“Moro de linaje y nación": Religious Identity and Lineage in an Encomienda Dispute in Sixteenth-Century New Granada

My paper examines the case of Diego Romero and the intricacies of identity politics in the Early Modern Spanish Empire. In 1558 Romero was accused of being a run away slave, and the son of North African Muslims, who had fled Spain for Spanish America with a false license. Because Muslims and Moriscos were prohibited from emigrating to the Americas, due to Spanish authorities' fears that they would influence indigenous religiosity, Romero's detractors argued that he should lose his encomienda and be exiled to Spain. They proceeded to gather testimonies against him in Spain that invoked his Muslim lineage. In response, Romero highlighted his status as one of the first conquerors of New Granada, and produced a series of documents detailing his services and loyalty to the Crown. Spanning a decade, this transatlantic dispute parallels others across Spanish America in which individuals were accused of being descendants of Muslims and Moriscos. My paper shows how these attempts to define status, in language that was steeped in religious terms, were being redefined on both sides of the Atlantic, as individuals like Romero grappled with their position in colonial society.