A Collective Justice: Royal Petitions and the Invention of a Black Community in Early Castilla Del Oro

In 1574, Philip II ordered that all free African and African-descent peoples in his kingdom pay some amount of tribute, the amount and distribution to be determined by regional Audiencias. In many places, collection soon took place, although individuals petitioned to request exemptions for a variety of reasons, with limited success. In Castilla del Oro (modern Panamá) individuals also directed petitions for exemption to the Audiencia and the monarch, but a large group of free Black women and men joined with a procurator to file what might be called a class-action petition, requesting exemption on the basis of meritorious service to the Crown.

This paper examines some of the materials in this case, which was, in a sense, unexpectedly successful: the litigants received their exemption but not for the reasons they intended. In particular, I locate the legal strategies that underpin the petitions, which borrow broadly from other legal forms of the period and use them in a radical new way. More profoundly, I ask what they might teach us about notions of community in a region that was characterized by a substantial enslaved majority, small free Black and Spanish populations, and groups of impoverished but not yet displaced native groups. How did these groups, which were deeply entangled with one another, understand themselves within the emerging colonial culture, and how did they utilize the language of legal custom to articulate their place?