Associates and Acquaintances: Afro-Indigenous Relations in a Spanish Silver Mining Town, Zacatecas, Mexico

The silver mining town of Zacatecas, Mexico, was home to a significant migrant and native born indigenous population, and a large community of free and enslaved individuals of African descent.   Indigenous people from central and western Mexico migrated to the city in search of wage labor and freedom from tribute and labor draft obligations, while slaves and individuals of African descent were brought to work in mining haciendas, homes, and ranches. Together, these two groups outnumbered the Spanish population throughout the colonial period.  While both the Indian and the African presence dates to the city’s founding, few works have considered the extent of relations and interactions, social, personal, and occupational, between these two groups (Lane 2005; Lewis 2003, Alberro 1988).  Prior scholarship has illustrated how Indians and individuals of African descent formed personal associations and social networks in spite of residential and labor arrangements that often segregated these two groups (Cope 1994).  This paper seeks to add to this discussion, focusing on how Indians and Africans constructed social networks between each other, rather than their relations with colonial authorities and institutions.

Utilizing criminal and notarial documents from archives in Mexico and Spain, this paper analyzes how the urban environment fostered these social networks.  First, I will discuss the locations in the city that drew these groups together, focusing on sites where the absence of colonial authorities may have encouraged more harmonious relationships, such as the city’s lively evening plazas, and the racially porous neighborhoods that bordered the Spanish center and the Indian townships. Subsequently, the paper will analyze the activities that generated interpersonal and communal interactions such as religious proceedings, mining activities, contraband trade, leisure pursuits, and romantic attachments.  Relations between non-Spanish migrants and laborers, due to their common social and economic circumstances, were less antagonistic than previously thought.