"To lose one's soul": Blasphemy and slavery in new Spain, 1596-1669

HAHR - Hispanic American Historical Review

Volumn 82, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 435-468

  Villa Flores, Javier ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 3142733846     PISSN: 00182168     EISSN: 15271900     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00182168-82-3-435     Document Type: Review

References (221)

1. Commissaries were the Inquisition's representatives in the major towns
2. Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico City), Ramo Inquisición (hereafter cited as AGN, Inq.), vol. 165, exp. 5 (hereafter 165.3) (unfoliated)
3. The Huntington Library Manuscript (hereafter cited as HLM), no. 31131, vol. 37, pt. 1 (unfoliated)
4. Archbishop Alonso de Montúfar famously challenged this position in a letter written to the Spanish crown in 1560 in which he asked the king to terminate the slave trade arguing that the benefits of Christianization did not offset the terrible injustices that Africans endured. Similarly, Jurist Bartolomé de Albornoz forcefully denounced in his Arte de contratos the extended conviction "that the freedom of the soul should be paid by the servitude of the body." These protests notwithstanding, the court at Madrid did not modify its royal policy and solidly embraced the doctrine of salvation as the main argument for the enslavement of African pagans. For a discussion of the tendency of the Spanish crown to disclaim any responsibility in the slave trade, see Anthony Pagden, The Fall of the Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (1982; reprinted, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994), 33
5. Vitoria's remarks are included in his Political Writings, ed. Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrence (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991), 335
6. Montúfar's letter is cited in Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, ed., Epistolario de Nueva España, 1505-1818, 16 vols. (Mexico City: Antigua Lib. Robredo, de J. Porrúa e hijos, 1939-1942), 9:55
7. Albornoz elaborates his position in "De la esclavitud," in Biblioteca de autores españoles, desde la formación del lenguaje hasta nuestros días, 305 vols. (Madrid: Real Academia Española, 1873), 65:232-33
8. For a detailed discussion of the moral qualms and rationalizations involved in the Atlantic slave trade, see David B. Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1966), esp. chap. 6
9. Equality before the law was an unknown concept in colonial courts. Reflecting the hierarchical order in which they were embedded, tribunals distributed sentences according to the race, social status, occupation, and even gender of the defendants: "judicial procedures may have been impartial, [but] the ultimate disposition of offenders often was affected by their position within the social order." See Michael Scardaville, "(Habpsburg) Law and (Bourbon) Order: State Authority, Popular Unrest, and the Criminal Justice System in Bourbon Mexico City," in Reconstructing Criminality in Latin America, ed. Carlos A. Aguirre and Robert Buffington (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2000), 11
10. On black slaves as defendants, see William H. Dusenberry, "Discriminatory Aspects of Legislation in Colonial Mexico," The Journal of Negro History 33 (1948)
11. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1982), 72
12. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 8
13. During the fusion of the Portuguese and Spanish crowns (1580-1640), the importation of black slaves to America increased enormously. Between 1595 and 1640, the average annual importation was 2,880, totaling 132,600 for the whole period. As might be expected, the mining economies of Mexico and Peru absorbed the bulk of the increase. See Frederick P. Bowser, "Africans in Spanish American Colonial Society," in The Cambridge History of Latin America, ed. Leslie Bethell, 12 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984), 7:361
14. For a detailed discussion of the slave trade to the Indies during these years, based on the study of monopoly contracts granted by the crown (known as asientos), see Jean-Pierre Tardieu, "Les principales structures administratives espagnoles de la traite des Noirs vers les Indes Occidentales," Caravelle 37 (1981)
15. and Enriqueta Vila Vilar, Hispanoamérica y el comercio de esclavos (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1977)
16. On slave resistance and racial tension during this period, see Leslie B. Rout, The African Experience in Spanish America, 1502 to the Present Day (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976), esp. 21-2, 105
17. Colin A. Palmer, Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico, 1570-1650 (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1976), 119-44
18. David M. Davison, "Negro Slave Control and Resistance in Colonial Mexico, 1519-1650," HAHR 46 (1966)
19. Edgar F. Love, "Negro Resistance to Spanish Rule," The Journal of Negro History 52 (1967)
20. Jonathan I. Israel, Race, Class, and Politics in Colonial Mexico, 1610-1670 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1975), 67-75
21. Ben Vinson, Bearing Aims for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico (California: Stanford Univ. Press, 2001), 15-16
22. R. Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660-1720 (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 17-18
23. For a discussion on Yanga and Veracruz, see Adriana Naveda Chávez-Hita, Esclavos negros en las haciendas azucareras de Córdoba, Veracruz, 1690-1830 (Xalapa: Univ. Veracruzana, 1987), 125-61
24. Octoviano Corro Ramos, Cimarrones en Veracruz y la fundación de Amapa (Veracruz: Ed. Citlaltepetl, 1974)
25. Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, El negro esclavo en Nueva España: La formación colonial, la medicina popular y otros ensayos (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1994), 179-86
26. Patrick J. Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz: Race, Ethnicity, and Regional Development (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1991), 90-92
27. and Carmen Bernard and Serge Gruzinski, Histoire du Nouveau Monde, 2 vols. (Paris: Fayard, 1993), 2:247-49
28. In contrast to the litigious reputation earned by Indians in Spanish America early in the colonial period, slaves seemed to have experienced a true "juridical wake-up" by the second half of the seventeenth century. See Carlos A. Aguirre, "Working the System: Black Slaves and the Courts in Lima, Peru, 1821-1854," in Crossing Boundaries: Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora, ed. Darlene Clark Hine and Jacqueline McLeod (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1999), 205
29. and idem, Agentes de su propia libertad: Los esclavos de Lima y la desintegración de la esclavitud, 1821-1854 (Lima: Pontificia Univ. Católica del Peru, 1993), 184
30. For a discussion of the uses of law by Indians, see, among others, Woodrow Borah, "The Spanish and Indian Law: New Spain"
31. Steve S. Stern, "The Social Significance of Judicial Institutions in an Exploitative Society: Huamanga, Peru, 1570-1640," in The Inca and Aztec States, 1400-1800: Anthropology and History, ed. George A. Collier, Renato I. Rosaldo, and John D. Wirth (New York: Academic Press, 1982)
32. Ronald Spores, "Spanish Penetration and Cultural Change in Early Colonial Mexico," in The Indian in Latin American History: Resistance, Resilience and Acculturation, ed. John E. Kicza (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1993)
33. Ward Stavig, "Ambiguous Visions: Nature, Law, and Culture in Indigenous-Spanish Land Relations in Colonial Peru," HAHR 80, no. 1 (2000)
34. and Susan Kellogg, Law and the Transformation of Aztec Culture, 1500-1700 (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1995)
35. Las pragmáticas del Reyno (Valladolid: Juan de Villaquiron, 1540), 11
36. On blasphemy by Sevillian slaves, see Jean-Pierre Dedieu, "Le modèle religieux: Les disciplines du langage et de l'action," in L'inquisition espagnole: XVe-XIXe siècle, ed. Bartolomé Benassar (Paris: Hachette, 1979), 249-50
37. Ruth Pike discusses the characteristics of Sevillian slaves, by far the "largest slave community in Spain," in her Aristocrats and Traders: Sevillian Society in the Sixteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1972), 170-92
38. In 1534 the Cortes of Madrid requested that all trials of blasphemy cases be conducted by secular courts. The Inquisition, however, continued to intervene in these cases for many years to come. See Henry Arthur F. Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1998), 261-62
39. For a detailed discussion of the jurisdictional disputes among the Spanish secular, ecclesiastical, and inquisitorial authorities over the right to try the blasphemers, see Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain, 4 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1906-7), 4:328-35
40. Following the seminal works of Johan Huizinga and Jean Delumeau, an increasing number of historians of early-modern societies have studied blasphemy in the last twenty years. See Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, trans. Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996)
41. Jean Delumeau, La peur en Occident, XIVe-XVIIIe siècles: Une cite assiégée (1978; reprinted, Paris: Fayard, 1988)
42. John C. Sommerville, "Religious Faith, Doubt and Atheism," Past and Present 128 (1990): 152-55
43. Silvia Berti, "At the Roots of Unbelief," Journal of the History of Ideas 56, no. 4 (1995)
44. Jean-Pierre Dedieu, "The Inquisition and Popular Culture in New Castile," in Inquisition and Society in Early Modern Europe, ed. Stephen Haliczer (London: Croom Helm, 1987)
45. Elizabeth Belmas, "La montée des blasphèmes à l'age moderne du Moyen Age au XVIIe siècle," in Injures et blasphèmes, ed. Jean Delumeau (Paris: Ed. Imago, 1989)
46. Maureen Flynn, "Betrayals of the Soul in Spanish Blasphemy," in Permanence and Evolution of Behavior in Golden-Age Spain: Essays in Gender, Body, and Religion, ed. Alain Saint-Saëns (Lewiston: Mellen Press, 1991), 30-44
47. idem, "Blasphemy and the Play of Anger in Sixteenth-Century Spain," Past and Present 149 (1995)
48. Alain Cabantous, "Du blaspheme au blasphémateur: Jalons pour une histoire, XVIe-XIXe siècle," in Blasphèmes et libertés, ed. Patrice Dartevelle, Phillippe Denis, and Johannes Robyn (Paris: CERF, 1993)
49. idem, Histoire du blasphème en Occident, XVIe-milieu XIXe siècle (Paris: A. Michel, 1998)
50. John Edwards, "Religious Faith and Doubt in Late Medieval Spain: Soria, circa 1450-1500," Past and Present 120 (1988)
51. David A. Lawton, Blasphemy (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1993)
52. Leonard W. Levy, Treason Against God: A History of the Offense of Blasphemy (New York: Schocken Books, 1981)
53. and idem, Blasphemy: Verbal Offense Against the Sacred from Moses to Salman Rushdie (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993)
54. I discuss these different uses of blasphemy in "Defending God's Honor: Blasphemy and the Social Construction of Reverence in New Spain, 1520-1700" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of California, San Diego, 2001)
55. For a recent discussion of blasphemy from the perspective of gender, see Kathryn Joy McKnight, "Blasphemy as Resistance: An African Slave Woman before the Mexican Inquisition," in Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World, ed. Mary E. Giles (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1999)
56. A similar trend is perceived in Lima, where bozales were never tried for blasphemy during the period under study here. See Jean-Pierre Tardicu, L'église et les noirs au Pérou: XVIe et XVIIe siècles, 2 vols. (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1993), 1:644
57. According to writers of the time such as Jesuit Alonso de Sandoval, the fact that creoles and ladinos had previous contact with the religion and language of their often blasphemous masters made them less valuable among Spaniards because they were thought to offer minimal service and have mañas (bad habits). An additional reason for preferring bozales over creole blacks and ladinos concerned the assumption that the latter peoples "were usually much less submissive than those who had been transported from Africa." See Israel, Race, Class, and Politics in Colonial Mexico, 68
58. and Alonso de Sandoval, Un tratado sobre la esclavitud, trans. Enriqueta Vila Vilar (Madrid: Alianza, 1987), 239
59. Throughout Spanish domination in Mexico obrajes earned what Charles Gibson called "a sordid reputation." Within their walls "the work was hard, food and living conditions were unsatisfactory, and physical abuse was a commonplace." See Charles Gibson, The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valle of Mexico, 1519-1810 (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1964), 243
60. For discussions on the obrajes in New Spain and the use of black slave work force during the period under consideration, see Edmundo O'Gorman, "El trabajo industrial en la Nueva España a mediados del siglo XVII: Visita a los obrajes de paños en la jurisdicción de Coyoacán, 1660," Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación 11 (1940)
61. Richard Greenleaf, "Viceregal Power and the Obrajes of the Cortés Estate, 1595-1708," HAHR 48, no. 3 (1968)
62. Palmer, Slaves of the Write God, 65-83
63. Samuel Kagan, "Penal Servitude in New Spain: The Colonial Textile Industry" (Ph.D. diss., City Univ. of New York, 1977), 31, 141-49
64. idem, "The Labor of Prisoners in the Obrajes of Coyoacán, 1660-1693," in El trabajo y los trabajadores en la historia de México/Labor and Laborers Through Mexican History, ed. Elsa Cecilia Frost, Michael C. Meyer, and Josefina Zoraida Vázquez (Mexico City: El Colegio de México; Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 1979)
65. Gonzalo A. Beltrán, "La esclavitud en los obrajes novoespañoles," in La heterodoxia recuperada: En torno a Angel Palerm, ed. Susana Glantz (Mexico City: Fondo de Culture Económica, 1987)
66. idem, El negro esclavo en Nueva España, 67-79
67. Richard J. Salvucci, Textiles and Capitalism in Mexico: An Economic History of the Obrajes, 1539-1840 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1987), 41, 99, 104, 114
68. Luisa Hoberman, Mexico's Merchant Elite, 1590-1660: Silver, State, and Society (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1991), 132-38
69. Carlos Paredes y María Blanca Tenorio, "La población negra en los valles centrales de Puebla: Orígenes y desarrollo hasta 1681,"
70. and María Guadalupe Chávez Carbajal, "La gran negritud en Michoacán: Época colonial," in Presencia africana en México, ed. Luz María Martínez Montiel (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1997), 59-61, 100-04
71. and Rebeca Horn, Postconquest Coyoacán: Nahua-Spanish Relations in Central Mexico, 1519-1650 (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1997), 218-20, 223
72. See Cesare Carena, Tractates de officio Santissimae Inquisitionis et modo procedendi in cavsis fidei (Lvgduni: Svmptibus Lavrentii Anisson, 1669)
73. Juan Alberghini, Manuale Qualificatorum Sanctae Inquisitionis (Zaragoza: Agustin Verges, 1671), chap. 16, no. 3, 44
74. Domingo de Soto, De iustitia et iure/De la justicia y del derecho, trans. P. Marcelino González Ordóñez (1556; reprinted, Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Políticos, 1967-1968), bk. 8, question 2, 753
75. Diego Covarruvias y Leyva, Relectio cap. qvamuis pactum, de pactis, regvl. possesor malaefidei, libro sexto, & clementinae si furiosus, de homicidio (Salmanticae: Andreas a Portonariis, 1557), chap. 7, no. 8, 52v
76. Francisco de Suárez, Operis de virtute et statv religionis tomvs primus (Lvgduni: Svmptibus Horatii Cardon, 1613), bk. 1, chap. 6, 295
77. The expression reniego de Dios constituted by far the most common one not only in New Spain but also in Peru, Cartagena de Indias (New Granada), Brazil, and Seville. For Seville, see Jean-Pierre Dedieu, "Les disciplines du langage et de l'action," in Benassar, L'inquisition espagnole, 250
78. and for Peru, José Toribio Medina, Historia del Tribunal de la Inquisición de Lima, 1569-1820, 2 vols. (Santiago: Imp. Gutenberg, 1887), 32
79. Paulino Castañeda Delgado and Pilar Hernández Aparicio, La inquisición en Lima, 3 vols. (Madrid: Deimos, 1989), 1:286-87
80. and Jean-Pierre Tardieu, L'eglise et les noirs au Perou, 643-60
81. for Cartagena de Indias, José Toribio Medina, Historia del tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición de Cartagena de las Indias (Santiago de Chile: Imp. Elzeviriana, 1899), 118-19
82. and for Brazil, Laura de Mello e Souza, El diablo en la tierra de Santa Cruz: Hechicheria y religiosidad popular en el Brasil colonial, trans. Teresa Rodríguez Martínez (Madrid: Alianza, 1993), 119, 122
83. Domingo de Soto, De como se a de evitar el abuso de juramentos (Antwerp: Viuda y herederos de Juan Stelfio, 1569), 82
84. and Nicolás de Avila, Suma de los mandamientos, y maremagnum del segundo, que enseña para el confesionario y persuade para el púlpito (Alcala: En casa de Juan Gracian, 1610), 493
85. Vicente L. Rafael, Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian. Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1993), 96
86. For an insightful discussion of Paul's theology of freedom, see Orlando Patterson, Freedom and the Making of Western Culture, vol. 1 of Freedom (New York: Basic Books, 1991), chap. 19
87. See also I. A. H. Combes, The Metaphor of Slavery in the Writings of the Early Church: From the New Testament to the Beginning of the Fifth Century (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), chap. 2
88. and J. Albert Harrill, The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1995), chap. 1
89. For a discussion of slavery to Christ as a soteriological and positive image for early Christians, see Dale B. Martin, Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1990), 50-65
90. Solange Alberro, "Negros y mulatos en los documentes inquisitoriales: Rechazo e integración," in El trabajo y los trabajadores, 140
91. and idem, Inquisition et société au Mexique, 1571-1700 (Mexico City: Centre d'Études Mexicaines et Centroaméricaines, 1988), 227
92. Although after the Council of Trent the church encouraged the identification of the Christian God with the figure of the father, it is unlikely that slaves found paternal metaphors as compelling as free men did. Indeed, incapable of making natal claims upon a father, they also had no claims to pass on their children. Under these circumstances, fathers represented rather weak figures to slaves. Consequendy, the Christian God was cast in the image of the earthly master himself, the only once capable of offering an image of power and authority. On the tendency of slaves to see the Christian God as a divine master, see Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York Pantheon Books, 1974), 167
93. and Colin A. Palmer, "Religion and Magic in Mexican Slave Society, 1570-1650," in Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies, ed. Stanley L. Engerman and Eugene D. Genovese (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1975), 318
94. On the church's stress on the image of God as a father after the Council of Trent, see Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies m Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), 152
95. and O. Robert, "Porter le nom de Dieu," in Histoire des pères et de la paternité, ed. Jean Delumeau and Daniel Roche (Paris: Larousse, 1990), 131-54
96. AGN, Inq. 480.3, fol. 83r
97. See AGN, Inq. 48.7, fol. 273r
98. Archivo Histórico del Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia (hereafter cited as AHMNAH), Col. Antigua (CA), 366.1, fol. 11
99. and AGN, Inq. 421.1 (unfoliated)
100. AHMNAH, CA, 366.4, f. 231
101. AGN, Inq. 421.1 (unfoliated)
102. and Tardieu, L'église et les noirs au Pérou, 647
103. AGN, Inq. 147.4 (unfoliated)
104. AGN, Inq. 147.2 (unfoliated)
105. Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (1983; reprinted, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994), 46-7
106. This was the case of Juan de Luyba, slave of Francisca de Peralta in 1625, see AGN, Inq. 421.1. (unfoliated)
107. Edmund Leach, "Anthropological Aspects of Language: Verbal Categories and Verbal Abuse," in New Directions in the Study of Language, ed. Eric H. Lenneberg (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1964), 24, 45
108. Francisco del Rosal, La razón de algunos refranes: Alfabetos tercero y cuarto de origen y etymologia de todos los vocablos de la lengua castellana, ed. B. Bussell Thompson (London: Tamesis Books, 1975), 81
109. In a recent article, Alberto Ferreira discusses the Medieval and Early Christian metaphorical tradition of depicting Jews, Muslims, heretics and general unbelievers as hostile, ravenous and wild canines to be shunned by Christians. See Alberto Ferreiro, "Simon Magus, Dogs, and Simon Peter," in The Devil, Heresy and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey B. Russell, ed. Alberto Ferreiro (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1998), 45-90
110. Perro apparently was a favorite Spanish expletive from the early days of conquest of the New World, for the Laws of Burgos (1512-1513) prohibited Spaniards from calling an Indian "dog," or "address[ing] him by any other name other than his proper name alone." See Charles Gibson, ed., The Spanish Tradition in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 74. In spite of increasing miscegenation, perro was still clearly identified as a Spanish insult in eighteenth-century New Spain
111. See William B. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1979), 82, 140. According to Cheryl E. Martin's analysis of popular speech in eighteenth-century Parral, Chihuhua, the use of the word perro or perra as an insult was frequently used in disputes that ended in attacks on personal honor
112. see her "Popular Speech and Social Order in Northern Mexico, 1650-1830," Comparative Studies in Society and History 33, no. 2 (1990): 312
113. For recent discussions of insults and honor in colonial Latin America, see Lyman L. Johnson, "Dangerous Words, Provocative Gestures, and Violent Acts," and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, "A Slap in the Face of Honor," in The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America, by Lyman L. Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1998), 132-35, 182-84, 187-89, 190-91
114. AGN, Inq. 48.6. (unfoliated)
115. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1990), 57
116. For a classical discussion of rituals of punishment in early modern society as political spectacles aimed at reactivating the power of authorities see Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of The Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), 58-60
117. Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism ( Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1994), 120
118. According to the sixteenth-century canonist Francisco Pefla, the fear of offering the audience encouragement instead of deterrence from committing the crime in question was always present. But "is there anything that wicked men cannot pervert?" he reasoned. "There's no doubt that teaching and terrifying people with the proclamation of sentences, the imposition of sambenitos, and so forth, is a good action." See Nicolau Eimeric and Francisco Peña, El manual de los inquisidores, trans. Francisco Martín (Barcelona: Muchnik, 1996), 199
119. See Oswald Ducrot, "Esquisse d'une théorie polyphonique de l'énonciation," in Le dire et le dit (Paris: Minuit, 1984)
120. See John L. Austin, How To Do Things with Words (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1962)
121. See in this sense the illuminating article by Jeanne Favret-Saada, "Rushdie et compagnie: Préalables à une anthropologie du blaspheme," Ethnologie française 22, no. 3 (1992)
122. For an excellent discussion of the "theory and practice" of denunciation and its crucial relevance for the development of the Inquisitorial process see Jean-Pierre Dedieu, L'administration de la foi: L'inquisition de Tolède, XVIe-XVIIIe siècles (Madrid: Casa de Velàzquez, 1989), chaps. 6, 7. In recent years the study of practices of denunciation has drawn the attention of several scholars "as an important but unstudied point of contact between individual citizens and the state, on the one hand, and to family and fellow citizens, on the other."
123. See Sheila Fitzpatrick and Robert Gellately, "Introduction to the Practices of Denunciation in Modern European History," The Journal of Modern History 68, no. 4 (1996)
124. Harold Garfinkel offered an analysis of public denunciations as part of what he called "the sociology of moral indignation," in his famous essay "Conditions of Successful Degradation Ceremonies," The American Journal of Sociology 41 (1955-56)
125. For his part, Luc Boltanski, Vann Darré, and Marie-Ange Schiltz offer a fascinating discussion of public denunciations in the framework of a "sociology and social history of methods of protest (modes de protestation)" in their "La dénonciation," Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 51 (1984)
126. The New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), 1112
127. Thomas Aquinas, The "Summa Theologica" of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 22 vols. (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1914-1925), 2:521
128. See also ACTN, Inq. 6, fols. 491v-492v for a discussion of the crime of scandal related to blasphemy
129. AGN, Inq. 578. 10, fol. 425
130. Peter Boyd-Bowman offers examples of such transactions in notarial records, see his "Negro Slaves in Early Colonial Mexico," The Americas 26, no. 2 (1969): 137
131. See also Chávez-Hita, Esclavos negros, 32
132. Rolando Mellafe, Negro Slavery in Latin America, trans. J. W. S. Judge (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1975), 84
133. and Aguirre Beltrán, El negro esclavo en la Nueva Espanã, 45-7
134. AGN, Inq. 441.5, fols. 503-43
135. My estimate of the slaves' price is based on Palmer, Slaves of the White God, 34
136. For a general discussion of black slaves' prices in colonial Mexico consult the following works: R. Brady, "The Domestic Slave Trade in Sixteenth-Century Mexico," The Americas 24, no. 3 (1968): 288
137. and Peter Boyd-Bowman, "Negro Slaves in Early Colonial Mexico," 137, for the years between 1540 and 1556
138. Frederick Bowser, "The Free Person of Color in Mexico City and Lima: Manumission and Opportunity, 1580-1650," in Engerman and Genovese, Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere, for the years indicated in the article's title
139. Carrol, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 34-35, for the years between 1581-1690, and 75-76, for the period 1675-1800
140. and Dennis Valdés, "The Decline of Slavery in Mexico," The Americas 44, no. 2 (1987): 171-74, for the period comprised between 1584 and 1756
141. AGN, Inq. 566.1, fols. 1-30v
142. AGN, Inq. 586.6, fols. 373-410
143. AGN, Inq. 452.6, fol. 98
144. AHMNAH, CA, 366.5, fol. 240r
145. AGN, Inq. 47.1, fols. 2-42
146. Emphasis mine. AGN, Inq. 514.4, fols. 12-15
147. AGN, Inq. 147.2 (unfoliated)
148. AGN, Inq. 375.5 (unfoliated)
149. 421.1 (unfoliated)
150. 279.1, fols. 1-17
151. 421.1 (unfoliated)
152. 421.1 (unfoliated), respectively
153. AGN, Inq. 279.10, fols. 114-137v
154. See AG-N, Inq. 271.16 (unfoliated)
155. AGN, Inq. 271.18 (unfoliated)
156. Obstructing the free exercise of the Inquisition constituted a grave offense; the "impeders of the Holy Office" were heavily fined and, in extreme cases, prosecuted as heretics. In 1635, for instance, Spaniard Francisco de la Torre was sentenced to pay two thousand golden pesos as an impeder of the Tribunal. See José Toríbio Medina, Historia del tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición en México (1905; reprinted, Mexico City: Conaculta, 1991), 194
157. and Stephen Haliczer, Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478-1834 (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1990), 19
158. Francisco (Mexico City, 1601), AHMNAH, CA, 366.1, fols. 1-27
159. Sebastián (Mexico City, 1603), AGN 271.14 (unfoliated)
160. Pascual Francisco (Mexico City, 1606), AGN, Inq. 279.10, fols. 114-137v
161. Pedro (Mexico City 1607), AHMNAH, CA, 366.2, fols. 168-190
162. Felipa (Mexico City, 1607), AHMNAH, CA, 366.4, fols. 191-236
163. and Pedro (Mexico City, 1608), AGN, Inq. 483.2, fols. 16-42
164. AGN, Inq. 566. 1, fols. 1-30v
165. AGN, Inq. 46.5, fols. 23-37, versus Domingo, Mexico City 1572
166. AGN, Inq. 421.1, versus Juan García, Mexico City, 1616
167. See also, Tardieu, L'église et les noirs au Perou, 656
168. AGN, Inq. 421.1 (unfoliated)
169. See Arnaldo Albertino, De agnoscendis assertionibus Catholicis et baereticis tractatus (Rome: In Aedibus Populi Romani, 1572), question 28, no. 18, 145v
170. and Antonio de Sousa, Aphorismi inqvisitorum in qvatvor libres Distribvti (Olissipone apud Petrum Craesbeeck, 1630), bk. 1, chap. 19, no. 18, 53
171. AGN, Inq. 446 (unnumbered), fol. 180
172. Both Davidson and Palmer stated in the same way that, in general, "the slaves were tried for their crimes, while the violence which provoked them was ignored." See Davidson, "Negro Slave," 241
173. and Palmer, Slaves of the White God, 118
174. See Haliczer, Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom, 74-75
175. Similarly, for the influential sixteenth-century canonist Francisco Peña, the main role of the defense attorney was "to press the defendant to confess and repent, and request penitence for the crime
176. See, for instance, AGN, Inq. 147.2 (unfoliated), vs. Domingo, Puebla, 1598
177. AGN, Inq. 48.6 (unfoliated), vs. Joaquín de Santa Ana, Jalapa, 1599
178. AMNAH, CA 366.1, fols. 1-27, vs. Francisco, Mexico City, 1601
179. AGN, Inq. 269.1 (unfoliated), vs. Juan (Jhoan), Los Angeles, 1603
180. Medina, Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición en México, 62, 121, 166, 169, 172, 174, 194, 297, 303
181. See also Alejandro Cañeque, "Theater of Power: Writing and Representing the Auto de Fe in Colonial Mexico," The Americas 52, no. 3 (1996): 332-33
182. Juan Montes (Mexico City, 1596), 6 months, AG-N, Inq. 145. 10, fols. 168-205v
183. Domingo (Los Angeles, 1598), 6 months, AGN, Inq. 147.2 (unfoliated)
184. Baltazar de los Reyes (Los Angeles, 1603), 4 months, AGN, Inq. 271.18 (unfoliated)
185. Ambrosio (Mexico City, 1603), one year in prison, AG-N, Inq. 271.17 (unfoliated)
186. Pascual Francisco (Mexico City, 1606), 6 months, AGN, Inq. 279.10, fols. 114-137v
187. Pedro (Mexico City, 1608), 4 months, AGN, Inq. 483.2, fols. 16-42
188. and María de la Cruz (Mexico City, 1658), 6 years in prison, AGN, Inq. 576.5, fols. 518-570
189. On obrajes as prisons, consult Samuel Kagan, "The Labor of Prisoners in the Obrajes of Coyoacán, 1660-1693," in El trabajo y los trabajadores, 201-214
190. idem, "Penal Servitude in New Spain: The Colonial Textile Industry" (Ph.D. diss., City Univ. of New York, 1977), 73-84
191. See also, Gonzalo A. Beltrán, "La esclavitud en los obrajes novoespañoles," in La Heterodoxia Recuperada: En torno a Angel Palerm, ed. Susana Glantz (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987)
192. In Peru, bakeries played a similar role since colonial times. See Christine Hünefeldt, Paying the Price of Freedom: Family and Labor among Lima's Slaves, 1800-1854 (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1994), 187-94
193. and Carlos A. Aguirre, "Violencia, castigo y control social: Esclavos y panaderías en Lima, siglo XIX," Pasado y Presente 1 (1988)
194. For several instances in which a milder punishment was ordered, see AGN, Inq 421.1 (unfoliated)
195. After constituting a participant in the slave trade as important as to purchase almost half of all Africans sent to America between 1595 and 1622 (a period in which the capital of the colony alone registered more than 10,000 slaves as well as 3,500 black freemen, mulattoes and mestizos), Mexico imported decreasing numbers of slaves in the 1630s. By the 1670s the trade had virtually stopped in important centers of slave acquisition such as Jalapa. This trend reflected the general withdrawal of New Spain from participation in the Atlantic slave trade after the dissolution of the Spanish-Portuguese union in 1640 and the consequent lack of supply of Africans. As a result of these changes, whites came to outnumber blacks in Mexico after the 1650s. For an estimate of the population of Mexico at the end of the sixteendi century, see Georges Baudot, "La population des villes du Mexique en 1595 selon une enquête de l'Inquisition," Cahiers du monde hispanique et luso-brésilien (Caravelle) 37 (1981): 17
196. For discussions of the decline in the importation of slaves to New Spain, see Carrol, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz, 31, 145, 146
197. Gilberto Bermúdez Gorrochotegui, Historia de Jalapa, siglo XVII (Xalapa, Mexico: Univ. Veracruzana, 1995), 317-19
198. Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, La población negra de México: Estudio etnohistórico, 2d ed. (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1972), 265-75
199. Cheryl E. Martin, Rural Society in Colonial Morelos (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1985), esp. chap. 6
200. Vila Vilar, Hispanoamérica y el comercio de esclavos, 207
201. and idem, "Trabajadores esclavos en las haciendas azucareras de Córdoba, Veracruz, 1714-1763," in El trabajo y los trabajadores, 163
202. and Alberro, "Negros y mulatos," 159
203. and Davidson, "Negro Slave," 240-41
204. See Cope, The Limits Racial Domination, 96
205. 572.13, fols. 1871-214v
206. and 544.19, fols. 375 -387v
207. AGN, Inq. 253 (unnumbered), fol. 270
208. AGN, Inq. 253, fol. 273
209. AGN, Inq. 374.4, fols. 40r
210. AGN, Inq. 666.6, fols. 417-442v
211. Like its counterpart in Spain, the activity of the Mexican Holy Office was mostly restricted to the capital city and surrounding areas. In the countryside, the degree of social control it could enforce seems to have been negligible. On the other hand, slaves in urban areas apparently had a higher rate of survival, not only in Mexico but also in Iberian America in general. See John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992), 180
212. For a rich portrait of the working and living conditions in mines and sugarmills, see Solange Alberro, "Juan de Morga y Gertrudis de Escobar: Esclavos rebeldes (Nueva España, siglo XVII)," in Lucha por la supervivencia en la América colonial, ed. David G. Sweet and Gary B. Nash, trans. David Huerta and Juan José Utrilla (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987)
213. On crimes as "windows to the past," see Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero, introduction to History from Crime: Selections from Quaderni Storici, ed. Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero, trans. Corrada Biazzo Curry, Margaret A. Gallucci, and Maty M. Gallucci (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1994)
214. Marc Bloch, "How and Why Ancient Slavery Came to an End," in Slavery and Serfdom in the Middle Ages: Selected Essays, trans. William R. Beer (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1975). 14
215. I draw here on William Rose berry's "Hegemony and the Language of Contention," in Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1994)
216. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 125
217. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, xii. Scott discusses the concept of "blind fury" on p. 217
218. It is unlikely in this sense that the use of blasphemy among Afro-Mexican slaves stemmed from a primitive and "naive confidence that one is in a possession of a verbal formula which is bound to produce the desired effect." See R. Harris, "Mentioning the Unmentionable," International Journal of Moral and Social Studies 2 (1987): 185
219. There is a vast literature, which associates blasphemy with the purported magical power of "taboo words." See, for example, James G. Frazer, "Tabooed Words," in Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, vol. 2 of The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 3d ed. (London: Macmillan, 1955), 318, 418
220. Ernest Crawley, "The Oaths, the Curse and the Blessing," in Studies of Savages and Sex, ed. Theodore Besterman (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1929)
221. and Sheldon H. Blank, "The Curse, Blasphemy, the Spell, and the Oath," Hebrew Union College Annual 23 (1950-1951)