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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2025
In 1584, Antón Zape, a Black enslaved African originally from Sierra Leone, received his manumission letter after a long trajectory of military service to the Spanish Crown. Although his enslaver was reluctant to grant him freedom, the Audiencia de Panama considered Antón’s services worthy of a royal grace. The president of the Audiencia himself intervened by writing to King Philip II to force his enslaver to grant Antón the manumission he deserved. The king heard the Audiencia’s recommendation and granted Antón freedom along with a substantial annual pension of 50 gold pesos to live according to his calidad (“quality,” but better translated as status). Philip II ordered Antón’s former enslaver to pay him this annual pension and to supervise the correct distribution of the stipend for his entire life; until Antón’s death, his enslaver’s descendants were required to fulfill the duty of paying him his annual pension. Because the pension was financed by Antón’s past enslaver, it subverted the enslaved person–enslaver relation, requiring the enslaver’s lifetime commitment to his former enslaved person. In addition to freedom and a pension, Antón was granted the privilege of bearing arms, signifying a public and official royal sanction of honor and calidad.1
I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to Cristina Soriano and Juan José Ponce-Vázquez, who read a draft of this piece and provided invaluable feedback. Their combined expertise and generous help substantially enhanced this article. A special thanks to Kyle Marini for his suggestions, careful reading, and support during the writing and publication process. I extend my gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers who provided constructive feedback that helped me to improve this article. Lastly, I need to acknowledge Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Humanities and Information, whose support enabled me to dedicate a whole academic year to my research and writing. This article was a product of this time and financial support.
1 Archivo General de Indias, (A.G.I), Panama, 237, lib. 12, ff. 12.v-13. r. A.G.I. Panama, 237, lib. 12, f. 23.r.
2 Among the vast and rich historiography, see: Ben Vinson III and Matthew Restall, Black Mexico: Race and Society from Colonial to Modern Times, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009); Ben Vinson III, Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001); Ben Vinson III, Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Matthew Restall, The Black Middle: African, Maas and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009); Herman L. Bennett, Colonial Blackness: A History of Afro-Mexico, (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2009); Herman L. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570-1640, (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2005); Stuart B. Schwartz, Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels: Reconsidering Brazilian Slavery, (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1996); Jane G. Landers, Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010); and Jane G. Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1999).
3 Christopher Leslie Brown and Philip D. Morgan, Arming Slaves: From Classical Times to the Modern Age, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). Elena A. Schneider, The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade, and Slavery in the Atlantic World, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018). Manuel Olmedo, “In Search of the Black Fencer: Race and Martial Arts Discourse in Early Modern Iberia,” in Trajectories of Empire: Transhispanic Reflections on the African Diaspora, ed. Jerome Branche, (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2022), 46-78.
4 Kathryn J. McKnight and Leo J. Garofalo, “Recovering Afro-Latino Voices from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World,” in Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1550-1812, eds. Kathryn J. McKnight and Leo J. Garofalo, (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009), IX-XXII. Cassander L. Smith, Nicholas R. Jones, Miles P. Grier, Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies: A Critical Anthology, (London: Palgrave, 2018), 1-15.
5 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, (Boston: Beacon Press, 2015). Camilla Townsend, Malintzin’s Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006); Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). Marisa J. Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence and the Archive, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2016). Daina Ramey Berry, “Soul values and American slavery,” Slavery & Abolition, vol. 42, 2, (2021): 201-218.
6 David A. Sartorius, Ever Faithful, 10. Jane G. Landers, Atlantic Creoles, 1-15. Manumission was understood as a “civic birth” in which slaves acquired their status as free men under the rightful vassalage of the Spanish monarch. Tamar Herzog, Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 161, 1-17; 64-94: 119-141. Norah L. Gharala, Taxing Blackness: Free Afromexican Tribute in Bourbon New Spain, (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2019), 5, 1-22. Ann Twinam, Purchasing Whiteness: Pardos, Mulatos, and the Quest for Social Mobility in the Spanish Indies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015), 3-35, 81-123. María Elena Díaz, The Virgin, the King, and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre: Negotiating Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670–1780, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 285-313, 314-329.
7 María Elena Martínez, “The Black Blood of New Spain: Limpieza de Sangre, Racial Violence and Gendered Power in Early Colonial Mexico,” William & Mary Quarterly, vol. 61, 3, (2004): 479-529.
8 Christopher Leslie Brown and Philip D. Morgan, Arming Slaves: From Classical Times to the Modern Age, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 1-14.
9 Marcela Echeverri, Indian and Slave Royalists in the Age of Revolution, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 15-14. John L. Phelan, The People and the King: The Comunero Revolution in Colombia (Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 1978). Miguel Dantas da Cruz, Petitioning in the Atlantic World, 1500–1840: Empires, Revolutions and Social Movements, (Berlin: Springer, 2022), 1-20.
10 Chloe Ireton, “They Are Blacks of the Caste of Black Christians”: Old Christian Black Blood in the Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century Iberian Atlantic,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 97, 4, (2017): 579–612. Jorge E. Delgadillo, “The Workings of Calidad: Honor, Governance, and Social Hierarchies in the Corporations of the Spanish Empire,” The Americas, vol. 76, 2, (2019): 215-239. Joan Cameron Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches: Afro-Mexican Ritual Practice in the Seventeenth Century, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007). Juan Manuel Ramirez, “Sowing Wheat and Other Merits: The First Black Conquistador of the Mexican Field,” Hispanic Review, vol. 91, 2, (2023): 197-219.
11 David Wheat, Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), 25.
12 Nicole Von Germeten, “Black Bortherhoods in Mexico City,” in The Black Urban Atlantic in the Age of the Slave Trade, eds. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Matt D. Childs, and James Sidbury, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 248-268.
13 David Wheat, Atlantic Africa, 21.
14 About Sandoval and his writings on the religious conversion of the enslaved African population in colonial Cartagena and the prominent role that Afro-descendants played as translators of Christian doctrine, see: Larissa Brewer-Garcia, Beyond Babel: Translations of Blackness in Colonial Peru and New Granada, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Alonso de Sandoval, Treatise on Slavery: Selections from De Instauranda Aethiopum Salute, (London: Hackett Publishing, 2008), 196.
15 In fact, Antón appears in Spanish documentation as Antón Zape, Antón Çape, and Antón Sape. The unstable spelling criteria by the imperial administrations pose an added difficulty in trying to find documentation on people of non-Spanish ancestry.
16 Nicole Von Germeten, “Juan Roque’s Donation of a House to the Zape Confraternity, Mexico City, 1623,” in Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1500-1812, eds. Kathryn Joy McKnight, Leo J. Garofalo, (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003), 83-105.
17 John Iliffe, Africans: The History of a Continent, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 127-158.
18 Nicole Von Germeten, “Black Brotherhoods,” 248-268. Herbert S. Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 62.
19 Herman L. Bennett, African Kings and Black Slaves: Sovereignty and Dispossession in the Early Modern Atlantic, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). Brett Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013). Chloe Ireton, “Black Africans’ Freedom Litigation Suits to Define Just War and Just Slavery in the Early Spanish Empire,” Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 73, 4, (2020):1277-1319.
20 David Wheat, Atlantic Africa, 68-103. John Iliffe, Africans, 132. Hervert S. Klein, The Atlantic, 17-48. John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 43-98.
21 Herbert S. Klein and Ben Vinson III, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
22 In Havana the Zapes represented almost 10% of the African population up to 1595. Alejandro de la Fuente, Havana and the Atlantic in the Sixteenth Century, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 105. David Wheat, Atlantic Africa, 5-19.
23 A.G.I. Panamá, 61, N.44.
24 A.G.I. Panamá, 42, N.21. A rich collection of archival documents from the A.G.I regarding the Bayano Wars, in Robert C. Schwaller, African Maroons in Sixteenth-Century Panama: A History in Documents, (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021).
25 María del Carmen Mena García, La Sociedad de Panamá en el siglo XVI, (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 1984), 266-267. A.G.I. Audiencia de Panamá, 13, R.8, N.15. A.G.I. Patronato, 135, N.1, R.3.
26 A.G.I. Panamá, 61, N.44.
27 A.G.I. Patronato, 135, N.1, R.3.
28 Matthew Restall, “Black Conquistadors: Armed Africans in Early Spanish America,” The Americas, Vol. 57, 2, (2000): 171-205. Matthew Restall, The Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 44-63. Matthew Restall, The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009). Jane G. Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999). Juan Manuel Ramirez, “Sowing Wheat,” 197-219.
29 A.G.I. Patronato, 135, N.1, R.3. Ortega sent multiple letters requesting personnel, equipment, and funding for the Second Bayano War. A.G.I. Panama, 229, lib. 1, ff. 56.r.-56.v.
30 A.G.I. Patronato, 234, R. 5, ff. 83-92. Letter transcribed in Robert C. Schwaller, African Maroons, 173-177.
31 María del Carmen Mena, La Sociedad de Panamá, 223, 257, 267-268.
32 Letter of Pedro Ortega to the Crown, dated June 14, 1579, in Robert C. Schwaller, African Maroons, 173-177.
33 Letter of the Cabildo of Nombre de Dios to the Crown, dated May 25, 1571. A.G.I. Panama, 30, N. 12.
34 A.G.I, Panamá, 236, lib. 10, f. 277.r.
35 A.G.I, Panamá, 236, lib. 10, f. 300.v.
36 Kris Lane, Pillaging the Empire: Global Piracy on the High Seas, 1500-1750, (New York: Routledge, 2015), 36-28. Jean-Pierre Tardieu, Cimarrones de Panamá: la forja de una identidad afroamericana en el siglo XVI, (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2009), 126.
37 María del Carmen Mena, La ciudad en un cruce de caminos: Panamá y sus orígenes urbanos, (Sevilla: CSIC, 1992), 236.
38 A.G.I. Panamá, leg. 13, r. 22, N.150.
39 María del Carmen Mena, La sociedad de Panamá, 266-269.
40 Jean-Pierre Tardieu, Cimarrones, 52-53.
41 Jean-Pierre Tardieu, Cimarrones, 52-5, 67, 80. Bibiano Torres, Juana Gil-Bermejo, Enriqueta Vila, Cartas de cabildos hispanoamericanos: Audiencia de Panamá, estudio preliminar y edición, (Madrid: CSIC, 1978), 19.
42 Javier Laviña, “Atlantization and the First Failed Slavery: Panama from the Sixteenth to the Seventeenth Century,” in Atlantic Transformations: Empire, Politics, and Slavery during the Nineteenth Century, ed. Dale W. Tomich, (Binghamton: SUNY Press, 2020), 182.
43 Robert C. Schwaller, African Maroons, 18.
44 Herbert S. Klein and Ben Vinson III, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 189-217.
45 Margaret M. Olsen, “African re-inscription of body and Space in New Granada,” in Mapping Colonial Spanish America: Places and Commonplaces of Identity, Culture and Experience, eds. Santa Arias and Mariselle Meléndez, (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2002), 51-68.
46 Jean-Pierre Tardieu, Cimarrones, 126-127.
47 Kris Lane, Pillaging, 29-55.
48 A.G.I. Panamá, 135, N.1, R.3. Jean-Pierre Tardieu, Cimarrones, 144-145. Schwaller reproduces plenty of documents that reveal the political tensions and different military and tactical approaches that Panamanian administrators had to address the Maroon revolt. Robert C. Schwaller, African Maroons.
49 Lopez Vaz’s Account of John Oxenham’s 1576 expedition, in Schwaller, African Maroons, 129-135.
50 David Wheat, Atlantic Africa, 25.
51 Ibid., 25.
52 María del Carmen Mena, La Sociedad, 373.
53 Robert C. Schwaller, African Maroons, 129.
54 Lopez Vaz’s account differs from Ortega Valencia’s, and states that there were only four fragatas with around a hundred men each. Each fragata was commanded by a captain who had authority over 25 men. Lopez Vaz’s Account of John Oxenham’s 1576 expedition, in Schwaller, African Maroons, 129-135.
55 A.G.I. Patronato, 135, N.1, R.3.
56 A.G.I. Panamá, 237, lib. 12, ff. 12.v.-13. r. A.G.I. Panamá, 13, R.22, N.150. A.G.I. Audiencia de Panamá, 1, N.30.
57 A.G.I. Panamá, 237, lib. 12, ff. 12.v.-13. r. A.G.I. Panamá, 13, R.22, N.150. A.G.I. Panamá,1, N.30.
58 A.G.I. Panamá, 237, lib. 12, ff. 12.v.-13. r. A.G.I. Panamá, 13, R.22, N.150. A.G.I. Audiencia de Panamá,1, N.30.
59 A.G.I. Panamá, 13, R.22, N.150.
60 Jean-Pierre Tardieu, Cimarrones, 144-145.
61 Jean-Pierre Tardieu, Cimarrones, 148-149.
62 Ibid, 150.
63 Ibid. 160-161. Robert C. Schwaller, African Maroons, 158-160.
64 Schwaller, African Maroons, 173-177.
65 Testimony of Rodrigo Hernández, Dean of the Cathedral of Panama City, dated August 30, 1580. In Schwaller, African Maroons, 178-184.
66 Letter of Pedro Ortega to Philip II dated June 14, 1579. In Schwaller, African Maroons, 173-177.
67 Schwaller, African Maroons, 184-185.
68 Schwaller, African Maroons, 186-187.
69 Jean-Pierre Tardieu, Cimarrones, 185.
70 Tardieu, Cimarrones, 195.
71 Schwaller, African Maroons, 189-190.
72 Jean-Pierre Tardieu, Cimarrones, 195-233.
73 A.G.I. Panamá, 237, lib. 12, ff. 12.v.-13. r.
74 María del Carmen Mena, La sociedad, 371-372.
75 Antonio Feros and Arlindo Caldeira, “Black Africans in the Iberian Peninsula (1400–1820),” in The Iberian World, 1450-1820, eds. Fernando Bouza, Pedro Cardim and Antonio Feros, (New York: Routledge, 2019), 261-280.
76 Deborah Blumenthal, Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 21, 194-238.
77 Sue Peabody, “Slavery, Freedom, and the Law in the Atlantic World, 1420–1807,” in The Cambridge History of Slavery, vol. III, eds. David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 594-630.
78 Ricardo Raul Salazar, Mastering the Law: Slavery and Freedom in the Legal Ecology of the Spanish Empire, (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2020), 91-93.
79 William D. Phillips, Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 130.
80 A.G.I. Panamá,,42, N.21. A.G.I. Panamá, 1, N.30. A.G.I. Panamá, 61, N. 44.
81 Letter of Pedro Ramirez de Quiñones, President of the Audiencia de Panamá, to King Philip II, dated April 25, 1583. A.G.I. Panamá, leg. 13, r. 22, N.150.
82 A.G.I. Panamá, 13, r. 22, N.150.
83 Enslaved people were considered “status symbols” that demonstrated the economic power of their enslavers. They were also seen as profitable investments, as they would work in both domestic and agricultural settings, and even provide services to third parties, generating economic income for their enslavers. In the dehumanizing context of slavery, enslaved people were seen as a monetary commodity and an important asset in the domestic economy. Antonio Feros and Arlindo Caldeira, “Black Africans.” Tamara J. Walkers, Exquisite Slaves: Race, Clothing, and Status in Colonial Lima, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 25-33. A.C. Saunders, A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal, 1441–1555, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 64.
84 A.G.I. Panamá, 237, lib. 12, ff. 15.r-17. r.
85 A.G.I. Panamá, 13, r. 22, N.150.
86 A.G.I. Panamá, 13, r. 22, N.150. On the “Economy of favor,” see: Alejandro Cañeque, The King’s Living Image: The Culture and Power of Viceregal Power in Colonial Mexico, (New York: Routledge, 2004), 174.
87 A.G.I. Panamá, 1, N.30.
88 Sherwin K. Bryant, Rivers of Gold, Lives of Bondage: Governing through Slavery in Colonial Quito, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 102.
89 Rachel Sarah O’Toole, “(Un) Making Christianity: The African Diaspora in Slavery and Freedom,” in The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Christianity, eds. David Thomas Orique, Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens, and Virginia Garrard, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 101-121.
90 Rachel S. O’Toole, Bound Lives, 101-121. Michelle A. McKinley, Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization in Colonial Lima, 1600-1700, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 1-26, 74-108.
91 Herman L. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570-1640, (Bloomsbury: Indiana University Press, 2005), 44-47.
92 Ibid., 126-154; 51-79. Michelle A. McKinley, Fractional Freedoms, 74-108.
93 Bennett, Africans, 81.
94 A.G.I. Panamá, 1, N.30.
95 Sherwin K. Bryant, Rivers, 95.
96 Deborah Blumenthal, Enemies, 207.
97 Jean-Pierre Tardieu, El Negro en la Real Audiencia de Quito, siglos XVI-XVIII, (Quito: Abya Yala, 2006), 208-212.
98 Rebecca Anne Goetz, “Religion and Race in the Greater South, 1500-1800,” in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Race in American History, eds. Kathryn Gin Lum and Paul Harvey, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 357-370. Jessica Delgado and Kelsey Moss, “Religion and Race in the Early Modern Iberian Atlantic,” in The Oxford Handbook, 40-60. Sherwin K. Bryant, Rivers of Gold, 103-113.
99 Bennett, Africans, 127.
100 A.G.I. Panamá, 1, N.30.
101 A.G.I. Panamá, 237, lib. 12, ff. 12.v-13. r.
102 A.G.I. Panamá, 237, lib. 12, f. 12.v.
103 A.G.I. Panamá, 237, lib. 12, f. 13.r.
104 A.G.I. Panamá, 237, lib. 12, f. 12.v.
105 A.G.I. Patronato, 135., N.1., R.3.
106 A.G.I. Patronato, 135., N.1., R.3.
107 Jorge Fonseca, Escravos e senhores na Lisboa quinhentista, (Lisbon: Colibri, 2010), 393. A.C. Saunders, A Social History of Black Slaves, 138-141.
108 William D. Phillips, Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).
109 Evelyn P. Jennings, “Imperial Defense and Manumission in Havana, 1762-1800,” in Paths to Freedom, 121-142. Mathew Restall, The Black Middle, 156. José Luis Cortes, La esclavitud negra en la España peninsular del siglo XVI, (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1989), 152.
110 Paola A. Revilla Orías, Entangled Coercion: African and Indigenous Labour in Charcas, 16th–17th Centuries, (Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2021), 233-242.
111 Ben Vinson III, Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free Colored Militia of New Spain, Black Mexico, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 131-172.
112 Ibid., 5.
113 Ben Vinson III and Matthew Restall, “Black Soldiers, Native Soldiers: Meanings of Military Service in the Spanish American Colonies,” in Beyond Black and Red: African-Native Relations in Colonial Latin America, ed. Matthew Restall, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2005), 15-52. Ben Vinson III, “Race and Badge: Free-Colored Soldiers in the Colonial Mexican Militia,” The Americas, Vol. 56, 4, (2000), 471-496.
114 María Elena Martínez, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 160. Matthew Restall, “Manuel’s World: Black Yucatán and the Colonial Caribbean,” in Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives: Blacks in Colonial Latin America, eds. Jane G. Landers and Barry Robinson, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006), 147-174. Norah L. Gharala, Taxing Blackness, 82. Antonio Feros, Speaking of Spain: The Evolution of Race and Nation in the Hispanic World, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017), 144.
115 Alejandro Cañeque, The King’s, 174.
116 Juan Manuel Ramirez, “Sowing,” 197-219.
117 Jane G. Landers, “Transforming Bondsmen into Vassals: Arming Slaves in Colonial Spanish America,,” in Arming Slaves, 120-145.
118 Landers, 120-145. María Elena Martínez, “The Black Blood,” 479-520. Miguel A. Valerio, Sovereign Joy: Afro-Mexican Kings and Queens, 1539-1640, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 80-125.
119 Jane G. Landers, Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 68-94. Evelyn P. Jennings, “The Sinews of Spain’s American Empire: Forced Labor in Cuba from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth centuries,” in Building the Atlantic Empire: Unfree Labor and Imperial States in the Political Economy of Capitalism, ca. 1500-1914, eds. John Donoghue and Evelyn P. Jennings, (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 25-53.
120 A.G.I. Panamá, 237, lib. 12, f. 23.r.
121 Jorge E. Delgadillo, “The Workings of Calidad,” 215-239. Magali. M. Carrera, Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), 1-22.
122 Joane Rappaport, The Disappearing Mestizo, 32. María Elena Martínez, “The Language, Genealogy, and Classification of Race in Colonial Mexico,” in Race and Classification: The Case of Mexican America, eds. Ilona Katzew and Susan Deans-Smith, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 25-43. Robert McCaa, “Calidad, Clase, and Marriage in Colonial Mexico: The Case of Parral, 1788–90.” Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 64, 3 (1984), 477–501.
123 Ann Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 65.
124 Robert C. Schwaller, Géneros de Gente, 27.
125 Joane Rappaport, The Disappearing Mestizo, 7.
126 Kathrin Burns, “Unfixing Race,” in Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires, eds. Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo, and Maureen Quilligan, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 188–202. Pamela A. Patton, “Race, Color and the Visual in Iberia and Latin America,” in Envisioning Others: Race, Color, and the Visual in Iberia and Latin America, (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 1-17. Jorge E. Delgadillo, “The Workings of Calidad,” 215-239.
127 Ruth Hill, Hierarchy, Commerce and Fraud in Bourbon Spanish America: A Postal Inspector’s Exposé, (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005), 197-239.
128 Norah Gharala, Taxing Blackness: Free Afromexican Tribute in Bourbon New Spain, (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2019), 23-46.
129 Robert C. Schwaller, “‘For Honor and Defence’: Race and the Right to Bear Arms in Early Colonial Mexico,” Colonial Latin American Review, vol. 21, 2, (2012), 239-266. Joan Cameron Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches, 26–27.
130 André Holenstein, “Empowering Interactions: Looking at State-Building from Below,” in Empowering Interactions: Political Cultures and the Emergence of the State, eds. Wim Blockmans, André Holenstein, and John Mathieu, (New York: Routledge, 2017), 1-34. On the petition system, see: Adrian Masters, “A Thousand Invisible Architects: Vassals, the Petition and Response System, and the Creation of Spanish Imperial Caste Legislation,” Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 98, 3, (2018), 377-406. On the “Lettered City” and its employment by racially and ethnically diverse vassals, see: Joanne Rappaport and Tom Cumins, Beyond the Lettered City: Indigenous Literacies in the Andes, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012). Also see: Alcira Dueñas, Indians and Mestizos in the “Lettered City”: Reshaping Justice, Social Hierarchies, and Political Culture in Colonial Peru, (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2011).
131 For sumptuary laws and the importance of the visual for the social order and the fluidity of identities in colonial society, see: Tamara J. Walker, Exquisite Slaves,1-19, 20-42. Joane Rappaport, The Disappearing Mestizo, 17, 50-55.
132 Robert C. Schwaller, “For Honor and Defence,” 239-266.
133 Andrés Mendo, De las Órdenes Militares: De sus principios, gouierno, priuilegios, obligaciones, (Madrid: 1681), 261-264. Regla de la Orden y caballería de Santiago, (Madrid: 1598), 206. On the feudal division of society, see: Georges Duby, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 76-110.
134 Mark A. Burkholder, “Honor and Honors in Colonial Spanish America,” in The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America, eds. Lyman L. Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), 18-44.
135 Robert C. Schwaller, “For Honor,” 246.
136 María Elena Martínez, “The Black Blood,” 479-520.
137 Mark A. Burkholder, “Honor,” 18-44.
138 Robert C. Schwaller, “For Honor,” 239-266.
139 Matthew Restall, “Black Conquistadors,” 175–205; Ben Vinson III and Matthew Restall, “Black Soldiers, Native Soldiers: Meanings of Military Service in the Spanish American Colonies,” in Beyond Black and Red: African-Native Relations in Colonial Latin America, ed. Matthew Restall, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 15–52. Juan Manuel Ramírez, “Sowing Wheat,” 197–219.
140 Vinson and Restall, “Black Soldiers, Native Soldiers,” 17.
141 Kate Lowe, “The Stereotyping of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe,” in Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, eds. T.F. Earle and K.J.P. Lowe, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 17-47. Manuel Olmedo, “In Search of the Black Fencer: Race and Martial Arts Discourse in Early Modern Iberia,” in Trajectories of Empire: Transhispanic Reflections on the African Diaspora, ed. Jerome Branche, (Nashville:Vanderbilt University Press, 2022), 46-78.
142 Tamar Herzog, Defining Nations, 7.
143 Scott K. Taylor, Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 1-16. Robert C. Schwaller, “For Honor,” 239-266.
144 Manuel Olmedo, “In Search,” 46-78. Robert C. Schwaller, “For Honor,” 239-266.
145 Joane Rappaport, The Disappearing Mestizo, 148.
146 María Elena Martínez, “The Black Blood,” 479-520.
147 John Thornton, Africa, 235-272. James H. Sweet, Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441-1770, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2004), 87-161, 191-217.
148 Chloe Ireton, “They are Blacks,” 579-612.
149 Chepas N. Omenyo, “Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone,” in Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa, ed. Kenneth R. Ross, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 201-213.
150 Herber S. Klein, The Atlantic, 62. P. E. H. Hair, “Christian Influences in Sierra Leone before 1787,” Journal of Religion in Africa, vol. 27, 1, (1997), 3-14.
151 María Elena Martínez, Genealogical, 160.
152 Robert C. Schwaller, “For Honor,” 239-266.
153 Rocio Quispe-Agnoli, Nobles de Papel: Identidades oscilantes y genealogías borrosas en los descendientes de la realeza Inca, (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2016), 60-64.
154 Lyman L. Johnson and Sonya L.-Rivera, “Introduction,” in The Faces, 1-17. Joane Rappaport, The Disappearing Mestizo, 34.
155 Rappaport, The Disappearing Mestizo, 34. Ruth Hill, “Between Black and White: A Critical Race Theory Approach to Caste Poetry in the Spanish New World,” Comparative Literature, 59, 4, (2007), 269–293.
156 Robert C. Schwaller, Géneros de Gente, 17-50.
157 Ann Twinam, Purchasing, 57.
158 Hervert Klein, “The Free Colored Militia of Cuba, 1568–1868.” Caribbean Studies, vol. 6, 2 (1966): 17-27. Ben Vinson III and Matthew Restall, “Black Soldiers,” 15-52. Ben Vinson III and Stewart R. King, “Introducing the New African Diasporic Military History in Latin America,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, vol. 5, 2 (2004), 1-24.
159 Karen B. Graubart, “Pesa más la libertad: Slavery, Legal Claims, and the History of Afro-Latin American Ideas,” William & Mary Quarterly, vol. 78, 3, (2021), 427-458. Frank T. Proctor, Damned Notions of Liberty: Slavery, Culture, and Power in Colonial Mexico, 1640-1769, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010). Rachel S. O’Toole, Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012).
160 Herman L. Bennett, Africans, 14-33, 79-154.
161 Tamar Herzog, Defining, 161. Rosemary Brana-Shute and Randy J. Sparks, Paths to Freedom: Manumission in the Atlantic World, (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2021), 1-14. Marixa Lasso, Myths of Harmony: Race and Republicanism during the Age of Revolution, Colombia, 1795-1831, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007), 1-33. Rachel O’Toole, “‘In a War against the Spanish’: Andean Protection and African Resistance on the Northern Peruvian Coast,” The Americas 63, 1 (2006), 19-52.
162 David A. Sartorius, Ever Faithful, 10. Jane G. Landers, Atlantic Creoles, 1-15. Ann Twinam, Purchasing, 35, 81-123. María Elena Díaz, The Virgin, the King, and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre: Negotiating Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670–1780, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 285-313, 314-329. Tamar Herzog, Defining Nations, 1-17; 64-94: 119-141. Norah L. Gharala, Taxing, 1-22.
163 Gharala, Taxing, 5.
164 Robert C. Schwaller, “For Honor,” 239-266.
165 María del Carmen Mena, La Sociedad de Panamá, 373.
166 A.G.I. Panama, 237, 13. Cited by Jean-Pierre Tardieu, Cimarrones, 233.
167 Lauren Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400-1900, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1-30; 31-79.