“My Conscience is Free and Clear”: Slavery and Respectability in Mid-Colonial Mexico

It was in the 1600s, when many African-descended people in Mexico labored as slaves in fields and urban centers, that a new demographic of coloniality emerged: free African-descended women of means. As colonial Mexico’s institutions took shape and local economies diversified, free women accessed developing labor markets, demonstrated greater geographic mobility, and keyed into interracial networks in order to secure their livelihoods.  Some of these women found their path towards financial security in the buying and selling of slaves.  As slaveowners, free women of African descent exercised the ability to be self-determining in ways that most subjects would not because of their lack of economic resources and exclusion from certain professions and trades.  They also experienced as slaveowners the power to determine the life chances of others.  Free women of African descent who owned slaves offered the notary and his assistants only a fleeting glimpse into a world that was in constant negotiation.  Their activities in the notarial archive highlight questions of respectability and social legitimacy perceived to be the domain of the Spanish elite.  This work examines how both race and gender race influenced their approaches in asserting and having legitimated their concerns about their finances, their families, and their own social statuses.