Felipa de la Cruz’s World and Letters
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2024
At the turn of the seventeenth century, Felipa de la Cruz penned two letters to her freed husband who had moved from Sevilla to Veracruz in New Spain. These letters reveal extended discussions of Cruz’s commitment to securing liberty for herself and their children, as she reminded her husband not to forget her desire for freedom. Felipa de la Cruz’s letters hold immense historical value as they are among the earliest known letters penned by an enslaved Black woman in the Atlantic world that have survived in a historical archive. Reading the private correspondence between Felipa de la Cruz and her absent husband also reveals the day-to-day lives of enslaved people in an urban environment. The Coda presents these two letters transcribed in Spanish as well as in English translation. The Coda also includes a map of the social ties of a generation of free and liberated Black Sevillians who were Cruz’s contemporaries in the late sixteenth century (approximately 1569–1626). The map and extended key allow readers to trace some of Felipa de la Cruz’s Black neighbors who also had ties with the Spanish Americas, and their respective socioeconomic ties across the city.
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