Roots in Stone and Slavery Permanence, Mobility, and Empire in Seventeenth-Century Cartagena De Indias
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Roots in Stone and Slavery Permanence, Mobility, and Empire in Seventeenth-Century Cartagena de Indias by Ana María Silva Campo A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History) in the University of Michigan 2018 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Emerita Diane Owen Hughes, Co-Chair Professor Rebecca J. Scott, Co-Chair Professor Jean M. Hébrard, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales Professor Kenneth Mills Assistant Professor Daniel Nemser Associate Professor David Wheat, Michigan State University Ana María Silva Campo [email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6352-0404 © Ana María Silva Campo 2018 Dedication Para Rubén, Elsa, Sebastián y Aura María ii Acknowledgments This work was made possible by the financial support of the Department of History, the Rackham Graduate School, the Institute for the Humanities, the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Program at the University of Michigan. The Casa de Velázquez in Madrid also provided funds and the support of a community of scholars during my research time in Spain. I am especially grateful to Rebecca Scott, whose generous mentorship and feedback influenced this project profoundly. It was a pleasure to discuss ideas and chapters with Diane Owen Hughes, whose creativity was an inspiration for my work. I am thankful to both for their support and patience as my research interests shifted from the Portuguese to the Spanish empire. I have greatly benefited from conversations with my committee members, Daniel Nemser, Kenneth Mills, Jean Hébrard, and David Wheat. At different stages of the long process of writing this dissertation, many people provided useful comments and asked difficult questions. For this I would like to thank the 2017-2018 cohort of fellows at the Institute for the Humanities and the members of the Premodern Colloquium at the University of Michigan. I am thankful to Ray McDaniel, whose rigorous reading of many chapter drafts was invaluable. Peggy McCracken, Christian DePee, Noah Blan, Paula Curtis, Ximena Gómez, and the members of the Medieval and Early Modern Studies dissertation seminar were careful and supportive readers of many of my chapters. At the Nouvelles recherches sur les sociétés esclavagistes et post-esclavagistes des Amériques iii symposium at the Écoles des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, Pedro Cardim, Jean Frédéric Schaub, and Cécile Vidal provided invaluable feedback early in my writing process. The questions that Paul M. Cobb and Vincent Brown posed at two workshops organized by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies helped me situate my work in a broader frame. Larissa Brewer-García and Michelle McKinley have served as long-term interlocutors and have both left an indelible mark on this work. I would have not been able to make it through several Michigan winters without the friendship and support of Ángela Pérez-Villa, Marcela Reales, Diana Carolina Sierra Becerra, and Andrew Walker. During my last year in Ann Arbor, Evan Lebow-Wolf and Cheryl Wong shared music, long walks, and delicious food that made my last months of writing easier. I am grateful to Pedro Cantisano, Adriana Chira, Deleska Crockett, Augusto Espinoza, Dustin Gamza, Sophie Hunt, Sara Katz, Jacqueline Larios, Benedito Machava, Hiro Matsusaka, Kelsey Millerschin, Emma Park, Edgardo Pérez-Morales, Andrés Pletch, Elena Rosario, Andrew Rutledge, Alexander Stephens, Duygu Ula, and Cindy Walker. In Bogotá, Marta Herrera, Claudia Leal and Mauricio Nieto at Universidad de Los Andes supported my early interest in becoming a historian. My friends Andrea Acevedo, Rodrigo Arrieta, Paula García, Diana Iregui, Patricia Rozo, and Camila Salame were eager to hear my Michigan stories every time we met in Bogotá. Finally, I am deeply grateful to my parents and siblings. Sin su apoyo, su amor, su sentido del humor y su paciente espera a pesar de mi ausencia nada de esto hubiera sido posible. iv Table of Contents Dedication……………………………………………………………………………………….. ii Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………...………. iii List of Maps…………….………………………………………………………………………. vi Abstract....................................................................................................................................... vii Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………... 1 Chapter One. “Building Authority Day by Day”: Religious Geography, Local Power, and Institutional Competition in Seventeenth-Century Cartagena………………………………….. 17 Chapter Two. Threatening Fortunes: Women of African Descent, Property, and the Inquisition of Cartagena…………………………………………………………………………………...... 54 Chapter Three. “They Can Sustain the Trade of the Blacks”: Economic Networks and the Boundaries of Religious Repression in Cartagena……………………………………………… 93 Chapter Four. Conspicuous Alliances: The Portuguese New Christian and the Inquisition Notary…………………………………………………………………………. 127 Chapter Five. Between Barrio and Arrabal: Debates Over Urban Space and Nuisance Industries in the Island of Getsemaní…………………………………………………………………...... 150 Chapter Six. Through the Gate at Media Luna: Cimarrones and the Geographies of Legal Status in Cartagena de Indias…………………………………………………………………………. 180 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………. 209 Appendix……………….……………………………………………………………………... 214 Bibliography……………………………………………..………………………………….... 218 v List of Maps Map 1. Plano de Cartagena de Indias y sus fortificaciones, 1610……………………………… 64 Map 2. Cartagena, Getsemaní, and location of houses……….………………………………… 83 Map 3. Cartagena, Tolú, Mompox, and the Magdalena River, reaching Honda and Santa Fe.. 120 Map 4. Provinces of Cartagena and Santa Marta (1766)……………………………………… 123 Map 5. The urban area of Cartagena de Indias in the early 17th C…………………………… 152 Map 6. Cartagena de Indias in 1735 (detail)…………………………………………………... 181 Map 7. Media Luna gate and defensive structures……….…………………………………… 184 Map 8. Relief map of Cartagena, Santa Marta, and the Sierras de María…………………….. 186 vi Abstract This dissertation examines the strategies that institutions and individuals employed in order to establish themselves in the slave-trading port city of Cartagena de Indias. In doing so, it uncovers social, religious, economic, geographic, and increasingly racialized transformations that made Cartagena a sustainable and stable component of the Spanish empire during the seventeenth century. In 1610, when church officials arrived in Cartagena with a mandate to establish a new tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition, a fragile political and economic balance already prevailed. The inquisitors needed to carve out space to integrate the new tribunal into the existing system without upsetting the local power groups. For this, the inquisitors employed a tactic that they described as “building authority day by day.” To avoid direct confrontation with existing power- holders the inquisitors applied confiscation of property gradually and selectively against people convicted of religious deviance. The first target for confiscation was a prosperous but socially vulnerable community of women of African descent whom inquisitors had declared guilty of “witchcraft.” By offering for sale confiscated real estate, which was located in a zone that was increasingly attractive to prosperous buyers, the Inquisition became integrated into the economic life of Cartagena and laid the foundations for the tribunal’s survival. Selective confiscations allowed inquisitors to secure the ground for later prosecuting members of the elite, especially Portuguese traders in African captives, suspected of practicing Judaism. The local power that the Inquisition had gradually attained allowed inquisitors to vii achieve some convictions and confiscations. However, the economic dynamics of the city--in which Portuguese traders had exclusive rights to trade in African captives through the asiento contracts--imposed limits to the Inquisition’s tactic. The inquisitors eventually acquitted most of the Portuguese traders and allowed many of them to remain in Cartagena. When the Portuguese asientos ended, Spanish migrants who had opened up space for themselves in Cartagena took control of the economic nodes that the Portuguese had previously dominated. Some Inquisition officials themselves profited from agricultural and commercial activities indispensable to the trade in African captives. Constrained by the physical limitations of a port city surrounded by water, members of the new commercial elite expanded their economic activities into the neighboring island of Getsemaní. Getsemaní was home to free and enslaved people of African descent who lived and worked in artisanal workshops, including noxious industries. Many residents of Cartagena described Getsemaní as an arrabal, or slum. Spanish newcomers seeking to become permanent residents of Getsemaní employed legal strategies to have those industries removed. For local officials, however, the economic benefits of the arrabal prevailed over arguments about the impropriety of unsavory enterprises. The economic survival of Cartagena required that such industries remain at the edges of the city’s physical boundaries. Against the colonial authorities’ interests, this liminal location allowed the communities of African descent that remained in Getsemaní to maintain connections with runaways from enslavement who had settled in the hinterlands. Fugitives themselves were sometimes able to maintain fragile