We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
I declare that when I married doña Margarita Mexia, she brought with her as her dowry 1,000 pesos and a black slave named Catalina de la Cruz, and that the said slave has produced seven other slaves [piezas de esclavos y esclavos] named Nicolasa Ramos, a twenty-year-old black woman; Alfonso José, a suckling child; José Ramos, an eighteen-year-old black man; Antonio Lugardo, a mulatto boy, 14 to 15 years old; Ignacio José de Ramos, a dark mulatto boy, 4 to 5 years old; and Margarita Ramos, a fair-skinned mulatta girl, between 2 and 3 years old. I declare them all to be slaves, subject to service.
Inventory taken at San Miguel de Almolonga, 1 July 1699: Among other property belonging to Don Nicolas Ramos de Bustos, we take inventory of the following slaves:
Catalina, 38-year-old black woman, married to Manuel de Rueda, free mulatto
Nicolasa, daughter of the abovementioned Catalina, 18 years old
José, 14-year-old black, son of Catalina
Antonio, a 12-year-old mulatto, son of Catalina
Margarita María, 8 years old, daughter of Catalina
Ignacio José, 5-year-old mulatto, son of Catalina
Margarita de Guadalupe, a mulatta girl, daughter of Catalina, between 2 and 3 years old
Alfonso José, 8 months old, son of the abovementioned Nicolasa [Catalina’s grandson]
Just as the women of the conquered pre-Columbian Indian populations found their lives changed forever as a result of the coming of European conquerors, the position and role of African women were permanently altered by their enslavement and transportation to the New World. Far from their communities of origin and torn from their cultures, slaves were forced to re-create a new social and religious world. They did this by accepting Hispanic forms while maintaining parts of their African heritage. Although they were viewed as legally inferior to the indigenous population, most slaves probably had closer day-to-day contact with their masters than did Indians. This was particularly true of enslaved women.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] 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.
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.
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.
