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The Spanish Petition System, Hospital/ity, and the Formation of a Mulato Community in Sixteenth-Century Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2021

Miguel A. Valerio Open the ORCID record for Miguel A. Valerio [Opens in a new window]
Miguel A. Valerio*
Affiliation:
Washington University, St. Louis, Missourim.a.valerio@wustl.edu
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Abstract

In 1568, a group of Mexican mulatos unsuccessfully petitioned the Spanish crown for a license to build a hospital. The mulatos’ petition, however, is an important document that speaks to the legal avenues Afro-Mexicans explored in the mid sixteenth century in their attempts to improve their social position. Through an analysis of how the petition process played out, this article demonstrates how that process epitomized the growing limits placed on Afro-Mexican autonomy by colonial administrators. I contend that this case attests to the difficulties Afro-Mexicans continually encountered in their efforts to establish safety nets through such institutions as hospitals and cofradías, following the example of other colonial subjects. Over time, however, the mulatos’ attempts to institutionalize their privileges as permanent fixtures of colonial society, for example, in petitioning to establish a hospital, intensified the opposition of local royal authorities. I also argue that the petition reveals a Mexican mulato community taking form as a common goal brought the mulatos together, setting in motion a process of community-building through petitioning. Finally, the petition process allows us to see how mulato-ness was understood at the time, broadening our understanding of the category at the time as well as its transformations. The article thus contributes to the study of Afro-Mexicans’ use of the Spanish legal system in the mid sixteenth century, as well as their engagement with the Spanish petition system, two topics that have received little scholarly attention.

Keywords

Spanish petition systemcolonial hospitalsAfro-Mexicocofradíasmulatosblack militias
Type
Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 78 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 415 - 437
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Academy of American Franciscan History

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Chloe Ireton, Adrian Masters, Christina Ramos, Bianca Premo, my wife AJ, the anonymous readers and the editors of The Americas for their generous comments and suggestions; Adrian Masters for sharing several pertinent primary and secondary sources; Esther González for helping me locate the mulatos’ petition at the AGI during the COVID-19 pandemic and for her assistance with the transcription of the more challenging documents; Norah Gharala and Caroline Cunill for their assistance with certain references.

References

1. Juan Bautista: “por mi y en nombre de los demas mulatos”: “Ynformaçion recibida en la Audiencia Real de la Nueva España a pedimiento de çiertos mulatos para ocurrir con ella ante su magestad,” 1568, Archivo General de Indias [hereafter AGI], México 98, probanza, fol. 1r. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

2. On the Spanish empire's use of defenders of the poor, see for example Caroline Cunill and Francisco Quijano, “‘Que nosotros quedemos en aquella figura como nuestra lealtad y servicios merecen’: cadenas de representación en el Imperio hispánico,” Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos (2020), https://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/79325, accessed April 26, 2021.

3. Philip II: “si convendra que se haga y edifique el dicho hospital”: “Real cédula a la Audiencia y a el arzobispo de México para que en la solicitud de los mulatos de Nueva España, hijos de negros e indias o de españoles y negras, que piden licencia y ayuda para hacer un hospital donde sean curados y fundarlo junto a la iglesia de San Hipólito, en unos solares al lado de la ermita de los Mártires, les proporcionen sitio en dichos solares sin perjuicio de tercero y el favor y ayuda necesarios,” November 4, 1568, AGI, México 1089:5, fol. 260v.

4. Philip II, “Real cédula a Martín Enríquez, virrey de Nueva España, y a la Audiencia de México para que provean lo que convenga en la solicitud de los mulatos de México que piden un sitio, con estancias y propios, para fundar un hospital, pues los que hay en México son para españoles o para los indios,” June 2, 1569, AGI, México 1089:5, fols. 347v-348v.

5. Philip II, “Real cédula al virrey de Nueva España y presidente de la Audiencia de México para que informen sobre la solicitud de los mulatos de Nueva España que piden ayuda para la fundación y edificación de un hospital,” November 2, 1570, AGI, México 1090:6, fol. 181r.

6. Juan de la Peña: “en nombre de çiertos vezinos mulatos”: AGI, México 98, petition, fol. 1r.

7. Martín Enríquez, “Carta del virrey Martín Enríquez,” April 28, 1572, AGI, México 19:82.

8. Enríquez: “ni en estos ni en otros nunca querria ver juntas, desbaratar las dichas tiene mas dificultad”: AGI, México 19:82, fol. 2r.

9. Philip II: “como veys de hazerse el dicho ospital se seguira mucho bien a los dichos mulatos”: AGI, México 1089:5, fol. 260v.

10. The term itself may have come from the Arabic term muwallad, which designated persons of Christian-Muslim descent, and not from the Spanish mula (mule), as is generally believed. See for example Forbes, Jack D., Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 140–147Google Scholar.

11. Schwaller, Robert C., “Géneros de Gente” in Early Colonial Mexico: Defining Racial Difference (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), 115–116Google Scholar.

12. Juan Garrido, “Probanza de Juan Garrido, negro, vecino de la ciudad de México,” September 7, 1538, AGI, México 204. Like the mulatos, Garrido was not granted the pension he sought. See Restall, Matthew, “Black Conquistadors: Armed Africans in Early Spanish America,” The Americas 57:2 (2000): 171–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. Bennett, Herman L., Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570–1640 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; A. McKinley, Michelle, Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization in Colonial Lima, 1600–1700 (Cambridge University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other important works include Rachel Sarah O'Toole, Bound Lives: Africans, Indians and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012); Sherwin K. Bryant, Rivers of Gold, Lives of Bondage: Governing through Slavery in Colonial Quito (Chapel Hill: University of Carolina Press, 2014); Ricardo Raúl Salazar Rey, Mastering the Law: Slavery and Freedom in the Legal Ecology of the Spanish Empire (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2020); and Erika Edwards, Hiding in Plain Sight: Black Women, the Law, and the Making of a White Argentine Republic (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2020).

14. Chloe Ireton, “‘They Are Blacks of the Caste of Black Christians’: Old Christian Black Blood in the Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century Iberian Atlantic,” Hispanic American Historical Review 97:4 (2017): 579–612; “Black Africans’ Freedom Litigation Suits to Define Just War and Just Slavery in the Early Spanish Empire,” Renaissance Quarterly 73:4 (2020): 1277–1319.

15. Nicole von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers: Confraternities and Social Mobility for Afro-Mexicans (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006), 84.

16. Enríquez: “aviendo cofradía”: AGI, México 19:82, fol. 2r.

17. Adrian Masters, “A Thousand Invisible Architects: Vassals, the Petition and Response System, and the Creation of Spanish Caste Legislation,” Hispanic American Historical Review 98:3 (2018): 400. Robert C. Schwaller argues in “Géneros de Gente” (7) that the casta system did not emerge until the seventeenth century.

18. See for example two works by Caroline Cunill, “Philip II and Indigenous Access to Royal Justice: Considering the Process of Decision-Making in the Spanish Empire,” Colonial Latin American Review 24:4 (2015): 505–524, and “El uso indígena de las probanzas de méritos y servicios: su dimensión política (Yucatán, siglo XVI),” Signos Históricos 16:32 (2014): 14–47.

19. On the Spanish petition system, see for example Masters, “A Thousand Invisible Architects.”

20. Juan de la Peña: “por ser gente libre e no esclavos”; “hijos de negros y de yndias e de españoles e negras”: AGI, México 98, petition, fol. 1r.

21. AGI, México 98, probanza, fol. 1r.

22. Philip II, “Real cédula a Martín Enríquez, virrey de la Nueva España, para que prohíba la proesión e disciplina de la cofradía de los negros de la ciudad de México, por los inconvenientes que genera,” May 15, 1575, AGI, México 1090. On the crown's support of black cofradías, see Karen B. Graubart, “‘So color de una cofradía’: Catholic Confraternities and the Development of Afro-Peruvian Ethnicities in Early Colonial Peru,” Slavery and Abolition 33:1 (2012): 43–64. On the Council of the Indies, see Ernest Schäfer, El Consejo Real y Supremo de las Indias, su historia, organización y labor administrativa hasta la terminación de la Casa de Austria, 2 vols. (Seville: M. Carmona, 1935–47).

23. Schäfer, El Consejo Real y Supremo de las Indias, 1:75–76.

24. Juan de Gerónimo: “pobres y necesitados”: AGI, México 98, probanza, fol. 4v. See Cunill, “Philip II and Indigenous Access to Royal Justice.”

25. AGI, México 98, petition, 1.

26. AGI, México 204. See Restall, “Black Conquistadors.”

27. Juan Bautista: “somos muchos y en cantidad de seys myll.” AGI, México 98, probanza, 1r.

28. Germán Setién Latorre, “Censos de la población del Virreinato de Nueva España en el siglo XVI,” Boletín del Centro de Estudios Americanistas de Sevilla de Indias 7:36–37 (1920): 44–66.

29. Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, La población negra de México: estudio etnohistórico, reprint (Xalapa: Univeridad Veracruzana, [1946] 1989), 209. See also Colin A. Palmer, Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico, 1570–1650, reprint (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, [1976] 2013), 40.

30. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico, 23.

31. Examples include Juan de Gerónimo: “no sabe al justo los que son”; Diego Coronel: “no sabe la cantidad al justo”; and Juan García: “no sabe que tanta cantidad ay dellos”: AGI, México 98, probanza, fols. 4r. 5r, 7r.

32. Latorre, “Censos de la población del Virreinato de Nueva España”; Aguirre Beltrán, La población negra de México, 210; Palmer, Slaves of the White God, 40. Von Germeten summarizes the debate around these figures in Black Blood Brothers, 73.

33. See Manuel Lucena Salmoral, Regulación de la esclavitud negra en las colonias de América Española (1503–1886): documentos para su estudio (Alcalá: Universidad de Alcalá, 2000), 33–34.

34. Ben Vinson III, Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 5; Susan M. Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 52–55. See also Karen Vieira Powers, Women in the Crucible of Conquest: The Gendered Genesis of Spanish American Society, 1500–1600 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), esp. 68–141; and Allyson M. Poska, Gendered Crossings: Women and Migration in the Spanish Empire (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016), 2–3. Vieira Powers calls mestizaje, “perhaps the most formative sociocultural process of Latin America's history” (68), but like so many others, neglects Afro-descendants’ role in this process.

35. Lourdes Mondragón Barrios, Esclavos africanos en la Ciudad de México: el servicio doméstico durante el siglo XVI (Mexico City: Euram, 1999), 36–39. In her study of black women in colonial Mexico City, which focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, María Elisa Velázquez Gutiérrez does not offer any figures for the sixteenth century, other than those of Aguirre Beltrán discussed here: Mujeres de origen africano en la capital novohispana, siglos XVII y XVIII (Mexico City: INAH/UNAM, 2006), 30.

36. See Lucena Salmoral, Regulación de la esclavitud negra, 21–148.

37. See Matthew Restall, “Black Conquistadors”; Elena F. Sifford, “Mexican Manuscripts and the First Images of Africans in the Americas,” Ethnohistory 66:2 (2019): 223–248; Matthew Restall, ed., Beyond Black and Red: African-Native Relations in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005); and Pat Carroll, “Black Aliens and Black Natives in New Spain's Indigenous Communities,” in Black Mexico: Race and Society from Colonial to Modern Times, Ben Vinson III and Matthew Restall, eds. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009), 72–95.

38. Juan de la Peña: “en la dicha Nueva España ay cantidad de mulatos”: AGI, México 98, petition, fol. 1r.

39. As I discuss here, in 1583, Juan presented another petition to Philip II wherein he claimed to be the son of the conquistador Gaspar Rubio de Cardona and a black woman named Catalina Martín, both from Valencia: “Informaçion fecha a pedimiento de Juan Bautista de Cardona sobre çierto tributo que se le pide,” 1583, AGI, Indiferente General, 1233. An exception from the quantification of Mexican mulatos as only half-black and half-Spanish is Schwaller, “Géneros de Gente,” 111–146.

40. On legal rhetoric by indigenous subjects petitioning the monarch and the Council of the Indies, see Brian Philip Owensby, Empire of Law and Indian Justice in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 49–89.

41. AGI, México 98, petition, fol. 1r.

42. Juan Bautista: “los mas son pobres”: AGI, México 98, probanza, 1r.

43. Andrew Sluyter, Black Ranching Frontiers: African Cattle Herders of the Atlantic World, 1500–1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 19–60.

44. Philip II: “tienen muchas granjerias y tienen sus tierras”: “Relación de los derechos que se pueden acrescentar y cobrar en las Yndias,” 1573, AGI, México 99, fol. 1r.

45. See Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico.

46. AGI, Indiferente General, 1233. On black tribute during the colonial period, see Norah L. A. Gharala, Taxing Blackness: Free Afromexican Tribute in Bourbon New Spain (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2019). Chapter 3 provides a historical overview of Afro-Mexican tribute before 1763.

47. The terms zambo and zambaigo used in other American latitudes for this population were not used in New Spain. Robert C. Schwaller, “Géneros de Gente” 46–47. Frederick P. Bowser stated that ‘mulato’ was used for Mexican Afro-mestizos up to 1650, but my experience has been that it was used throughout the colonial period, even for the children of Asians and blacks, and that zambo or zambaigo was never used. Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524–1650 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), 383–384 n19. On Asians in New Spain, see Tatiana Seijas, Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico: From Chinos to Indians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). On categories of human difference in sixteenth-century New Spain, see Schwaller, “Géneros de Gente.”

48. AGI, México 98, petition, fol. 1r.

49. See for example Tamar Herzog, Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). Freedom was not a prerequisite to petition the crown or seek relief in the courts. See Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico; and McKinley, Fractional Freedoms.

50. On Afrodescendants’ strategic use of vecindad in the sixteenth centtury, see Ireton, “‘They Are Blacks of the Caste of Black Christians’”; Pablo F. Gómez, The Experiential Caribbean: Creating Knowledge and Healing in the Early Modern Atlantic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017); Karen B. Graubart, “Los lazos que unen: dueñas negras de esclavos negros en Lima, ss. XVI–XVII,” Revista Nueva Corónica 2 (2013): 625–640; and David Wheat, Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570–1640 (Chapel Hill: University of Carolina Press, 2018), 166–180, 207–215.

51. Robert C. Schwaller, “‘For Honor and Defence’: Race and the Right to Bear Arms in Early Colonial Mexico,” Colonial Latin American Review 21:2 (2012): 240.

52. Juan de la Peña: “no tienen hospital donde se curar de sus enfermedades e sean amparados porque de tres hospitales que ay en aquella tierra y çiudad de mexico en ninguno los admiten sino son españoles o yndios que tambien tienen su hospital por sy y en ninguno son admitidos y asy se mueren sin ser curados e sin sacramentos”: AGI, México 98, petition, fol. 1r.

53. In using the term “socio-racial,” I follow Robert C. Schwaller's understanding that “during the sixteenth century categories of human difference had begun to undergo a process of racialization.” Schwaller, “Géneros de Gente,” 6.

54. Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias mandadas imprimir y publicar por la Magestad Católica del rey Don Carlos III, Nuestro Señor, reprint (Madrid: Viuda de D. Juanquín Ibarra, [1681] 1791), libro 6, título 9.

55. See Shirley Cushing Flint, “Treason or Travesty: The Martín Cortés Conspiracy Reexamined,” Sixteenth Century Journal 39:1 (2008): 23–44.

56. Cushing Flint, “Treason or Travesty,” 27.

57. Francisco de Sande, “Proceso contra Martín Cortés,” 1566, AGI, Patronato 208. Contemporary accounts of these events are found in Juan Suárez de Peralta, Tratado del descubrimiento de las Yndias y su conquista (transcripción del manuscrito de 1589), Giorgio Sabino Antonio Perissinotto, ed. (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, [1589] 1990); and La conjuración de Martín Cortés y otros temas, Agustín Yáñez, ed., reprint (Mexico City: UNAM, [1589] 1994).

58. Real Audiencia de México, “Secuestro de bienes de Martín Cortés,” 1567, AGI, Patronato 17; Real Audiencia de México, “Condena de Martín Cortés, culpado en la rebelión de México,” March 3, 1573, AGI, Patronato 171:1:20.

59. Don Francisco Velasco: “dixo querer hazer servicios de su magestad y que el trazia a serbir en ello que se ofreçia el y otra mas cantidad de mulatos para servir en lo que ofreçiese”: AGI, México 98, probanza, fol. 8r. On the Velasco clan, see for example John F. Schwaller, “The Early Life of Luis de Velasco, the Younger: The Future Viceroy As Boy and Young Man,” Estudios de Historia Novohispana 29 (2003): 17–47; and Rafael Sánchez Domingo, El régimen señorial en Castilla Vieja: la casa de los Velasco (Burgos: Universidad de Burgos, 1999). As John F. Schwaller notes in “The Early Life of Luis de Velasco, the Younger” (42), Luis de Velasco, the younger, was the principal witness in the case against adherents of Ávila and Córtes.

60. Juan Méndez: “la qual guardia fizieron con mucho cuidado y deligencia y toda solcitud”: AGI, México 98, probanza, fol. 3v. Also Juan de Gerónimo: AGI, México 98, probanza, 4r.

61. See Schwaller, “‘For Honor and Defence,’” 240.

62. Juan de Cordaz: “mostrando ser servidores y leales vasallos de su magestad”: AGI, México 98, probanza, 6v.

63. Juan Bautista: “con mas de sesenta hombre mulatos fueron a ofrecerse al servicio de su magestad y a don francisco de velasco . . . quando prendieron al marques del valle y sus hermanos [sic] y asi hizieron su ronda y vela con mucho cuidado,” AGI, México 98, probanza, 1v.

64. AGI, México 98, probanza, fols. 2r, 8r.

65. Juan de Llerena, “Petición de Juan de Llerena, mulato, vecino de la ciudad de México,” 1578, AGI, México 102.

66. See Robert S. Smith, “Sales Taxes in New Spain, 1575–1770,” Hispanic American Historical Review 28:1 (1948): 2–37; Tim Connell, “New Spain and the Tribute System in the 16th Century, Diego Ramírez, and Jerónimo de Valderrama: Justo Juez and Azote de Indios,” Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv 4:2 (1978): 161–170; and Ross Hassig, Trade, Tribute, and Transportation: The Sixteenth-Century Political Economy of the Valley of Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993).

67. Ben Vinson III, Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 132–172. See also Gharala, Taxing Blackness, 112–113.

68. Vinson III, Bearing Arms for His Majesty, 7–45.

69. Vinson III, Bearing Arms for His Majesty, 2.

70. Vinson and Restall, “Black Soldiers, Native Soldiers: Meaning of Military Service in the Spanish American Colonies,” in Beyond Black and Red, 15–52.

71. On Afro-Mexican militiamen's legal privileges, see Vinson, Bearing Arms for His Majesty, 173–198.

72. Juan Bautista: “sera dios nuestro señor servido dello porque en el [hospital] seran curados e yndustriados en las cosas de nuestra sancta fe catolica”: AGI, México 98, probanza, 2r.

73. Juan Méndez: “muchos dellos se aplican a aprender ofiçios y ecerçiçios virtuosos”: AGI, México 98, probanza, fols. 3v. Also Diego Coronel: AGI, México 98, probanza, 4v.

74. Juan de la Peña: “tienen devoçion de hazer un hospital donde se recojan asy se curar como rrecibir los sanctos sacramentos e morir como cristianos”: AGI, México 98, petition, 1r.

75. Philip II: “tienen devoçion de hazer un hospital donde los que enfermen sean curados”: AGI, México 1089:5, fol. 260v.

76. On colonial administrators’ suspicion of the genuineness of Afrodescendants’ Catholicism, see Graubart, “‘So color de una cofradía’”; Miguel A. Valerio, “‘That There Be No Black Brotherhood’: The Failed Suppression of Afro-Mexican Confraternities, 1568–1612,” Slavery & Abolition 42:2 (2021): 293–314.

77. Juan Bautista: “quando adoleçen y les çubçeden algunas enfermedades no tienen donde yrse a curar por no los querer recoxer los hospitales que en esta dicha çiudad ay porque tienen solamente de recoger en ellos españoles e yndios”: AGI, México 98, probanza, fol. 1r.

78. Enríquez: “tanpoco e querido venir en otro ospital que querian hazer para negros”: AGI, México 19:82, fol. 2r.

79. Enríquez: “que los negros los curen sus amos”: AGI, México 19:82, fol. 2r.

80. See for example John S. Leiby, “The Royal Indian Hospital of Mexico City, 1553–1680,” The Historian 57:3 (1995): 573–580.

81. See Christina Ramos, “Caring for Pobres Dementes: Madness, Colonization, and the Hospital of San Hipólito in Mexico City, 1567–1700,” The Americas 77:4 (2020): 539–571.

82. Ramos, “Caring for Pobres Dementes,” 544.

83. See for example Josefina Muriel, Hospitales de la Nueva España (1956, reprint: Mexico City: UNAM, 1990); Pablo F. Gómez, “Hospitals and Public Health in the Sixteenth-Century Spanish Caribbean,” in The Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic World in the Long Sixteenth Century, Ida Altman and David Wheat, eds. (Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 2019), 211–234; Guenter B. Risse, “Shelter and Care for Natives and Colonists: Hospitals in Sixteenth-Century New Sapin,” in Searching for the Secrets of Nature: The Life and Works of Dr. Francisco Hernández, Simon Varey, Rafael Chabrán, and Dora B. Weiner, eds. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 65–81; and Gabriel Ramos, “Indian Hospitals and Government in the Colonial Andes,” Medical History 57:2 (2013): 186–205. An example of a hospital's constitution is found in AGI, Lima 123 (June 13, 1574).

84. Charles V: “que se funden hospitales en todos los pueblos de Españoles é Indios”: “Que se funden hospitales en todos los pueblos de Españoles é Indios,” 1541, Recopilación de leyes, libro l, título 4, ley 1.

85. See Muriel, Hospitales de la Nueva España.

86. Matthews, 25:35–36: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me”: New American Bible.

87. Philip II: “gastando para ello de sus propias haciendas”: AGI, México 1089:5, 260v.

88. See Joan Cameron Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches: Afro-Mexican Ritual Practice in the Seventeenth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007), 6.

89. Enríquez: “con cualquier ocasion destas se juntan dos mill negros y de ay arriba”: AGI, México 19:82, fol. 2r.

90. Enríquez: “los negros es una de las cosas con que a se de tener mas particular cuenta en esta tierra”: Martín Enríquez, “Carta del virrey Martín Enríquez,” October 18, 1579, AGI, México 20:29, fol. 2r.

91. Rodrigo too leveraged his militia service in petitioning for a license to carry a sword: “Petición de Rodrigo de Mercado,” 1575, Archivo General de la Nación [hereafter AGN], General de Parte 1:63. See Schwaller, “‘For Honor and Defence’”; and Lucena Salmoral, Regulación de la esclavitud negra, 43–88.

92. See María Elena Martínez, “The Black Blood of New Spain: Limpieza de Sangre, Racial Violence, and Gendered Power in Early Colonial Mexico,” William and Mary Quarterly 61:3 (2004): 479–520.

93. Enríquez: “Aqui a dias que los negros tenian una cofradia y se juntavan y hazian por si su procesion de diciplinantes como los demas y esto como las otras cosas desta calidad a ydo siempre en crecimiento y siempre dando y tomando que parecia que traya incoveniente”: AGI, México 19:82, fol. 1v.

94. Luis de Quiroz: “una cofradia de disciplina con la cual salieron el juebes santo . . . asotandose en forma de prosesion . . . llevando estandarte . . . sin tener para ello licencia del prelado ni de ministro de su nombre”: “Contra algunos mulatos que han fundado cofradia y salido en procesion sin licencia,” 1601, AGN, Bienes Nacionales 810:28, fol. 1r. See von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers, 85.

95. Mexicna Inquisition, “El señor fiscal del Santo Oficio contra Ysidro de Peralta,” 1699, Huntington Library [hereafter HL], Mexican Inquisition Papers, Series II, Box 6, HM35168. Elsewhere I have argued that the religious orders founded and supported Afro-Mexican cofradías under their canonical prerogative: Valerio, “‘That There Be No Black Brotherhood.’”

96. Inquisitor: “no resulta cosa de heregia, ni sabor de ella, y que solo pareze haver sido una devoçion yndiscreta”: Mexican Inquisition, “Autos contra diferentes personas que formavan nueba religion de san Agustin,” 1702, HL, Mexican Inquisition Papers, Series II, Box 6, HM35169, s/fol. See Valerio, “‘That There Be No Black Brotherhood.’”

97. Valerio, “‘That There Be No Black Brotherhood.’” On these prelates’ support of Afro-Mexican confraternities, see von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers, 15–17; and Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva, Urban Slavery in Colonial Mexico: Puebla de Los Ángeles, 1531–1706 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 170–174.

98. Brondat: “tienen otro abuso que es aver hecho juntas y conciliabulos so color de una cofradía en el convento de Santo Domingo San Agustin Ospital de Nuestra Señora y desamparados y para esto tienen su caxa que llaman del tesoro con tres llaves y su tesorero mayordomo escribano prioste y allí juntan suma y cantidad de pesos de oro rrobando a sus amos y a los vezinos desta dicha ciudad”: Actas del cabildo de la Ciudad de México, vol. 14, Ignacio Bejarano, ed. (1521–1821; first edition; Mexico City: Aguilar e Hijos, 1889–1911), 115. For an identical accusation against Afro-Limeños, see Graubart, “‘So color de una cofradía.’”

99. “Relacion del alçamiento que negros y mulatos libres y cautivos de la Ciudad de Mexico de la Nueva España pretendieron hazer contras los españoles por Quaresma del año de 1612, y del castigo que se hizo de los caveças y culpados,” 1612, Biblioteca Nacional de España [hereafter BNE], MS 2010, fols. 158–164; Domingo Chimalpahin, Annals of His Time, James Lockhart, Susan Schroeder, and Doris Namala, eds. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 219–223. See Martínez, “The Black Blood of New Spain”; and Daniel Nemser, “Triangulating Blackness: Mexico City, 1612,” Mexican Studies 33:3 (2017): 344–366.

100. Philip II: “por los incovenientes que genera”: AGI, México 1090, fol. 42v.

101. See Aurelia Martín Casares and Christine Delaigue, “The Evangelization of Freed and Slave Black Africans in Renaissance Spain: Baptism, Marriage, and Ethnic Brotherhoods,” History of Religions 52:3 (2013): 214–235; and Erin K. Rowe, Black Saints in Early Modern Global Catholicism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 46–86.

102. See Isidro Moreno, La antigua hermandad de los negros de Sevilla: etnicidad, poder y sociedad en 600 años de historia (Seville: University of Seville, 1997), 23–56; and Carmen Fracchia, “Black but Human”: Slavery and the Visual Arts in Hapsburg Spain, 1480–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 48–55.

103. John II of Navarre: “christianos nigros libertate donatos”: “Ordenanzas de la cofradía de los cristianos negros de Barcelona,” March 20, 1455, Archivo General de la Corona de Aragon [hereafter, AGCA], R. 3298, fol. 3r.

104. Confraternity of St. Jaume: “Item sia ordinacio de la confraria que si algun confrare o confraressa vendra a pobressa o fretura per malaties o perdues o en altra qualsevol manera que los prohomens de la dita confraria e caxa segons llur bon vijares a aquell o aquella la dita fretura sostendra axi en provisio de son menjar com en necessitats de metges et de medecines com en totes alters coses a ell o a ella necesaries”: AGCA, R. 3298, fol. 3r.

105. See Didier Lahon, “Da redução da alteridade a consagração da diferença: as irmandades negras em Portugal (séculos XVI–XVIII),” Projeto História 44 (2012): 53–83; and Cécile Fromont, “Dancing for The King of Congo from Early Modern Central Africa to Slavery-Era Brazil,” Colonial Latin American Review 22:2 (2013): 184–208.

106. John II of Navarre, “Fundación de la cofradía de los negros libertos de la ciudad de Valencia,” 1572, AGCA, R. 3512, fols. 217–218. See Debra Blumenthal, “‘La Casa dels Negres’: Black African Solidarity in Late Medieval Valencia,” in Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, Thomas F. Earle and Kate J. P. Lowe, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 225–246.

107. See Graubart, “‘So color de una cofradía’”; Moreno, “Plurietnicidad, fiestas y poder: cofradías y fiestas andaluzas de negros como modelo para la América colonial,” in El mundo festivo en España y América, Antonio Garrido Aranda, ed. (Córdoba: University of Córdoba, 2005), 169–188.

108. Von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers, 23–37.

109. Luis López de Azoca, “Carta de López de Azoca, alcalde del crimen de la Audiencia de México,” February 28, 1609, AGI, México 73:1:4; “Relacion del alçamiento,” BNE, MS 2010, fols. 158–164. See Martínez, “The Black Blood of New Spain.”

110. Pedro López: “tres generos de gentes que ningun hospital las querran curar que son mestizos mulatos y negros libres o esclavos”: “Testamento del doctor Pedro López,” February 14, 1596, AGN, Tierras 3556:4, fol. 38r. See Luis Martínez Ferrer, “Pedro López y los negros y mulatos de la ciudad de México (1582–1597),” in Socialización y religiosidad del médico Pedro López (1527–1597): de Dueñas (Castilla) a la ciudad de México, Martínez Ferrer and María Luisa Rodríguez-Sala, eds. (Mexico City: UNAM, 2013), 179–216. On the Dominicans’ work with Mexico City's black population, see Valerio, “‘That There Be No Black Brotherhood.’”

111. Archdiocese of Mexico, “Memorial de todas las cofradías de españoles, mulatos e indios,” 1706, AGN, Bienes Nacionales 574:2. See von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers, 84, 90; and Muriel, Hospitales de la Nueva España, 37–49.

112. See van Deusen, Nancy E., “The ‘Alienated’ Body: Slaves and Castas in the Hospital de San Bartolomé in Lima, 1680 to 1700,” The Americas 56:1 (1999): 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.