UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Urban Slavery in Colonial Puebla De Los Ángeles, 1536-1708 a Dissertation Submitted In
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Urban Slavery in Colonial Puebla de los Ángeles, 1536-1708 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Pablo M. Sierra 2013 © Copyright by Pablo M. Sierra 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Urban Slavery in Colonial Puebla de los Ángeles, 1536-1708 by Pablo M. Sierra Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2013 Professor Kevin B. Terraciano, Chair This study addresses the emergence, rapid development and gradual decline of chattel slavery in the city of Puebla de los Ángeles during the early and mid-colonial period. The presence and exploitation of African slaves in Puebla has been ignored in the historiography of colonial Mexico (New Spain), Latin America, and the greater African Diaspora. By crossreferencing extant municipal, notarial, parochial and judicial records with Spanish- and Nahuatl-language colonial chronicles, I reconstruct the history of African slaves and their descendants in Puebla from 1536 to 1708. My notarial investigation focuses on bills of slave purchase, letters of manumission, apprentice contracts and loans produced between 1600 and 1700. I find that during the seventeenth century, 20,000 slaves were bought in notarized transactions in the Puebla slave market. The city's large and wealthy Spanish population demanded large retinues of skilled and unskilled slaves to labor as domestics, water carriers, wet nurses, textile workers, etc. The owners of sugar plantations (ingenios) in nearby Izúcar, Cuautla, and the Cuernavaca basin also required large numbers of enslaved workers in the context of extreme Indigenous depopulation. ii By the 1620s, a series of epidemics, combined with exploitative labor practices, reduced the Indigenous population of Central Mexico and the greater Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley to 10% of its pre-Hispanic levels. In response, the Spanish Crown authorized the implementation of a sophisticated slave trading system, led by Angola-based Portuguese merchants, to operate in Puebla de los Ángeles. These Lusophone networks relied on the encomendero de negros, a locally-based merchant to regulate the entry and sale of all new African arrivals to the city between 1616 and 1639. Yet African slaves had already begun to erode the foundations of chattel slavery well before these dates. Although theoretically reduced to human property under Spanish law, Afro-Poblano slaves actively resisted their bondage by exercising their religious rights as practicing Catholics. In particular, male slaves established numerous formal unions with free women (of all races) through the sacrament of matrimony. In turn, children born of these unions were legally free, leading to numerous generations of free Afro-Poblanos by the end of the seventeenth century. iii The dissertation of Pablo M. Sierra is approved. Lauren Derby Mark Q. Sawyer William R. Summerhill Kevin B. Terraciano, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2013 iv To Marina Sánchez Gómez, mi abuela. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables vii List of Acronyms viii Acknowledgments ix Vita xii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 - Formative Slavery in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley, 1536-1580 21 Chapter 2 - The Transatlantic Voyage: From Angola to Cuextlaxcoapan, 1595-1635 52 Chapter 3 - The African Influx and the Puebla Slave Market, 1600-1700 81 Chapter 4 - Failed Freedoms, Manumissions and Apprenticeships 122 Chapter 5 - Slave Matrimony and Afro-Indigenous Interactions 158 Conclusion - A City of Freedmen 200 Bibliography 219 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1. Slave trains conducted from Veracruz to Puebla de los Ángeles 63 Table 3.1. Male-female slave ratios in the Puebla slave market, 1600-1639 90 Table 3.2. Average purchase price for slaves in Puebla by age group, 1600-1635 92 Table 3.3. African slaves sold in Puebla by ethnic labels/origin, 1595-1635 107 Table 5.1. Number of married slaves owned by obrajeros in 17th-century Puebla 171 Table 5.2. Groom marital preference by ethnic/cultural labels, 1585-1615 177 Table 5.3. Slave-free marriages in Sagrario and San José by legal status, 1585-1657 183 Table 5.4. Number of grooms and brides by race and legal status, 1660-1700 186 vii LIST OF ACRONYMS AGN Archivo General de la Nación (México) AGNP Archivo General de Notarías del Estado de Puebla AHJP Archivo Histórico Judicial de Puebla AHPA Archivo Histórico de la Parroquia del Santo Angel Custodio de Analco AMP Archivo Municipal de Puebla APSJ Archivo Parroquial del Señor San José, Puebla ASMP Archivo del Sagrario Metropolitano de Puebla viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to thank my dissertation adviser, Kevin Terraciano, for his unwavering support, mentoring and friendship during these seven years of graduate study. I am truly indebted to him for having received such a bountiful education at UCLA. To the members of my doctoral commitee, Lauren (Robin) Derby, William Summerhill and Mark Sawyer, thank you for your constant advice, constructive criticism, and for the endless letters of recommendation submitted on my behalf. I would also like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to the many members of the History department staff, and especially to Eboni Shaw and Hadley Porter. This project would not have been possible without the generous financial support provided by UCLA's Graduate Division, in combination with a number of other external institutions. Summer research in Puebla's archives was made possible by funding from the UCLA Latin American Institute, the Faucett Catalyst Fund, and UC-Mexus. My sincerest thanks to the members of the Fulbright-Hays Committee for their financial support during the 2009- 2010 academic year. A FLAS award for the study of Portuguese also contributed a year of study on Brazilian history at UCLA and several weeks of language immersion in Salvador, Bahia. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Center for Primary Research and Training for the opportunity to work and learn with the priceless manuscripts held at Young Research Library. My sincerest thanks for making this academic project financially viable. My Latin American history cohort has been a priceless source of inspiration throughout my graduate education. Molly Ball, Bradley Benton, Xóchitl Flores-Marcial, Verónica Gutíerrez, Dana Velasco-Murillo, Miriam Melton-Villanueva, Peter Villela, Zeb Tortorici, León García and Felipe Ramírez, you have all impacted my thoughts and taught me to be a better friend and ix scholar. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Lino Camprubí Bueno and Antonio Zaldívar. Your boundless knowledge is a humbling reminder of how much I have yet to learn. To my newest cohort, Sabrina Smith, Susan Rosenfeld, Fernando Serrano, Michelle Masaye Kiso and Selah Johnson, I thank for your fresh perspectives, energy and optimism as you begin to forge your own promising academic careers and research. I would also like to express my gratitude to the wonderful circle of colleagues and friends who contributed to my research in Puebla. This project would have been truly impossible without the constant assistance and expertise of Puebla's finest archivists: María Antonieta Esquivel Torres, María Aurelia Hernández Yahuitl, and Gabriela Rivera Carrizosa. Thank you for making the historian's work possible. I am also indebted to Blanca Lara Tenorio at the Centro INAH-Puebla, for her cooperation, guidance and passion in divulging the forgotten history of the African Diaspora in Puebla. Isis Zempoalteca and Guillermo Rodríguez, my relentless colleagues and companions in the notarial trenches, you are a testament to the wonderful camraderie that one can foster in the archives. Lidía Gómez García likewise opened me the doors to her remarkable research and academic community at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. Thank you for taking me in. To all of you, "gracias, gracias y mil gracias." This dissertation would not be complete without the support of my loving family, scattered as we are throughout Puebla, Mexico City, Pachuca, Córdoba, Boca del Río, the United States and beyond. To my parents, thank you for the inspiration, drive and opportunity to pursue my academic dream. To my siblings, thank you for always keeping your older brother socially sane and grounded. Karen Sierra Martínez and Laura Elena Sánchez Carvallo, you have been instrumental in making my return to Puebla the heartwarming experience I always hoped it would be. To the Pichel Zamora family of Prados Agua Azul, thank you. I would also like to x express my love to my extended family: the Saviñon, Sánchez and Ríos of Puebla, the Sierra of Mexico City, and the Álvarez of Pachuca. This historical project, which is a central part of our own family history, would have not been possible without you (and your meals)! Finally, I must conclude by thanking my wife, colleague, best friend and partner-in- crime, Molly Ball. Words cannot express my admiration for your tenacious research. For teaching me how to properly use an Excel spreadsheet (!) and for explaining the intricacies of South Carolina football, family and culture, thank you. For taking a chance on an argumentative Poblano, and a living in his native and tumultuous country, thank you. For giving birth to our beautiful daughter, there are no words. xi VITA - PABLO M. SIERRA EDUCATION University of California-Los Angeles C.Phil, History (2009) Specialty: African Presence in Colonial Mexico Subfields: Colonial Latin America, African Diaspora, Urban Slavery University of California-Los Angeles M.A., History (2008) Specialty: Colonial Latin American Slavery Subfield: Afro-Mexican History University of Pennsylvania, College of Arts & Sciences Bachelor of Arts, Summa cum Laude (2006) Major(s): World History, Latin American Studies Minor: French FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS & AWARDS Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship (DDRA) Oct. 2009 – Aug. 2010 Puebla and Mexico City, Mexico Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (Summer - Portuguese) Jul. 2008 – Sep. 2008 Salvador, Brazil Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (Academic Year - Portuguese) Sep.