Francisca’s Story: Black Youth, Despair, and Blasphemy in 1605 Mexico City

Between 1500-1700 numbers of New Spain’s citizenry were entangled with the Inquisition. In the nascent colony charges of blasphemy accounted for nearly a quarter of all ecclesiastic charges brought to the Office of the Inquisition. Recently, scholars have taken interest in understanding the shifting historical contexts and social meanings of those transgressions, questioning just what can be gleaned from the investigations, testimonies, and outcomes located in Inquisition records. Two scholars, Javier Villa-Flores and Kathryn Joy McKnight’s, have given attention to blasphemy accounts involving enslaved people of African and Afro-Mestizo descent in New Spain. They have largely interpreted those accused of transgressing as evidence of acts of resistance against slave-owners.  This paper builds on their research by examining the life of Francisca Lopez, a nineteen-year-old enslaved African-descended women who was tried for blasphemy in Mexico City in 1605. It pushes against the common resistance framework arguing that day-to-day acts of resistance were common, but that those acts failed to alleviate Francisca’s despair and that more than resistance, despair better explains Francisca’s blasphemous outburst. Blasphemy was one way she could respond to the ubiquitous and multiple aggressions that she experienced from many antagonists, not solely her ama (owner).