peru because this witness spoke [it]
with her and they understood one another.
Asked how she can say that on her father’s side Beatríz is from Margarita
and on her mother’s from Puerto Rico, when she [Beatríz] has said and
confessed that she is from Malaqueta in the province of New Spain? She
answered that God never wanted Beatríz to be from Malaqueta, but from
where this witness says [she is from] and if she has said she is from Malaqueta
it is because [Beatríz] does not know how to respond and does not understand
anything.
Asked if Beatríz is from the Indies of Portugal, she said “no,” from the
Indies of our king.
She said that Diego Sánchez and his wife brought this witness and Beatríz
as slaves because later this witness came to this house [of Trade] and asked
for [her] freedom and they freed her and being free she married and for this
reason she knows that all the indios and indias of the Indies of His Majesty
are free and cannot be slaves.

2.6 Witness on Behalf of Juan Cansino: Juan Luis

Calafate, Sailor and Vecino of Lisbon and Resident
in Triana, a Neighborhood of Seville17

[Having sworn an oath the witness was asked the following:] The first ques-
tion asked of this witness is if he knows about Malagueta, which is a land
of the King of Portugal and is under his dominion and señorio (political
domain) and the Portuguese govern it and the Mine of the Malagueta is there
because this witness has been there traveling on Portuguese ships that left
from Portugal and went to the said Malagueta. Malagueta is a land and on
­
the coast of Guinea which begins at Sao Tomé, or nearby, and then follows

17. 31r–32r.
 2 • Beatríz, India’s, Lawsuit for Freedom from Slavery

the land [southward] until reaching Brazil, the Indies of Portugal. The land
and coast of Malagueta is inhabited by blacks and this is what [the witness]
knows for having seen it. He did not sign because he does not know how to
write and he is approximately thirty years old.
[Although a rare occurrence in the freedom lawsuits of indios in the
House of Trade or the Council of the Indies, Juan Cansino requested that
Beatríz be called in for additional questioning and his legal representative
­
drew up a set of questions for her to answer. Cansino and his lawyer’s stated
intention was to catch Beatríz lying.]

2.7 Additional Depositions of Beatríz, 9–15 March 155918

Beatríz responded to the questions posed by Francisco Aguilar [legal repre-

sentative of Juan Cansino] in his name, and under advisement of the magnifi-
cent Señor Licenciado Salgado, judge of this Casa [Casa de la Contratación]
by his majesty and in my presence, señor Yuso, notary. On 12 May 1559, she
declared the following:
To the first question, she said that in her land of Margarita there are no
animals of the kind mentioned in the deposition, and if there are this con-
fessant has not seen them. Asked if there are horses, asses, and other service
animals she said “no.”
To the second question she said that in the land of this confessant they
wear cotton [garments] worked with colors. Asked if there is velvet, brocade
and different kinds of cloth, she said “no,” they only dress in cotton, as she
said.
To the third question she said that in her land they grow and eat herbs
and that is how they live and that there they have pepper, cloves, cinnamon,
ginger and other spices.19
Then, the same day [15 March 1559] she was asked some things in the
presence of Juan García Hermosilla, someone who understands the Mexican
language and who was sworn in, in order to see if she understands the lan-
guage. Being asked by Hermosilla where she was from and who was her
master Beatríz responded that she did not understand . . . [Beatriz does not
understand any of the questions and swears an oath accordingly].
[On 11 July 1559, the judges of the House of Trade issued a ruling that
Beatríz and her children had not proved their intention and that they would

18. Depositions of Beatríz, 9/III/1559, 71v–73v.

19. These spices were not native to Mexico.

23
 2 • Beatríz, India’s, Lawsuit for Freedom from Slavery

remain slaves and under the custody of their master, Juan Cansino.20 Fourteen
years later, in 1572, the year after Beatríz had died, her daughter, Catalina
appealed the sentence and issued a demand before the House of Trade, on
14 March 1572.]

2.8 Demand for Appeal, Catalina Hernández on Behalf

of Her Deceased Mother, Beatríz, and Her Siblings21

Most illustrious lords, I, Catalina Hernández, daughter of Beatríz Hernández,

state that at the time New Spain was conquered, my mother was among the
other indios from there who they brought [to Iberia]. By bad and illicit means,
the man who brought her [also] sold her. Because my mother was a person
of little understanding and judgment and was so oppressed, my brother and I
have been unable to have recourse to your lordship in order that you [be able
to] grant us our freedom since we cannot be captives, in conformity with the
laws and royal ordinances of his majesty.
[Having reconsidered the merits of the case, the judges determined that
the appeal could go forward. Both complainants and defendants called in
witnesses.]
­
2.9 Witnesses on Behalf of [the Complainants] Catalina/Beatríz

On [March 15, 1572] witness, Marina Hernández, india, widow of Pedro

Muñoz, indio, deceased, vecina of this city in San Julian in the Corral (yard)
of the Knife Makers. [Hernández was then sworn in with the accustomed oath
and her questioning began.] She said she has known Catalina Hernández and
Beatríz Hernández, her mother, both indias, for twelve years, and that she
met them in this city and that this witness knows that Beatríz Hernández
india, mother of Catalina, was a natural of New Spain in the Indies of his
majesty and that this witness knows this because [Beatríz] told her many
times [as did] other indios called Juan Gonzáles and Juan Vázquez who were
also naturales of New Spain where this witness is also from. And that Beatríz
appears to be an india from New Spain in terms of her language and her
[physical] aspect and this witness spoke to her many times in the language

20. 77r–v.
21. 82v.
 2 • Beatríz, India’s, Lawsuit for Freedom from Slavery

of New Spain. When [other] indios spoke to her she understood, and that is
why this witness understood her to be a natural of New Spain.
[In the intervening folios the court moved through the process of reopen-
ing the case. Five additional witnesses were called on behalf of Beatríz. Three
had their testimony stricken from the record (through a tacha or error correc-
tion), but the other two confirmed the above testimony by Marina Hernández
which proved the merit of the case. In April and May, the procurador general

­
de los indios (legal defender of indigenous people), Francisco Sarmiento
repeatedly petitioned the judges of the Casa de la Contratación to remove
Catalina and her siblings from Cansino’s power during the trial and place
them in déposito. Court officials relayed the news of the reopened legal process
from Seville to Carmona where the decree was read at Cansino’s house to his
wife and servants (though he is not present). Juan Casino then presented to
the court a power of attorney authorizing his son, Hernando Casino, to act
on his behalf. Copies of the original legal demand and ruling from the 1559
case were entered into the record. Soon thereafter, the court received additional
testimony.]
After this, on 4 July 1572, before the señor Licenciado Salgado Correa,
judge, Catalina Hernández presented as a witness in this case a woman called
Marina Rodríguez,22 india natural of the province of New Spain, a widow
and vecina of this city who lives in the parish of San Julian in the Corral of the
Knife Makers. [Rodríguez swore an oath and promised to tell the truth in her tes-
timony, and reaffirmed her earlier testimony that she had known both Catalina
and Beatríz Hernández for about ten years. She affirmed she was over fifty years
old and had no personal conflict of interest in the case.]
To the second question she said that she has made a declaration on behalf
of Catalina Hernández and asked [the court] that it be read and shown in
front of me; the notary read it to her, and after having heard and understood
the summary information, Marina Hernández said that the content is true
and affirmed it. [Rodriguez did note here, however, that the court had misre-
corded her name as Hernández and asked that the error be noted.]
[To the third question, the witness affirmed that her earlier testimony regard-
ing Beatríz’s birth place was true.] . . . the witness is certain and has no doubt
that Beatríz was an india natural of the province of New Spain, and Pedro
Nuñez, deceased indio and husband of this litigant, knew this for certain
because he engaged and communicated with her and said that she had been
born between Oaxaca and Teguantepeque23 in a land called Manacata. If

22. Earlier in the text, the court recorded her name as Marina Hernández—and the record
reverts to this name in the testimony below.
23. Tehuantepec is a municipality in the current state of Oaxaca, Mexico.

25
 2 • Beatríz, India’s, Lawsuit for Freedom from Slavery

Beatríz had not been born in that land she would not speak the language of
New Spain so well as this witness has seen her speak it and as such all the
indios [in Seville and Carmona] treated her and took her to be an india from
New Spain, without seeing or hearing anything to the contrary.
To the fifth [sic] question, this witness said that she takes Beatríz to be
a person of little understanding and ability and she knows this for certain
because Juan Vázquez, deceased indio and other persons knew that she got
drunk on wine.
[Witnesses on behalf of Juan Cansino no longer contended that Beatríz
came from “Malagueta,” located along the western coast of Africa and con-
nected to Brazil (see earlier testimony, above), but they did argue that she had
been born in Portugal, and was the daughter of an Arab. Several witnesses
maintained that because Beatríz was a Portuguese Moor, that Catalina was a
morisca, a forced convert to Catholicism from Islam.]

2.10 Witnesses for Cansino

Witness, Gonzalo de la Vega, fifty years old more or less, councilman.24

When this witness was in the house of Juan Cansino [de la Vega’s brother-in-
law], Beatríz told this witness many times that she was an india from Portugal
and that she had been in Portugal when she had a son with a Moor. While
going to the fountain to fetch water [the Moor] impregnated her. The son
was [still] in Portugal. He did not sign because he did not know how to write.

2.11 Questions to Discredit Witnesses

[Complainants and defendants had the opportunity to discredit witnesses

for the opposing side (called the tacha), which meant that their testimonies
would be struck from the legal record. Witnesses were considered unreliable
if they were related or proven to be biased in favor of the litigant. One could
also discredit witnesses by attempting to malign their character. Questions for
the interrogatorio often contained the desired answer in them, and were what
we would now call “leading” questions. Juan Cansino and his son Hernando

24. 172r–173r. The witness, Gonzalo de la Vega, was married to one of Juan Cansino’s sisters.
Witnesses who were relatives or close associates were supposed to be barred from testifying
because of bias.
 2 • Beatríz, India’s, Lawsuit for Freedom from Slavery

Cansino, acting on his father’s behalf, resorted to this strategy and Catalina
Hernández, Beatríz’s daughter, followed suit.]

Questions for Witnesses on Behalf of Juan Cansino to Discredit

Witnesses on Behalf of Catalina Hernández, 2 September 1572.

Does the witness know the witness presented on behalf of Catalina Hernández,
Juan Topin, who said he was an indio natural of Santo Domingo? Does the
witness know that [even] before Juan Topin testified in this lawsuit he was
[known as being] vile and inferior and of loose opinions, old, decrepit and
feeble and without capacity and understanding and that he is a very close and
intimate friend of Catalina Hernández?
Do witnesses know Catalina Sánchez, who said she was a natural of New
Spain, a vecina of Triana on the Street of Altilleza, and a witness in this law-
suit, is a foolish woman lacking in judgment. She said she was thirty and that
she had known Beatríz in New Spain. Do witnesses know that this is false
because when Beatríz, india, and mother of Catalina, died more or less a year
ago, she was over seventy years of age and that villagers in Carmona knew she
had been in these parts for over forty years?
Do witnesses know Marina Rodriguez, who said she was an india nat-
ural of New Spain, vecina of a parish in Seville in the corral of the knife
makers . . . that she is a poor person, vile and inferior and of loose opinions,
an old woman and decrepit and of little substance and a very close and inti-
mate friend of Catalina Hernández.
Do witnesses know Isabel Nabarro and Juana Ponce, vecinos of Carmona?
Nabarro was a captive slave of Quintanilla and Juana Ponce is a captive slave
of the Vicar, don Lope Ponce and between the two of them and even before
they testified they were vile and inferior and of loose opinions and not cred-
ible and very intimate friends of Catalina Hernández, who by offering them
favors has gotten them to testify against the truth.
Do witnesses know Bartolomé López, worker and Ana, slave, and do they
know that Bartolomé Lopez was Catalina’s long-time “friend” who has had a
daughter with her and who thinks she is free, and as such would passionately
say what is contrary to the truth. [Do witnesses know that] he is an enemy of
Juan Cansino’s because Cansino caught him living illegally with Catalina and
[do witnesses know that] Ana, a slave, who has been a captive and wanted all
slaves to be free, besides being a liar and black, would say [things] contrary
to the truth? The two are inferior people, vile and of low opinion and no one
should give them any credit for what they say.
[On 10 September 1572, Catalina and her lawyer requested that her
witnesses be allowed to stand, despite the claims that were made in the tacha.

27
 2 • Beatríz, India’s, Lawsuit for Freedom from Slavery

She also called in new witnesses, all of whom were Spanish and vecinos of
Carmona to verify that her witnesses were reliable and that Juan Cansino’s
were not, and should be discredited mainly because they were all his close
relatives or worked for him.]
­
Questions for Witnesses on Behalf of Catalina Hernández

Are the witnesses on behalf of Catalina well known individuals, Christians

and fearful of God? Do witnesses know that Juan Cansino and Hernando
Cansino, his son, a current councilman of the village are powerful and
rich persons and that they have many friends and relatives in the village of
Carmona?
Do the witnesses know that when Catalina Hernández went about draw-
ing up evidence in Carmona to support her case, that Hernando Cansino,
son of Juan, went about letting the witnesses know what they had to say in
his favor and that he confronted and insulted those witnesses who wanted to
say what they thought?
Do witnesses know that Juan Cansino went about persuading many neigh-
bors of the village that Beatríz, india mother of Catalina Hernández spoke
Portuguese [and that she was a morisca] and he promised a bag of wheat if
they would declare this [in their depositions]?
Do witnesses know that Diego Romy, public notary of the village of Car-
mona, who drew up the interrogatory evidence for Juan Cansino is an intimate
friend of Hernando, his son, and that they always eat and go about together
and that Hernando Cansino was present when Romy examined witnesses?
[On 21 November 1572, the judge and members of the tribunal of the
House of Trade determined that Catalina had not proven her case, that she and
her siblings and Catalina’s daughter would remain slaves, and that Juan Cansino
should not mistreat them. Within two years, the defender of the Indians, Francisco
Sarmiento, appealed the decision before the Council of the Indies, the appel-
late court of the House of Trade. After reviewing the case, the Council members
reversed the sentence, thus freeing Beatríz and her offspring from bondage.]

2.12 Appeal Sentence

Council of the Indies, Madrid, 22 January 1574

In the case between Catalina Hernández, her brothers and children of
Beatríz, deceased india, and Ana, daughter of the said Catalina Hernández,
 2 • Beatríz, India’s, Lawsuit for Freedom from Slavery

and Juan de la Peña her legal advocate versus Juan Cansino Aragones, vecino
and magistrate of the town of Carmona and Sebastian de Santander, his legal
representative:
We find that the definitive sentence of this lawsuit given and pronounced
by the official judges of the House of Trade in Seville on behalf of the said
indias was appealed, judged and pronounced badly and that the said parties
[Catalina, etc.] appealed well. As such we must revoke and we revoke their
lawsuit and sentence25 . . . We [the members of the tribunal of the Council
of the Indies] declare the said Beatríz, deceased india to have been free and
not subject to any servitude by her birthright, despite the sentence rendered
against her by the said judges on 11 July 1559. We also declare as free by
birth the said Catalina Hernández, her brothers, and Ana, Catalina’s daugh-
ter as the children and grandchildren born of a free mother, as the said Beatríz
india was, and we condemn Juan Cansino to not perturb or disturb them in
their freedom in any way. . . . We condemn [Cansino] to give and pay the
said indios a just and deserved salary for their service from the day on which
this lawsuit [appeal] began, 30 April 1572.

Suggested Reading

Reséndez, Andrés. The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in
America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.
van Deusen, Nancy E. Global Indios: The Indigenous Struggle for Justice in Sixteenth-
Century Spain. Duke, NC: Duke University Press, 2015.
———. “Indios on the Move in the Sixteenth-Century Iberian World,” Journal of
Global History, 10:3 (November 2015), 387–409.
———. “The Intimacies of Bondage: Female Indigenous Servants and Slaves and
Their Spanish Masters, 1492–1555,” Journal of Women’s History, 24:1 (2012),
13–43.

Document Themes
• Family
• Labor
• Law
• Migration and mobility
• Sexuality and gender

25. Ellipses in this paragraph represent the omission of formulaic phrasing.

29
 3

Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and

1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

Wills written in anticipation of death provide extraordinary windows into

lives lived as well as aspirations for the future of loved ones and kin. This
chapter collects the wills of four women of color (two indigenous, one mes-
tiza, and one Afro–Peruvian) from several Andean cities and spans the period
from the late sixteenth to late seventeenth centuries. Potosí was a mining
metropolis with a population of near one hundred thousand while La Plata,
today known as Sucre, was a much smaller city that functioned as an admin-
istrative center for the Viceroyalty of Peru. The two cities were in relatively
close proximity, so travel and interaction between the two was common. The
propensity of non-Spaniards to leave wills in early Latin America has been
well documented by historians.1 In particular, indigenous women left wills
in surprisingly large numbers in comparison to both Spanish women and
indigenous men.2 In cities, women had ties to market networks as well as
cofradías (religious brotherhoods) and, thus, had extra reasons to make legal
records when they feared death. Women also recognized that leaving instruc-
tions in a will could help to care for family members once they were gone.
Thus, this chapter illuminates rich details about the lives of non-Spanish
women who availed themselves of a Spanish legal tradition to settle scores,
make their peace, or tie up loose ends within the complex colonial cities in
which they lived.
Spanish inheritance law guided what women owned and what they could
do with their property at death. First, women could separate property from
their husbands (this might come from their dowry, for example). And, while
women did not need their husbands’ permission to bequeath such property,
there were certain inheritance laws they had to follow. People could dispense
one-fifth of their estate to whomever they wished. The other portion of the

1. See the collection edited by Susan Kellogg and Matt Restall, Dead Giveaways: Indigenous
Testaments of Colonial Mesoamerica and the Andes (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press,
1998).
2. Frank Salomon offered excellent insights into the testamentary practices of indigenous
women in “Indian Women of Early Colonial Quito as Seen Through Their Testaments,” The
Americas 44:3 (1988), 325–41.
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

estate had to be given to legitimate (that is, born-in-wedlock) children in

equal shares, regardless of sex.3
All wills follow a formula prescribed by Spanish notarial custom, and the
basic outlines of that formula are evident in the documents in this chapter.
Individuals began by identifying themselves and their state of mind; the will
then proceeded to address burial plans, some of which were very elaborate;
next, testators listed debts they owed or those owed to them; a will then listed
assets, bequests, and lastly named both a universal heir (or heirs) and the exec-
utors of the will.4 The will was completed with signatures by the witnesses and
the notary public. Frequently, testators themselves did not sign these docu-
ments due to illiteracy. In this sample, none of the women signed their wills.
Even though all wills followed a formula, the individual documents reveal
important differences. The wills collected here reveal four distinct female
experiences. The details allow readers to trace how women of color experi-
enced kin networks, material culture, religious devotion, and economic trans-
actions. Moreover, these documents show women acting as agents in their
own lives and in the lives of their descendants. Wills allowed people to collect
debts, to make claims for property, and to carry out obligations to loved ones.
The 1577 will of the free morena (black woman) Luisa de Villalobos shows
the remarkable migration of an Afro-descended woman from Nombre de
Dios in Panama to Lima on the coast of Peru and finally to the highland min-
ing city of Potosí in modern-day Bolivia. The section of her will excerpted
here focuses on her belongings, her debts, and her bequests. While she does
not list an occupation, the emphasis on clothing and cloth in her will suggests
that she may have been a seamstress and a petty cloth merchant. By tracing
her economic transactions, one can locate her multiracial network of indig-
enous, Afro-descended, and Spanish women and men. While Villalobos is
careful to identify herself as a free person, her will also mentions a master. Is
she referring to the man who was her former master from whom she retained
the same title? Or was she perhaps still in debt to him for her freedom as she
declared she owed him fifty pesos?5

3. See a longer discussion in Silvia Marina Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 1790–1857
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985), 67. Also, I discuss the ways in which, through
the practice of writing wills, parents sometimes challenged inheritance law in Jane E. Mangan,
Transatlantic Obligations: Creating the Bonds of Family in Colonial Era Peru and Spain (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 163–69.
4. In order to contextualize the peso values listed in the wills, readers may wish to know that in
1600, annual rent for a small urban property ran at about one hundred pesos, a bottle of wine
cost ten pesos, and a loaf of bread was one real (or one-eighth of a peso).
5. On enslaved colonial women and strategies for freedom, see Michelle A. McKinley,
Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization in Colonial Lima, 1600–1700
­
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

31
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

Ana Copana made her will in 1598 and died soon thereafter, as the official
inventory (not excerpted here) shows. She was an indigenous woman born
outside the city of La Plata who eventually moved to the high Andean city
where she had a family and became a property owner. Copana’s will richly
details the material culture of an urban indigenous woman, the examples
of which remind us that colonial cities, often considered centers of Spanish
culture, were also filled with people who walked around in indigenous-style
clothing made of indigenous textiles. At the same time, Copana’s religious
devotion, an adaption to Catholicism introduced by the Spanish, is also
evident. Her will reveals her equal commitment to both the material and
spiritual realms. Note the provisions she made in her will respecting the even-
tuality that a man named Pedro González might appear on the scene to make
a claim to her granddaughter or her property. Copana’s example illustrates
how indigenous women adapted to colonial life while maintaining distinct
cultural and kin identities.
The indigenous woman doña (lady) Isabel del Benino dictated her will on
a rural estate outside of the city of Potosí, where she lay dying.6 It was later
admitted into the notarial record in Potosí at the insistence of her daughter
and heir, doña María del Benino, born to her former master when her mother
was presumably working as his servant. Isabel Benino’s only other immediate
family member was her husband, who was not the father of her daughter.
How do both her husband and her daughter appear in the will? Who does
she favor and what might be her motivation? Further, what does her rural
economic engagement suggest about the business possibilities for an indige-
nous woman who grew up alongside Spanish presence in the Andes? It is also
instructive to compare Isabel Benino’s will to that of Ana Copana in order
to consider how indigenous women’s lives might differ. Notice, for example,
that both women paid special attention to religious devotion. The economic
relationship Benino had with clerics (who bought agricultural goods from
her) afforded her a power that Copana did not have.
Finally, the will of doña Ana de Barba y Talora reveals insight into the
life and death of a mestiza (woman of indigenous and Spanish parentage) in
seventeenth-century La Plata. Barba y Talora cannot be said to be typical, for
she was divorced from her husband, only one of her children had survived
early childhood, and that child, a daughter, was blind. Much of her will,
then, can be read as the financial strategy adopted by a single mother. What

6. The use of the honorific doña by Isabel del Benino was indicative of her relative wealth
and connection to a former Spanish boss as well as a Spanish son-in-law. In the colonial world,
an expansive use of honorific titles occurred relative to Iberia, which led to contestation at
times about social hierarchy. See James Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 1532–1560: A Colonial Society
(Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), 153–55.
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

specific steps did doña Ana take to prepare her daughter for life on her own?
How did she address her mixed-race identity? Did she lead a life that suggests
connections to indigenous culture, Spanish culture, or both?
All of these wills reveal women who led dynamic lives with complex social
and economic networks and who strongly expressed how they wanted to be
remembered. Moreover, they prompt some collective questions. Wills docu-
ment particular moments in peoples’ lives and thus provide snapshots of spir-
itual, social, and economic reckoning. How might this framework influence
the details we can learn about women’s lives through this type of document?
What do women’s debts reveal about their work and the role of money in
their day-to-day existence? How did women use wills as strategies to plan for
loved ones after death? And, if you think comparatively about the four wills,
how did the mestiza, indigenous woman, and morena differ from each other
in terms of social status or material culture?
Finally, keep in mind that these documents are equally informative about
men in colonial society because all the women who left wills had connections
to the men who were their spouses, sons, fathers, bosses, business partners,
and priests. Thus, wills constitute a clear window into the gender makeup
of women’s networks and allow us to see how and when men’s presence was
most (and least) influential. Did women choose men to be their executors?
Did they benefit from donations made by men? Did they provide for and
receive financial and nonmonetary support from their husbands?

3.1 Will of Luisa de Villalobos (1577)7

In the name of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three persons
and only one true God, and all the rest that the holy mother church of Rome
holds and believes, and hoping to place my soul on the path to salvation and
for that for my advocate the Holy Virgin Mary, that she beg her precious son,
my Lord Jesus to grant me his grace and know that to his service and honor I
make and order my testament in the following form and manner, I, Luisa de
Villalobos, color morena, free and not subject to any servitude, native of the
city of Nombre de Dios in the Kingdom of Tierra Firme, resident as I am in
this Villa Imperial de Potosí.
First, I commend my soul to God [the next half page is illegible due to
damage.]

7. Archivo Histórico de Potosí-Casa de la Moneda, Escrituras Notariales, Volumen 8, Fols

1204–1206v, July 24, 1577.

33
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

I declare that I owe fifty pesos of silver, assayed and marked, to my master
who knows Juan de Aranbuco and Antono de Yllescas. I order that they pay
him because I owe the money from five years ago.
Item,8 I declare that in the City of Kings,9 I have in the possession of
María Fula morena 100 silver pesos that I gave her to keep for me. I order they
be collected and delivered to Francisca Godines.
Item, I declare that to Francisca Godines or her closest heirs [you] pay the
value of nine glass bottles of orange blossom water10 and thirteen flasks of the
said water.
Item, I declare that I owe Antonio Gutiérrez six pesos, and I order that he
be paid from my estate.
Item, I declare that one yellow skirt with velvet trim, another trimmed
with velvet, one doublet of fine wool11 and one wool cloth in which is it
wrapped belongs to Costanca, morena, of the falconer of the Villa Real, for
which she owes fifty pesos. I order that it be collected and that the said cloth-
ing be returned to her. Once collected, the said pesos should be given to
Andrés Sánchez because they are his.
Item, I declare that I have in my possession four pesos in reales at eight to
the peso and two pesos plus a tomyn which are from Catalina morena, slave of
Francisco Ruiz. I gave and loaned those said pesos and reales to Juan Díaz. I
order that they be collected and returned to their owner.
Item, I declare that I sold two and-a-half varas12 of table linen to a girl who
is currently in the house of Juan Barba for two pesos per vara. I order that they
be collected and given to the said Catalina because they are hers.
Item, pay four pesos to Gerónima de Contreras.
Item, I declare that I have pawned with Sancho Antón, shoemaker, a
piña13 worth six pesos and also eight pounds of silver mercury for the value
of some shoes that I took from him. I order that the piña and mercury be
collected and the piña be given to Domingo or to Catalina, his wife, slaves of
the said Francisco Ruíz, or the person that Father Medina of the Jesuits says,
and Sancho Antón be paid for the shoes. The mercury I declare to be mine.
Item, I declare that Jorge Cocana, slave of Andrés de Burgos, owes me
thirty-four pesos of silver currency that I loaned him in front of Francisco
Martín, who is in Tarapaya, and I have asked him for them in front of María

8. Ytem in the original, meaning next in an itemized list.

9. Lima was known as the City of Kings.
10. Orange blossom water was used as a perfume in the early modern era.
11. Telilla in the text; a fine, thin wool.
12. The vara was a common measurement used at the time and it is approximately equivalent
to three feet.
13. The piña was the term used to refer to an unminted cone of refined silver.
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

de Herrera and the negra (black woman) of Jofre. I order they be collected
and the twenty pesos given to Juan Díaz, my master.
Item, I declare that in the City of the Kings, I have in the possession
of María Fula four shirts (two men’s and two women’s), three skirts (two
of them of fur and the other of cotton), four sheets, two pairs of damask
tablecloths, twelve napkins, three handkerchiefs, two doublets (one of blue
damask and the other new), of fine wool with gold-plated silver buttons, two
bedcovers (one scarlet and one embroidered), two scarlet pillows, two mul-
ticolored14 blankets, two plates and two pewter platters, and one scarlet sash
and one box in which are some handkerchiefs. I declare that these are mine
and I order they be collected. I desire and it is my will that with all of this
Father Medina does what he likes.
Item, I declare that in this Villa [Potosí] I have three mattresses and three
sheets of linen and other blankets and five Rouen shirts, three handkerchiefs,
three tocas de mengalas15 and three embroidered headdresses, three blankets,
two pillows, ten varas of Rouen cloth, one painting of Christ and another of
Our Lady of the Rosary. This I order that it be given to the said Juan Díaz.
Likewise, I have another sheet of linen and a small image of the Veronica,
and an acsu16 of cumbe,17 a chumbe,18 five skirts, one yellow, another blue,
one black with its shawl, and two brown, and two blue silk blouses, and one
fine black wool blouse and one black shawl and this I order to be given to
Juan Díaz. Likewise, I have two paintings19 of Cristo de Oro, both paintings
cost seventy pesos. I order that the bigger of the two be given in the name of
[illegible].
Item, I order that I have a small, delicate golden image of our Lady, five
pairs of earrings, four of gold and the other of crystal and gold, plus two
chests, one for letters and the other larger, and three old blankets.
Item, I order that my sister, a slave of Gerónimo Leto, be given two brown
skirts that I have as well as a blanket and two shirts.
Item, I order that the new cumbi acsu which I have be given to Juana, india
(indigenous woman), my comadre20 whom Juan Bernal knows.
Item, I declare that Isabel, mother-in-law of Leonardo Cenapoles, be given
a white cotton acsu and a chumbe.

14. pintados.
15. bonnets.
16. Acsu is the Quechua word for a woman’s tunic, part of typical Andean female dress.
17. Cumbe or cumbi is the Quechua word for finely woven wool cloth.
18. A chumbe is the Quechua word for a woolen belt used to cinch the acsu, in Andean female
dress.
19. Hechuras in the original.
20. Here comadre means a good female friend.

35
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

Item, I declare for my property two sashes, one new of scarlet and the
other of blue wool and a headscarf with [illegible word], two rosaries, a silver
agnes dei 21 with its silver chain, and six varas of Rouen cloth.
And to fulfill and satisfy this, my will, I leave as my executor Juan Díaz, my
master, to whom I give my full power to administer my estate.
And I revoke, nullify, and declare void any other will or codicil that I have
made.
And to fulfill and satisfy this my will, I order fifty pesos be given to my
niece Isabel who is in Gerónimo Leto’s house.

[signed] Sebastian de Vergara, scribe. 24 July 1577

3.2 Will of Ana Copana (1598)22

In the name of God, Amen. Know all who see this letter of testament, that
I, Ana Copana, natural of Cayque,23 being ill of body and sound of mind,
that God, Our Lord saw fit to give me in order that I serve him, believing
as I believe in the mystery of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
three persons and only one true God, and all the rest that the holy mother
church of Rome holds and believes, and hoping to place my soul on the path
to salvation and for that for my advocate, the Holy Virgin Mary, to beg her
precious son, my Lord Jesus to grant me his grace and know that to his service
and honor I make and order my testament in the following form and manner:
First, I entrust my soul to God who created it and when I should leave
this world, I order that my body be buried in the church of our Lord Saint
Sebastian in the chapel of Our Lady of Copacabana and the customary alms
be paid for the burial.
Item, I order that a requiem mass be sung over my body.
Item, I order that eight masses be said for my soul in the parish of Saint
Sebastian.
Item, I order that another six masses be said for my soul and my executors
pay the customary alms.
Item, I order that they say another six masses for my soul, by selling a little
bit of corn that I leave in a pirua (corncrib).

21. Lamb of God: A figure of a lamb bearing a cross or flag, and symbolizing Jesus Christ.
22. Archivo General de Bolivia, Escrituras Publicas, Escribano Castro, Fols. 297–319, 20 de
junio de 1598.
23. The original text reads, “native of Cayque,” but the place-name is crossed out. Likely this
referred to the highland community of Caque, just north of Arequipa.
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

Item, I order that the day of my burial the body of Saint Sebastian
accompany me and my executors pay the customary alms.
­
Item, I declare my belongings:
Item, I order one Xauxa24 acsu of cumbi and its lliclla25 be sold by my
executors and with it they say the masses for me.
Item, I leave an acsu and its lliclla of cumbi to my granddaughter, María,
and a pair of topos.26
Item, I leave two llicllas so that they say masses for me.
Item, I leave my granddaughter, María, a cumbi nanaca.27
Item, I leave my youngest granddaughter, named Ines Titivalla, a cumbi
acsu and some silver cocos.28
Item, I leave my houses to my granddaughters María and Ínes Titivalla, to
be shared in equal parts.
Item, I order that a large solar (lot) which I have that is connected to
the said houses be sold and it is my will that my executors sell it. With that
money, masses should be said for my soul and for my husband’s soul, in all
the monasteries of this city where my executors wish, and they pay the alms
for them.
Item, I leave two pairs of large topos, I order they be sold.
Item, I leave a half-pirua of corn, I order that they make flour with it for
the sustenance of my granddaughters.
Item, I leave a [illegible word] of trim. Also, I leave some small pieces of
silver and some old broken, silver tupus.
Item, I leave red and blue wool.
Item, I leave sixteen chickens, I mean twenty, big and small.
Item, I leave a large trunk and also sixteen sheep, big and small, and also
nine reddish cows.
Item, I leave an old silver bowl and some glass pitchers.
Item, I state and it is my will that don (sir) Juan Bayllanco and I have and
raised my two granddaughters in the said houses and nobody should remove
them from there because I have raised them with much work.

24. Xauxa, or Jauja, is a region of Peru, its usage here refers to a particular pattern in Copana’s
acsu that identifies that region.
25. Lliclla, also spelled liquilla, is the Quechua word for the large shawl that was part of typical
Andean female dress.
26. Topos, also spelled tupus, is the Quechua word for the dress pins use to attach the lliclla
(shawl) around the acsu (tunic). Typically, these pins are made from silver.
27. Ñanaca is the Quechua word for a woven head covering, part of typical Andean female
dress.
28. Cocos are silver drinking vessels, typically used for drinking native corn beer and kept in
pairs.

37
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

Item, I declare that my daughter who died left two outfits for her daugh-
ter. I order my executors to keep them for my granddaughter to give to her
when she is bigger. Do not sell them. In case the girl whom they are for, who
is Inés, should die, my executors can sell them and have masses said for me
wherever they wish.
Item, I order that in case Pedro González should come to say that a girl that
I have, who is my granddaughter, is his or is the daughter of his yanacona,29 I
state and confess that she is not because I have raised her since childhood and
her mother left her to me when she died.
Item, Pedro González might also say that these houses are his. I state that
my husband and I bought them with our own money and sweat and he does
not have anything to do with them, because they are mine.
Item, I have three bushels30 of corn in the chacara (farm) of don Juan; I
order it be brought from there.
Item, I confess that my husband, may God bless him, and I bought a solar
from an indio named Andrés to whom I gave ninety pesos in reales. He did not
give us the title to the land and, because he was a known friend to my hus-
band, we did not force him by law to give me the titles. I have sown [crops] in
those lands as my own, and for three or four years I have not planted because
I cannot do so anymore and I am old. I order that my executors collect the
titles, paying nine pesos that I still owe and in collecting the titles. My execu-
tors should sell the land and with the money from it, they should have masses
said for me in the monasteries of this city and in the principal church because
it is my will.
Item, I leave six pairs of queros (wooden drinking vessels for corn beer).
Item, I declare that Juan Gambi owes me three and-a-half pesos.
Item, Inés, the wife of Diego Laco, owes me five pesos from a birque (large
earthen vessel).
Item, Alonso Daque owes me fifteen and-a-half pesos.
Item, Lorenco Yunga, married to a Quillaca woman, owes me ten pesos.31
Item, C— [illegible word], shoemaker, owes me three pesos, plus an india
owes me a yoke [for animals], and the chiriguana cantor32 named Luymana
owes me seven pesos; I order it be collected.
And an india, the sister-in-law of María Yanpara, owes me two pesos.

29. The term yanacona, in colonial usage, refers to an indigenous person (usually a man)
responsible to a Spanish master and without kin ties to a specific ayllu (Andean kin-based
community).
30. Cargas in the original. In fact, a carga was a load equivalent to 1.6 current bushels, but
bushel is used throughout this text as a translation for carga.
31. Yunga identifies Lorenco as being from the Yungas region in Bolivia; his wife is a Quillaca
native, which is in the Oruro region of Bolivia.
32. Chiriguana refers to an indigenous Guaraní ethnicity in the lowlands of Bolivia.
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

And the wife of Guarany owes me three pesos.

And Francisco Vila owes me twenty-two pesos, I order it be collected from
him.
And to fulfill this will, I leave for my executors Lorenzo García Botetano
and don Juan Bayllanco to whom and to each one individually I give my full
power [of attorney] so that they may administer my estate, collect and pay
and sell what must be done, and that my executors use the power for the best
interest of the salvation of my soul.
I revoke, nullify and give for void any other will or codicil that I have
made. I do not want any to be valid except for this one that is executed in the
city of La Plata on May 28, 1598, being witnesses Juan Zambí and Diego de
Eredía and Alonso Gui and because he did not know how to sign, the witness
begged them to sign for him

[signatures]

Item, I declare for my estate nine bushels of salt.

Item, I declare eight bushels of corn, those eight are in some sacks in my
pantry.
Item, I declare for my estate four birques and seven jugs and three pots and
some painted cups.
Item, I declare that I owe for me and for my daughter, may God bless her,
[illegible] to an india guayra33 named Canco and her husband who is named
Pedro. If they call, pay them from my estate what I owe.
Item, I declare that Elvira india owes me four pesos. I order it be collected.
Because this is all true I beg that a witness sign for me, witness Lorenzo
García and Diego Heredia and Luis de Vera and Juan de Satas

[signatures]

3.3 Will and Codicil of doña Isabel del Benino, India34 (1601)

In the Villa of Potosí, on August 23, 1601, before the licenciado (licenciate)
Juan Ramírez de Salazar, teniente corregidor (deputy district governor) and
senior justice in this jurisdiction, Pedro de Montalvo, senior procurador (legal

33. Guayra is the Quechua term for the native Andean smelting process using clay ovens, and
the term is applied here to a woman who carried out the task of smelting ore.
34. Archivo Histórico de Potosí, Casa Nacional de la Moneda, Escrituras Notariales No. 32
Venegas. 23 August 1601.

39
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

representative) of the encomienda (landed estate), presents this petition with

the will that is mentioned therein.
I, doña María del Benino for myself, say that doña Isabel del Benino, india,
my mother, being in the Anti Valley, executed her will and codicil under
which she died in which she named me as her universal heir and executor.
This that I present she executed with all the solemnity possible for her on
earth. It is in the interest of my right that [the will] be put in the record of this
notary so that it does not get lost and from it I receive the authorized copies
that are and will be necessary.
I ask and beg your lord incorporate the said testament in the register35 and
from it give me the authorized copies that will be necessary and so that there
is faith I ask for justice.

From Pedro de Montalvo:

The said teniente corregidor having seen this petition and will, I order that
so that this be kept and not lost, it be put in the register of my present scribe
and a record made of its contents, so that this transfer move forward.
[Licenciado Ramírez de Salazar signed the document before Pedro
Benegas, public notary. The will of doña Isabel follows.]
­
  
In the name of the Holy Trinity, father, son and Holy Spirit, Amen. I,
Isabel del Benino, india, native of Cajamarca,36 being ill of body and sound of
mind, state that if God, Our Lord, is served to take me from this life with this
illness that at present I have, I order my soul to God who raised it from noth-
ing in his image and who saved me and redeemed me through his precious
­
blood, and the body to the earth from whence it came.
First, I order that if God is served to have me die from this illness, my body
be rested in the chapel of this chacara of doña María del Benino, my daughter.
After one year has passed, it is my will that my bones be taken to the Villa of
Potosí where they will be buried in the monastery of our Lord San Francisco
in the tomb of Nicolás del Benino, who was my master, where the masses
declared below will be said for me.
Item, I declare for my goods owed to me by Pedro Holguin, 150 pesos; I
order them collected.
Item, Cristóbal de Perales owes me one hundred pesos, for which I have a
document; I order it collected.
Item, Francisco, servant, owes me fifteen pesos which I lent him in reales;
I order it collected.

35. Here she refers to the official registry of the notary public.
36. Cajamarca is located in Peru’s northern highlands and was the site of the battle between
Francisco Pizarro and the Inka ruler Atahualpa.
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

Item, Gaspar de Miranda owes me ten bushels of corn that I sold him, six
at four pesos and the other four at three pesos which totals thirty-six pesos; I
order it collected.
Item, the Father Joseph de Llanos, priest and vicar of this valley, owes me a
remainder of thirty pesos from some goats that I sold him; I order it collected.
Item, the Father Vicar owes me for twenty hand-picked goats that I recently
sold him at two-and-a-half pesos that totals fifty pesos; I order it collected.
Item, Pedro Nuñez Vello owes me twenty-five fanegas of corn that he took
from me on two occasions, fifteen of them at four pesos a load and ten at three
pesos which totals ninety pesos; I order it collected.37
Item, Bautista del Benino owes me the remainder of an account of ten
pesos; I order it collected or he gives me two lambs that I want and they can
be counted against the debt.
Item, the heirs of Captain Luis Gomez de Chávez, deceased, owe me for
the said deceased party, ten bushels of maiz at three pesos, thirty pesos,38 and
twenty hand-picked goats at twelve pesos and six reales, totaling from the corn
and the goats eighty-five pesos and also ten pesos for a new large-sized payla39
that they took from me [two illegible words] which amounts to ninety-seven
pesos; I order it collected from the estate of the deceased.
Item, the indios carboneros40 of Sillata, Carangas, owe me 280 pesos accord-
ing to a written memo from don Juan cacique (hereditary indigenous chief-
tain) who came with an order to collect his indios and take them to their
villages; I order it collected.
Item, Pedro Holguin owes me twenty bushels of corn at three pesos per
bushel. I say and order that this totals seventy pesos; I order it be collected
from him and this is apart from the 140 pesos.41
Item, I declare for my estate that I have 400 oxen that cost me 200 pesos.
Item, I have, at present, fifty bushels of corn for my estate.
Item, I have for my estate four pregnant mares, I mean large and small
animals.
Item, I declare for my estate two pieces of clothing of cumbi.
Item, one article of avasca.42
Item, one woolen dress with its trim.
Item, a woolen lliclla.

37. Four fanegas constituted one carga.

38. This confusing notation is how it is written in the original.
39. Metal vat.
40. Refers to indigenous men who sold wood, llama dung, or other combustibles for fires.
41. Which doña Isabel already noted earlier in the will.
42. Avasca is the Quechua term for cloth made of a coarse weave of alpaca wool.

41
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

Two pairs of silver tupus with their bells. My dresses are in Potosí in the
possession of my daughter, doña María del Benino.
Item, ten llamas I declare for my estate.
Item, I declare that I do not owe anything to anyone, unless I am charged
with some restitution that has gone wrong.
Item, I order for the day of my burial a misa cantata (High Mass), with my
body present with a vigil, and the customary alms be paid from my estate.
Item, I order that later in this chapel, they say six low masses for me and
the customary alms be paid from my estate.
Item, I order that during the year that my body will be in this chapel in the
chacara, the priest of the Valley say one monthly mass for me and the custom-
ary alms be paid from my estate, I mean these to be low masses.
I order for the day that my body is taken to Potosí, they say a High Mass
over my body in the monastery with a deacon and sub-deacon and the cus-
tomary alms be paid from my estate.
Item, I order for the day of my transfer they say ten low masses in the
monastery at the will of my executors and the customary alms be paid from
my estate.
Item, I order the necessary wax be spent on the day of my burial and
transfer at the will of my executors and according to what they say, with
­
simple oath, pay them whatever is spent on wax plus five pesos and other
things necessary for my burial.
Item, I order that they give alms of ten pesos to have a mass said for me in
each monastery of Potosí and in the principal church ten masses, and it be
paid from my estate.
Item, I order that my executors, in auction or outside of it, sell the estate
that I have left and declared in order to comply with the orders that I leave
and by their oath they will profit from what they sell from my estate at good
prices and with the understanding that most of my estate is in the country-
side. They should not take more than what they are given.
Item, I order that they give twenty pesos in alms to the Hospital of the
Natives in Potosi, given them from my estate.
Item, for my estate I have vestments for saying mass that is comprised of a
missal, vestments, table cloths, little bell and large bell of two arrobas,43 more
or less that is in this chacara, I order that it be sold to comply with my record,
last will and testament.
Item, I declare as my final wish that, as I have dictated in this will [with
respect to] the masses to be said by Father Pedro de Llanos, priest of this
Valley, if I die [he] should discount the masses that he says for my soul in
accordance with that I have ordered and declared, and do not interpret that

43. Arroba is a measure equivalent to twenty-five pounds.

 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

they are to give any money to the said vicar from my estate until he has com-
plied with the burial and masses that are said for me or the quantity of money
that he owes me. If any is lacking, I order he be paid from my estate what he
is owed and it more is leftover, I order that it be collected from him and to
comply with the other orders.
Item, to conclude my last will and testament so that is comes to a proper
conclusion, I name as my executors and custodian doña María del Benino,
my daughter, and Gonzalo Holguin vecinos (citizens) of this Valley of Anti,
to both and or to each one.
Item, I declare and confess for my hija natural (daughter born out of
wedlock),44 doña María del Benino, whom I leave for my universal heir in
all the remainder of my estate. Even though I am married in the law of the
Holy Mother church with Domingo Quispe, my husband, who is present,
in terms of our estate and goods, from the day I married him until today he
has had and has what pertains to him knowingly, in his possession, insofar as
half of the marital earnings so nothing pertains to him insofar as the half of
the marital gains I have declared in my record and will. And thirty pesos that I
have lent Domingo, my husband, and he owes me, should be collected from
him. The said Domingo Quispe, before me, the present notary and below-
signed witnesses, said and declared to be true what doña Isabel del Benino, his
legitimate wife, said and declared in this clause. Because it is so, he [Quispe]
asked Gonzalo Holguin to sign because he did not know how.
Item, I order that in addition to the masses I have ordered, if my estate can
cover it to give twenty pesos to the Hospital of the Natives in the Villa of Potosí
and if it does not cover it, do not give it to them, or if there is some other money
left over from that which I have ordered in this, my will, say some masses for
the souls of purgatory and this I leave to the will of my executors and I, the said
notary, certify that I know the declarant of this will and record, all who were
present: Diego Pérez Loreyro and Juan Holguin and Juan Suparara and Diego
Quispe and Pedro Chincha yanaconas of the said chacara, that was dated on the
20th day of the month of December of 1597, In supplication and by witness.
[Signed by Goncalo Holguin before Joan Perez Loreyro Public and
cabildo notary.]

Codicil of doña Isabel del Benino

After the aforementioned in the said chacara on March 1, 1598 doña Isa-
bel del Benino said that she declared and declares for her estate a solar and

44. On the distinction between “natural” and “illegitimate” children, see Chapter 1, footnote 7.

43
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

run-down house in the parish of the Conception in the Villa of Potosí, I

order them sold for my estate.
Item, [I] declare for [my] estate a solar that is next to the house of Alonso
Torrejon in the parish of Saint Peter; I order it be sold.
Item, I declare that Domingo Asangato owes me twenty pesos of currency
that I loaned him in reales; I order it collected.
Item, Damian indio of Caracoto owes twelve, I mean fifteen llamas. I order
them collected from the chacara of Aguirre.
Item, Pablo Guanca owes me six pesos from a load of flour. I order it
collected.
Item, Pedro Chichay yanacona of this chacara owes me ten pesos, I order
them collected from him.
Item, Antonio Cornejo Morcano, ten pesos which he sent me to say that
Christobál de Perales is supposed to pay me; I order that Christóbal de Pera-
les swear by oath if he owes them and that they be collected for my estate.
Item, Diego Quispe my brother-in-law owes me twelve loads of corn; I
order it collected.
Item, it is my last will that [illegible words] doña María del Benino my
daughter and heir here in this her chacara, should alone be my executor and
custodian and carry out and comply with the orders of this, my last will and
testament as best as she perceives and the masses that I ordered to be said in
Potosí should be said above all in a manner that all is done by her will as all is
directed toward the good of my soul and in this way I declare before Gonzalo
Holguin and Gerónimo Escudero, to whom I beg to sign here and witness
before all who are here present to all of the above as stated: Juan Suchavara,
Diego Quipse, Pedro Chincay, and Domingo Quispe, her husband. [The
codicil is signed by Gonzalo Holguin and Gerónimo Escudero.]

3.4 Will of doña Ana de Barba y Talora45 (1658)

In the name of the Holy Trinity, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, three peo-
ple and one true God with whose grace all things have their beginning middle
and praiseworthy end. Amen = Know all those who see this letter that I, doña
Ana de Barba y Talora, native of the Villa Imperial of Potosí, (daughter of
Luis de Barja, who is already deceased, and of Joana Colquema,)46 resident

45. Archivo Nacional de Bolivia, Escrituras Publicas, Ortiz Gallo, Volume 186B. Fols. 1041–
1045v.
46. Colquema is an indigenous name, which reveals the indigenous-Spanish ancestry of Barba
y Talora.
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

of this City of La Plata and legitimate wife of Juan de Castro Samelvide, who
is absent from [the city] through marital relief dictated by the ecclesiasti-
cal judge who ordered our divorce and separation from cohabitation. I find
myself at present with the bodily illness that our Lord has seen fit to give me,
but sane in my judgment and wisdom that his Holy Majesty granted me,
and fearing death which is a natural thing for all creatures, ignorant of it and
uncertain of the hour when it will arrive. I desire the serenity that befalls the
unburdening of conscience, and choose for my advocate and intercessor in
the Holy Royal Kingdom of the Angels, mother of god and our Lady, so that
[she will] intercede with her preciousness and forgive me my sins and admit
my soul on the road to Salvation, lighting for me the knowledge so that his
majesty in his holy service is willing, I order my will in the following shape
and form:
First, I entrust my soul to God, our Señor (Lord), who nourished and
redeemed it with his precious blood, death, and passion, and I order it back
to the land from which it was formed. Item, I order that my body be buried
in the principal church of this city, in the location and place that my execu-
tors wish, and that the priest and sacristan accompany my body with a cross
and a tolling of the bells, without further ostentation nor accompaniment, for
which the customary alms will be paid from my property.
Item, I order that the day of my burial, if there is time, those gathered
sing a mass for me with my body present, with a vigil and response, and the
customary alms will be paid from my property.
Item, I order that one hundred low masses be said for my soul by the clergy
that my executors wish and the customary alms be paid from my property.
Item, I order two pesos to the mandas forzosas (a bequest to the church) be
distributed and I set them aside from my property.
Item, I declare that I owe Manuel Bel two pesos and six reales; I order he
be paid.
Item, I declare that I owe Rafael García Ros nine-and-a-half pesos; I order
he be paid.
Item, I declare that I owe Andrés de Orostegui four pesos; I order he be
paid.
Item, I declare that I owe doña Inés de Obando, legitimate wife of Juan
de Ortega, my compadre (close friend), five pesos for a silver candle snuffer,
also some wax and some little things that I took from her store. I order that
whatever she says I owe her should be paid to her.
Item, I declare that I am married and veiled by the order of the Holy
Mother Church to Juan de Castro Samelvide, even though we have been
separated as declared above, and only one of those children that we had dur-
ing our cohabitation has survived, a daughter who is named Juana, who is

45
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

blind. I declare her for the daughter of my husband and myself because all the
others died in their childhood.
Item, I declare that at the time we married, I took in dowry for the pos-
session of my husband, in different types of things, up to two thousand and
five hundred pesos, all of which he spent and gambled, giving cause for which
he mistreated me and obliged me to ask for the divorce. I declare it as such so
that it is known for all time.
Item, I declare that my husband did not bring his own money to the mar-
riage. I declare it so it is known.
Item, I declare that during the time that I lived with him, my husband
did not have any financial gains because as I have said he used all of what I
brought [to the marriage] to gamble. I declare so that it be known for all time.
Item, I declare for my property the following:
First, the Captain Diego Fernández de Vega, merchant, owes me six hun-
dred pesos by a public document before the present scribe. I order it collected
as part of my estate.
Item, I declare that the Bachiller (graduate) Juan Díaz de Nava, priest of
Totora47 owes me 330 pesos from simple decrees that are in a desk that I leave;
I order it collected.
Item, I declare that Luis Altamirano owes me forty pesos for a fruit bowl
that I sold him; I order it collected.
Item, I declare that Baltasar de Bocos owes me sixty pesos for a clavichord;
I order that if he pays, it be returned to him.
Item, I declare that I own two altar cloths,48 one in decorated blue cloth49
and the other half laminated, with two statues of the Holy Christ.
Item, I leave a statue of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception with its
cloak of blue cloth and silver crown.
Item, I leave another small statue of the Virgin of Candelaria, which the
statues and the dossal of blue cloth; I leave them for my daughter Juana.
Item, two pictures of the same size with their golden frames, one of Saint
Gertrudis and the other of the Conversion of Saint Augustine.
Item, another picture of the Coronation of the Virgin with its golden
frame.
Item, a canvas of Saint Gertrudis without frame.
Item, another small picture of Saint Francis of Paula without frame.

47. This appears to be a reference to the town of Totora in the province of Cochabamba,
Bolivia.
48. Called dossals, or doceles.
49. Tela quajada azul. The term tela de cuajada could refer to cheesecloth but this seems
unlikely. Cuajada can also mean “decorated.”
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

Item, other pictures of little value, and a large box and a small box, which I
bequeath to a girl who I have in my house, my niece named Juanita, daughter
of my brother Manuel de Barja, for the love I have for her.
Item, I leave a mirror with its black frame.
Item, I leave a copper brazier that cost me fifty pesos and is in my house.
Item, a wooden bedframe, four mattresses, two blankets, a canopy, and a
bedspread of blue and white cotton.
Item, a new cumbe bedspread and a new cumbe dressing gown.
Item, another bedspread of white taffeta.
Item, I leave a new lace cloth50 that is five fingers in length.
Item, I declare that a clavichord in my house belongs to Luis Altamirano
who has a small harp of mine; I order it be returned and the harp be collected.
Item, I leave a medium-sized wooden desk and another smaller desk,
covered with black sheepskin, with its drawers.
­
Item, I leave a string of pearls that has the Virgin at the neck and bracelets
of coral and pearls on her hands.
Item, two rings and a gold necklace with white stones.
Item, an Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, garnished with some
stones.
Item, a gold toothpick and another seven small brooches also of gold, for
shirt fronts.
Item, a large harp.
Item, two trunks lined with Moscovia cloth, two large wooden boxes, one
small and the other larger.
Item, a bench, two medium tables, one new and the other used.
Item, a small stone water filter and an old, common table.
Item, a monochord that I have loaned to Marcos Antonio Bautista.
Item, a small clavichord with two small tables on which it stands.
Item, one chamber pot, four candlesticks, two with their drip collars, two
small censors, one bowl with its tray, a small drinking cup, a large bowl with
its two small handles, eight spoons, four plates, two small pots with their lids,
another somewhat bigger, another medium with its two-handled lid, a small
pitcher, a chamber pot, four small plates, one platter, another medium, another
small plate, a salt cellar without lid, all of silver that weighs sixty-four marcos.51
Item, a holy water font with a silver heart that weigh two marcos, more or
less.
Item, I leave another bedframe, wooden and common.
Item, I leave two new blankets, one with a lace border and one without.

50. Specifically, a corte (cut); meaning sufficient cloth from which to make a woman’s dress.
51. All these items were made of silver and the weight would determine the value. One marco
weighed a half pound.

47
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

Item, I leave some sheets, pillowcases, shirts, new and used petticoats, head
scarves, handkerchiefs, which are found in my trunks with six varas of new
linen, two and-a-half of Rouen and four of Brittany, and other odds and ends.
Item, I leave some skirts and doublets in some boxes.
Item, I declare that in addition to the goods I have mentioned, that my
daughter has her entire bed [and bedclothes] as well as some clothing and
interior clothing for her personal use, I declare it so it is understood.
Item, I declare that I owe the Bachiller Eusebio de Armas for the rent of the
house in which I live, which runs from the beginning of this year in which we
are, at ten pesos each month, because all that prior I have paid him.
Item, I declare that Marcos Antonio Bautista teaches my blind daughter
to play the harp at the rate of ten pesos per month; I order that this account
be settled for the time that he has taught her and with what I have been
paying him and that he be paid what he, in his conscience, says I still owe
him.
Item, I declare that the Maestro Juan Candidato has taught my daughter
to play the clavichord. For all the time that he has taught her, I do not owe
him anything because I have paid him.
Item, I declare for my additional belongings a wooden platform, three
varas long and two-and-a-half varas wide.
Item, two woolen runners of different colors that are for the platform.
Item, another three small runners of the same style that are for the tables
and trunks.
Item, another small runner of cumbe of three varas, somewhat worn.
Item, I leave other odds and ends and household items of little value that
are my belongings.
And to fulfill and satisfy this my will, requests, and bequests contained
therein, I name as my executors and administrators of the estate the Captain
don Eugenio del Olmo y Cabrera, vecino of this city, and the licenciado Este-
van Feliz de Arron, lawyer of this Real Audiencia (Royal Court) to each one
of whom I give power so that in time they may collect and gather, sell and
auction (or outside of auction), all these goods, charging and taking them
from whoever has them, appearing in court cases, making motions and all the
necessary steps to finalize my estate by granting letters of payment, deeds, and
all the other contracts that are necessary even after one year of the executor-
ship has passed. I will prorate the appropriate time and I give you sufficient
authority as the law requires.
And I name for tutor and guardian of the person and goods of my daugh-
ter Juana, the said licenciado Estevan Felix de Arron to whom I beg, for the
love of God, that after my death, as an act of charity accept this guardianship
and care of my daughter. And he should take her to his house so that doña
María de Barros, his legitimate wife (to whom I make the same request that
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

his divine majesty will pay them for the good and charity that they perform),
can teach her virtue. It is my will that they accept the burden of this guardian-
ship without payment. In the satisfaction that I have with licenciado Estevan
Feliz de Arron, I charge him with continuing to teach music as he has begun
with my daughter so that she is sufficiently skilled to procure her a place in
a convent. There she can serve the choir, and be kept for this ministry. This
is what I desire: that she apply herself in service to His divine majesty in His
holy house.
And to complete and pay for this, my will, commands, and requests con-
tained herein, the remainder of my belongings, rights and actions that in any
way belong to me, I leave to and name as my universal heir my blind daughter
Juana, because I declare that I have no other heir, ascending or descending, so
that she can enjoy it with God’s blessing and mine.
Item, I declare for my goods a new woman’s chair with its adornments.
Item, I order that my mother, Juana Colquema, be given mourning clothes
of bayeta de la tierra (locally woven cloth) and twenty pesos that I leave her.
With this I revoke and annul any other wills, codicils, powers to testate
that are dated before this, executed in writing or verbally so that none of those
are valid in court or outside of it except this that I now make and execute
before the present scribe. Let this will be validated and executed as my last
will and disposition in whose testimony I order it in the Registrar which is
dated in the city of La Plata, April 9, 1658. I, the public scribe, grant that
the testator is seemingly of sound mind but did not sign because she did
not know how. At her request a witness signed being called and requested
Christóbal de Salacar, Juan de Bonifaz, Lorenzo de Mayorga, y Diego Anto-
nio de Villareal y Thomas Monrroz present and resident in this court at the
request of the grantor

Diego de Villareal
Before me Diego Ortiz Gallo, Public Notary

Suggested Reading

Christensen, Mark, and Jonathan Truitt. Native Wills from the Colonial Americas:
Dead Giveaways in a New World. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015.
Jouve-Martin, José R. “Death, Gender, and Writing: Testaments of Women of Afri-
can Origin in Seventeenth-Century Lima, 1651–1666,” in Afro-Latino Voices:
Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1550–1812, ed. Kathryn
Joy McKnight and Leo J. Garofalo (pp. 105–25). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub-
lishing Company, 2009.

49
 3 • Women’s Wills (Potosí, 1577 and 1601; La Plata, 1598 and 1658)

Kellogg, Susan, and Matthew Restall, eds. Dead Giveaways: Indigenous Testaments
of Colonial Mesoamerica and the Andes. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press,
1998.

Document Themes
• Family
• Labor
• Law
• Religion
• Sexuality and gender
 4

Midwife Francisca Díaz’s Petition to

Return to Mexico (Seville, 1566)

Francisca Díaz was an Iberian-born midwife who first sailed to Mexico in

about 1560. She thus formed part of one of the first waves of Spanish women
who traveled to the New World in the decades after the initial conquest of the
Aztec and Inca capitals. The following text is the petition that she presented
in Seville before don (sir) López de Armendáriz, an alcalde mayor (district
judge) in the Real Audiencia (Royal Court) of that city for permission to
return to New Spain along with her son, whom she planned to marry off
there, and an enslaved woman called Ana whom she had acquired in Mexico.
Throughout much of the colonial period, Spain carefully monitored per-
sons who wished to migrate to the Indies. In 1510, the Council of the Indies,
the supreme advisory body to crown policy in the New World, decreed that
“all people were prohibited to travel to the Indies without bringing with
them licence to do so from the officials of the Contratación (Royal House of
Trade).”1 The Council subsequently relaxed its prohibitions on individuals
and groups who might travel overseas, but scrutiny over migration persisted.
The House of Trade kept records about all travelers, and the Council issued
several subsequent proclamations governing the practice. These discouraged
married men from traveling to the Indies without their wives, but also, at
least in the first fifty years of the sixteenth century, discouraged most women
from traveling to the New World.2 Further, the Crown forbad members
of various other groups from migrating, including Muslims, Jews, Gypsies,
and Protestants, descendants of those “reconciled” by the Inquisition, non-
Spaniards, vagrants, and delinquents. In 1554, the Council decreed that “the

1. Título XIII, I. De los pasajeros y personas prohibidas pasar a las Indias y estar en ellas, y de
las licencias e informaciones de los pasajeros. Angel de Altolaguirre y Duvale, Colección de
documentos inéditos de ultramar Series II, Tomo XXI (Nendeln: Kraus Reprint Limited, 1967),
61.
2. José Manuel Azcona Pastor, Possible Paradises: Basque Emigration to Latin America (Reno:
University of Nevada Press, 2004), 125. Peter Boyd-Bowman’s examination of Sevillian pas-
senger registries documented that while women represented about 6 percent of all emigrants
before 1540, for the next twenty years, that number grew to more than 16 percent and between
1550 and 1579, women constituted more than 28 percent the total population of Spanish
emigrants. Peter Boyd-Bowman, “Patterns of Spanish Immigration to the Indies Until 1600,”
The Hispanic American Historical Review 56:4 (November 1976), 83.

51
 4 • Midwife Francisca Díaz’s Petition to Return to Mexico

officials of Seville would allow single women to travel to the Indies, as long as
they were not prohibited from doing so [because of their membership in one
of the afore-named groups], even if they did not carry a license to journey.”3
Shortly after the 1554 decree, however, likely for reasons of female safety as
well as for perceptions of propriety, the crown mandated that single women
might only travel when accompanied by close male relatives. Such restrictions
notwithstanding the majority of women who traveled to the New World in
the sixteenth century were unmarried.4
Díaz, as a married woman whose husband had remained in Spain when
she first traveled alone to the New World, would certainly have required
a license for her first journey. She was likely motivated to travel, as were
many of her male Castilian contemporaries, for financial reasons. The Span-
ish economy was shrinking in the second half of the sixteenth century and
this pushed individuals and households to seek more opportunities elsewhere.
As a skilled midwife, Díaz observed she found a professional niche in the
particular market of (likely Spanish) women who were her clients in New
Spain. Other Spanish women, like the nuns discussed in Chapter 9, traveled
to the New World because of their spiritual motivations; still others, like Ana
de Anguiano whose story is treated in Chapter 5, accompanied husbands or
other relatives who were merchants, skilled craftsmen, or administrators, and
some of them joined their male relatives in these fields, either before or after
the men’s deaths. A final group likely traveled because they believed that the
relative scarcity of Spanish women in the Indies would mean they might
make more advantageous marital matches there.5
On her second voyage, even though she was widowed by then, Díaz evi-
dently still required official license and applied for that permission, likely to
a municipal-level judge or alcalde ordinario. The phrase “no ha lugar” (had
no place in law) scrawled on the back of her first petition indicates that this
official—doctor Vázquez—denied her plea. Undeterred, Díaz apparently
resubmitted her permission before alcalde Armendáriz, referred to in the clos-
ing documents as an alcalde mayor (district judge), and therefore of greater
authority than the initial judge who rejected her petition. The closing lines of
Armendáriz’s judgement and a Real Cédula (royal decree) dated 1567 which
conceded royal license to Díaz to return to New Spain along with her son
and the enslaved woman, Ana, indicate that her petition succeeded in the

3. Altolaguirre y Duvale, Colección de documentos inéditos, 63.

4. Boyd-Bowman, “Patterns of Spanish Immigration,” 84, found that 60 percent of the
female population who migrated to the New World were unmarried, including those who, as
children, were too young for marriage.
5. Mary Elizabeth Perry, Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville (Princeton, NJ: Princ-
eton University Press, 1990), 16.
 4 • Midwife Francisca Díaz’s Petition to Return to Mexico

end.6 Because her son Andrés was ten years below the age of legal majority,
he did not have to submit his own separate probanza (petition or proof) but
could be included in her application. Francisca Díaz may have had to pro-
vide particular justification for her need to re-import Ana to Mexico because
in the context of the more than five hundred African immigrants imported
into New Spain annually in the mid-sixteenth century, New Spain’s viceroy
(royal governor), Luís de Velasco, had in 1553 requested that Spanish King
Philip II limit their entry because “there are more than twenty thousand who
are increasing and will eventually spread confusion in the land.”7
Díaz sought a license that she could carry with her to legitimize her pres-
ence in the New World, and the officiating alcalde referred to her petition as
a probanza. Probanzas were legal dossiers from which a variety of subgenres
developed in the Spanish and Spanish American Early Modern World. Early
colonizers and inhabitants of the Indies (including most famously one of
Hernán Cortés’ footmen, Bernal Díaz del Castillo) produced probanzas de
méritos y servicios (proofs of worth and service), testifying to their military
and administrative service to the crown, as arguments for the receipt of royal
favors, while probanzas de limpieza de sangre documented petitioners’ claims
to blood cleanliness free of the taint of Jewish, Muslim, and eventually indig-
enous or African ancestry.
In this set of documents, Díaz’s petition serves more explicitly to attest to
the legitimacy and propriety of her passages between Iberia and the Indies,
and her residency in the latter. The details of her experiences as revealed in
her probanza complicate our notions of the practical, financial, and emotional
conditions of women’s sixteenth-century lives and help us to reconstruct a
more nuanced picture of women’s reproductive, social, and financial expe-
riences in this setting. Apparently, her professional practice in New Spain
brought Díaz considerable wealth; she amassed sufficient income, at any rate,
to afford the purchase of a slave, and to finance two trans-Atlantic journeys.
A document conceding license to other members of Díaz’s kin who trav-
eled from Talavera, Spain, to Mexico City to collect her belongings after her
death, dating from 1581, suggests that Díaz continued to accrue substantial
wealth after her return to Mexico.8

6. Archivo General de Indias, Indiferente, 1967, L. 16, F. 155R. “Real Cédula a los oficiales
de la Casa de Contratación dando licencia a Francisca Díaz, comadre, para volver a Nueva
España llevando una esclava llamada Ana y un hijo.”
7. Luís de Velasco, quoted in Herman L. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolut-
ism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570–1640 (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2003), 21.
8. Archivo General de Indias, Indiferente, 2060, N. 149. “Expediente de concesión de
licencia para pasar a México a favor de Francisco González, vecino de Talavera, con su mujer
Isabel Núñez, vecina de Talavaera, hija de Juan Gutiérrez y de Francisca Díaz (murió en

53
 4 • Midwife Francisca Díaz’s Petition to Return to Mexico

Along with her financial success, Díaz’s petition testifies to both her medi-
cal expertise and to her familiarity with legal practice, for much of this docu-
ment is composed of the questions she herself apparently suggested that the
alcalde should pose to the witnesses she had assembled to substantiate her
right to a license; the court evidently concurred, agreeing that witnesses were
to “Digan lo que saben” (They should say what they know) after each of her
suggested queries.
What details can be extracted from Díaz’s petition to fill in details about
her life? What prompted her to travel to New Spain in the first place, what
motivated her return journey to Iberia, and why might she have been
ambiguous about her reasons for returning to Spain after her first journey
to Mexico? What do details from the text allow us to conclude about Díaz’s
social and economic status? Because we know that midwifery practices, in the
pre-conquest society of central Mexico were widespread and sophisticated,
why might Díaz have commented that her services were so much in demand
in that setting?9 What can we learn from the material included and excluded
from her probanza? Why might she have encouraged questions testifying to
Ana’s status as a slave? How does the evidence supplied by Díaz’s various
witnesses compare? What might explain any differences in their testimony?

4.1 Francisca Díaz Petitions the Alcalde10

Most powerful Señor (Lord),

I, Francisca Díaz, midwife, native of the town of Talavera de la Reina,
declare that I have been in Mexico, which is in the Indies, and I came on the
fleet led by Cristóbal de Eraso and I bring with me Ana, my slave. And while
there, I practiced my profession of midwifery, in which I am very skilled,
and I did much good for many people. And now I want to return to the
city of Mexico and bring with me Ana, my slave, and also Andrés Gutiérrez,
my son aged fifteen years, who is single, in order that he be married. I have

México), con sus hijos con una criada. Para ir a cobrar los bienes dejados por la dicha Fran-
cisca Díaz.” Although the medical profession often denigrated midwives as poor and ignorant,
recent research in the European context suggest midwives there often pertained to various
social strata. See Samuel S. Thomas, “Early Modern Midwifery: Splitting the Profession, Con-
necting the History,” Journal of Social History 43:1 (2009), 115–38.
9. For more on pre-Columbian and early post-conquest obstetrical history, see Nora E.
Jaffary, Reproduction and Its Discontents in Mexico: Childbirth and Contraception from 1750
to1905 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016).
10. Archivo General de Indias, Indiferente 2051, no. 32. Thanks go to José Manuel Vázquez
Ruiz for his transcription help with this document.
 4 • Midwife Francisca Díaz’s Petition to Return to Mexico

merchandise in the quantity of five hundred pesos to bring with me and I need
to take with me three other people to serve me because I am old.11 All this is
supported in this report which I present. To your highness I beg for a license
for this purpose, and in granting it, your highness, you show me great favor.

[illegible signature]

[The following summary of the text was written on the back of the pre-
ceding page. The positioning of the letters indicates the document would have
originally been folded up, with its reverse side acting as an envelope.]
Francisca Díaz [three illegible words]

Begging license to return to New Spain from whence she came and request-
ing permission for other things contained in her petition.
To Señor Doctor Vásquez
So that she and the slave that she brought and her fifteen-year-old son, not
being married, and with pesos and all the rest. But the petition is dismissed.
(Mas no ha lugar.)

4.2 Second Petition

[On December 4, 1566, Díaz appeared before a different official,

alcalde Armendáriz, and presented her petition requesting permission to return
to Mexico with her son and with the enslaved woman, Ana. She identified
herself and the ship upon which she arrived from Mexico and requested that
the alcalde carefully consider her petition and her witnesses’ testimony, which
would address the following questions:]
First if they [the witnesses] know me, the said Francisca Díaz, and for how
long and if they also know Ana, my negra (black) slave.
Item.12 If they know and etc. that the said Francisca Díaz was in the city of
Mexico, which is in the Indies, for the time of four years, more or less, and in
all this time practiced her profession of midwifery in the said city of Mexico,
­
where she was of great use and that it was necessary that she dwell there
and practice her occupation because there was a lack of midwives who had

11. We do not know from this document how old Díaz was. One of her witnesses, aged fifty,
says he has known her for more than forty years, so all we can know is that she is at least that old.
She may be exaggerating her age as a means to justify traveling with the enslaved woman, Ana.
12. Ytem in the original, meaning next item in a list.

55
 4 • Midwife Francisca Díaz’s Petition to Return to Mexico

knowledge and experience in this profession, and this witness should say what
he knows and saw as the question asks. They should say what they know.
Item. If they know and etc. that because of a certain need that presented
itself to the said Francisca Díaz, she came to Spain to this city of Seville where
she is at present, she came on the fleet that just arrived from New Spain,
together with the fleet from Tierra Firme13 under general don Cristóbal de
Eraso, and she brought with her in her service a negra slave named Ana. This
witness should say what he knows and has seen as the questions asks. They
should say what they know.
Item. If they know and etc. that all that has been said is publicly known
and stated (de pública voz y fama), the licenciado Santiago de Ugarte.
Item. If they know and etc. that Francisca Díaz has been and is sick, and is
a woman of advanced years, for which reason it was necessary for her to bring
with her the slave from Mexico to this city for her service and for this reason
it will also be necessary for her to return with her to the city of Mexico for
her service because her service is necessary for the reasons given. They should
say what they know.
Having presented the petition and questions, as they are written, Francisca
Díaz asked for the fulfillment of her petition and asked for justice. Witnessed
by Hernando de Villarroel and Juan de Torres.
The señor alcalde said that he commanded that Francisca Díaz’s probanza
be taken and received and that it be examined according to the questions.
Diego de Ojeda, notary.
Then, a short time later, Francisca Díaz presented witnesses Diego de Tala-
vera, Hernando de Palma, Pascual de Sagobal, and Gabriel López, hosier, for
the probanza. Each one of them took an oath according to form and law, by
virtue of which they promised to tell the truth in this case in which they were
presented as witnesses and what each of the witnesses said and deposed is as
follows:
Witness: Diego de Talavera, dealer in the China of Talavera, vecino (citi-
zen) of Seville in the street de la Sierpe. The witness was presented, sworn,
questioned, and declared the following:
To the first question, he said that he has known Francisca Díaz the mid-
wife for over twenty years, because they are both natives of the same village
of Talavera,14 and that he has known Ana, negra slave of the said Francisca
Díaz, for two months, more or less, from the time when the fleet of ships
came to this city because Francisca Díaz came on this fleet and brought with
her Ana, her slave.

13. The mainland (as opposed to the Antilles) of Spain’s New World possessions.
14. Talavera de la Reina is a city in the western province of Toledo, four hundred kilometers
northwest of Seville.
 4 • Midwife Francisca Díaz’s Petition to Return to Mexico

Asked about his particulars,15 he said that he is of about thirty years of

age, more or less, and that he is not related to the said Francisca Díaz, and
that he has no financial interest in this transaction.
To the second question, he said that what he knows is that six years ago,
more or less, Francisca Díaz the midwife came from the said village of Tala-
vera, where she was born, to this city [Seville] and that from here she left
for the Indies, to New Spain, to practice her profession of midwifery and
has been in the city of Mexico, according to what this witness knows, and
recently came back to this city in the fleet that she arrived here two months
ago, more or less, and that this witness knows that Francisca Díaz is a skillful
woman with experience in her profession of midwifery, and that this is public
and notorious among those who know her and that he has heard it said to
others that in the city of Mexico, where she has been, she has practiced her
profession of midwifery and has done much good in the city because of her
ability and that, after she came on this fleet as he has said, he has seen her also
practicing her profession of midwifery in this city of Seville. And this is what
he knows of this question.
To the third question he says that, as he said in the previous question, this
witness knows and has seen that Francisca Díaz came from the Indies to this
city on the most recent fleet that arrived two months ago, more or less, under
General don Cristóbal de Eraso, and that she brought with her Ana, her negra
slave, and that regarding this slave the witness has seen that she belongs to
Díaz and is for her service, according to what he has seen and what Francisca
Díaz has said. And this is what he knows about this question.
To the fourth question, he says he has already answered this.
To the fifth question, he says that this witness has seen that the said Fran-
cisca Díaz is very old and requires assistance and it seems to this witness that
it was necessary for her to bring Ana her slave with her on this voyage from
Mexico to this city for her service and in the same way it will be necessary to
­
return with her, if she goes back to the Indies, for the reasons already given.
And this is what he knows about this question. And this is the truth under
oath that he took and he signs. Diego de Talavera. Diego de Ojeda, notary. . . .
[The second witness, Hernando de Palma, a spice merchant, fifty years
old, and resident of Seville, supplied virtually identical testimony to the court
as the first witness, indicating that he had known Díaz because they were both
natives of the same village of Talavera. He expanded only on the following
details in reply to the second question:]

15. Las generales in the original. Normally, “las generales de la ley” refers to a person’s basic
personal information.

57
 4 • Midwife Francisca Díaz’s Petition to Return to Mexico

. . . that Francisca Díaz came to this city [Seville] on this most recent fleet
and it is said that she comes to fetch certain children, and that since she has
returned she has been seen practicing her profession of midwifery in this city.
And this is what he knows about this question.
To the third question he said as has been said that Francisca Díaz the
midwife came to this city on the fleet that came about three months ago, and
he says that she came to fetch her children and she brought the negra slave
Ana with her for her service and the witness believes that it was necessary for
her to bring her with her for her service, and this witness takes [Ana] to be
her slave because she has seen her possessing her as a slave and the slave serves
Francisca Díaz.
To the fourth question, he said that he has already said what he has to say
about this.
To the fifth question, this witness said that he knows that Francisca Díaz
is very old, because he has known her for more than forty years as he has said,
and she arrived here ill and it appears to this witness that it was necessary for
her to bring with her the said Ana her slave for her service and company and
that even here in Seville he has seen that the said slave, since her owner is old
and sick, helps undress her, and readies her for bed, and serves her in all that is
necessary and that in this way it appears to this witness that if Francisca Díaz
returns to the Indies, it would also be necessary for her slave to return with
her for these reasons. And this is the truth according to the judgement that
he has made and he signs. Hernando de la Palma. Diego de Ojeda, notary.
[The third witness, Pascual de Sabogal, a surgeon barber, aged thirty,
declared he had known Francisca Díaz on the voyage that had brought her back
from Mexico to Spain three months earlier. He declared that he did not know
the enslaved woman, Ana, but provided no other evidence supplementing that
which the other witnesses had provided. The fourth witness was Gabriel López,
a hosier, and vecino of Talavera de la Reina, age twenty-five. López said he
had known Francisca Díaz for more than fourteen years, and had known Ana
for three months. His answers to several of the questions merely corroborated
the evidence of the other witnesses, but in answer to the second question, he
elaborated on the reasons for Díaz’s return journey from Mexico to Spain:]
. . . To the second question, he said that what he knows about this question
is that six years ago, more or less, when this witness, who, like Francisca Díaz,
is from the town of Talavera, he saw Diaz depart from the village of Talavera
to come to this city of Seville to embark from here to New Spain, and that
afterwards this witness heard that she went on a voyage and was living in the
city of Mexico, practicing her art of midwifery and this is public and notori-
ous and for this reason this witness believes that in the city of Mexico, she
­
did great service with her profession and that Francisca Díaz returned on this
 4 • Midwife Francisca Díaz’s Petition to Return to Mexico

most recent fleet and he has heard it said that that she came because there
were objections there that she had been married in Talavera and that she
should come and to live as husband and wife, and after she came she learned
that her husband had died and that since she returned here, Francisca Díaz
was at the childbirth of the wife of this witness and from what he saw, she was
very skilled in her art. And this is what he knows about the question.
And so, having submitted an authenticated copy of the probanza, Fran-
cisca Díaz said that she requests that the said señor alcalde mayor grant her the
probanza in public form to keep her rights and she asks for justice.
The señor alcalde said that he commands that Francisca Díaz be given two
or more—as many as she wants—copies of the authenticated copy of the said
probanza and that his authority and judicial decree should be interpolated
into each one so they will be validated, to which he gives faith and he signs
his name, doctor don Lope de Armendáriz, Diego de Ojeda, notary.

[signs] Doctor don Lope de Armendáriz

And I, the said Diego de Ojeda, scribe and public notary of his majesty, tran-
scribes it and make my sign in testimony of its truth.

[signs] Diego de Ojeda, notary.

Suggested Reading

Altman, Ida. Transatlantic Ties in the Spanish Empire: Brihuega, Spain and Puebla,
Mexico, 1560–1620. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.
Mangan, Jane E. Transatlantic Obligations: Creating the Bonds of Family in Conquest-
Era Peru and Spain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Owens, Sarah E., and Jane E. Mangan. Women of the Iberian Atlantic. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 2012.
Poska, Allyson M. Gendered Crossings: Women and Migration in the Spanish Empire.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016.

Document Themes
• Family
• Labor
• Law
• Migration and mobility

59
 5

Life and Love in Women’s Letters to

Spouses (Spain and Mexico, 1567–1576)1

Letters showcase women’s voices and experiences in a distinct manner from

court records and notarial documents. When women took ink to paper, they
revealed unique aspects of married life and the challenges of living apart
in the era of Spanish expansion and New World domination. The letters
in this chapter highlight two distinct experiences; the first four letters are
from women in Spain writing to men in Mexico and the latter five letters
are between a husband and wife who both lived in the New World but were
separated by the obligations of work. These letters, with a geographical trajec-
tory depicted in Map 3, come from a larger collection of letters sent between
Spain and the Indies, most of which were archived in Seville in the Archivo
de Indias as part of a Crown inquiry.
Sending a letter in the 1500s constituted an undertaking that is repre-
sentative of that time and place. First of all, literacy rates were not very high
in Spain or in the New World at this time.2 Thus, many letters were not
necessarily written by the hand of the sender. Rather, men and women hired
scribes or used trusted acquaintances to write letters for them. In addition, to
safeguard the contents of a letter, it was necessary to use networks of friends,
relatives, and kin to help with their delivery from one location to another.
Royal documents of the Spanish empire had their own system of transport
with crown officials, but for personal letters, other arrangements had to be
made. Francisca Hernández’s letter makes the most of the issue of needing to
have a trusted representative to carry letters. Finally, once scribes wrote letters
and senders entrusted them to carriers, it took months for a letter traveling
between Spain and Mexico to reach its intended recipient. Thus, while letter
writing was an important outlet for separated couples to send messages, the
communication was precarious and slow.

1. The editors thank Ana Fasold-Berges for her translation assistance in this chapter.
2. In her study of sixteenth-century Spain, Sarah Nalle, for example, discovered rates of
literacy for women ranging from 2 percent (rural Toledo) to 16 percent (urban Valencia).
Sarah Nalle, “Literacy and Culture in Early Modern Castile,” Past and Present 125 (November
1989), 68. On educated women’s culture of literacy, see Anne J. Cruz and Rosilie Hernández,
eds., Women’s Literacy in Early Modern Spain and the New World (London: Routledge, 2011).
 5 • Life and Love in Women’s Letters to Spouses

In addition to letters, news from the Indies was a commodity, and the
best place to find it was Seville. As the launching point for passengers and the
arrival point for returnees, Seville was the hub. The official House of Trade,
or the Casa de la Contratación was founded in 1503 in order to track licenses
for passengers and inventories for property passing between the metropole
and the colonies. Note that in her letter, María Goméz states she heard from
a scribe who arrived on the latest fleet from Mexico that there were inquiries
as to whether she was alive or dead. This news prompted Goméz to travel
from her city of Ronda to Seville (roughly eighty miles) with her son in order
to follow up on these inquiries. Other letter-writers have a general idea of the
whereabouts of their husbands, thanks in part to hearsay.
Thus, previous letters and hearsay inform the content of letters by María
Gómez, Francisca Hernández de los Arcos, and Leonor Gil de Molina. All
communicated with men who had been in the New World for years, even
though their tone suggests they write as if they had just seen each other. This
tone derives from the immediacy of purpose that prompted them to write.
All the women asked for money, for additional communication, and for the
return of the men to whom they wrote. What we see anecdotally is borne out
in the scholarship on the era;3 women whose husbands or sons left Iberia for
the New World often supported themselves by taking menial jobs, such as
sewing or selling food, or apprenticed their children, and relied heavily on
relatives for help to provide housing and food. The letters reveal a common
experience: women whose spouses and children left them in Spain while they
sought New World endeavors suffered hardships.
Women’s efforts to contact their departed husbands often revolved around
the issue of men’s responsibilities to their children. Sometimes, the children
were newborns or not yet born when husbands boarded ships for the New
World. The task of raising the children fell to the women. While the needs of
children were constant—they required food, shelter, clothing, care in times
of illness—some women found it more urgent to write their husbands around
times of crisis or when the child was nearing adulthood. For daughters, the
approach of adulthood meant that it was time to amass a dowry to ensure a
suitable marriage. The networks of a father could help sons find work and, as
we see in the case of María Gómez, the hope that a son could join his father
in Mexico. Overall, we see that children figure prominently in these letters
as the bond between men and women who have been separated for years on

3. Mary Elizabeth Perry, Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville (Princeton, NJ: Princ-
eton University Press, 1990).

61
 5 • Life and Love in Women’s Letters to Spouses

end. And women viewed paternal contributions to the future of these chil-
dren as a cultural obligation on the part of their husbands.4
The responsibility of a father to his children as well as of husband to his
wife was also considered within a religious framework. The letters frame
notions of obligation in terms of Christian duty. Women’s language here
served as both reminder and threat. Francisca Hernández, for instance,
claimed that if her husband did not pay her in this life, he would pay in the
next. Whether by making direct pleas for economic assistance or relying on
religious discourse to shame men into action, these women used their letters
for direct messages.
Some of these letters surely went unanswered. In that case, women might
continue to write or they might decide to file a complaint with the crown to
bring their husbands back to them. As strange as this might seem, the crown,
in keeping with religious models of family, but also in the interest of model-
ing family units for its empire, supported some women in their attempts to
find their husbands. According to royal legal code for the Indies, married men
were only allowed to stay in the Indies for three years without returning to
Spain or bringing their wives to the New World. Moreover, had a women’s
husband married again in the New World, that would have been a crime of
bigamy and led to further investigation. While many women remained unsat-
isfied in their searches, a lucky few were reunited with husbands or received
some financial support from them after Crown intervention.5
The letter writers from Spain have much in common in this context, but
they are also separated by an important distinction: María Gómez and Leonor
Gil de Molina were both legitimately married to the men to whom they wrote
while Francisca Hernández de los Arcos was not. It was not uncommon for
men and women to have children outside of marriage in early modern Spain.6
Moreover, the medieval tradition of barraganía had written into law a series
of guidelines to practice with regard to lovers and illegitimate children born
to, for example, merchants who were away for long periods of time. Despite
the fact that Hernández de los Arcos’s situation was not unique, her letter
reveals important strategies that she used to protect the identity of her lover.
Also, her recourse to support from the Crown or from family was diminished

4. On women seeking assistance from spouses in the Indies, see Jane E. Mangan, Transat-
lantic Obligations: Creating the Bonds of Family in Conquest-Era Peru and Spain (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2016), especially Chapter 3.
5. See Mangan, Transatlantic Obligations, Chapter 4.
6. Allyson M. Poska analyzes practices of family formation, women’s sexuality, and out-of-
wedlock births in Poska, Women and Authority in Early Modern Spain: The Peasants of Galicia
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
 Map 3: Letters Sent between Spouses and Lovers

Cadiz, Spain to Veracruz, Mexico Seville

via Cuba Alcala de los Gazules

Mines of
Guanajuato

Mexico City
Veracruz, Mexico to Cadiz, Spain

Key
Jalapa
Atlantic Ocean
María Gomez
Leonor Gil de Molina
Coatepec Francisca Hernández
Xalcomulco de los Arcos
N 0 20 km Ana de Anguiano
Megan Rohrer | 2017 750 0 750 1500 2250 GADM | Robinson Projection

Kilometers
 5 • Life and Love in Women’s Letters to Spouses

in comparison to women like Gómez and Gil de Molina because of the ille-
gitimate status of her children.7
While the first four letters highlight the challenges of couples separated by
an ocean, in the final five letters, the back-and-forth correspondence between
Ana de Anguiano and Francisco de Barbosa suggests the possibilities of mar-
ried life for a woman who followed her husband to the New World. Angui-
ano was part of a growing number of women who traveled to the Indies by
the latter half of the sixteenth century.8 Despite making the long journey to
Mexico, she found herself alone while her husband traveled for work. None-
theless, the content and tone of her letters with her husband are quite differ-
ent from those of her contemporaries who remained in Spain and reveal the
experience this couple shared of adjusting to the culture, local economy, and
local networks in Mexico.
As you read the letters, locate points of comparison between the transat-
lantic letters and the Mexican ones. Consider, too, the comparison between
the married women and the unmarried one; how did marriage create differ-
ence? What do the letters reveal about how family was defined in this era—
what was common for mothers, fathers, and children? What do the letters tell
us about the economics of family life or daily life in the 1500s? And, finally,
how many emotions do letter writers express in these letters and what words
reveal the emotions?

5.1 María Gómez Writes to Her Husband (1567)9

Letter 13

María Gómez (vecina of [the city of] Ronda) writing from Seville to her hus-
band Juan Escudero (barber and surgeon)10 in the City of Mexico. 1567.
Vol. 91, fols. 157–157v.

7. On the distinction between “natural” and “illegitimate” children, see Chapter 1, footnote 7.
8. For an example of a woman who traveled without her husband to the New World, see the
case of Francisca Díaz in Chapter 4.
9. This and all the following letters are translated from Rocío Sánchez Rubio and Isabel
Testón Núñez, El hilo que une: Las relaciones epistolares en el viejo y el nuevo mundo. (Siglos
XVI–XVIII) (Mérida: Universidad de Extremadura, 1999). Sánchez Rubio and Testón Núñez
located these letters among bigamy cases in the Ramo de Inquisición of the Archivo General
de la Nación de México.
10. Barbers, in addition to grooming-related work, acted as low-level medical practitioners
who performed such services as bloodletting, surgery, and dental extraction. Surgeons operated
 5 • Life and Love in Women’s Letters to Spouses

Señor (Sir) Husband,

It would be reasonable after these nineteen years since you moved away
from me and left me pregnant, or rather newly delivered, one day before you
left for those parts [Mexico] and with two children, that you would have cor-
responded with me and with them. But I saw that you had left me no means
of raising even the one I was nursing. Still I raised these two sons, and one of
them died at age four, and Juan, the eldest I have with me alive and he has a
great desire to meet his father, and he, already a man, seeing the scarce means
that I have, wants to leave me to find you.
Therefore, I beg you, for the love of God, to pity me and the great travails
that I have suffered and continue to suffer to raise him; do not permit him to
leave while I remain here without a husband and without a son; instead you
should come with all haste possible to live with me and with your son like the
Christian that you are. And it is certain that if you would see and know him,
he would rejoice and have great happiness in this.
His name, as I say, and according to your wish, is Juan and he is now
named after you: Juan Escudero, and this is his surname. He is a very good
young man and virtuous, and with the little that I earned as a woman with
my hands, I put him to work as an apprenticed tailor. And it is certain that
with what he earns, we are both able to eat and if it were not for him, as I
am old and tired and am near the end of my days, I would already be dead.
And señor, with this fleet that came from New Spain, a scribe says that he
received a letter from which he took a memo and sent it to Ronda, asking for
news of me, about if I was dead or alive, and if I was married and for how
long, and about how many children I have and if they were alive or dead. And
the report came to my hands and after I took the necessary steps, and came
to this city of Seville following the letter and with the great desire we had, I
and your son, to learn about you. We went to la Contratación (the House
of Trade) and we spoke with the scribe that sent the letter and when he saw
me and your son, he said it was from you, and that a perulero (native of Peru)
who had come on this armada had given him a letter, but he had lost it and
did not know where it was. And I did this in vain, and we spent some money
(unas blancas) on this that your son had not yet earned.
At the time that I write this, we are in Seville and although we know how
to ask for it, for the love of God, we have to complain to the señores of the
House of Trade in order that they tell us which scribe that it was the reason
why he sent us the letter and cost us so much work.

at a slightly higher level on the medical hierarchy, and though they often had no formal educa-
tion, they learned how to set bones, perform amputations, and do bloodletting as apprentices.

65
 5 • Life and Love in Women’s Letters to Spouses

And so señor, for the one God, we pray very much that you pity us and
remember that we all habíais de morir (must die) and that you are captive.11 I
say this in truth and because if it were not for people telling me, I would do
you much harm even if good people were to see it. For the love of God, send a
letter that you have written; it is not just that such an honorable man, as they
tell me you are, which I take to be true, should be so long in mortal sin and
separated from his wife. And because I have faith in God and that you will
make things much better than I find them, I trust in this end.
And I tell you that I and your son, Juan Escudero, are alive and well, and
my sisters kiss your hand. Your brother-in-law Luis Real died six years ago
and left one son who has a great desire to see you. May my God, Our Señor
(Lord), keep you and give you the grace to agree to come to Spain so that my
eyes may look upon you before I die.
From Seville, 13 September, 1567. From your desiring and very loving wife.

María Gómez.

Señor: if by chance you, have a post in that city such that you cannot come,
for the Love of God your son Juan Escudero begs you to send us some secure
funds for him to leave to see you and see you, because he has great desire, as
I say, to meet his father, but that I would not come because, for my sins, I
am old and sick and am afraid if I were to undertake such a long journey, I
would die.

To my very desired and beloved Juan Escudero, barber and surgeon, in the
City of Mexico, in New Spain, my señor.

5.2 Francisca Hernández de los Arcos Writes to Her Lover (1574)

Letter 26

Francisca Hernández de los Arcos, from Seville to her lover Cosme Sánchez
de Bilbao (merchant), in the mines of Guadajate, close to the City of Mexico.
1574. Vol. 105. s/f.

11. Both María Gómez in this letter and Francisca Hernández, in the subsequent one, repeat-
edly wrote that their estranged menfolk habíais de morir. They were surely attempting to
prompt the charity of the men by reminding them of the Christian notion of the last judgment
that at death all humans must face God’s judgment of their deeds on earth.
 5 • Life and Love in Women’s Letters to Spouses

Señor Hermano (brother):12

I am frightened by your great stubbornness in not writing me through a
trusted person, since I had found such a person, who was the innkeeper of
Santa Catalina, where your son died on the day of San Juan. He told me he
had been with you and spent fifteen days in your home. The reason was that
since he spoke to you in person and he told you that you should come to see
your children and especially to see the one that had been born, and whether it
was a son or daughter, whoever had this information with him, a letter would
be greater comfort to me since you know that you are at least obliged to write
that, even if you do no more than leave me with two children and five months
pregnant. From this pregnancy, I gave birth to a son whose name is Juan
Sancho de Bilbao, like your father, and I have raised the children with great
effort. Juan and Diego are alive. Rodrigo was killed; for this I have remained
inconsolable.
You have not done that which you promised as a Christian, but rather
have shown that you undertake these tasks as if you had no conscience and
were on the point of death. You well know that because of you I lost my land,
my estate, my husband, my children, and that I am hated by my siblings and
my mother, and that after you left, I was cut off from the relatives of my
husband; if it had not been for don (sir) Rodrigo Ponce, they would have one
come to kill me one night.
All these hardships I have suffered because of you and not only for you
now but also for your children. It was not enough to make me lose my house
but also the house of don Rodrigo. I beg you for the love of God to remember
me and your sons since you know that I would not make it known that they
are yours.
I do not have Diego de Bilbao, your son, with me because out of pity a
cousin of mine took him with him to Las Palmas so I would not lose him,
because he is now a man, and I, as a mother, can hardly provide for them.
The one whom you left me with pregnant is already a man, and the other
will become one as well. Many times, I have wanted to do this [i.e., write to
you] but because I believed you would not answer me, I thought it would
always be this way. This man has such little conscience, does he think he will
never die? I wish you would have remembered me more, even if it was only
for having led you where I did; even if you had no other relative, you would
be obliged to repay me for this.
Señor Gonzalo de Peralta, your friend, has told me how well and rich you
are. That richness God has given you, so that it will be seen that you are a
Christian and since you have to die, you have to restore something of your

12. Rather than actually referring to her brother, Hernández de los Arcos called Sánchez de
Bilbao “her brother” as a term of endearment and intimacy.

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 5 • Life and Love in Women’s Letters to Spouses

conscience. Speak with him [Peralta] when you see him as you did when
you were friends, because you know each other, and he will inform you of
my hardships and of how I am living. They tell me it is a shame to see me in
such hardships as are seen here, and he took care to take some of them up in
his own hands and [said he would] make sure that you would send me some
money to help me with my hardship. If you saw fit to send for your son Juan
and for me, I am ready for anything you might send because I have been
many times [ready] to go there but I have not done it because I understood
you to be a better Christian than you have shown you are.
For the love of God, I beg you to write me and send me some money to
help me because I am tired of working because the little you send me will be
worth much to me. And if you send it, let it be to the House of Trade, so that
it will not be like those of the Sarmiento family who never give me anything,
not even a power [of attorney] because they told me you had never left it with
them. For this reason, send it to me now because if you send something I can
get it; and even if you write through the House of Trade, write to me at the
house of the bonnet maker on Gradas Street. Write to doña María Grillo; you
must have the greatest care in writing to me since I was the mother of your
sons. You must by now understand the pain that I have in my heart and such
is the health of doña María Grillo, that it affected the pay that she gives me
and your sons.
I am in the company of a señora from my region who is very honorable; I
do not have anything else you may have sent me but you must see that I am
a Christian and you must die some day and my health gets worse each day.
Your sons have a great desire to see you, both the one that has left and the one
I have with me; they ask me every day about you and, as your sons, they wish
to see you and they pray to God for you. If you are married, this should not
prevent you from repaying me what you owe me and from remembering your
sons because if in this world you do not pay me, you will pay it in the next.
Look carefully at what you do because for you I suffer derrostrada (shame-
faced) and go about in tierras ajenas (foreign lands) because however much
hardship I face in this world, you will endure in the next since you are the
cause of it all. There is not enough paper to write you all that I feel, and these
letters are written with drops of blood from my heart.
Mateo Jorge came from the Indies and I did not ask him anything about
the shoes that you said you had sent with him, I did not say anything to him,
nor has he given me anything, nor do I think to ask for them.
I will not say more, except to wish that God and his blessed mother should
have you before them and in Christianity.

From Seville, the last day of May 1574. At your service,

Francisca Hernández de los Arcos

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 5 • Life and Love in Women’s Letters to Spouses

Letter 27

Francisca Hernández de los Arcos, from Seville, to her lover Cosme Sánchez
de Bilbao (merchant), in the mines of Guadajate, close to the City of Mexico.
1575. Vol 105, s/f.

Señor Brother,
I have done this [written you] many times, and I have been more careful
in it than he.13 You have not answered any letter, for I do not know what
reason although it cannot be because of me. That you had children with me
should give you sufficient cause to remember, for you left me with two [chil-
dren] and another one in the belly. The one you left in the belly is as big as
the others and is put to work as a colchero (mattress maker) because of your
absence. And the boy desires to meet and know his father, and he asks me
every day for him. And since you had the mouth to speak to the innkeeper of
Santa Catalina and two others that came to speak to me, it would be good if
you also had the hands to send me some money for your children and for me
as a gift. Just because you are married you cannot forget about me or them,
because you have obligations since you know that for all the hardship I suffer
and have suffered you must ask forgiveness from God, since I suffer on your
account; look to God in heaven and ask him for it.
With what nerve do you send me to ask me for Dieguito?14 Do you think
me as foolish as before? And since you sent everything to Dieguito, you
should also send [support] to Juan since you know they are [both] yours and
you should not blame them as you know. And when you send for them, you
should send for them as hijos de padres15 so that there is knowledge that they
should have something [from you], because they have not been deprived on
my side, and you know me and who I am, and that they were not made by
somebody else. Remember you must die [one day] so do not regret not doing
right by them; it would be good if you had sent some support ever since you
got there. A man that has not taken care to send me a letter does not deserve
to forget the rest. May it please God that just as you remember me, God will
remember you; and I leave it to Him that which is in his possession. And you
know well that I am right, since you took away the peace that I could have
had. I have not written you recently because I have had some brief jobs and

13. Here, she presumably means that she has taken more care than Cosme Sánchez de Bilbao.
14. Likely her son, Diego de Bilbao.
15. Hernández de los Arcos is trying to distinguish between orphans, or unrecognized chil-
dren here.

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 5 • Life and Love in Women’s Letters to Spouses

I inform you since they tell me my husband is alive and wants to go there16
with wine.
My mother and my brothers are coming to where I am; I have taken all
these assaults because of you, you should pay me by gifting me from there. To
the carrier of this letter, would you do me the favor of gifting him something
and doing for him that which is necessary. So that he will hold you in greater
friendship you should give him something that he can bring, and take care
because until now I have not had nothing to thank you for but a jug of water
that you sent me from there. And if you send him with something, send a
poder (power of attorney) so that I can collect what you are sending, and do it
with this messenger because he is a trusted and known person and will return.
And he will tell you about the hardship I have and where I am and whom I
serve, since I wanted my fortune to come from you, for better or worse17 look
to the responsibility you have, when you ran from duty. And with this, may
Our Señor give you better judgment that you have had until now, and health
so you can take up some of that for which you are responsible. If you write
me put it . . .18 in them in Gradas [street] in the house of the bonnet maker,
and I will get the letters there.

From Sevilla, the 20th of May 1575. I remain at your service, as always,
Francisca de los Arcos

To my señor brother Cosme Sánchez de Bilbao, merchant, in the mines of

Guadajate in New Spain, near the City of Mexico. This is my señor. Guada-
jate, to the messenger four reales.19

5.3 Leonor Gil de Molina Writes to Her Husband (1576)

Letter 30

Leonor Gil de Molina, from Alcalá de los Gazules, to her husband, licenciado
Juan Chávez de Vargas (instructor in grammar), in Mexico. 1576. Vol. 106,
s/f.

16. Presumably, to Mexico.

17. This idiomatic phrase is “Mi ventura que por vos viniese yo a ser más y a ser menos” in the
original.
18. Ellipses in the original.
19. One real was a piece of currency worth one eighth of a peso.
 5 • Life and Love in Women’s Letters to Spouses

My much desired señor,

If I had understood how much I would feel your departure, I would have
understood dying since I have not experienced anything before in so much
pain, because when I have previously been apart from, I did not feel it to the
point that I do now, because the pain my heart feels is so much because I have
so much hardship and the remedy for it is so far away. Many times, if God
had not been with me, I would have already made a terrible mistake, because
I am an inconsolable woman who is so little favored by him who has a duty to
oblige me. But since God is such a great señor, he makes a space in my heart
and gives me patience to live this trying life. If I tell you what I felt when I
sent you the mattress and the books and they were sent back; I felt so much
pain that I tell you truthfully that I began to have cisuras (wounds), for more
than a month; and after they gave me the letters, it pleased God to make them
heal and restore my health for the time being, which I pray God will not take
away from me until we see each other.
What you wrote to my uncle Mateo Sánchez in your letter did not come
into effect because they understood that in order to keep me in his home,
they had to give me his estate and this is why they said that there was no
house for him until his daughter left. And I have seen the lack of love from
my aunt and the little help of my brothers; my sister left her house and came
to live with me. And one month after we began living together, on the Sat-
urday of Carnestolendas,20 she had a pain on the side, which took her life
after twenty-one days and we buried her on the day of the Incarnation. Her
death has affected me so much that I know if you saw me now, you would
not recognize me. It was a lot that I lost when losing Miguel Pérez. I should
not have bored you with this, because you already know how bad things got,
and for the love of God, I hope that you feel this and will bear it with patience
because these are the acts of our Señor, and because I understand where you
must go, I tell you this.
For the love of God, remember the hardships we both have, and if it is pos-
sible to send some money to pay for the house in which we live and the other
one that my uncle is renting to us next year, for us and for my brother, the
widower, who will be with us. We are going to live in the house Juan Lobo
bought, next to my uncle’s house, which belonged to his mother from Silleros.
­
We go there to keep the favor of my uncle and because in our hardship we
have had not had any other house. That is why he wanted to bring us close to
his home where we can be cared for until God brings you back to Spain.
For the love of God, may you perceive what little fortune we have and
as soon as possible, determine to come back here to live or take us with you
whether by sea or by land, because ever since Miguel Pérez left us, we should

20. Three days before Ash Wednesday.

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 5 • Life and Love in Women’s Letters to Spouses

have been with you, but since it is a path we cannot walk, we will be praying
to God to let us see you with him for the good of serving him. And so I have
nothing more to say except that I pray God listens to our prayers.
From Alcalá, April 28, 1576. I love you more than anything I love you,
your wife,

Leonor Gil de Molina

To the very magnificent señor, the licenciado Juan de Chávez in the City of
Mexico, in the home of señor doctor Miranda, oidor to His Majesty. He is
my señor.

5.4 The Married Couple Francisco de Barbosa and

Ana de Anguiano Write One Another (1573)

Letter 254

Francisco de Barbosa from Xalcomulco to his wife Ana de Anguiano, in

Jalapa. 1573. Vol. 184, s/f

My Señora (lady),
I arrived in this town of Xalcomulco with Juan López and we came upon
these indios (indigenous people), and because of their great affection in mat-
ters of money, they gave us two amantecas (featherwork pieces), of the best
kind that there are. To the governor, we sent a half arroba of wine,21 which
the messenger went looking for. Do me this favor, my señora, send word
to Lerna’s house so that Lerna gives the wine to the messenger, because he
should not fail to do this. And if there is none, tell Tomás de Herrera to
give it, I will pay for it; and whatever way it is done, the indio cannot come
without wine.
To my son-in-law, who brings this himself; give the 200 pesos.
I have not sent you fish because we did not even find one to eat.
Receive my goodwill. Juan López kisses your hands; and it should not be
known by any means that from here we bring indios, for the love of Alonso
de Orta, because this is advisable. We have very good news from el Río, and
that is why the indios go willingly.

21. One arroba was equivalent to 4.26 gallons of wine.

 5 • Life and Love in Women’s Letters to Spouses

Give the letters to Juan de Sahagun. May Our Señor permit me to return
to see you in the peace that I desire for you and may he give us his good
blessing.
From Xalcomulco, today Wednesday afternoon, February 14th, 1573.

Yours Until Death.

Francisco de Barbosa.

To my señora Ana de Anguiano, in Jalapa, my señora.

Letter 255

Francisco de Barbosa, from the inn of Cuatepec, to his señora, Ana de

Anguiano, in Jalapa. 1573, Vol. 184, s/f.
­
My Señora,
Today, Friday morning, I received your letter, and with it great pleasure in
knowing about your health, which Our Lord will always give you.
I received the mattress, and the indio took the other, and inside it a shirt
of mine, and a cofia (cap), a pillow and two bobos22 that I bought here and I
wanted to send them before eating them.
I received the letter from Hernando Alonso and saw what it said. I have
already told you what Córdoba wants to do with Alonso Gallego, and I wrote
you a long letter, and I also wrote to your honorable son-in-law about how
much good he has done. They are trying to kill me with this sale23 and Pero
[sic] Hernández is the one that wants to form the debt, and your brother is
taking steps against me so that I will be thrown out of this. I do not know
where it will end; I have not seen any other letter other than the one the indio
brought.
I cannot go out on the way to meet the alcade mayor (district judge and
governor) because I do not know when he will come. I will go there Thursday
or Friday without fail, that is why you have fodder and do not tell anyone I
am coming. And tell Alonso Gallego in secret not to go anywhere, because
we will go where he knows, that I will be there soon. You will ask for the
money as a favor, and if they give it to you keep it very safe, because it is of
great need.
Today, Friday, we finished stoning the well, which in truth costs me more
than fifty pesos; but it is fixed for as long as the world exists. Work on the

22. Bobo has many meanings, including simpletons, but here it likely refers to a fish found in
rivers in Mexico and Guatemala.
23. Ejecutarme en esta venta in the original.

73
 5 • Life and Love in Women’s Letters to Spouses

fountain will carry on until Monday and they will work on it until Monday
all day, because then the indios will finish and after I will go see you with the
help of God.
I sent Bartolomé yesterday to Tecamachalco to straighten the chair and
buy me boots, already these ones can no longer bring me anywhere. Tell
Mariquilla that I am alive and that I will pay her for the love she shows you.
Kiss the hands of the alcade mayor for me because since I do not have paper, I
cannot write him. Kiss also the hands of señor Horta and doña María.
I do not have anything else to tell you. May Our Señor keep you in his
holy hand, Amen.
From the inn of Cuatepec, today Friday at 10 o’clock. Yours until death.

Francisco de Barbosa

To my señora wife Ana de Anguiano, in Jalapa, my señora.

Letter 256

Ana de Anguiano, from Jalapa, to her husband Francisco Barbosa. 1573, Vol.
184, s/f.

My señor,
I have been, and am, with so much distress that you cannot imagine in not
knowing the state of your health, or even what you have been doing. On your
life, you must send word to us about what has happened to you, for in the
sixteen days since you left here you, you seem to have forgotten where your
house is. My children and I kiss the hands of the one to whom we do not
speak. I ask you to what end you have left. On your life, make haste.
I do not say more, only that Ines Núñez has not given me money, I will
tell you that she says she does not have it.
From Jalapa, today, Wednesday, where I remain. Your wife.

Ana de Anguiano.

The señor alcade is scared because you did not write to him with the informa-
tion about the land. I have a friend that would send them there without the
three pesos, but he did not send them, since I believe you are on your way.

Letter 257

Ana de Anguiano, from Jalapa, to her husband Francisco Barbosa. 1573. Vol.
184, s/f.
 5 • Life and Love in Women’s Letters to Spouses

My señor and all my consolation:

You know I have been very lonely without you and that I do not know
what will become of me. On your life, my soul, hurry as quickly as you can.
They bring the adze24 and two axes—one for cutting because we found
none among the tools—and they bring the barreta (crowbar) and the can-
tarita (copper pot) canteen and three bateas (kneading troughs). They bring
two shirts and zaragüelles (trousers), and a hand cloth and a cap, that the
urca25 has not appeared. . . .26
From here, there is nothing you need to know. On your life, my soul, do
what you can to avoid sending me Bartolomillo; do not send him, because he
is wicked, and he is of no use to me, because God knows what it took to get
him out of town, and he is so childish. If you can, send a little bacon with an
indio; you know I cannot eat.
I do not have anything else to tell you about, only that we are all well. May
our Señor let me see you. With my soul I leave you.
From Jalapa, today, Friday, where I remain. Yours until death.
Ana de Anguiano.
Reina says to collect the cal 27 that is in San Juan.
To my señor Francisco de Barbosa, wherever he may be, my señor.

Letter 258

Ana de Anguiano, from Jalapa, to her husband Francisco Barbosa. 1573. Vol.
184, s/f.

My señor,
Because the messenger is trusted, I write you. My children are well, except
that Reina is very unhappy over her ceramics, and a lot of it broke, and I do
not know what will become of it. And it does not stop raining day and night;
our Señor will stop it here.
So, on your life, write me a little because I am very sad and lonely. I have
nothing more to say. May our Lord give you health.
From Jalapa, on the day of San Pedro and San Pablo, I remain.

Your wife.
Ana de Anguiano.

24. A carpentry tool.

25. Possibly an alpaca. One Andean term for alpaca is urco. The Diccionario de Autoridades
(1739) defines urca as a large boat, which obviously cannot be its meaning here.
26. The final line of the paragraph reads: Mira si las llevastes en las calzas. The editors have not
succeeded in translating the phrase in a way that makes sense in the context of the paragraph.
27. Cal has several meanings including a white wood, quicklime, and white wash.

75
 5 • Life and Love in Women’s Letters to Spouses

Reina and her woman kiss your hands; they say hurry up and that we all have
to go up.28
To my señor Francisco de Barbosa, my señor.

Suggested Reading

Altman, Ida. Transatlantic Ties in the Spanish Empire: Brihuega, Spain and Puebla,
Mexico, 1560–1620. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.
Cook, Alexandra Parma, and Noble David Cook. Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance:
A Case of Transatlantic Bigamy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991.
Perry, Mary Elizabeth. Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1990.

Document Themes
• Family
• Labor
• Migration and mobility
• Property
• Religion

28. Ir arriba in the original.

 6

Mothers and Wives in Labor Agreements

(Arequipa, 1590; La Plata, 1602;
and Potosí, 1571 and 1659)

In the latter quarter of the sixteenth century, indigenous and occasionally

Afro–Peruvian women began to appear before notaries to sign work con-
tracts. In such acts, women agreed to perform a particular type of labor,
during a specific period of time, for a specific person, and at a specific wage,
all formalized in front of a notary public. Women also came before notaries
in this period as mothers who signed up their children for apprenticeships.
Generally speaking, non-Spaniards most often signed contracts to work for
Spaniards, but there were occasional exceptions to this rule. The collection
of documents in this chapter highlights how colonial-era wives and mothers
made labor agreements. While historians take it for granted that indigenous
and Afro–Peruvian women worked as servants for Spaniards, the details of
those arrangements are revealed in very few documents. The texts that fol-
low provide an official record of such agreements. They were written accord-
ing to a formula that demanded certain things of the worker and of the
employer. We can learn about the supposed nature of these jobs because
these formulas were repeated over and over in different cities of colonial
Peru. However, because each contract varied slightly, this chapter allows
the reader to consider individual women as historical, social, and economic
actors.
As many of our chapters demonstrate, women worked throughout the
colonial era. They worked as market vendors, seamstresses, laundresses, wet
nurses, servants, sex workers, midwives, and in houses, shops, and taverns,
in textile mills, and on farms. In the corporate setting of the convent, they
also ran agricultural estates, acted as landlords, and served as lenders of capi-
tal. Generally speaking, women worked in jobs closer to home than did
men (so men might be long-distance merchants whereas women were urban
merchants) and most physically taxing jobs such as mining were predomi-
nantly performed by male workers while women did jobs considered less
physically demanding. Indigenous men were designated as tribute payers
by the Spanish colonial system and thus their labor (for example, as mine
laborers) was often forcibly required by Spanish officials. Enslaved women

77
 6 • Mothers and Wives in Labor Agreements

worked doing whatever they were told (for instance, as domestic workers,
street vendors, bakers, or plantation workers). The only women who did not
work were elite Spanish women whose economic situation allowed them to
engage servants or purchase slaves who performed all domestic chores. Many
non-elite Spanish women, however, worked in order to support household
economies.1
Women’s negotiations around labor often involved their roles within fam-
ilies as well. Mothers who approved or initiated apprenticeship contracts for
children sought training for their sons. Wives who signed labor agreements
often did so in the presence of their husbands so that, as heads of house-
holds, these men could give permission for their wives to enter into labor
agreements. Some of these women entered into not only the household of
another family when they worked, but also new kin networks associated with
these. The presence of relatives who appear in the following work agree-
ments suggests that women did not work in isolation from their husbands
and families but often sought contract work as part of a household strategy
or responsibility.
Any strategy relative to work in the colonial era revolved around earn-
ing money. The contracts reveal important economic shifts that occurred as
indigenous people became drawn into a peso economy, as indigenous women
began to labor away from their homes and families, and as forms of exploit-
ative labor occurred beyond those imposed by the colonial state in “indi-
vidual” relationships that relied on paternalism. Notice that in more than
one case, women received wages in advance to pay off debts. In such cases,
their future labor earnings had already been spent before they even started
working.
As you read, you will notice that these work and apprenticeship agree-
ments are brief. Imagine that hundreds of such contracts might be signed in
the space of one month in any given city. Examine these examples closely.
What do women’s jobs suggest about the roles they fulfilled in colonial soci-
ety? What kinds of wages did the women and children receive? How is racial
identity reflected in the form of payment? What does the format of the work
contract suggest about the obligations of employer to worker? What do the
contracts tell us not just about women, but about families in colonial society?
Finally, would the female laborers benefit from agreeing to these notarized
contracts? Why or why not?

1. On women and urban work, see Jane E. Mangan, Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity and the
Urban Economy in Colonial Potosí (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005).
 6 • Mothers and Wives in Labor Agreements

6.1 Work Contract of Catalina Caima2

In the city of Arequipa of Peru on January 13, 1590 before Francisco Fernán-
dez Tarifeno, alcalde ordinario (judge) of this city, and in presence of me,
the public scribe and notary, appeared Catalina Caima, india (indigenous
woman), native she said of the city of Cuzco. She said that of her good will
she agreed by document to service and stipend with Hernando Alvárez de la
Serda, to serve him and doña (lady) Isabel de Castro, his wife, for the period
of one year counting from today, the date of this document. She is to be given
for this service twelve pesos of eight reales each and two dresses of avasca 3 or
cotton; it is understood that one acsu (tunic) and one lliclla (a shawl) [should
go with] each dress. [She will also have] to eat and drink and [she will] be
cured if she is ill. She is obliged during the said time period not to leave, nor
be absent from the said service. If she should do this, she will lose the time
served and begin to serve anew. Hernando Alvárez de la Serda, who was pres-
ent, agreed to the payment of what is said above and to not dismiss the india
from his service during the said time period under penalty that he would pay
for the entire year. To comply as such, each one of the parties for themselves
gave power to your majesty’s justices and renounced the laws in their favor
and the general law. I, licenciado (licenciate) Alvárez, the public scribe, testify
that Juan López Mancano signed this and because the india did not know
how to write, the notary of this document signed for her. Witnesses were
Juan López Mancano and Juan Vejarano and Sebastián de Encinas Cañizares

[signatures]: Francisco López Tarifeno, Licenciado Alvárez de la Serda.

Witnessed by Juan López Mancano and signed before me, in the name of
this public and cabildo (municipal council), scribe Afrian de Ufelde.

6.2 Work Contract of Inés Quispe4

In the City of Arequipa on February 7, 1590 before me, Francisco Hernán-

dez Tarifeno, alcalde ordinario of this city appeared Inés Quispe india, native
she said of the community of Tiayvaya, in the jurisdiction of this city, enco-
mienda (landed estate) of Alonso Picado, vecino (citizen) of this city. Of her
good will she said she agreed to service and stipend with Fernando Hernández

2. Archivo Regional de Arequipa, Adrian de Ufelde 1590, folio 21.

3. Avasca is the Quechua term for cloth made of a coarse weave of alpaca wool.
4. Archivo Regional de Arequipa, Adrian de Ufelde 1590, folio 69.

79
 6 • Mothers and Wives in Labor Agreements

Retamoso, vecino of this city to serve him and doña Mariana de Mercado his
wife for the period of one year, counting from today, the date of this docu-
ment. She is to be given for the said service twelve pesos of eight reales each
and two dresses of avasca or cotton; it is understood that one acsu and one
lliclla [should go with] each dress. [She will also have] to eat and drink and
a home and will be taught the Christian doctrine and be cured if she is ill.
She agrees to having received the two dresses and ten pesos toward her said
salary for which she was satisfied. [Hernández] agreed to pay the said india
the remainder of her salary and to not dismiss the said india from his service
during the said time period under penalty that he would pay for the entire
year. Each party, in obligation of goods received and to receive, gave power to
the justices and renounced the laws in their favor. The said alcalde signed and
executed this and I, Fernando Hernández, testified to this. For the india who
did not know how [to sign], witness Mateo de Funes [signed]. Blas Velasco
and Graviel de Larra, alcaldes of this city.
Signed Francisco Fernández Tarijeno and Francisco Retamasso
As witness, Mateo de Funes
Before me, Adrian de Ufelde, public notary.

6.3 Luisa de la Cerda Signs Apprenticeship for Her Son5

In La Plata August 14, 1602 in presence of me, the scribe and witnesses, I
swear, recognize and grant that Luisa de la Cerda free morena (black woman)
appeared and agreed that her son, Fernando de la Cerda mulato (person
of African and Spanish parentage),6 serve with Gonzalo Hernández, mas-
ter tailor, for the period of two years counting from today, the date of this
document until completed. During this time, [Hernández] must teach [de
la Cerda] the trade of tailor and [the latter] shall serve him in all that he is
ordered and is reasonable. For this service, [Hernández] is to give him after
one year an outfit of Quito wool in whatever color he wishes; this is under-
stood as pants and jacket and cape and a hat and two Rouen shirts and two
Dutch ruffs7 and all the shoes that he needs. And at the end of this time, he
is to give him another outfit of good wool and two more Rouen shirts and
two Dutch cuffs and a hat and shoes. Gonzalo Hernández is to assume the
cost of the outfits, and he is to teach her son all that he can learn and know

5. Archivo Nacional de Bolivia, Escrituras Publicas, Michel 1602, Tomo 71, f. 606v.
6. He is described as a minor later in the document.
7. Cuellos de olanda, pieces of cloth worn at the neck to be laundered separately from the
jacket, thus keeping the jacket clean.
 6 • Mothers and Wives in Labor Agreements

about the trade of tailor without any dishonesty or fraud. And, he is to give
him food, housing, and clean clothing during this time and cure him of his
illness and teach him good customs in conformity with Christian obligations.
In turn, her son is obliged not to leave this service during the two years. If he
should leave during that time, Francisco de la Cerda shall be taken from any
location and place where he is and compelled by the rigor of law and justice
to finish the owed time, and that he should lose any time he shall have served
and restart the two-year service again. Gonzalo Hernández [Hernández agrees
to the conditions and the document is signed by Hernández and the notary.]

6.4 Work Contract of Isabel Guayra8

Isabel Guayra, india, native of Checasupa, and wife of don Juan Pariguana,
agreed to serve Juan de Xexas for one year. Juan de Xexas is to give her one
hundred silver pesos plus the rent of a store for Isabel.9 Isabel said that she
agrees to serve with the said Juan de Xexas for the year to serve him by selling
coca in a store.10 And, for doing this service and renting the store, he is to
give her [a quantity of] silver which is 146 pesos and she is to take her clothing
and shoes and food from those pesos. And Isabel, india, agreed to keep good
accounts for the said Juan de Xexas of all the coca that he delivers to her so
that nothing is unaccounted for. And, during this time, Isabel agreed not
to sell any other person’s coca apart from the said Juan de Xexas. Signed by
Martin de Barrientos (public notary).

6.5 Work Contract for Luisa Sisa11

In the Imperial Villa (city) of Potosí, on October 17th, 1659, some indios
appeared before me, Juan Pérez de Goynativia, public notary of this Villa. One
is named Luisa Sisa, a yanacaona (personal retainer) of the principal church
of this Villa, and with express license and agreement of Francisco Saes, indio,
who said he is her legitimate husband. [Sisa] agreed with Francisco Yanguren,
vecino, of this Villa that she would serve him as a wet nurse to raise a son of

8. AHP-CNM.EN 4 Cuadernillo #11, Fol. 1, Potosi, 23 may 1571.

9. Here there is an omission of the formulaic language that outlines the obligations of the
employer to the worker, as spelled out in the contracts of Inés Quispe and Catalina Caima.
10. On the trade of coca in Potosí, see Paulina Numhauser, Mujeres indias y señores de la coca:
Potosí y Cuzco en el siglo XVI (Madrid: Ediciones Catedra, 2005).
11. AHP-CNM.EN 118 Fol. 573–573v, 17 octubre 1659 JPdG.

81
 6 • Mothers and Wives in Labor Agreements

his and breastfeed him and do all that is necessary that she can do insofar as
raising the son as well as what she can do in the house of Francisco Yanguren.
Further, she is obliged to never be absent during a year-and-a-half. Yanguren
agrees that he is to give her five pesos every month. At the end of the stated
year-and-a-half, he is to give her a basic dress and a custom dress for which he
will reserve ten pesos. And, likewise, it is a condition that on any occasion when
Francisco Saes would like to see Luisa Sisa, his wife, or sleep with her, it must
be with the consent of Francisco Yanguren because of the risk this could have
for the baby. Signed Juan Pérez de Goynativia.

6.6 Work Contract of María Cangua and Juana de Torres12

In the Imperial Villa of Potosí on March 24th, 1659, some indias appeared
before me, Juan Pérez de Goynativia, public notary of the Villa. Through
interpretation, they said they are named María Cangua and Juana de Torres,
mother and daughter, naturales (natives) of the Province of Copacabana.
They said that inasmuch as they owe María de la Barrera, who is present,
ninety-two pesos and four reales, and because they have no way to be able to
pay her, they have begged and pleaded with Graviela de Toro, who is present,
that she pay the said quantity for them. In exchange, they will make chicha
(corn beer) for her and discount the pesos as they make it, with María de la
Barrera. To be fair they want to make and offer as their guarantor Cristobal
Tito of the pueblo of [illegible] and Ysabel Yuscama of the ayllu (Andean kin
unit) of Copacabana, who are present.13 The said María Cangua and Juana de
Torres will repay in this way: they are to make chicha during the whole year
and for the work, with each trip (of chicha) their debt to Graviela de Toro
will be discounted by four reales and one real for food which is a total of five
reales per trip.14 Signed by Juan Pérez de Goynativia.

12. AHP-CNM.EN 118 Fol. 779–780, 24 marco 1659, JPdG.

13. Here there is an omission of the formulaic language that outlines the obligations of the
employer to the worker, as spelled out in the contracts of Inés Quispe and Catalina Caima.
14. It is unclear how much corn beer constitutes a trip. Given that other contracts for chicha
are notarized around this time, there was probably an understanding of a standard amount
based on the typical size of the vats in which it was brewed. Still, this debt will not be paid until
these women have brewed 185 “trips” of chicha, which sounds like a lot.
 6 • Mothers and Wives in Labor Agreements

Suggested Reading

Mangan, Jane E. Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity and the Urban Economy in Colonial
Potosí. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
Stern, Steve J. Peru’s Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest: Huamanga
to 1640. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982. See especially Chapter 6,
“The Political Economy of Dependence.”
Vergara, Teresa. “Growing Up Indian: Migration, Labor, and Life in Lima (1570–
1640),” in Raising an Empire: Children in Early Modern Iberia and Colonial Latin
America, ed. Ondina E. González and Bianca Premo. Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico, 2007.

Document Themes
• Family
• Labor
• Race and ethnicity

83
 7

Criminal Complaint by Angela de

Palacios on Behalf of Her Daughter,
Leonor Arias (Potosí, 1584)

In February of 1584 in the populous silver-mining city of Potosí, Angela de

Palacios filed a criminal complaint against a man and a woman for allow-
ing her daughter, the fourteen-year-old Leonor Arias, to be deflowered. As
with many accusations of sexual assault, the testimony by the mother and
daughter differed from that provided by both the accused and by several
witnesses. Sadly, the extant document does not reveal the final outcome of
the case.1 Once the relevant complaint by Palacios was acknowledged and
testimony was taken, the case turned to focus primarily on property, specifi-
cally an enslaved man and a horse belonging to doña (lady) Isabel de Chávez,
the original accused in the judicial case of first instance. This chapter focuses
on the excerpt pertaining to the allegation of Leonor Arias’ sexual assault to
study colonial society’s culture of gendered honor, the mobility of women
within colonial Peru, and gender roles within urban social networks.
Witness testimony highlights a young woman’s sexual behavior and the
potential of sexual assault as the main themes in this case. In colonial Peru, a
young woman’s family and household protected and guarded the significant
asset of her virginity until marriage. The practice of recogimiento (seclusion) was
a social tool that served to protect women who might be at risk of losing their
honor.2 So, too, was the convent a place where young women might be placed
prior to marriage to protect their honor by keeping them in relative isolation
from men.3 However, great variability often existed between the theory and the
practice of chastity. Women of various racial backgrounds and social statuses
had sex outside of marriage, both with and without their consent.4 In this late
sixteenth-century case, Angela de Palacios brought suit against Ortiz de Velasco

1. This is not uncommon in colonial archives where a case file may have been partially
destroyed or misplaced over the course of several hundred years.
2. Recogimiento here refers to the virtue of enclosure and quiescent conduct for females; is also
treated in Chapters 8, 12, and 13.
3. See Lyman L. Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and
Violence in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998).
4. For Peru, see Bernard Lavallé, Amor y opresión en los Andes coloniales (Lima: IEP, 1999),
67–84. See an empire-wide discussion in Ann Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender,
 7 • Criminal Complaint by Angela de Palacios on Behalf of Her Daughter

for having sex with her unmarried daughter and also charged one doña Isabel
de Chávez as an accomplice for allowing the alleged rape to occur in her home.
When colonial women traveled, as Palacios and her daughter had done,
they ran a greater risk of assault or aggression because they were moving out-
side of the networks that protected them best. In fact, when women traveled
in this era, husbands, fathers, and brothers frequently hired or appointed
trusted men to look out for their wives, sisters, or daughters.5 In young Leonor
Arias’ case, her mother charged that she had fallen prey to aggressive men first
while she traveled from her original home of Lima, the administrative cen-
ter of the Viceroyalty of Peru, to the provincial city of Arequipa, and from
there to Potosí, and next while living in Potosí. According to her mother’s

­
account, Arias was the victim of a crime, and this may well have been the case.
Once she arrived in Potosí, Leonor Arias would presumably have had limited
mobility. Most young women of Spanish descent were expected to be in the
company of their relatives and servants at all times to ensure their exclu-
sion from dangerous or compromising situations. As a new arrival in Potosí,
however, Arias likely had weaker social networks of relatives and kin than
young women who had grown up in the city and this may help account for
what befell her. Alternately, it is possible that Arias had chosen to engage in
premarital sexual relations. Women whose suitors did not have their parents’
approval sometimes resorted to establishing a sexual relationship with these
men in order to pressure their families into allowing them to marry their co-
conspirators to avoid scandal and preserve familial honor.6
The houses and streets of Potosí come alive in the testimony of this case.
We can try to imagine the newly arrived Leonor Arias making her way in a
city of approximately one hundred thousand people, where a massive indig-
enous population mined silver and a large mixed-race population processed
that silver. How would the size and complexity of this city have helped Ortiz
de Velasco to make an impression on the young Arias? Several domestic ser-
vants were called as witnesses in this case. Their comments highlight the
extraordinary access all members of a colonial household had to one another’s

Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (Stanford, CA: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 1999).
5. See Jane E. Mangan, Transatlantic Obligations: Creating the Bonds of Family in Conquest-
Era Peru and Spain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 112–18.
6. For a discussion of sexuality and marriage focused on non-elites in seventeenth-century
Lima, see María Emma Mannarelli, Private Passions and Public Sins: Men and Women in Sev-
enteenth-Century Lima, trans. Sidney Evans and Meredith D. Dodge (Albuquerque: University
of New Mexico Press, 2007). Allyson Poska’s work on women in early modern Spain suggests
that notions of honor did not drive female sexual behavior for non-elite women in the era.
See Poska, “Elusive Virtue: Rethinking the Role of Female Chastity in Early Modern Spain,”
Journal of Early Modern History 8, 1:2 (2004), 136–46.

85
 7 • Criminal Complaint by Angela de Palacios on Behalf of Her Daughter

business, whether or not they were master or servant, Spanish or people of

color. Servants could be helpmates to subterfuge, yet they could also reveal
transgressions. Which appears to have been the case here?
That Leonor Arias had lost her virginity was not in question; the issue,
rather, was whether anyone might be blamed for it. In some instances, parents
looked for some form of payment for the loss of virginity.7 The case brought
by Palacios, however, never reached that stage. Moreover, the defendant’s accu-
sation that her daughter had sexual relations with more than one man made
it less likely that Palacios could sue for loss of her daughter’s virginity. What
might Angela de Palacios have hoped to gain from bringing this suit and draw-
ing additional public attention to her daughter’s loss of virginity? No mention
is made of Leonor’s father; how might the absence of a male head of household
affect this case or the standing of Angela and Leonor in the first place? What
does witness testimony about Ortiz de Velasco suggest about expectations of
men in colonial society? What might have happened to Leonor Arias after the
tales of her sexual encounters were spread widely through social networks?

7.1 Criminal Complaint against Juan Ortiz for

the Rape of Leonor Arias (Potosí, 1584)8

In the Imperial Villa of Potosí on February 8, 1584 before señor (lord) don
(sir) Alonso Ortíz de Levya, corregidor y justicia mayor (district administra-
tor and senior judge) in this province of Charcas9 for his majesty, appeared
Angela de Palacios, resident of this said Villa and said that she had a criminal
complaint to make, according to law (como mejor de derecho y aya lugar de
derecho) against Juan Ortiz de Velasco, resident of this Villa and against doña
Isabel de Chávez, her [daughter’s] guardian10 and against the other persons
who by information appeared guilty. In recounting the case, she said that she

7. For parents suing for reparations over loss of honor, see Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor, and
Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574–1821 (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1988) as well as Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets.
8. Archivo Nacional de Bolivia, Sucre. Expediente 1584.2. Doña Isabel de Chávez e doña
Angela Palacios sobre violentacion de la hija de esta Leonor Arias, por Juan Ortiz e devolución de
un negrillo esclavo, Potosí, 23 folios.
9. The province of Charcas is located in modern-day Bolivia.
10. The term in the original is “deuda”; the editors use the word guardian to imply a form
of protection for Leonor that doña Angela imagined she would provide, although no legal
guardianship is implied by this relationship. Isabel de Chávez’s loyalty was possibly divided.
She was to act as Leonor’s guardian, but later testimony suggests she was also the biological
aunt of Leonor’s aggressor, Juan Ortiz de Velasco.
 7 • Criminal Complaint by Angela de Palacios on Behalf of Her Daughter

has a daughter, Leonor Arias, a girl of thirteen or fourteen years, more or less,
whom she brought, still a maiden, from the City of Kings (Lima) in the com-
pany of doña Inés Ramirez de Cartagena, wife of Diego Bravo vecino (citizen)
of this Villa. While on the road, Juan Ortiz de Velasco and other people
solicited [Leonor] and persuaded her to know them carnally and with flattery
and pleas, as well as with force and against her will. They lay with her carnally
and they corrupted her and took her virginity. Once [Leonor] had arrived at
this Villa and was living in seclusion in houses that are on Juan Baron Street,
where they play ball, Juan Ortiz de Velasco entered through the walls of these
houses that border on the houses of Felipa, a negra (a black woman), and, by
force, lay with Leonor Arias, her daughter. And what is worse is that by the
same force, he took her out of her house and had her, taking advantage of
her for several days while staying in the house of doña Isabel de Chávez, her
guardian, who concealed that this was happening in the house. In all this,
the named person and the other guilty parties committed grave and dreadful
crimes worthy of punishment and penalty. I ask that your mercy order that
there be an inquiry and arrest the guilty parties and put them in the public jail
of this Villa because these acts beg for justice in whatever form is convenient.
The Señor Corregidor orders an investigation of the content of this complaint
that relates what happened in order that justice be served.
Before me, Fernando de Medina, public notary, in Potosí on February 8,
1584 Leonor Arias, daughter of Angela de Palacios and resident of this Villa,
swore an oath before God our Señor (Lord) and made the sign of the cross,
according to the law swore to tell what she knows respecting the investigation
of the aforementioned. She said under oath that a month ago, more or less,
she and her mother entered this Villa. They came to it in the company of
doña Inés Ramírez de Cartagena, wife of Diego Bravo,11 and they lived in this
period in a house that is in the street of the Juego de la Pelota (the ball game).
After arriving, doña Inés was in the city of Arequipa, more or less, for two
months waiting for Diego Bravo, her husband. When he arrived to Arequipa,
he solicited [Leonor] and persuaded her to lie carnally with him. And Leonor
told him that she did not want to do the aforementioned because she was a
doncella (virgin). Bravo persuaded her to do it. Leonor always repeated these
words even though she was not a doncella because don Fernando de Cartagena,
son of licenciado (licenciate) Ramírez de Cartagena, had already had her on
the road from Lima to the city of Arequipa, but she said it so Bravo would
stop harassing her. Arriving at a town in the provinces, although she does not
remember which one it was, other than that she stayed there in the Inn de

11. A man by the same name worked as a public notary in the city of La Plata in this period,
which would signify an important role in colonial society. However, it is not clear if the two
were one and the same.

87
 7 • Criminal Complaint by Angela de Palacios on Behalf of Her Daughter

Vergara, Juan Ortiz de Velasco sent her to a soldier named Tomás de Casta-
ñeda who traveled with them so that he could persuade her to lie with him.
Also, Castañeda took Leonor from the door of a room in the said inn and car-
ried her to the lodgings of Juan Ortiz de Velasco. There he had her in his bed
that night, lying carnally with her as many times as he wanted. Once they had
arrived at this Villa, and were living in the house in the Juego de la Pelota, Ortiz
de Velasco solicited her many times so that he could lie with her carnally.
When Leonor’s mother left her at the guest house, Ortiz de Velasco entered it
through the house of Felipa Velázquez, negra, jumping the walls of the pens12
and lay carnally with Leonor more by force and against her will than by her
choice. And last Wednesday on the fifth day of this present month, Leonor’s
mother was absent from the house because she had gone for food and to see
about a lawsuit that she has. Ortiz de Velasco came into the house through
the pens of Felipa Velázquez, and he told Leonor that the following night they
would be together and that she should wait for him in the breezeway of the
house of Felipa Velázquez.13 From there, he would remove Leonor from the
house of her mother and take her to the house of doña Isabel de Chávez, his
relative. From there he would take her to another pueblo (town), saying also
that he did not have much to give and use to serve Leonor. That night Leonor
did not go to the breezeway of Felipa Velázquez’s house as he had told her,
but Juan Ortiz de Velasco jumped the walls of the pens of Felipa Velázquez’s
house, as he had already done, and took her in his arms from her mother’s
house over the walls of the house of Felipa, negra. He took her through the
settlement toward San Pedro and from there he took her to the house of doña
Isabel de Chávez, his aunt, where he slept with her. Then doña Ana de Valder-
rama, wife of Juan Ochobueita, and doña Luisa Riquelme and other people
took her from there on Friday night, the seventh of this present month. Doña
Angela de Palacios went to the house [of his aunt Chávez] while she was there
to ask if she [Leonor] had been seen and doña Isabel denied this, saying that
she did not know of that woman. And the deponent [Leonor] was behind
doña Isabel’s bed because she ordered her [Leonor] there. And that night that
her mother looked for her, Juan Ortiz de Velasco accompanied her [mother]
to her house, saying that he had never heard nor seen her [Leonor].
She was ordered, under oath, to respond as follows.

12. Animal pens.

13. Zaguán in the original. Zaguanes or breezeways were entryway spaces located adjacent to
exterior doorways; they often served as passageways between buildings’ interior and exterior
spaces. Sonya Lipsett-Rivera found that these spaces served as liminal areas between private
and public spaces in late colonial and nineteenth-century homes; Gender and the Negotiation
of Daily Life in Mexico, 1750–1856 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 87–88.
 7 • Criminal Complaint by Angela de Palacios on Behalf of Her Daughter

She was asked if Felipa, the negra, knew or understood that Juan Ortiz
entered through her house to the house of Leonor’s mother and if she (or any
other person) consented to it. She said she does not know, and that what she
has said is the truth. She said that had no personal conflict of interest with
any party in the case. She was asked her age and she said she is fourteen years
old and she did not sign because she does not know how to write.
Order
On this day, month, and year the señor corregidor reviewed the declaration
of Leonor Arias, and I order that Juan de Velasco be arrested and placed in
the jail of this Villa before the investigation of this case proceeds. Because if
we proceed without arresting him, he might flee and remain without punish-
ment for the crime that he appears to have committed. This I declare and
order, before me, Fernando de Medina public scribe, witness.

7.2 Testimony of Catalina Valero

Potosí, February 24, 1584

Witness, Catalina Valero, resident of this Villa of Potosí, wife of Fran-
cisco de Herrera swore an oath before God our Señor and made the sign of
the cross, according to the law swore to tell what she knows respecting the
investigation of the aforementioned. Valero said that she has known Angela
de Palacios for more than eight years and her daughter Leonor for the last
twenty days, more or less, she has known Ortiz de Velasco and doña Isabel
de Chávez for the past two years, more or less. And, she says that twenty days
ago, Catalina was in her house asleep in her bed one morning at dawn, and
Margarita, a female slave of doña Isabel de Chávez, knocked on her door.
Catalina ordered her to open the door and she came in to where Catalina
was lying in her bed. She had with her Leonor Arias, daughter of Angela
de Palacios, and the slave told Catalina, “Señora, my señora doña Isabel de
Chávez does not want to have this girl in her house. I beg your mercy that
she may stay here for a day or two while she finds a place to stay.” The slave
did not tell Catalina who sent [Leonor] to her house, nor did this witness
ask her. That same day at 10 o’clock, more or less, Ortiz de Velasco came.
He brought Leonor food for lunch and at that time that he came to the
house Catalina did not see Ortiz de Velasco because she was out of the house
in the stream of the Villa watching how they processed some bits of ore.
When Catalina came home about 11 o’clock, Ortiz de Velasco had already
gone. When this witness entered her house, they told her that Ortiz de
Velasco had come to Catalina’s house and he had brought food for lunch

89
 7 • Criminal Complaint by Angela de Palacios on Behalf of Her Daughter

to Leonor Arias. The same day around vespers,14 Leonor took her shawl and
she wanted to go out. This deponent said to Leonor, “Why do you want to
go? Do not go until Ortiz de Velasco comes.” So Leonor took her shawl off
and after it got dark, Leonor again took her shawl and wanted to go. And this
witness made her stay and sent for Ortiz de Velasco, who came later to her
house. And since she knew that Leonor wanted to go he told her, “Don’t go
because you are in a good house,” and with this, Ortiz de Velasco left and one
hour later, more or less, Ortiz de Velasco returned to the house of this wit-
ness. He took Leonor and Simon de Herrera, Catalina’s son, went with them.
When Simon de Herrera returned, this witness asked him where they took
that girl. Simon de Herrera responded that they had taken her to the house
of Felipa Velázquez morena (a black woman) who lives on the [street of the]
Juego de la Pelota. Likewise he said that Leonor was the daughter of Angela de
Palacios, the witness’s comadre,15 and this is the truth. She said that she had
no personal conflict of interest with any party in the case. She is forty years
old, and she did not sign because she does not know how.

7.3 Testimony of Simón de Herrera

Potosí, February 24, 1584

Simon de Herrera, resident of this Villa, said that he has known Angela de
Palacios for eight years and Leonor Arias, her daughter, for twenty days, more
or less. Likewise, he has known Ortiz de Velasco and doña Isabel de Chávez
for more or less two years. And, twenty days ago, this witness was asleep in the
house of his mother, Catalina Valero, one morning. It was already dawn and he
heard a knock on the door. He sent to open it and to find out who it was and in
came a slave named Margarita who belongs to doña Isabel de Chávez, and with
her, another girl named Leonor de Arias. Once inside, they went to talk with
Catalina Valero, his mother, who was sleeping in her bed where this witness
was likewise sleeping in another small room next to his mother. After entering,
the slave said to his mother, “Señora, my señora, doña Isabel de Chávez sent me.
Señora, my señora, doña Isabel de Chávez does not want to have this girl in her
house. I beg your mercy that she may stay here for a day or two while she finds
a [permanent] place to stay.” His mother responded to the slave that she did
not want to have her in this house. Margarita, negra, begged the mother of this
witness on behalf of Leonor de Arias that she take her for the day because

14. Vespers were prayers in the evening, usually at dusk.

15. In this context, the term translates as “close friend.”
 7 • Criminal Complaint by Angela de Palacios on Behalf of Her Daughter

she was chapetona16 and had come from the city of Lima. And when Catalina
Valero, mother of this witness, learned that the girl was from Lima, she said
she could gladly stay. With this Margarita, negra, left. Leonor stayed, and at
around 11 o’clock that day, this witness came back to his house to eat because
he had gone out to see his ore washed in the stream of this Villa. And when
this witness came in to eat they told him how Ortiz de Velasco had come to the
house and had brought food for lunch for the girl: peach, grapes, and a stew,
then he had gone. Having finished eating, this witness Simon turned to go to
his house and when he came, he found the said girl covered with her shawl.
Catalina Valero, mother of this witness, said, “Why are you covered with that
shawl?” The girl responded that she wanted to go. The mother of this witness
said, “Do not go. Wait. We will send word to Ortiz de Velasco.” And so this
witness, by order of his mother, went to find him and he found him in the house
of the said Isabel de Chávez. He said to Ortiz de Velasco that Catalina Valero,
mother of this witness, called him. Then Ortiz de Velasco came with him and
having arrived at his house, Ortiz de Velasco called to the young girl. He said,
“Señora Leonor, where do you want to go? You are in a good house, and if you
leave here, what?” And after he had spoken with Leonor, Ortiz de Velasco left.
Half an hour later, Ortiz de Velasco returned to the house of this witness. He
said that the señor corregidor had gone to his house in search of Leonor and
they had taken what was in his house. And since he was in the house, Ortiz de
Velasco called for this witness and told him that he wanted to have a word with
him. This witness distanced himself from Ortiz de Velasco, who asked if he
would do him the favor of going with him and with this girl [Leonor] because
he wanted to take her to a house. And he asked if he [Simon] would lend him
[Ortiz de Velasco] a large cape so they would not be recognized. This witness
gave him the cape, and he took the cape that Ortiz de Velasco was wearing.
Ortiz de Velasco asked this witness if he had heard the curfew,17 because it if
had rung, he did not want to carry his sword. When this witness said yes [that
the curfew bell had rung], he left the sword. He and Ortiz de Velasco left this
witness’s house with the girl walking by the stream that runs above the Villa
and arriving at the refinery of Juan Gómez. But they could not cross because
there was a lot of water, so they changed course and went higher up. They
turned to enter the ravine in order to avoid law [officers]. From there they left
the stream and went to the street of the pelota and this witness said to Leonor,
“Angela de Palacios lives here,” not knowing that Leonor was her daughter.
And the girl responded, “I know the Juego de la Pelota very well.” And halfway
up the block, Ortiz de Velasco knocked on a door of the house where a morena
called Felipa Velázquez lives. An indigenous woman answered and Ortiz de

16. Meaning a person who had recently arrived, usually from Europe to America.
17. Queda for toque de queda. Literally a bell tolling to signify the curfew.

91
 7 • Criminal Complaint by Angela de Palacios on Behalf of Her Daughter

Velasco said to her in indigenous tongue, “Tell Felipa Velázquez that Ortiz de
Velasco is here.” Then the indigenous woman opened the door for him and
Ortiz de Velasco entered inside the house. He said “Señor, stay at the door with
this girl,” and this witness stayed with her at the door, waiting. He asked the
girl “does Felipa Velázquez live here?” To this question Leonor said “Oh, take
care of me. What am I doing. Let’s go, Simon de Herrera, to your house.” And
when Leonor said this, the witness started to go with her down the street. Then
Ortiz de Velasco came outside and when he didn’t find them at the doorway,
he came running until he caught up with them. The girl asked him, “Where are
you taking me, your mercy?” Ortiz de Velasco said, “Here, I am taking you to
the house of a morena,” and the said girl responded, “It is possible señor Velasco
that your mercy is taking me to where they will kill me? Leave me, for the love
of God. I want to go by myself to Chuquisaca.”18 Ortiz de Velasco said, “I
swear on my mother who gave birth to me and the milk that I suckled! Do you
want to cut off my head?19 Let’s get out of here so la ronda (the patrol) doesn’t
come because if they catch us, they will take you to jail.” And with this, Leonor
returned and all three of us entered the house of Felipa Velázquez, morena. This
witness stayed on the patio of the house and Ortiz de Velasco entered with the
girl into a room where Felipa Velázquez was and this witness was in the patio
more than half an hour watching for Ortiz de Velasco to come out. He heard
certain words by which he understood that Leonor was the daughter of Angela
de Palacios because from the patio he heard those inside say: “Your mother
Palacios is looking for you.” Since Ortiz de Velasco did not come out [of the
room], this witness went to his house and Ortiz de Velasco stayed at the house.
This is the truth. The witness said that he had no personal conflict of interest
with any party in the case. Then the witness signed and when asked his age he
said he is twenty-one years of age.

7.4 Witness Juana Pérez

Potosí, February 24, 1584

Juana Pérez, wife of Simon de Herrera, [witness takes oath] she has known
Angela de Palacios for five years, more or less, and her daughter Leonor for
the last twenty days. She has known doña Isabel de Chávez and Ortiz de
Velasco for the last two years. She said that one morning at dawn, twenty

18. Chuquisaca refers to the Bolivian department that is in the central south of the country
where La Plata (mentioned herein) is located. It borders the region where the Villa of Potosí
is located.
19. This is a literal translation of the testimony; the phrase is akin to asking “do you want to
sell me out?”
 7 • Criminal Complaint by Angela de Palacios on Behalf of Her Daughter

days ago, they knocked on the door of her house and that of Catalina Valero,
her mother-in-law. Valero said to a muchacha (female servant) that she should
see who was knocking and open the door. In came a negra named Margarita,
slave of doña Isabel de Chávez, with another girl. Entering into the room of
Catalina Valero, mother-in-law of this witness, the negra told her “Señora, my
señora, doña Isabel de Chávez does not want to have this girl in her house. I
beg your mercy that she may stay here for a day or two while she finds a place
to stay.” Margarita the negra told her, “Señora, just for today if you like, could
your mercy have her in your house? At night they will come back for her.”
Catalina Valero told this witness that if it would only be for today, [then she
could be there]. Valero asked the girl if she had a mother, and she responded,
“yes,” and said later she would tell her who. With this the negra left and the
girl stayed. After a while, this witness asked the said girl what her name was
and she responded that her name was Francisca. At around ten o’clock on
that day, Ortiz de Velasco came to the house of Catalina Valero, mother-in-
law of this witness. He spoke with the girl and then he turned to go. Ortiz de
Velasco sent a boy [servant] with lunch, a cake and peaches, grapes and bread.
Around nightfall, the girl took her shawl and said that she wanted to go and
seeing this, her mother-in-law asked Leonor, “Why do you want to go? Do
not go until Ortiz de Velasco comes.” So Leonor took her shawl off and after
it got dark, Leonor again took her shawl and wanted to go. Her mother-in-
law made her stay and sent for Ortiz de Velasco, who came later. Knowing
that Leonor wanted to go he told her, “Do not go because you are in a good
house,” and with this, Ortiz de Velasco left. One hour later, more or less,
Ortiz de Velasco returned to the house. Before he took her [Leonor], this
witness heard her say that evening, “How bad is Ortiz de Velasco. Because
of him I go around in this manner because he took me from my house.”
This witness did not speak to him. This is what she knows. She said she had
no personal conflict of interest with any party in the case. She did not sign.
When asked her age, she said she is thirteen years old, more or less.

7.5 Witness Madame20 Isabel Bisconte

Potosi, February 24, 1584

Madame Isabel Bisconte, wife of Juan Varón, resident in this said Villa.
[Witness swore oath] said that she knows Angela de Palacios and her daughter,
Leonor Arias, and has known Ortiz de Velasco for more than two years. She
does not know doña Isabel de Chávez. About one month ago, more or less,

20. The original includes the term Madame, though it is unclear why.

93
 7 • Criminal Complaint by Angela de Palacios on Behalf of Her Daughter

this witness saw that Angela Palacios was living across from her house in the
street of the Juego de la Pelota. She had seen Leonor Arias, her daughter, with
her because at that time [Leonor] had communicated with her, and this wit-
ness had entered the house of Angela de Palacios and had spoken to Leonor
Arias, her daughter, many times. In the time that she has known them, she
has often seen Ortiz de Velasco walking past their door and standing in their
doorway. About fifteen or twenty days ago, this witness heard tell that Ortiz
de Velasco had taken the daughter from the house of her mother, Leonor
Arias. When she was in the house of maestro Juan, surgeon, Ortiz de Velasco
entered the house and said to this witness and to others there that they should
be alert because the daughter of Leonor Arias had been taken from the house
of Angela de Palacios. This witness and the others who were there responded
that this was true and that he must have taken her and Ortiz de Velasco
responded that this was not true and with this, he left. She did not hear more
and this is the truth. She did not sign because she did not know how. Asked
her age, she said she is thirty-three years old.
[The remaining extant folios in the case treat the appellate court’s han-
dling of the case but refer only with the matter of the legal ownership by doña

­
Isabel de Chávez of a horse and a slave. There is no additional mention of the
alleged abduction of Leonor Arias.]

Suggested Reading

Boyer, Richard. “Catarina María Complains That Juan Teioa Forcibly Deflowered
Her,” in Colonial Lives, Documents on Latin American History, 1550–1850, ed.
Richard Boyer and Geoffrey Spurling. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Mannerelli, María Emma. Private Passions and Public Sins: Men and Women in Seven-
teenth-Century Lima. Trans. Sidney Evans and Meredith D. Dodge. Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 2007.
Twinam, Ann. Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality and Illegitimacy
in Colonial Spanish America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.
von Germeten, Nicole. Violent Delights, Violent Ends: Sex, Race, and Honor in Colo-
nial Cartagena de Indias. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013.

Document Themes
• Family
• Migration and mobility
• Race and ethnicity
• Sexuality and gender
 8

Bárbara López, India, Accuses Her

Husband of Abuse (Santa Fe, 1612)

Local authorities in Santa Fe, Colombia took it seriously when the indigenous
woman Bárbara López appeared before them with bloody bandages on her
head and blamed her husband, Salvador López, for her injury. Under Iberian
legal codes, which served as the foundation for law in the Indies throughout
the colonial period, men had power over their wives and their households,
but there were limits to this power. If a man abused his wife, she could file a
criminal complaint against him as we see in this case. Spousal abuse was com-
mon in colonial Latin America and at times resulted in the death of a wife at
the hands of her husband. While we do not have good quantitative data on
how often this occurred, we know that sometimes husbands were charged for
the crime of abuse and served time in jail.1 The testimony and outcome of the
following case illustrate some of the legal protections afforded to women in
instances of alleged abuse as well as the difficulty courts faced in investigating
and prosecuting cases of spousal abuse. Given the universality of domestic
violence, we may also use this case to consider how Bárbara López’s actions
reflect the context in which she lived.
Incidents of violence sometimes stemmed from a man’s perception that his
wife was not living up to her role in the marriage. Expectations of marriage
roles were heavily gendered in this era. Theoretically, men provided for fami-
lies and households that women managed while providing meals, and giving
loyalty and obedience to their husbands. In practical terms, overwhelming
evidence shows that many women contributed to households in material
ways and that an important portion of households were female-headed.2 In
the case of Bárbara López, however, her marriage to Salvador López brought
with it an expectation that the couple enjoy vida maridable, or making mar-
ried life, including sexual relations. Because men, as husbands or fathers, held
legal authority over wives and daughters, the law did allow men certain lee-
way in terms of how they enforced their role as heads of household. In many
instances, courts and communities permitted men’s physical abuse of their

1. Steve J. Stern, The Secret History of Gender, Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial
Mexico (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
2. See, for example, Jane E. Mangan, Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Urban Econ-
omy in Colonial Potosí (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005).

95
 8 • Bárbara López, India, Accuses Her Husband of Abuse

wives as a reasonable method to assert spousal power. However, families and

neighborhoods also upheld a moral code that kept such abuse in check; in
other words, people knew when a man in their community was beating his
wife and could step in if they viewed his actions as excessive.
Cases against men for spousal abuse could be brought to courts by wives or
by state officials. Both secular and ecclesiastical courts tried such cases because
colonial populations understood abuse within marriage as an offense against
the church. Elite women were often housed for protection or surveillance
by means of what was known as the practice of recogimiento (seclusion).3
Women could establish reputations of virtue for themselves by practicing
seclusion on their own and would then be known as “mujeres recogidas.” But
recogimiento was sometimes accomplished when families or courts placed
women in forced seclusion and scrutiny either in convents; private houses;
or in some cities, formal institutions called recogimientos whose purpose was
to reform and occasionally to protect women who had fallen into danger,
legal limbo, or moral lassitude. While women were in the process of a legal
case against their husbands, they were subject to potential physical attack as
well as moral suspicion if not secluded in a supervised and enclosed house-
hold or institution known as depósito. While court officials in Santa Fe acted
quickly in López’s case, they made no move to place her en depósito or in a
recogimiento, likely due to her non-elite status.
In the case studied here, Bárbara López’s judge ordered that her wounds
be examined and further that her husband be apprehended and jailed. Both
López, her husband, and other witnesses presented evidence to the court. The
nature of the witness testimony creates a “he said, she said” story structure
and readers should be aware that not all witnesses were forthcoming in their
statements. While some pieces of the narrative remain consistent throughout
the transcript, many parts do not. This leaves us to wonder what actually
happened. Did Salvador López hit his wife? Or did she hit him? Was the
provocation because he was having an affair or because Bárbara was boister-
ously socializing independently of her husband?
Bárbara López’s initiation of the case, as well as her withdrawal of her com-
plaint, must also be considered from the perspective of both parties’ status as
indigenous peoples. The case dates from 1612, less than a century from the
time that the Spanish entered the region of Santa Fe. Bárbara is identified by
the court as an india ladina, which indicates that she has acculturated toward
Spanish culture at least in terms of language and was able to present testimony

3. This institution and practice is also discussed in Chapters 7, 12, and 13. For an analysis of
recogimiento in colonial Peru, see Nancy E. van Deusen, Between the Sacred and the Worldly:
The Institutional and Cultural practice of Recogimiento in Colonial Lima (Stanford, CA: Stan-
ford University Press, 2001).
 8 • Bárbara López, India, Accuses Her Husband of Abuse

to the judge without a translator. Prior to the existence of Spanish courts and
even some decades after they opened, spousal relations and breaches in the
code of marital conduct would have been handled through families, kin net-
works, and community leaders. But by 1612, the indigenous woman Bárbara
López looked to the colonial judicial system to handle her claim. This may
indicate either that by this period the indigenous kin network system had
weakened so dramatically it was unable to support her, or it may reveal that
Spanish courts introduced a legal practice into Andean life to which indige-
nous women readily responded when they perceived it might serve their inter-
ests.4 López’s petition to withdraw the case toward its close suggests, however,
that she operating from a position of weakness rather than strength. Without
her husband’s income, apparently, Bárbara was unable to support herself.
This brief case opens up a window onto how men and women experi-
enced marital discord in early seventeenth-century society as well as how
their peers and the authorities in their midst responded to it. What do wit-
nesses’ testimonies reveal about acceptable contemporary behavior for men
and for women? Notice that Bárbara López is identified as indigenous and as
socializing with “Indians.” What is the significance of this? What does it sug-
gest about the legal system and about colonial society that the court judged
that Salvador López could be released from prison? How does this court case
reveal emotional states of people in the deep past?

8.1 Criminal Complaint against Salvador López,

Indio, for Mistreatment of His Wife Bárbara5

Complaint

In the city of Santa Fe on November 26, 1612 before the señor (sir) licenciado
(licenticate) Alonso Vázquez de Cisneros of the council of his Majesty and mayor
of the court of this Real Audiencia (Royal Court) appeared a ladina Indian who
said she was named Bárbara López, and she was a native of the pueblo of Bogotá.
She made a criminal complaint against her husband, Salvador López, because
yesterday on the 25th of the current month and year around five o’clock in the

4. For further discussion of this interesting topic, see Bianca Premo, The Enlightenment on
Trial: Ordinary Litigants and Colonialism in the Spanish Empire (Oxford: University of Oxford
Press, 2017).
5. Archivo General de la Nación, Colombia. Sección Colonia, Fondo Caciques e Indios, Legajo
Indios de Chivatá . . . India demanda a su marido por maltratos Caciques Indios, 64, D. 16
1612.

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 8 • Bárbara López, India, Accuses Her Husband of Abuse

afternoon, Salvador López, with no fear of God and disparaging the law, took
a stick and hit her many times in the head from which he gave her two wounds
that broke the skin and bone and which bled profusely. He did this without her
giving him any reason to do so other than that she had told him “do not be hav-
ing an affair; come make married life with me as your wife that I am.” Bárbara
López, india (indigenous woman), appeared in front of the judge by [reason of]
her face and some bloody bandages that she had on her head, along with his
mercy, the judge accepted her complaint and ordered that information be given
as to the content of the complaint including about the wounds, all of which
the señor judge conveyed to the present receptor who decreed and ordered that
Salvador López be jailed by one of the bailiffs of the court.

[Signed by] Luis de Palma R.

[Next, Bárbara was examined by a court official to create an official

account of her injuries.]

8.2 Evidence of Wounds

Later this day, month, and year above stated the 26th of November, 1612, I
the receptor, in compliance with the order by the señor judge, say that Bár-
bara López removed the bloodied bandages that she had tied to her head. I
saw that she had a head-wound one finger-length long that appeared to be
a knife wound, and going across her forehead close to her hairline she had
another deep wound two fingers long that seemed deep enough that it had
been made by a stick because around the edges it is somewhat bruised.
[Luis de la Palma signed for the court record and the bloodied bandages
were preserved as evidence.]

8.3 Recommendation

In the city of Santa Fe on the 26th of November 1612, Blas Fernández,

bailiff of the court, in compliance with the orders of the señor judge arrested
Salvador López and put him in the royal jail of this court. He handed the
prisoner over to Diego Serrano, alcalde (judge) of the jail, who signed and
took responsibility for him.

[signed by] Diego Serrano

Before me Luis de Palma R.
 8 • Bárbara López, India, Accuses Her Husband of Abuse

8.4 Witness Testimony

In the city of Santa Fe on the 29th of November of 1612, Bárbara López, india
ladina, for the investigation of her complaint presented as a witness who was
an indio ladino who said he is named Francisco López and he is a master chair-
maker and native of this city. I, the receptor, recorded his Holy oath and he
made the sign of the cross in the form of God, and he promised by these to tell
the truth. Questioned as to the tenor of the case and complaint, he said that he
knows Salvador López and Bárbara López, his wife, indios, and what he knows
about this quarrel is that this past Sunday, the 25th of November, at around
five in the afternoon, this witness was near the tile workshop6 of San Agustín
where Bárbara López and her husband were as well. He saw how Salvador
López had fighting words7 with his wife and this witness went into a hut8 with
other Indians who were inside and from there he heard tell that some indig-
enous women who were there, though he does not remember who they were,
how Salvador and his wife were fighting. Then this witness left the hut and saw
how Bárbara and her husband were fighting. This witness went up to Bárbara
and saw that she had a head wound that was bleeding heavily. This witness did
not see nor hear who gave [the injury] to Bárbara nor does he know more than
what he has said, which is the truth and what he knows, under the oath that he
made in this decree. Having read it, he affirmed and ratified it. He said he was
of the age of forty-two years and that had no personal conflict of interest with
any party in the case.9 He did not sign because he said he did not know how.

Before me, Luis de Palma R

[On December 7, 1612 Bárbara López presented another petition before

the Real Audiencia in which she asked that her husband be released from jail.]
I state that I have had my husband Salvador López jailed before the royal
judge señor licenciado Cisneros, for having wounded me in the head. Because
I have healed and because with my husband’s imprisonment, I lack many

6. Tejar in the original.

7. Pesadumbre de palabras in the original.
8. The term is difficult to decipher in the original, but appears to be bugio in the original;
which might be an alternate spelling of bohio or hut.
9. The text reads “no le tocan las generales de la lei que le fueron fechas.” Normally, “las gene-
rales de la ley” refers to a person’s basic personal information: name, surname, marital status,
age, address, and sometimes immediate personal relationships, for example, of parentage. The
phrase can also be used, as it appears to be here, to indicate whether a witness was in a position
of personal conflict of interest with an implicated party in a lawsuit, for instance because of a
familial relationship. The same phrase is also used by a witness in Chapter 20.

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 8 • Bárbara López, India, Accuses Her Husband of Abuse

necessities, I withdraw my complaint. I do not want to ask for anything now

nor anytime [from the court] which I do for the service of God Our Lord and
for the above reasons. To your highness I ask and plead that you withdraw
the complaint for me and free Diego Salvador López, my husband, from
prison because it is justice that I seek for him.

[signed] Bárbara López

[Next Salvador López presented a petition to the judge.]

Very powerful Lord:
I, Salvador López, have been imprisoned in this royal jail many days now
due to a complaint that my wife made in which she said that I had beaten
her. Now she is better and has withdrawn the complaint. I suffer in this jail
because I am a poor artisan and have nothing to eat. For this reason, I beg and
plead your highness that you free me from this prison owing to the aforemen-
tioned for which I hope to receive mercy with justice.

Salvador López

[On the same day, December 7, the Count Luis de Palma sends a
surgeon to evaluate Bárbara López and señor licenciado don Francisco de
Herrera goes along as a witness.]
Declaration
In Santa Fe on December 7, 1612, I, the receptor, in compliance with the
orders of the señores, presidents, and judges, received an oath by God our Lord
as well as a sign of the cross in the form of God, from García Brabo, surgeon,
who swore to tell the truth. Under the oath he said that he has cured Bárbara
López, india, of a wound in her head and another in the forehead, wounds
from which she is much improved. At present, she has no fever and is out of
danger, even though the wounds have not completely closed. He said this is the
truth under the oath, and he signed García Barbo, before me, Luis de Palma R.
[Three days later, Salvador López was brought before señor licenciado
don Francisco de Herrera Canpucano, magistrate of the court of the Real
Audiencia to give his confession.]

8.5 Confession of Salvador López

In the city of Santa Fe on December 10, 1612. I, the receptor, received the oath
to God and a cross in the form of God from Salvador López, imprisoned in
 8 • Bárbara López, India, Accuses Her Husband of Abuse

this royal jail to hear his confession in compliance with the orders of the señor
judge. López took the oath and under it promised to tell the truth about what
he knew about whatever he was asked. He was asked the following questions:
Asked his name and where he is from and what age and job he has = He
said his name is Salvador López, and that he is native to the city and a shoe-
maker and thirty years old, more or less and thus he responds.
Asked if it is true that on November 25 just past five o’clock in the evening
next to the tile workshop of San Agustín, this witness in the company of Bár-
bara López, his wife, had fighting words with her. And asked if, as a result, this
witness gave her two head wounds which cut skin and bone from which she
lost much blood. And whether he gave her these blows in the head without
[his wife] having given him reason [for them] other than that she said that he
should not be cohabitating and should live with her like his wife that she was.10
He said he denies the question. What happened is that the day and at the
hour that he has been asked about, this witness was near the tile workshop
and found Bárbara López, his wife in a hut with other Indians having a good
time. This witness told her to leave the said party, and go to their house
because it was time. She responded that she did not want to go home, but
wanted to stay on. This witness told her to stay, then, and that he would
also stay on to relax. And the witness and his wife had words about this from
which it resulted that she gave [him] a push with which he landed on the
ground and from there he got back up [three illegible words]. This which he
has said is the truth in this confession having it read to him he confirmed. He
did not sign because he did not know how.

Before me, Luis de Palma R.

[Magistrate Herrera Canpucano ordered that Salvador López should pay

four gold pesos, two of them for the discalced nuns and two for the prisoners in
the jail. After paying his debt, he would be freed on bail from the prison where
he is, not being jailed for anything else. Shortly thereafter, after paying only
one gold coin, López was freed on bail.]

Suggested Reading

Abercrombie, Thomas A. “Affairs of the Courtroom: Fernando de Medina Confesses

to Killing His Wife,” in Colonial Lives, Documents on Latin American History,

10. The question here implies that Salvador López was living with another woman and not
“hacienda vida” or carrying out married life with Bárbara, a charge he denies.

101
 8 • Bárbara López, India, Accuses Her Husband of Abuse

1550–1850, ed. Richard Boyer and Geoffrey Spurling. New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2000.
Boyer, Richard. “Women, La Mala Vida, and the Politics of Marriage,” in Sexuality
and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, ed. Asunción Lavrin. Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1989, 252–86.
Johnson, Lyman, and Sonia Lipsett-Rivera, eds. The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame,
and Violence in Colonial Latin America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1998.
von Germeten, Nicole. Violent Delights, Violent Ends: Sex, Race, and Honor in Colo-
nial Cartagena de Indias. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013.

Document Themes
• Family
• Law
 9

Sor Ana’s Travel Excerpt from Mexico

to Manila (Mexico and Manila, 1620)

Introduction and Translation by Sarah E. Owens

Sor (Sister) Ana de Cristo’s “Travel Excerpt from Mexico to Manila” provides
the modern-day reader a unique opportunity to view travel, evangelization,
and empire through the eyes of a seventeenth-century Franciscan nun. From
1620 to 1621, a group of Franciscan nuns made an incredible journey to
found the first female convent in the Far East. Led by their mother abbess Sor
Jerónima de la Asunción (1556–1630), the small group of nuns and novices
traveled from Toledo, Spain, to Mexico and then on to Manila, Philippines.
Of the ten religious women who formed the group (two joined them in
Mexico City), only nine nuns would survive the journey. Surprisingly, it was
not Sor Jerónima, who was sixty-four when she left Spain and almost con-
tinuously ill during the entire trip, who died, but another nun from the town
of Belalcázar, Córdoba. Death loomed large on long oceanic voyages, and the
nuns, although saddened by their loss, continued on to Manila to found a
convent under the strict First Rule of Saint Clare. The descendants from that
community still exist today, although the original building was destroyed
during Allied bombing at the end of World War II.
The main purpose of Sor Ana’s manuscript was to record the life story of
the mother abbess, Sor Jerónima de la Asunción.1 The genre of vidas (spiri-
tual biographies) was quite common in early modern convents. Nuns wrote
about themselves or about other nuns, but normally these accounts did not
follow a linear story. Instead, they included many hagiographic details that
exalted the religious life of the subject. Sor Ana’s account also follows this tra-
ditional pattern. She often describes Sor Jerónima’s extreme penance, fasting,
and daily prayer schedule, but her text is also unique because she illustrates
their remarkable transoceanic journey, often interjecting her own observa-
tions of their travels. Sor Ana had been ordered by other accompanying nuns
and the father confessor to write this account, ultimately with the hope that
their mother abbess might become a saint. During her lifetime, Sor Jerónima

1. The original 450-folio manuscript can be found in the convent of Santa Isabel de los
Reyes, Toledo, Spain.

103
 9 • Sor Ana’s Travel Excerpt from Mexico to Manila

had accumulated a substantial following of devotees who viewed the austere

nun from Toledo as a living saint.
Unlike Sor Jerónima, who was immortalized by the painter Diego
Velázquez in at least two full-length portraits when the nuns stopped in
Seville on their way to the coast of Spain, we know very little about Sor Ana
de Cristo (1565–1636). She does, however, include first-person observations
in her account and explains how she had known Sor Jerónima for more than
forty years. The abbess, only ten years older than Sor Ana, had been her nov-
ice mistress back in Toledo and had taught her how to read. Sor Ana had not
known how to write, but a friar taught her to do so during the journey so
that she could take up the task of biography. Although this might sound like
a trope of humility, this scenario was quite common in early modern Spain,
where the skills of reading and writing were taught separately. Indeed, many
nuns and other laypersons alike knew how to read but did not know how to
put pen to paper.
As was common in the early modern time period, Sor Ana was exposed
to an extensive aural culture in her convent community. She heard many
sermons, learned rote prayers in Latin, and listened to other nuns read about
the lives of saints and other religious texts. The fact that Sor Ana was able to
write the biography with such advanced language structure is not far-fetched,
but readers should note that the section of the journey reproduced here is
much more polished than other parts of her account. Most likely friars, or
even other nuns, helped her with the retelling of their transoceanic travels as
they portray many extreme obstacles and highlight the courage of the mother
abbess and her travel companions.
Their foresister Spanish nun Mother Juana de la Cruz (1481–1534)
exerted a direct spiritual influence on the nuns described in this account.
Juana de la Cruz had joined a beaterio, a house for third-order Franciscan
laywomen, in a small town called Cubas, near Madrid, as a young woman.
She later became abbess when the community was dedicated as a convent in
1509. During her lifetime, Mother Juana became renowned for her weekly
“sermons,” a type of trance-like rapture when supposedly she became the
mouthpiece of Christ himself. Her contemporaries also believed that the Lord
and the Virgin Mary had blessed a large number of her rosary beads, infus-
ing them with miraculous powers. According to later biographers, including
Antonio Daza, those beads had the power to cast out demons, calm stormy
waters, and cure illnesses, among other uses. In addition, other beads that
were tocadas or touched as contact relics to the original beads also contained
those powers. Two of the nuns that joined Sor Jerónima hailed from Madre
Juana’s convent of Santa María de la Cruz, in Cubas. Most likely, they had
been chosen for their close connection to their spiritual foremother and for
 9 • Sor Ana’s Travel Excerpt from Mexico to Manila

the beads that they brought with them on the journey. The nuns frequently
referred to “Saint” Juana, even though she was never officially canonized a
saint. They firmly believed in the miraculous powers of the beads and they
encountered many people of Spanish, indigenous, and African descent who
venerated Juana as a saint.
In this portion of her account, Sor Ana describes the journey from Mexico
City to the port of Manila. The group had just spent about five months in
Mexico City awaiting news of the arrival of the Manila Galleon, the generic
term for the yearly crossing of the Pacific Ocean to the Philippines by one
or two ships. This was not the nuns’ first oceanic voyage; they had already
earned their sea legs on the voyage from Cadiz, Spain, to the port of Vera-
cruz. The nuns had also had some exposure to life on the trail. Upon arrival
in Veracruz, they mounted mules as they made their way along the Path of
Inns, even stopping at the now-iconic shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe on
the outskirts of Mexico City. Without a doubt, however, the China Trail
southward from the capital to Acapulco and then three-and-a-half months on
the Manila Galleon would be the most arduous part of the journey.
Relatively few travelers, let alone women, have described life on the China
Trail, aptly named for the transport of goods between Asia and Mexico City.
Sor Ana’s text offers a picture of feisty, spirited nuns who were willing to
rough it physically to bring the order of Poor Clares to the Philippines.
Myriads of mosquitos assaulted the pilgrims as they trekked past the town
of Cuernavaca on their way to the port of Acapulco. The nuns, two friars,
servants, and others who escorted the group fell ill to intermittent fevers and
severe diarrhea. It is difficult to diagnose their ailments, but a combination
of a malaria-like illness and dysentery are probable, exacerbated by unsani-
tary conditions with the women’s insistence on “enclosing” themselves as
if in a cloister. To remedy their sickness the women used some of their
miraculous beads from Saint Juana, ingesting them as a type of ground-up
medicine.
The three-and-a-half month sea voyage across the Pacific tested the true
grit of the nuns. They were not afraid to die as martyrs if their galleon drifted
off course to Japan or to die at sea if a storm wrecked their ship. The women
enclosed themselves cheek to jowl in a small cabin as they did their best to
care for the ailing Sor Jerónima and Sor María de la Trinidad. The tragic
death of Sor María did not deter Sor Jerónima and she rallied once the galleon
arrived at the port of Bolinao, a peninsula on the southwestern side of the
island of Luzon. During their final trek across the island to Manila Sor Ana’s
account offers a bird’s-eye view of native bearers who carried the women on
hammocks and a colorful depiction of a devout pious indigenous woman in
a remote village.

105
 9 • Sor Ana’s Travel Excerpt from Mexico to Manila

Sor Ana’s travel account is a rare lens to follow the path of religious women
in the early 1620s to a far-flung corner of the Spanish Empire. Sor Jerónima
and her co-founders were the first Spanish nuns to board a Manila galleon
and travel to the Philippines. Up until recently scholars of colonial Latin
America have only been exposed to the first-hand accounts of male mission-
aries, soldiers, and noblemen. Documents such as this one by Sor Ana add a
layer of information to our growing knowledge of the Spanish Empire and
its diverse inhabitants. Her writings raise several interesting questions about
the lives of female religious and their representation in the early modern
Spanish Empire.
In this account, how did Sor Ana’s membership in a strict Franciscan order
influence the way she portrayed life on the journey? How did Sor Ana depict
Sor Jerónima? Do you think that even from her sickbed she controlled the
nuns and friars who accompanied her? How does this help to explain the
role of nuns in Spanish Catholic culture of the 1600s; one that is commonly
thought to be dominated by men? How and why did the Spanish men and
nuns described here treat the enslaved woman, María? Sor Ana exaggerates
certain events and leaves others out of this manuscript. If you were able to
interview her, what specific questions would you ask her and why?

9.1 Chapter 47: Of the Trail from Mexico City to Embarkation2

We were traveling with much joy on rough trails along very high cliffs. We
climbed upwards and then downwards in such a way that those above could
barely see the others below and some paths were so tight that if a mule were to
trip, it would fall as if it came from a very high tower; we traveled this extreme
route for more than seventy leagues.
There were many rivers and streams with lovely water and wooded springs;
there were fruit trees, coconut palms, orange groves, banana plants, and a type
of plant that they use to make pita thread.3 There were cemetery caretakers

2. Ana de Cristo, Sor. Historia de nuestra santa madre Jerónima de la Asunción 1623–29.
Archivo del Monasterio de Santa Isabel de los Reyes (AMSIRT), Toledo, Spain.
History of Our Blessed Mother Jerónima de la Asunción: Travel Excerpt from Mexico to Manila,
fols. 92–96v. I would like to thank Asunción Lavrin, Maricela Villalobos, and Edward Chauca
for helping me with some of the difficult parts of this translation.
3. Pita thread (hilo de pita) is generally made from the inner part of the agave plant. For this
definition of pita, see the online version of the Real Academia Española Diccionario de Autori-
dades—Tomo V (1737): http://web.frl.es/DA.html, accessed February 12, 2017.
 9 • Sor Ana’s Travel Excerpt from Mexico to Manila

like in Spain.4 There were vineyards, and trees where cotton grows;5 reeds so
tall and thick that they are used to build houses and churches; sturdy pines
and solid hardwoods, and such pleasant fields, flowers, fruits, and trees that it
seemed like we were in paradise. Indeed, we were told that we were very close
to it and to the River Jordan.
[In the short paragraph that is omitted here Sor Ana continues the
theme of the River Jordan. She describes the kingdom of Cambodia and she
encourages Franciscan missionaries to travel to that region to convert infidels of
­
the Muslim faith.]
We arrived at a settlement of indios (indigenous people) where there were
only two españoles (Spaniards): a priest and the governor. The governor’s
wife sent us a very well-prepared meal. We went visiting in the company of
the priest’s sister who was called doña Juana. When she saw Mother Leonor
de San Buenaventura suffering from hemorrhoids and fearful of stomach
cramps, she said she wanted her to be given a ground-up bead from Saint
Juana with a sip of water and once this was done, she was completely cured.
She said that the place is so poor that it could not support a doctor so she
cured everyone with that relic [a bead from Saint Juana] and in particular, she
had cured two indias who had been given Extreme Unction and had carried
dead fetuses in their bodies for several days. Upon receiving the relic, they
expelled out the rotting fetuses.
[The short paragraph that is omitted here describes the acclaim of
Mother Juana de la Cruz’s rosary beads. Many friars wanted to touch their
rosaries to the original beads to obtain their miraculous powers.]
Some of the doctrinas (indigenous parishes) run by clergy that we encoun-
tered along the route showed us much hospitality housing us in their churches
or in their homes. In some places, there were inns, while others were deserted.
Some nights we camped by the side of rivers with such joy that it almost felt
like we were in heaven because in no place along the way did we have any
misfortune and we wanted for nothing in the doctrinas of the fathers of the
[Franciscan] order where we were treated very well.
Nearing Cuernavaca, a group of indios met us dressed in white linen and
carrying a crimson standard [three words of illegible text]. They came out of the
friary of our fathers and the corregidor (district judge and administrator) who
was from Toledo along with other españoles on horseback. We dismounted
from [our mules] at an inn belonging to the friars, which was prepared for

4. This phrase about cemetery caretakers seems a bit out of place with Sor Ana’s list of plants
and trees, but this is also a good example of her prose, which is not always polished or linear.
5. Perhaps she was referring to cottonwood trees.

107
 9 • Sor Ana’s Travel Excerpt from Mexico to Manila

us by the head friar. We had three days’ rest there after the roughest part of
the trail. He treated us very well and then accompanied us for a few leagues,
covering all our costs, and if we had let him he would have done so for the
rest of the trip right up to the port. He bid us farewell, shedding many tears
as if he were the confessor of each one of us. We received the same treatment
from the Dominican friars in a place just after this one.
We arrived at another place where a priest was saying mass with two sac-
ristans at his sides fanning away mosquitos because there were an infinite
number of them. We made confession, received communion, and right there
in the church he gave us food, and went with us as far as the River Balsas,
which we crossed in calabazas (dugout canoes) each one tied to the other and
rowed by indios. We then traveled along the River Papagayo, which was the
roughest part of the journey due to its ups and downs and rocky cliffs. God
saved us from great dangers because there were tigres (jaguars) and other wild
beasts in this area.
The Father Commissary6 had been to Acapulco two months earlier and
a priest there had a house and everything necessary for us for when we went
there. When we came in sight of the port, a salvo was fired from the fort.
Some of our friars along with other gentlemen met us on the beach. As we
entered the town we were greeted with a solemn procession. Dismounting
from the mules, we joined the procession until we arrived at the high altar of
the friary of Saint Francis and in our honor, they exposed the Blessed Sacra-
ment and left it that way during the whole time we were in the church.7
They said mass and we received communion. Everything was so decorated
with banners on the alters as if it were a Corpus Christi procession, and with
this, they brought us right up to the inn, which was closed like a cloister and
they said mass for us every day and they made a room into a visiting parlor
with a cane grille and a door for our doorkeepers.8 While there, we all had
some fevers; our mother [Sor Jerónima] was in great danger, and our Father
Commissary had a bad tertian fever9 and when he recovered, he ordered Sor
Jerónima to stay behind with one nun and for the rest of us to continue our
journey, but God put things right by giving Sor Jerónima such energy that
one day they gave her the Viaticum10 and the next she boarded the ship on

6. The “Father Commissary” refers to the position of commissary in charge of Franciscan

friars. In this case Sor Ana was most likely referring to Fray Pedro Bautista who traveled with
them on the galleon to Manila.
7. To expose the Blessed Sacrament meant that the consecrated host was displayed in an
ornate monstrance for adoration.
8. This entire sentence is somewhat vague in Spanish. It appears that Sor Ana is saying that
they brought the host with them to the inn.
9. “Tertian” literally means a fever that repeats itself every three days.
10. Holy Communion or Eucharist given to a person who is in imminent danger of dying.
 9 • Sor Ana’s Travel Excerpt from Mexico to Manila

her own two feet. The ship set sail on Holy Tuesday and the head friar sent
.

her [Sor Jerónima] to sea with about one hundred hens and the mother of
our sister María de los Angeles sent more than two hundred more with many
other gifts. And during the month, more or less, that we spent there [in Aca-
pulco], the neighboring Guardians continuously visited us.

9.2 Chapter 49. All the Things That Happened during

Navigation from the Port of Acapulco to Manila

We set sail on Holy Tuesday and if the Lord had provided good comfort
for the first ship [on the trip from Spain to Mexico], then it was at least as
good on the second ship, which was very large with a larger cabin [for us] on
the poop deck that had a beautiful corridor and a small toilet.11 At last we
traveled as if in a cloistered cell with doorkeepers. The Mother Vicaress and
Mother Luisa de Jesús received messages there, and visitors who could not be
denied, entered. Mother Magdalena de Cristo served as provisora (food pro-
visioner) and worked like a man preparing the food, and servants then took
it to the communal stove made of brick and lime, which was the designated
place for everyone’s food preparation. The friars had their lodging next to the
door. The general of the ship, don Jerónimo de Valenzuela, looked after our
every comfort as if it were his only duty. And since our mother was so thin,
we put her in a bed and she did not leave it, suffering incredible discomfort,
until we disembarked.
On Holy Thursday, Father Friar Pedro Bautista, Commissary of our friars,
sang the gospel and the señor Bishop of Nueva Segovia preached a lofty ser-
mon.12 We had many sermons on Sundays and feast [days] because there were
many great preachers. Everyday, the young and old sang the Hail Mary to Our
Lady, the priests said the prayer, and they also sang the litany responsively in
four voices in the choir. In the morning and at night there was doctrine for the
boys and everyone said the prayer of the Immaculate Conception. Everything
was so well orchestrated as if in a convent and if someone neglected a task,
later he would pay for it. On Easter eve, the friars said very solemn vespers. On
Easter day, they blessed the water and sang the Gospel because mass was never
said. On the Octave of Ascension, Mother María de la Trinidad was afflicted
with the illness that so quickly caused her death that the pain of losing such a

11. Sor Ana uses the word “secretilla” for small toilet. Nuns referred to their toilets as secretas
and most likely she is using the diminutive to be polite.
12. Nueva Segovia refers to a diocese in the Philippines erected in 1595. For more informa-
tion, see Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11149b.htm

109
 9 • Sor Ana’s Travel Excerpt from Mexico to Manila

great nun whom we loved very much for her virtues caused us horrible pain.
She was from the Convent of Belalcázar de Santa Clara. She had diarrhea and
a high fever and did not respond to any remedies given to her. On the fifth
day, the friars handed her soul over to God. We understood how the sorrow of
this trial might cost our blessed mother her life since she also suffered from the
same terminal illness and we understood that she might not wake up the next
day, and the general kept inquiring about her and everybody from our fathers
to everyone else prayed together and reflected at every instant who we would
be if we found her lifeless. According to some of the words some of us heard
from her, she said that she had seen God there in the purgatory of the deceased
[María de la Trinidad] and later she told us that as the illness progressed at sea,
she received great favors from the Lord because he had exposed her soul to a
type of death or passage that often passed through her when she received God,
His Majesty who left her here with us, blessed be His name.
The bishop and our friars celebrated the [funeral] service [of María de la
Trinidad] very solemnly and instead of the funeral toll, three shots were fired
from the artillery. They sang responsos (prayers for the dead) as she was thrown
into the sea, dropped into the current at the bow, dressed in her habit and hold-
ing a crucifix in her hands; may her soul receive its prize. During the whole day
our mother abbess suffered acute bouts of illness. Sixty attacks of the deadly
diarrhea left her weak and only a shell of herself. Seeing that she was dying the
Father Commissary was so upset that he said, “Watch her face very carefully
so that she does not expire without you all seeing it.” At this point, the bishop
entered very teary-eyed and with the general on his knees and they asked for her
blessing and from there they went to a secret meeting with our Father Commis-
sary about what to do with her body. The bishop responded that there was no
reason for her to be fish food and she would be brought to Manila in a box. The
general conveyed this decision to the mother vicaress. She was so upset that she
cried out to Saint Juana saying, “my mother, what about those pacts we made in
San Juan del Hoyo;13 when with many tears I asked you to take her to Manila
in your hands. How can you leave us now with this affliction?” We gave her one
of [Saint Juana’s] ground-up beads and she started to get better. Now when we
tell her that we used two of the originals: one for this occasion and the other
for when we were in the port of Acapulco, she responded: “to touch the beads
would have done the same, and the originals would have been more valuable to
cure two kingdoms.” She soon began to eat and we tried to treat her as if we were
in the convent. We gave her broth made from a very good hen, and at night a
chicken breast ground up with starch, which was heated up with a candle since
no other fire was allowed for fear of fire in our wooden cabin. At the hour of
the Hail Mary it [the common stove] is extinguished and then it is lit at dawn.

13. Possibly a variant of San Juan de Ulloa, an island off the port of Veracuz in Mexico.
 9 • Sor Ana’s Travel Excerpt from Mexico to Manila

The general ordered all-hands on deck; and it was shouted from above [the
mast] that enemy Dutch ships had been sighted. There was a great commo-
tion and the captains and soldiers began to ready their arms and ammunition
with gunpowder. They put a big loaded canon next to our door. This was
done to encourage the soldiers and to warn them about what might happen.
Three years earlier, God had saved them miraculously when the Dutch had
surrounded the ships even though they told us some of our men had died.
They said they would put us in the hatchway, which is like a cave because it’s
very dark, below water. Our blessed mother, seeing the friars tending to us,
sat up in her bed, even though she was so thin, saying: “Me, in the hatchway?
I will do no such thing. Before that I’ll help throw piezas (cannonballs) if nec-
essary and I’ll tell those heretics a thousand things.” Since the drill lasted the
whole day, no fire could be lit and the patient became very weak; but because
the crew was so dedicated, God boosted our spirits greatly.
Another night when heavy winds whipped up, those who controlled the
rudder made a mistake causing the ship to list and all the cabins filled with
water. People said confessions very quickly and there were those who until
that moment had not confessed in ten years and in all of that turmoil, they
took refuge with our blessed mother. She ordered one of Saint Juana’s beads
to be thrown into the sea and the fair weather began. At the worst of the
storm, the mother vicaress took a touched rosary14 and wrapped it around
the neck of a crucifix, beseeching her [Santa Juana] to show the virtue of her
promise and liberate us with the holy beads. At that moment they [the beads]
all broke off into crosses and after a short while they all turned back again
around the same Christ [crucifix]. One of the sailors said that on a similar
occasion, when all of the masts had snapped and everyone was giving their
confessions to each other, he remembered that he had a “touched” bead. He
shouted loudly for everyone to commend themselves to the Saint [Juana] and
when he put the bead on the base of the mast, the tempest stopped suddenly
and that after the successful voyage, they found the bead on top of the wood
but without any fasteners and everyone gave thanks to God. Many similar
cases like this one could be told about other sea voyages.
A desperate negra (black woman) named María threw herself into the sea
and those that witnessed it grabbed her by the hem of her skirt. The captain
ordered her tied to the mast and punished. Hearing her screams and knowing
of her case, our mother sent the Father Fray Miguel de San Francisco with a
bead so he could bless her; and she stood there in tears, commending herself
to the saint [Juana]. And, as the negra being very angry said she was going to

14. The original Spanish is “rosario tocado,” literally “touched rosary.” This is one of the
rosaries that was considered a contact relic since it had touched one of Madre Juana’s original
rosary beads.

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 9 • Sor Ana’s Travel Excerpt from Mexico to Manila

throw herself into the sea, the priest approached her and touched her with
a bead, at which point she fainted with great trembling and sweating at his
feet. When she came round she said that when she was touched by the bead,
a negro who wanted to take her to hell was cast out of her. Then our blessed
mother said to her: “Did you know, my daughter, that you were going to
him?” She responded that yes, that she had been robbed of some cuartos (cop-
per coins) and beads and the negro had told her: “You have no other alterna-
tive than to throw yourself into the sea.” And she consoled her and dressed
her, giving her many beads.
A period of calm set in for ten days. The priests went back and forth
over whether we were going to land in Japan. They did not want to let their
beards grow so they could slip onto the island as laymen, and as for us, they
were going to build a hut with branches in the countryside until they could
inform Manila to send a ship. God enabled us to respond to all of this with
good spirits. The general said to our mother: “Señora, do you not see that
we are lost and the ship is like a toothpick in the sea. Did you not tell me
that on the other sea voyage when you threw a bead [overboard], you would
get wind in the sails, but now no matter how many beads we toss the calm
increases.” She consoled him saying: “The Saint is so affable that I am con-
vinced that this instance is a greater miracle than the other one, so we shall
see.” After this affliction, a wind blew in that brought us to safety. Then a
frigate appeared in the distance, from which they shouted to us: “Praise be
to Jesus Christ. What type of prayer did you say that you avoided fourteen
Dutch ships that had just left port? They were waiting to rob you as they
are wont to do.” We gave thanks to God who saved us and that the men
who spoke to us were Christians and for being close to land since we were
so lacking food and drink that the friars said there were soldiers who would
give a peso for a jug of water. Upset by their suffering, our blessed mother
asked the general to remedy the situation. He responded that the officers
were already receiving a half ration of water and it would be even worse to
take it all away at once. She told the general, “trust God’s mercy and in the
name of Saint Juana you will be returned the entire ration.” He said, “so be
it,” and with this, the outcry subsided and everyone was saying joyously that
the Saint has ordered water be given to us.
Once the breezes began, not a lot happened and soon thereafter the ship
dropped anchor. The men constructed a small skiff from some boards and
a steward with four sailors was sent to receive a blessing from the blessed
abbess. They asked her to commend them to God and to touch their rosa-
ries. After receiving precautionary advice, they were given letters for the city
of Manila. They encountered so much wind [on the skiff] that they found
themselves in great danger, but God favored them with the power He gave to
the beads. Afterwards, the men said they put a rosary around the mast and the
 9 • Sor Ana’s Travel Excerpt from Mexico to Manila

never-ending waves that looked like mountains parted . . .15 and it could not
have been anything but a miracle that they arrived so quickly to Manila. The
men gave tidings of the successful trip and they were congratulated.
When we dropped anchor, Father Fray Miguel de San Francisco was dis-
patched with all of the clothing in sampans16 and from there, he went to
Manila and we stayed three days in the port at the house of the regional mag-
istrate who treated us very well and with much kindness since he had invited
us while we were on the ship. From the port we had another five-day jour-
ney. It was not any easier than before since we had to ride on what they call
hamacas (hammocks), which are carried on the shoulders of four indios.17 It
was like a funeral bier, and the only thing missing was the pall [cloth covering
a coffin]; when it rained we made a kind of tarp with our veils. These trails
close to Manila are very dangerous because there are pagan negrillos who take
refuge in the mountains.18 From their perches in trees, they shoot arrows and
kill people when small groups travel together. We were well guarded because
our blessed Commissary saw to our protection. There were harquebusiers
shooting every now and again. God has given these people [negrillos] control
of mountains of gold, which was amazing to see. Only they and the native
indios know how to mine the gold, but they are good for very little and very
humble and see no use for it.
After this segment of the journey, we arrived at a parish of Augustinian fri-
ars who treated us with much kindness. From there we went to a good town
called Pampanga where there is also an Augustinian friary. The prior and the
townspeople went out in a procession to receive us and the streets were deco-
rated with branches. They had a good church where we confessed and took
communion and from there we were brought to the chapter house, which is
part of the friary. We spent three days resting there and we were showered
with the indescribable charity of many [visitors]. The prior was the brother
of the señor Archbishop of Manila who told us that he was from the Villa de
Chinchos. The Dominican friars gave us such good lodging in their parishes
as if we were from their same order. In one town before arriving at Pampanga,
we stayed at the house of a very devout and very elite india who wore a habit.
We spent two or three days and nights there during which she always rose at
midnight with all her servants for matins and to say the catechism and to pray
like a nun. She showed us great affection and gave us gifts even though we did
not understand a word she said nor she us.

15. The phrase following this is illegible in the original.

16. A small boat with a flat bottom used in the Far East.
17. Most likely Sor Ana is using the generic term indios to refer to native people of the
Philippines.
­
18. She is referring to the Negritos, an indigenous group of Australoid descent.

113
 9 • Sor Ana’s Travel Excerpt from Mexico to Manila

After finishing the journey of the hamacas, we rode in a sampan the rest of
the way to Manila. We saw several leagues of beautiful greenery as we traveled
on the river and the countryside is a mangrove that leads to the sea. As such,
the river narrows in an area that enters the city and it wraps around the wall.
Our convent is next to the sea and the river, with only one street between it
and the wall. A day’s journey before our arrival, our father provincial, who at
the time was Fray Pedro de San Pablo, sent his secretary and other religious
to welcome us with some gifts, and closer to Manila he, himself, came in
his boat. He was accompanied by the blessed Father Fray Luis Sotelo, other
religious, two judges with their wives, and other devout persons; all pleased
to finally see nuns in their city. At the entrance, señor Govenor don Alonso
Fajardo greeted us along with many people. The maestre de campo19 with his
captains and soldiers at his side, ordered the firing of the artillery. He [the
governor] was lamenting that no one had notified him so that all the religious
orders could have come with him to greet the new Order of Santa Clara.
Our Provincial Father apologized, saying that it was the mother abbess’s fault
because she had asked him for a quiet entry. The governor responded that
it was his humble responsibility to welcome her in the way she deserved so
that the infidels could see the glory of these devote ceremonies for our holy
Catholic faith.

Suggested Reading

Arenal, Electa, and Stacey Schlau, eds. Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own
Works. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, Press, 1989.
Lavrin, Asunción. Brides of Christ: Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2008.
Owens, Sarah E. Nuns Navigating the Spanish Empire. Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press, 2017.
———. “Transatlantic Religious,” in The Routledge Research Companion for Early
Modern Spanish Women Writers, ed. Nieves Baranda and Anne J. Cruz. New
York: Routledge, 2018.

Document Themes
• Migration and mobility
• Religion

19. Maestre de campo was the rank just below captain-general.

 10

The Spiritual Diary of an Afro–Peruvian

Mystic, Úrsula de Jesús (Lima, 1647–1661)

Translation by Nancy E. van Deusen

Úrsula de Jesús was a devout donada, a convent servant who professed simple
religious vows, in the Limeño convent of Santa Clara in 1645.1 She had been
born into slavery in 1604, the legitimate child of an enslaved African woman
who served a wealthy Spanish household. From age eight to twelve, Úrsula
was sent to work in the household of one of Lima’s most prominent lay holy
women, the celebrated mystic Luisa Melgarejo Sotomayor. In Melgarejo’s
household, Úrsula had her first exposure to the spiritual climate that would
eventually inform her own religious expression: the physical representations
of baroque religious devotion constructed in the artwork and ornamentation
of the Melgarejo home’s personal altar; the celebration of Catholic devo-
tion in the sermons, saints’ lives, and confessional guides that Úrsula may
have learned to read, and certainly would have heard read aloud; exposure to
the circle of the city’s religious luminaries, including the beata (lay religious
woman) Rosa de Lima (later canonized as Latin America’s first saint). Finally,
Úrsula would doubtless herself have witnessed doña Melgarejo’s bouts of reli-
gious ecstasies—visions, physical mortifications, and prophecies—which, fol-
­
lowing in the tradition of affective female religious practice established by the
sixteenth-century Avilan nun Teresa de Jesús, represented the most orthodox
means for spiritual women to expression their religious vocations in the Early
Modern period.
At about age twelve, Úrsula left the Melgarejo household to work for
the niece of Úrsula’s mother’s owner, sixteen-year-old Inés del Pulgar, who
became a novice in the Santa Clara convent in 1617. For the next twenty-
eight years, Úrsula served del Pulgar, attending to her mistress’s needs for
food and clothing in her private cell, and working alongside other servants

1. This introduction summarizes many of the salient features of the life and spiritual writings
of Úrsula de Jesús that Nancy E. van Deusen provides in her introduction to The Souls of
Purgatory: The Spiritual Diary of a Seventeenth-Century Afro-Peruvian Mystic, Ursula de Jesús
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004), 1–77. This introduction adopts van
Deusen’s practice of referring to the donada by her Christian name.

115
 10 • The Spiritual Diary of an Afro–Peruvian Mystic

and Afro–Peruvian slaves in Santa Clara’s kitchen and infirmary for long
hours each day. Úrsula was one of between 100 and 130 Afro–Peruvians
(both African- and New-World born) who worked in the convent of Santa
Clara in this period. In the year 1637, when the convent housed a total of
446 women, Afro–Peruvian enslaved women constituted between 22 and 33
percent of the convent’s total population.2 The Afro–Peruvian enslaved pop-
ulation was even more concentrated in the city of Lima beyond the convent’s
walls. By the late sixteenth century and through most of the seventeenth, half
of the population of Lima was black, although this number represented a
growing population of free as opposed to enslaved Afro–Peruvians.3
As a slave, Úrsula occupied the lowliest rung of the highly stratified (and
prominently displayed) social hierarchy that existed within the convent,
where members of each successive social strata (slaves, servants, donadas,
White Veil novices, White Veil nuns, and the prestigious nuns of the Black
Veil) sometimes gave in to the temptation to lord their position over those
on lower levels. One of Úrsula’s peers, for example, an enslaved woman called
María Malamba, served a donada in the convent for decades. Upon Malam-
ba’s death, her mistress seized the enslaved woman’s few belongings to which
her bereaved husband had previously laid claim.4 The intensely stratified
atmosphere of the convent, illustrated in such instances, may have contrib-
uted to Úrsula’s initial decision to leave the convent rather than remain there
as a donada once she had obtained her liberty.
Although she had not manifest any great spiritual devotion in her first
decades at Santa Clara, Úrsula’s contemporary biographer, an anonymous
Franciscan, recorded that a few years before her manumission, God inter-
vened to save Úrsula from physical peril and that it was this act that motivated
­
her to embark on a life of intense spiritual devotion. This in turn, perhaps in
combination with gratitude for Úrsula’s gifts as a physical healer, prompted
one of the convent’s sisters to purchase Úrsula’s liberty in 1645. Later that
year, Úrsula decided to return to Santa Clara as a donada, professing formally
eighteen months later. She lived for a further twenty-one years as a donada
in the convent and during this time, generated a reputation as a mystic. She
began to experience frequent visions, to communicate with God, and to
develop her cherished spiritual gift: the ability to intercede on behalf of souls

2. van Deusen, The Souls of Purgatory, 26.

3. Herbert S. Klein and Ben Vinson III, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean,
2nd Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 25. See also Michelle A. McKinley,
Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization in Colonial Lima, 1600–1700
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 32.
4. van Deusen, The Souls of Purgatory, 4.
 10 • The Spiritual Diary of an Afro–Peruvian Mystic

trapped in purgatory in order to alleviate their suffering and in some cases to

assist them to ascend to heaven.
The selections below contain passages from Úrsula’s spiritual journal, a
standard literary genre of Counter-Reformation female religious, composed
between 1647 and 1661. The fact that a spiritual biography, or vida, of
Úrsula exists is both extraordinary and representative. It is unusual in the
sense that it is one of the very few such existing texts detailing the spiritual
lives of non-Spaniards. It is representative in the sense that it follows the
literary conventions that colonial nuns frequently used in composing their
spiritual biographies following in the tradition of celebrated medieval and
early modern mystics. Because it was potentially heterodox for nuns to claim
authorship of their writing, they often justified their writing by claiming, as
Úrsula did, that they produced them at the behest of God or of their confes-
sors.5 Although the entries are recorded in the first person, we do not know if
Úrsula recorded any of them herself; she acknowledges dictating some parts
of them to at least one sister, and it is likely this is what she did for all the
entries. Nancy E. van Deusen observes that the diary “was probably uncen-
sored because it contains very few scratched out words or phrases and shows
no evidence of editing.”6 Readers will observe that the writing style is less
polished and less formal than Sor Ana’s excerpts in Chapter 9. Are there other
important distinctions between the spiritual experiences described in Sor
Ana’s letters and those Úrsula recorded? It is worth considering how Úrsula’s
experiences as an enslaved woman within the social hierarchy of both the city
of Lima and the convent of Santa Clara informed her religious visions. What
influences and preoccupations from her secular life are manifest in the partic-
ular kinds of spirituality Úrsula expressed? Students might also consider how
Úrsula’s navigation of contemporary attitudes toward non-Spaniard religious
professants compares to those depicted in Chapter 13 with its discussion of
early eighteenth-century attitudes toward indigenous nuns in Mexico. How
did Úrsula respond, spiritually, to Spanish attitudes about non-Spaniard
spiritual inferiority—or inadequacy—for religious perfection? Finally, as an
Afro–Latin American, how did her experiences and outlook, as a donada who
operated within one of the key institutions of colonial society, compare with
those of secular Afro–Latin Americans, like the free black women, Luisa de
Villalobos (Chapter 3), and Luisa de la Cerda (Chapter 6), or the enslaved
eighteenth-century women whose legal and social experiences are treated in
Chapters 14, 15, 17, 19, and 20?

5. Ibid., 50.
6. Ibid., 60.

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 10 • The Spiritual Diary of an Afro–Peruvian Mystic

10.1 Excerpt One from Úrsula’s Vida7

On the day of the Epiphany,8 I was in a state of recollection after having

taken communion. I do not know whether these are tricks of the big-footed
one,9 or from my head, but I recalled María Bran, a slave of the convent
who had died suddenly some fourteen years ago: one of the things most for-
gotten for me in this world. At the same time, I saw her in a priest’s alb,10 the
whitest of whites, beautifully embellished and gathered together with a short
cord with elegant tassels. She also wore a crown of flowers on her head. The
celestial beings arranged for me to see her from the back, although I could
still see her face and she was quite lovely, and her face a resplendent black. I
said, “How is it that such a good black woman, who had been neither a thief
nor liar, had spent so much time in purgatory?” She said she had gone there
because of her character, and because she slept and ate at the improper time.
Although she had been there a long time, her punishment had been mild.
She was very thankful to God, who with His divine providence had taken her
from her land and brought her down such difficult and rugged roads in order
to become a Christian and be saved. I asked whether black women went to
heaven and she said if they were thankful (8v)11 and heeded His beneficence,
and thanked Him for it. They were saved because of His great mercy. When I
ask these questions I do not do so because I want to but, just as I soon as I see
them, they speak to me without my wishing it to happen, and they make me
speak without wanting to. I need for them to commend me to God because
all this torments me. She also told me that I should thank God for the gifts
He had given her, and although I thought she went to heaven, I could not
be certain.
I am burdened by a terrible temptation. When I run into the nuns, I want
to bury myself so that they do not see me. On my way to the choir, I encoun-
tered a circle of nuns standing there, and so-and-so among them.12 As I
passed by, she said, “Is there anyone in this house who performs miracles?” I
felt like dropping dead on the spot. Distraught, I went to God, as He knows.
“Why did you allow this to happen, my Lord—what is it in me that they say

7. Reproduced by permission from Ursula de Jesús, The Souls of Purgatory, edited by Nancy E.
van Deusen: 80, 82–85, 87–88, 90–92. The editors have preserved the capitalization, punc-
tuation, and translation rules of the original published text and notes in this selection.
8. 6 January.
9. This is a reference to Satan and is used throughout the text.
10. The alb is the vestment priests wore to say mass. (DA, 1: 161). (Real Academia Española.
Diccionario de autoridades. Vol. 1. Facsimile, Madrid: Gredos, 1963, henceforth DA —Eds.)
11. These page numbers, which van Deusen includes in her translation, refer to the pages
from Úrsula’s diary (—Eds.)
12. So-and-so is a translation of the term, fulana, often used to avoid naming someone.
 10 • The Spiritual Diary of an Afro–Peruvian Mystic

such things?” I was so bereft that my heart would not stop pounding in my
chest. Pay no attention to this, leave it to Me. They called Me a trickster and
imposter, and they did not believe me, even when I was afflicted. And there, at
the end when I was dying, they said it again. What you now ask is more difficult
than if two hundred men wished to move a mountain from one place to another
by their own might, without it being my will. Later, I had the opportunity to
climb up to a lofty cell and from there I saw a mountain. What the voices had
said to me, here inside myself, now happened. Even if they were one thousand,
or even more. I looked again at the other side, and there I saw the San Cris-
tóbal Mountain.13 Within myself, the voices explained that even if they were
many, without the will of God, they could do nothing. I forgot to mention
that Christ told me not to fear this deceiver; he had no more power than that
which they wished to give him.

10.2 Excerpt Two

Monday, as soon as I had gone to the choir and prostrated myself before
the Lord, I saw two black women below the earth. In an instant, they were
beside me. One of them said to me, “I am Lusia, the one who served Ana
de San Joseph, and I have been in purgatory for this long, only because the
great merciful God showed compassion toward me.14 No one remembers
me.” Very slowly, she spoke of God’s goodness, power, and mercy, and how
we should love and serve Him. Lusia had served this community in good
faith, but sometimes they had accused her of certain things, and at times she
suffered her penance where she tended to cook. For the love of God, would
Ursula please commend her spirit to God. Before Lusia died, she had endured
awful hardships, and because of them they had discounted much of the pun-
ishment. This is all mixed up, as I remember it. She spoke at length, and her
appearance corresponded to the way she looked while living. I did not know
who the other dead black woman was. On another day, in the morning, Lusia
returned with the same demand and requested the same for doña Polonia de
Moya.15 She said doña Polonia had endured terrible suffering and had no
one who would remember her, and I thought I saw her there. I said to God

13. San Cristóbal Mountain is visible from the convent of Santa Clara.
14. Ana de San Joseph was elected interim vicaria (assistant abbess) in 1650, while the conven-
tual election was pending. See “Auto Arzobispal,” 1650. (Archivo Arzobispal de Lima [AAL],
Convent of Santa Clara [SC], 9: 6, —Eds.) The word caridad can be translated as “love,”
“compassion,” or “charity” (DA, 2: 309.)
15. Doña Apolonia de Moya appears in two documents related to a dispute over the sale of
her cell. It is probably the same person (see “Autos que sigue Francisca de Aliaga . . . contra

119
 10 • The Spiritual Diary of an Afro–Peruvian Mystic

that if He sent the suffering, I would commend them to Him and offer what-
ever I could for them and for that friar, who almost always appears before me.
On one of these days, the friar told me that what a community did together
for a soul was great, and worth more than when it was done for many souls,
because then, only a little went for each one. I see that the flames do not
come out of the top of her head as they did before, now they only reach to
the middle of her forehead. I do not know whether this is the chicanery of
that trickster.16
Another time, the morena [black woman] Lusia returned with the nun,
doña Polonia saying that I should ask the Father in the name of the Incarna-
tion of his Son on their behalf—I said, “In the name of the Incarnation?”
and the Angolan woman said, “Yes, in the name of the Incarnation.” She
explained, “Had He not become flesh, been born, suffered, and died for our
redemption?” I saw the nun with that peculiar eye that looked as though it
would burst.
Thursday, at times I would like to know how the nun, doña Mariana
Machuca, is.17 While having this temptation, I asked my Lord Jesus to guide
me so that I would no longer have it and would do only what He wished.
Today, while I was where I usually am, a desire swept over me. I resisted it as
much as possible, because I do not know whether these are contrivances of
that one [the devil]. I saw her in purgatory, in the same way as she was here:
seated on her chair with her cane held close to her. I wondered, “In purga-
tory? How can such a saintly person be there?” The voices said that she was
there, purging herself, and that it is worthwhile for the living to mortify them-
selves in many ways, although they live as though they had not done that. They see
and hear as though they cannot hear or see, and in this manner, many things are
not the way they really are. The voices said, that in order not to sin they avoided
certain things, so as not to be punished when they deserved it, or they let obliga-
tory matters slide. All these were the devil’s tricks. No matter what, one should
never stop fulfilling one’s duties. God’s creatures will not be left without receiving
the proper discipline, because that might be the cause of their perdition. They
are redeemed with the blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ. I do not know how to
describe what happened there. The punishment doña Mariana experienced
was minimal, and that children also pass through the fire, and that on the day

Apolonia de Moya,” 1639–44, AAL, SC, 6:41; and “Autos que sigue Francisca de Aliaga,”
1642–44, SC, 7:20.)
16. Another reference to the devil.
17. Mariana de Machuca spent thirty years as a nun in Santa Clara and died on 8 September
1630 (Córdova y Salinas, Crónica, 904) [Diego de Córdova y Salinas, Crónica franciscana de
las Provincias del Perú, 1651. Reprint, Lino G. Canedo, ed. (Washington, DC: Academy of
American Franciscan History, 1957), 904. —Eds.]
 10 • The Spiritual Diary of an Afro–Peruvian Mystic

of the Incarnation she will go to heaven. This is written the way I remember
it, in bits and pieces. God only knows what it is; I pay no heed.
Friday, I have the nerve to say, “My Lord Jesus, and there, have they
heeded this?” Because I said this, the voices repeated what they had said
before, saying My good Jesus. I said, “I should say, ‘My Lord, Jesus Christ.’”
They said it is important for a child to treat his parent with love and rever-
ence. Later, near the end, I see her18 on her deathbed, with large candles,
and all the other things they place on the dead. This must be a trick of that
devil.
Later, in the evening, while in my bed and praying to God with my eyes
closed, Cecilia appeared in front of me. I was so terribly frightened that I
began shaking like someone poisoned by mercury. Wherever I turned she
appeared before me, in the same way and dressed in the same manner as
when she was alive. She was an Indian donada who had died some years
ago.
Saturday afternoon, on the day of San Marcelo,19 I was praying the entire
rosary, and the voices told me to meditate upon when they took my Lord
down from the cross and the intolerable pain and agony He suffered there.
I should consider that the Lord had suffered all He had suffered from the
moment He entered this world solely for our salvation and redemption,
and He had done it all because of His eternal Father’s (10r) will. If His
Father willed Him to be born, He said, “Thy will be done”; if He willed
Him to suffer, “Thy will be done”; if He willed Him to die, “Thy will be
done,” all in such a way that He followed the will of God in everything. I
said I did not wish to see or hear anything. I want to get up now and leave
here. My Lord Jesus was our teacher from whom we should learn obedi-
ence, humility, and all the other virtues. I should recognize that I am noth-
ing, a worm, and deserved only hell. Only because of God’s goodness and
love did I receive his beneficence. I should be extremely grateful for these
gifts and worship my Lord with the same reverence and love with which the
angels adored Him in the manger, on the cross, and in the tomb. I should
also ponder how, because of God’s will, He had moved that tremendous
slab away from the tomb. At that moment, within myself I had the desire to
understand how they had carried my Lord to the sepulcher. They explained
that, it happened in the same way that I see them carry the most Holy Body
in the procession on the Friday of Holy Week, and in the same manner
that the venerable men, accompanied by angels, went along singing. I do
not know how to describe what happened there. Afterward, I offered three

18. I was unable to understand what la sid referred to in the document.

19. 16 January.

121
 10 • The Spiritual Diary of an Afro–Peruvian Mystic

decades of my rosary for each soul,20 most of them clerics and friars outside
the convent. In a chastising tone, the voices said, that with so many in the
house for whom I could plead or offer prayers, why did I look for those
outside, naming so-and-so, whom I had named in my prayers. While saying
this, a throng of nuns came out from under the earth, and two by two they
came by way of that deep place from the area near the kitchen. First, there
was doña Teresa, looking very well, with her wimple beneath the habit
very white. I recognized some of the nuns who had died more than twenty-
four years ago. They all came with their veils covering their faces; only
Teresa was unveiled. I recognized a Beatris, two Juanas, and another named
Mensia. I was astonished that they had been in purgatory for such a long
­
time. They said, “Does that frighten you? We have been there since the
days of Saldaña.”21 I asked after a few nuns, particularly doña Ana Delga-
do.22 The voices told me that she was in heaven. I asked after another whom
I won’t name, and they responded that from the moment she died, terribly
burdened, she had descended into hell. They awaited her there, with ter-
rible cauldrons, where she will remain forever. They named the sins she had
committed that condemned her and for which she had never asked forgive-
ness. Although she was always taking pleasure from her vices, she suffered
from some of them. If, as she lay dying, she had asked for forgiveness, God,
in His goodness would have pardoned her. She did not do that, though,
and I should see the harm caused by living carelessly and allowing oneself to
be carried away by the appetite. This taught me a lot about the importance
of spiritual exercises and that in this house the one sin that displeases God,
our father Saint Francis, and our mother Saint Clare greatly, are the friend-
ships. What happened there I am unable to say, but I was dumbstruck by it
all, and for having asked after the one who is so far beyond my (10v) recall.
They make me ask against my will, and I do not even know who speaks
to me, and I afraid that someone undesirable will respond. If it were up to
me, I would ask after other, very different dead souls. In that same proces-
sion I also saw a black woman named Lusia off to one side. I asked if black
women also went there, and they responded, Yes, they remain separated to
one side, and everything there occurs in great concord. On Sunday, while in

20. The rosary was divided into three groups of ten beads each.
21. Francisco de Saldaña was a wealthy Portuguese man who donated his estate to the foun-
dation of the convent of Santa Clara. The four foundresses were Justina de Guevara, Ana de
Illescas, Barbola (or Bartola) de la Vega, and Isabel de la Fuente.
22. In 1620, Ana Delgado, (in the convent, Ana de Jesús), an aristocratic married woman,
decided, along with two of her daughters to become nuns. Popular among the community, she
was known for her humility, ecstatic raptures, and rigorous disciplines. After fifteen years as a
clarisa (a nun of the order of Saint Clare —Eds.), she died on 29 November 1635, Córdova y
Salinas, Crónica, 900.
 10 • The Spiritual Diary of an Afro–Peruvian Mystic

a meditative trance pondering what had happened, I saw doña Teresa in a

very well lit place. She looked happy, and her face was well covered with
a pristine wimple; her veil was very long. It seemed that she only suffered
now because she could not see God. I asked myself, “Does purgatory have
cavities?” The voices said, Yes, and that specific sins brought specific punish-
ments. Those punished in the cavities received the same torture as those in hell.
That well where I saw Alfonsa was where they went when they had commit-
ted a mortal sin. Although they asked for forgiveness, confessed their sins, and
were forgiven, they still went there to be purged. In order to go to heaven they
had to be purer than one thousand crystals. Those wishing to please God were
fearful and careful not to offend Him and asked forgiveness. Those are the ones
who are like doña Teresa. If they are miserable, wretched, and fall into mortal
sin, they should ask God for forgiveness: if they are truly remorseful for having
offended Him. They can then be certain that this is what the blood of our Lord
Jesus Christ is for and offer it to the eternal Father for all He suffered. This was
an important lesson. I do not know how to describe what happened there.
May God be with me and free me from all evil. Everything torments me.
On Tuesday while doing my spiritual exercises, I saw that wretched one
they told me about the other day, a thousand depths below. She was in that
wretched place, lying flat on her back on something like a barbecue, sur-
rounded by many demons who tormented her. Flames came out her mouth,
eyes, and ears, just as when flames burst from a firework that is not allowed
to leave the ground. She had that noise in her head, and they touched her
head, using a thousand different methods of torture. Others came and placed
horrible pieces of iron around her feet. The voices said, See, this is how the
indulgent and lazy ones live. They turn their backs on everything and pay atten-
tion to nothing. They do not fear God, but only feed their appetites, spending
their time jeering and causing a ruckus. God offers them the help they need.
In speaking of the woman who was standing there, God said that He had
provided her with memory, understanding and will so that she could make
the appropriate choice. She had chosen that life, in spite of the confessors,
preachers, the inspirations, and books. Our Lord Jesus Christ said, Be vigilant
and pray in order to avoid temptation. She had made that choice and fallen into
temptation. Everything goes to bits and pieces as I recall it. It is amazing how
everything there is said harmoniously, (11r) and in such an orderly manner.
When I leave that place I feel so confused, wondering why they come to me
with such things, me, a poor little woman who means nothing, what use am
I? Sometimes I want to get up and run from there. I already told God that
He knows very well I want nothing more than to please Him. I do not come
here because I want them to speak to me, and the same with the visions. The
voices also told me that when I see someone in that way, I should counsel her
gently for her good.

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 10 • The Spiritual Diary of an Afro–Peruvian Mystic

10.3 Excerpt Three

Another evening, I went to the choir. I was so tired I could not help but fall
asleep. I said to my Lord, “I am going to go now because I cannot go on.”
It must have been divine providence, because I chanced upon a very sick
woman who called me and asked me to light a candle and the charcoal and do
a few other things and to summon a nun to help cure her, which is something
the sister usually did. The nun responded to me very disagreeably, saying she
was too tired, that the sick woman was too much trouble, and that she had
already fulfilled her duties. I returned to the sick woman saying I had already
called the sister. She took so long in coming that the sick woman asked me to
summon her again, but once again the nun told me she did not wish to go. I
told the sick woman that she was not going to come and that she should order
me to do what I could. For better or worse, I would take care of her needs as
best I could. When it was very late, and the night nearly over, the sister said,
“I have been unable to sleep all night out of guilt because I did not help the
sick woman.” I went to the choir, and I don’t know who it was who started
speaking about how she was enjoying Christ’s glory and how He left it for us
and He came and suffered terribly throughout his life to redeem us and set a
good example. For all that, we never failed to forget His kindness, and that
He raised and redeemed us with such great effort. In this way she referred to
the favors He had done and continues to do. Afterward, the voices told me to
say, “I thank you, my Lord, because you made me a Christian. I thank you
a thousand times over for bringing me to your house, one hundred million
times for the blessed sacraments you sent for our benefit, one hundred mil-
lion times because you wanted us to receive them today.” In this way they
referred to the many favors and how we should give thanks for them. They
told me how often for each of them and how much evil they have saved me
from, how much I deserved to be in hell, and how I should give thanks to
God for this.
(12v) Another time, after I had taken communion the voices told me to
commend the spirit of a black woman to God. She had been in the convent,
and had been taken out to be cured because she was gravely ill, but died a
few days later. This had happened more than thirty years ago, and I had for-
gotten about her as if she had never existed. I was frightened and thought to
myself, “So long in purgatory?” The voices responded, For the things she did.
Here, the voices led me to understand that she had illicitly loved a nun and
the entire convent knew about it, but that my father, Saint Francis, and my
mother, Saint Clare had gotten down on their knees and prayed to our Lady
to secure the salvation of that soul from her Son. That is because she had
served his house in good faith. Later, almost in front of me, I saw a crown
 10 • The Spiritual Diary of an Afro–Peruvian Mystic

of large thorns being lowered from heaven, suspended by a ribbon. I could

not tell how many there were, maybe sixty or so. Within two days, I saw the
morena again in that same corner, somewhat distant, like the first time I had
seen her there. Then the voices told me that she did her penance in the old
dormitory, and I now saw her in her human form, wearing a green skirt and
a head scarf. The morena explained that she was there because of the tremen-
dous mercy God had shown her and that our father, Saint Francis, and our
mother, Saint Clare, had gotten down on their knees on her behalf. I asked
her, not because I wanted to, but because they make me. Within myself, I
asked, “How, and why so much time in purgatory?” She told me that God
loves his wives23 so much that when He sees them fail to carry out their
duties, He feels it deeply, just as husbands do when their wives are unfaithful.
God, who raised and redeemed us, is so beneficent. So much happened there
that is incomprehensible.

10.4 Excerpt Four

On Holy Wednesday, I awakened before dawn at three with such a terrible

fright that the bed and I both shook uncontrollably. God was very merci-
ful toward me so that my screams did not knock down that room. I had
begun feeling the same fear the day before because of a black woman from
the convent who had died without receiving confession. Because she was sick
they had taken her to a farm to see whether she might recover in a different
climate, but as I said, she died. She told me that at that time of night she had
so much to do because when she was a cook and baker she was made to work
very hard, and the señora abbess could have corrected that problem. Later, I
went to the choir during the hour when everyone went to the kitchen. When
I prostrated myself I saw a crucified Christ. From the wound on his side a
stream of the purest blood poured out, which then merged with the blood
from the wounds on his feet. A thicker, more powerful stream was created
from them. When some arrived, the blood fell on them, and when they left,
others appeared. The voices explained that This was a sea that would never run
dry and it would last until the end of the world. Consider this: if everyone in the
world took water from the sea would it run dry? In the same way, this sea would
never run dry. Who can say what happened there? I was in a state of shock,
crossing myself again and again.

23. When a novice took her vows and became a nun, she literally became a bride of Christ.

125
 10 • The Spiritual Diary of an Afro–Peruvian Mystic

(14r) On Thursday of Holy Week, I had spent the entire night in front
of the holy altar without being able to do anything but sleep. At dawn, I
said to the Lord, “Hello. I have been lazy all night long.” The voices said
that I would see what I could do and a weak nature needs to rest. The entire
night before I had prepared the food for this day in the convent. The voices
said, Why does that cooking matter to you? What matters is that you should look
toward God. What matters is whether He looks or does not look at us. Look at
what you accomplished during the night. Then the celestial being repeated, If I
had a friend and I saw him working [det]24 and in danger of dying and then he
recovered, I could leave him, but if he did not and I left, the friend would have
reason to complain for the rest of his life. I have forgotten much of what hap-
pened because a long time has passed and I am not going to write it down. I
am not being conscientious.
On the second day of Easter, while pondering the wounds of my Lord, I
told Him to take away these illusions. I asked the Father, and the voices told
me that I should confide in Him and to ponder the glory of His resurrection
and that all that He as God had done to enter paradise. What was it for? He
did not need it, save to teach others what they should do to enjoy his Father’s
paradise. What would become of us if He had not suffered? Something came
over me, and it felt like my heart would burst in my body. They taught me
so many beneficial things, and I said to myself, “Would the enemy say such
good things to me?” Then I turned back to God and said, “How can I believe
it is you speaking to me, Lord? My God, I am nothing, of no use, do not
allow me to have illusions from the devil. I come directly to you with the
desire to please and love you. I have no other father, god, or teacher.” Here
he told me—after other things I do not recall—Have you heard it said, when
people affirm something, “By the Royal Crown”? So He says, “By His wounds.”
I do not know how to recount what happened there. In the afternoon I left
the kitchen for a short time. When I returned, I chanced upon a companion
who was angry that another cook, whom they assigned to work for a month,
ate too much. I simply said to her, “One pot of food at midday and another
in the evening.” Still, she remained angry. Each time I see her do it I have to
stop her. In the evening, I went to the choir and just as I prostrated myself
before the Lord, the voices said, “Why had I said that about so-and-so, men-
tioning her by name. Would I want them to say that about me?” I said to
myself, “The nuns were saying it,” but the voices said, Let them say it, but you
confirm it by repeating it. This came from the devil because it was gossip. You
know that you must speak to her in a kind manner and use words that do not
anger her. If she does not correct her behavior, do not torture yourself, leave it to

24. The text is deteriorated here. (—Eds.)

 10 • The Spiritual Diary of an Afro–Peruvian Mystic

me. For my part, when I was in the world they said many things to me, and I
remained silent. I was frightened. These are just bits.
On the third day of Easter a mulata entered the kitchen. She was upset
because each time her owner’s mother came she mistreated and chastised
her, lying to her daughter about her. On the contrary, she felt she did all she
could to please them. During the siesta, I went to the choir and said to my
Lord God, “Are you not God, the Father of mercy? Why do you not allevi-
ate the suffering of this poor, disconsolate woman?” The voices said to me, I
am pleased when some suffer from what others do to them. With this response,
I desisted.

Suggested Reading

Bristol, Joan Cameron. Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches: Afro-Mexican Ritual

Practice in the Seventeenth Century. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 2007.
Jaffary, Nora E. False Mystics: Deviant Orthodoxy in Colonial Mexico. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 2004.
­
Jesús, Ursula de, and Nancy E. van Deusen, The Souls of Purgatory: The Spiritual
Diary of a Seventeenth-Century Afro-Peruvian Mystic, Ursula de Jesús. Albuquer-
que: University of New Mexico Press, 2004.
Myers, Kathleen Ann. Neither Saints nor Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Span-
ish America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Document Themes
• Race and ethnicity
• Religion

127
 11

Isabel Hernández, Midwife and

Healer, Appears before the
Inquisition (Mexico, 1652)

Isabel Hernández, a mestiza (person of indigenous and European parentage)

midwife and curandera (healer) of humble means appeared before Mexico
City’s inquisitorial tribunal in the spring of 1652 to answer to allegations that
she was a hechicera or witch. This charge, although not considered a heresy,
was one the Mexican tribunal of the Holy Office investigated with consid-
erable frequency.1 Along with helping their clients with medical problems,
hechiceras were often accused of using “love magic” to secure the exclusive
devotion of an existent lover or to attract the interest of a new one.2 As was
the case with Hernández, many of the practices that both colonial popula-
tions and the Inquisition associated with witchcraft were linked to indigenous
religious or medical practices, even though the practitioners themselves were
not always indigenous. At the time of the foundation of the three New World
courts of the Inquisition in Mexico City and Lima (1570), and in Cartagena
(1610), the Habsburg king Philip II removed Latin America’s indigenous
population from the jurisdiction of the tribunal, in part as a response to the
wave of popular protests that swept through Mexico following the brutal exe-
cution by public burning that the Franciscan Order had sentenced a Nahua
cacique (hereditary indigenous chieftain) in Texcoco, don (sir) Carlos Omet-
ochtzin, in 1539. As a mestiza, Hernández was a colonial subject who, like
all Spaniards, mixed-race people, and Africans, fell within the jurisdiction of
the Inquisition.
Her trial followed the standard process by which the inquisition operated: a
denunciation, the defendant’s imprisonment, the court’s seizure of the defen-
dant’s possessions, and his or her initial interrogation before the court. The

1. Solange Alberro, Inquisición y sociedad en México, 1571–1700 (México: Fondo de Cul-

tura Económica, 1988), 205, found that 18.8 percent of the cases opened by the court for the
period between 1571 and 1700 were for charges of “magic and witchcraft.”
2. Although courts of the Inquisition sometimes charged men with witchcraft, the majority
of the accused were women. For example, of sixty accused witches in Lima between 1650 and
1700, 82 percent were women. Lee M. Penyak and Walter J. Petry, eds., Religion and Society
in Latin America: Interpretive Essays from Conquest to Present (New York: Orbis Books, 2009),
129–30.
 11 • Isabel Hernández, Midwife and Healer

court then urged the defendant to tell the truth in three formal admonish-
ments. This was followed by the collection of testimony from relevant wit-
nesses, a formal accusation (sometimes preceded by the considered written
assessment by the court’s theological qualifiers), and the defendant’s responses
to these charges. Witnesses’ testimony was then communicated in an anony-
mous fashion to the defendant, who again responded to any new evidence
presented. Cases concluded with the inquisitors’ judgment and sentence.
Hernández’s five-month-long inquisition trial, several passages of which
are excerpted here, includes fascinating details about several matters: her
work as a health-care provider, the community networks that existed between
different residents of city of Tlaxcala where she lived, and elements of the
operation of the court of the Holy Office itself. While many of her denounc-
ers focused on allegations of her engagement in “love magic,” in Hernández’s
own confessions, as the following passages indicate, she focused more on
descriptions of her work as a midwife.3 She provided a detailed confession
to the court, for instance, of her assistance to one woman pregnant with an
undesired (and unacknowledged) child. Hernández does not explicitly indi-
cate in her testimony if the baby was stillborn or whether she played a role in
ensuring its demise. The newborn simply disappears from her description. It
is likely that she had facilitated the woman’s miscarriage by giving her a dose
of cihuapatli (the aster flower), identified by Francisco Hernández, the cel-
ebrated sixteenth-century naturalist, as an effective producer of contractions
either at or before the full term of pregnancy.4 This was one of the many
plants the inquisitors’ officers found in Hernández’s lodgings, which when
asked to identify, she merely acknowledged that it was “to give to women in
labor.” Interestingly, the court did not pursue the discussion of the details of
the pregnant woman’s experience, or the outcome of the fetus she was car-
rying, beyond Hernández’s vague description. Charges of inducing a miscar-
riage did not appear among the list of formal charges that the court included
in its formal accusation against Hernández.
Two witnesses had originally denounced Hernández to the tribunal two
years before the court pursued its investigation of her for having offered to
provide them with powders that they might use to control the rigida condición
(strict or controlling nature) of their husbands. We cannot discern definitively
from the documents if by employing this phrase, Hernández’s denouncers

3. For a discussion of inquisitorial accusations of women’s engagement in “love magic” see

Ruth Behar, “Sexual Witchcraft, Colonialism, and Women’s Powers: Views from the Mexi-
can Inquisition,” in Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, ed. Asunción Lavrin
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 178–206.
­
4. For more on cihuapatli’s usage in colonial Mexico, see Nora E. Jaffary, Reproduction and
Its Discontents in Mexico: Childbirth and Contraception from 1750 to 1905 (Chapel Hill: Uni-
versity of North Carolina Press, 2016), 80–84, 179.

129
 11 • Isabel Hernández, Midwife and Healer

were using a euphemism for physical abuse or if they were instead describing
either the jealousy or perhaps emotional aloofness of their husbands. Women
who appeared before colonial tribunals (including in Bárbara López’s case
found in Chapter 8), often used explicit language to describe the violent acts of
their husbands, so it is possible the women who denounced Hernández were
referring to the emotional rather than the physical behavior of their husbands.
Besides the occasionally perplexing language, readers will be confronted
with various other curious elements of Hernández’s trial. The first two wit-
nesses who denounced the midwife in 1650 both declared that they were
prompted to act only after a delay of twenty years.5 Neither witness provided
plausible explanations for the lengthy delay, nor did the court’s officials ques-
tion them about it. The first witness, Inés de Herrera, opened her statement
by asserting that she had been prompted to come forward having heard the
Inquisition’s “Edict of the Faith,” a text describing the heretical practices
about which Catholic subjects should be vigilant against, read aloud one
month earlier in her parish church. By the seventeenth century, the Mex-
ican Inquisition had ordered that the general edict of the faith should be
read out publicly on one of the Sundays of Lent each year in New Spain’s
cities and towns.6 Herrera claimed that upon hearing the Edict, she had
recalled Hernández’s offers, twenty years earlier, to provide Herrera and
some companions with powders and medicines they might use to attract and
repel men’s romantic attention. The second witness, Catalina de Herrera,
presumably the mother of Inés, provided much the same information.7
We cannot know whether the comisario (inquisitorial agent and acting
judge) in Tlaxcala or the women’s parish priest had simply neglected, in
contravention of the Holy Office’s requirements, to regularly publish the
Edict of Faith to their communities for two decades. Possibly, this is what
happened, and that it was only upon first hearing the Edict—two decades
after the fact—that both women immediately recalled Hernández’s suspi-
cious acts. It is also possible, and perhaps more probable, that the Herrera
women, had sat through several annual readings of the Edict but had not had
any motive to denounce Hernández until some other (unacknowledged) inci-
dent, prompted them to act. This seems a likely scenario because using the
courts for “paying off old scores” was a practice that Henry Kamen describes
as the rule rather than the exception in the generation of inquisitorial cases.8

5. This type of delay was not unusual in Inquisition trials where denouncers and witnesses
often gave evidence about events that had occurred decades earlier.
6. John F. Chuchiak IV, ed., The Inquisition in New Spain, 1536–1820: A Documentary
History (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 107.
7. AGN, Inquisición, vol. 561, exp. 6, fol. 530.
8. Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2014), 229.
 11 • Isabel Hernández, Midwife and Healer

It is certainly an interpretation that Hernández herself supported, possibly

having been prompted to do so by her appointed legal counsel.
Beyond considering the motivations for Hernández’s initial two denounc-
ers, details of the timing of Hernández’s trial also allow readers to draw con-
clusions about the motivations of many of the witnesses who appeared before
the Inquisition to denounce accused parties. The Inquisition prided itself on
the secrecy of its proceedings; defendants were placed in its “secret cells” dur-
ing their trials, and were enjoined to maintain absolute secrecy about their
cases during and after their hearings. All identifying information was struck
from denouncers’ testimony before it was read to defendants so that they
would be, theoretically, unable to decipher who had testified against them. In
Hernández’s case, how secretly does the court appear to have actually operated?
Why might the witnesses who appeared in her case have been prompted to
detail their interactions with the curandera and midwife to the court? Inquisi-
tion trials, when read carefully, can provide us with evidence about the religious
and social lives of those whom the court investigated, but they are even more
revealing of the preoccupations and anxieties of denouncers, witnesses, and the
prosecuting bodies themselves. How do Hernández’s peers and clients of vari-
ous class positions seem to have viewed her? What acts or ideas with which she
was charged does the court seem to have been most and least concerned with
in its investigation of Hernández? We know that indigenous people existed
beyond the institutional jurisdiction of the Inquisition, yet do you see evidence
of how indigenous people nevertheless figured in inquisition trials?

11.1 The Trial of Isabel Hernández9

[Isabel Hernández’s case opens with a title page indicating that in 1652,
the court of the Holy Office charged Isabel Hernández with hechicería. The
court identified Hernández as a midwife and curandera, a widow, native of
the town of Gueichiapa, but resident in Tlaxcala. The title page also indicates
that Hernández’s defense lawyer was one don Juan García de Palacios and
that the trial had reached a conclusion after moving through the standard
stages of an inquisitorial investigation. The following ecclesiastical personnel
conducted Hernández’s investigation. Inquisitors: Doctor don Francisco de
Estrada y Escovedo, don Juan Saenz de Mañozca, and don Bernabe de la
Higuera y Amarilla; the acting fiscal (prosecutor) was señor (sir) licenciado
(licentiate) Thomas López de Erenchum.]

9. Archivo General de la Nación, México, Inquisición, vol. 561, exp. 6, fols. 525–82.

131
 11 • Isabel Hernández, Midwife and Healer

11.2 Denunciation of Isabel Hernández by Inés de Herrera

[Left margin: Inés de Herrera, forty-five years old against Isabel Hernández,
widow, vecina (citizen) of the city of Tlaxcala, midwife and healer concerning
spells.]
In the city of Tlaxcala on Monday June 20, 1650 at three in the afternoon
more or less, before the Señor licenciado Antonio González Lasso, cura benefi-
ciado (ordained priest) of His Majesty for this city and juez comisario (judge)
of the Holy Office of this kingdom for the illustrious inquisitors, appeared
Inés Herrera, widow of Hernando Alonso Cardoso, deceased, vecina of this
city and owner of a hacienda (estate) in Hueyotlipan in this province.10 She
said she is aged forty-five and stated that on the day of the Incarnation, May
25 of this year, she entered the parochial church of the Glorious Saint Joseph
in this city at the time of the publication of the Edict of the Holy Faith, and
having heard in it that which concerns heresies and sinful states, she came to
give an account of a certain declaration that she had attempted to make but
then suspended because of the activities of Lent and Holy Week and she was
ordered to appear today in fulfillment of which order she appears to make her
declaration. The señor comisario made her swear the oath and Inés de Herrera
swore to God our Lord and made the sign of the Holy Cross and promised
to tell the truth.
She said that that twenty years ago, more or less, she was at the hacienda
of Hueyotlipan with Hernando Alonso, her husband, and she had commu-
nication and friendship with Isabel Hernández who then was married and is
now a widow and lives in this city where she practices the office of midwifery
and healer. And this declarant told [Hernández] in friendship, about how
Hernando Alonso was a person de rigida condición (with a controlling nature)
and that she was considering accepting the favors of another man who was
interested in her but that she did not dare to do so because of her husband
because she was very afraid of him. Isabel Hernández responded that she
should not worry about her husband, that she would give her something to
remove the mala condición (undesirable nature) of her husband and that she
should accept the favors of this man. To this she replied that if this man had
another woman how would it be possible to accept this? To which Isabel
Hernández replied that she would give her some powders which she did, and
they were white and she told her to sprinkle them on his cloak, shirt, and
other clothing and that after this he would die only for this declarant and for
no other person. And then she received the powders and kept them, and eight
days later she went to take confession and she was dissuaded from confessing

10. The text reads “hacienda de lavor en el partido de Gueyotlipa,” a working estate in the
region of Hueyotlipan, a municipality in the present-day state of Tlaxcala.
 11 • Isabel Hernández, Midwife and Healer

about them but she had not used them in any way on this man or on any
other person although many times Isabel Hernández asked her if she had used
the powders. And that about a year after this happened, this declarant was
bathing with Isabel Hernández and another woman in a temascal 11 on the
estate and Isabel Hernández saw a frog jumping and she secretly said to this
declarant: “If you grab that frog and strangle it I will make you some powders so
that any man you like will die for you.” To which this declarant replied that
[Isabel] should strangle the frog herself and Isabel replied that for the spell to
work, she would have to do it which she did not want to do and never tried
it. She does not know if Isabel Hernández has used these things on anybody
else and she never spoken one word about them nor has she had any further
communication with her. And she says this is the truth under oath, and hav-
ing read the declaration to her she said it was well written and that she had
not said it for malice and since she does not know how to write she does not
sign it and the comisario signed it for her.

[signature] Antonio Gonzales Lazo

Before me, Christobal de Ordaniuis notary. [Herrera ratified her testimony

two days later.]
[Catalina de Herrera, sixty-year old mother of Inés de Herrera also
denounced Hernández to the court. Like her daughter, she, too claimed to have
been prompted to do so by her recent hearing of the Edict of the Faith, and,
like her daughter, testified that Isabel Hernández had offered to provide herbal
cures to help women ameliorate the severe nature of their husbands.
On February 22, 1652, nearly two years after both women had given
their testimony, Inquisitors don Francisco de Estrada y Escobedo, don Juan
Saenz de Mañorca, and licenciado don Bernave de la Higuera y Amarilla
ordered Hernández imprisoned in the secret cells of the Inquisition and her
case pursued.
The court’s comisario and bailiff seized Hernández’s personal goods
from her residence and sold them in a public auction to pay for the expenses
of housing and feeding Hernández while she was in the court’s custody. Her
belongings included clothing and textiles, dishes, religious items, and medici-
nal substances, the latter two which were submitted to the central court of the
Inquisition for further examination.
The comisario then named a guard, Pedro Álvarez, a barber who was a
resident of Tlaxcala, to accompany Hernández on her journey to the Mexican

11. Mexican midwives and healers used temascales, “houses of heat,” or sweathouses since the
pre-Columbian period to cure various illnesses and maintain good health.

133
 11 • Isabel Hernández, Midwife and Healer

capital. The comisario used the money from the sale of Hernández’s goods to
pay for the rent of a mule needed for the transport, for the labor of the Indian
who accompanied them, and for Hernández’s food.]

11.3 A Further Denunciation

[Comisario González Lasio wrote the Mexico City Inquisitors shortly

after sending Isabel Hernández in to the Inquisition’s secret prison.]
After having remitted Isabel Hernández to the Holy Tribunal, a prin-
cipal doncella (respectable lady) of this town called doña Beatriz de Nara
y de la Mota called me in church and told me that it had caused her great
scruples that she had forgotten to declare that Isabel Hernández, having
shrouded her mother for burial had taken her teeth from her mouth telling
two boys and a woman who accompanied her that she wanted them because
they were relics because the deceased was a saint.12 I advise you so that your
orders can be served. The carrier brings the mattress or pallet of Isabel
Hernández. May our lord keep you joyful for the good of Christianity.
­
Tlaxcala May 20 1652.
[The court ordered González Lasio to formally interrogate Nara y de
la Mota, and the comisario also reported that he was sending in some objects
for their examination including some bones, powders, hairs, and a monkey’s
hand. He also informed the court that after Hernández’s imprisonment, he
had overhead a conversation of three men, one of whom had commented
that when don Diego de Villegas was governor of the district of Tlaxcala,
Isabel Hernández had acted as his bawd, and that she had supplied pow-
ders to Villegas that he could use to make women enamored of him. Finally,
comisario González Lasio reported that several other witnesses had come
forward to denounce Hernández. One, Antonio de Lepe had informed the
comisario that Hernández had supplied women in labor with the “egg of
the Ascension” to aid their deliveries; another declared that Hernández had
supplied her with powders to rid her husband’s “mala condición” which had
made him very ill. Others recounted the story of Hernández removing the
teeth from the corpse of a dead woman whom she believed was a saint. As
instructed by the court, the comisario interviewed all these witnesses. What
follows is one of these interviews.]

12. Underlining in the original.

 11 • Isabel Hernández, Midwife and Healer

11.4 Mariana de Alfaro Denounces Isabel Hernández

In the city of Tlaxcala on May 25, 1652 at 10 a.m. before the comisario
appeared Mariana de Alfaro, without being called, the legitimate wife of
Joseph de Riguen, age thirty-one, and vecina of this city and she swore to
tell the truth and said that to unburden her conscience she denounced Isa-
bel Hernández, widow, midwife, and curandera who lives in this city. Two-
and-a-half years ago the declarant told Isabel Hernández about the hardships
she suffered because of the mala condición of her husband when the two of
them were alone, and then she learned that her husband was having an affair,
which was the reason why she was enduring a mala vida. Isabel Hernández
said that she should arrange to keep her eye on the woman [with whom her
husband was involved] who was called Úrsula, who was of the mulata (person
of mixed African and Spanish parentage) nation, and that when she went to
the corral (farmyard) to perform her necessities, that [Alfaro] should collect
some of her excrement or filth and put it to dry in the sun. And when it was
dry, she should mix it up with some yellow worms that appeared when it was
damp and mix it with a little fragrant water and all this mixed up she should
give to her husband to drink in his chocolate and that with this, she would
get rid of his lover, and that she had seen this done to a woman in Mexico,
although she did not say the name of this woman. The declarant said to Isa-
bel Hernández that she would not do this because it must be a great sin to
­
which Isabel Hernández replied that it was not a sin because its purpose was
to secure her husband and this is where the conversation ended. And later,
on different occasions, Isabel Hernández asked her why did she not use the
remedy and that she was to blame for her mala vida since she had the remedy
available, but she never wanted to use it because she understood it to be a
grave sin and she forgot about it. And although she heard the Edict of the
Faith read, she never remembered this and now and when she learned that
Isabel Hernández had been imprisoned by the Holy Tribunal it came to her
memory and she declares it so. She does this to unburden her conscience and
this is the truth by virtue of the oath that she has made. And when it was read
to her, she said it was well written and said that she did not act out of malice.
She promised secrecy and did not sign because she did not know how to do
so. The comisario signed for her.

[signature] Antonio Gonzáles Laso

Before me, Christobal de Ordaniuis, notary

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 11 • Isabel Hernández, Midwife and Healer

11.5 Isabel Hernández’s First Appearance before the Inquisition

In the city of Mexico, on Wednesday May 22, 1652 in the afternoon audi-
ence before inquisitors doctors don Francisco de Estrada y Escovedo, don
Juan Saenz de Mañorca, and licenciado don Bernabe de la Higuera y Ama-
rillo. They commanded to be brought before them a woman who has been
imprisoned in the secret cells of the Holy Office and she received the oath in
the manner required by law under which she promised to tell the truth in this
audience and in all subsequent ones that should occur until the determina-
tion of her case and she promised to keep secret in all that she might believe
or see or understand that happened concerning her case. She was asked for
her name, and from where she came, and her age and her occupation and
about when she was imprisoned.
[Left margin: Isabel Hernández de Guichiapa, vecina of Tlaxcala.]
She is called Isabel Hernández, mestiza, native of Guichiapa in this Arch-
bishopric, and did not definitively know her age, but she appeared to be over
forty years old, and that her occupation is that of midwife, and she is now a
widow, and a vecina of the city of Tlaxcala where she was taken prisoner this
morning.
[Hernández declared that her parents were both deceased. Her father
was a Spaniard from Castile and a manual worker. Her mother, a mestiza,
was her father’s “mujer natural.”13 She knew nothing of her paternal grand-
parents and only that her maternal grandparents were thought to be descen-
dants of the Tobar family of Guichiapa, nor had she any knowledge about her
parents’ siblings. She told the court that she had a deceased brother who had
married an indigenous woman, who was also deceased. She provided the court
with biographical details about her own brother and sister’s lives and those of
their descendants but they are not germane to her case. She then detailed her
own marital history:]
She said that she has been married and widowed four times. The first with
Pablo Martínez blacksmith, native of Almendralejo in Castile and who died
in Guichiapa and by whom she did not have any children. The second time
she was married to Pedro García from the same place, by trade a blacksmith,
and who died in Esmiquilpa14 and by whom she had three children who
are living today: one in Tlaxcala called Andrés García, married to Cathalina
de Guzmán and who has three young children, two boys called Juan and
Joseph and a girl called María Rita and he [Andrés García] is a silk weaver.
Her second son is called Juan López and he lives in Atrisco and is by trade a

13. His woman, but not his formally married wife.

14. Possibly Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo.
 11 • Isabel Hernández, Midwife and Healer

basket weaver and is married to María de Jaén and they do not have children.
And the third is called Nicolás Hernández and he lives in Tlaxcala and he is
also a basket weaver. And the third time, she married Juan Asencio, a native
of Estremadura, by trade a butcher in Esmiquilpa where he died and with
him she had a daughter called Juana who died in Puebla, where she married
Melchor de Robles, Spaniard, by occupation a tailor who is in Parral, and
they had a son called Pedro. And the fourth and last time she married Fran-
cisco de la Parra, a shopkeeper, and it was in this city in the barrio of Santa
Anta and he died in Tlaxcala and he was a Spaniard and she does not know
from where and they did not have children.
She was asked about the caste and parentage of her parents and grandpar-
ents and if they or any of them was a confessant or prisoner or penitent of the
Holy Office of the Inquisition.
She said that she has understood and understands them to have been old
Christians according to what her parents said. And that on her mother’s side,
she descended from the natives of this kingdom, from principal Indians of
the Kings of Tlaxcala and that none in her lineage have been imprisoned by
or penitent before the Holy Office, nor has she, before the present occasion.
[Hernández next confirmed that she was a baptized and confirmed
Christian who regularly heard mass and took communion and possessed a Bull
of the Holy Cross.15 She named her godparents. She made a sign of the cross
before the court and recited the four prayers but did not know more of the
Christian doctrine and admitted she had forgotten the commandments and the
articles of faith and the confession because of “a terrible illness” that had devas-
tated Tlaxcala.16 She also confirmed that she could neither read nor write. The
interrogation then continued:]
[Left margin: account of her life.]
Asked for the account of her life. She said that having been married the
second time to Pedro García, he took her from the town of Guichiapa to
Esmiquilpa where they were for five or six years, and where she was widowed
again and she married for the third time to Juan Asencio by whom she was
widowed and she came to this city and lived in the district of Santa Anna
where she had a store that sold things to eat and she married for the fourth
time to Francisco de la Parra and over fifteen years ago they moved to the city
of Tlaxcala because of flooding. She has left this city some four times since

15. La bula de la Santa Cruzada was a series of indulgences originating in the Middle Ages
with papal concessions to crusaders. In the sixteenth century, the bula was converted to indul-
gences given in return for service to the Spanish crown.
16. Literally, she says “un tabardillo grande,” a high fever.

137
 11 • Isabel Hernández, Midwife and Healer

then to perform midwifery in Guachinango17 for doña Isabel de Cervantes

and doña Anna de Castillo and doña María de Guzmán and she has not trav-
elled anywhere else.
She was asked if she knows or presumes the reason why she has been
imprisoned and brought to the secret cells of the Holy Office.
[Left margin: Presumes the reasons for her imprisonment, that she relate
and declare them.]
She said she presumes it is because about a year ago María de Chávez,
vecina of the city of Tlaxcala, came to see her one day in the company of
one of her daughters, called Michaela, and both of them begged her to give
them some powders to soothe Michaela’s husband who had a rigida y mala
condición (strict and bad nature) and for this [Chávez] gave a coin18 to this
confessant and she told them that she did not have the powders that they
wanted; and the next day she collected some dried herbs from her pots
and rubbed them in her hands and made the powders and gave them to
Michaela who came for them [Left margin: she gave some powders made
from dried herbs from her pots and said that Michaela, who is the one who
asked for them, should give them in chocolate to her husband] and she told
her that she should give them to her husband in chocolate or however she
liked and that with this, he would be soothed. And this confessant does not
know what herbs they were except that they were the first that she came
across, although she did know that they could not harm him; and that the
reason why she played this trick was that she is a poor woman and that on
that day she did not have anything to eat and she needed to earn the four
reales.19
And she also remembers that don Diego de Ulloa, being the governor of
Tlaxcala, begged this confessant to bring to his house a woman of this city
called Cathalina de Ortigossa, married to Juan Alonso, who is a pork butcher
by trade because he was in love with her and so she brought her one night
and leaving her by the back door of the house of the governor, she left to do
some business [Left margin: The pimping she did and what happened] and
she returned to wait for [Ortigossa] to come out and when she came out of
the governor’s house, she said that she came out feeling very afflicted, without
saying why, and asked her [Hernández] to take her to her house and a short
while later the governor arrived and he was very angry and bad-tempered and
he grabbed on to Cathalina de Ortigossa and said he wanted to throw her in
the river [Left margin: Cathalina de Ortigossa] saying to her what was it that he
had done to her, and she responded that he had done nothing, and seeing this

17. A district in current-day northern Veracruz and Puebla states.

18. A tostón, a coin worth one half peso.
19. Reales were a unit of currency representing one-eighth of one peso.
 11 • Isabel Hernández, Midwife and Healer

fight, the confessant asked Cathalina de Ortigossa why they were having this
fight, and [Ortigossa] implored this confessant to say that she had given her
some powders and to free [Ortigossa] from this danger. She said to don Diego
de Ulloa that she had given to Cathalina de Ortigossa some powders without
actually having given any to her, and with this don Diego de Ulloa calmed
down and said that Cathalina de Ortigossa had put some powders on his neck
that had stung him but this confessant did not know what powders they were
and Cathalina de Ortigossa never told her, but she knows only that, to help
[Ortigossa] from this danger, she claimed to have done this act herself, and
she ended her discussion of Cathalina de Ortigossa.
And she remembers that when a woman in Tlaxcala was pregnant who was
understood to be a virgin, when the time of her childbirth drew near, because
she could not be in the house or proximity to her father and sister who were
honorable people, she gave them to understand that [the medical situation of
the woman] was the detention of the blood, and that she would cure her with
some powders and that it would be more convenient to bring the woman to
her house, and having taken her there, the woman gave birth that night, and
word ran [Left margin: opinion that ran that she cured the sick one with some
powders] in Tlaxcala that this confessant had healed her with some powders
and that although many friends asked her what powders she had used, she
answered them that they were some powders that she knew and that she did
not want to say, when the truth was that she said this to prevent them from
learning about the frailty of the woman because of her good reputation. And
that these three cases that she has described could be the reasons why the
idea has spread that she gives powders and uses them and having added some
other things, this being the truth that she confessed because in God and in
her conscience, there is no sin in anything against our Holy Faith because she
is a faithful Catholic Christian.
[The court then warned Hernández in three formulaic monitions, or
warning notices, that she was admonished to tell the truth in all aspects of her
testimony. After the second monition, Hernández described some of the rituals
with which she greeted newborn infants, and also described some other powders
she had once sold to women to clean their faces.
The court next produced its formal accusation of Hernández. The
fiscal charged her with being a witch, one who engages in superstition, and
­
a deceiver (supersticiosa and embustera) for having used herbs and powders
and taken money from people and deceiving them with tricks. As was stan-
dard, in the formal accusation, the fiscal repeated the substance of what each
witness had described as Hernández’s religious crimes, listing a total of ten acts
and concluding that Hernández should be judged harshly because she showed
no remorse and because her actions meant that “it might be presumed that

139
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she had a pact with the devil whom she invoked in her prayers and spells,” a
notion none of the witnesses had discussed.
Hernández then responded to each charge in turn. For the most part,
she denied the truth of the charges brought against her, including the accusa-
tions of her first two denouncers, Inés and Catalina de Herrera, although she
occasionally substantiated a witness’s testimony, as she did in the case of one
witness, Antonio de Lepe, who declared that Hernández had used a treatment
involving an “egg of the Ascension” on his enslaved negra when the latter was
in labor. To this charge, (#6) Hernández replied:]
. . . She says that only this is true, and that she has heard it said but does
not remember by whom, that keeping an egg from the day of the Ascension
of the Lord until the next day of the Ascension when you cut it [Left mar-
gin: that she did that with the egg of Ascension and she did what it says in
the charge] was a good medicine and she did it, and she found the egg was
hard and she dissolved it in wine, a part of which she gave to a black slave of
Antonio de Lepe who could not give birth and that after she had given it, she
gave birth and that if she had known that it was prohibited, she would not
have given it.

11.6 Hernández Responds to the Charges against Her

[In the ninth chapter of the accusation, the court asked Hernández
to identify various items that the comisario and bailiff had seized from her
residence:]
She said to put them before her so she could tell the truth. [Left margin:
asked to be shown the powders and other things so she can identify them].
And having unwrapped in her presence a cloth, they found in them the tail
of a little animal that she said was tlacuache,20 and that she had it to give to
women who were in labor, and to those with urinary illnesses. These pow-
ders, she put in hot pulque,21 or mixed with fried onion, or with almond oil.
[Left margin: She identified the things and described each]

20. Bernardino de Sahagún recorded in the early post-conquest era that dried and powdered
tail of the tlaquatzin (an alternative spelling of tlacuache), an opossum, was believed to have
powerful expulsive properties.
21. Pulque is an alcoholic drink made from the fermented sap of the maguey cactus.
 11 • Isabel Hernández, Midwife and Healer

Item.22 She was shown a paper wrapped up in a rag in which she said was
a root called chichilpatle23 that she gave to criaturas (babies) when they had
indigestion.
Item. She was shown another cloth in which was wrapped some colored
items which she said were axí (chili pepper), to give to women who were
feverish after childbirth mixed with ule (rubber), and that this was made by
Indians from some worms.
Item. She was shown some other cloths that had some herbs in them that
she said were suapatle24 to give to women in labor.
Item. She was shown another cloth and it was wrapped around a stone
fragment that she said was a bezoar stone and that for this purpose she had
been given it.25
Item. She was shown another rag in which was a root that she said was
contrayerba to make cures.26
Item. She was shown another paper which had some white powders in it
and she said it was to wash the faces of women. And then they showed her
some other papers with some venetian glass in it that she said were used to
make agua de rostro (water for washing faces) along with limes. [Left margin:
That the white powders that were in this cloth are of the shells of the egg used
for the Ascension and are used to make water for faces]
Item. She was shown another cloth that had some white powders in it and
she said it was the shells of egg of Ascension and was for making face water.
Item. She was shown a little blue cloth which had a little black round ball
in it and she said it was a coyol (a type of palm) that the children ate.
Item. She was shown a paper that was wrapped around some cloth with
some colored powders inside that she said were of ilacastli that the Indi-
ans sold that were good for the baths of women who experienced escocicas
(stinging).27 [Left margin: that she does not know what is in this cloth.]
Item. She was shown a little brown cloth in which there was a seed and
she said that she did not know what it was that but that the children played
with it.

22. Item in the original, meaning next in a series of elements.

23. Nahuatl for “bitter medicine”; chichiliá (verb—to make bitter), pah-tli (medicine).
24. This is an alternative spelling for cihuapatli.
25. One early seventeenth-century medical tract described using a piedra becar in this way:
“Water which can be drunk at meals is heated with escorconera (garden viper-grass), and into
it is put in the pitcher a piedra becar, and a little contrayerba, and between meals and at meals
is given this syrup.” Andrés de Mamayo, Tratados breves de algebra y garrotillo (Valencia: Por
Juan Chrysostomo Garriz, 1621), 46.
26. Plants with this name may refer to a number of species used for medicinal purposes.
27. We have been unable to translate ilacastli, although Frances Karttunen translates the
closely related ilacatztic as “something twisted.”

141
 11 • Isabel Hernández, Midwife and Healer

Item. She was shown a little idol of stone that she said was something the
children played with.
[Left margin: that the dried hand that appeared to belong to a monkey was
found by a nephew of hers] Item. She was shown a dried hand that appeared
to be that of a monkey and she said that a nephew of hers called Juan found
it in the plaza (main square) and then she had given it to father Antonio
Gonzáles when they took her so that she would not keep anything.
[Left margin: that she did not know what these feathers were] Next. She
was shown a small paper with two colored feathers in it and she said she did
not know what they were or if they were of some woodpecker or of some
parakeet.
Item. She was shown a cloth wrapped around some white powders that she
said were the teeth of a dog to give to children who had indigestion.
Item. She was shown a white fang hanging on a cord that she said was of
a pejemulier28 and was for rheumatism and that one of her sons had given it
to her.
[Left margin: that that which looked like meat and was shown her was not
but was a chili pepper.] And that that which looked like meat was not but
rather was a red chili pepper which is what she identified at the beginning.
Item. She was shown another little paper which had in it some white shav-
ings or rinds that she said were for a medicine that she got from Macote, a
erbolario (herbalist) in Tlaxcala for a woman who had a swollen mouth. And
then was found a paper on which was written in poor letters a psalm that she
said her godmother doña Juana de Arizaga, deceased, gave her to learn how
to recite the psalm and that since she does not know how to read she did not
learn it.
[Hernández then declared that she had already told the truth about the
tenth accusation against her and resumed her defense as follows:]
. . . And to the conclusion of her accusation, she said that she has not done
any of things that they accuse her of, nor does she know of any person who
has done them and that she has already confessed and in her audiences, she
has told the truth, and that in Tlaxcala there are people who want to do her
ill, because of the skill she has had at [aiding in], and for this reason they have
brought testimony against her. And that if they tortured her she would die in
it because she did not owe anything and God could condemn her if this was
all a lie, and that this is the truth by the oath she had sworn.
[The Inquisition appointed a letrado (lawyer), don Juan García de
Palacios, to defend Hernández with whom she consulted briefly. The court

28. A pejemulier is also known as a dujong, a large marine mammal.

 11 • Isabel Hernández, Midwife and Healer

then proceeded with the “publicación de testigos” (publication of witnesses’

testimony) in which the Inquisitors read aloud an anonymous summary of
all the evidence accumulated against Hernández from each individual wit-
ness who had testified against her, omitting any details which indicated the
identity of all witnesses. In Hernández’s case, as was standard, the information
contained in the publicación de testigos segment of her trial did not differ
from the material presented to her in the court’s formal accusation against her,
and Hernández replied to the evidence consistently with her first responses;
that is, she denied almost every charge made against her. She confirmed only
the testimony provided by Antonio de Lepe, who had described Hernández’s
provision of an “egg of the Ascenscion” to aid his slave during a difficult labor.
In an appearance before the court on July 5, after having consulted with her
defender, Hernández made the final last plea of innocence to the court.]

11.7 Isabel Hernández’s Final Plea of Innocence

[In her final appearance, Hernández reiterated that she had spoken
truthfully in all her testimony and she questioned the unsubstantiated nature
of many of the witnesses’ testimonies. She ended her plea as follows:]
. . . And all or some of [the witnesses] could have been incited to testify by
Blas Estevan, a doctor who is the rival and enemy of this confessant and who
may have initiated this testimony against her because he often threatened her
when he found her visiting some sick person. And there is not the smallest
word of truth in the whole case. And for this reason, faith and credit should
be extended to her because she is a good Christian, fearful of God. And with
this, she has no more to say in her defense but instead puts herself in the
mercy of this Holy Court, contesting that she is suffering in innocence and
that she will be found innocent and she begs and pleads to be absolved and
put in liberty and here she concludes her case.
[Six weeks after Hernández presented her final defense, the court called
her before them to render judgment. Her inquisitors sentenced her in a stan-
dard fashion for this crime at this time: she was to serve in the convent of the
oidor (judge) don Gaspar Fernández de Castro for the time that the tribunal
judged appropriate and also exiled her from the city of Tlaxcala for two years.
Hernández pledged that she would never repeat the crimes for which she had
been accused, and she thanked the Inquisitors for the mercy they had shown
her. She also affirmed that she had not heard anything against the Holy Faith
while being held in the cells of the Inquisition. The court acknowledged receipt

143
 11 • Isabel Hernández, Midwife and Healer

of a summary of the costs of feeding Hernández and providing her with linen,
and eating utensils during her 105-day imprisonment totaling forty pesos.]

Suggested Reading

Behar, Ruth. “Sexual Witchcraft, Colonialism, and Women’s Powers: Views from
the Mexican Inquisition,” in Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, ed.
Asunción Lavrin (pp. 178–206). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
Few, Martha. Women Who Live Evil Lives: Gender, Religion, and the Politics of Power
in Colonial Guatemala. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.
Jaffary, Nora E. Reproduction and Its Discontents in Mexico: Childbirth and Contracep-
tion from 1750 to 1905. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016.
Lewis, Laura A. Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft, and Caste in Colonial Mexico.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.
Sousa, Lisa. The Woman Who Turned into a Jaguar, and Other Narratives of Native
Women in Archives of Colonial Mexico. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
2017.

Document Themes
• Labor
• Law
• Race and ethnicity
• Religion
• Sexuality and gender
 12

Don Juan de Vargas y Orellana

Accuses His Wife doña Francisca de
Marquina of Abortion (Potosí, 1703)

In the absence of personal letters, it is difficult to apprehend the details of

family life in the 1700s except when a court case brings them before the
historian’s eye. Though this judicial file is truncated before a decision is ren-
dered, the excerpt of the legal proceeding is rich in detail as it reveals a couple,
doña (lady) Francisca de Marquina and don (sir) Juan de Vargas y Orellana,
in crisis over in-law tensions and concern about reproduction. The precise
judicial rationale for the case is that a Spanish woman sought a divorce from
her husband, which then spurred counter-accusations on his part about her
having aborted her pregnancy. The accusation of abortion warranted witness
testimony. It is clear from the trial transcript that doña Francisca’s mother,
doña Petronilla, was heavily involved in her daughter’s affairs. There is no
mention in the case, though, of doña Petronilla’s husband, which is impor-
tant because it suggests that no powerful male figure emerged as a protector
of these two women (which may have made it easier for don Juan de Vargas y
Orellana to mount the charges against them).
The notion of a woman seeking a divorce within Spain’s eighteenth-
­
century Catholic empire deserves explanation.1 Divorce in this context was
unusual. However, the possibility of an ecclesiastical divorce did exist. Such
cases were much like civil trials with attorneys, motions, and witnesses, but
would be heard before ecclesiastical judges who had the final say in judging
the case. Though marriage was a sacred vow, certain situations could invali-
date a marriage. For instance, where one party was unable to consummate the
marriage (and thus procreation was impossible), a divorce could be granted.
In cases of extreme spousal abuse, some women gained a divorce. Divorce in
the 1700s signified that the couple was no longer expected to live together
nor pool their economic resources. However, divorce did not signify that
either party (man or woman) could marry again unless their spouse died.

1. Asunción Lavrin, Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1989). On divorce in colonial Peru, see Bernard Lavalle, Amor y Opresión
en los andes coloniales (Lima: IEP, 1999), 19–66.

145
 12 • Don Juan de Vargas y Orellana Accuses His Wife

In colonial Latin America, if a woman found herself in a difficult position

with her spouse, she might choose to enter what was known as a recogimiento
(a safe house). The recogimiento allowed women physical separation from
their spouses while at the same time it provided institutional supervision (and
hence respectability) to protect women’s honor.2 Notice that doña Francisca
de Marquina entered the recogida of Orphan Girls in the city of Potosí during
the period when her divorce to don Juan de Vargas y Orellana was pending.
Ironically, as the witness testimony suggests, although this institution was
meant to serve as a space of protection and respectability, it was also the place
in which Marquina sought to end her pregnancy.
The details presented here seem to offer us at least two narratives. Was
Marquina being manipulated by her mother to leave her husband and abort
her pregnancy? Or was Marquina’s mother helping her to leave an unhappy
and/or dangerous marriage? This case prompts us to evaluate what is being
examined and how it is being examined in order to decide if a woman was
pregnant, if she aborted the fetus, and if her mother helped or forced her.
Witness testimony, in particular, allows us to elaborate on how women and
men in this time period thought about pregnancy and abortion. As you
read the witness testimony, consider what kind of women were called to
give evidence. How did men and women in this era determine pregnancy?
What methods did they understand might provoke abortion or clues about
whether an abortion had occurred? Who were the medical experts in the
case? Why was this case of alleged abortion so important in the context of an
ecclesiastical divorce?
­
12.1 Proceedings in the Ecclesiastical Divorce
of doña Francisca Marquina3

The Doctor don Fernando Ignacio de Arango Queipo, father and most senior
rector of this Holy Metropolitan Church on behalf of the excellent Señor
Doctor don Juan Queipo de Llano y Valdéz, my senior Archbishop of this
Archbishopric of the Council of your Majesty, Vicar and Ecclesiastical judge
of the Imperial Villa (city) of Potosí, to whom I give commission for what
will be heard and will give salutations in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ,
who is the true one. I make known that before me and in this Archbishop’s
Audience that a petition was presented and whose decrees have the following

2. Nancy E. van Deusen, Between the Sacred and the Worldly: The Institutional and Cultural
Practice of Recogimiento in Colonial Lima (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001).
3. Archivo Arzobispal de Sucre, Divorcios, Legajo 3, No. 5332. 1703 Potosi. 32 fols.
 12 • Don Juan de Vargas y Orellana Accuses His Wife

tenor: Juan de Artega, [submits] as attorney for and in name of don Juan de
Vargas y Orellana, in the lawsuit and demand for divorce and separation that
has been placed upon my party by doña Francisca de Marquina, his wife, and
the rest that is known. I declare that doña Petronilla Fernández, mother-in-
law of my party and mother of the said [Francisca], it seems for hatred and
ill-will that she has toward my party has disposed her daughter to seek separa-
tion. While carrying out married life with my party, she used cunning to take
Francisca to the recogida of Orphan Girls. On this occasion, doña Francisca
was pregnant. The mother-in-law of my party has had such audacity4 that
in order that she [doña Francisca] not remain pregnant by her husband as
under the order of Holy Matrimony, she [doña Petronilla] arranged to give
her daughter a concoction so she would abort.5 She committed the gravest
offense possible against the highest Pontifical order. Consequently, my party
is appealing to the superior judgment of your Grace to file my complaint with
the Vicar of the Villa of Potosí so that before him I can make a secret report
about the content of this demand. It will be proven by remarkable witnesses
and by different acts and circumstances that led up to it, as well as that who-
ever is proven guilty in the case of abortion will be punished. Therefore, to
Your Grace I beg and plead that you see fit to send me the necessary order6
to begin discovery and to send information to the Vicar [so he can] proceed
for censure against the witnesses who refused to make a declaration on the
truth of the matter with respect to the mother-in-law of my party who has
instigated the abortion as well as the divorce lawsuit. Given the information
the Vicar will submit secretly, in the original to the power of Your Grace so
that you may order that justice be served. I request costs and swear on the
soul of my party.
[With this, don Juan de Vargas y Orellana’s attorney officially asked the
court that his case be heard. The next several folios admit the case to court and
then witness testimony begins.]
Potosí, July 31, 1703
Witness
Don Juan de Vargas, for the secret investigation that has been offered
before the Monsignor don Joseph de Sotomayor y Herrera, head priest of
the Parish of San Roque of this Villa, Vicar Ecclesiastical Judge. I present as
a witness a cloaked Spanish7 woman who said she was a native of the city of

4. Ardimiento in the original.

5. The words used are abortarse/aborto.
6. The word used is recado.
7. The document notes that the witness is cloaked, indicating an attempt at anonymity or
attempt to preserve honor while testifying in this case.

147
 12 • Don Juan de Vargas y Orellana Accuses His Wife

La Plata and is married to Miguel de Vargas. She said that she has been in this
Villa for about seven months. Also, she said that she lived in same house as
doña Petronilla and her daughter, doña Francisca de Marquina, for about six
months, with the said women in their rooms. Speaking about various things
that came up on one occasion, doña Francisca Marquina asked her what thing
would be good to [use to] abort,8 to which she responded that she did not
know about that because she had never tried to abort. On another occasion,
Francisca asked her if an herb that they call sacha9 would be good to abort.
This witness responded to her that she did not know, but said that the indias
(indigenous women) used it to make those foolish [potions]. And this wit-
ness knew that doña Francisca de Marquina was pregnant because of what
she showed in the toilet and in her actions [illegible phrase]. When she asked
[Marquina] if she was pregnant, she denied it. Therefore, don Juan, husband
of the said woman, sent her the urine of his wife one morning, and having
seen it, she knew by it that she was pregnant. This is what she said and she
declared that it is what she knows. She said that she had no personal conflict
of interest with any party in the case. She is thirty years old, and she did not
sign because she does not know how.

Potosí, July 30, 1703

Witness
Pasquala de Savala, free negra (black woman) who carries out the trade
of midwife in this Villa, swore an oath before God our Señor (Lord) and
made the sign of the cross, according to the law swore to tell what she knows
respecting the investigation of the aforementioned. This witness said that
what she knows and can say is that don Juan de Vargas, husband of doña
Francisca de Marquina, who presents her as a witness, went one day to the
house of this witness and he told her that his wife was unwell and that she
should go to see her. And with that, she went, and feeling her belly, she found
that [Marquina] was a few months pregnant. And some days having gone
by, don Juan called on her again about the same matter. He told her that his
wife’s pregnancy was advancing and that after she was in the recogimiento
and that doña Francisca sent don Juan to send this witness to the recogimiento
where she was afflicted in her belly, according to what [Marquina] said. And
she [Savala] went back another time to settle her and on these three occa-
sions that she visited her as a midwife, she always found that Marquina was
pregnant and further along each day, and according to her trusted knowledge
and understanding, the bulge [Marquina] had in her abdomen was a baby
and not her belly as has been said. This is the truth. She said that she had

8. Mal parir in the original.

9. This is probably a reference to sacha inchi, a plant native to the rainforest in Bolivia/Peru.
 12 • Don Juan de Vargas y Orellana Accuses His Wife

no personal conflict of interest with any party in the case. She did not sign
because she was blind.

Potosí, August 2, 1703

Witness
An indiecita (young indigenous) girl [who through an interpreter] said
she was named Rosa and she did not know her last name, native of this
Villa, parishioner of the Parish of San Pedro in it, original of the Pueblo
of Pichigua. She swore an oath before God our Señor and made the sign of
the cross, according to the law swore to tell what she knows respecting the
investigation of the aforementioned. This witness said that what she knows is
that on March 2 until July of this present year, she served don Juan de Vargas
and his wife, doña Francisca de Medina, with whom she was in the recogida.
There [Marquina], two months ago, more or less, told her that she should
go to where her mother was and tell her that she [Marquina] was hurting in
her belly and that she should send her some remedy. And this witness carried
out the order and doña Petronila Fernandez, mother of doña Francisca, gave
this witness a wrapped paper saying to her that you tell my daughter that she
should drink this, and having taken without knowing even what it was, she
gave it to doña Francisca who put it in a mate de yerba (herbal tea) and drank
it the next day.
Doña Francisca gave this witness a basija de barro (clay basin) as the indios
call it, but one well wrapped with a blanket, ordering her firmly not to untie
it and that she should take it to her mother and so she took it and she gave
it to her and she does not know nor did this witness see what the basin held
because doña Francisca’s mother did not show anything to this witness. This
is the truth. She said that she had no personal conflict of interest with any
party in the case. She is around thirteen or fourteen years old, and she did not
sign because she does not know how.

Potosí, August 3, 1703

Witness
Doña Thomasa de Soria, vecina (citizen) of this said Villa swore an oath
before God our Señor and made the sign of the cross, according to the law
swore to tell what she knows respecting the investigation of the aforemen-
tioned. This witness said that what she knows and can say is that about six
months ago, more or less, don Juan de Vargas, husband of doña Francisca de
Marquina, called her saying that his wife was sick and that she should see her
and she give her some remedy and having seen doña Francisca de Marquina,
this witness recognized that she did not suffer from any accident and asked
what it was that she was feeling. She responded to her that a woman had
told her that she [doña Francisca de Marquina] was pregnant, to which this

149
 12 • Don Juan de Vargas y Orellana Accuses His Wife

witness said she did not believe that and only knew that her uterus had fallen
down low and that it should be corrected10 and she applied some remedies.
This is the truth. She said that she had no personal conflict of interest with
any party in the case. She is sixty-three years old and she did not sign because
she does not know how.

Potosí, August 3, 1703

Witness
Doña Michaela Guerrero who said she was the widow of Gaspar de Roxas,
resident in this Villa swore an oath before God our Señor and made the sign
of the cross, according to the law swore to tell what she knows respecting the
investigation of the aforementioned. This witness said that what she knows
is that about six months ago, more or less, don Juan de Vargas solicited her
as a person who practices midwifery and asked her if she would see his wife,
doña Francisca Marquina, and so this witness went and saw her and recog-
nized that [she] was two months pregnant, more or less, by her estimate,
which she told [her] and she responded that Pasquala, who is also a midwife
in this Villa, had told her that she had “la madre mui baja” even though she
was pregnant and, after applying some remedies and settling her abdomen,
she left her in this state. This is the truth. She said that she had no personal
conflict of interest with any party in the case. She is sixty-eight years old and
she did not sign because she does not know how.

Potosí, August 3, 1703

Witness
Domingo de Arse y Cueto, natural of the city of Ica, at present residing in
this Villa, swore an oath before God our Señor and made the sign of the cross,
according to the law swore to tell what he knows respecting the investigation
of the aforementioned. This witness said that what he knows is that about
three months ago, more or less, he met with Doctor don de las Casas, clergy
of the minor orders, in the house of don Juan de Vargas. And conversing with
him in the presence of doña Francisca de Marquina, about women giving
birth and godparent networks, don de las Casas said that if he was in this Villa
at the time of doña Francisca’s childbirth, he would be the godfather. And
this witness did not dispute that doña Francisca de Marquina, wife of don
Juan de Vargas, was at this time pregnant, as he heard it said to her repeated
times and in different occasions. And that this is what he has said and this is

10. Que le abia bajado la madre que se la compuso in the original. “La madre,” literally “the
mother,” was used to refer to the uterus in the colonial era. The condition of having a uterus
muy bajada may refer to a uterine prolapse.
 12 • Don Juan de Vargas y Orellana Accuses His Wife

the truth. He said that he had no personal conflict of interest with any party
in the case. He is twenty-five years old, and he signed.

Potosí, August 3, 1703

Witness
Doctor don Diego Thesillos, doctor in this Villa, swore an oath before
God our Señor and made the sign of the cross, according to the law swore
to tell what he knows respecting the investigation of the aforementioned.
This witness said that what he knows and can say is that at the beginning
of her pregnancy, he assisted doña Francisca Marquina, wife of don Juan de
Vargas who is presenting him as a witness and in the visits that he made, he
recognized that [she] was pregnant as was indicated by the lack of menses
and other incidents that pregnant women regularly have and in order to
better ascertain the truth he called some midwives so that they could see
and touch the abdomen and they said it was clear she was pregnant. This
is what he knows and this is the truth. He said that he had no personal
conflict of interest with any party in the case. He is forty years old, and he
signed.
[At this point in the case, don Juan de Vargas y Orellana and his law-
yers admit the testimony of their witnesses and suggest that this testimony
proves that an abortion was committed.]
Juan de Artiaga as empowered by don Juan de Vargas, state that as justice
demands, Your Grace should send notice of imprisonment against doña Fran-
cisca de Marquina and her mother doña Petronilla Fernández on account that
the abortion has been proven.
The Vicar General of this Archbishopric of the City of La Plata: by this
notice, the Vicar and Ecclesiastical Judge of the Villa Imperial of Potosí should
deliver as prisoners to this city the persons of doña Francisca de Marquina and
­
doña Petronilla Fernández.
[The court orders that both women should be sent to the Casa de
Recogidas of Orphan Girls in Potosí.]
On October 11th, 1703, the señor Vicar went to the house of doña Petro-
nilla Fernández, mother of doña Francisca de Marquina, in order to remove
her and take her to the Recogidas. Having arrived at the house, his mercy [the
Vicar] found doña Petronilla Fernández sick, in bed, and bleeding from her
ankle. Because of this, her imprisonment was halted. The Vicar proceeded
to embargo her belongings which were the following: six old, small canvases
of different pictures, two broken stools, one old wooden bowl with some
sold earthen mugs, and an [illegible word] an old trunk of cow’s leather with
some rags inside, [illegible phrase], a bed—old wooden frame, blanket, sheet,

151
 12 • Don Juan de Vargas y Orellana Accuses His Wife

canopy, old Cajamarca-style11 bedspread. And because her goods were so

few and of little value, she was allowed to keep an old shawl and an old skirt
even though they had been entered in the inventory of goods. She agreed to
relinquish those if she were asked. Later they went to the Casa de Recogidas
where doña Francisca de Marquina had been put en depósito (surveilled cus-
tody). Going to the room where she was and has been, the following goods
were inventoried: First, an old wooden bedspread, without a canopy, an old
blanket, an old mattress, an old bedspread like a blanket without sheets nor
pillows, a small trunk without a key, and she was wearing a worn patterned
Rouen blouse, a striped bodice, an old shawl, a wool skirt of piel de febre12
and she did not have anything else. She swore to God and a cross that she did
not have any more belongings because when she entered the said Recogidas,
and had left all her clothing in the possession of her husband. [The Vicar
signed the inventory.]

Marcos de Bracamonte presents a petition on behalf of doña Francisca de

Marquina.
I declare that my party has been placed in the recogimiento of Orphan
Girls of this Villa [Potosí] for many days owing to the demand that don
Juan de Vargas has filed for marriage annulment. Those proceedings have
been sent to the señor Vicar General of this Archbishopric. Meanwhile my
party is experiencing extreme poverty in the recogimiento without which
to feed herself thanks to the impiety of Juan de Vargas. He has not sent
her even a half-real of relief. She is surviving each week really through ten
pesos from doña Francisca de Barea and another ten pesos from Joseph Ortiz
de Uribe, from the quantity that those two owe my party and though it is
hers [doña Francisca’s], don Juan de Vargas is spending it without my party
having any hope that it be returned to her. And, to avoid similar prejudice
and the little regard that don Juan de Vargas has for my party, if your mercy
would serve with Christian and pious zeal, help by sending notice to the
debtors that they do not give anything to him and that they contribute to
my party with the ten pesos weekly for her food. They can [also] remit some
pesos to the City of La Plata for the cost of the lawsuit, the reason why she
is detained.
[Marcos de Bracamente insists that his client is innocent and held in the
recogimiento unjustly. Here the extant case file ends.]

11. Reference to a style produced in the city of Cajamarca, Peru.

12. French textile, very fashionable in Spain in early modern Spain.
 12 • Don Juan de Vargas y Orellana Accuses His Wife

Suggested Reading

Jaffary, Nora E. Reproduction and Its Discontents in Mexico: Childbirth and Contracep-
tion from 1750 to 1905. Chapel Hill, NC: University of Chapel Hill Press, 2016.
Lavrin, Asunción, ed. Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
van Deusen, Nancy E. “‘Wife of My Soul and Heart, and All My Solace,’ Annulment
Suit between Diego Andrés de Arenas and Ysabel Allay Suyo,” in Colonial Lives,
Documents on Latin American History, 1550–1850, ed. Richard Boyer and Geof-
frey Spurling. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Document Themes
• Family
• Labor
• Law
• Sexuality and gender

153
 13

Founding Corpus Christi, a Convent for

Indigenous Women (Mexico City, 1723)

The question of whether indigenous women possessed the intellectual

aptitude and spiritual mettle to become nuns divided ecclesiastics in Latin
America throughout the colonial period. Some, like Mexico’s first bishop,
­
Juan de Zumárraga, remarked as early as the late 1520s on the receptiveness of
the daughters of Aztec nobility to Christian instruction. Similarly, sixteenth-
century Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún judged that indigenous women
had the “aptitude to be nuns and keep perpetual chastity.”1 As also occurred
in Peru, a small number of mestiza (person of mixed Spanish and indigenous
parentage) women were admitted to Mexican convents shortly after the con-
quest; these included Isabel Moctezuma’s two daughters, who entered the
first convent for women, Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, founded around
1540.2 By 1585, however, Mexico’s Third Provincial Council, which pro-
duced the formal ecclesiastical regulations governing the Viceroyalty for the
following two centuries, legislated against the openness to indigenous sub-
jects’ religious profession, deeming indigenous men unfit for ordination and
omitting any discussion of indigenous women’s religious vocation. By this
period, most mestizas (women of indigenous and Spanish parentage) found
in convents in New Spain worked there as servants rather than professing
as nuns,3 and for the following century and a half, strong opposition to the
notion of allowing indigenous women to take the veil remained the dominant
position in Mexico until spiritual debates and social attitudes had changed suf-
ficiently within at least some sectors of the institutional church that the ques-
tion of indias’ (indigenous women’s) formal profession could be reopened.4
Indigenous populations’ popular devotion to localized Catholic saints and the

1. Bernardino de Sahagún, as quoted in Asunción Lavrin, “Indian Brides of Christ: Creating

New Spaces for Indigenous Women in New Spain,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 15:2
(Summer 1999), 227.
2. On Isabel Moctezuma’s descendants, see Chapter 1. On the creation of convents admit-
ting mestiza and some indigenous nuns in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Peru, see Kath-
ryn Burns, Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1999).
3. Lavrin, “Indian Brides of Christ,” 229.
4. Ibid.
 13 • Founding Corpus Christi, a Convent for Indigenous Women

growth of a small body of spiritual biographies of devout indias and indios in

the seventeenth century both contributed to the church’s growing openness to

­
the idea of the profession of indigenous nuns.
Contemporary experts’ arguments both for and against indigenous wom-
en’s capacity to profess are reproduced below in the reports generated for
an inquiry Mexico’s Real Audiencia (Royal Court) launched in 1722 into
the question of establishing Mexico’s first convent for indigenous women.
The administrative initiative to found the convent originated with Mexican
viceroy Baltasar de Zúñiga, marquis of Valero, who in 1719 proposed the
foundation of a convent of Franciscan nuns to which only noble indigenous
women (cacicas or principales) of legitimate birth would be eligible for admis-
sion. King Philip IV issued a real cédula (royal letter) in September 1722
supporting the initiative and requesting that the Real Audiencia initiate a
formal report—an informe—into the matter. The informe called for the con-
sultation of principal administrators and ecclesiastical authorities, including
the directors of several convents, to render their assessments of the capacity of
indigenous women to profess, and as the following responses illustrate, it elic-
ited both positive and negative reactions from spiritual authorities. Initially
disposed to reject the foundation of the convent, its receipt of a second Real
Cédula approving the foundation in March of 1724 compelled the Audiencia
to support the intellectually revolutionary establishment of the convent of
Corpus Christi later that year.
As well as excluding commoners, aspirant nuns whose ancestors the
Inquisition had accused of idolatry were prohibited from admission to Cor-
pus Christi, as were women who had performed “vile occupations” such as
slaughtering animals or selling pulque (a popular alcoholic drink made from
fermented cactus nectar), or whose ancestors had performed such labors.5
Several aspirant nuns were either excluded from admission or ejected from
the convent at mid-century for having failed to demonstrate the purity of
their indigenous blood from intermixture with Spaniards in an ironic rever-
sal of Spaniards’ preoccupation with demonstrating their own limpieza
de sangre (blood purity).6 Its founding documents decreed that the new
convent would be run by several nuns of Spanish descent drawn from the
Viceroyalty’s other convents, but allowed that indigenous nuns would take
over the administration of Corpus Christi after twenty years if they were
judged capable of self-government. Corpus Christi, which followed the strict
Order of the Clares of First Rule, required no dowries of its members who

5. Ibid., 242; Ann Miriam Gallagher, R.S.M. “The Indian Nuns of Mexico City’s Mon-
asterio of Corpus Christi, 1724–1821,” in Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives, ed.
Asunción Lavrin (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978), 153.
6. Gallagher, “Indian Nuns,” 155.

155
 13 • Founding Corpus Christi, a Convent for Indigenous Women

numbered between eighteen and thirty-three throughout the eighteenth and

early nineteenth centuries.7 Although animosity to the admission of indig-
enous women to the status of nuns continued after its foundation, the church
founded two additional convents for indigenous women in New Spain later
in the eighteenth century: Nuestra Señora de la Pursíma Concepción de Cos-
amalopan in Valladolid and Nuestra Señora de los Angeles in Oaxaca.
One letter supporting and one opposing the foundation of a convent for
noble indigenous women generated at the behest of the Audiencia’s informe
are reproduced below. What do they demonstrate about contemporary atti-
tudes to indigenous populations? What were the specifically gendered atti-
tudes toward indigenous women’s spiritual potential that ecclesiastics held?
In comparison to the excerpts concerning the Afro–Peruvian nun Úrsula de
Jesús (Chapter 10), can we detect differences between ecclesiastical attitudes
toward Afro–Latin American and indigenous female religious?
The sources excerpted here challenge the attempt to access indigenous
women’s own views of formal profession because women feature only as
the subjects rather than the agents of these texts. Can they still be used to
try accessing women’s own attitudes toward formal religious profession?
Rather than conceiving of convents as places where wealthy families could
stow unloved and unmarriageable daughters, many scholars have shown that
participation in formal religious orders and life within the convent would
have attracted women in the colonial world because life within the convent
afforded women considerably more intellectual, social, and even financial
autonomy than they would have had access to in secular life.8
The very last pages of the excerpts chosen here give us a more direct
glimpse of three of the indigenous women who were meant to profess in
Corpus Christi themselves but who had recently made other choices. What
do these excerpts reveal about their motivations and attitudes toward enter-
ing the convent and about those whom the church saw as eligible to profess?
If women’s voices per se are muted, what do these documents reveal about the
perspective of indigenous women in colonial society? Given the unavailability
of these women, the scribe of the Real Acuerdo learned from Madre Petra de
San Francisco of Mexico City’s convent on San Juana de la Penitencia that
she knew of thirteen other able cacicas, several of whom worked as servants
in the convent and others who had been educated in it from a young age

7. Gallagher, “Indian Nuns,” 153.

8. Burns, Colonial Habits; Margaret Chowning, Rebellious Nuns: The Troubled History of a
Mexican Convent, 1752–1863 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Ellen Gunnarsdót-
tir, Mexican Karismata: The Baroque Vocation of Francisca de Los Ángeles, 1674–1744 (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 2004); Kathleen Ann Myers, Neither Saints nor Sinners: Writing
the Lives of Women in Spanish America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
 13 • Founding Corpus Christi, a Convent for Indigenous Women

whom she attested would make able candidates for profession. Another six
candidates for profession originated in the capital’s Santa Clara convent. The
fiscal (prosecutor) considered several nuns’ supporting testimony sufficient
evidence of their merit to concede license to found the convent, admitting
these women as its founding cohort.

13.1 Fray Ignacio García de Figueroa Opines about

the Qualities of Potential Indian Nuns9

Fray (brother) Ignacio García de Figueroa of the order of Our Father of San
Francisco, Predicador General (official preacher to indigenous subjects) of the
Archbishopric, curate of the parish of San Joseph de Naturales, which is in
the convent of Our Lord of San Francisco in Mexico, this original city of
America, obeying the command of Your Highness in which I am ordered to
provide information about the advisability and inadvisability that may follow
from Law I, Title 3, of Book 1 of the Recopilación de las Reales Leyes de Indias10
regarding the foundation of a convent of discalced Franciscan nuns for prin-
cipal and noble Indias in this kingdom, I state: There is just cause and urgent
need, as defined by the cited law, for such a foundation because there are
many Indias of known virtue and some, even the majority, do not enjoy the
perfection of virtue that they might because of a lack of religious recogimiento
(seclusion) that the spiritual and mystical life requires. The foundation of
this convent is urgently required for the advancement of the spiritual life so
that many souls will not be lost and so that the situation which the reverend
father Fray Juan Bautista related from the past in the seventh of his Adver-
tencias on folio 12 will not come to pass in our time.11 There, he wrote of a
priest who complained that the Indios were not good Christians. To this, an
Indio replied that if the fathers took even half as much care to make the Indios
good Christians, as the ministers of the idols had done in teaching their rites
and ceremonies, the Indios would be good Christians since the law of Christ
is better. And in the absence of anyone to teach them the law with patience,
the Indios would not take to it.

9. All documents in this chapter are taken from Archivo General de la Nacíon (México),
Historia, Vol. 109, exp. 2.
10. The Recopilación de las leyes de los reinos de Indias, first published in 1680, was an indexed
collection of all the Royal and Viceregal directives pertaining to Spanish America. The passage
cited here governed the regulation of convents and recogmientos for women.
11. Fray Juan Bautista was a Franciscan missionary and scholar of Nahuatl who taught at the
Franciscan seminary in Santiago Talatelolco in the late sixteenth century. His tract, Adverten-
cias para los confesores de los naturales, was published in 1600.

157
 13 • Founding Corpus Christi, a Convent for Indigenous Women

These words are certainly very worthy of consideration if the absence of

somebody to teach them explained why Indios did not become good Chris-
tians. Today we say and we are told that the absence of convents where Indias
may enter without dowries (due to their poverty) means that they are not
nor can become good mystics who develop their virtue. And proof of this
is that señor (sir) Juan Diego and his wife María Luisa, on hearing a sermon
by the venerable father Fray Toribio Motolonia on the subject of virginity
(as recounts bachiller Luis Lazo de la Vega in his history of Our Lady of
Guadalupe), became so enamored of chastity that they decided together to
­
remain in perpetual chastity.12
In the town of Guaxosingo,13 the venerable father Fray Miguel de
Estibales, compelled by obedience to his guardian who was then of that con-
vent, declared before the public scribe of that place with the assistance of wit-
nesses that in the town of Sinsonsa14 his Guardian Fray Pedro de Reyna was
attending mass with a candle in his hand and he saw after the consecration,
that a form [a communion host] flew from the altar and into the mouth of
an India who was behind the door of the church listening to the mass. And
there is no doubt that if there had then been a convent of those recogidas and
indoctrinated in the religious doctrine, this blessed India, María Luisa, would
have passed to greater perfection, and that from this to highest sanctity for
the greater glory of God.
Neither, Señor, can we deny that presently there are among the Indias
some spirits that are as pure as those described, but these are not improved
and cannot expand because of the absence of religious recogimiento in a con-
vent since although they have sufficient cultivation by holy reverend fathers,
they are distracted in many matters of the secular world from which they
would not suffer if they achieved the recogida peace of a convent because there
they could leave all secular concerns and could devote themselves exclusively
to God. And although it is true, Señor, that there are many spirits so valiant

12. García de Figueroa here refers to a history by seventeenth-century priest Laso de la Vega
who published a 1649 account of the Virgin of Guadalupe’s reputed apparition to Indio Juan
Diego in 1531. Vega reported that when Diego heard a sermon by Franciscan missionary Fray
Toribio de Motolonía on how celibacy pleased God, he and his wife both resolved to remain
chaste for the rest of their lives. See Stafford Poole, The Guadalupan Controversies in Mexico
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 200. A bachiller was a person who had earned
the degree of bachillerato, or baccalaureate.
13. Alternative spellings include Huejotzingo, Huexocingo, Guaxozingo, Bexosinco. The
town is located in western Puebla state.
14. Sinsonsa does not appear in Peter Gerhard’s A Guide to the Historical Geography of New
Spain, Revised Edition (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993). However, Thomas
Gage, does mention the town of Sinsonsa in his Nueva relacíon que contiene los viages de Tomas
Gage in la Nueva España, and locates it in Michoacán.
 13 • Founding Corpus Christi, a Convent for Indigenous Women

and expansive that they do not suffer from the thorns of the secular world
but rather are roses of virtue and fruits of sanctity among them. There are
also other spirits that are so delicate, prim, and proper that the mere air of the
secular world withers them, and these require the refuge and solitude of the
cloister for their preservation and improvement especially because virginity
and chastity is a virtue so delicate that it is always soiled by the corrupting
airs of an impure conversation, which they lack in the secular world, and
even more when without safe-keeping they . . .15 since most times fathers
leave their doncellas (virginal daughters) to mind their houses on their own,
without company, about which their wives complain pitifully because when
they are left as guards of the house, they cannot guard the vineyard of their
own virginity. We have daily mourned this shameful state in our confes-
sionaries, since in thirty-two years of administering to them, and of these,
twenty-six as a priest, I have heard much of this. And many spirits that could
be progressing have been kept behind with many crosses because of the lack
of recogimiento.
[García de Figueroa then spends a paragraph flattering the Spanish king
in an effort to convince him that supporting the foundation of the convent for
indigenous women, he would please God.]
It is ordered in law 19 title 3 book 1 of the Nueva Recopilación that the
maintenance of houses in which girls are taught not only the spiritual life, but
also la política (decorum) should be ensured since it appears to His Majesty
that their maintenance is necessary because it is a pious work and important
to the service of God and the well-being of these lands for which reason His
Majesty orders that where no such houses exist, they should be founded, and
once founded, preserved. The foundation of the discalced convent for noble
Indias will be seen not only as devotedly Catholic, but also as necessary and
important to the service of God and the well-being of these lands since it will
help remedy many harms about which the Provinciales (district governors)
complain because of the absence of convents for the improvement of their
daughters.
[García de Figueroa’s report continues for another two paragraphs in
which he repeats his support for the crown’s legal and moral obligation to
found the proposed convent. He signs his letter May 11, 1723, from the par-
ish of San Joseph. Several other priests whom the Real Audiencia consulted
expressed much more critical views of the idea of the convent’s foundation, as
illustrated in the following report.]

15. Two words are illegible here.

159
 13 • Founding Corpus Christi, a Convent for Indigenous Women

13.2 Priest Alessandro Romano Objects to the

Foundation of a Convent for Noble Indias

Most powerful Señor

I am commanded by Your Highness through an order of Your Real Acu-
erdo16 to express my views with respect to an establishment for cacique nuns
that is proposed in this imperial city of Mexico. And obeying as I must this
command, I declare that there is no disposition among the Indias, but rather
positive ineptitude among them to become nuns for the following reasons.
Nuns are Christian women, who desiring the perfection of all virtue pro-
fess to live communally and in perpetual cloister under the obedience of a
prelate who obliges them to keep the three vows common to all nuns as well
as to the other rules and statutes that they judge to be the most efficacious
means to obtain their goals.17 In no way do I see the Indias disposed to any
of this.
First, they do not possess the natural inclination to live communally, as
is evident in their ancient and present way of living. Since before the arrival
of our Holy Faith in these lands (except for those who lived in the company
of their great grandparents), they lived either in the hills or in small towns as
gentiles are still accustomed to do, even those who, after having holy baptism
at the cost of much work by their ministers, found themselves reduced or
were reduced to towns,18 but still in large measure maintain their natural
opposition to sociable and civil life, since each one builds his house distant
from others. They do this for one of these two reasons: either because they
do not have the patience and prudence to endure or conceal some inconve-
nience by their neighbors, or, which is more likely, from themselves. And if it
is natural for the Indios to not tolerate living right next to one another, how
could the Indias be expected to accustom themselves to living together in one
house, each one exposed to the view of all those who would take note of their
actions so that their prelates could correct them and so that they would be
obliged to conceal and tolerate everyone else’s inconveniences?
They lack, as well, speaking of Indios in general, the constancy of the soul
in their good purposes, as experience teaches us. And although this is lacking
in them, they have shown us the reason, because the facility to change the
mind and their will originates, as Saint Thomas teaches, in the imperfection
of the mind to know purposes. For this reason, the angels who clearly and

16. An official body composed of the Viceroy and officers of the Real Audiencia.
17. The three common vows are poverty, chastity, and obedience.
18. The author refers here to missionary orders’ practice of “reducciones” by which they reor-
ganized the indigenous population of rural Spanish America into concentrated towns, thus
facilitating their conversion to Christianity.
 13 • Founding Corpus Christi, a Convent for Indigenous Women

perfectly know things are very tenacious in their judgments and affections.
And for the same reason we see in men that those with cortedad de enten-
dimiento (limited minds) are also more likely to change their minds and wills.
Since the limited mental capacity of the Indios is notorious, their tendency
toward inconstancy follows from this. Who does not see the unsuitability of
the cacicas for the religious state, which is said to be the perpetual exercise of
very arduous virtues, repugnant to human nature?
This discourse is confirmed by experience because there is no doubt that it
is easier and less repugnant to human frailty to fulfill the obligations of mar-
riage than those of religion, and even then, there is scarcely a married India
who has not repented marrying, and many of them repent for good and leave
forever their husbands. For which reason, I do not see how prudence can
teach that such inconstant woman could profess the religious state, and that
of perpetual cloister which requires much constancy of the spirit and not a
little strength, which is generally also lacking in the Indias for which reason
they are unsuited to the religious state. Since this is the state of the mortifica-
tion of all the passions and of a continuous longing for the abnegation of self
will which cannot be achieved without great strength of spirit, the effect, in
large part of the mind that uncovers to the will the honesty of the virtues,
hides the senses, and in this way, the encouragement and force to mortify the
disorderly appetites. For this reason, all priests and spiritual directors require
so greatly the meditation on the eternal truths by those they have under their
care because without this they cannot fortify the soul. Without fortification,
there can be no mortification, and without mortification it is illogical to pre-
sume to reach any virtuous state at all. The very limited mental capacity of
the Indias is, after all, notorious and it is also clear that they are incapable
of meditating on their own about the eternal truths and since they lack the
force of the spirit so necessary to mortify the passions and to arrive not only
to the cross that the Señor commands all Christians to carry as the necessary
means of arriving at heaven, but also the heaviest and most difficult to arrive
and for this reason I do not make it obligatory but rather a counsel which is
that of the religiosos (male members of religious orders) that to most please
the Señor they take a vow of various arduous and things that are difficult to
achieve. The experience of thirty years has taught me that the Indias are of
such limited understanding that they cannot meditate or seriously reflect on
the virtues of our faith in which they are directed since by steps that I take to
teach them the way to meditate, all of them have left, fruitless and in vain.
The doctors doubt whether the vow of chastity that those who are sum-
marily inclined to a lack of restraint is valid and many of them . . .19 affirm
that it is not, based on the fact that this vow respective to a given person is not

19. Two words are illegible here.

161
 13 • Founding Corpus Christi, a Convent for Indigenous Women

of the greater good,20 nor can it be a sacrifice agreeable to the Señor because
it lacks the salt of prudence. I do not want that these reasons count to prove
the Indias incapable of being nuns because of the great difficulty that must be
spoken about of fulfilling all the obligations of this state. But who can deny
that these reasons at least convince them that they should not be permitted
to profess this state which could be the occasion more of setbacks than of
spiritual benefits?
Nor is this satisfied in saying that divine grace and not the law of our
discourse is that which checks and subdues our passions. Because grace does
not only work in us, but also with us and ordinarily it accommodates itself to
nature the doctors teach us who also affirm that the natural talents that the
Señor has given some person can gather the use of this doctrine in his church.
It costs us then the short achievement of the Indias to understand the honesty
of the virtues proper to religious people, we must not assume that the Señor
knows their false nature with extraordinary illumination, but rather judge
that he does not want them for this state since he gave them the talent and
understanding and discourse necessary for the order of their ordinary provi-
dence to achieve religious virtues.
But above all, I do not see in the Indias even one trace of this great and
good sense that is required in a superior to govern a community of incapable
women, and in the inferiors to obey a prelate of the same calidad (class and
caste) because the governor of an incapable people needs great knowledge of
the inclinations and dispositions of the soul of each one of her inferiors as
well as much concealed patience and skill, bringing to each one in her path
and suffering many faults without prejudice to the common good, qualities
that cannot be hoped to be found except miraculously in a superior India of
very little potential. And even less can one hope to find in the inferior ones
who are incapacitated this heroic humility, patience, and blind obedience
that is required to . . . to an ignorant, and consequently . . . superior.21
This, then, my powerful Señor is my opinion with respect to the new foun-
dation that is intended. And I believe that this same opinion that many reli-
gious superiors have had until now, and continue to have in this immense
Kingdom because even though Indios were capable of taking religious orders,
because they are naturally so humble, nevertheless no religious superior has
wanted them nor wants now to admit them even as lay members to their
orders because of their great incapacity, inconstancy, and weakness of the
soul. These reasons must have even greater force when speaking of Indias
because they are of the more imperfect sex.

20. The phrase here is Latin: “non este de meliori bono.”

21. Two words are illegible in this sentence.
 13 • Founding Corpus Christi, a Convent for Indigenous Women

[Romano concludes by reiterating his main points, and dates his sub-
mission May 25, 1723. The fiscal of the Real Acuerdo, having weighted the
opinions of the religious authorities consulted, judged that it would be helpful
to create an inventory of the possible women who might be prepared to enter
the proposed convent. He noted that such a list might begin with two cacicas
originally considered for the convent, Luisa de Rivera who owned a business
selling enaguas (petticoats) from Xilotepec (a community in the current state
of Mexico) and a second woman who could be found in the company of a nun
of the convent of San Juan de la Penitencia. However, both of these women,
he learned, had recently married. The following excerpts describe the circum-
stances of three of the women who had been considered possible novitiates for
the convent, but whose lives had turned in other directions.]

13.3 Biographical Details of Possible Novices

for the Corpus Christi Convent

Account of the marriage of doña Luisa de Riviera

June 16, 1723: Having looked in the main square of this city for doña
Luisa de Riviera, India cacique, she was found in a stall selling petticoats from
Xilotepeq and in her company was one Francisco Xavier Chavazpado, a Span-
iard, her husband. I spoke to both of them and they told me that they married
on the fourth of October, the day of San Francisco, in the year 1722 and to
validate this account I include witnesses Francisco Xavier Durán and Nicolas
Rodríguez Moreno, Spaniards, bachilleres (graduates) and of this, I attest.
Joseph Manuel de Paz

Account of the marriage of Michaela de Candia

I certify and attest that having taken steps from Damiana Michaela de
Candia, India cacique who notified me that she had a decree to enter as a nun
in the new foundation and that she married. It occurred to her to look for me
accompanied by her husband, Manuel Indio Sacristan22 of the Hermitage of
Nuestra Señora de Piedad, located at the opening of the roadway, and they
told me they had contracted marriage in the month of May of this year and
to validate this I include (in present in Mexico on the 17th of June of 1723)
as witnesses licenciado Phelipe de Salazar, clerk of the Real Audiencia and don
Diego de Arpuello, gatekeeper.
Joseph Manuel de Paz

22. A sacristan was a lay officer of the church who was responsible for the care of the sacristy
and church.

163
 13 • Founding Corpus Christi, a Convent for Indigenous Women

Account of the marriage of Josepha de Solis

On September 14, 1723 doña Luisa de Riviera informed me that Josepha
de Solis, India cacique who had been named to enter as a nun married Fran-
cisco Bermudes, servant of father fray Sandoval, vicario of the convent of
San Juan de la Penitencia and the marriage took place on August 30, the day
of Santa Rosa, of this year. And having asked don Miguel Moreno Vezarez,
mayordomo of the convent about this, he told me it is true which and to verify
it I make this account.
Joseph Manuel de Paz

Suggested Reading

Burns, Kathryn. Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999.
Díaz, Mónica. “The Indigenous Nuns of Corpus Christi: Race and Spirituality,” in
Religion in New Spain, ed. Susan Schroeder and Stafford Poole. Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 2007, 179–192.
Gallagher, Ann Miriam, R.S.M. “The Indian Nuns of Mexico City’s Monasterio of
Corpus Christi, 1724–1821,” in Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives,
ed. Asunción Lavrin (pp. 150–72). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978.
Lavrin, Asunción. Brides of Christ: Conventual Life in Colonial Mexico. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2008.
van Deusen, Nancy E. Between the Sacred and the Worldly: The Institutional and
Cultural Practice of Recogimiento in Colonial Lima. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2002.
­
Villella, Peter B. Indigenous Elites and Creole Identity in Colonial Mexico, 1500–1800.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Document Themes
• Race and ethnicity
• Religion
• Sexuality and gender
 14

An African Woman Petitions for

Freedom in a Colonial Brazilian
Mining Town (Vila Rica, 1766)

Introduction and Translation by Mariana Dantas

Rita de Souza Lobo, the main protagonist of this chapter, was an enslaved
African woman in early eighteenth-century Brazil. She successfully negoti-
ated her freedom in 1743, but later had to prove her freed status and that of
her Brazilian-born daughters to avoid re-enslavement. Lobo’s story is appeal-
ing because, unlike so many other enslaved Africans and African descendants
in Brazil, she managed to become free. Her struggles reveal, nevertheless,
the vulnerability of freed people, particularly women, in a society organized
around slavery and patriarchy.
In the early eighteenth century, Rita de Souza Lobo was taken from West
Africa, most likely present-day Ghana, to the Brazilian port city of Rio de
Janeiro. Slaves who were embarked in that region of Africa were commonly
described as “Mina” or of the “Mina nation,” a general term that ignored and
erased their geographical or ethnic origins and collective identity.1 Lobo
experienced the traumatic Atlantic crossing as a young woman, or girl, a fact
that would not have spared her from being sexually harassed or raped by ship
crewmembers, a common practice on transatlantic slave ships. After arriving
in Rio de Janeiro, she still had to endure the rough trek inland to the cap-
taincy of Minas Gerais. The captaincy’s rich mining sites had attracted tens of
thousands of people and created an intense demand for slave labor.2 Once
near the town of Vila Rica, the seat of the captaincy, Lobo was purchased
by a freed black couple. Her owners were former slaves who, after obtaining

1. The term Mina derived from the Castle of São Jorge da Mina, a Portuguese trading fort
and the first European trading post established in the Gulf of Guinea, in West Africa. James
H. Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World,
1441–1770 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 13–30.
2. Gold was first discovered in the interior of Brazil in the late seventeenth century. The
region, named Minas Gerais, quickly became the economic center and most densely populated
captaincy of colonial Brazil. Laird W. Bergad, Slavery and the Demographic and Economic His-
tory of Minas Gerais, 1720–1888 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

165
 14 • An African Woman Petitions for Freedom

their freedom, sought their own prosperity through gold mining and slave
ownership.
Rita de Souza Lobo became a wage earner for her owners, João de Souza
Lobo and his wife, Francisca Nunes do Rosário. Enslaved women were rarely
forced to work in gold mining. Their owners expected them to earn money as
peddlers of food and drink, domestic workers, and sex workers. They enjoyed
some autonomy and were often allowed to keep part of their earnings after
surrendering the amount demanded of them. Occasionally they managed to
save enough gold to purchase their freedom. Because African women were
frequently employed as wage earners, they were more successful than male
slaves at negotiating their manumission (the process by which slaves were
legally freed). Rita de Souza Lobo, for instance, accumulated sufficient gold
by 1743 to pay for her freedom.
Access to manumission also depended on a slave owner’s goodwill. João
de Souza Lobo, inspired perhaps by a sense of obligation toward the enslaved
woman he pursued sexually and impregnated, offered Lobo her freedom with
the condition that she remain in his company while he lived. Lobo, in turn,
offered her owners a payment of one pound of gold to secure her freedom
immediately.3
As a former slave, Rita de Souza Lobo would face new challenges. While
enslaved, she had become sexually involved with a branco (white man), Fran-
cisco Martins Castellano. It was Castellano, it seems, who had advised Lobo
to renegotiate the terms of her freedom. He had even tried to pay for Lobo’s
immediate manumission with credits that were owed to him—a common
form of payment in colonial Minas Gerais, where the shortage of currency
was notorious. But gold was ultimately preferable to credit, and thanks to her
savings Lobo secured her freedom without becoming indebted to another
man. She was unable, however, to avoid altogether Castellano’s attempts to
claim some authority over her. In order to hide the illicit nature of their
relationship, she agreed to pass for his slave in public.
­
Despite their domestic arrangement, Rita de Souza Lobo worked hard to
become independent from Castellano. She took up different economic activi-
ties, contracting purchases and sales, moving credit, and collecting wages as
a washerwoman. She eventually acquired her own house in the town of Vila
Rica and, according to witnesses, always conducted herself as a free person.

3. Manumission was relatively widespread in colonial Brazil, even though the number of
freed slaves was relatively small compared to the overall size of the slave population; the major-
ity of manumissions resulted from slaves’ own efforts to purchase their freedom. Stuart B.
Schwartz, “The Manumission of Slaves in Colonial Brazil: Bahia, 1684–1745,” The Hispanic
American Historical Review 54:4 (November 1974), 603–35.
 14 • An African Woman Petitions for Freedom

Lobo’s standing in Brazil’s patriarchal and slave society remained vulner-

able, however. When Castellano died in the mid-1750s, his son and executor
of his will, Manuel Martins, claimed that Lobo and three of her five daugh-
ters were his father’s slaves. Maria, Efigênia, and Escolástica, were born of
sexual encounters Lobo had outside of her relationship with Castellano. All
three were described as crioulas. Lobo’s middle daughters, Anna and Fran-
cisca, had been fathered by Castellano and, because of their mixed descent,
were described as pardas.4 Martins recognized Anna and Francisca as his half-
sisters and did not try to enslave them. But he took advantage of the domestic
fiction Castellano had fabricated to list Lobo and her crioula daughters as
part of the family estate and his own inheritance. Faced with the potential
enslavement of her daughters and her own re-enslavement, Lobo appealed to
local government officials and to the King of Portugal himself to defend their
right to freedom.
The documents in this chapter illustrate Rita de Souza Lobo’s legal efforts
to prove her and her daughters’ free status. Lobo initiated legal proceedings
in 1766, most likely with someone’s help; very few former slaves were liter-
ate in colonial Minas Gerais. At that time, she procured witness testimonies
and documents that proved her manumission and the free-born status of
her daughters (document 14.2). Her file, however, remained forgotten in
the archives of the secretariat for several years. In 1774, with the help of an
acquaintance on his way to Lisbon, Lobo tried again to argue her freedom by
appealing directly to the King. Her plea gained the sympathy of the Over-
seas Council, the King’s advisers in matters pertaining to Portugal’s colonial
possessions (document 14.1). Armed with an order from the King, Lobo
petitioned the governor of Minas Gerais once more in 1775 to confirm her
freedom. An official from the secretariat reviewed Lobo’s earlier file, inter-
viewed new witnesses, and pronounced that his findings corroborated Lobo’s
claims (document 14.2).
Rita de Souza Lobo’s story reveals the many challenges slave women had to
face in colonial Brazil: from sexual subjugation, to forced social submission,
to potential re-enslavement after achieving freedom. But it also reveals these
women’s resilience and persistence as they sought their autonomy in a slave
and patriarchal society. In the end, Lobo successfully proved her freedom
on paper. Unfortunately, we lack information about whether or not those

4. The terms pardo(a) and crioulo(a) were used in colonial Brazil as descriptive terms to dis-
tinguish, respectively, a person of mixed African and European descent, or perceived to have a
lighter skin tone, from someone of sole African descent born in the colonies. Douglas Libby,
“A Culture of Colors: Representational Identities and Afro-Brazilians in Minas Gerais in the
18th and 19th Centuries,” Luso-Brazilian Review 50:1 (June 2013), 26–52.

167
 14 • An African Woman Petitions for Freedom

involved in her and her daughters’ illegal enslavement were subsequently

ordered to release them and complied.
Rita de Souza Lobo blamed her willingness to pursue an illicit relationship
with Francisco Martins Castellano on her fragility; she may have meant her
moral fragility. Yet, in what ways does Lobo’s story of enslavement and tran-
sition to freedom reveal other, social and economic fragilities or vulnerabili-
ties of black women in colonial Brazil? How did Lobo attempt to strengthen
her standing in Minas Gerais’s slave and patriarchal society? Did the fact that
Lobo chose to live in an urban center influence the outcome of her story?
While her relationship to Castellano became the source of her later troubles,
what other relationships proved helpful to her? Overall, how did the social
and economic behavior of African descending people in colonial Brazil influ-
ence people’s perception of what it meant to be a slave or a free person?

14.1 Petition for Confirmation of Freedom

Presented by Rita de Souza Lobo to the Portuguese
Overseas Council in Lisbon, 17745

Rita de Souza Lobo, freed preta (black woman), resident in Vila Rica do Ouro
Preto, declares that, being a slave of João de Souza Lobo and his wife Fran-
cisca Nunes, they granted her a letter of manumission and liberty in the year
of 1743 not just for the love they had for her but also because they received
from the petitioner the amount of one pound of gold, that was then worth
192$000 réis.6 And since then she began to behave as the freed person she
had become, going wherever she wanted and living wherever she could afford
without contestation or impediment from anyone. However, the petitioner,
because of her fragility, got together with Francisco Martins Castelhado, in
whose house and company she lived for many years in illicit union. But since
he did not want the parish priest to know about their concubinage, he said
and showed externally that the petitioner was his slave, and as such she was
reputed to be by the neighbors and the same priest, something the petitioner
did not deny, not just because of her ignorance and rusticity, but also because
she believed she was safe because of the letter of freedom she possessed. And

5. This petition can be found among the Loose Documents from the Portuguese Overseas
Council Archive—Collection for Minas Gerais (microfilmed and digitized), box 115, docu-
ment 60, May 13, 1774.
6. The real (pl. réis) was the currency of colonial Brazil. But the absence of printed money
and shortage of minted coins meant that transactions mostly relied on gold powder or small
gold bars. In 1743, one-eighth of an ounce of gold (a unit called the oitava) was worth fifteen
hundred réis.
 14 • An African Woman Petitions for Freedom

during that time, she had five daughters, two pardas, Anna and Francisca,
whom her said lover recognized as his and sent to a convent in this kingdom,
and three crioulas, Maria, Efigênia, and Escolástica. And supposing that the
priest has declared them captives of the said Francisco Martins in their bap-
tismal records it is not because in truth they were, but because he believed
that the petitioner was a slave. But the said Francisco Martins always treated
her as a freed woman because he knew her to be one and, consequently, her
aforementioned three daughters. In fact, when he passed away leaving his will
he did not mention one word in reference to the petitioner or the said crio-
ulas. However, Manuel Martins, son and heir of the said Martins Castelhado,
knowing this indisputable truth, nevertheless declared the three crioulas in
the inventory as captives of his father, and as a result they have been suffering
under the yoke of slavery for more than thirteen years, because being rustic,
poor, and miserable7 they do not have someone to help and speak for them.
She, the petitioner, as their mother, wanted to request that since she was free,
and since birth follows the womb, 8 the said crioulas should not be subjected
to captivity, for they had been born after the petitioner was freed. But when
she looked for her letter of freedom she did not find it, either having lost it or
having had it stolen, but she made up for the lacking document with a justi-
fication from five witnesses she produced through the citation of her masters
João de Souza Lobo and his wife which they had not opposed as is judicially
evident in the indubitably substantiated papers contained in the attached
documents. But she has not filed any legal proceedings because of the right-
ful fear that justice will require a bribe. In light of these circumstances, she
resorts to Your Majesty so that you, as a father and lord of your vassals may
free the petitioner’s miserable daughters from the unjust captivity in which
they find themselves, since only the venerable and paternal providence of
Your Majesty can help them, offering them justice without the bribes that are
so common in that land. And may you order the Judge of the Royal Exche-
quer of Minas Gerais, and in his absence or impediment the Judge Intendant

7. “Miserable” was a rhetorical term often used in colonial petitions. It implied that a group
or an individual’s vulnerability made them deserving of the legal protection of the crown or
to be favored by the king. R. Jovita Baber, “Law, Land, and Legal Rhetoric in Colonial New
Spain: A Look at the Changing Rhetoric of Indigenous Americans in the Sixteenth Century,”
in Native Claims: Indigenous Law against Empire, 1500–1920, ed. Saliha Belmessous (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 41–62.
8. In the Portuguese Empire, as well as elsewhere in the Americas where Africans and their
descendants were enslaved, the children of enslaved women were considered to be legal slaves.
Conversely, the children of free mothers could not be legally claimed as slaves. Margarida
Seixas, “Slave Women’s Children in the Portuguese Empire: Legal Status and Its Enforce-
ment,” in Women in the Portuguese Empire: The Theatre of Shadows, ed. Clara Sarmento (New-
castle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 63–80.

169
 14 • An African Woman Petitions for Freedom

of Vila Rica or the Local Judge of Marianna (since she is suspicious of the
District Judge for personal reasons), that given the judicial documents the
petitioner has presented, he soon free her said three crioula daughters Maria,
Efigênia, and Escolástica, ordering that the said Manuel Martins pay them
promptly the wages determined by two arbitrators of good conscience who
shall take into account the time in which they have been unjustly enslaved.
And all shall be granted by the said Martins summarily and soon without the
involvement of another official in order to avoid further delays which is what
the defendant [Martins] wants, so that he may eternalize this dependency.
And since the petitioner and her daughters are poor, miserable, and rustic,
and he more powerful and with friends, he will easily corrupt your justice and
will seek the means to satisfy his malice.
I ask Your Majesty that by your greatness you will see it fit to grant the
mercy requested.
[There is an annotation on the margin of the petition, possibly from one
of the Overseas Councilors, which reads, “The mercy the petitioner requests can
only be obtained by the immediate greatness of Your Majesty.” A second anno-
tation, dated from November 22, 1774, orders the governor of Minas Gerais
to ascertain with all exactness the claims Rita de Souza Lobo has made and
then to issue a decision.9]

14.2 Lobo’s Legal File10

[This file includes: a) A petition by Rita de Souza Lobo regarding the

freedom of her daughters, presented to the governor of the captaincy of Minas
Gerais in 1775. b) The opinion of an officer of the secretariat of the govern-
ment of the captaincy, whose name is illegible. c) Record of the testimonies of
witnesses interviewed by the officer of the secretariat in 1775. d) The Instru-
ment of Justification, or claims proceedings, that Rita de Souza Lobo initiated
in 1766 and filed with the local courts in 1767; it includes: (i) a list of Lobo’s
claims, (ii) witness testimonies, (iii) information about the content of Fran-
cisco Martins Castellano’s last will and testament, (iv) copies of her daughters’
baptismal records, and (v) a letter from Lobo’s former owner.]

9. This petition can be found among the Loose Documents from the Overseas Council
Archive—Collection for Minas Gerais (microfilmed and digitized), box 115, document 60,
May 13, 1774.
10. Public Archive of Minas Gerais, Collection Secretariat of the Government of the
Captaincy—Colonial Section, box 8, document 14, July 24, 1775.
­
 14 • An African Woman Petitions for Freedom

a) Illustrious and Most Excellent Sir,

Rita de Souza Lobo, freed preta, resident of this town for many years,
declares that she had petitioned his Royal Majesty, deceased, with a very just
request about the five daughters that the petitioner bore after being free of
slavery, and who are serving a perpetual enslavement, except one who has
already died. The said petition was taken to the court by the hand of Sargent
Major Francisco Sanxas Brandão, who has returned it to this capital with a
statement sent from the Monarch to Your Excellency’s predecessor ordering
that it be investigated and, if in fact [her daughters] were in captivity, that
they be released and paid the wages they were due during their enslavement.
[The rest of this document states that the response Lobo received from the
Crown was an order to investigate her claims, and requests that the current
governor of Minas Gerais search for the documents she had filed in 1767.]
b) Illustrious, Excellent Sir
Through documents, which I now share with you, and witnesses that I
extra-judicially interviewed, I have come into the knowledge that Rita de
Souza Lobo, mentioned in the enclosed petition, was the slave of João de
Souza Lobo and of his wife Francisca Nunes do Rosário. The two, because
of the good services she provided and a pound of gold they received from
her, gave her a letter of manumission and freedom. Under that condition
she came to this hamlet of Inficcionado from the Hill of Agua Quente [in
the captaincy of Minas Gerais] to live with Francisco Martins Castellano.
He, to disguise the illicit communication he had with her, called her his
slave, and declared her as such in the Roster of Confessed during their first
years [together].11 She nevertheless had with him the two mulata (person of
African and European parentage) daughters that she declared in her petition,
of whom I know one to be deceased and the other in Rio de Janeiro and
willing to be placed under the authority of Manuel Martins, son and heir
of the aforementioned [Castellano].12 However, after a few years, because
[Castellano] was jealous that she had given birth to two crioula daughters,
as well as of her first daughter who was born as soon as she had arrived in
that hamlet, he left her. From then on, she began to live by herself, buying
a house, exchanging credit, selling and contracting as a free person with no
objections from the said Francisco Martins or any other person. And once

11. The Roster of the Confessed was a list of parishioners who had complied with their
annual obligations of confession. It was organized by household and therefore identified mem-
bers of the family unit as well as household dependents, such as slaves or members of the
extended family.
12. It appears that Lobo’s surviving mulata daughter was willing to live under Manuel Martin’s
­
patriarchal authority as his dependent.

171
 14 • An African Woman Petitions for Freedom

he died, it is known that he did not bequeath the petitioner or her daughters
in his will; even so, the said Manuel Martins listed them in the inventory as
slaves and sold the mother and two crioula daughters, the youngest ones, to
the Priest Pedro Machado, who resides near Serro Frio [a district in northern
Minas Gerais]. After concluding a judicial inquiry through the summation of
the testimonies I include here, its findings were:
Having heard the accused Manuel Martins, he only presented me with a
torn note of credit passed by his father Francisco Martins to João de Souza
Lobo, former owner of the petitioner, according to which [Francisco Mar-
tins] committed to satisfying the amount of 249 oitavas of gold for which
amount the note stated he had bought [Rita de Souza Lobo] in the year of
1743. However, without witnesses who had observed the said purchase and
contract of credit, and only [Martins’s] signature, and there being no deed
of sale or any other document that could prove that alleged sale, he only
brought to my presence some witnesses who had heard say, most of them
from [Castellano], that he had bought [Rita] from her owner. Still in no
other way was I given evidence that the said purchase had been real and that
the credit agreement had been verified.
Given the terms of this case I am persuaded that both the petitioner and
her daughters are freed; she because of the freedom she obtained from the
only owners she recognizes, and those because they were born of a free womb
as was that of their mother at the time of their birth. The request of the peti-
tioner is worthy of the paternal providence to which she has appealed. [The
officer asks that the governor proceed as he judges best and signs the document with
his initials.] City of Mariana, July 24, 1775.

c) [The first pages of the recorded testimonies of witnesses interviewed by the officer
of the Secretariat of the Government of the Captaincy are missing. The first avail-
able folio of the document begins in the middle of a witness statement.]
Rita de Souza Lobo was never the slave of said Francisco Martins but
instead lived under the authority of the aforementioned with this title to
better disguise the illicit communication she had with him and so that testi-
monies given to the priest of that parish not cause the priest to separate them.
Therefore, he was completely certain that her only owners had been João de
Souza Lobo and his wife Francisca Nunes, from the Hill of Agua Quente
in the parish of Catas Altas, who in the past had given [Lobo] her letter of
freedom. And in the security of her freedom she lived and moved around
and at this time she had the daughters she had mentioned in her petition,
and who he, the witness, is informed are being held or were sold by Manuel
Martins, son of the aforementioned Francisco Martins, with the exception
of the two mulatas who [Manuel Martins] recognized as daughters and, as
 14 • An African Woman Petitions for Freedom

such, were sent to one of the convents in the kingdom of Portugal, as is the
current practice of all in that hamlet. And this, with some specificities pro-
vided by witnesses, he made known through a letter from September 2, 1770
to captain Bernardo Vasco Cardoso, who per order of the then governor
of this captaincy had informed himself of this matter having thus, both at
present and since that time, recognized as free the aforementioned preta and
her daughters and the fraud that the aforementioned Manuel Martins perpe-
trated against them. And no more did he say about the petition [the statement
is signed by the public notary Joaquim José de Oliveira]. [Witness signature:]
Jeronimo Barros Souza.
[The second witness was Captain Bernardo Vasco Cardoso, a forty-four-
year-old resident of the city of Mariana, whose occupation was described as
miner. Cardoso confirms that he had been asked in 1770 by the governor of
the captaincy to seek information about Rita de Souza Lobo. He states that she
was the slave of João de Souza Lobo and his wife, from whom she purchased
her manumission. Cardoso repeats much of the information shared by the first
witness about Lobo’s relationship with Castellano, adding only that after the
relationship ended “she lived in her own house, selling and contracting as a
freed person and paying the cost of her head tax.” He also acknowledges that
Manuel Martins had held or sold Lobo and her crioula daughters despite their
free status.
The third witness was captain Pedro Gonçalves Chaves, a sixty-two-
year-old farmer, and resident of the parish of Inficcionado, where Rita de Souza
Lobo once lived. His testimony added the following information to the previous
two testimonies:]
[Rita de Souza Lobo] was the slave of João de Souza Lobo of the Hill of
Agua Quente, who because he was intimate with her he took her away from
his house for the sake of his wife and he placed her in the hamlet of Inficcio-
nado in another house he had bought or rented for that purpose. And while
in that situation, it is said that Francisco Martins Castellano bought [Rita de
Souza Lobo] from [João de Souza Lobo], but the witness is not sure. [Chaves
describes in the same terms as the other witnesses Lobo’s relationship to Castel-
lano, but he adds that:] In the beginning [Lobo] demonstrated submission
and obedience to the said Francisco Martins just like a slave. But it was not
like this towards the end, because she bought, sold, and contracted on her
own as a freed person and on terms such as those of the purchase of a house
that he, the witness, had sold to Antônio da Costa Pena, who in turn sold
it to the said preta woman for credit. [Lobo] had then become indebted to
him, the witness, and as a result of that obligation he, the witness, received
in payments [from] the said preta woman seventy-six thousand and so many

173
 14 • An African Woman Petitions for Freedom

réis. [Chaves testifies further to Lobo’s commercial dealings and financial solvency
by stating that:] [She] has bought several shipments of goods in her name and
commits to satisfying their price, paying others in the same way she paid him
the witness.

d) Civil Instrument of Freedom and Justification issued by petition from Rita

de Souza Lobo, freed preta
Know all who view this public instrument of justification and citation of
witnesses given and issued by judicial order and authority in the office of me,
notary public named below, that in my possession and notary office there are
certain acts of justification between the parties Rita de Souza Lobo and João
de Souza Lobo and Francisca Nunes do Rosário, his wife, which were de verbo
ad verbum [word by word] as follows:

(i) [The first part of the Instrument of Justification is the summary of the claims
made by Rita de Souza Lobo in a petition that had been issued by, or with the
help of, local town judge Captain Antônio João Bellas. Lobo appeared in person
to file the summary with the office of the governor of the captaincy, in the town of
Vila Rica, on July 17, 1766.]
Rita de Souza Lobo, freed preta of the Mina nation, resident in this town,
declared that she, the claimant, proposes in this court to prove the follow-
ing items, and requests that once that is done, she receive her instrument of
proof:
Item 1: That the claimant was the slave of João de Souza Lobo and his
wife Francisca Nunes do Rosário, freed pretos and residents in the parish of
Our Lady of Catas Altas do Matto Dentro, a precinct of the city of Mariana.
Item 2: That the said owners of the petitioner gave her a letter of freedom
written in the year of 1743 because the claimant had for that purpose given
them one pound of gold, which they received from her hand, and because
of the great love her said owners had for her in return for the service the
claimant had provided to them.
­
Item 3: That since that time and year of 1743 until now the claimant has
always been on her own.
[The document is missing the folio in which the rest of item 3 and items
4 and 5 are listed. We can assume from the witness statements that these items
reflected Lobo’s claims that she behaved as a free woman after obtaining her
manumission; that she never had another owner; that she had lost her letter of
manumission; and that her children were born after she had been freed. The
existing pages of the document pick up again with the testimonies of Rita de
Souza Lobo’s former owners.]
 14 • An African Woman Petitions for Freedom

(ii) [On the same day, July 17, 1766, the witnesses were called to the office of
the notary public of the town of Vila Rica and questioned by the inquisitor of
the court, João Rodrigues Martins.] 1st Witness: Francisca Nunes do Rosário,
freed preta, resident in the Catas Altas, parish of Our Lady of Conceição, pre-
cinct of the City of Mariana, who lives with her husband João de Souza Lobo,
said to be sixty years of age more or less. Witness to whom the said inquisitor
administered the oath of the holy gospels by putting her right hand over the
holy book and charging her to say and swear on the truth of all she knew and
was asked, and having received the oath, she promised to do as instructed.
And asked of her the witness about the content of the first item presented
by the claimant she said that she is the very Francisca Nunes do Rosário
named in this article and that there is no doubt, and she knows firsthand, that
the claimant Rita de Souza Lobo had been hers and her husband’s slave and
she said no more about this.
Of the second item she said that she knows first-hand, having witnessed
it, that the claimant had given them one pound of gold for her freedom in
the year of 1743, and that they gave her a letter of manumission and freedom
signed by her, the witness, and her husband, it being certain that she and her
husband had loved the said claimant because of her good services; and she
said no more about this.
Of the third item she said that after she and her husband had given the
claimant her letter of manumission she immediately left from under their
authority and dominion, moving to wherever she wanted since she was her
own master and because the said letter of freedom was granted without any
onus or condition, all with no objection by any person still to this day; and
she said no more about this.
Of the fourth item, she said that she knows first-hand that the said claim-
ant after being freed lived several years in the parish of Our Lady of Nazareth
of the Inficcionado and that nine or ten years ago the said claimant moved
to the parish of Ouro Preto of this town [of Vila Rica] where she was still
living without going to another part, without objection of any person, and it
is certain that the said claimant did not have another owner in these mines
aside from her the witness and her husband since they had bought her from a
shipment coming to these mines from Rio de Janeiro; and she said no more
about this.
Of the fifth item, she said that there is no doubt that the said claimant
complained to her, the witness, that she had lost the letter of her freedom
that she the witness and her husband had given her; and she also knows first-
hand that the same claimant never during the time she was her slave had any
children, and only since some time back did she start having the children she
declared in this item; and she said no more about this last and final item of

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 14 • An African Woman Petitions for Freedom

the petition, which had been read and declared to her by the said inquisitor.
[After the deposition was read back to the witness, who agreed it was accurate,
the inquisitor signed it for her because the witness “does not know how to read or
write.”]
[Francisca Nunes do Rosário’s testimony was followed by the testimony
of four more witnesses. The second witness was João de Souza Lobo, Rita
de Souza Lobo’s former master. He was described as eighty-seven or eighty-
eight years old, a freed preto, resident in Catas Altas, a town of the city of
Mariana, and a miner by occupation. The third witness was Antônio Luis
da Costa, also a freed preto, who appeared to be seventy years old. Costa
resided at the base of the hill of Antônio Dias, adjacent to the town of Vila
Rica, and was a miner by occupation. The fourth witness was Estácio Ferras
Sampaio, a branco of approximately fifty-one years of age, and a resident of
the town of Vila Rica; he was a solicitor of causes in the town courts. The
fifth and final witness was Joana Coelho de Oliveira Coimbra, a freed preta
whose age appeared to be seventy years, a resident on the New Street of the
town of Vila Rica, and an innkeeper by occupation. Costa, Sampaio, and
Coimbra all stated that they were acquainted with Lobo, and therefore knew
information about her firsthand. They noted that Lobo had moved from her
owner’s house after purchasing her manumission and settled in the parish of
Inficcionado for a few years. She had then moved to the town of Vila Rica
where, some added, she earned a living as a washerwoman. Finally, they all
testified to the veracity of Lobo’s claims and to her and her daughter’s right
to freedom.]
(iii) Rita de Souza Lobo, freed preta, declares that for the benefit of a peti-
tion she has she needs a certificate containing the content of the disposition
or dispositions from the last will and testament of the deceased Francisco
Martins, resident in Inficcionado, in which he mentions the petitioner and
her three crioula daughters named Efigênia, Escolástica, and Maria. And if
no such dispositions are found in the last will and testament she needs this
fact noted in the certificate. Additionally, that the same notary public, when
examining the inventory that was drawn after the death of the said Martins,
declare who listed the property that was inventoried, and for what price were
the said crioulas evaluated; and if such information is not in the inventory,
that it be noted in the certificate.
[On September 11, 1767, the notary public of the exchequer of the
City of Mariana submitted a certificate declaring that in a book of last wills
and testaments that was kept at his notary office he located the last will and
testament of Francisco Martins Castellano. In that document, he found no
mention of the claimant Rita de Souza Lobo, or of her daughters, as slaves
 14 • An African Woman Petitions for Freedom

or the manumitted slaves of Castellano’s. Finally, he noted that he had no

information about the inventory of the deceased’s property because that
­
document had not been registered with his notary office.]
(iv) Rita de Souza Lobo, preta of the Mina nation, declares that having been
the slave of João de Souza Lobo and his wife Francisca Nunes Rosário, freed
pretos and residents in the parish of Conceição das Catas Altas do Mato Den-
tro, she achieved her letter of freedom for a price that she satisfied in the year
of 1743. With that freedom, she moved to the parish of Inficcionado where
she lived in the house of Francisco Martins, a white man and today deceased.
In those circumstances the petitioner had during the following years five
daughters, two by the name of Ana and Francisca, and three crioulas by the
names: Maria, Efigênia, and Escolástica. And because she needs the baptismal
record of each one of the three crioula daughters: it is requested that you be
asked to order the reverend vicar of the said parish of Inficcionado, or who
in that capacity may serve, to report from the books of baptismal records the
content of the record for each one of the said crioulas: Maria, Efigênia, and
Escolástica, daughters of the petitioner.
Antônio Dias Delgado de Carvalho, vicar of Inficcionado and graduate in
the Canons from the University of Coimbra
I certify that reviewing the second book of baptisms of this parish, in it,
on the back of folio 30 there was a record with the following content: “On
the sixteenth day of the month of November of one thousand and seven
hundred and forty-three in this mother church of Our Lady of Nazareth of
Inficcionado I baptized and put the holy oils on Maria, daughter of Rita slave
of Francisco Martins. The godparents were José Ferreira Fialho and Anna
mulata. And this being the truth I made this record, signed it and affirmed
it under oath. Parish of Inficcionado, day, month, and year above, the vicar
Luis Jayme de Magalhães Coutinho.” And nothing else was found in the said
record.
I also certify that on folio 83 of the same book there is another record with
the following content: “On the twenty-first of September of one thousand
seven hundred and fifty-two in this mother church I baptized and put the
holy oils on Ephigenia parvola13 natural daughter of Rita slave of Francisco
Martins. The godparents were Captain João Favacho Roubão and Luzia de
Crasto, the wife of Manuel Carreira Botelho, all from this parish, and I made
this record, coadjutor Manuel de Souza.” And nothing else was found in the
said record.

13. Parvola, or parvolo in the masculine form, means small or little. As a noun it can also
mean child.

177
 14 • An African Woman Petitions for Freedom

Finally, I certify that on the back of folio 101 of the same book there
was another record with the following content: “On the sixteenth day of the
month of October of the year of one thousand seven hundred and fifty-seven
in this mother church of Our Lady of Nazareth of Inficcionado, the Reverend
Inácio Pedro de Souza, with my license, baptized and put the holy oils on
Escolástica parvola natural daughter of Rita slave of Francisco Martins and
of unknown father. The godparents were Captain João Favacho Roubão and
Archangela de Moura, freed parda, and I made this record, the vicar Antônio
Dias Delgado de Carvalho.” And nothing else was found in the said record.

Inficcionado, September 9, 1767

The Vicar, Dr. Antônio Dias Delgado de Carvalho

(v) Captain Sir Bernardo Vasconcellos Cardoso

I, João de Souza Lobo, freed preto, had a negra14 woman by the name of
Rita and to the said slave I gave a letter of freedom with the obligation that
she always be with me. And there was a branco who advised her to challenge
that obligation. I then said that if they gave me something I would remove
the obligation. The branco said that he committed to passing me a credit if
I removed the obligation.15 And seeing this, the same slave was very happy
and quickly gave me one pound of gold which she had accumulated while
under my authority. The man then recorded a paper that stated that the gold
was his. I would like now to see him show a paper of sale saying that I sold
the negra to him, with witnesses: All the records he has were made by himself
without any paper statement being made by me. Therefore, the said negra is
freed because she gave me her own gold, and the truest witness is myself and
my wife. And [my wife] was never her mistress because I had bought [Rita] as
a new slave from the hand of João Ferreira. And [Rita], for the good services
she has provided, was freed by me and has never known another owner. I had
a child with her and therefore I gave her the letter and the negra may pursue
her justice because I did not contract a deed of sale with the said senhor Fran-
cisco Martins. And if she was his slave while she washed his clothes why did
he pay her? She certainly was not his slave. She bought her house and lived in
it as a freed preta,16 and she paid the royal tax, and all else that was licit. [The
letter is signed with two crosses, identified as the sign of João de Souza Lobo and

14. The term negro/a was often used to refer to a slave of African origin. It was not inter-
changeable with preto/a, however, because it would not have been used to refer to a freed
person, whereas preto/a could be used for either an enslaved or freed person.
15. Payment in the form of a transfer of credit was common in colonial Minas Gerais, where
other forms of currency were scarce.
16. When referring to her as a free person, he identified Lobo as a preta rather a negra.
 14 • An African Woman Petitions for Freedom

of Francisca Nunes do Rosário. The notary public wrote that the signs of the cross
were made by the hand of João and Francisca.]17

Suggested Reading

Dantas, Mariana. “Market Women of African Descent and the Making of Sabará,
a Colonial Town in Eighteenth-Century Minas Gerais, Brazil,” Colonial Latin
American Historical Review, Second Series 2:1 (Winter 2014): 1–25.
Furtado, Júnia. Chica da Silva: A Brazilian Slave of the Eighteenth Century. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Higgins, Kathleen. “Licentious Liberty” in a Brazilian Gold-Mining Region: Slav-
ery, Gender and Social Control in Eighteenth Century Sabara, Minas Gerais. State
College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.
­
Lauderdale Graham, Sandra. Caetana Says No: Women’s Stories from a Brazilian Slave
Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Document Themes
• Family
• Labor
• Law
• Race and ethnicity
• Slavery

17. This file can be found at the Public Archive of Minas Gerais, Collection Secretariat of
the Government of the Captaincy—Colonial Section, box 8, document 14, July 24, 1775.

179
 15

Isabel Victoria García Sues the Hacienda

del Trapiche over Land Ownership
(Pamplona, Colombia, 1777)1

In this late eighteenth-century civil court case, an enslaved woman, Isabel

Victoria García, sues a Spaniard to maintain possession of a portion of land
on the Hacienda del Trapiche (or Landed Estate of the Mill), formerly owned
by the Jesuits, and by 1777 under the ownership of one Juan Gregorio de
Almeida. The parcel of land in question was a grove of several thousand cacao
trees; whomever controlled the land would also enjoy the profits from the
cacao trees. The entire case runs more than one hundred folios; the excerpts
chosen here emphasize the issue of an enslaved woman’s legal right to use her
deceased husband’s property and to file suit in the court to protect it. The
excerpts also provide insight into marriage and family structures of enslaved
women in late colonial Colombia.
Isabel Victoria García was the widow of Francisco Borja González, an
enslaved man who held the position of captain at the Hacienda del Trapiche.2
When he died in 1767, Isabel and their children became the beneficiaries of
his estate and gained the right to use and profit from the property during her
lifetime. At her death, the property was meant to revert to the body of the
main estate. The practice of lending enslaved peoples land to cultivate was
long-standing within the Spanish empire and it would have been a breach
of custom for the land to be taken away from Isabel after Francisco’s death.
García’s claim to the land was based on customary practice by enslaved
peoples at the Jesuit hacienda; her conviction in the legal persuasiveness of
custom may have emboldened her to take the case to the court.
At the time of her suit, García had remarried. Her second husband, Sal-
vador Noguera, was a free man, possibly of Spanish descent, who frequently
represented García in the case. From a legal standpoint, García’s marriage to
Noguera did not invalidate her claim to the cacao grove. The hacienda owner,

1. The editors thank Wilson Pava for his transcription assistance on this document.
2. As captain, Francisco would have enjoyed status and responsibility on the Hacienda relative
to other slaves. This status likely influenced how much land they worked in the parcel, as well
as Isabel’s status.
 15 • Isabel Victoria García Sues the Hacienda del Trapiche over Land Ownership

Almeida, argued that he only allowed García to marry Noguera after she
agreed to sell her claim to the land in order to purchase her freedom.
This case transpired in the 1770s in the town of Cucutá and the city of
Pamplona, Colombia, both located today in the northeast corner of the coun-
try near its border with Venezuela. Because of the rural location, the case illu-
minates the experience of enslaved women and their families in the context of
plantation labor and agriculture, as opposed to slaves living in towns and cities
and working in market settings. Near Pamplona, Isabel and her family labored
over cacao trees, an important product in Colombia’s economy. This time and
place highlights the experience of rural enslaved peoples in society and in court.
With regard to chronology, the expulsion of the Jesuits from the New World in
1767 prompted the changeover of the ownership and management of the haci-
enda from the religious order to the private individual, Juan Gregorio Almeida.
Living and working conditions for an enslaved person on a Jesuit-run hacienda
would not have necessarily been preferable to those under a private owner.
Nevertheless, the following case does include some indications that the defense
of rights to land possession was more challenging in the new private system
with its more precarious relationship to customary practices and behavior and
its severance from previous personal slave-owner relations.
The hacienda owner Almeida objected stubbornly to García’s claim lest a
legal victory by a female slave should make an example of him. Almeida used
to his advantage a characteristic of colonial litigation (and one not specific
to women): the preponderance of overlapping or competing jurisdictions. A
local judge in Cucutá initially ruled to award possession of the parcel to Isabel
Victoria García. However, when Almeida appealed the ruling, he argued that
“the proceedings carried out in Cucutá . . . are considered null inasmuch as
[the judge in that court] did not have authority to undertake proceedings.”3
This was a clever argument. Because the land was formerly owned by the
Jesuits, it fell under the jurisdiction of the Superior Junta (Council) de Tem-
poralidades (ex-Jesuit landholdings) of the City of Pamplona. The Junta de
Temporalidades was set up as a part of royal bureaucracy to deal with the
sale of the property of the Jesuits after their order was exiled from the New
World.4 Almeida argued concurrently that he never would have agreed to let
his slave marry a free person, claiming, “I responded that in no way I would
consent to this . . . and she told me she would give me the money, or the part
of the grove that corresponded to her. . . .”5

3. Archivo General de la Nación de Colombia, Sección Colonia, Fondo Temporalidades:

SC.57, 8, D9, fol. 17v.
4. Bianca Premo, Children of the Father King: Youth, Authority, and Legal Minority in Colo-
nial Lima (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, Press, 2005), 143.
5. Fol. 39v.

181
 15 • Isabel Victoria García Sues the Hacienda del Trapiche over Land Ownership

Throughout the case, several rulings by different judges supported Isabel

Victoria García in her claims to maintain access to the land. To some, this
may seem surprising; having remarried, she had arguably severed ties with the
man who had originally possessed the land. And how could an enslaved per-
son, whom we normally assume would be deprived of all civic rights and per-
sonal privileges, marry, file a legal case, and acquire property? Under the Siete
Partidas, thirteenth-century Iberian legal code, enslaved men and women had
the right to marry.6 If a woman was married and her owner attempted to
sell her away from her husband, she could ask a judge to mandate the sale be
local in order not to jeopardize her marriage. Further, enslaved peoples had
the right to be litigants if mistreated by their owners, a right that was codi-
fied in the 1680 Recopilación de Leyes de Indias and further emphasized in a
1789 Royal Cédula (decree).7 In the case before us, Isabel Victoria García is
a married woman who takes a Spaniard to court to ensure her access to prop-
erty. Studies have shown that enslaved women acquired property in urban
areas, especially, by earning money in markets. In fact, some women acquired
enough property over time as a strategy to purchase their freedom.8 How-
ever, Victoria García seeks a different kind of property: she wants to maintain
what are known as usufruct rights over a cacao grove.9 The legal rights
to marry and to hold property were certainly not realized by all enslaved
women. However, for some, like Isabel Victoria García, perseverance and
luck might mean these possibilities became realities. Recent work by histo-
rians on enslaved people’s litigation suggests that García’s decision to press
forward with the lawsuit was in keeping with a strong embrace of the court
system by enslaved peoples.10 Especially in the time period in which her case
unfolded, the number of court cases filed by enslaved peoples spiked.11

6. On slaves and marriage, see Samuel Parsons Scott and Robert I. Burns, Las Siete Partidas,
Volume 4: Family, Commerce, and the Sea: The Worlds of Women and Merchants (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 901–3.
7. See the discussion in Matthew Mirow, Latin American Law: A History of Private Law and
Institutions in Spanish America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 81–82.
8. On this practice, see the work of Christine Hünefeldt, Paying the Price of Freedom: Family
and Labor among Lima’s Slaves, 1800–1854 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
9. Usufruct, or right to use without ownership, refers to Isabel Victoria García’s right to use
and profit from the cacao grove that belonged to her first husband throughout her and her
children’s lifetimes. Upon their deaths, the use of the property reverts to the owner.
10. In particular, Bianca Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial: Ordinary Litigants and Colonial-
ism in the Spanish Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
11. Evelyne Laurent-Perrault researches this trend for enslaved women in late colonial Ven-
ezuela. See “Esclavizadas, cimarronaje y la Ley en Venezuela, 1760–1809,” in Demando Mi
Libertad; Relatos de mujeres Negras y sus estrategias de resistencia en Nueva Granada, Venezuela y
Cuba (Universidad Icesi, Cali-Colombia, forthcoming).
 15 • Isabel Victoria García Sues the Hacienda del Trapiche over Land Ownership

How and where does the person and voice of Isabel Victoria García enter
this legal document? What can we read between the lines about her role in
the court case? Is it passive or active? How did both gender and race affect her
appearance in the court case? What was the potential influence that owner-
ship of this piece of land might have on her life? How did García’s life as an
enslaved woman differ from that of other enslaved women whose lives are
detailed in this volume?12 How did her experience of the law compare with
those of other women?13

Civil Suit between Isabel Victoria García, an Enslaved

Afro–Colombian Woman, and a Hacendado over
Land Ownership. Pamplona (Colombia), 176814
15.1 Decree on the Lands Left by Francisco Bonifas

I, the public notary [Raphael Barreto] of the Cabildo of the City of Pam-
plona, in compliance with the orders of the Señores (Sirs) of this Municipal
Junta [de Temporalidades] in a decree dated November 24th and 25th, 1777
order the testimony be presented from the following acts, whose content is as
follow: [The case file includes original testimony on how Isabel Victoría García
came to possess usufruct15 rights to the cacao grove.]
By virtue of which this decree was provided = Santander on April 19th,
1768. Pursuant to the foregoing and based on what the prosecuting attorney
[don (sir) Juan Josef de Vargas Machuca] has set forth, all the possessions
remaining after the death of Francisco Bonifas Gonzáles, slave and captain
of the Hacienda del Trapiche that belonged to Pamplona’s Jesuit religious

12. Readers could compare García’s experiences to those of women discussed in Chapters
14, 17, 19, and 20.
13. Readers could compare García’s experiences to those of women discussed in Chapters 2,
12, and 21.
14. Archivo General de la Nación de Colombia, Sección Colonia, Fondo Temporalidades:
SC.57, 8, D9 Juan Gregorio de Almeida, owner of the Hacienda Del Trapiche (Mill) del Sal-
ado, that was property of the regulars, the ex-Jesuits of the city of Pamplona, with respect to
the appeal of the municipal council and the alcalde ordinario (judge of first instance and town
council member) of the city in the case initiated by Isabel Victoria García, slave of the afore-
mentioned Hacienda, concerning some groves (small farming plots) and some cacao groves.
15. Usufruct, or right to use without ownership, refers to Isabel Victoria García’s right to use
and profit from the cacao grove that belonged to her first husband throughout her and her
children’s lifetime. Upon their deaths, the use of the property reverts to the owner.

183
 15 • Isabel Victoria García Sues the Hacienda del Trapiche over Land Ownership

order, must be surrendered to his widow and his heirs.16 Don Juan José de
Vargas Machuca declares that the widow can take advantage of the cacagual
(cocoa plantation) for her lifetime, but at the time of her death, the assets
must be fully incorporated into the main hacienda = as signed by Olarte [the
public notary] = You are hereby notified to implement, by virtue of the above
mentioned, what has already been determined, agreeing with me and allow-
ing me to make it known to the aforementioned junta = May God keep you
many years. Santander, April 21st, 1768. I kiss your majesty’s hand. Your
servant [signed] José Simón de Olarte = don Juan José de Vargas Machuca

Petition: Members of the junta: don Pedro Agustín de Peralta, superin-

tendent of the Temporalidades in this city, I appear before Your Honors in
accordance with the power to declare on behalf of Salvador Noguera, resident
of Cucuta and husband of Isabel, slave of the Trapiche Hacienda that was
the property of the Jesuit order, and widow of the slave Francisco Bonifas. It
has come to my attention that the slave Isabel has been dispossessed by Juan
Gregorio Almeida of the cacagual that she owned, under pretext of [exchang-
ing it] for her freedom. As this is not in accordance with the order by the
members of the Junta Superior, dated April 19, 1768, which I submit to Your
Honors in its original version, and given the fact that the slave Isabel has
been dispossessed, the cacao grove, and by extension, the Temporalidades
may suffer damage over time. Your Honors will be well served to consider
what has transpired and should grant the present scribe my petition as does
the Superior Order that I attach below. And to all Your Honors, I beg you
declare as I plead = Pedro Agustín de Peralta = Pamplona, October 25, 1777.
[The court acknowledged receipt of this petition and forwarded it to the
superintendent of Temporalidades, don Pedro Agustín de Peralta. Soon there-
after, Salvador Noguera appeared before the junta of Pamplona to provide
additional details on the case.]

15.2 Petition of Salvador Noguera

Members of Pamplona’s junta: Salvador Noguera, resident of this jurisdic-

tion, respectfully appearing before you as the legal representative of Isabel
Victoria García, who was a slave of the Temporalidades [estate], and I declare:

16. There is a rich historiography on Jesuit landholdings in Latin America. For one example
see Nicholas P. Cushner, Farm and Factory: The Jesuits and the Development of Agrarian Capi-
talism in Quito, 1600–1767 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982).
 15 • Isabel Victoria García Sues the Hacienda del Trapiche over Land Ownership

as stated in the evidence, that my party stood before the alcalde ordinario of
this city, resident of St. Joseph parish, with the resolution of the Junta Provin-
cial de Temporalidades to request that [the formalization of] her possession
of a cacao grove be granted. According to a Superior Order,17 she inherited
the property at the death of Francisco Bonifas. This same Superior Order
also states that she was despotically dispossessed by Juan Gregorio Almeida,
who had claimed whatever he wanted. Suspicious of this outcome, the alcalde
declared the decree, that can be found below on page twelve and its reverse,
and ordered that I be notified of his decision. Given these facts, and since it
did not appear that justice had been served, I decided with a heavy heart to
seek justice before Your Honors. In the interest of justice, I plead that the
court protect us and mandate in due compliance with the higher resolution
that we submitted to the aforementioned alcalde, and which the party against
whom judgment has been given cannot contest. Juan Gregorio Almeida
argued since the beginning that he would not consent to grant us the cacao
grove if we got married and that to this my party [García] responded that she
would give him the share of the grove that fell to him or its monetary equiva-
lent determined by mutual agreement. However, this is not what happened.
In fact, what happened was that he made this offer, but my party answered
him that she did not consent to it but rather said she would progressively pay
him with the grove’s usufruct. But he argued that she had to get the full value
of the cocoa and that he would then accept the payment. After having agreed,
he gave us permission to get married. We then got married and moved to the
hacienda without any trouble. However, once we got there, [Almeida] called
for Isabel and said these words to her: “Well now you got yourself married,
and you have a husband who can take care of you; move out of here.” To this,
my party responded: “Sir and my parcel of cacao which is my sweat and labor,
how am I to leave it? This is not what was agreed upon with your grace.”
[Almeida] repeated to her that there was nothing for her in the hacienda and
that she should move. In the light of this irony, we found ourselves forced to
move and this is what we did last year on December 4, 1775.
As had initially been planned, we decided to give him a hundred and
fifty pesos,18 which is the price at which the grove had been evaluated. I then
went to Juan Gregorio’s house to ask him if he would accept the money in
exchange for the grove. He answered that he would take it. For this reason, I
went to the house of don Juan Ignacio de Salazar, resident of the parish of el
Rosario, to request that he lend me the money; I told him that I would pay

17. This refers to the ruling made by the Superior Junta de Temporalidades in 1768 that
awarded the use of cacao grove of Francisco Bonifas to Isabel Victoria García, see Section 1
“Decree.”
18. Units of money; one peso was made up of eight reales.

185
 15 • Isabel Victoria García Sues the Hacienda del Trapiche over Land Ownership

him with the usufruct of the grove and he agreed to this. We went together
to see Juan Gregorio, and Salazar told him to acknowledge that he would
provide the money on the condition that he would be paid with the usufruct
of the grove. Juan Gregorio answered him that he could not steal the bread
from Isabel’s children’s mouths. Given this answer and given the fact that
he enjoyed no guarantee of being paid with the usufruct of the grove, [Sala-
zar] did not want to supply the money and left. Everything was suspended
because we were not yet aware of the superior judgement mentioned earlier.
As God willed it, we learned of the [judgment] just then but Juan Gregorio,
empowered by his authority, took the best eight hundred and ninety-two
cacao trees saying they were worth two hundred pesos, which corresponded to
the amount the slave is worth. This is not true and goes against both logic and
the law because, because [her value] and the agreement they had for it was for
one hundred and fifty pesos.
He has confessed that he ordered, in an authoritarian manner, that he
asked Javier Fernández to go to the grove and separate the number of trees
whose appraisal satisfied his interest. This should not have happened because
even supposing that this had been the agreement (which we do not concede
it was), [his claiming of the trees] should only have transpired with the prior
consultation with and consent of my party, or with the intervention of [the
law]. And unless [Almeida] demonstrates [her] consent or good faith, it
should not have happened. Almeida wants to get three hundred thirty-four
pesos and four reales that corresponds, according to him, to the cacao grove’s
value calculated with the market price of three reales per tree. But this is
mistaken because the market price is four reales per tree since those trees
are, according to what has been declared, deemed to be in privately owned
lands. For all these reasons, I beg your Honors to protect me and grant us
the possession of this grove and of the house inside. I beseech you to pre-
vent Juan Gregorio from disturbing our property; I also beg you to formally
record that we harvested three times, the worth of which has benefited this
hacienda. The value of the harvest should be used, on one hand, to cover the
payment of a hundred and fifty pesos corresponding to the amount that my
wife agreed to pay and, on the other, to defray the charges and fees that I
had to pay because of the lawsuit brought on the refusal to give us the grove.
I ask the court to order the relief requested = Salvador Noguera = For legal
purposes, I beg your Excellencies to order to the public notary to provide
me with a copy of my pleading = Salvador Noguera = Pamplona, October
25, 1777.
[The case then moves through motions for transfer to a different jurisdic-
tion, because Juan Gregorio de Almeida hopes to appeal. Copies of the case files
are sent and received by the relevant offices.]
 15 • Isabel Victoria García Sues the Hacienda del Trapiche over Land Ownership

15.3 Petition of Juan Gregorio Almeida in Response

to the Allegations by Isabel Victoria García

Señores of the municipal Junta de Temporalidades: Juan Gregoria Almeida,

having received the scribe’s copy of a text presented by Salvador Noguera in
the name of Isabel Victoria that claims that I wrongfully plundered Isabel
of a parcel of cacao trees, I appear before your grace and state that having
filed this same lawsuit before the tribunal of señor don Pedro Navarro, alcalde
ordinario, resident of Cucuta. I responded to the claim in the demand on
pages ten, eleven, and twelve and the señor alcalde had to remit the response
to the Superior Provincial Junta by decree on September 25, 1777. [The peti-
tion goes on to suggest that because Almeida has filed the case before another, the
court should not pursue the suit and should inform his accuser that multiple suits
are unnecessary and cause extra work for him and for the judges.
Almeida states that the case will be heard by the Superior Junta, which is in
possession of the case files, including the record of García taking possession of the
parcel of land.]

15.4 Isabel Victoria García and Felipe Noguera

Take Possession of the Cacao Grove

Citation.
In Trapiche in the jurisdiction of Pamplona, on the hacienda of Juan Gre-
goria Almeida on the 17th of the same month and year, I the alcalde, have
given possession as ordered by the señores of the municipal Junta of Pam-
plona to Salvador Noguera and Isabel Victoria, his wife, of the cacao grove
[Noguera] has requested in this hacienda as its owner. And since [Noguera]
is currently away in Pamplona I sought out the mayordomo (overseer) of the
hacienda or whomever is responsible for its care. Finding there Gerbacio Gar-
cía, a slave, who holds the office of Captain, I read him the dispatch given
to me, and the order I provided to effect the possession. I cited him in the
name of his master so that he would agree. He did not sign because he said
he did not know how. This was recorded for the decree. I signed it with wit-
nesses Juan Antonio de Omaña Riva de Neira = Juan Augustín del Rincón =
Ambrozio Javier de Castro =
On the same day, month, and year I, don Juan Antonio de Omaña de
Riva de Neira, alcalde of the parish of Our Lady of the Rosary and juez de
comición (investigating judge) for the señores of the municipal Junta de Tem-
poralidades of the City of Pamplona give possession of a small land parcel
of cacao trees to Salvador Noguera in the name of his wife, Isabel Victoria.

187
 15 • Isabel Victoria García Sues the Hacienda del Trapiche over Land Ownership

According to and detailed in the dispatch. This landholding is found within

the sphere of this hacienda, and to this effect, I have come and have solicited
the corresponding citation of the [hacienda’s] principal owner, Juan Gregorio
Almeida. Because he is absent, I presented the decree to Gerbacio García
mulato (man of African and Spanish parentage) slave who holds the office
of Captain with whom along with Salvador Noguera and his wife, Isabel
Victoria, I went to the place where the landholding is found. It aligns on
the eastern part with the (plowed) fields that they call Santa Rita, and lies
next to the smallholding of Rosa, slave of the hacienda, connecting by a large
stream down below it, giving way to the plot named San Antonio. By its
base, is found the boundary of the street named Santa Barbara where there
is a little house of the aforementioned Isabel except for some trees that are
found midway to the little house down below that are said to belong to the
main hacienda. And taking Noguera and his wife by the hands, I put them
in possession of the whole land parcel. [The alcalde formally closes the decree
affirming Noguera and García’s rights to ownership. Salvador Noguera, Omaña
Riva de Beira and two witnesses all signed the decree on November 20, 1777,
although García did not.]

15.5 Petition of Juan Gregorio to Challenge the Possession

Señores of the Junta de Temporalidades: I, Juan Gregorio Almeida, vecino

(citizen) of this city, according to the law, appear before your Honors and
state that today I have been informed through a decree dated today by your
Honors pursuant to an appeal that I made wherein your Honors declared
that Salvador Noguera and Isabel, his wife, be given possession of the cacao
grove. [Juan Gregorio alleges this decree has been made in too great haste and
notes that the Superior Court is still planning to review the case. He argues that
it is indispensable that the junta not allow the sentence of a lower judge to stand
until the higher court has heard the appeal. He also highlights García’s status as
an enslaved woman. He continues:]
I beg your Honors be served to determine that which corresponds in jus-
tice respecting the enslavement of Isabel because there is some urgency in
this matter at present. I do not know if I should execute the role that masters
can and should execute with their slaves or if I should consider her to be
free and to entirely use her own hand. I beg that what I now ask does not
prejudice my case nor the awaited results from the superior court. I beg your
Honors to rule what you deem appropriate. Juan Gregorio Almeida, Pam-
­
plona, November 27, 1777.
 15 • Isabel Victoria García Sues the Hacienda del Trapiche over Land Ownership

15.6 Decree in Response

Pamplona, November 27, 1777.

This party can use his slave under the terms allowed by the law. Ordered
and signed by the señores of the municipal junta before me the authorizing
scribe, don Jacome Gonzalez Arze Barreto. And I the scribe made the decree
known to Juan Gregorio Almeida in person. [A decree orders that copies of
documents be transferred to the higher court, including the appeal by Almeida
and the testimony of both Noguera and García, all of which had been overseen
by don Juan José de Vargas. Attorney Juan Vicente Pérez de Paramo acted on
behalf of Almeida.]

15.7 Notification

On July 7 of the current year, don Juan José de Vargas19 finding himself in
his home in this parish, I, the scribe, in compliance with what was ordered in
the decree that precedes this went and in person to inform him of the con-
tent and aforementioned decree. Respecting what is asked of him in the text
of the decree, he says the following: That he acted as teniente (deputy) and
justicia mayor (senior judge) of the city of Pamplona and its jurisdiction and
at the same time as administrator of the Temporalidades during the time that
Francisco de Borja, slave of the Hacienda del Trapiche, died. [Borja] left some
goods including a small cacao grove, located on the land of the Temporali-
dades of which an account was made for it all and remitted to the Superior
Government for its resolution. And he knows this for a fact because the señor
don Domingo Antón de Guzman, commander of said Temporalidades, sent
him a missive in which the Superior government declared that the possession
of the groves, or land parcels by the slaves of the hacienda belonged to them
during their lifetimes and their children’s lifetimes, giving no reason for them
to be stripped of [these lands]. In their view, they are not documents that
should be intercepted because they are to be returned to the señor comandante
and this is what he can say on the subject. To certify I, Juan José de Vargas
Machuca = Alejandro Ortiz, public scribe signed. [In subsequent folios of the
lawsuit, Noguera returns to court to check on the copies. A declaration detailing
the goods belonging to Francisco Borja, García’s deceased husband, as well as the
ruling and testimony by Isabel are all re-entered into the record.]

19. The attorney introduced in the opening decree of the case.

189
 15 • Isabel Victoria García Sues the Hacienda del Trapiche over Land Ownership

15.8 Decree

Holy Thursday, April 19, 1768, with reflection on the exhibits by the señor
fiscal (prosecutor) and others who are present, it is declared that [the cacao
grove] should be turned over to the widow and heirs of Francisco Borja
Gonzáles, slave and Captain of the Hacienda del Trapiche that the Jesuit
fathers possessed, in the jurisdiction of the City of Pamplona. All the goods
that remained at the time of the death of Borja. Further, it is declared that the
cacao grove is only to be enjoyed for the life of the widow and with her death
it is to be incorporated into the main hacienda.

15.9 Petition of Isabel Victoria García

Petition to the Señor Alcalde Ordinario

Isabel Victoria García, slave previously of the Temporalidades, legitimate wife
of Francisco Borja (deceased), with due respect and according to law, I appear
before Your Honor to petition with due solemnity and with the necessary oath,
against the Superior Order of the Royal Provincial Junta de Temporalidades,
which has declared the law that assists me respecting the goods of my late hus-
band, which I have possessed as my own and worked [with him] with sweat and
labor. Among [his goods], the most lucrative is a cacao grove of more than 6,000
trees. Two years ago, my master Juan Gregorio Almeida, owner of the main haci-
enda, vested with his own power authoritatively stole this parcel of land from
me, leaving me in complete misery. If divine Majesty had not permit me to have
remarried, I would be begging from door to door. For these reasons and because
this Superior Order [of the Junta de Temporalidades] should give its due consid-
eration and brought to its pure and required execution, I request the protection
of Your just tribunal. I beg you be served to order as decreed and I should be left
in the quiet and peaceful possession of my land. September 12, 1777. [The next
several pages are filled with court record-keeping. The only new information they con-
tain is that García informs the court at one point that in her absence the cacao grove
has become overgrown with weeds and is not being properly watered.]

15.10 Petition of Juan Gregorio Almeida,

Vecino of the City of Pamplona

Juan Gregorio Almeida, vecino of the city of Pamplona and resident in this
valley of Cucuta, in response to a petition presented by Isabel Victoria García,
 15 • Isabel Victoria García Sues the Hacienda del Trapiche over Land Ownership

legitimate wife of Salvador Noguera, in which she demands from me a cacao

grove that I supposedly took away from her authoritatively: In accordance
with the law, I appear and say that in the past year of 1776, the aforemen-
tioned proposed to me that I give her permission to marry Noguera. Attend-
ing to the serious prejudices I could endure by allowing this, I responded
that the only way I would consent to this would be if she liberated herself
from slavery. Afterward, she could marry whomever she wanted. To this she
responded that she would give me the money, or the part of the grove that
had belonged to her deceased husband. I warned her with the knowledge
that the very same day she married, she would have to leave the hacienda.
We agreed that she would give me the quantity of her value which was 200
pesos or the equivalent part that she had in the grove. In reality, she married
Noguera and as she did not give me the pesos worth her value, I called don
Francisco Xavier Fernández. I begged him to count the trees that belonged
to Isabel (because the remainder was divided among her three children as
the heirs of Francisco de Borja) and having counted that there were 892, I
took them and paid for her freedom in accordance with what had been previ-
ously agreed. I ordered her to leave the hacienda to live wherever she wanted
to. Never mind that the said Isabel and her husband, Noguera, persisted in
entering the hacienda without my knowledge to harvest cacao from the afore-
mentioned parcel, from which I have harvested very little fruit. This is from
the part that corresponded to the said Isabel, because her children and she
have harvested the fruit from the trees that correspond to her children, which
would not have happened without this deal, nor would she have left my pos-
session and been able to go about free as she does. And, so that your Honor
also remain convinced of my motive in opposing the case with Noguera: I say
that I have all the sufficient motives that slaveowners generally enjoy to resist
against their slaves marrying with freedmen, derived from experience and
other motives that I perceive. I am compelled to speak against this marriage
for these reasons to your Honor. I beg that having satisfied the complaint,
you declare and order what I have asked.
San José, September 25, 1777
[The court decides to admit the case to a Superior Tribunal and notifies
both parties. García gives legal power for her husband to act on her behalf.
Noguera then files a motion to ensure that Almeida would not leave the parish
for any travel (especially to the City of Pamplona, to where he often claimed
to travel). Next Noguera asks for copies of all of the testimony. In the ensuing
pages, there is a list of the court costs that each side was responsible for paying.
Almeida’s attorney repeatedly petitions the court to rule in his client’s favor,
submitting copies of earlier witness testimony supporting his client and a copy
of a plea on his behalf. The last folios of the case show Noguera and Garcia

191
 15 • Isabel Victoria García Sues the Hacienda del Trapiche over Land Ownership

granting power of attorney to the procuradores de número (municipal law-

yer) for representation in court. His legal minutiae is surely not the end of the
case once it arrived in Pamplona, but there are no additional pages in the
extant case file.]

Suggested Reading
Cushner, Nicholas P. Farm and Factory: The Jesuits and the Development of Agrarian
Capitalism in Colonial Quito, 1600–1767. Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1982.
Echeverri, Marcela. Indian and Slave Royalists in the Age of Revolution: Reform, Revo-
lution, and Royalism in the Northern Andes, 1780–1825. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2016.
McKinley, Michelle A. Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization
in Colonial Lima, 1600–1700. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Document Themes
• Family
• Labor
• Law
• Property
• Slavery
 16

Between Heaven and Earth: Thereza

de Jesús Maria Jozé’s Last Will and
Testament (Cachoeira, Bahia, 1777)

Introduction and Translation by Caroline Garriott

Thereza de Jesús Maria Jozé was an elite woman born in a small rural parish
of Cachoeira, a township of about twenty-six thousand inhabitants located
around one hundred kilometers northeast of the city of Salvador, “The Bay of
All Saints,” a bustling Atlantic port which served as the political and adminis-
trative capital of Brazil until 1763.1 In the sugarcane- and tobacco-producing

­
hinterlands where Jesús Maria Jozé lived—a region called the Bahian Recôn-
cavo, which was dependent upon slavery—slaves not only labored on agri-
cultural estates and in engenhos (sugar mills), but also influenced religious
society by forming their own Catholic brotherhoods devoted to patron saints
including Our Lady of the Rosary and the black Saint Benedict.2
Just a few months before she died, on January 30, 1777, Jesús Maria
Jozé affirmed her individual wealth as the wife of Manoel Ferreira Gomes
Guimarães in her will and testament dictated before a local scribe in her
farmhouse of Olho d’Agua “The Eye of Water.”3 While still a single

1. Beginning in 1615, Portuguese bandeirantes (cowboys) began colonizing the hinterland

region outside of Salvador called the Recôncavo, displacing its originary indigenous popula-
tions to establish settlements along the fertile banks of rivers that fed into Salvador’s port. With
the rise of sugarcane and tobacco at the end of the seventeenth century, Cachoeira became
the second most populous and wealthy city in the captaincy of Bahia after Salvador. In 1775,
26,980 persons, including free and enslaved populations, lived in urban and rural Cachoeira.
Arquivo Histórico Ultamarino, Bahia, Castro e Almeida, cx. 47, doc. 8750, “Mappa de todas
as Freguezias, que pertenecem ao Arcebispado da Bahia [. . .] Bahia 9 de janeiro de 1775,”
document published in the Anais da Biblioteca Nacional, n. 32 (1910): 288–90.
2. The city of Salvador de Bahia, “The Bay of All Saints,” was a populous city with com-
mercial ties to Europe and West Africa dependent upon slave labor. In 1819, nearly half of the
Salvador’s inhabitants of fifty thousand were enslaved and an estimated thirty thousand slaves
resided in nearby Cachoeira. Stuart Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian
Society: Bahia, 1550–1835 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 400.
3. An abbreviation of Sant’ana dos Olhos D’água, a fazenda (rural property) with a water
source where travelers such as bandeirantes and cattle herders passing through the arid region
rested. On September 28, 1732, Domingos Barbosa de Araújo and Ana Brandão, the wealthy

193
16 • Between Heaven and Earth: Thereza de Jesús Maria Jozé’s Last Will and Testament

woman, Jesús Maria Jozé inherited the landed property and dowry of five
slaves from her parents and relatives, whose location along the river banks
provided strategic access to Salvador’s Atlantic port as well as to overland
routes leading into the sertão (interior) of Minas Gerais with its gold and
diamond mines. As a couple, Jesús Maria Jozé and Gomes Guimarães’ con-
jugal patrimony included twenty-two slaves, only five of which were pur-
chased, and five sitios (mixed tobacco-farms and cattle ranches). Since only
wealthy persons could afford to purchase more than one slave, the fact that
Jesús Maria Jozé and her husband owned twenty-two slaves signifies their
economic privilege as members of the powerful planter class who controlled
the region’s engenhos.4
According to the 1603 civil codes known as the Ordenações Filipinas, the
couple’s legal heirs—either ascendant or descendent relatives up to the tenth
degree—would inherit two thirds of their conjugal patrimony.5 Jesús Maria
Jozé and Gomes Guimarães, however, were childless. Thus, when she ver-
bally dictated her last will before a local scribe in Cachoeira, Jesús Maria
Jozé exercised her legal right to freely disburse her half of the couple’s estate
among relatives (siblings, nieces, cousins) as well collateral kin affiliated to
her through the Catholic institution of compadrío (godparentage).
Following her opening declaration of her Catholic faith—a common for-
mula in colonial-era wills—Jesús Maria Jozé expressed her individual ties to
local Catholic institutions in both urban Cachoeira and the nearby port city
of Salvador by describing her funeral rites and ordering requiem masses on
behalf of her soul’s salvation. A member of the exclusive Carmelite Third
Order (a prestigious lay institution restricted to populations of Portuguese
ancestry who could demonstrate their limpieça de sangue (purity of blood)),
Jesús Maria Jozé declared that her corpse should be wrapped in the Carmelite
shroud, accompanied by several priests, and escorted to her burial site in the

property-holders occupying the “Olhos d’água,” donated lands to construct a chapel dedicated
to the Santa Anna and São Domingos, in their parish of São José de Itapororocas.
4. During the late 1780s, around twenty-four slaves labored on each sugar mill in the nearby
parish of São Cristovão, and throughout the sugar-producing region of the Recôncavo the
average number of slaves per owner was eleven. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations, 94, 443.
5. Livro IV, Título LXXX. Os testamentos e em que forma se farão. Cândido Mendes de
Almeida, ed. Codigo Philippino, ou, Ordenações e leis do Reino de Portugal: recopiladas por man-
dado d’El-Rey D. Philippe I, (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. do Instituto Philomathico, 1870), 900–907.
Promulgated by the Spanish King Felipe II in 1603, the Philippine Civil Codes were used
to govern Brazil until the 1916 institution of the first Brazilian Civil Code (Código Civil
Brasileiro), a legal constitution revoked by law in 2002 (Lei n. 10.406) and replaced by the
New Brazilian Civil Code (Novo Código Civil Brasileiro). For an historical analysis of legality
surrounding last testaments and wills in colonial Brazil, see Júnia Ferreira Furtado, “A Morte
como testemunha da vida,” in O historiador e suas fontes (São Paulo: Editora Contexto 2011),
93–118.
16 • Between Heaven and Earth: Thereza de Jesús Maria Jozé’s Last Will and Testament

parish church by at least ten clergymen as well as her affiliated brotherhoods:

Our Lady of the Rosary, the Holy Sacrament, and the Blessed Souls.6 As a
wealthy woman, her funeral was an ostentatious affair and also included a
sung mass (perhaps with an orchestra, choir, and musicians), and a large
public procession officiated by her parish priest, several clergymen, and her
Brotherhoods of Our Lady of the Rosary and Blessed Souls that were obli-
gated to attend all members’ funerals, as well as the black Brotherhood of the
Glorious Senhor Saint Benedict that, since Jesús Maria Jozé was a nonmem-
ber, was paid to accompany her body to its burial.7
Jesús Maria Jozé further performed her Catholic identity by earmark-
ing large sums of money for masses for the souls of her deceased relatives
and slaves, as well as in honor of her preferred saints, Saint Joachim and
Saint Anne. Given that Saint Anne was both a symbol of the chaste mother
devoted to the spiritual instruction of children as well as the patroness of
barren or sterile women, it is perhaps not surprising that Jesús Maria Jozé
would identify with the elderly grandmother of Jesus Christ. After all, she
herself, though lacking birth children, served as the surrogate spiritual
mother for several young females affiliated to her through ritual kinship ties
of compadrio.
To preserve the family’s farming operations, Jesús Maria Jozé left her hus-
band with the mestiço8 slave named Vicente, a modest parcel of land, eight
oxen, and six mules; also, she designated large sums of money, slaves, and
productive estates to women not related to her by blood: Maria Vicencia, the
daughter of her wealthy compadre (co-parent according to Catholic baptismal
sponsorship) the Captain Francisco Pereira de Carvalho, as well as Maria’s
sister Anna Maria.9 Given that Jesús Maria Jozé served as the madrinha

6. The number of participants within Jesús Maria Jozé’s funerary cortege extended beyond
her membership affiliations to include all the available brotherhoods in her parish church
including the black brotherhood of Saint Benedict, which was paid 1$280 réis for the privilege
of escorting her shrouded body to its burial site in the church.
7. The black Irmandade do Gloriozo Senhor São Benedito (Brotherhood of the Glorious Senhor
Saint Benedict) also received 16$000 réis (the value of fifty masses), a material transaction
which implied a spiritual obligation to perform intercessory masses on behalf of the soul of
Jesús Maria Jozé.
8. Rather than a juridical designation, the term mestiço refers to Vicente’s mixed ancestry as
descendent of European and indigenous parents, or the son of a white male and a biracial
woman of African-descent referred to as a mulata. Raphael Bluteau and Antonio de Moraes
Silva, Diccionario da Lingua Portugueza composto pelo Padre D. Rafael Bluteau, reformado, e
accrescentado por Antonio de Moraes Silva, natural do Rio de Janeiro, vol. 2 (Lisbon: Na Officina
de Simão Thaddeo Ferreira, 1789), 78.
9. While the ethnic status of Vicente’s parents is unclear, the fact that he was referred to as a
mestiço implies lesser black ancestry—or at least lighter skin—than that of mixed-race children
born of whites and blacks (whether Brazilian-born creoles or Africans) referred to as mulatos or

195
16 • Between Heaven and Earth: Thereza de Jesús Maria Jozé’s Last Will and Testament

(godmother) of Francisco Pereira’s two daughters, she was responsible for

shaping them—from their infant baptism—into honorable women who
would fulfill their Christian roles as chaste wives and virtuous mothers. By
bequeathing these capital assets to serve as dowries for her unwed female kin,
Jesús Maria Jozé effectively established reciprocal bonds of ritual kinship with
her compadre Francisco Pereira while also replicating her own upward mobil-
ity as she, too, had inherited slaves and land as part of her dowry. Moreover,
by declaring that any property left over from the division of two thirds of her
conjugal estate in the absence (or perhaps death) of her sister Bernarda Fran-
cisca should be passed on to the daughter of her godchild Maria Vicencia,
she preserved these economic and spiritual bonds that linked her to compadre
across two generations of female descendants.
Throughout her testamentary declarations, Jesús Maria Jozé symbolically
performed her status as a member of the Christian elite while strategically
positioning herself within Bahia’s broader religious and economic orbit.
Besides bequeathing large sums of money for masses for herself, relatives,
slaves, the souls of purgatory, and Saint Anne and Saint Joachim, Jesús
Maria Jozé channeled the legal apparatus of her last will and testament to
preserve her inheritance across future generations of elite females not affili-
ated by blood. Ultimately, Jesús Maria Jozé’s political power was reflected
through her strategic social alliances with the region’s male elites and main-
tained through reciprocal kinship ties based on godparentage—spiritual
bonds which she not only maintained over the course of her lifetime but
that, even after her death, she preserved through material bequests to female
kin inscribed within her last will and testament.
Reflecting on this document, readers might consider how institutional
patriarchy informed the way that property was bequeathed and inherited in
eighteenth-century Brazil as well as the regulations on who was able to serve
as legal witnesses for the writing of wills. Similarly, gender considerations can
be brought to bear on the contents of the will itself. How might Jesús Maria
Jozé’s will have differed, if at all, from that of an elite Portuguese man, such as
her spiritual kinsman, Francisco Pereira? How did Theresa Jesús Maria Jozé
actively perform her Christian identity in her will and express her spiritual
kinship toward living and deceased persons?

pardos—a term referring to the lighter skin tone of mixed-race Afro-descended persons who
were differentiated from darker-skinned pretos or negros (blacks) whether African or Brazilian-
born. Since the Portuguese Crown proscribed the enslavement of indigenous populations dur-
ing the 1570s, Vicente was likely the son of a white man and a light-skinned black woman
and may even have been the natural son (born out of wedlock) of Jesús Maria Jozé’s husband
and a female slave.
16 • Between Heaven and Earth: Thereza de Jesús Maria Jozé’s Last Will and Testament

16.1 Last Will and Testament of doña

Thereza de Jesús Maria Jozé10

January 30, 1777

Opening
Know, all those who see this document, that in the year of Our Lord Jesus
Christ 1777 on the 30th day of January of said year, I, Thereza de Jesús Maria
Jozé, being of sound mind and judgment, and taking more account of death,
than of life, and desiring, as a true Christian to conform myself with the will
of God, I order this my will in the following manner:

Invocation of Christian Faith

First, I commend my soul to the Most Holy Trinity, which created it, and
I ask that through the merits of the passion of my Lord Jesus Christ that He
desire to forgive me of my sins, and I beseech the Virgin Mary, Our Lady,
Mother of God, and all the saints of the celestial court, especially the Archangel
Saint Michael, and my guardian angel, and my patron saint, that they intercede
and beseech my Lord Jesus Christ now, and when my soul leaves this body
because, as a true Christian I profess that I live and die in the Holy Catholic
Faith, and to believe as I truly believe, that which the Holy Mother Church of
Rome and our faith reveres and believes, and I hope to save my soul, not by my
worthiness, but by the Most Holy Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Appointment of Testamentary Executor

I nominate as the general executors of my will in these interior regions
of Cachoeira, in the Parish of San José de Itapororocas11 where I was born
and where I reside, in the first place my husband Manoel Ferreira Gomes
Guimarães, in the second place my brother-in-law Domingo Ferreira Gomes,
and in the third place my compadre José Pires de Carvalho.12

10. Arquivo Público de Estado da Bahia, Seção Judicial. Tribunal da Relação. Testamento.
Classificação 3/1282/1751/14. 65 ff. This last will and testament is excerpted from a lengthy
judicial process concerning the distribution of Thereza de Jesús Maria Jozé’s estate among her
many heirs. Due to the deteriorated state of the document, the folio numeration is illegible.
11. Following the Dutch Invasion, on July 3, 1655, the Portuguese Crown awarded the
wealthy bandeirante João Peixoto Viegas with a sesmaria (a royal concession of lands) and the
title “Morgado da Casa de São José das Itapororocas” (the morgado was a type of entail which
served to prevent the dissolution of the landed estate). The parish of São José das Itapororocas
was founded in 1694 to attend to the spiritual needs of the region’s growing populations of
cattle herders, tobacco farmers, as well as slaves.
12. As a widower, Manoel served as the executor of his wife’s will, and was responsible
for organizing Thereza’s funeral, disbursing payments for pious bequests (such as requiem
masses) to local priests and Catholic brotherhoods, and distributing his wife’s estate among
her designated heirs. Thereza’s co-godparent José Pires de Carvalho was a wealthy engenho

197
16 • Between Heaven and Earth: Thereza de Jesús Maria Jozé’s Last Will and Testament

Funeral and Burial Rites

My body will be shrouded in the habit of Our Lady of Carmen, and bur-
ied in the main church of this parish of Saint Joseph; and my body will be
accompanied to the grave by the Reverend Vicar with eight or nine priests,
and more if possible; and all of them on that day will say a Mass of corpo pre-
sente (to be performed before the coffin is lowered into the grave), and burial
rites for my soul, and they will be given customary arms for the Mass and
burial rites, and for accompanying me 10 patacas (silver coin worth 320$ réis)
with a half-pound of wax;13 and the brotherhoods of the Most Holy Sacra-
ment, and Our Lady of the Rosary, to which I belong, and all the Crosses and
Banners that might be found in my parish church, will accompany me, and
they will be given the customary alms.14
I declare that each one of the priests who accompany my body to the grave,
will say an octave of masses for my soul on the day following my burial, with
alms of 320$ réis.15
I declare that if the Mass of corpo presente cannot be done on the day of my
burial, I want it to be done as soon as possible, and by the eighth day [follow-
ing my death] at the very latest; and on this day all of the priests present at the
burial rite will say a mass for my soul, and for the burial rite and mass, they
will be given for alms eight patacas (2$560 réis) and a half-pound of wax.16

owner, married to the daughter of an aristocratic family—the Calvacanti and Albuquerque—

­
who owned lands across Pernambuco and in Bahia. By 1805, the Carvalho and Albuquerque
clan not only monopolized privileged administrative posts within the municipal council of
Salvador and Cachoeira, but also owned nine sugar mills and thousands of heads of cattle in
the Recôncavo, as well as large mansions in the city of Salvador. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations,
277.
13. In other words, each priest present at Thereza’s funeral received a lump sum of $3200 réis
as payment for participating in her funeral cortège.
14. Though first erected in 1692 on lands donated by wealthy planters, the Carmelite Con-
vent in Cachoeira was reconstructed between 1752 and 1757. It included a black brotherhood
devoted to Bom Jesus dos Martírios (The Lord of the Martyrdoms) which, by 1761, owned
its own burial vaults within the convent. The construction of the Church of the Third Order
of the Our Lady of Mount Carmel, which annexed the Carmelite Convent, was financed by
wealthy merchants, planters, and businessmen and completed in 1773, just a few years before
Thereza’s death.
15. While the mass of corpo presente—performed before the open tomb to commend the
deceased person’s soul to the afterlife—was a lengthy and opulent mass, funeral masses
included all octave masses, which were any masses performed within eight days of burial.
16. Thereza’s funeral was an expensive affair as the officiating priest charged 12$000 réis, and
the brotherhoods of Our Lady of the Rosary and Santas Almas, which escorted her body to the
tomb, were paid 2$000 réis in outstanding membership dues. Moreover, given that she was
not a member, the black brotherhood of Saint Benedict was paid 1$280 réis for the privilege
of accompanying Jesús Maria Jozé’s funerary cortege.
16 • Between Heaven and Earth: Thereza de Jesús Maria Jozé’s Last Will and Testament

Masses
I declare that they request six chaplets17 of Masses be celebrated for my
soul [three hundred masses]; and two chaplets of Masses for my deceased par-
ents [one hundred masses]; and two chaplets of masses for my deceased slaves
[one hundred masses]; and two chaplets of masses for the souls in purgatory
[one hundred masses]; and one chaplet for the Senhor São Joachim [fifty
masses]; and one chaplet for the Senhora Saint Anna [five hundred masses],
with 12$000 réis of alms for each chaplet.18
I declare that all of these masses be said within eighteen months of my
death: and my executor can have them said in whichever place seems best,
and most desirable, and where the best accounts can be given me during
my life to say a Chaplet to Senhora Santa Anna, and to the Senhor Saint
Joachim, and if upon my death one or another of the chaplets has already
been discharged, or both chaplets are already said; I want that same quittance
to be taken into account by my executor, so that it is not necessary for him to
request they be celebrated a second time.

Patrimony: Lands and Property (Slaves and Equipment)

I declare that I am married to Manoel Ferreira Gomes Guimarães and
from our marriage we do not have children, nor any direct [legally enforced]
heirs to inherit my estate.
I declare as a couple we possess the following properties: four fazendas
(rural properties) with their own lands, which we purchased from João de
Teixera de Argolo. Specifically, the Mangabeira farm in which we cultivate
tobacco, [and] the farms of Pindoba19 or Sitio Novo and Queimada, which
at present are vacant (dispossessed); in these fazendas we have some heads of
cattle; and horses; and two pairs of domestic bulls; and we bought from the
aforementioned seller a plot of land on the skirts of the River Jacuípe called
São Jorge, where Francisco Nogueira Arão and his nephew Luis da Costa

17. A chaplet of masses consisted of fifty masses officiated by priests before designated altars
inside churches or convents. During the eighteenth century, the Third Order of the Car-
melites awarded its membership body—both living and dead—with one hundred and fifty
requiem masses (three chaplets) pronounced on Sundays and religious holidays. In her will,
however, Jesús José ordered an additional three chaplets be pronounced on behalf of her soul
in whichever church or convent the executor of her will deemed appropriate.
18. The executor of Jesús Maria Jozé’s will was thus required to pay a grand sum of 132$000
réis in requiem masses, the estimated value of two creole (Brazilian-born) slaves.
19. Pindoba is a word of Tupi origin which likely refers to hooked reed poles used for fishing
and for collecting graviola fruits from pindaíba trees. Alexandre de Mello Moraes, Corographia
historica, chonographica, genealogica, nobiliaria, e politica do imperio deo Brasil, vol. 2 (Rio de
Janeiro: Typografia Americana de J. Soares de Pinho, 1858), 234.

199
16 • Between Heaven and Earth: Thereza de Jesús Maria Jozé’s Last Will and Testament

currently reside;20 and in the fazenda called Borda da Mata de Baixo, we also
have a parcel of lands; and developments shared together with the rest of
the heirs, partly given to me legitimately from my parents Mathias Pereira
Bernardes and Marianna Pereira de Castro; and partly given at the bequest of
my uncle João Pereira Bernardes; and the fazenda called Ilha in the parish of
Santa Anna do Camizão which I purchased from the Reverend Priest Pedro
de Sylva Dias when I was still unmarried.
I declare that we possess as a couple twenty-two slaves, both male and
female, and among these Antonio Crioulo, Bernardo Crioulo, Jacinto Crio-
ulo, Joanna Crioula, and Jozé Criolo were not inherited.21 Moreover, we also
have two oxen-carts; farm instruments, and any home furnishings that may
be found upon my death.

Debtors and Debts

I declare that from a lawsuit that we won against them João Hornato and
his uncles owe us 70$000 réis; and João Ribeiro owes us the greater part of
the interest from a loan advance worth 140$000 réis.
I declare that we as a couple owe the following debts: From a debt we devel-
oped from a contract we made with the brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament
in the main parish church of Saint Joseph, so that they would discharge us
from membership obligations under which all brothers are subjected [we owe]
100$000 réis with interest; and to the mill of the aforementioned parish 50$000
réis; for a loan advance with interest from Miguel Alfonso, money which we
used to buy provisions 50$000 réis; for a loan advance from Jozé Ferreira de
Castro 50$000 réis; in the city of Bahia we also owe the merchant Luis da Costa
Gomes with whom we have accounts, the debts that are recorded in his book.

Distribution of Estate Among Heirs

I leave the executor who accepts my will, as prize and compensation for all
the labor [trouble] he will have with it, 300$000 réis.22

20. While Francisco Nogueira Arão and his nephew may have been tenant farmers, who paid
rent to Thereza and Manoel from their agricultural surplus, it is also possible that they were
skilled employees who administered part of the couple’s estate while overseeing slave laborers.
21. The creole (Brazilian-born) slaves Joanna and Antonio were worth seventy thousand and
sixty thousand réis respectively, while African-born slave Ignacia was evaluated at only forty
thousand réis according to a 1782 postmortem inventory of Thereza’s estate. The fact that the
Pindoba ranch was assessed at four hundred thousand réis suggests the high value of slaves in
comparison to land. Slaves constituted 50 percent of the value of agricultural estates in most
eighteenth-century postmortem inventories. Alida Metcalf, Family and Frontier in Colonial Bra-
zil: Santana de Parnaíba, 1580–1822 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 106–7.
22. This amount is the purchasing value of around four Brazilian-born slaves at the time.
A 1782 inventory of Jesus Maria Jozé’s estate included her property in slaves, which were
16 • Between Heaven and Earth: Thereza de Jesús Maria Jozé’s Last Will and Testament

I leave the following alms: For my brother the Reverend Priest João
Pereira 150$000 réis. For my cousin Catherina Alvez the crioulinha named
Maria.23 For my niece Maria, the daughter of Manuel de Pinho, I leave
the crioulinha named Anna, as well as 100$000 réis in cash. For my niece
Joanna Maria Francisca who is the keeper of my brother’s house, I leave
the crioulo slave named Domingos. For my goddaughter Antonia Maria,
wife of Manuel Jozé das Santos [I leave] 20$000 réis as alms. I leave for my
nieces, the daughter of my compadre Francisco Pereira, my goddaughter
Maria Vicencia 100$000 réis in cash and the farm Queimada with the lands
that pertain to it demarcated in this form: divided on the western the part
with the boundaries established by its first seller Capitão João Rodrigues
Adorno,24 and in the middle from the northern to the northeastern part
my farm is split by the surrounding proprietors, thus upon my death with
this delineation my god-niece can take possession of it, as her own prop-
erty, and it will remain so by virtue of this clause; I leave 150$000 réis for
the sister of my goddaughter, my other niece affiliate with my compadre
Francisco Pereira.25

appraised by public officials at market value. The fact that Antonio and Joanna (creoles)
were appraised at 60$000 and 70$000 réis, respectively, while the African slave Ignacia,
whose ethnic affiliation was noted as gêge (a West African ethnic group), was valued at
only 40$000 réis, shows the relatively high price of Brazilian-born slaves to African slaves
at this time.
23. The term crioulinha is a diminutive form of crioula and refers, in this case, to a Brazilian-
born black slave who was still a minor—an unwed female under fourteen years of age. During
the early colonial period and throughout the nineteenth century, the term crioulo [creole] was
applied to Brazilian-born blacks to distinguish them from Africans. The cultural and linguistic
associations between blackness and slavery in the Portuguese Empire is reflected by the fact
that Afro–Brazilian freedmen, even if born into freedom, were referred to as crioulos forros or
libertos (manumitted or liberated blacks).
24. Beginning in 1654, the Captain João Rodrigues Adorno established himself in the region,
and in 1673 he erected a small hermitage with a chapel dedicated to Nossa Senhora de Rosário
on his property, which was eventually converted into the parish church. In 1688, he and his
wife dona Úrsula de Azevedo donated lands to the Carmelite Order so that they could begin
the construction of their convent. Completed in 1692, the Carmelite convent and church
and its adjoining Carmelite Third Order was renovated during the mid-eighteenth century
and the church’s interior decoration—which includes remarkable collection of Portuguese
azulejos (decorative ceramic tiles)—continued through 1780. Maria Helena Ochi Flexor, ed.,
O Conjunto do Carmo de Cachoeira [The Carmo architectonic ensemble of Cachoeira] (Bras lia:
í
IPHAN/Monumenta, 2007), 34–83.
25. Captain Francisco Pereira was obligated by bonds of compadrazgo (godparentage) to not
only instruct Jesús Maria Jozé in the Catholic faith but also to materially provide for her
well-being. She, in turn, was discharging her mutual obligation as godmother to his daughter
through this bequest.

201
16 • Between Heaven and Earth: Thereza de Jesús Maria Jozé’s Last Will and Testament

I declare that out of gratitude for the great love and affection with which
my husband Manoel Ferreira Gomes always treated me, I leave him the mes-
tiço Vicente, and fifty varas (175 feet of land),26 eight domesticated oxen, six
mules, and in the lack of any of these items their value of in cash, so that he
can take this amount as inheritance, or all the value of these items as one third
of my inherited and acquired possessions.
I declare that my executor will record and satisfy these suffrages,27 and the
other bequests and legacies as declared in my will, first by levying and setting
aside the expenditures from my funeral from the one third of my inherited
possessions, and exempting from these accounts my acquired possessions;
which without anything more being necessary, shall be disbursed and signed
by him.28
I declare that my executor will satisfy in their entirety of all the disposi-
tions and legacies that are specified in this my will within five months, and so
long as these remain unfulfilled, he cannot be obliged to attend to any other
thing.
I declare that I institute as the heirs of the two parts [two thirds] of my
inherited possessions my brother the Reverend Priest João Pereira and my
sisters Joanna Maria Pereira de Castro and Bernarda Francisca Pereira and
Maria Jozé Sá, verifying the third part [one third] of my estate is equally
divided among them.
I declare that after the bequests and legacies declared in this my testament
are all satisfied, I institute my sister Bernarda Francisca as the heir of whatever
remains from the two parts [two thirds] of my acquired goods, and I state
that whatever is left, and remains from the two parts [two thirds], granted
to my brother the Reverend Priest João Pereira, and my cousin Catherina
Alvez, and my niece the daughter of Manuel de Pinho, and my nieces—my
goddaughter Maria Vicencia and her sister29—the daughters of my compadre
Francisco Pereira, and my niece Joanna Maria Francisca, I institute each one
as heirs of solely the aforementioned legacies and nothing else, such that these

26. This is roughly the size of a subsistence farm or a sugarcane plot in which eight oxen were
needed to transport one cart loaded with heavy cane or timber.
27. Suffrages were intercessory prayers or masses pronounced on behalf of the deceased’s
souls intended to swiftly deliver them from purgatory into heaven.
28. A 1782 inventory evaluated Jesús Maria Jozé’s total estate after subtracting150$000 réis
(the money devoted to funerary rites and pious legacies) to 450$242 réis to be divided equally
among her four siblings.
29. On February 26, 1779, the Captain Francisco Pereira acknowledged that because they
were unmarried, he served as the administrator of his two daughters’ inherited properties. He
also provided his elite daughters’ full names: doña Maria Vicencia de Jesus and doña Anna
Maria da Purificação.
16 • Between Heaven and Earth: Thereza de Jesús Maria Jozé’s Last Will and Testament

legacies will be recorded during the division of the property from the two
parts [two thirds] of my acquired goods.
I declare that if any of the third part [one third] of my acquired goods
should remain, I institute my sister, the aforementioned Bernarda Francisca
Pereira, as the heir of all that remains, but if in my life she is absent, all the
inheritance that I left her upon my death I restitute to be passed on to the
daughter of Maria Vicencia, my aforementioned niece.

Closure
I declare that all that I have ordered written is my last and final wish, and
I now ask my executors as a service to God and as a favor to me, to accept
this my testament and seek to retain and fulfill what is contained in it, and
with it I nullify any other will, or codicil made before this one, and I beg
that the justices, ecclesiastical and secular alike, will assist me in carrying
out executing what is ordered in it [my will], and if necessary I grant my
executors with all the powers of attorney if required of them; and for this
testament at my request I had Simão da Cunha Barboza serve as witness and
I ordered it written by him, and since it is in the form which I ordered it in
my farm of Santo Antonio, I signed it with my sign, along with the afore-
mentioned scribe, who wrote it on the thirtieth day of January, the year of
the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ, one thousand seven hundred and seventy
seven [1777].

[signature of Thereza Jesús Maria Jozé]

As the witness that wrote it

[signature of Simão da Cunha Barboza]

Suggested Reading

Ferreira Furtado, Júnia. Chica da Silva: A Brazilian Slave of the Eighteenth Century.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Metcalf, Alida C. Family and Frontier in Colonial Brazil: Santana de Parnaíba, 1580–
1822. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
Myscofski, Carole A. Amazons, Wives, Nuns and Witches: Women and the Catholic
­
Church in Colonial Brazil 1500–1822. Austin: University of Texas Press,
2013.

203
16 • Between Heaven and Earth: Thereza de Jesús Maria Jozé’s Last Will and Testament

Reis, João José. Death Is a Festival: Funeral Rites and Rebellion in Nineteenth-Century
Brazil, trans. H. Sabrina Gledhill. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina
Press, 2003.
Schwartz, Stuart B. Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia,
1550–1835. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Document Themes
• Family
• Law
• Property
• Religion
 17

Natividad, Negra, Sues Her Owner

for Freedom (Lima, 1792)1

Accusations of forced sex by an owner–priest and a demand to be freed from

him constitute the heart of a lawsuit filed by the enslaved woman, Nativi-
dad, in late eighteenth-century Lima.2 To modern-day readers, the opening
statement may seem to fly in the face of common understandings about the
legal powers of enslaved peoples, and in particular, enslaved women. Yet the
complaint of Natividad, while unique in its particular details, should be read
in the context of an augmentation in the number of lawsuits and petitions
initiated by enslaved women in this period. The priest, Doctor don Juan de
la Reinaga, rejected Natividad’s claims and offered a defense that relied on
stereotypes about unruly behavior by enslaved women. In both the origi-
nal petition and the ensuing case (of which only a portion survived), details
about Natividad’s experiences allow us to reconstruct a sense of the pressures
suffered on a daily basis by enslaved women, as well as about the kin resources
and legal discourses to which enslaved women might appeal for assistance.
Higher numbers of enslaved women appeared in courts in the late eigh-
teenth century in part due to a Royal Decree passed in 1789 which made
practical changes allowing enslaved peoples more room to maneuver in the
courts.3 Recently, historians have argued that there was a broader trend
in this time period that was not solely based on this decree but which sub-
stantially shifted how minors (women, indigenous peoples, enslaved peoples)

1. The editors acknowledge our gratitude to Bianca Premo for providing us with this docu-
ment. See analysis of the case in Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial: Ordinary Litigants and
Colonialism in the Spanish Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 203.
2. For additional context on the lives of enslaved women in Lima, see Michelle A. McKinley,
Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization in Colonial Lima, 1600–1700
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016) and Christine Hünefeldt, Paying the Price of
Freedom: Family and Labor among Lima’s Slaves, 1800–1854 (Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1994).
3. See discussion of the 1789 Instruction on the Education, Treatment and Occupation of Slaves,
in Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial, 198. Also, Evelyne Laurent-Perrault researches this
trend for enslaved women in late colonial Venezuela. See “Esclavizadas, cimarronaje y la Ley
en Venezuela, 1760–1809,” in Demando Mi Libertad; Relatos de mujeres Negras y sus estrategias
de resistencia en Nueva Granada, Venezuela y Cuba (Universidad Icesi, Cali-Colombia, forth-
­
coming).

205
 17 • Natividad, Negra, Sues Her Owner for Freedom

looked to the judicial system to seek redress and freedom. In doing so, these
people were instrumental in creating the intellectual current we now know as
the Enlightenment.4 As Bianca Premo contends, these historical actors made
the Enlightenment by promoting “the preeminence of secular law as they
opted to use the king’s civil courts for formal trials” rather than by using
other jurisdictions or extrajudicial options. They also “contributed to the
notion that the value of the law was intrinsic . . . [because of] its very status
as law.”5
It was within this context, then, that Natividad took deliberately crafted
legal action to free herself from the priest, Reinaga, who owned her and with
whom she alleged a sexual relationship. We might anticipate that the courts
would be more likely to side with the priest in this case who was, after all,
her master and her superior in colonial society’s race, gender, and class hier-
archies. Her petition strove to counter those factors that worked in Reinaga’s
favor. Natividad’s original petition used language and reason to deflect atten-
tion away from Reinaga’s status and shone light on his failure to live up to
the model expected by Spanish men, especially those who were members of
the clergy. Even the choice of the court to which Natividad appealed suggests
strategy on her part. With attention to the details we notice that the main
judge mentioned throughout the case is an ecclesiastical, or church, judge.
Natividad did not strive to have this lawsuit heard in a civil court, but rather
wanted it tried before the eyes and ears of other religious men whom, she
hoped, would judge Reinaga more harshly because of his failures to adhere
to the vows of the priesthood. Moreover, if we analyze the language of the
petition carefully, we see that it is the priest who was really on trial here,
for his abuse of Natividad. Because slaves represented property as well as
income, Reinaga repeatedly insisted that Natividad should be forced to pay
him a bond for her daily wages. Many urban slaves labored outside of their
masters’ homes during the day and had to give a set amount of money, daily
or weekly, to those masters.
The particulars of violence alleged by Natividad, striking in terms of her
significant suffering, are emblematic of what enslaved women suffered daily
in the colonial world. Contemporaries viewed the infliction of physical abuse
by masters as a prerogative rather than a crime. Imprisonment in bakeries,
where people worked shackled near hot ovens, served as a frequent punish-
ment for enslaved men and women in the urban Andes who dared to resist
their masters. And rape was a common tool that male slaveowners used to
further subjugate their female slaves. This dark violence of daily life lurked in
stark contrast to the reach for reason and legal justice that Natividad sought.

4. See the novel argument in Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial.

5. Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial, 14–15.
 17 • Natividad, Negra, Sues Her Owner for Freedom

When Natividad tried to move beyond her unbearable situation with Rein-
aga, was the law on her side? This question does not have a simple answer.
Enslaved women and men did have rights before the law according to early
modern Spanish legal code. Natividad could bring a case against her master
for abuse and ask to be sold to another master. She went further, however, by
taking her case to the religious courts and asking for her freedom. This was a
harder case to make.
Readers studying this document could consider what networks and strat-
egies Natividad employed to try to gain her freedom from Reinaga. Who
assisted her to present her case and what does that suggest about how men
and women worked together? More generally, what does Natividad’s case
reveal about gender-specific struggles for enslaved women? Compare this
with the case of the enslaved woman Isabel Victoria García in Chapter 15.
How did the experience of slavery and paths to manumission differ across
these geographic locations?

17.1 Petition of Natividad, Slave of Licenciado don Juan

de Reinaga about the Recognition of Her Freedom6

Illustrious Señor:
I, Natividad, negra (black woman), slave of licenciado (licentiate) don (sir)
Juan de la Reinaga, priest of this Archbishopric, appear before the feet of your
Illustrious Señor (Lord) with the greatest remorse and I say: that clearly my
master forgot the obligations of his position, about Christianity and about
authority when, on different occasions, he proposed his dishonest relations.7
Taking advantage of the honesty and example that he is expected to embody,
for many days I resisted, not condescending to an impurity so abominable.
Ultimately, I was compelled by the violence of a determined master and also
by my longing to obtain the freedom that the same licenciado promised me
on repeated occasions. I had to allow his troublesome request and commit
the offense that I had valiantly resisted until, exhausted from the persuasions
of he who ruled me, I allowed this sexual congress. It endured over a long
period, during which he repeatedly affirmed his solemn promise to grant

6. Archivo Arzobispal de Lima: Autos de Natividad, esclava del licenciado don Juan de
Reinaga, presbítero domiciliario del arzobispado, sobre que le reconzca su libertad que obtuvo
por el concubinato que tuvo con su amo, Causas de Negros, 33, no. 3, 1792.
7. The original language in the document is “communicacion torpe,” which she used to refer
to sexual relations.

207
 17 • Natividad, Negra, Sues Her Owner for Freedom

[me] freedom, without which condition I would not have consented to this
illicit concubinage, not the first time, nor ever thereafter.
With the days passing in my unhappy fate, no offer of manumission was
initiated, and at the same time, the most abominable happening suddenly
impeded any end to the aforementioned excesses. I tried to remove myself
from the situation and reject the new and effective intentions of my mas-
ter. Because he recognized my firm renunciation [of the earlier behavior],
my master seized on this offense as a lack of respect and disobedience. He
imprisoned me in a bakery,8 where they shaved my head, believing perhaps
that in this way they would conquer my perseverance. Disappointed that
these punishments could not conquer my just condemnation and dread, my
master moved me and imprisoned me in his hacienda (landed estate) which
is called Manchay. Holding me there with all his severity, my Master impul-
sively ordered that his mayordomo (overseer) give me twenty-five lashes that
I indeed suffered. Thereafter, my master, the licenciado, punished me by his
own hand for nine continuous days so that I spilled copious blood from the
simplegadas9 outside of the oppressive prison where I was kept, called the
Rabo de Zorro. My master, determined to prevail, attached me to an iron bar
that was available and took me from this city for that purpose, according to
what I was notified.
To avoid offending the pious ears of your Illustrious Señor, it does not
seem useful to me to elaborate further on this simple and truthful account.
Your superior understanding will mean that you will have understood that
this case compels me to act by in the very least soliciting that you grant me
the freedom that corresponds to me. Because according to legal principles,
the slave owner that compels or introduces his slave to dishonest commerce
by that same act must grant that slave the benefit of manumission. Further,
that the slave who consented to this favor, of course, acquires that pardon due
to the lack of restraint of the master, primarily when the motive of promise
of freedom was involved.
Dispensing with those (aspired) legal statutes through which immediately
are determined the illustrious benefit,10 the other action that concerns me
is the claim against my Master licenciado don Juan de la Reinaga for sexual
assault. No one can ignore either our view or the conviction of the Señor that
if a slave sins, or even more, is complicit in sinning, ([because they believe
that] merit and reason requires that the slave endure spiritual cruelty), this

8. For a detailed discussion of bakeries as punishment for enslaved men and women, see Carlos
­
Aguirre, “Violencia, castigo y control social: esclavos y panaderías en Lima, siglo XIX,” Pasado
y Presente (Lima), 1988, 1.
9. This colloquialism may refer to the anus.
10. In other words, her freedom from slavery.
 17 • Natividad, Negra, Sues Her Owner for Freedom

is because they mean for their masters to sell them for a fair price and with
good conditions as I now aspire. If I am denied a declaration of freedom that
I have previously proven that indisputably compels [my freedom], how much
less will I be concerned with the spiritual and corporal punishments that I
have suffered for not wanting to persevere in the impure sins that my master
inflicts upon me and tries to have me carry out under the anguish of punish-
ments, prisons, and unmerciful cruelty.
I could very well lodge my appeal before the Señores of the Real Audiencia
(Royal Court) where the law of God has directed that slaves demand freedom
whenever they seek the sanctuary and refuge that the law grants. But I wish
that the secular11 courts should hear about the recklessness, indifference,
and tyrannies so foreign to leniency12 and self-restraint that an ecclesiastical
priest professes. Thus, I renounce the indulgence of royal law and bring my
case before the just commission of Your Most Illustrious Lord, who is very
competent to reform the immoderate powers13 of a priest and decree what is
in the interest of the pious cause of liberty that I claim. And in fact, there are
no grounds for granting the sale of my person,14 [as opposed to granting her
freedom] according to the law. For all of these reasons:
To Your Excellency, I ask and beg that you see fit to admit this petition, as
is appropriate, and demand that I be declared free. Moreover, grant me relief
so that licenciado don Juan, my master, sells me for a just price and under
good conditions according to what justice demands. Swearing to God, Our
Lord and to this sign of Christ, I declare that I do not behave maliciously in
this petition. Also, I state that, cautiously, I fear that my master will make
sure to capture me and punish me using the highest form of authority in ven-
geance for my petition. And it is precisely for this kind of behavior that I have
denounced his actions against modesty and the kind of honest example that
would elicit much more respect from his slaves. Therefore, to Your Illustrious
Sir, I ask and beg that you demand that licenciado don Francisco de la Reinaga
be notified, that for no reason or excuse [should he] follow me, trouble me,
nor capture me, leaving me helpless. Rather I should be ready to make use of
my rights and justice which I demand above.

[sign of the cross]

11. Here she refers to secular courts or civil course in contrast to the ecclesiastical courts, which
she has petitioned in this document.
12. Legnidad in the original.
13. Gobernaciones in the original.
14. Natividad literally says there are no grounds to grant the sale of her cabeza (head).

209
 17 • Natividad, Negra, Sues Her Owner for Freedom

17.2 Response of Licenciado don Juan de

Reinaga, Priest and Slave Owner

In the City of Kings of Peru on May 31, 1792: Licenciado Juan José Negrón,
lawyer in this Real Audiencia, juez ordinario (judge) of the Holy Inquisition,
Examinador Sinodal (synod examiner), Cura Rector (priest, rector), Provisor y
Vicario General (judge and Vicar General) of this Archbishopric,15 in virtue
of the verbal dispatch to your Illustrious Señor, Your Grace the Archbishop:
My señor, I order that you transmit to the licenciado don Juan de Reinaga
that he should not aggravate the punishment of this party and inflict no
greater harm because of this appeal and the release that is solicited by the
other party. Further, [you should] consider the surety of her person and daily
wages before you give a decision. Signed before me [by] Doctor Nuñez and
Francisco Gutiérrez Gallegos.
Doctor Juan de la Reinaga responding to the notification that your grace
has sent me about the petition of Natividad, my slave: I say: that I am ready
to answer it and to prove its falsehood, demonstrating with the most distin-
guished witnesses, the agreeable treatment that I give and have always given
to her and to all my slaves. Likewise, I will prove the well-known, practice of
notorious prostitution, disorder, and scandal of this servant. But in order to
execute this, it is necessary (in keeping with the forewarned about this point)
that the slave stand surety for this slander with her person and her wages with
a known person and to my satisfaction.16 Having protested with this reply as
I have said, therefore I ask and beg your highness demand that the aforemen-
tioned slave give the surety that I ask and justice be done.
don Juan de la Reinaga
In the city of Kings in Peru June 18, 1792: Before Señor Doctor don Juan
José Negrón, this petition was read and seen by your honor, who ordered that
the negra Natividad, slave of the Doctor don Juan de la Reinaga, be notified
to give surety for her person and daily wages to the satisfaction of the said don
Juan, and he signed it.
I, don Juan de la Reinaga, in the lawsuit initiated by a negro whose
name I do not know,17 in the name of Natividad, my slave, I say: that to
the document presented by this [negro] your Honor ordered that I be sent
notification; and responding to him, I say that I was ready to respond to

15. Licenciado Juan José Negrón’s title is repeated every time his name is mentioned in the
documents, though this is the only instance in which the editors have included it in its entirety.
16. Here the priest and owner Reinaga is demanding that a bond be guaranteed for Natividad
before moving forward with this complaint since she has, in his opinion, slandered him.
17. At this point in the case, Reinaga claims that a negro (Afro–Peruvian man) has entered the
petition on the part of Natividad.
 17 • Natividad, Negra, Sues Her Owner for Freedom

the lawsuit and persuade him of its falsehood with the most distinguished
witnesses and evidence; but before making these declarations [I wanted
to] guarantee the servant, her person and her wages, as is anticipated in
similar cases.
I sent this request to your honor and the court was informed. I did not
direct it to the said servant (because as I have said she did not make the pre-
sentation) but to the above-mentioned negro, on the chance that he came to
this tribunal to inquire into the ruling that had been given in the lawsuit, as
the notary could certify. It has been much more than one month since this
court carried out these proceedings, and neither the negro nor the servant
have complied with what your honor ordered. She [Natividad], in the shad-
ows of her fanciful lawsuit, is living in her excesses. I am deprived [of her
wages] because of the almost five times in which she has fled her service. It
will continue thus if your honor does not order that she is put in a bakery.
In that way, she can give surety as is decreed and, thereafter, your honor can
continue deliberating the pending lawsuit. Therefore, to your honor I ask
and beg that you order as I request and as justice demands. Signed, don Juan
de la Reinaga [The court receives and reads Reinaga’s petition on July 27, 1792
as presented by his lawyer.]

17.3 The Court Looks for Natividad

I, the under-signed public notary of this Archbishopric Court, attest that in

the lawsuit that a negra named Natividad pursues against Doctor don Juan
de la Reinaga, her legitimate master, in which she attempts to be declared as
free in virtue of various deeds that against Doctor don, her master she presents
in a document that in my name a negro named Mariano de Castas, criollo
(Peruvian-born), presented to his illustrious Honor the Archbishop, my lord.
In virtue of the verbal dispatch that the Illustrious Señor [Archbishop] sent
the Señor Provisor he supplies a decree of the following tenor:
In the City of Kings in Peru on May 31, 1792, I, Señor Doctor don Juan
José Negrón, in virtue of the verbal dispatch that the Illustrious Archbishop,
my lord, decreed, order you transmit [to] licenciado don Juan de la Reinaga
who should be promptly notified that he should not aggravate the petitions
of this party nor inflict more damages for this case and for the release that is
solicited in the other count, that of guaranteeing the person and wages [of
Natividad], a ruling will be made and he signed it: don Negrón = before me,
Francisco Gutiérrez Gallegos = On the same day that Doctor don Juan de la
Reinaga was notified in person of the content; based on this notification the
said Doctor presented a letter asking for justice that the negra Natividad give

211
 17 • Natividad, Negra, Sues Her Owner for Freedom

surety for her person and daily wages for the continuation of the lawsuit, pro-
testing her excuses, this was verified, in whose petition his Lord decreed an
Auto of the following tenor: In the City of Kings of Peru on June 18, 1792:
before licenciado don Doctor Juan José Negrón, this petition was read. And
seen by your Lord, he ordered that the negra Natividad, slave of Doctor don
Juan de la Reinaga, be notified, and he signed it don Negrón = Before me.
Francisco Gutiérrez Gallegos. This Auto was not communicated in person
to the said negra Natividad because she is not known nor has she presented
herself in this court. Nor is the location or existence of her dwelling known,
so the content [of the Auto] was made known, on the same day and date,
to the referred negro Mariano who presented the written copy of the lawsuit
and the one who came to pursue these proceedings and he to whom, on one
of these occasions, I made the decree known. However, from this time until
the present day, neither Natividad nor the interlocutor Mariano have come
to counterclaim, and for the record as is appropriate under the law, I give the
present decree at the order of the Señor Procurador and Vicar General of the
City of the Kings of Peru on July 27, 1792.
Justo de Taboada
Public Notary

In the City of the Kings of Peru on July 28, 1792: Doctor don Juan
José Negrón, having seen this certification of the record. I order that the
present notary locates the negra Natividad, slave of Doctor don Juan de
la Reinaga, with the intent of letting her know in person the proceedings
that transpired on June 18 of this present year, certifying what will be the
results of the proceedings. He signed it: don Negrón before me, Francisco
Gutiérrez Gallegos.
I, the public notary of this Audiencia, certify that I requested that the negro
named Mariano Bravo speak with Natividad, negra, slave of Doctor don Juan
de la Reinaga, to tell me her location and to make known to her in person the
act decreed by the Provisor and Vicar General on June 18 of this present year
as is justified and ordered by the act of 28 of July of this same year. Having
seen Mariano Bravo and asked after the house or dwelling of Natividad, he
told me that he knew nothing of her. It had been many days since he had seen
her, because he had a leg injury. Further, he said he did not know which was
her house, nor in which place one could find her. He maintained his igno-
rance of her whereabouts even after I made known to him the punishments
that could be unleashed upon him for concealment [of information]. At the
same time, he let me know that he was the brother of the negra Natividad and
that his surname by which he was known was Bravo; actually, it was also Solis
but nobody knows him as such. For the record and validity that applies, I
 17 • Natividad, Negra, Sues Her Owner for Freedom

give the present order of the Lord Procurador (legal representative) and Vicar
General in the Kings of Peru August 3, 1792.
Justo de Taboado, Public Notary

Suggested Reading

McKinley, Michelle A. Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization

in Colonial Lima, 1600–1700. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Premo, Bianca. The Enlightenment on Trial: Ordinary Litigants and Colonialism in the
Spanish Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Townsend, Camila. “Angela Batallas: A Fight for Freedom in Guayaquil.” In The
Human Tradition in Colonial Latin America, Second edition, ed. Kenneth J.
Andrien. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013.

Document Themes
• Labor
• Law
• Race and ethnicity
• Slavery
• Sexuality and gender

213
 18

A Colonial Cross-Dresser (Mexico, 1796)

In the spring of 1796, Mexico City resident María Vicenta Vargas raised her
concerns about another parishioner’s behavior, detailed in the complete file
documents reproduced here, to her parish priest. Vargas had informed her
priest that when taking communion during Holy Week, she had witnessed
Gregoria “la Macho” Piedra participating in the holy rite, but doing so dressed
in the clothing of a man. Even more alarmingly, rather than ingesting the
communion host, Vargas had also witnessed Piedra smuggling it out of the
church in her hand. The priest with whom Vargas had spoken had ordered
Piedra seized and held in the “jail of the court” awaiting further investigation.
One of the Inquisition officials questioned Vargas and queried the pre-
fect of the Royal Prison about Piedra’s past and present behavior. The latter
revealed that Piedra had come to legal authorities’ attention on several other
occasions. Piedra had been held in custody four times in the city jail, once
for three months in the jail of the Acordada, in the Hospicio de Pobres for
two months, and twice before in the jail of the court. Piedra’s crimes had
consisted in having taken communion more than once, dressing as a man,
and brawling.
La Macho’s file documents that Gregoria Piedra dressed as both a man and
a woman, but preferred to dress as a man. Transvestism occurred, but was
rarely recorded, in colonial Latin America. Historians have recently uncov-
ered a number of cases of both male and female cross-dressers across the colo-
nial period in both secular courts and inquisition trials.1 Although witnesses

1. Serge Gruzinski, “The Ashes of Desire: Homosexuality in Mid-Seventeenth-Century New

Spain,” in Infamous Desire: Male Homosexuality in Colonial Latin America, ed. Pete Sigal (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 205, uncovered eight cases of male transvestites in
the colonial era. Zeb Tortorici discusses several other cases in Sins Against Nature: Sex and
Archives in Colonial New Spain, 1530–1821 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018).
Laura A. Lewis, “From Sodomy to Superstition: The Active Pathic and Bodily Transgressions
in New Spain,” Ethnohistory 54:1 (Winter 2007), 155. fn 66 has found equal numbers of
female and male cross-dressers in Mexican archives. Geoffrey Spurling, “Under Investigation
for the Abominable Sin: Damián de Morales Stands Accused of Attempting to Seduce Antón
de Tierra de Congo (Charcas, 1611),” in Richard Boyer and Geoffrey Spurling, eds. Colonial
Lives: Documents on Latin American History, 1550–1850 (New York: Oxford University Press,
2000), 112–129, located another man accused of cross-dressing in early seventeenth-century
Charcas, while Thomas A. Abercrombie encountered a story of a late sixteenth-century
­
 18 • A Colonial Cross-Dresser

described defendants in these cases as having cross-dressed, both church and

secular courts prosecuted them for other crimes—most often sodomy, but
in Piedra’s case, sacrilege. Transvestism, although prohibited in at least two
obscure Spanish and New World ordinances, was a marginal criminal act,
rarely prosecuted.2 Male transvestism appears to have disturbed members
of colonial society more than female cross-dressing because the former act,
unlike the latter, was associated with suspicion of homosexuality.3
There is some suggestion in the following texts that Gregoria Piedra pro-
fessed a preference for a masculine gender identity; witnesses describe her as
preferring men’s clothing to women’s, as enjoying men’s pass-times, and as
publicly brawling, although we must be careful to not impart anachronistic
thinking about gender on historical subjects living in different times from our
own. It is also possible that Piedra enjoyed switching from one public identity
to another; one witness describes Piedra as dressing interchangeably between
“the clothing of men and of women according to what suits her criminal
plans.” It is also difficult to know from the surviving materials, as in the case
of Gregoria Piedra’s more well-known antecedent, the cross-dressing early
seventeenth-century Basque “lieutenant” nun, Catalina de Erauso, whether
Gregoria la Macha’s preference for dressing as a man implied a preference for
same-sex sexuality. Inquisitorial authorities and regular citizens did acknowl-
edge (and vigorously prosecute) same-sex relations when they occurred
between men, but same-sex relations between women was much more likely
to remain unperceived and unacknowledged.4 Even in cases which more

cross-dressing woman: “Affairs of the Courtroom: Fernando de Medina Confesses to Kill-

­
ing His Wife (Charcas, 1595),” in Boyer and Spurling, Colonial Lives, 54–76. Catalina de
Erauso, the “lieutenant nun” is the most well known early seventeenth-century cross-dresser.
For Erauso’s story, see Catalina de Erauso and Michele Stepto, Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a
Basque Transvestite in the New World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997).
2. One late eighteenth-century Spanish law and one mid-sixteenth-century royal ordinance
directed at Nahuas prohibited transvestism: Antonio Calvo Maturana, Impostores: sombras
en la España de las Luces (Madrid: Cátedra, 2015) 266, 270; Barry D. Sell and Susan Kel-
logg, “We Want to Give Them Laws: Royal Ordinances in a Mid-Sixteenth Century Nahuatl
Text,” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 27 (1997), 327, 330. But famously, when Pope Urban
VIII learned of Catalina de Erauso’s transvestism, practiced along with the maintenance of her
virginity, he granted her permission to continue to dress as a man as long as she promised to
desist from her violent activities. A similar ruling befell the late eighteenth-century Mexican
Mariano Aguilar, whose case is discussed further below.
3. Lewis, “From Sodomy to Superstition,” 141.
4. Martin Nesvig, “The Complicated Terrain of Latin American Homosexuality,” His-
panic American Historical Review 81:3–4 (2001) 689–729; Chad Thomas Black, “Prosecuting
Female-Female Sex in Bourbon Quito,” in Zeb Tortorici, ed., Sexuality and the Unnatural
in Colonial Latin America (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), 141–161; and
Ronaldo Vainfas and Zeb Tortorici, “Female Homoeroticism, Heresy, and the Holy Office in
Colonial Brazil,” in Tortorici, ed, Sexuality and the Unnatural, 77–94.

215
 18 • A Colonial Cross-Dresser

explicitly dealt with sexuality, such as that of one late eighteenth-century

transvestite, Mariano Aguilera, the church appears to have been virtually
incapable of perceiving female homosexuality.5 In some historic cases, as in
La Macho’s, however, allegations that defendants had specifically imperson-
ated male members of the military, did concern state authorities.6
Witnesses in Piedra’s case alleged she had committed two spiritual crimes:
smuggling the communion host out of church, and removing and selling
communion letters. Ecclesiastical law required priests to distribute printed
letters that certified parishioners had taken communion to members of their
congregations at Easter. They were to be signed by individual curates, and
read: “Taken communion in the parish church of N. in the year N.” The
letters were meant to be resubmitted to the curate the following Sunday.7
Another witness also claimed that Piedra had blown out the candle of a
religious processant who paraded in front of her. In all three actions, La
Macho violated one of the seven religious sacraments (Baptism, Confirma-
tion, Confession, the Eucharist, Marriage, Holy Orders, Last Rites) that the
colonial church placed at the center of colonial religious orthodoxy. One
eighteenth-century theological guide detailed the various means by which
the Eucharist might be desecrated or rendered invalid.8 If consecrating the
host with grape juice rather than wine was classified as a “grave sin,” how
much worse would it be for a layperson to smuggle outside a half-eaten host?
Piedra was challenging the authority of the Counter Reformation church,
which, particularly in Latin America, insisted on the efficacy of both sys-
tematic observation of the Holy Sacraments, and the public’s participation
in ostentatious public rites, as means of cementing orthodox piety amongst
inhabitants of its New World possessions.9
Piedra’s investigators did not charge Piedra with sodomy (same-sex rela-
tions), but did insinuate Piedra’s proclivity to identify as masculine. The
prison prefect described Piedra as “una mujer hombrada” (a manly woman),

5. María Elena Martínez, “Sex and the Colonial Archive: The Case of ‘Mariano’ Aguilera,”
Hispanic American Historical Review 96:3 (2016), 421–43.
6. François Soyer, “The Inquisitorial Trial of a Cross-Dressing Lesbian: Reactions and
Responses to Female Homosexuality in 18th-Century Portugal,” Journal of Homosexuality 61
(2014), 1529–1557; Tortorici, Sins Against Nature.
7. See description in Diego Sánchez Carralero, Constituciones synodales del priorato de San-
tiago de Ucles (Murcia: Felipe Díaz Cayuelas, 1742), 250–51.
8. Francisco Echarri, Directoria moral que comprehende, en breve, y claro estilo todas las mate-
rias de la theologia moral (Gerona: Por Pedro Morera, 1755).
9. On baroque Catholicism in Mexico, see Brian Larkin, The Very Nature of God: Baroque
Catholicism and Religious Reform in Bourbon Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 2010); on challenges to such orthodoxy, see Nora E. Jaffary, “Sacred Defiance and Sex-
ual Desecration: María Getrudis Arévalo and the Holy Office in Eighteenth-Century Mexico,”
in Tortorici, ed. Sexuality and the Unnatural, 43–57.
 18 • A Colonial Cross-Dresser

as someone known to participate in activities (brawling and street games)

more often associated with men than women, and also as a person prefer-
ring the company of women to that of men. In outward appearance, Piedra
performed identification with manliness and masculinity. Can we necessarily
conclude from this, as at least one scholar has done, that Piedra also pre-
ferred homo to heterosexual amorous or sexual relations?10 Are there indica-
tions that Piedra’s contemporaries made this assumption? Several witnesses
claimed Piedra dressed in men’s clothing in order to facilitate her “criminal
plans.” What crimes do witnesses suggest Piedra was trying to commit and
how would dressing as a man rather than a woman have made them easier or
more appealing to Piedra in some other way? What does the correspondence
from her investigation reveal about how Piedra’s contemporaries perceived
sexuality and gender? What associations did the term “macho” convey here?
A contemporary dictionary defined the term in the following way: “Macho.
By implication is called the man of excessive force and resistance.”11 It also
bears considering which actions of Piedra’s most disturbed her contemporary
peers and judges. Were her choices of clothing and pastimes more disturbing
than the sacrilegious acts described? Did they see her acts of religious defi-
ance as linked to her refusal to conform to the virtues (or the appearance) of
idealized femininity?12

18.1 María Vicenta Vargas Denounces Gregoria13

[left margin: Received on 30 March 1796 Inquisitors Mier y Bergosa]

[right and left margin]: Respecting the proximity to San Diego in which
the denouncer, María Vicenta Vargas, was located, our calificador (theologi-
cal evaluator), fray (brother) José Francisco Valdés examined her according
to procedure about the passage referred to in this denunciation and about
her knowledge of the whereabouts of the denounced party, her surname,
and personal identification. He asks to be informed by the prefect of prisons,

10. Úrsula Camba Ludlow assumes that because she was a cross-dresser, Piedra must have
been a lesbian. See “Gregoria la Macho y su ‘inclinación a las mujeres’: reflexiones en torno
a la sexualidad marginal en Nueva España, 1796–1806,” Colonial Latin American Historical
Review 12:4 (Fall 2003), 480.
11. Real Academia Española, Diccionario de Autoridades, Tomo IV, (1734). http://web.frl.
es/DA.html
12. For discussion of a contemporary figure who challenged both sexual and sacred conven-
tion, see Jaffary, “Sacred Defiance and Sexual Desecration,” 43–57.
13. The excerpts are drawn from Archivo General de la Nación, Inquisición, vol. 1349, exp.
29 fs, 336–344; exp. 30, fols. 357–357v.

217
 18 • A Colonial Cross-Dresser

Montejano, clarifying all that is known respecting this denounced party, her
surname, where she is or where she has lived, but without her perceiving that
this is done on behalf of the Holy Office.
On Holy Monday the 21st of March, a woman presented herself to me
named María Vicenta Vargas, who is married to Joseph Antonio Reyes, and
lives in the pajería (straw shop) facing the Alameda,14 on the walkway in front
of Corpus Christi,15 and she has come to make a denunciation: Having come
to take communion on this day in the parish church of the Sagrario, she
observed close to her that a woman named Gregoria dressed in men’s cloth-
ing was taking communion and that immediately after receiving the sacred
host, she put her hand to her face and furtively took it out from her mouth
between her fingers, and that when she saw the denouncer observing her, she
hid this with an action of admiration and surprise, and at that moment, Gre-
goria stood up and left the church and she [Vargas] did not see what she did
with the holy sacrament that she took out between her sacrilegious fingers.
Surprised, as is to be expected by such an irreligious and sacrilegious
affront, I [the writer of the report, don José Nicolas Larragoiti] took it upon
myself to learn from other subjects who this Gregoria is and where she is seen
and where she lives, and I have informed myself in order to give an account
of it here so that [Gregoria] will be punished for this horrific and very unusual
crime.
In consequence of this duty, a sergeant of the regiment del Comercio
named Joseph de Acosta apprehended [Gregoria] on Holy Friday the 25th
of the current month, dressed in the clothing of a man, while she was watch-
ing the procession that passed by on this day and she was even ridiculing it,
according to what the sergeant informed me. And having put her in the jail of
the court, since he arrested her near to it, he informed me of this and gave an
account of it to the Governor of the Real Sala del Crimen (the High Crimi-
nal Court), don Juan Francisco de Anda, requesting that he order [Gregoria]
to be held in prison and declared that an account should be made to the
Holy Office of the Inquisition which body I consider appropriate to acquire
knowledge about this crime since [Gregoria] is suspected for her faith, espe-
cially considering other circumstances which will be discussed.
[Gregoria] is of such depraved and perverse customs, according to what I
have learned that she has been in all the prisons of this city many times for
many misdeeds which she has committed under the cloak of various dis-
guises, because she has always dressed interchangeably in the clothing of men
and of women according to what suits her criminal plans and I have been told

14. A central park in Mexico City.

15. An eighteenth-century convent for indigenous women (discussed in Chapter 13), located
on what is now Avenida Juárez on the south side of the Alameda.
 18 • A Colonial Cross-Dresser

that [Gregoria] has even established herself at the Plaza of soldiers dressed in
a uniform.
Recently, in 1794, [Gregoria] was denounced in this parish for coming,
at the time of religious obligation, to frequently take communion dressed
sometimes in the clothing of a man, and other times in that of a woman so
that she would not be recognized afterward, with the goal of obtaining cédu-
las (official letters) to sell them, which deed she confessed to me and to my
colleague doctor and maestro (master) don (sir) Joseph María Alcalá, and we
informed the senior ecclesiastical judge of this archbishopric about it and he
put her in prison for it and brought a case against her.
This is what has happened and I inform you, my lords, about it so that if
you judge it appropriate you give an account of it to the Holy Office so that
they take the corresponding measures, in light of which the cited Gregoria
remains imprisoned in the royal jail of the court.
My lord, may you live many years. Parish of the Sagrario, Mexico, March
30, 1796. Doctor don José Nicolas Larragoiti

18.2 The Inquisition’s Theological Qualifier, Fray José

Francisco de Valdés, Examines María Vicenta Vargas

[left margin:] To señor doctor don Juan de Mier

In this convent of San Diego de México on April 4 1796 a woman appeared
before the reverend father and theological qualifier fray José Francisco Valdés,
having been called, and swore to tell the truth. She said her name is María
Vicenta Vargas, she is married to José Antonio Reyes, native of Puebla and
citizen of Mexico, and works as a servant. She does not know how old he is
because she says she does not know how to count, nor does she know her
own age.
Asked if she knows or presumes the reason why she has been called, she
answered that it is because on the last Holy Monday of this year when she
came to take communion at the church del Sagrario and she was close to the
altar rail she saw a woman arrive dressed in the clothing of a man to take com-
munion and that when she left the altar rail, she walked with her hand over
her face and she took the host, which the denouncer saw she had between
her fingers, and she kept watching her face and Gregoria was also watching
her. And that after this she saw that Gregoria made a sign with her hand and
this denouncer looked to see to whom she made it and saw that it was to a
boy, and that after this [Gregoria] got up and left the church in the company
of this boy leaving some strips of cotton cloth that she had brought with her
there, and she went laughing out of the church with this same boy. She was

219
 18 • A Colonial Cross-Dresser

asked from where she knows Gregoria and she answered that she has known
her since she was a girl when the denouncer went for atole16 at her house. And
although she knows her name is Gregoria, she does not know her surname.
Asked if she knows where Gregoria lives and what her social status is and how
she lives her life and what work she does, she responded that she knows nothing
about this because since the time when she knew her when she was a girl she has
never had contact with her. And this is the truth according to the oath which she
has taken. And having read her this statement she said that it was well written
and that she does not act out of malice and she promised to keep this secret. And
since she does not know how to write, the father and qualifier signed it for her.

[signature] fray José Francisco Valdés, qualifier

María Vicenta Vargas

Before me, Fray Santiago Ayala Henas, notary
[Vargas subsequently ratified her testimony without amending it except
to clarify that she had previously made the same denunciation to other authori-
ties twice previously. The officers of the Inquisition wrote the prefect of the
Royal Prison three times requesting more information about Gregoria: her sur-
name, the places she had lived and with whom, how she lived and what kind
of conduct they had observed of her in prison, and the details of her appear-
ance, and eventually, about any details respecting her prior imprisonments.
In compliance the prefect submitted the following description.]

18.3 The Prison Prefect Describes Gregoria

and Gregoria’s Companion

In obedience to your request of April 1 of this present year of 1796, I have

taken the steps that appear to me appropriate to inform myself about the
news that you solicit about the prisoner, Gregoria, who has been arrested
and is in the Royal Jail of the Court by order of one of the priests of the
Sagrario because on this past Holy Monday, she took communion in this
church in the clothing of a man and immediately afterward passed her hand
over her face and took from her mouth the sacred form and one person saw
her and observed this action that she did with the sacred form. This person
denounced her to one of the priests who arranged for Gregoria’s apprehen-
sion and she was found on the afternoon of that day watching the procession

16. A rich rice drink.

 18 • A Colonial Cross-Dresser

of the Holy Mother near the jail where she is at present, in whose act of
devotion she showed contempt by putting out the candle of one of those
who went with one illuminated, making fun (apparently) of this devout act;
this act moved [the priest] to worry and he requested the Sergeant, don José
Acosta, to apprehend her.
She is una mujer hombrada (a manly woman), prieta (dark-skinned), with
the face of a man, body and behavior of the same, curly hair, limbs, skin,
markings, and skin tone typical of a mulata (woman of African and Spanish
descent). Her surname is Piedra, she was born in the Plazuela de las Viz-
caínas and she has lived much of her life in this part of town, in the streets
San Juan, Puente de Peredo and Callejón de la Baca, and in these byways,
she is known as Gregoria la Macho, and she has been seen in both kinds of
clothing although more often in that of men, playing pelota,17 picado, and
rayuela,18 accompanied more often by women than by men. She has been
put in the jail of this city on four occasions for having worn men’s clothing,
for fighting, and for brawling. She was put in the Acordada19 about three
months ago, and has also been in the Poor House. Two years ago, she was
taken from the same church of the Sagrario for having taking communion
twice, once in the clothing of a man and once as a woman and was put
then in the ecclesiastical jail and from there transferred to the city jail and
it appears that she did this in order to sell the [communion] letters. She has
been imprisoned in the jail of the court previously for her repeated quar-
rels. She claims that some while ago she was a soldier in the regiment of the
blacks or in the cavalry.
In prison, nothing remarkable has been observed except the bother caused
by keeping her separate from the women, but she has prayed the holy rosary,
and she devoted herself to God and the saints. As for the confrontation she
had with her denouncer, she entirely denies the accusation made against her.
This is all the information that I have uncovered here within the jail as well
as outside it, which I, in my customary capacity place in your hands so that
you may judge from it how best to proceed. April 6, 1796.
May god keep you for many years my illustrious Señor,
Illustrious Señor
I kiss the hand of your Illustriousness, your most affectionate and blessed
chaplain, Bachiller (graduate) Agustín José Montejano Larrea

17. A Basque ball game played on a large court and brought to Mexico in the eighteenth
century.
18. A game that involves throwing coins into a hole in a brick.
19. An eighteenth-century criminal court, first formed in 1715 for the countryside but
extended to the capital in 1756.

221
 18 • A Colonial Cross-Dresser

[left margin note:] On the 9th of the same month, Montejano was
instructed in writing to learn and inquire in the most opportune manner
about anyone who might know the boy described by the denouncer with
whom the denounced left the church and to whom she signaled.
[In the court’s second letter to prefect Montejano Larrea, the Inquisition
requested further details about the boy who had accompanied Piedra.
His response follows:]
In obedience to the preceding order, I have used every means available to
verify who the boy was who accompanied Gregoria Piedra on the day that
she took communion in the Sagrario and by these steps I have only acquired
a little information and it is that on the afternoon that she was apprehended,
she was with a boy of medium size, barefooted, wearing leather breeches and
he did not appear at the jail and only the woman did who brought food
knowing that the judge was requesting her. He has stayed away and has not
reappeared. I had hoped to bring in this boy and I informed myself about
where he lived but he has since moved houses and I have not found out where
he is. I will remain in communication with you if I learn anything further and
in the mean time I hope that god keeps you for many years.
April 26 1796
I kiss the hand of Your Illustriousness, your affectionate and blessed
chaplain,
Bachiller Agustín José Montejano y Larrea
[In response to the Inquisition’s third request for further information
about Piera Prefect Montejano Larrea observed the following:]
Most Revered Father Comisario Fray José Francisco Valdés,
My Dear Señor,
With respect to the order that you, my father, have communicated to me
in your letter of the 4th of this month, I have attempted to inform myself
with the necessary details to produce, as far as I am able, the report that you
seek from me . . .
[The next paragraph of his letter repeated the same description as above
about why Gregoria Piedra had been imprisoned in the Royal Jail of the court.
The remainder of his letter repeated nearly verbatim the text of his first report,
although he elaborated in a little more detail in his closing description of some
of Piedra’s past actions and present preferences:]
. . . Her surname is Piedra, and in this there has been no variation. She says
that she was a soldier for a while, either in the regiment of pardos (blacks) or
in the cavalry. In jail, she has only been observed showing an inclination to
women (solo se le ha obserbada la inclinación á las mujeres), and this has given
 18 • A Colonial Cross-Dresser

her something to do (por este lado ha dado que aser). She has been seen praying
the holy rosary and sending her soul to saints, and in the matter of the events
with the denunciant, she denies it entirely.
He signs his letter as above.
[The final document in the file is a note directed to Inquisitor don
Juan de Mier signed by Thomas Calderón, an officer in the Real Sala dated
December 17, 1802 noting only that he is sending the accompanying file about
Piedra’s case to the court which he says should have been previously sent in
December 1796 according to the regulations of the Real Sala, the business of
the court had impeded the file’s earlier transfer.]

Suggested Reading

Few, Martha, “‘That Monster of Nature’: Gender, Sexuality, and the Medicalization
of a ‘Hermaphrodite’ in Late Colonial Guatemala,” Ethnohistory 54:1 (Winter
2007), 159–76.
Jaffary, Nora E. False Mystics: Deviant Orthodoxy in Colonial Mexico. Lincoln: Uni-
versity of Nebraska Press, 2004.
Lewis, Laura A., “From Sodomy to Superstition: The Active Pathic and Bodily
Transgressions in New Spain,” Ethnohistory 54:1 (Winter 2007), 129–57.
Martínez, María Elena, “Sex and the Colonial Archive: The Case of ‘Mariano’ Agu-
ilera,” Hispanic American Historical Review 96:3 (2016), 421–43.
Tortorici, Zeb, ed. Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America. Oakland:
University of California Press, 2016.
———. Sins Against Nature: Sex and Archives in Colonial New Spain, 1530–1821.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, forthcoming.
Velasco, Sherry, The Lieutenant Nun: Transgenderism, Lesbian Desire, and Catalina
de Erauso. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000.

Document Themes
• Law
• Religion
• Sexuality and gender

223
 19

Ana Gallum, Freed Slave and

Property Owner (Florida, 1801)

Introduction and Translation by Jane Landers

The following documents are drawn from a lengthy probate case of a frontier
planter and translator of indigenous languages named Joseph or Jacob or Job
Wiggins, who died in Spanish Florida. From the testimonies in this case we
know that when Florida was still a British colony (1763–1784), Job Wig-
gins bought a young Senegalese slave from the British firm of Panton, Leslie
& Company that held the monopoly on the Indian trade in Florida. Wig-
gins subsequently freed the young woman variously known as Ana Gallum,
Nancy/Nansi Wiggins, and Ana Wiggins, and married her in a Protestant
ceremony somewhere near Rollestown, Florida.1 Spanish officials who took
control of the colony in 1784 did not recognize this marriage because it was
not sanctified by the Catholic Church, but Ana and Wiggins lived together
for approximately eighteen years before his death and had seven children who
lived, all of whom were baptized in the Catholic Church.
When Wiggins died in 1797, Ana was left in charge of their surviving
minor children and an estate that included a furnished plantation house,
twelve hundred acres of land, farm equipment, almost one hundred head of
cattle, and thirteen slaves living in six cabins. Because Wiggins died intestate,
the Spanish governor ordered a tribunal to determine Ana’s rights and those
of the couple’s children. Ana was interviewed multiple times by Spanish court
and treasury officials and although she was illiterate, assisted by an amanuen-
sis, and by her extended network of advocates, Ana also filed multiple peti-
tions of her own in this process, as did her eldest daughter, Patty. Ultimately,
in 1801, Ana’s inheritance rights and those of her surviving mixed-race, and
technically illegitimate, children were upheld.2

1. To avoid confusion she is normally referred to as “Ana” in this chapter.

2. Testamentary Proceedings of Jacob Wiggins, November 14, 1797, East Florida Papers
(hereafter EFP) microfilm reel 134, P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History, University of
Florida (hereafter PKY). I would like to thank James Cusick, Curator, Florida History, PKY,
for providing me with a scanned copy of this 142-folio document.
 19 • Ana Gallum, Freed Slave and Property Owner

Women of all ethnicities, backgrounds, and legal conditions, including

free and enslaved women of African descent, like Ana, took advantage of their
access to law in Spanish Florida. They clearly understood the significance of
law in Spanish society; the intimate nature of the tribunal, which consisted
of the governor, his legal counsel, and the royal notary, and the small size
and interrelatedness of the community may have minimized petitioners’ fears
about approaching the court. If the women who approached the court were
illiterate, as Ana was, they could use the services of a friend or of the gov-
ernment notary to file petitions or complaints. In those cases, the women’s
“Xs” would be accompanied by the signature of the person assisting and by
the notation “at the request of _____ who cannot write.” If they required
the assistance of translators this fact, too, was duly noted in the documents.
Many women in colonial Florida, however, were multilingual, especially
women of African descent.
Just as they learned new languages, women of African descent learned to
manipulate Spanish law, customs, and gender conventions to their advan-
tage. Once free, women of African descent living in Spanish colonies, like
Ana, enjoyed the legal and customary rights held by Spanish women. They
operated small businesses; litigated in the courts; and bought and sold prop-
erty, including slaves. Some, like Ana, and the better-known Anna Madgigine
Jai Kingsley, became plantation mistresses.3
European–African unions such as Job and Ana’s were common and
accepted in Florida, much as they were on the African coast and in other
areas of Latin America. Even in cases involving concubinage, rather than
legal marriage, Spanish law and community consensus protected widows
and heirs, and the Catholic Church also interceded “paternally” on behalf
of mothers of African descent. Spanish settlers across the Americas left sub-
stantial property to their common-law wives and natural children,4 and the
community usually respected the desires of the deceased, as well as the rights
of the bereaved. Many of Florida’s wealthiest ranchers, planters, government

A number of African women living in Florida in this period also came from the interior of
Senegal, most notably Anna Madgigine Jai. Daniel L. Schafer, Anna Madgigine, Jai Kingsley: Afri-
can Princess, Florida Slave, Plantation Slaveowner (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003).
Baptisms of Patricia Wiggins (b. 1782), María Wiggins (b. 1785), Benjamin Wiggins (b.
1788), and Abigail Juana Wiggins (b. 1789) all on Feb. 13, 1795; Baptisms of Ana María
Wiggins (b. May, 15, 1792) and Jorge José Wiggins (b. July 10, 1795) both on Nov. 8, 1797
(Black Baptisms, Catholic Parish Records [hereafter CPR], microfilm reel 284 J, PKY). A
number of witnesses also alluded to a son, William Wiggins, who was killed by Indians shortly
before Wiggins’ death.
3. Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).
4. This phrase alludes to the allegation that their parents were unmarried. For the distinc-
tion between “natural” and “illegitimate” children, see Chapter 1, footnote 7.

225
 19 • Ana Gallum, Freed Slave and Property Owner

officials, and merchants had large mulato (of African and European parent-
age) families (sometimes in addition to their white families) and recognized
their mulato children, educated them, and provided for them in their wills.
Among the prominent Florida planters, merchants, and government offi-
cials with African wives or consorts and mixed-race children were Zephaniah
Kingsley, James Erwin, John Fraser, Francis Richard, Luis Mattier, Francisco
Xavier Sánchez, John Sammis, Oran Baxter, Juan Leslie, Eduardo Wanton,
the brothers Jorge J. F. Clarke and Carlos Clarke (who was married to Ana’s
daughter), and the physicians Tomás Tunno and Tomás Sterling. John Les-
lie of the British trading firm Panton & Leslie, the government translator
Miguel Ysnardy (who was himself of mixed-race heritage), the militia com-
mander Carlos Clarke, and the physician Tomás Tunno were among others
testifying that Job Wiggins had always recognized Ana and their children as
his family, that Ana and the children had, in fact, been responsible for greatly
augmenting Wiggins’ estate, and that Wiggins always intended for them to
inherit his estate. All also testified that they knew of no other legitimate wife
or heirs who might make claims on the estate.5
In the years after her husband’s death, Ana continued to manage the estate
she inherited and she appeared frequently in the legal records of the day, buy-
ing and selling horses and slaves.6 But Ana’s life on the plantation was not
an easy one. Two years after Wiggins’ death, Ana reported to the governor’s
tribunal that she had been raped by Pedro Casaly, who had come to her plan-
tation to get a horse. On his way back to town, Casaly was drowned, but Ana
was left pregnant. She appealed to the court for financial assistance for the son
that was born of the rape, as she claimed to have no money. The governor,
and everyone else in the community, knew Ana held substantial property and
had important and wealthy “family” on whom she could depend, namely the
important white consorts of her daughters, so no government assistance was
forthcoming.7 In 1811, Ana Wiggins petitioned the government for lands

5. Interestingly, English witnesses like the priest Thomas Hassett, and the court-appointed
executor James Forrester mistakenly gave Ana’s birthplace as Bengal, rather than Senegal.
Daniel L. Schafer, Zephaniah Kingsley Jr. and the Atlantic World: Slave Trader, Plantation
Owner, Emancipator (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2013). Kimberly S. Hanger
found many similar cases of cross-racial inheritance in Spanish New Orleans. Bounded Lives,
Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769–1803 (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1997).
6. The free black militiaman Jorge Sanco brought suit against Ana (alias Nansi) Wiggins to
try to force the manumission of his wife, Rosa, which Ana contested. Petition of Jorge Sanco,
June 4, 1810, Civil Proceedings, EFP, microfilm reel 160, PKY. Rose appears as twenty-three
years old on an inventory of Ana’s estate, f. 120.
7. Testamentary Proceedings of Jacob Wiggins, op. cit.; Declaration of Ana Gallum, October 3,
1799, ibid.; Baptism of Pedro Casaly (b. Sept. 18, 1799) on Sept. 5, 1800. The child is listed
as the natural son of Pedro Casaly and Ana Wiggins, free black from Senegal. Catholic Parish
 19 • Ana Gallum, Freed Slave and Property Owner

on which to work four slaves and live with her twelve-year-old son, but the
acting governor replied that she already owned lands on the St. Johns River
and ordered her to get that acreage into cultivation or lose it.8
Compare Ana’s case to the stories of women in Chapters 2, 14, 15, and 17
in this collection. How does Ana’s use of the law compare to the attempted
uses by other enslaved or formerly enslaved women in colonial Latin Amer-
ica? What attitudes toward their marital partnership did Job Wiggins’ peers
express in these legal proceedings? Do you think the relationship between
Ana’s family and that of their slaves would have differed from relations
between white slave-owning families and their slaves? How so or why not?

19.1 Declaration of Miguel Ysnardy, Testamentary

Proceedings, Jacob Wiggins, November 14, 17979

[All witnesses called to testify in the case followed the format of an inter-
rogatory, with each witness swearing first on the Cross, and then responding to
a set of questions posed by a Spanish official.]
Miguel Ysnardy, public interpreter, swore on God and the Cross that by
law he promised to tell the truth about all he knew that was asked of him; and
regarding the particulars contained in this case he said the following.
To the first question he said: He has resided in the Province since 1782,
when it still belonged to the British Crown and it was then he met Job Wiggins,
although he can’t be certain that at that time he was already living conjugally
with the morena (black woman) Ana Gallum, he understood that he bought her
from the House of Panton Leslie as a young girl and that he freed her later and
that he knows that they always lived as if married until his death and that he
had children of both sexes with her, which the declarant saw because he dealt
often with Wiggins and went to his house and saw that he raised and fed them

Registers on microfilm reel 284 J, PKY. These records are also available online at the Slave
Societies Digital Archive http://www.slavesocieties.org/
8. Petition of Nancy [sic] Wiggins, July 3, 1811, and reply by Governor Juan José de
Estrada, July 9, 1811, Spanish Florida Land Records, Record Group 599, Series 992. Brief
translations of the various Wiggins’ land claims were also done by the Historical Records
Survey, Works Projects Administration and published by the State Library Board, Tallahassee,
FL, May 1941. These are available on the Florida Memory site of the State Library & Archives
of Florida. https://www.floridamemory.com/collections/spanishlandgrants/
9. East Florida Papers, Reel 134, P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History, University of
Florida, f. 88 v. The editors have rearranged the ordering of some of the documents in the
following transcriptions to follow chronological order.

227
 19 • Ana Gallum, Freed Slave and Property Owner

as if his children treating them in this manner, unlike the slaves he had in the
house although they were of the same color, who were assigned to serve him.
And to the second question, he referred to his first answer. And to the third
question he said he knows that Wiggins’ estate grew considerably in the last
years he lived, when because he was already old and could not work as much as
in his youth, although one would have expected the contrary. And the witness
attributes this to the management of the negra Ana; and that of her children
and of Wiggins, now grown who worked to conserve and augment the goods;
To the next [fourth question] he answered that the great friendship and history
he had with the deceased Wiggins aids his knowledge and he is certain that he
was never legitimately married nor does he know he had any other children
than those he had with the morena Ana Gallum and he remembers that years
ago, two strangers appeared at his [Wiggins’] plantation saying they were his
relatives, one of whom left shortly afterwards because Wiggins did not recog-
nize him as a relative and the other whom he did recognize stayed but died
some three years later. To the fifth and last question he stated: That the wit-
ness, for the love and high esteem he observed that Wiggins had for Ana and
her children, that as he said were also his own [Wiggins’], he believed and still
believes it was that only they should enjoy the fruits of their labor, inheriting
all the goods at his death, and the witness always understood that although he
never heard Wiggins voice it, and he responds that all he has said is the truth
according to his oath: he is fifty-eight years old, is under no legal charges and he
signed understanding the contents of this declaration

Licenciado Ortega Miguel

  
Ysnardy Isaac Wickes
  
Before me, Jose de Zubizarreta, Government Scribe

19.2 Declaration of don Miguel O’Reilly, November 20, 179710

Don (Sir) Miguel O’Reilly, cura beneficiado Vicario Juez Ecclesiastico (ordained
priest and ecclesiastical judge) of the Parish Church, Plaza and Province of
St. Augustine, Florida, certify that in the second book of the archive in my
charge, are found the following entries of baptisms of pardos and morenos
(blacks) on page 40, second entry, page 41, first, 2nd, and 3rd entries and
page 94, 1st and 2nd entries, numbers 76, 77m 78, 79, and 285 are found
the following persons:

10. Testamentary Proceedings, Jacob Wiggins, November 14, 1797, East Florida Papers,
Reel 134, P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History, University of Florida, f. 17–18.
 19 • Ana Gallum, Freed Slave and Property Owner

Friday, February 13, 1795 I, don Thomas Hassett, cura beneficiado Vicario
Juez Ecclesiastico of the Parish Church, Plaza and Province of St. Augustine,
East Florida baptized and put the holy oils on a free parda (black girl) of thir-
teen years, natural daughter of don Joseph Wiggins, native of England, and of
the free negra, Ana Gallum, native of Bengal [sic]; and I performed all the cer-
emonies of our Holy Mother Church, and named her Patricia, her godfather
was Doctor don Thomas Travers, resident of this city and I advised him of
his spiritual relationship and obligations, and I signed it this day and month.
Thomas Hassett
[On Friday, February 13, 1795, don Thomas Hassett, baptized three
more children of Joseph Wiggins and Ana Gallum. The first was María, their
ten-year-old mulata daughter; the second was their seven year-old mulato
son, Benjamin; and the third was their six-year-old mulata daughter, Juana
Abigail. Serving as godfather for all three children was Doctor don Thomas
Travers. On Wednesday, November 8, 1797, don Miguel baptized Joseph
and Ana’s mulata daughter Ana María, who was born on May 15, 1792, and
their mulato son, Jorge José, born on July, 10, 1795. Don Carlos Clarke11
and doña Ana Sanders served as Ana María’s godparents and don Lorenco
Solana and doña Maria Scott served as godparents for Jorge José.]

19.3 Inventory of Wiggins Plantation, November 21, 179712

On the same plantation and on the same day and year [January 26, 1797]
the Captain of the Militia, don Bernardo Segui, in virtue of the commis-
sion he received and with the assisting witnesses don Juan Forester [sic] and
William Wignes [sic], lists the goods belonging to the deceased for inventory
­
as follows:

Credits:
A debt by Juan Mor [Moore]13 resident of the Rivera de San Juan for twenty
pesos and five reales (coins worth one eighth of a peso each)

11. Don Carlos Clarke, commander of the free black militia of Fernandina, Florida, also
of English ancestry, raised a mixed-race family with Ana’s daughter, Beatriz. Landers, Black
Society.
12. Testamentary Proceedings, Jacob Wiggins, January 26, 1797, East Florida Papers, Reel
134, P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History, University of Florida, f. 3V-6.
13. Juan Moore was a free black militiaman whose enslaved family fled Georgia and received
religious sanctuary in Spanish Florida. Landers, Black Society.

229
 19 • Ana Gallum, Freed Slave and Property Owner

Inventory:
Slaves
First, a negro (black man) named Francisco, seventy years old
Item,14 a negra named Bety, fifty years old
Item, a negrita (black girl) named Rose, eight years old
Item, another negrita named Fanny, four years old
Item, a negro named Bob, twenty-seven years old
Item, a negra named Seillia [Celia], thirty-eight years old
Item, a negra named Amie, seventeen years old
Item a negro named Dicke, fifty-five years old
Item, a negra named Carolina, fifty years old
Item, a negro named Champion, fifty-four years old
Item, a negra named Chloe, thirty-eight years old
Item, negrita named Tenah, seven years old
Item, another negrito named Chason, five years old
Item, another negrito named Dick, five years old
Item, a negra named Venus, thirty-eight years old
Horses
First, a sorrel horse with the usual brand
Item, another red horse [with brand drawn, letters IF inside a circle] on its
right flank
Cattle
First, thirty head of young bulls and bulls, branded with the brand 3E; usu-
ally about seventy head of cattle and calves; forty head of male and females
about two years old, sixty of the same one year old, all marked with the
same brand
Note
Regarding the said cattle, it having been impossible to see them, you can
more or less see they do not account for this year’s calves
Pigs
First, two pigs with piglets
Item, two deer
Item, about thirty head [of pigs] that wander in the forests endangered by
tigers15 and other animals
Canoes
First, a canoe with two oars
Item, another useless canoe

14. Item in the original, meaning next in a list.

15. Likely panthers.
 19 • Ana Gallum, Freed Slave and Property Owner

Corn
One hundred bushels of corn
Rice
A barrel and a half of rice weighing 800 pounds
Yams
Forty bushels of muniatos (yam-like or cassava-like tubers)
Furniture
First, two beds, each with their mattress
Item, three tables of pine
Item, three benches of pine, useless
Item, three cauldrons of iron
Item, one coffee pot of iron
Item, one rifle to shoot birds
Item, five hatchets
Item, four grills
Item, four small hatchets
Item, two carpenter’s tools16
Item, one hand saw
Item, one saw to cut boards
Item, another to chop
Item, two palm leaf baskets
Item, two knives for making shingles
Item, one cooper’s hammer
Item, two cooper’s washers
Item, five large drills
Item, one stone grinder
Item, eight wedges of iron
A plantation of their habitation with one house with a kitchen where the
family lives, two houses of [illegible word] and one Espensa17 six [word illeg-
ible] of negros
Item, sixty fenced acres of land
Item, one thousand forty acres of pine. These lands he gave to his woman
[Ana Wiggins] to inhabit
In the same plantation on the sixth of the same month and year the
Captain of Militias, one Bernardo Segui with the assisting witnesses having
inventoried the property of the deceased Jacobo Wiggins, named don Juan
Forester [sic], resident of the Rivera de San Juan, as executor of the goods

16. The text looks like suelas in the original, which might refer to a carpenter’s, or shoe-
maker’s sole.
17. This phrase is hard to decipher. An Espensa is an expense.

231
 19 • Ana Gallum, Freed Slave and Property Owner

corresponding to the same inventory until the disposition of the tribunal and
he signed in the presence of the assisting witnesses Juan Forrester

Bernardo Segui, Lorenzo Yanes, Lorenzo Solana

19.4 Declaration of Ana Gallum, November 21, 179718

Ana Gallum, free morena, before Your Excellency as legally permitted, pres-
ent myself and state: That I was married in the custom of the Anglicans,
when they dominated the province, to don Joseph Wiggins, resident of the
place called Rolls Town, about thirteen leagues from this Plaza, who being
now dead left thirteen slaves, cattle and other effects on the plantation he
owned, all without doubt for my use, and that of his six living children as his
only and legitimate heirs. But in the month of February of this year [1797],
the Militia Captain, don Bernardo Seguy [sic] came to the plantation to
inventory said property and placed it in the control and administration of
don Juan Forrester who had put one Luis (James Lewis) in charge of every-
thing on my said plantation. But this man wants to be owner of everything
and blocks my use and benefit of the most minimal thing, giving my chil-
dren and me only one ration of corn such as the rest of the negros receive and
we are experiencing the greatest miseries and cruel treatment. In virtue of
this [situation], I come to receive the powerful aid of Your Excellency having
presented the sad situation in which I find myself and of course I believe that
said Lewis is not authorized to enact such a thing, for which reason I find
myself needing to make the following requests of Your Excellency.
First, that your Excellency immediately order the said Lewis to leave my
plantation because no stranger can better care for a property than I who has
helped conserve and augment [it] with my labor and sweat; that because the
Wiggins estate incudes six natural children registered in this Parochial Church
as found in the baptismal books, of which four are minors, two daughters,
one of eight years and the other of six years, and two boys, one of ten years
and the other of three, that you name me as their guardian, as I should be.
Because there is nobody better than I, and for the benefits that redound to
me, who could better care for the properties of these minors, this having
been my same home which for the period of twenty-two years I have been
working and augmenting that which is now inventoried. And respecting my

18. Testamentary Proceedings, Jacob Wiggins, September 11, 1797, East Florida Papers,
Reel 134, P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History, University of Florida, f. 12–13.
 19 • Ana Gallum, Freed Slave and Property Owner

two children older than twelve years, they ask that a guardian be named this
very day. And, finally, that you concede me the free administration of all my
goods as the legitimate widow of the said Wiggins and give me after examina-
tion the same inventories [of goods] that are about to be registered, or failing
that, the necessary sustenance to allow me and my children to exist without
misery, and to this end I ask Your Excellency the right that I am due to the
said property, and to the papers left due to the death of the said Wiggins who
I always heard say would leave all to his children.
For all these reasons I humbly ask Your Excellency agree to order as I
have asked, what I ask is just, and I swear I do not proceed out of malice but
according to the [legal] requirements.

For the interested party who does not know how to write, Dimas Cortes

19.5 Declaration of Patricia Wiggins, November 21, 179719

Patricia Wiggins, free parda (black woman), for herself and in the name of
María, her sister, as is my right by law, present myself to your Majesty and
state: That as the document I present states, I am the natural daughter of
don Joseph Wiggins, now deceased, who was the owner of the plantation
situated about nine leagues west of this Plaza, in the area called Rolls Town.
To my knowledge, my father never made any testamentary disposition of the
thirteen slaves, cattle and other goods that he left. As a result, those goods are
now by the dictate of this Tribunal inventoried and placed in the care and
management of don Juan Forrester, and we are not allowed the use of any of
them.
I ask Your Majesty to appoint me a curador (legal defender) because I have
no known person in this Plaza to take charge of this matter, to represent my
rights, and it is justice that I seek, and I swear that I do not proceed out of
malice but according to the [legal] requirements. . . .

At the request of the interested party who does

not know how to sign, Dimas Cortes

19. Testamentary Proceedings, Jacob Wiggins, November 23, 1797, East Florida Papers,
Reel 134, P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History, University of Florida, f. 15.

233
 19 • Ana Gallum, Freed Slave and Property Owner

19.6 Declaration of don Juan Leslie, November 21, 179720

In the city of St. Augustine, Florida on the 27th of November 1797, I, the
scribe notified don Juan Leslie of what is contained in the earlier document
and informed by this he stated: That he is not sure he has the will in his
possession, that in truth the deceased Wiggins made it during the English
dominion [of Florida] using a qualified attorney or official and the under-
signed certifies as to the authenticity of the said Wiggins’ will because he
read that disposition in which he named as his only and universal heirs his
natural children with a negra named Ana Gallum who was at that time his
slave and to whom he also gave liberty in the cited will. All of which he con-
firms is certain and true according to his religious oath according to law, for
God Almighty and on the Sacred Bible, according to the Protestant sect he
professes, adding that he remembers that the deceased Wiggins in that testa-
ment named don William Panton, the testator’s partner, as guardian of said
children and their mother and of their goods, until such time as they were old
enough to manage them. [The testator] is forty-seven years of age, a resident
and a merchant in this city. He is married and is under no legal penalties and
what he has testified is the best he can remember of what transpired more
than twelve years ago when Wiggins made the said will and he signed it and
I witnessed, Juan Leslie

Before me: Jose de Zubizarreta, Government Scribe

[These proceedings run more than a hundred double-sided folios, a num-

ber of which are dedicated to the signatures of the officials and persons testify-
ing and recording all those who were notified of the testimony. The royal scribe
occasionally summarized all the earlier testimonies. A number of the folios are
illegible but the format is fairly consistent and many of the subsequent testimo-
nies are similar to Leslie’s. Residents, often those who had fictive or actual kin-
ship connection to the free black community, testified about their relationship
or connection to Joseph Wiggins and about the length of time they had known
he and Ana Gallum to have lived together as a couple. They also testified as
to their knowledge that it was always Wiggins’ wish to have Ana and their
children inherit his property, Some witnesses commented on Ana’s successful

20. Testamentary Proceedings, Jacob Wiggins, November 14, 1797, East Florida Papers, Reel
134, P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History, University of Florida, f. 19 don Juan Leslie was
a leading merchant in St. Augustine and director of the important Panton Leslie Trading
Company, from whom Wiggins had initially purchased Ana. Leslie was another resident of
English ancestry, who although married, had children with his slave and he also served as com-
mander of the free black militia. Landers, Black Society, 150, 207, 242.
 19 • Ana Gallum, Freed Slave and Property Owner

management of his estate. Folios 25–28 offer an interesting accounting of items

Wiggins purchased from the Panton Leslie Company and of his outstanding
debt to the company. The following examples focus on testimonies regarding
Ana Gallum’s rights to Wiggins’ property.]

19.7 Declaration of don Dimas Cortes, Testamentary

Proceedings, Jacob Wiggins, January 179821

Don Dimas Cortes, on behalf of don Rafael Espinosa, named guardian of the
minors Patricia Wiggins and her brothers and sisters, natural children of don
Joseph, now dead, formerly a new vassal of Your Catholic Majesty in this
province, in the inventory of goods left by his death ordered by Your Excel-
lency’s Tribunal, following the law and representing the best interests of said
minors, before you appear and state: That I have been informed that your
order of the ninth of this month, in which you declare that the said Wiggins
died intestate; and that the said minors should justify the legal basis they
have for challenging their natural births22 and illegitimacy recorded in their
respective baptismal entries.23 Such justification, Señor Gobernador, would
be impossible for anybody to provide especially since it is not optional, nor
would it lead to the desired objective, and the only thing that can be proven,
and that which is very clear in the cited baptismal entries, against which
nothing else can prevail, is that the minors are truly the natural children of
don Joseph Wiggins, resident who lived in the Province from the time it was
under the dominion of the King of Great Britain; that he remained in the
province even after July 12, 1784 when your Majesty’s troops took possession
of the province; and that under the Protestant sect he professed (and in which
he died) he lived in a conjugal union with his morena slave whom he later
freed and with whom he had numerous children and who helped him over
almost thirty years of labor augment his wealth that is now inventoried and
in deposit and possession of a stranger. This being the case, I do not want nor
should I want for now any other thing except that as quickly as possible, Your
Excellency definitively declare to whom the inventoried goods belong, pre-
serving the rights of my minors (should it be the case that they are not named
the legitimate heirs of all) so that by my representation they may protest and
appeal where it is most convenient, for although the poverty of options in

21. East Florida Papers, Reel 134, P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History, University of
Florida, f. 31. The precise day in January is not indicated on the document.
22. Underlining in the original.
23. Underlining in the original.

235
 19 • Ana Gallum, Freed Slave and Property Owner

this place is known, there are many possibilities in Havana by which they can
appeal if it should be necessary before the Royal Throne if by chance (as I
have heard some rumors) these goods are adjudicated to the Royal Hacienda
in accordance with the Laws.
For these [the Laws] if they so disposed, must be very different in other
cases and by no means apply in this Province, to which Your Majesty [the
King] conceded the privilege to receive new settlers of whatever faith, as long
as the public faith was solely Catholic. Many other exemptions also appear in
this case, that in another time I will allege and aided by other information I
will be able to better claim, the main ones being that it appears in this inquiry
that the deceased made a will in the time of the British, according to the dec-
laration on f. 19; and if he did in fact make one, it must exist wherever they
moved their archives; so there is much to claim and in consequence it cannot
be said that Jacobo Wiggins died intestate. It would certainly appear a very
hard thing for Your Excellency to appropriate the goods resulting from the
sweat and industry of farmers and deprive legitimate natural children of their
enjoyment, who are now loyal vassals of His Majesty in the Province and who
have joined the brotherhood of the Church, all of them being very young, in
addition the law favors the mother, for the work and increase during the time
of the couple’s union, and that of her oldest son who, sadly, the Indians killed.
And as for the credit of don Juan Leslie for the two bills that he has pre-
sented, I agree that these seem very correct and for all these reasons, I implore
your Majesty to definitely rule as I have asked, it is justice I seek and I swear
not to proceed from malice, and all the rest. . . .
And, because you have not yet ruled anything regarding the request that
Ana Gallum, mother of these minors, made to you in her petition of the 21st
of November last on f. 12, asking that the inventoried goods be assigned to
her with the corresponding bond as agreed to by the executor in his own peti-
tion of f. 20 and the Royal Accountant in his representation, if it please Your
Majesty, this just request should take effect or give this function to another
administrator because in the control of the current one [don Juan Forrester],
who has had it for almost a year, I consider for many reasons it has been
extremely prejudicial to the increase of the property and the rights of the
heirs. I request justice, Dimas Cortes
[In subsequent folios, a number of other individuals to whom Wiggins
­
owed money came forward to record their claims to Ana’s inheritance. On f.
40 the widow María Hambly registered a claim on two cows and their off-
spring; on f. 41–42v don Juan Forrester, an associate of the Panton Leslie
Company also made additional claims on the Wiggins’ estate. On f. 43–44v
Ana Gallum petitioned the governor for assistance stating that she and her
children were in dire need of “clothing and other indispensable items” and
 19 • Ana Gallum, Freed Slave and Property Owner

asking that she be given “a dozen cows with their calves, two negro men named
Bob and Champion, and the negress Betsi for domestic service” until such time
as the court ruled. Ana’s supporter, Dimas Cortes, and two other witnesses,
Juan Gutiérrez and Lorenzo Solano, inventoried the Wiggins’ plantation
a second time on October 21, 1798 on f. 55–61, recommending that since
Ana had no other way to pay Wiggins’ debts, she sell most of her cattle herd
to satisfy them. On f. 66 dated November 29, 1798, Ana asked the court to
wait until spring for the sale (after the birth of calves) and on f. 68–69, don
Juan Forrester, of the Panton Leslie Company, agreed. Ana subsequently sold
a number of cattle to don Fernando Arredondo and Antonio Huertas, among
others, while she and the children continued to live on their plantation.]

19.8 Declaration of Manuel Zamorano, Royal

Accountant, September 14, 179824

[I,] the Accountant of the Army and the Royal Treasury, as fiscal (crown attor-
ney), in response to Your Majesty’s [the Governor] order of the fourteenth of
September, have reviewed the official proceedings resulting from the death
of Jacobo Wigins [sic], resident of this province, to assign his properties and
goods in favor of those who appear to be his legitimate heirs and from what
it appears I say: As a result of the declarations received from Jaime Luis, Juan
Muray [sic] that said Wigins [sic], a new vassal of His Catholic Majesty was
unmarried but did leave seven children who he had with a free morena named
Nancy [i.e., Ana Gallum]; and that the will of their father was always to leave
them in possession of his properties when he died. I am of the opinion that if
Your Honor’s Tribunal applies the relevant laws touching on this matter, and
declares that natural children, such as those that present themselves here, are
due the same inheritance as those born of a legitimate marriage, then whatever
Wigins [sic] left should be placed in the control of the said morena. But if by
law, they do not enjoy the same rights as those [legitimate children], it falls on
Your Majesty to assign what the inventory states exists to the named trustee,
don Juan Forrester, declaring invalid the wishes of Jacobo Wigins [sic], as there
is no testament. And if all that exists are the declarations of those who testified,
Your Majesty will decide what you judge to be most just. San Agustin de la
Florida, twentieth of November of seventeen ninety-seven.

Gonzalo Zamorano

24. Testamentary Proceedings, Jacob Wiggins, November 23, 1797, East Florida Papers,
Reel 134, P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History, University of Florida, f. 14.

237
 19 • Ana Gallum, Freed Slave and Property Owner

[This case was only concluded in 1801, three-and-a-half years after

Wiggins’ death, but in the end, Governor Enrique White agreed with the
­
many who testified on Ana Gallum’s behalf that Wiggins intended Ana and
the children to inherit his estate, but reminded her that she was forbidden from
alienating any of the estate and was still responsible for her remaining debts,
including to her daughter, Patricia.]

19.9 Declaration of don Enrique White,

Testamentary Proceedings, Jacob Wiggins25

In the city of St. Augustine, Florida, on the fourteenth of July, 1801: Señor
don Enrique White, Colonel of the Royal Armies and Governor, Civil and
Military of it and this Province, for Your Majesty: Having reviewed the dec-
larations and inventories and estimates of the goods left at the death of Job
Wiggins, resident in this Province since the time of the British dominion,
which pertain to the Royal Treasury; and to the free morena Ana Gallum, and
to her children Ysavel, María, Benjamin, Juana, Ana and Jorge, that she had
with Wiggins, living in conjugal marriage according to the Protestant sect,
decree: that it is clear in these declarations that the named children, and no
others, were had by and raised by Wiggins with the named Ana, and that also
no other children are known, nor are any other relatives known who would
have rights to legitimately inherit, should declare and does declare, that the
named six children and one other] who in the declarations is named William
and who died at the hand of the Indians after his father died, are heirs in
equal parts to the goods left by his death, and that also is [heir] in two parts
equal to that of her children their mother Ana, for earnings or as best required
by law, in consideration of the clear findings in the declarations, not only
because it was the wish of Wiggins shortly before his death, but also there
is some proof that he stated this in a will that two very reputable witnesses
signed in the times of the British dominion, whose [the will’s] location is
unknown, and the children of the morena, Ana, all being still minor and she
the tutor and legal guardian.
[The governor then ordered that Ana be named administrator of the
inheritance from Wiggins’ estate and that she absolutely be forbidden from
alienating any of the inventoried goods, adding that it would without doubt
be worse to place the administration in the hands of another. Ana would

25. East Florida Papers, Reel 134, P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History, University of
Florida, f. 107 v.
 19 • Ana Gallum, Freed Slave and Property Owner

administer the estate remaining after deducting all legal charges incurred
­
by officials taking testimony, inventorying the estate, and certifying the legal
paperwork, and after deducting nineteen pesos and one real due to her adult
daughter, Patricia.]
Signed Enrique White, Licenciado Josef de Ortega: before Me: Jose de
Zubizarreta, Government Scribe.
­
Suggested Reading

Candido, Mariana P. “Concubinage and Slavery in Benguela, 1750–1850.” In Slav-

ery in Africa and the Caribbean: A History of Enslavement and Identity Since the
18th Century, ed. Olatunji Ojo and Nadine Hunt (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012),
65–84.
Hanger, Kimberly S. Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial
New Orleans, 1769–1803 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997).
Landers, Jane. “African-American Women and Their Pursuit of Rights through
Eighteenth-Century Spanish Texts.” In Haunted Bodies: Gender and Southern
Texts, ed. Anne Goodwyn Jones and Susan V. Donaldson (Charlottesville: Uni-
versity of Virginia Press, 1998), 56–76.
———. Black Society in Spanish Florida (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999,
2001, 2002, 2005).
McKinley, Michelle A. Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization
in Colonial Lima, 1600–1700 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
Schafer, Daniel L. Anna Madgigine, Jai Kingsley: African Princess Florida Slave, Plan-
tation Slaveowner (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003).

Document Themes
• Family
• Labor
• Law
• Race and ethnicity
• Religion
• Sexuality and gender
• Slavery

239
 20

A Female Slave Owner’s Abuse of an

Enslaved Woman (Neiva, Colombia, 1803)1

A legal investigation into slave abuse raises questions about both the limits of
slave owners’ powers and about gendered understandings of violence in the
setting of Colombia at the turn of the nineteenth century. The following texts
are excerpted from an 1803 criminal suit from Nueva Granada (current-day
Colombia, Panama, and Venezuela) charging that a Spanish woman, doña
(lady) Ana María Vargas, had physically abused Simona, an enslaved black
woman, to the point of death. The Colombian National Archives classifies
the following excerpt in its catalogue as a “sumaria,” denoting the central
investigative portion of a legal case that was preceded by the case’s open-
ing denunciation, and which was normally followed by the juicio plenario
(plenary suit, where all evidence was fully examined) and the sentencia or
sentence.2 The sumaria, which became a crucial innovation in Spanish law
beginning in the mid-sixteenth century, consisted in magistrates’ investiga-
tive inquiries into the cases they tried. Conventionally, such processes opened
with a magistrate’s declaration about a specific crime about which he had
learned from a denunciation or accusation or his own knowledge, followed
by his analysis of its occurrence undertaken by interviewing several witnesses.
The materials contained in this file document a case already in progress. The
denunciation or accusation, alleging that Vargas was responsible for Simona’s
death, has already been made. We cannot ascertain from these documents who
had initiated the inquiry, but they imply that a man called don (sir) Diego
Antonio Gutiérrez, a scribe, had initiated the case. The portion of the sumaria
reproduced here opens with a notice from alcalde ordinario (municipal judge)
Josef Silvestre Rodríguez Durán to all his peer alcaldes ordinarios in the city of
San Sebastían de la Plata, informing them of an order issued by the Audiencia
(court) of New Granada requiring that certain elements be included in any
presiding alcalde’s investigation of Simona’s death. Luis de Oballe, doña
Ana María Vargas’s hardworking legal defender, had successfully lobbied the

1. Archivo General de la Nación de Colombia, Colonia, Miscelánea: SC.39, 65, D. 57,

“Sumaria criminal por maltratos a esclava y causar su muerte.” The editors acknowledge with
thanks Frida Osorio Gonsen’s translation assistance with this document.
2. Charles R. Cutter, The Legal Culture of Northern New Spain, 1700–1810 (Albuquerque:
The University of New Mexico Press, 1995), 105.
 20 • A Female Slave Owner’s Abuse of an Enslaved Woman

Audiencia to require the alcalde ordinario de primero voto (he of higher rank)
in La Plata who handled the investigation to include the various stipulated
questions detailed below in his inquiry. Much of the following document,
then, consists in the list of questions that Oballe had specified the direct-
ing magistrate should put to the witnesses to be examined in the case. We
might conclude from the extent and tenor of the questions that Vargas and her
family had been alarmed by indications in the initial proceedings that Vargas
stood a chance of being found guilty of excessively abusing Simona or causing
her death. Her procurador (legal defender) certainly went to intricate lengths
to ensure that the court be made aware of context he considered relevant to
Vargas’s defense. He framed many of the questions he instructed the alcalde
ordinario to put to witnesses with a negative construction, as in his sixth pro-
posed question: “If when [Simona, the slave] was brought back to the house
of Zerrano for the second time, was she not so furious that she tore apart even
the animals that went into her room.” He framed his queries in this way either
because evidence given in the original denunciation revealed this information,
which he wished to substantiate, or because he was aware of it from private
conversations with doña Vargas, the party he represented.
­
Doña Vargas was married to Pedro Zerrano, identified as the owner of
Simona, a slave. Vargas, Zerrano, and their daughters lived on a hacienda
(estate), in the town of Timaná, located the southern tip the cordillera central
(central mountain range) in current-day Huila department, which was called
the province of Neiva in the colonial period. The case was tried in the nearby
larger municipal center of San Sebastián de la Plata. The Zerrano–Vargas
family’s ownership of an African slave in this location would have been some-
what unusual at this time and in this part of Colombia. Representing just
under 8 percent of the total population, the enslaved population amounted
to sixty-five thousand people according to Nueva Granada’s 1778–1780 cen-
sus.3 While this represented one of the largest slave populations in main-
land Spanish America by the late colonial period, the concentration of slaves
differed markedly within regions in the kingdom with the slave population
concentrated much more heavily in the provinces of Popayán, Cartagena,
Choco, and Antioquía, working particularly in the mining and sugar sectors.
By the early nineteenth century, the African slave population in Neiva, where
Simona worked and died, was just over 2 percent of the province’s total. The
1825 census listed 1,237 slaves among Neiva’s total population of 47,157.4

3. Anthony McFarlane, Colombia Before Independence: Economy, Society, and Politics Under
Bourbon Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), Table 1, 353.
4. Russell Lohse, “Reconciling Freedom with the Rights of Property: Slave Emancipation
in Colombia, 1821–1852, with Special Reference to La Plata,” The Journal of Negro History
86:3 (Summer 2001), 204.

241
 20 • A Female Slave Owner’s Abuse of an Enslaved Woman

Most of this population would likely have worked in the dominant economic
ventures of the region: cattle raising, cacao cultivation, and gold and salt min-
ing. The Zerrano–Vargas household, however, apparently employed Simona
more often as a domestic laborer.
The circumstances of this case are also unusual in that they describe a
female member of a slave-owning family engaging in the physical punishment
of an enslaved person. New research has begun to examine women’s roles as
slave owners in Spanish American society, but most work has focused on
women’s participation in the emancipation of slaves rather than on the ways
they participated in the institution of slavery even to the point of inflicting
physical discipline on slaves, as discussed in this text.5 Spanish law permitted
owners to physically discipline their slaves, but prohibited owners from kill-
ing them. The Siete Partidas, the thirteenth-century legal code that served as
the most important foundation of the law in Spanish America, specified that
while owners could punish slaves, owners who unintentionally caused their
deaths could be sentenced with five years’ banishment, and those who had
actually intended to kill their slaves were subject to capital punishment, the
same penalty for parents who murdered their children.6 It is unlikely that
Vargas would have been sentenced in such terns. Spanish American mag-
istrates tended to sentence more lightly than prescribed by the Siete Parti-
das. Nevertheless, the extensive intervention of the Audiencia in shaping the
investigative magistrate’s interview questions suggests that both her defender
and the Audiencia itself took seriously the implications of Vargas’s actions
and their possible ramifications and went to extensive lengths here to pre-
empt a guilty sentence.
Other elements of the case may be more representative of the history of
African slavery in Colombia, including Simona’s evident repeated resistance
to her condition. The evidence of the sole witness, Toribio Clavijo, whose
testimony is reproduced in the excerpt of the sumaria below, confirms that
Simona had repeatedly tried to flee from servitude. Other material alludes
to the violence with which she resisted capture and pacification as well as
her husband’s reputation as a cimarron, or renegade slave. Simona and her
husband, like many of those enslaved in Nueva Granada, chose revolt and
resistance, while others, like Isabel Victoria García (see Chapter 15) opted
for adaptation to the slave regime. Although recent researchers are hesitant
to characterize late colonial Colombia as definitively experiencing a dramatic
rise in slave rebellion, an older historiography contends that slave resistance

5. Susan Migden Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 139.
6. Alan Watson, Slave Law in the Americas (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989), 45.
 20 • A Female Slave Owner’s Abuse of an Enslaved Woman

and escape had become so frequent in this period that it had acquired the
characteristics of a colonial civil war between slaves and slave owners.7
This document, because of its fragmentary nature, poses particular chal-
lenges for those seeking to reconstruct the history of enslaved women and
female slave owners. We do not hear in it from either Simona or from doña
Ana María Vargas themselves, nor do we possess the case in its entirety, so we
do not know what kind of evidence different witnesses presented against Var-
gas, nor if the efforts of her procurador succeeded in securing her absolution.
Nevertheless, the sumaria can still be analyzed for several purposes. What do
we learn from it about late colonial conceptions of normative femininity,
both for African slave women and Spanish women of the upper class? Which
aspects of behavior deemed unfeminine did various parties described here
seek to curtail or reframe? What specific evidence had earlier witnesses appar-
ently provided to the court about the details of the case that doña Vargas’s
procurador sought to challenge and why? Aside from the legal issues presented
in this case, its details allow for the reconstruction of some aspects of the lived
experience of slavery in the context of this hacienda. What details can you
extract from it that help you reconstruct the living and working conditions?

20.1 Alcalde don Josef Silvestre Rodríguez Durán Informs la

Plata’s Magistrates about How to Investigate Simona’s Case8

[Sealed paper: 1804 and 1805]

Don Josef Silvestre Rodríguez Durán, alcalde ordinario de primer nomi-
nación (of first nomination) in this city of San Sebastián de la Plata and its
jurisdiction, for His Majesty, may God preserve His Highness.
To the Señores (sirs) Alcaldes Ordinarios of the city of Buga,9 and to any
other ministers which may be presented with this suit, I make known that
the honest servants10 of the Audiencia (Court) and Royal Chancellery of the
Kingdom of New Granada, have issued a royal provision whose content liter-
ally states the following: Don Carlos, by the grace of God, . . . [this is followed
by the long list of the titles of the Spanish king and all the places over which

7. Jaime Jaramillo Uribe, “Esclavos y señores en la Sociedad Colombiana del siglo XVIII,”
Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura, 1:1 (January 1963), 42. Available
at http://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/achsc/article/view/29620/29858. Accessed May 16,
2017.
8. Archivo General de la Nación de Colombia, Colonia, Miscelánea: SC.39, 65, D. 57
“Sumaria criminal por maltratos a esclava y causar su muerte.”
9. A city in western Colombia’s current Valle del Cauca department.
10. SS in the original, which might represent, as translated here, “Seguros Servidores.”

243
 20 • A Female Slave Owner’s Abuse of an Enslaved Woman

he held royal authority]. Insofar as the indicated criminal case was received
and put to judgement before my viceroy, president, regent and the oidores
(judges) of my Audiencia and Royal Chancellery in this Kingdom of New
Granada, and was represented in the following way:
Most powerful Señor: Luis de Oballe, procurador del numero11 and legal
representative for doña María Vargas y Flores, vecina (citizen) of Timaná, in a
case about the ill-treatment attributed to her of a slave named Simona, from
which the slave’s death is said to have followed appears before Your Highness
to declare: that as part of the evidence that forms this legal process, I beg that
Your Highness will be well served, prior to the fiscal (prosecuting attorney)’s
citación (subpoena), to issue a Royal Provision instructing the alcalde ordi-
nario de primer voto of the city of La Plata to proceed with the following
inquiries: First, to confirm whether don Diego Antonio Gutiérrez recognizes
as his own and by his hand the letter written in la Plata, dated the 15th of
April, 1803 and addressed to don Felix Zerrano certifying a copy of the bap-
tismal certificate of doña Antonia and doña Margarita Zerrano, daughters of
the party I represent. Further,12 that the judge and a scribe interview wit-
nesses from the hacienda of San Miguel which belongs to don Pedro Zerrano,
and also examine the place where the body of Simona, slave of Zerrano, was
buried according to the information that could be obtained, to study the
gorge located eight blocks from the house, next to the ravine called Las Muse-
ñas, and provide a detailed account of the location or place where Simona’s
bones were found and their distance from the aforementioned house. Fur-
ther, to receive information from the witnesses that will be presented to him
about the following questions:
First if they have news about the lawsuit. 2nd: Their age and identifying
information.13 3rd: Their knowledge of Simona, who was don Pedro Zerra-
no’s slave, and of her temperament, nature, and habits and if she had a wild
and depraved nature and was inclined principally to run away such that her
owners could not put up with her and if she was always escaping from their
house. 4th: If as a result of this, he discovered that don Pedro Zerrano tried to
send her back, together with her husband, to her previous owner, don Nicolas
de Cabrera, who, instead of agreeing to this, lowered the price another one
hundred pesos from his original price so that the two pieces were sold for
their most negligible value.14 5th: If the negra (black woman), because of her

11. Procuradores de número were professionals licensed to practice law who were less fully
educated than the lawyers and who often handled the initial submission of legal cases.
12. “Pared ” in the original, which in this context, I have translated as “further” throughout.
13. The original says that witnesses should provide their “generales de la ley,” their identifying
information (name, home address, occupation, and marital status).
14. A pieza, or piece referred to an able-bodied slave.
 20 • A Female Slave Owner’s Abuse of an Enslaved Woman

numerous childbirths and her escapes was not destroyed and emaciated to
such an extent that she appeared to be a skeleton and if her womb was on the
outside of her body (tenia su matriz fuera).15 6th: If when she was brought back
to the house of Zerrano for the second time, was she not so furious that she
tore apart even the animals that went into her room. 7th: How many times
was she punished for the two escapes, how many lashes she received, with what
instruments, by whose hand, and in what position; and whether she was hang-
ing, stretched out, tied up, etc. 8th: If, even after receiving only one moderate
punishment which doña Ana María de Vargas herself administered after they
brought her the second time, [Simona] was not fulfilling her womanly duties
in the house, such as grinding corn and cooking it and putting the copper pot
on the fire. 9th: If she did not go down to fetch water in the drinking jug and
was accompanied only by a daughter of doña Ana María or someone else from
the house to prevent her from running away, until one day, when she resisted
when she was at the spring accompanied by doña Rosa and María Muñoz, so
that they had to bring her by force because she said that not even all the devils
in the world could make her return to this house. If this occurred when doña
Ana María Flores16 was already very ill, with fever and swollen feet, and just
about to give birth; if she gave birth the next day and if two days later she felt
a terrible pain in her side to the point where she lost consciousness, and if she
was brought on the third day to la Plata and did not know anything about the
slave for a long time, nor had any contact with her because she did not conva-
lesce from her unhealthy condition nor return to the hacienda for two months.
10th: That Rosalía Liscano should say whether, when doña María de Vargas
was just recovering from her illness and was speaking one day about the negra,
she [Rosalía] told her that the negra had already died and if this was the first
news she had had about it. And if she did not ask her then what she had died
from and if she said that she did not know. And if she did not reply that that
was how it was that she had been advised, and if she had answered that it was
because they had not left her. 11th: They should say if Vargas had not always
been a sick woman and weak and incapable of giving harsh punishment. If, in
her house, her slaves had been given bad treatment with respect to food and
clothing. If her daughter, doña Rosa, is not of a docile and mild-mannered
temperament. 12th: They should say if the aforementioned don Diego Anto-
nio Gutiérrez is not an avowed enemy of the house because of an altercation
he had with don Toribio Zerrano concerning his father’s will. 13th: If the
aforementioned Gutiérrez has not been the scribe of La Plata and since when,
and if he has not for this reason addressed documents to all the alcaldes ordi-
naries including don Miguel Mariano González who was a scribe as well in the

15. Presumably, the judge is to ask if Simona had a prolapsed uterus.

16. I.e., Vargas, whose full name was doña María Vargas y Flores.

245
 20 • A Female Slave Owner’s Abuse of an Enslaved Woman

preceding year, and if he received detailed information regarding this case that
the señores of the court of the Real Audiencia sent him. 14th: If they know how
this information was obtained and if the witnesses were left in liberty or if they
were intimidated or threatened, and by whom; and if they swore a legal oath;
and who examined them, and who issued and wrote out their statements; and
if these were read to them after being written in order that they could see what
they had declared; and if before this they had been able to see the statements
of some other witnesses so as to not make variations in their statements. 15th:
That they should say if don Joaquin Benites is not also an avowed enemy of
Toribio Zerrano because of opposing interests and if la Muñoz is not a beggar
and drunk during the day. And if Juan Romualdo Villarroel is known in Zer-
rano’s house or has been seen entering it before or after the events of this case
with some frequency. 16th: That don Gerónimo Gonzáles should say if it was
not he who brought back the slave Simona to the house of doña Ana María de
Vargas the second time that she ran away, having caught her as alcalde then of
la Santa Hermandad17 and if the slave was mistreated or hurt because of the
lashes. 17th: They should say whether doctor don Fernando de Vargas, priest
of La Plata, as uncle of doña Ana María, did not visit her house with great
frequency to help her with whatever task she needed. 18th: They should say if
the reason for having sent the slave who was the husband of Simona to be sold
at the gateway to the Chocó18 was because he was a cimarrón. 19th: That don
Toribio Clavijo should testify about the events in this case of which he is well
aware, and especially to ask him if, after many days after having been informed
by the news from Liscano, whether (doña) Vargas asked him (Clavijo) what
had happened, and if he, no doubt, out of fear for the delicate condition in
which he saw her, answered that nothing had happened. And if this important
witness is not in that jurisdiction, the respective judge should be urged to
request statements about all the pertinent questions, and that once the investi-
gation is done, to send his report to this High Court and that it is kept for an
appropriate time in the interest of justice through which I beg Your Highness
to decree as I ask I swear in what is required etc. I also ask that the certification
by the city council of La Plata be kept for a time. I swear as above.19

Doctor Camilo Torres, Luis de Ovalle.

17. John Leddy Phelan, The People and the King: The Comunero Revolution in Colombia,
1781 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), 177, describes Nuevo Granada’s Santa
Hermandad as “both a rural police force” and “a court of first instance exercising original juris-
diction in the rural hinterland of an urban or village nucleus.”
18. The Chocó, now a Pacific coastal department in northwest Colombia, was a historic
center of Nuevo Granada’s African slave population.
19. Juro ut supra in the original.
 20 • A Female Slave Owner’s Abuse of an Enslaved Woman

[The court’s fiscal and the alcalde ordinario de primer voto of la Plata,
Josef Silvestre de Rodríguez y Durán, agreed to implement the Audiencia’s
decree. Rodríguez y Durán also obtained the testimony of the key witness, don
Torivio Clavijo. His deposition constitutes the remainder of the sumaria:]
On the same day, month, and year, [March 22, 1804], in accordance with
what was ordered, I don Josef María Cárdenas, called Toribio Clavijo, vecino,
to testify in the presence of witnesses and in the absence of a scribe. He
took an oath in due form required by law for Our Señor God and he made
the sign of the cross by whose power he swore to tell the truth about that
which and would be questioned, in accordance with the ynterragatorio yncerto
(unresolved interrogation) within his knowledge touching the written com-
mission.20 He declares that he has heard about the lawsuit and is not in a
position of personal conflict of interest with respect to it.21 He is forty-four
years old. And in response to the second question he says that he personally
knew the negra (black woman) Simona, who was don Pedro Josef Zerrano’s
slave, and who had an arrogant temperament and therefore a bad nature.
She did not treat her señora (mistress) with the respect due to her despite the
latter’s forgiveness of her many faults. He declares that Simona’s customary
practice was to go about absconding for no known reason. In response to the
third question, he states that everything is true in this question and he refers
to what he has already expressed. To the fourth question, he says it is true
that because don Pedro José Zerrano found out about Simona’s bad attri-
butes, he tried to return her along with her husband to her previous owner,
don Nicolás de Cabrera; but the latter, in order to avoid again owning such
slaves in his house, preferred to reduce by one hundred pesos the price he
had originally charged for them. To the fifth question, he answers that it is
true and he attests that he has seen the slave Simona aniquilada (destroyed)
when don Pedro Zerrano brought her under his control and that she suffered
the illness of having her womb outside her body. She did not recover from
this, and he is persuaded that this was because of her continual flights. In
response to question six: that he was aware of the facts because he heard them
said to the servants of the house. To the seventh: that in the case of the two
principal escapes that are dealt with here, he did not see the punishment of
the negra, Simona, but that he did know that the first time some fellow called
Coellar punished her by order of the señora doña Ana María de Vargas, and
according to what she told the declarant, that she, by her own hand disci-
plined [Simona] the second time with some short lashings which he takes to

20. The text literally refers here to a “deprecatorio,” a commission of specific functions that
the judge in a suit makes to another judge of equal seniority to fulfill a prescribed legal step.
21. The text reads: “los generales de la ley no le tocan.” See Chapter 8, footnote 9.

247
 20 • A Female Slave Owner’s Abuse of an Enslaved Woman

be how it happened considering that he perceives the said señora to be sick

and delicate and incapable of excessive punishment. In response to the ninth,
he says that in equal terms it is true that after her escape, Simona the negra
was punished so that she would not run away and that she was controlled to
prevent her from escaping again. That concerning the resistance of the negra
and its consequences, he did not see this but he did hear it said from those of
the house that all the rest that is asked about in this question is true and he
states that it is true for having seen it. To the eleventh question, he responds,
because he did not speak about the tenth question, and refers to what he
declared in response to the seventh question, that he knows this from having
seen that in the house of doña Ana María Vargas the slaves were not mis-
treated with excessive punishments; that food was regular and the same with
clothing. The declarant knows that the temperament of doña María Rosa
Zerrano, daughter of doña Ana María, is docile and mild-mannered as he was
asked. And in response to question twelve: that he can not give any other rea-
son than that provided for don Diego Antonio Gutiérrez’s bad faith against
don Pedro Zerrano and his family. And in response to question thirteen: that
don Diego Antonio Gutiérrez, first was a scribe, and then wrote to the judges
of la Plata, as documents certify. In response to question fourteen: that he
does not know about it. To the fifteenth question: that he does not know and
only knows that María Muños is a poor woman who was subjected to serve
señora doña Ana María Vargas for her maintenance and that it is true that she
has the vice of drinking. To the seventeenth question for not having spoken
about the preceding one, he said that it is true that doctor don Fernando de
Vargas, as he was her uncle, frequently visited the house of doña Ana María,
his niece, and he believed that everyone in her house would have helped her
with any work that needed doing. And in response to the eighteenth ques-
tion: he confirms the content of the question. And in response to the nine-
teenth question, he refers to the declaration he made on the 15th of January
of this year concerning this same case and he says that this is the truth as he
declared in under oath, which he affirms and ratifies. And once his statement
was read to him, he signed it with me the judge and the witnesses as I certify.
[signature] Cárdenas [signature] José Toribio Clavijo; witnesses: guard
Cazerez, [signature] Miguel Bermeo
­
Suggested Reading

Helg, Aline. Liberty and Equality in Caribbean Colombia, 1770–1835. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
 20 • A Female Slave Owner’s Abuse of an Enslaved Woman

McFarlane, Anthony. Colombia Before Independence: Economy, Society, and Politics

Under Bourbon Rule. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Uribe-Uran, Victor M. Fatal Love: Spousal Killers, Law, and Punishment in the Late
Colonial Spanish Atlantic. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015.

Document Themes
• Family
• Labor
• Law
• Sex and gender
• Slavery

249
 21

María del Carmen Ventura’s Criminal Trial

for Infanticide (Zacualtipan, Mexico, 1806)

The criminal trial for the crime of infanticide María del Carmen Ventura
underwent at the close of the colonial era in a small Mexican community
reveals much about contemporary notions of maternity and femininity, the
localized operation of criminal justice in the era of the Enlightenment, and
the social experiences of non-elite women in this setting. Ventura was a poor
woman of Spanish descent who lived in the small community of Zacualti-
pan, in the current state of Hidalgo, Mexico, at the turn of the nineteenth
century. Although legally married, Ventura had lived apart from her husband
for twelve years at the time that a encargado de justicia (judicial official) in her
community opened a criminal investigation against her because he suspected
her of having committed infanticide.
Both legal theory and statute regulating criminal practice in the colonial
period handled with considerable severity both the crimes of infanticide and
the closely related charge of intentional abortion. Medieval and Early Mod-
ern Castilian legal texts, including the foundational Castilian legal code, King
Alfonso X’s Siete Partidas, decreed that those found guilty of committing
infanticide should receive the death penalty. One eighteenth-century Spanish
medico–juridical tract that took its inspiration from the Partidas asserted that
those convicted of infanticide should be “sewn into a hide with a rooster, a
dog, a snake and a monkey and tossed in the sea or a river.”1
Although the crime was theoretically treated harshly, in the setting of colo-
nial Mexico, as María del Carmen Ventura’s trial illustrates, community mem-
bers and judicial officials adopted a more equivocal view of the act. Ventura’s
was one of the only twelve cases of infanticide historians have uncovered in
the setting of New Spain. Unlike other violent crimes—homicide, assault, or
rape—infanticide was not a crime that community members felt compelled
to bring to the attention of judicial authorities in the colonial era, perhaps
because they did not often perceive its occurrence. As in Ventura’s case, very
few women in colonial Latin America, even at the close of the colonial period,

1. Cristóbal Nieto de Piña, Instruccion medica para discerner, se el feto muerto, lo ha sido den-
tro, o fuera del utero (Madrid: don Manuel Nicolas Vazques, n.d.), quoted in Nora E. Jaffary,
Reproduction and Its Discontents in Mexico: Childbirth and Contraception from 1750 to 1905
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), 109.
 21 • María del Carmen Ventura’s Criminal Trial for Infanticide

gave birth assisted by medical doctors. Most commonly, however, women

were attended at childbirth by a midwife, like Isabel Hernández (see Chapter
11). But many also gave birth either alone or assisted by female acquaintances
and for these reasons, details about unexpected births or misbirths, when
they occurred, would easily escape legal or medical monitoring by agents of
the colonial state. We cannot know from the evidence presented in this case
whether Ventura’s child died of natural causes immediately after birth, or
whether she had facilitated this act by ingesting an efficacious abortifacient
such as cihuapatli (the aster flower) or altamisa (altamisia), that would induce
early labor. This was a practice to which women frequently resorted in colo-
nial Mexico, although its history has only been recently brought to light.2
The attitude many of the court officials involved in Ventura del Carmen’s
case is also typical of those judges adopted toward those accused of both abor-
tion and infanticide. Conviction for either crime was the exception rather
than the rule in the colonial period.3 We may be observing the beginnings
of a late colonial change in attitude about such matters in Ventura’s case,
however. In this instance, a local judicial officer, don José López de Anaya,
initiated the case against her because of his indignant suspicion that she had
killed her newborn child. His supposition was based on the grounds that he
had noticed that her publicly known pregnancy had ended both abruptly
and secretly. Notice, however, that coincident with the heightened suspicion
about Ventura that Anaya voices here, we also see evidence in the defense
presented by both her curador (legal defender) and Real Audiencia (Royal
Court) lawyer Victoriano Umaran y Arenzaza of Enlightenment-influenced
rhetoric in defense of her rights.4
Ventura’s case is also illustrative of some aspects of non-elite women’s lives
in late colonial Mexico. We learn from these records that while it may have
been possible for women to apply for church-sanctioned marital separation
from unsatisfactory husbands (see Chapter 11), the voluntary and unofficial
dissolution of marriage that Ventura and her spouse had enacted was subject
to societal censure, and, according to her curador, to a position of economic
precariousness as well.5 Although she normally lived in a small community
­
2. See Jaffary, Reproduction and Its Discontents, 33–34, 79–85.
3. See Jaffary, Reproduction and Its Discontents, 104–37.
4. For further discussion of such ideas and their mobilization in the late colonial era, see
Bianca Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial: Ordinary Litigants and Colonialism in the Spanish
Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
5. Silvia M. Arrom, “Desintegración familial y pauperización: Los indigentes del Hospicio de
Pobres de la ciudad de México, 1795,” in Familia y vida privada en la historia de iberoamérica,
ed. Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Cecilia Rabell Romero (Mexico: UNAM-Colegio de México,
1996), 119–31, has documented that women who remained single in late colonial Mexico
suffered from economic disadvantages when compared to their married peers.

251
 21 • María del Carmen Ventura’s Criminal Trial for Infanticide

outside of the urban capital, Ventura’s economic prospects would not have
differed greatly from those of the better documented urban population of late
eighteenth-century Mexico City. By the late eighteenth century, poor people
constituted approximately 85 percent of Mexico City’s population. They
worked as its manual laborers, domestic servants, seamstresses, cooks, heal-
ers, paupers, and prostitutes, workers whose labor was morally condemned
although not prohibited by law in the colonial world.6 Despite María del
Carmen Ventura’s limited financial means, readers might be surprised to
learn of the degree of geographic mobility she experienced. At the beginning
of her trial, she was living in Zacualtipan, Hidalgo, a community roughly
two hundred kilometers northeast of Mexico City. But at some point in the
month between early November and early December 1806, Ventura had
escaped from a private house where she was being held to join her former
lover in Mexico City. None of the administrators handling her case found it
remarkable that a plebeian woman of limited financial means (and apparently
failing health), managed to make this rather substantial journey, with her
son. The reverse journey (visualized in Map 4), which she likely did on foot,
took her two weeks to complete. We might conclude that although we often
assume that the rural poor of generations past would have normally lived
immobile lives, Ventura’s example challenges that assumption.
María del Carmen Ventura’s trial allows readers to perceive the everyday
functioning of justice on the local level in New Spain. Her case opens in her
own small community where it is first appraised by the encargado de justicia,
Josef López de Anaya. López de Anaya then submitted his findings to his
district supervisor, don Ignacio Muñoz, the senior magistrate of the larger
neighboring community of Mextitlan (referred to in the text as a cabecera,
a “head town”), a predominantly indigenous community that by 1797 was
populated by 7,313 indigenous tributaries, and a small number of non-indig-
enous families, as well just over 600 mulato (person of African and European
parentage) tributaries.7
Midway through Ventura’s case, another official, don Francisco Lezama,
charged with the administration of justice in Mextitlan, took over Muñoz’s
duties due to the latter’s “illness and absence.” Lezama communicated regu-
larly with officials in the Mexico City’s primary criminal court, the Sala de
Crimen of the Real Audiencia, where numerous officials also weighed in on

6. This was in contradistinction from bawds—those who procured prostitutes for others—
­
whose work was prohibited. Nicole von Germeten, “Mexican Bawds: Women and Commercial
Sex in the Viceroyalty of New Spain,” Latin American History: Oxford Research Encyclopedia,
Latin American History (latinamericanhistory.oxfordre.com).
7. Peter Gerhard, A Guide to the Historical Geography of New Spain (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1993), 186. Because only adult men paid tribute, we can assume the indig-
enous population was, in fact, much larger.
 21 • María del Carmen Ventura’s Criminal Trial for Infanticide

both the gravity of the crime with which Ventura was charged and the likeli-
hood that she had committed it.
Readers might consider what the correspondence of these judicial officials
reveals about the extent to which the state was able to scrutinize the behavior
of regular inhabitants of colonial Latin American society. How much privacy
or anonymity does it seem regular inhabitants of Mexico’s rural communities
experienced?
María del Carmen Ventura’s case is also interesting because of the infor-
mation it conveys about contemporary expectations of gendered behavior.
What does her trial reveal about which of her actions and attributed attitudes
most disturbed her peers and her judges? What elements of her activities or
traits do not seem to have elicited the condemnation of her judges? What atti-
tude does the case reveal about contemporary attitudes toward prostitution,
motherhood, and women’s financial independence?

21.1 Writ of the Opening of the Hearing8

In the town of Encarnación Zacualtipan de la Sierra 28 July, 1806. I, don

(sir) José López de Anaya, teniente (deputy) charged with the administra-
tion of justice here by señor (sir) don Ignacio Muñoz, the Justicia Mayor
Subdelegado (senior judge and administrator) of this district and com-
mander of its militias, and acting, as prescribed by law, as the receiver of
witnesses in the absence in this place of a royal and public notary, certify
the following.
That in the royal court under my charge, Mariana del Carmen Ventura,
a member of this community and legitimate wife of José Hernández (alias el
Güero) from whom she has been separated for some time, appeared for verbal
judgment. The present judge, observing that she is not now pregnant as he
had seen her to be just a few days earlier, and forming a poor judgment of her
depraved conduct because she is held in public opinion to be of bad reputa-
tion, orders the opening of this hearing. In virtue of this, María del Carmen
Ventura is brought before me by the ministro de vara (a municipal officer) of
this jurisdiction, and is compelled to account for the pregnancy that she expe-
rienced since being separated from her husband and she must declare under
the oath of the sacred religion by whom she was impregnated, where the
baby can now be found, if she has given birth to others during this matrimo-
nial separation, from whom she was impregnated in these cases, and where
[these babies] may be found. In light of this, so that the swift administration

8. Archivo General de la Nación, Criminal, vol. 251 exp. 10, fols. 274–308.

253
 21 • María del Carmen Ventura’s Criminal Trial for Infanticide

of justice will demonstrate the truth, it is ordered that [Ventura] be appre-

hended in the usual way and be made to account for these charges to the
Señor Justicia Mayor Subdelegado of the district without delay. I order and
sign the opening of this hearing with the others and give faith.

[signature] Josef López de Anaya.

21.2 María del Carmen Ventura’s First Appearance

[María Ventura del Carmen is brought before teniente López de Anaya,

admonished to tell the truth, and asked to provide the court with an account of
the babies she has given birth to since her separation from her husband.]
She said she is called María del Carmen Ventura, she is of the Span-
ish calidad 9 and is married to José Hernández alias el Güero, of the same
­
calidad, from whom she has been voluntarily separated because there was
disagreement between them about the dissolute behavior of the declarant.
And it is true that during the time of her separation from her marriage
up until now, she has given birth to three babies. The first, four years ago
when she was imprisoned in the royal jail of Mextitlan for a wound that
she gave to her lover, Venancio Ruíz. She miscarried there, without hav-
ing had time to put the water of baptism on the baby,10 and this creature
was the child of her lover, Venancio. The second, she had two years ago,
more or less, when she was exiled from this town by the previous Señor de
Justicia Mayor Subdelegado, and living in one of the outlying communities
of the town of Mextitlan, she had an illicit friendship with a young soldier
from there called José Larios, alias Pozos (who has since died), from which
resulted a baby boy that her compatriot Petra Espindola baptized in her
own house because she [Ventura] was sick. And that they then went to
bury him in the cemetery of the church but, in truth, she does not know
where he was buried. The third child she gave birth to two months ago,
more or less, in her own home in this town, and she had him with Manuel
Hernández, an unmarried militiaman. The baby was a boy and she gave

9. The term calidad, or quality, denoted a person’s overall social status with respect to racial,
economic, social, and reputational attributes.
10. To avoid sending to hell the souls of unbaptized infants who died shortly after childbirth,
birthing mothers or the midwives who assisted them were obliged to baptize babies imme-
diately after childbirth if it appeared they might die before priests could arrive to provide a
proper burial.
 21 • María del Carmen Ventura’s Criminal Trial for Infanticide

birth to him alone in the middle of the night, without a midwife nor any
other person except her legitimate son, Pedro. The baby was born alive,
and having shown signs that he was going to die, she took a mouth full of
water and sprayed it in his mouth saying “in the name of the Father and
the Son and the Holy Spirit” and then he died. Only her son Pedro saw
this, he, who the next morning at about midday made a hole at the foot
of her bed where he buried the baby by her order and where the cadaver
must be still. For now, this is all that she can declare about that which she
has been asked. This hearing remains open in case further investigation is
necessary. She says she is thirty years old and does not sign the transcript
herself because she does not know how to read.
[María del Carmen Ventura remained imprisoned while several court
officials went to her home to excavate the corpse of the baby which she then
identified as the one to which she had recently given birth. Teniente López de
Anaya ordered Ventura’s son, Pedro Hernández, brought before him and con-
sulted with the local priest about reburying the corpse. The latter advised that
since the baby had not been formally baptized, he could not be given a Chris-
tian burial, and must be buried outside of the church cemetery, without cross or
any ceremony.
On 30 July, 1806, López de Anaya sent a summary of the case along
with Ventura herself to the regional judicial administrator, don Ignacio
Muñoz, Justicia Mayor Subdelegado of the district of Mextitlan. Muñoz
decreed that Ventura should remain in the royal jail of Mextitlan under
the custody of its alcalde, that she ratify her initial declaration, and that
a curador be assigned to represent her. Finally, Muñoz declared that he
would send her dossier on to the Viceroyalty’s central court, the Sala del
Crimen in the Real Audiencia in Mexico City for assessment. On August
4, Ventura, as typically occurred, was given the opportunity to name a
curador herself and she named one don Anselmo Ferreira, a Spanish
­
resident of Zacualtipan. Ferreira declined the position because of his
“notorious illnesses.” Ventura affirmed she had no other suggestions and on
August 8 Muñoz assigned Antonio Morales, a resident of Zacualtipan to
serve as her curador. Morales, too, declined explaining that his work as a
muleteer “who traveled ordinarily on the road” prevented him from taking
the position. A different judicial administrator in Mextitlan, don Francisco
Lezama, who replaced Muñoz, eventually assigned don Manuel de los
Reyes Mateos, administrator of mail tax, to act as Ventura’s curador. Reyes
Mateos requested that copies of all materials relating to her case be sent to
him so he could prepare her defense.]

255
 21 • María del Carmen Ventura’s Criminal Trial for Infanticide

21.3 Don Manuel de los Reyes Mateos’s

Defense of María del Carmen Ventura

In the town of Zacualtipan on 12 of January, 1807 before the official charged

with justice in this jurisdiction of Mextitlan [Francisco de Lezama] is pre-
sented the following document:
[left margin:] document
Don Manuel de los Reyes Mateos, administrator of the royal tax on mail in
the cabecera of Mextitlan, acting as curador ad litem11 for María del Carmen
Ventura, imprisoned in the Royal Jail for the unfounded, capricious suspi-
cion of infanticide. In compliance with the law, I declare that you must order
a reversal of the so-called preparatory proceedings of the encargado de justicia
in this case. I declare [Ventura] to be innocent of those things which he [the
encargado] has wished to invent about her for the following reasons.
The encargado opened the proceedings without being directed to do so
by a sentence or by a request from a third party and only on the basis of his
own suspicions, and these are far removed from all rational (I speak with all
due respect) and Christian and humane sentiment. A woman who is preg-
nant and then ceases to be so, can be, and indeed must be in this state either
because she has reached the end of her normal term of pregnancy or because
by some accident before the end of it she miscarries prematurely. What other
party than his own malicious perversity suggested to the encargado that this
could only happen when the babies were murdered? Merely by reading the
cited proceedings it becomes apparent that he followed no procedure but
rather acted with malice contrary to the divine precepts that command us to
judge those around us charitably and not to suspect them without founda-
tion and not to be suspicious of the actions of others without sufficient proof.
It is a more than obvious principle that to bring a person to judgment, a
case should be opened because someone is caught in the act of committing
the crime, or the case has been requested by a pedimento de parte (accusation)
or by a denunciation. In these cases, the accused party must justify them-
selves. But if a person is investigated only because of the suspicion of a judge
or arbitrarily (or by another impulse), the case will always end with the defen-
dant being found guilty.12 And I may presume to ask what connection [the

11. Ad litem is Latin for “for the suit” and indicates a party appointed to act on behalf of a
minor.
12. Reyes Mateos’ objections here are perplexing, because Spanish law recognized the right of
a magistrate to initiate legal investigations. Such cases were classified as those that opened “de
oficio.” Charles R. Cutter, The Legal Culture of Northern New Spain, 1700–1810 (Albuquer-
que: University of New Mexico Press, 1985), 114. Indeed, judges were obliged to prosecute
crimes against the public order, including all forms of homicide, to satisfy the need for “public
 21 • María del Carmen Ventura’s Criminal Trial for Infanticide

encargado] might have in this matter, because while prostitution has created
a bad reputation for the party I am defending, is this alone sufficient reason
to charge her with infanticide? Why were no witnesses called to be examined?
I well know that there are many ways to create criminal cases, but we must
always arrive at a result that illuminates the truth and the crime imputed to
my party should not derive merely from the rash suspicions of a judge.
He could, as already indicated, begin with the defendant’s declaration, but
not even this demonstrates that infanticide occurred on the three occasions of
her pregnancies; on the first occasion, she gave birth in health and the baby
was baptized; the second two were misbirths, a common occurrence, so how
can he name the prisoner guilty of repeated infanticides? Who instructed this
man to investigate how many times a married woman had given birth and
who had fathered the children? Is it not likely that his practice results in grave
injuries to peoples’ lives and the dissolution of their marriages? I know that
not even in the Tribunal Sagrado de la Penitencia are the names of accom-
plices requested, but this official, to better demonstrate his talent, discovered
a new method of proceeding in his investigation.13
Regarding the procedures for exhumation, what proof was revealed dem-
onstrating infanticide? He wished to show, perhaps that the body had been
thrown to the dogs? Could it not be that the body was not buried outside
because as a mother she wished to save it from this unhappy end? If one
wishes to conclude that she buried the body in order to hide her moral weak-
ness, why would she have shown herself in the streets pregnant? With what
proof will the rash, unfounded, and malicious charges of the encargado de
justicia demonstrate that she is an imposter?
The only thing to which the party I represent has confessed in good faith
in her declaration is prostitution, but although it is very certain that she can-
not be excused in moral terms, in legal ones, does not her situation of finan-
cial need mitigate judgment against a woman abandoned by her husband and
who has no recourse to provide for her sustenance, especially in these lands
where it is almost impossible to survive on the miserable salary that domestic
labor produces?
For this reason, you must see fit to command that which I have requested:
judge that the party that I represent has already served a sentence of six
months’ imprisonment in a place unknown to her, one in which nothing
exists from which prisoners can support themselves, for a charge that, by her
declaration, should result in her being placed in liberty. This is even more

vengeance.” Victor M. Uribe-Uran, Fatal Love: Spousal Killers, Law, and Punishment in the
Late Colonial Spanish Atlantic (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016), 45.
13. By Tribunal Sagrado de la Penitencia, Reyes Mateos was likely referring to the sacrament of
confession, sometimes referred to as occurring within the “tribunal of penance.”

257
 21 • María del Carmen Ventura’s Criminal Trial for Infanticide

urgent given that her husband is also in the royal jail of the royal tribunal of
the Acordada at the present, while the couple has two children, one of them
a maiden of fifteen years, who, since she does not have shelter nor anyone to
care for her at the moment, circulates in the streets in search of help for her
mother without any other company than that of her little brother, expos-
ing herself to the circumstances and ends that are to be expected in such
unending circumstances.
­
For these reasons, I beg that your highness decree and order as such.

Manuel de los Reyes Mateos

[Having considered Reyes Mateos’ plea, Mextitlan’s judicial officer, don

Francisco Lezama, deemed that Ventura’s dossier should be sent to the assessor
of the Real Audiencia in Mexico City, licenciado (licentiate) and lawyer don
Victoriano Umaran y Arenzaza.]

21.4 Assessor Victoriano Umaran’s Opinion

To the Señor charged with the administration of justice in the district of Mex-
titlan, don Francisco Paredes de Lezama:
Even a fleeting examination of the legal trial of the prisoner María del Car-
men Ventura reveals that her case was opened without precedent either by an
accusation or a denunciation but only because of the passing suspicion held
by the encargado of Zacualtipan that she had twice executed infanticide dur-
ing her twelve-year separation from her husband. This, only because on two
occasions she seemed different to him. He noted that she had been pregnant,
and then a few days later was no longer pregnant without any sign whatsoever
that she had been.
This act, that the prisoner presented as that of repeated adultery, cannot
and must not be elevated to the status of infanticide. Her presumption of
having presented herself in this town in a way that publicly registered her
moral weakness as well as what was enclosed in her womb inclines judgment
to believe her. We must conclude that she did not perpetuate such a crime,
since only two motives could have pushed her to do what she is charged with
after giving birth to the infant: the shame that is proper to her sex or the fear
of punishment.
Both motives are absent in her. The love that nature engenders in parents
for the preservation of their children, has in her surpassed its highest grade
(according to the views of the authors) in valuing more the lives of the infants
 21 • María del Carmen Ventura’s Criminal Trial for Infanticide

than even her own, and even more than her own being, since she sacrificed
her own modesty and the loss of her public estimation for them. One must
be persuaded that she did not commit the murder of any of the three infants
to which she says she has given birth in her two-page declaration.
In her declaration, she asserts that during her marital separation, two of
these infants were born alive but perished shortly thereafter and that she mis-
carried the third when she was imprisoned in the jail of the cabecera [Mex-
titlan]. She does not reveal any reason why she would have intentionally
procured their death. . . . [Assessor Umaran then discussed the importance of
judges using only concrete evidence rather than conjecture and inference to judge
crimes, particularly hidden private crimes.]
. . . In the case formed against María del Carmel [sic], the evidence—her
confession and the exhumation of the cadaver—is scarce and is contradictory
to the judgment formed by the encargado. From the first, as has been noted,
nothing can be deduced of a criminal nature; rather her declaration merely
showed that the deaths of her children occurred through natural causes.
Regarding the second, the body revealed no sign of the intentional privation
of life either during the act of birth or after it.
Further and even more importantly than all of this, is the fact that when
the misbirth occurred inside the jail, no one denounced the defendant for
charges of having procured an abortion. It is unreasonable to believe that if
[infanticide] had been her depraved intention that nobody upon learning of
the act, denounced her for it so that her impunity would not remain habitu-
ated to such efforts.
Indeed, since there is no proof of them, María del Carmel [sic] is not the
culprit of these infanticides, and if there is evidence of adultery into which
she has frequently fallen, as she has openly confessed, she merits the indul-
gence and generosity of the law in these acts. But the licentious prostitution
or libertinage in which she has lived since the abandonment of the obliga-
tions of her state [of marriage] opened the doors to her punishment and for
the encargado de justicia, the opportunity to prosecute her despite her link
to the ties of marriage, for the grave scandal that her adultery caused in her
neighborhood.
She must be expected to reform her obscene practices, and given that she
suffers great pain in prison because she says she is innocent of the infanticides,
and given that her extended time in prison has purged her of the practice of
prostitution, it would serve you to order her put in liberty, while a person
known to be a good Christian watches over her and supervises her activities,
conduct, and care of her children, so that when her husband is freed from
the jail he is held in by order of the Royal Tribunal of the Holy Brotherhood
it will be possible to reunite them in marriage and avoid greater harm or

259
 21 • María del Carmen Ventura’s Criminal Trial for Infanticide

deviation for her smaller children for whom they must set a good example.
Mexico, April 20 1807. Licenciado Victoriano Umaran.

[in a different hand:] Between the lines (entre renglones) = This determination
is given to the Real Sala for its approval or revocation.
[The justicia mayor of Zacualtipan, subdelegado Ignacio Muñoz noted
on May 11, 1807, that he had received the assessment and requested that the
officers of the Real Sala direct him further how to proceed. On October 7,
1807, licenciado Manuel de la Bandera, an official of the Sala de Crimen in
the Real Audiencia, wrote to don Ignacio Muñoz, to say that the justices of the
Sala de Crimen advised him to examine Pedro, María del Carmen Ventura’s
son. Muñoz confirmed receipt and obedience of this directive on November 2,
1807. Two days later, don Francisco de Lezama, Muñoz’s occasional delegate
because of absence or illness, “acting as the receiver of witnesses because of the
absence of a notary,” notified the Real Audiencia that he had ordered María del
Carmen Ventura removed from the municipal jail in which she had been held
and installed in a private home because she was ill. Ventura had escaped from
this house and had traveled to Mexico City where Lezama learned she was serv-
ing her former lover, the soldier Manuel Hernández, a member of the infantry
regiment of Zelaya. Lezama sent one José Abrego along with his notification to
the Real Sala de Crimen and a request that the central court order Ventura’s
recapture and return to Mextitlan, upon which journey Abrego would accom-
pany her. The alcalde ordinario de primero voto (first instance judge) in the
Sala de Crimen received and complied with Lezama’s directive. Ventura was
re-imprisoned in the public jail in Mexico City on December 3, 1807. Follow-
ing this are a series of letters sent by the administrators of justice in several small
towns located between Mexico City and Mextitlan, reporting on the passage of
Ventura and her conductor, José Abrego, through each location.]
­
Reports from the Local Alcaldes

Court of Popotla, January 21 1808

The prisoner María del Carmen Ventura, was been sent today by the
alcalde ordinario de primero voto of the capital of Mexico to this, my court, so
that she may be conducted through the mountains to the town of Mextitlan.
By virtue of this command, when she passed through, I ordered her processed
by the teniente of the Villa and Sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe so that
he would execute his obligation to receive her. This, I, don Ramón de la Rosa
y Serrada, teniente of the said place execute, and I sign with those of my court
and give faith.
 Map 4: Itinerary of María del Carmen Ventura

N Zacualtipan
Mextitlan Hometown
Trial

Atontonilco

Omitlan

Real del Monte

San Matheo Isttahuaca

Santa Cruz Tecamac

San Christoval Ecatepec

Popotla
Villa de Guadalupe

Mexico City
Escapes here, escorted home

0 1000 km

María del Carmen is from Zacualtipan. Her case is tried in Mextitlan. She escapes to
Mexico City and is then brought back home by an official escort.
10 0 10 20 30
Megan Rohrer | 2017
Kilometers GADM | Robinson Projection
 21 • María del Carmen Ventura’s Criminal Trial for Infanticide

Ramón de la Rosa y Serrada.

De . . .14 Toribio Sánchez
With the assistance of Antonio García.

Villa de Guadalupe January 22 1808

The suspect María Venura del Carmen, continues her imprisonment
under transit for San Cristoval Ecatepec.

[signature] Anguilo

San Christoval Ecatepec, January 23 1808

Maintaining, fulfilling, and executing the antecedent order, the prisoner
María Ventura del Carmen follows the route through the mountains to the
town of Tecamac.

[signatures] Francisco Somarriba, Salvador de la Batista, Pedro García

Santa Cruz Tecamac January 23 1808

Fulfilling the antecedent order of traveling through the mountains María
Ventura continues her confinement on her journey to the town of Santa
Anita and to affirm this I sign.

[signature] Pablo de la Cruz, Governador

San Matheo Isttahuaca, January 24 1808

Fulfilling the antecedent order, with the route through the mountains that
María Ventura del Carmen must follow for the town of Asuyatla and to verify
this I sign.

[signature] Julian Thomas, Governador

Court of Real del Monte, January 26 1808

This suspect, with her custodian, destined for the Real de Omitlan, passed
through here. The teniente of this place requested that I receive her. I com-
mand this. I, don José de la Serna, teniente of this Real del Monte. I sign.

[signature] José de la Cerna

14. There is an illegible word here; it might be custodio (custodian).

 21 • María del Carmen Ventura’s Criminal Trial for Infanticide

Court of Real de Omitlan January 26 1808

This suspect passed with her custodian for the town of Atotonilco el Grande.
This I commanded. I, the teniente of this Real de Omitlan, and to affirm it I sign.

[Signature] José María Baca

Royal Court of Atontonilco January 27 1808

This suspect and her custodian passed en route to the judge of the town of
Santa Monica and is ordered to be conducted to the appropriate judge there.
I claim and affirm this along with those of my assistance and I certify.

[signatures] Francisco Rubín, of assistance Juan Diego

de la Orta, assistant, Juan Agustín Montez

[María del Carmen Ventura returned to the town of Mextitlan on Feb-

ruary 3, 1808, and justicia mayor subdelegado Muñoz ordered her deposited
in the house of don Manuel Cordova. The court also ordered Ventura’s son,
Pedro, to return to Mextitlan from Mexico City where she had left him in
the care of his older sister. Ventura informed the court on March 2 that she
believed Pedro had delayed his return to Mextitlan because of illness. On May
30, 1808, Pedro appeared before Muñoz and described how one night his
mother had awoken him and asked him to light a fire and asked for water. She
told him that she had given birth to a child who had been born dead and she
had requested that he dig a hole in which to bury the body. Pedro Hernández
signed his own testimony.
A midwife, Josefa Morales, a Spaniard, testified before Muñoz on May
31, 1808. Morales declared that she had arrived to aid Ventura in her most
recent childbirth only after the latter had given birth, but said the baby had
been “born dead, or died of natural causes.” A second woman, María Boni-
facia Larios, also appeared on the same day to testify that Ventura had asked
her one month before the birth to be the godmother of the baby when she was
pregnant, but had written her after the birth to say the child had been still-
born. Another witness, Ana Petra Espindola, testified that she had known that
Ventura had had an affair with a man, Larios, in Mextitlan that had resulted
in the pregnancy of an earlier child. The baby in this case had been born near
death and so sick that even though they had “put powder in its eyes and nos-
trils,” it had died, but they had had permission from the curate to bury it in
the cemetery even though the infant had not been properly baptized. On Octo-
ber 10, 1808, María Magdalena, a midwife who had attended Ventura at the
birth of this child confirmed that it had been born “more dead than alive.” On
October 26, Francisco Lezana Mextitlan’s encargado de justicia remitted all

263
 21 • María del Carmen Ventura’s Criminal Trial for Infanticide

these testimonies to the Real Sala del Crimen in Mexico City for further judg-
ment.
The file seems to have sat unattended for the next eighteen months. Not
until the spring of 1810 did the alcaldes del crimen of the Real Audiencia
take any action on Ventura’s case. On May 10, 1810, the fiscal (prosecutor) of
the Real Audiencia decreed that María del Carmen Ventura was “not found
guilty of any of the instances of infanticide for which she had been accused,
instead they all seem to be the result of natural deaths.” He ordered her freed.
Eleven days later, another officer of the court declared that María del Carmen
Ventura should be liberated because of Royal Pardon. Fol. 289 of the dossier
is inserted out of order amid the pages constituting the assessor’s judgment. It
is dated June 6, 1810, signed by licenciado Ignacio Muñoz, and records that
María del Carmen Ventura has been placed in freedom by virtue of the order
that the Real Sala communicated to Muñoz, and that the parish curate is
charged with overseeing her conduct.]

Suggested Reading

Jaffary, Nora E. Reproduction and Its Discontents in Mexico: Childbirth and Contracep-
tion from 1750 to 1905. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016.
Lavrin, Asunción, ed. Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
Premo, Bianca, The Enlightenment on Trial: Ordinary Litigants and Colonialism in the
Spanish Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
von Germeten, Nicole, Violent Delights, Violent Ends: Sex, Race, and Honor in Colo-
nial Cartagena de Indias. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013.

Document Themes
• Family
• Law
• Migration and mobility
• Sexuality and gender
 Glossary

Abbreviations used in the Glossary are as follows:

N = Nahuatl, P = Portuguese, Q = Quechua, S= Spanish

acsu (Q): tunic worn as part of women’s dress in the Andes.

adze (S): carpentry tool.
agua de rostro (S): water for washing faces.
alcalde/alcalde ordinario (S): municipal-level first instance judge elected from town
council.
alcalde mayor (S): district judge and district governor (synonymous with corregidor).
alguacil (S): bailiff.
altamisa (S): artemisia; an herb inducing early labor.
amantecas (S): featherwork pieces.
arroba (S): unit of liquid measure equivalent to 4.26 gallons; and dry measure
equivalent to 25 pounds.
atole (S): drink made from rice.
audiencia (S): governmental unit with judicial and administrative power; usually the
highest court within a colonial district.
avasca (Q): cloth of coarse alpaca wool.
ayllu (Q): Andean kin unit.
bachiller (S): graduate of a baccalaureate program.
bandeirantes (P): men who explored territory in Brazil; sometimes translated as
cowboys.
barbero (S): barber–surgeon.
barraganía (S): semi-permanent common law relationship customary in medieval
and early modern Iberia.
bayeta de la tierra (S): domestic, as opposed to imported, cloth.
beaterio (S): house of women who have taken informal religious vows.
birque (S): large earthen vessel.
bobo (S): freshwater fish found in the rivers of Mexico and Guatemala.
branco (P): white; person of Portuguese or European descent.

265
 Glossary

cabecera (S): head town of a municipality or parish.

cabildo (S): municipal council.
cacagual (S): cocoa plantation.
cacique/cacica (S): hereditary indigenous chieftain or lord; the term is from the
Arawak.
calidad (S): signifier of social position in terms of class, race, reputation, wealth, social
connections, and character.
calificador (S): theological qualifier (officer of the Inquisition).
Capitán General (S): regional royal official with military and civil powers.
carga (S): bushel.
cédula (S): written decree; usually a royal decree.
chacara (S): farm or lot of land that can be tilled (term used in the Andes).
chicha (S): fermented drink made from corn; common in the Andes.
chichilpatle (N): bitter medicine.
chumbe (Q): woolen belt used to cinch a woman’s tunic in the Andes.
cihuapatli (N): the aster flower; a powerful abortifacient (also sp. suapatle).
cimarrón (S): runaway enslaved person or community of runaway enslaved people.
coco (Q): silver drinking vessel, typically used for drinking native corn beer.
cofradía (S): lay religious brotherhood, usually founded for a specific devotion.
comisario (S): inquisitorial agent acting as first-instance judge at the local level.
compadrazgo (S): godparentage.
compadre (S): godparent (co-parent according to Catholic baptismal sponsorship);
also close friend
compadrío (P): godparentage.
conquistador (S): conqueror.
contrayerba (S): medicinal plants.
cordillera central (S): central mountain range.
corpo presente (mass of) (S): mass performed before coffin is lowered into the grave.
corral (S): yard, animal pen.
corregidor (S): district judge; district governor (synonymous with alcalde mayor).
coyol (N): type of palm, for consumption.
 Glossary

crioulo/a (P): person of mixed African and European descent yet perceived to have a
lighter skin tone.
crioulos forros (P): manumitted blacks.
crioulos libertos (P): free blacks.
crioulinho/a (P): diminutive form of crioula.
cuartos (S): copper coins.
cumbe (Q): finely woven wool cloth.
cura (S): rector, parish priest.
cura beneficiado (S): ordained priest.
curandero/a (S): healer.
curador (S): court-appointed guardian and legal defender.
depósito (S): legal practice of keeping women in custody prior to marriage or during
ecclesiastical divorce proceedings.
doctrinas (S): indigenous parishes administered by regular clergy.
don (S): customary title of sir.
doña (S): customary title of lady.
donada (S): convent servant, usually a woman of color, who professed simple vows.
doncella (S): young woman who is unmarried and a virgin.
encomendero (S): recipient of an encomienda.
encomienda (S): crown grant to an encomendero of the tribute and labor of indigenous
people in a specified location.
engenhos (P): sugar mills in Brazil.
expensa (S): expense.
examinador sinodal (S): synod examiner, for a Church council.
fanega (S): unit of dry measure equal to 1.5 bushels.
fazenda (P): landed estate.
fiscal (S): prosecutor.
fray (S): brother (religious).
gobernador (S): official with similar power to a corregidor, sometimes refers to position
of authority held by an indigenous person.
guayra (Q): native Andean smelting process using clay ovens. Also, the women who
carried out the task of smelting ore.

267
 Glossary

hacienda (S): landed estate.

hamaca (S): hammock.
hechicería: (S): witchcraft.
hechizera/hechicera (S): witch; spell-maker.
hija/o natural (S): daughter or son born outside of marriage to a man and woman
who are not married to others and who are recognized by their father.
indio/india (S): indigenous person
indio/a ladino/a (S): indigenous man or woman who has acculturated particularly in
terms of learning the Spanish language.
indios carboneros (S): indigenous men who sold wood, llama dung, or other
combustibles.
informe (S): formal report mandated by the Real Audiencia.
interrogatorio (S): questions, typically in written format, to be answered by witnesses.
juez comisario (S): examining judge in a court of the Inquisition.
juez de comición (S): investigating judge.
juez eclesiastico (S): ecclesiastical magistrate.
juicio plenario (S): plenary suit.
junta (S): ruling body, usually refers to a council.
justicia mayor (S): deputy of the governor or corregidor who has judicial authority
within the local cabildo.
letrado (S): lawyer; learned person.
licenciado (S): an honorific title indicating the bearer held a university licentiate
degree.
lliclla (Q): shawl worn as part of women’s dress in the Andes.
limpieza de sangre (S)/limpieça de sangue (P): blood purity determined through
religious identity as a Christian.
­
madre mui baja (S): prolapsed uterus.
madrinha (P): godmother.
maestre de campo (S): field commander, one step below captain general.
maestro (S): master, one who has acquired skill or learning in a given field.
mala vida (S): literal translation is “bad life”; reference to chronic mistreatment of a
woman by her male partner or spouse.
 Glossary

maltratos (S): abuse.

mandas forzosas (S): obligatory donations, for example to the poor or to orphans,
required of those who made wills.
marco (S): unit to measure weight (and value) of silver; each marco weighed half a
pound.
matadero (S): slaughterhouse.
mate de yerba (S): herbal tea.
mayordomo (S): overseer.
mestiço (P) : person of mixed Portuguese and African parentage. In the Brazilian
context, implies lesser black ancestry—or at least lighter skin—than that of
mixed-race children born of whites and blacks referred to as mulatos or pardos.
mestiza/o (S): person of mixed Spanish and indigenous parentage.
morena/o (S): mixed-race person of predominantly African descent.
morisca/o (S): new convert from Islam to Christianity.
mora/o (S): Muslim inhabitant of the Mediterranean.
mulata/o (S): person of mixed Spanish or Portuguese and African parentage. In Brazil,

­
can refer to lighter-skinned mixed-race Afro-descended persons.
morgado (P): a type of entail which served to prevent the dissolution of the landed
estate.
mujer hombrada (S): manly woman.
muniatos (S): a yam-like or cassava-like tuber.
nación (S): an abstract grouping based on place of origin, residence, or imperial
affinity.
ñanaca (Q): woven head covering worn as part of women’s dress in the Andes.
natural (S): can refer to an indigenous person or, especially in the sixteenth century,
a person who belongs to or is an original inhabitant of a place or broader
“culture.”
negra/o (S): black; person of African descent.
negrita/o (S) black child.
oidor (S): judge of the Real Audiencia.
oitava (P): one-eighth of an ounce.
parda/o (S,P): Brazilian Portuguese: person of mixed African-European descent;
Spanish America: person of African descent.

269
 Glossary

parvolo/a (P): child; also small, little.

pataca (P): silver coin worth 320$ réis.
pelota (S): a Basque ball game played on a large court and brought to Mexico in the
eighteenth century.
perulero (S): a merchant or other trader who has made money in Peru.
peso (S): unit of money; one peso was made up of eight reales.
piezas (S): cannonballs.
piña (S): a cone of refined silver, unminted.
pirua (Q): corncrib.
poder (S): power of attorney, specifically legal power of one person over another.
Predicador General (S): ecclesiastical officer; preacher general.
preta (P): black; person of African descent.
principales (S): hereditary indigenous elite
probanza (S): petition, proof.
procurador (S): legal representative.
provisor (S): chief ecclesiastical judge of a diocese.
pulque (N): fermented cactus beverage.
quero (also kero) (Q): wooden drinking vessel for corn beer.
rayuela (S): game that involves throwing coins into a hole in a brick.
reales (S): units of currency denoting one eighth of one peso.
Real Acuerdo (S): official body composed of the viceroy and officers of the Real
Audiencia.
Real Audiencia (S): highest (royal) court within the jurisdiction of Spanish kingdoms.
real cédula (S): royal decree.
Real Sala del Crimen (S): High Criminal Court.
recogida (S): a woman who leaves her home, by will or by force, to enter a secluded
community; the quality of being secluded from the world.
recogimiento (S): the act of seclusion or withdrawal; a building or house of seclusion
for spiritual retreat.
réis (P): plural of real, the currency of colonial Brazil.
relaciones (S): legal, certified accounts.
 Glossary

responsos (S): sung prayers for the dead.

rígida condición (S): controlling nature of a person.
sacha (Q): a plant native to the rainforest in Bolivia/Peru.
senhor/a (P): lord or lady, sir or madam.
señor/a (S): lord or lady, sir or madam.
señor comandante (S): senior military commander
señorio (S): lordship, or similar political domain over a territory.
sentencia (S): legal sentence.
sesmaria (P): a royal concession of lands.
Siete Partidas (S): expansive medieval legal code drafted in the thirteenth century
under Alfonso X and used in Iberia and colonial Latin America.
sitios (P): mixed tobacco farms and cattle ranches.
solar (S): urban land lot.
sor (S): a religious sister; nun.
sumaria (S): initial investigative portion of a legal case.
subdelegado (S): royal district governor position instituted during the Bourbon
Reforms of 1780s; replacement for alcalde mayor and corregidor.
Superior Junta de Temporalidades (S): court set up as part of royal bureaucracy to sell
the property of the Jesuits after their expulsion from the New World in 1767.
tacha (S): in a judicial case, the disqualification of a witness.
temascal (N): pre-Columbian “houses of heat” or sweat houses.
teniente (S): deputy.
teniente corregidor deputy to a district governor.
tlacuache (Q): a powder of dried opossum tail.
tocadas (S): relics that contained spiritual powers.
tomín (S): coin, unit of currency, subdivision of the real.
topos (also tupus) (Q): dress pins, usually silver, that attach the shawl to the tunic
worn as part of a woman’s dress in the Andes.
varas (S): measure equal to about three feet of cloth in Peru.
vecina/o (S): citizen or permanent resident of a city with attendant privileges and
responsibilities.
vicaria (S): assistant abbess.

271
 Glossary

vicario (S): assistant to the parish priest.

vicario general (S): vicar general, assistant to a bishop.
vida (S): spiritual biography.
vida maridable (S): married life, meaning specifically to fulfill obligations of man
and wife.
Villa Imperial (S): literally, imperial village, an honorific status granted by the Span-
ish Crown to certain cities in the New World, such as Potosí for its silver.
yanacona (Q) an indigenous person (usually a man) responsible to a Spanish master
and without kin ties to a specific ayllu (Andean kin-based community).
 Bibliography

Abercrombie, Thomas A. “Affairs of the Courtroom: Fernando de Medina Confesses

to Killing his Wife.” In Colonial Lives, Documents on Latin American History,
1550–1850, ed. Richard Boyer and Geoffrey Spurling (pp. 54–76). New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000.
Aguirre, Carlos. “Violencia, castigo y control social: esclavos y panaderías en Lima,
siglo XIX.” Pasado y Presente (Lima) 1:1 (1988), 27–37.
Alberro, Solange. Inquisición y sociedad en México, 1571–1700. México: Fondo de
Cultura Económica, 1988.
Altman, Ida. Emigrants and Society: Extremadura and America in the Sixteenth Cen-
tury. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
———. Transatlantic Ties in the Spanish Empire: Brihuega, Spain and Puebla, Mexico,

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van Deusen, Nancy E. Between the Sacred and the Worldly: The Institutional and
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 Index

abortion, 145–53, 251. See also children, xiii, 32, 77–78, 45–46
abortifacients Church, Catholic, xiv, 96, 154–56, 216.
abortifacients, 129, 139, 141, 148, 251 See also Catholicism; Inquisition
adultery, xxii, 67, 132, 135, 258–59 cihuapatli. See abortifacients
Afro-Latin American women, xviii–xix, cimarrones, 242, 246
33–36, 115–27, 168–79, 224–39. See clothing: in bequests, 34–38, 47–49; and
also enslaved Africans and Afro-Latin economy, 31, 75; and identity 23, 32,
Americans 215; inventoried at imprisonment, 152;
Afro-Latin Americans, and courts, 210–11 as payment 79–82
agriculture, 38 cofradías, 30
agricultural goods, 23; in the Andes, 32, 39, cohabitation, 45, 101, 235
41, 44, 82; in Florida, 231; in Mexico Colombia. See Nueva Granada
106 communion. See Eucharist
alms, 36–37, 42, 43, 45 compadrazgo. See god parentage
Ana de Cristo (Sor Ana), 103–14 concubinage, 168, 208, 225
arras, xxi, 7, 8 confraternities. See cofradías
assault, sexual, 84–94, 207–8 conquest of Mexico, 1, 5–8
convents, 154–64
baptism, 177–78, 228–29, 232, 235, 244, Corpus Christi, convent of, 154–64
254 Cortés, Hernán, 1–8
barranganía, 62 Cortés, Martín, 2–3
bawds, 134, 138. See also prostitution Council of the Indies, 15, 16, 51
beatas, 104, 115 courts, 181, 206, 256; ecclesiastical, xx, 45,
bigamy, xiii, 62 96, 145, 205–6, 228
birth. See childbirth crime, 250
black women. See Afro-Latin American cross-dressing, 214–23
women Cuauhtémoc, 1, 3
branding 14, 17, 20 curadores. See defenders, legal
Brazil, 165–68, 193–204 curanderas, 131, 132
burials, 36, 40, 42, 43, 45, 198 curfews, 91
Burns, Kathryn, xiv, xxi, xxv currency, 166

cacao groves, 180, 182, 185–86, 188–89 debt, 46, 78, 82, 200–203
Cano, Juan, 3–4, 9–11 defenders, legal, 15, 233, 241, 251, 255–56
Casa de la Contratación, 14, 15, 21, 51, deflowering, 84–85
61, 65 depósito, 96, 152, 263
Catholicism: and morality, 66, 67, 69; in devil, 120, 123, 126, 140, 245
wills, 33–36, 40, 42, 45–46, 194, 197– divorce, xiii, 32, 45, 46, 145–53
99. See also religious practice domestic service, 14, 77–83, 85, 242, 245, 257
chastity, 84–85, 154, 158, 159, 161 domestic violence, 95–102, 130. See
childbirth, xiv, 139, 140, 150, 251, also enslaved Africans and Afro-Latin
254–55. See also midwives Americans: and physical abuse
childrearing, xiv, 32–33, 48–49, 61, 65–67, donadas, 115, 116
226 dowries, xxi, 7, 8, 20, 46, 61, 194, 196

283
 Index

ecstasies, 115 infanticide, 250–64

Edict of the Faith, 130, 132, 135 inheritance, 9–12, 30–50, 200–203,
enslaved Africans and Afro-Latin Americans, 234–38; laws respecting, xxi, 4; and
15, 52–53, 111–12, 116, 118; in Nueva women: 2, 11, 12, 169, 180–85, 202
Granada, 241; inventories of, 194, 200, Inquisition, 51, 128–44, 214, 218
230; and land ownership, 180–92; and
the law, xx, xxvi; and manumission, xix, jail, 100, 220
116, 165–79, 193, 205–13; and physical Jerónima de la Asunción (Sor Jerónima), 103
abuse, 240–49 Jesuits, 180–81. See also Temporalidades
enslaved indigenous people, 10, 14–29 Jesus Christ, 125–26, 197
encomenderos. See encomiendas Juana de la Cruz, (Madre Juana), 104
encomiendas, 1–4, 5–8 justice system, xx–xxii, xxv, 15–16, 97,
Enlightenment, xx, 250, 251 181–82, 205, 252. See also courts; law
Eucharist, 108, 214, 216, 218, 219
kin, xiii, 38. See also children; family, history
family, history of the, xii–xiv; structures xiv, of the; networks: kin
171–72, 180
fatherhood, 61–62, 65, 68, 69 La Plata, 30, 32
femininity, 250 labor, 65, 166; contracts, 77–83; and
Florida, 224–39 historiography, xviii. See also enslaved
Franciscans, 104, 106, 157 Africans and Afro-Latin Americans;
free womb, law of the, 172 domestic service; midwives
freedom from slavery, 165–79, 205–13 landholding: enslaved Afro-Latin Americans
funerals, 194, 195. See also burials and, 180–92; Jesuits and, 180–81,
183–84; women and, 38, 42–44, 52, 77,
Graubart, Karen, xxi 199–200, 224–39
Ghana, 165 languages, indigenous 15, 17–20, 22, 24–26
god parentage, 177, 194, 195–96 law: composition of, xx–xxiii; and enslaved
gold mining, 166 peoples, 182, 224–39; Iberian, 95; and
indigenous people, xx, 14–29; as empire,
healers. See curanderas xix–xx; and manumission, 165–79; and
hechicería. See witchcraft women, xxii–xxiii, xxvi, 30, 52–54,
herbs, 11, 141, 148–49 95–102, 180–92, 205–13. See also justice
homosexuality, xii, 215–16 system; Siete Partidas
honor, gendered, 62, 67, 68, 84–86, 253 Lavrin, Asunción, xii, xix
horticulture, 23 legal history, xx–xxiii
House of Trade. See Casa de la Contratación legal records, xv–xvii, xix–xxiii, xxiv, 31
legal rights, women’s, xxi–xxii. See also law:
identity, gender, xxvi, 215, 216, 221; and women
indigenous, 16–22, 24–26, 32; racial, legitimacy, xxi, 31, 62, 155
xxvi, 78 lesbianism, xii, 215–16
illegitimacy, xiii, 62–63, 224, 237, 238 letters, 60–76
illness, 105, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112 Lima, 34, 35, 116
indigenous women: and Catholicism, limpieza de sangre, 53, 155
154–64; and conquest, xvii–xviii, xxvi, literacy, 60, 104
1–3; disparagement of, 160–62; and livestock, 37, 42, 44, 230
labor contracts, 79–80, 81; and the law,
14–29, 95–102; marrying Spaniards 7; as mail, 60
will-makers 30, 36–43 Malinche. See Malintzin
 Index

Malintzin, xvii, 2, 3 notarial documents, xxiii, 30–50

Manila Galleon, 105 nuns, 103–14, 116, 117; indigenous,
manumission, xix, 116, 165–79, 208 154–64
marriage, 61–64, 71–76, 145–53, 180; Nueva Granada, 240
as alliance, 1, 2, 3; discord in, 97, 99;
finances in, 46, 97, 100; enslaved people Pamplona, 181, 187
and, 181–82; indigenous women and, 7; patria potestad, xxi, xxii
inheritance and, 43, 202. See also arras; patriarchy, xv, xix, xxvi, xxvii, 95, 165, 196
bigamy; dowries; polygamy; separation, pelota, 87, 88, 90, 91, 94, 221
marital penance, 10, 103, 119, 125
masculinity, 99, 215, 217. See also patriarchy Philippines, 103, 105
material culture: in bequests, 11, 34–39, 42, polygamy, xiv
46, 49; in letters 72, 75 Potosí, 30, 32, 35, 84, 85
maternity, 2–3, 32–33, 77–78, 167, 250, poverty, 69, 71, 138, 252
253 prayer, 104, 109, 110, 121, 109
medicine, 54, 141, 149, 150 pregnancy, 129, 145–46, 148, 150–51, 253
Melgarejo Sotomayer, Luisa, 115 Premo, Bianca, xx, 206
mestizas, 32, 44–49, 128–44, 154 privacy, 85–86, 88, 253
Mexico City, 5 probanzas, 2, 53, 56
midwifery. See midwives procuradores. See defenders, legal
midwives, 51–59, 128–44, 148, 149 property, women and, 9–13, 30, 199–200,
migration: licenses for, 51–59, 61; regional, 224–39. See also landholding: women
31; transatlantic, xv, 15, 19, 50-59, 61, and
165 proselytism, 7, 103–14. See also Catholicism
miracles, 104, 105, 107, 118–19, 158 prostitution, 252, 257
miscarriage, 129, 139, 254 Protestantism, 235
missionaries, 103–14 pulque, 155
mobility, women’s, 84, 85; nuns’ 103–14 purgatory, 110, 117–20, 122–25, 199
Moctezuma, Isabel, 1–13
Moctezuma, Leonor Cortés, 2–4 rape. See sexual assault
Moctezuma II, Emperor, 1–2, 5–7, 12 Real Audiencia, xx, 155
money: and domestic economy, 64–76, recogimiento, 84, 96, 146, 148, 159
97, 152; from transatlantic spouses, 65, religious practice, 104, 108, 109. See also
68–71; as wages, 53, 78–83. See also ecstasies; prayer; religious devotion
currency religious devotion, 31, 32, 35, 46, 103,
moriscas, 26, 28 220–21. See also Catholicism
moros, 20 reputation, 253
mortification, 161 Rosa de Lima, 115
mulatos. See Afro-Latin Americans
music, 48–49 Sahagún, Bernardino de, 154
mysticism, 115–27 Saint Anne, 195
Salvador, 193
New Laws, xvii, 14, 15, 17 Santa Clara, convent of, 115, 116
networks: female, xxvi; kin, 30–31, 32, 60, sea voyages, 22, 56, 105, 109–14
78, 85, 97; economic, 30, 31, 32; social, separation, marital, 59, 61–62, 70–72,
84 250–54
news, 61 Seville, 61
nobility, indigenous, xxv, 1–2, 6–7, 155, sexual assault, 84–95, 205, 207, 208, 226
183–84, 189 sexual relations, 85, 87, 88, 95, 166, 171, 205

285
 Index

sexuality, xii, 62. See also adultery; Úrsula de Jesús, 115–27

homosexuality; lesbianism; sexual uterus, prolapsed, 150, 245
relations; virginity
Siete Partidas, xxii, 182, 242, 250 vassalage, 6, 8
slaves. See enslaved Africans and Afro-Latin vidas, 103, 117, 155
Americans; enslaved indigenous people Virgin Mary, 33, 36, 45, 46, 197
sodomy, 215, 216 virginity, 84, 86, 87, 158, 159
Sucre. See La Plata virtues, 161, 162
visions, 118–27
tacha, 26–28
Tacuba, 2, 4, 5–8 wet nurses, 81–82
temascal, 133 widows, xxi, 3, 131, 136, 180, 184, 225
Temporalidades, 181, 183–84, 189 wills, 4, 9–11, 30–50, 193–204, 234
Tenochtitlan. See Mexico City witches. See witchcraft
Teresa de Jesús, 115 witchcraft, 128, 133–35, 138–42
textiles: as bequests, 34–37, 41, 47–49; writing, by lay women, 60–76; by female
inventoried at imprisonment, 152 religious, xiv, 103–14, 115–27
Tlaxcala, 129, 137, 142
Totorici, Zeb, xii Zumárraga, Juan de, 154
transvestism, 214–23
“This outstanding collection makes available for the first time a remarkable range of pri-
mary sources that will enrich courses on women as well as Latin American history more
broadly. Within these pages are captivating stories of enslaved African and indigenous
women who protest abuse; of women who defend themselves from charges of witchcraft,
cross-dressing, and infanticide; of women who travel throughout the empire or are left
behind by the men in their lives; and of women’s strategies for making a living in a world
of cross-cultural exchanges. Jaffary and Mangan’s excellent Introduction and annotations
provide context and guide readers to think critically about crucial issues related to the
intersections of gender with conquest, religion, work, family, and the law.”

—Sarah Chambers, University of Minnesota

“Mangan and Jaffary’s volume offers an impressive collection of primary sources for Latin
American women’s history. It includes texts covering a diversity of women, times, and
places across this broad region; shows that women were agents of survival and change for
themselves and others; and humanizes the experience of colonial life for specific individu-
als and families across a long period. This book will be very usable in courses on Latin
American, gender, social, and cultural history. I highly recommend it.”

—Susan Kellogg, University of Houston

Nora E. Jaffary is Professor of History, Concordia University.

Jane E. Mangan is Mary Reynolds Babcock Professor of History and Latin American
Studies at Davidson College.

ISBN-13: 978-1-62466-750-3
90000

Cover image: Francisco Laso, The Three Races or Equality

Before the Law (c. 1859). MALI, Museo de Arte de Lima. 9 781624 667503