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Chapter Nine - Women and Slavery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2015

Susan Migden Socolow
Susan Migden Socolow
Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
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Summary

I declare that when I married doña Margarita Mexia, she brought with her as her dowry 1,000 pesos and a black slave named Catalina de la Cruz, and that the said slave has produced seven other slaves [piezas de esclavos y esclavos] named Nicolasa Ramos, a twenty-year-old black woman; Alfonso José, a suckling child; José Ramos, an eighteen-year-old black man; Antonio Lugardo, a mulatto boy, 14 to 15 years old; Ignacio José de Ramos, a dark mulatto boy, 4 to 5 years old; and Margarita Ramos, a fair-skinned mulatta girl, between 2 and 3 years old. I declare them all to be slaves, subject to service.

Inventory taken at San Miguel de Almolonga, 1 July 1699: Among other property belonging to Don Nicolas Ramos de Bustos, we take inventory of the following slaves:

Catalina, 38-year-old black woman, married to Manuel de Rueda, free mulatto

Nicolasa, daughter of the abovementioned Catalina, 18 years old

José, 14-year-old black, son of Catalina

Antonio, a 12-year-old mulatto, son of Catalina

Margarita María, 8 years old, daughter of Catalina

Ignacio José, 5-year-old mulatto, son of Catalina

Margarita de Guadalupe, a mulatta girl, daughter of Catalina, between 2 and 3 years old

Alfonso José, 8 months old, son of the abovementioned Nicolasa [Catalina’s grandson]

Just as the women of the conquered pre-Columbian Indian populations found their lives changed forever as a result of the coming of European conquerors, the position and role of African women were permanently altered by their enslavement and transportation to the New World. Far from their communities of origin and torn from their cultures, slaves were forced to re-create a new social and religious world. They did this by accepting Hispanic forms while maintaining parts of their African heritage. Although they were viewed as legally inferior to the indigenous population, most slaves probably had closer day-to-day contact with their masters than did Indians. This was particularly true of enslaved women.

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The Women of Colonial Latin America , pp. 140 - 156
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

Capitaine, Fernando Winfield, ed., Esclavos en el Archivo Notarial de Xalapa, Veracruz (Xalapa, Veracruz: Universidad Veracruzana, 1984), 102
Mannarelli, , Pecados públicos: La ilegitimidad en Lima, sieglo xvii (Lima: Ediciones Flora Tristán, 1993), 291–292Google Scholar
Hünefeldt, Christine, Paying the Price of Freedom: Family and Labor among Lima’s Slaves, 1800–1854 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 21Google Scholar
Russell-Wood, A. J. R., The Black Man in Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Brazil (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982), 40CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Socolow, Susan M., The Merchants of Buenos Aires, 1778–1810: Family and Commerce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 218CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowser, Frederick P., The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524–1650 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), 189Google Scholar

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  • Women and Slavery
  • Susan Migden Socolow, Emory University, Atlanta
  • Book: The Women of Colonial Latin America
  • Online publication: 05 February 2015
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139031189.010
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  • Women and Slavery
  • Susan Migden Socolow, Emory University, Atlanta
  • Book: The Women of Colonial Latin America
  • Online publication: 05 February 2015
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139031189.010
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Women and Slavery
  • Susan Migden Socolow, Emory University, Atlanta
  • Book: The Women of Colonial Latin America
  • Online publication: 05 February 2015
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139031189.010
Available formats
×