Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-5xszh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T14:37:23.466Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - Juana Ramírez, Eighteenth-Century Oaxaca, New Spain (Mexico)

from Part II - Experiencing Freedom during Slavery’s Expansion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2020

Erica L. Ball
Affiliation:
Occidental College, Los Angeles
Tatiana Seijas
Affiliation:
Rutgers University, New Jersey
Terri L. Snyder
Affiliation:
California State University, Fullerton
Get access

Summary

In eighteenth-century New Spain, free and enslaved African descent women challenged the social order by negotiating their social identities in various colonial spaces. Juana Ramirez was a freed African descent woman who was labeled as both a mulata and an Indian woman in the historical record. In 1761, Juana was interrogated by inquisitors in Antequera for transforming herself into a tall, white figure. In the context of this Inquisition case, Juana’s legal and social statuses were questioned, and local authorities reported that Juana was a mulata criolla and that she was not a “pure” Indian woman. The authorities also indicated that they initially could not pinpoint her social status and thus, they initially referred her case to the Juzgado General de Indios. The uncertainty of Juana’s ethnic background suggests that she possibly proclaimed her indigenous identity to attain her legal freedom at an earlier point in the eighteenth century. By analyzing Juana’s behavior in enslavement and freedom, this chapter highlights how African descent women navigated the Spanish colonial courts and relied on self-fashioning to secure their state of freedom in the Spanish colonial world.

Type
Chapter
Information
As If She Were Free
A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas
, pp. 207 - 217
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

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 Dropbox.

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.

Available formats
×