The Other Side of Corruption: Prisoners’ Agency in the Cells of the Lima Inquisition, 1600s
When the officers of the Lima Tribunal of the Inquisition detected some sort of wrongdoing in the development of trials of faith, they conducted investigations labeled as criminal trials. In addition to institutional corruption, these investigations unveil how prisoners accused of the heresy of crypto-Judaism took advantage of interstices left by organizational practices of the tribunal, used their knowledge of inquisitorial procedures and deployed a limited level of agency during their trials of faith. Information present in trials, trials’ summaries, and correspondence between metropolitan and colonial tribunals, are archival sources in which appear mentions to both individual behaviors and collective strategies that affected the development of trials of faith. Tribunal officers and/or African slaves are sometimes mentioned as those who assisted prisoners and enabled these behaviors and strategies. In addition, there are references to prisoners who had undergone trials of faith under other inquisition tribunals and had therefore shared knowledge of procedural regulations that informed collective behaviors. This paper is anchored on information related to trials of faith and criminal trials conducted in Lima in the seventeenth century and poses broader questions, aiming to understand if such practices are recorded for other Inquisition tribunals, and if also existed in Lima throughout the life of the tribunal (1570-1820).
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