From Chains to Chiles: An Elite Afro-Indigenous Couple in Colonial Mexico, 1641-1688

Ethnohistory 62:2 (April 2015) DOI 10.1215/00141801- 2854356 Copyright 2015 by American Society for Ethnohistory

From Chains to Chiles: An Elite Afro- Indigenous Couple in Colonial Mexico, 1641–1688

Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva, University of Rochester

Abstract. This article explores the life of an elite Afro- indigenous couple in the city of Puebla de los Ángeles during the seventeenth century. Through the study of a freed-man, Felipe Monsón y Mojica, and his indigenous wife, Juana María de la Cruz, I propose a new approach to the study of the African diaspora in the urban centers of New Spain (colonial Mexico). By combining an extensive corpus of notarial, judi-cial, and parochial records with isolated references to Puebla’s Nahuatl- language annals, this article also sheds light on city- dwelling native women who married enslaved men. I argue that formal unions of this type held enormous social, politi-cal, and commercial potential for Afro- indigenous couples to emerge as new politi-cal actors and urban patrons. In particular, the Monsón de la Cruz household rose to a position of preeminence in pardo religious and military corporations through commerce in indigenous agricultural products.

Keywords. Urban slavery, Afro- indigenous, manumission, confraternity, free- colored militia

This article is a microhistory of plebeian life, identity politics, and inter-ethnic interactions in seventeenth- century Puebla de los Ángeles. This case study of one household is testament to the extreme social mobility that marketplace vendors, domestic servants, and even former slaves were able to achieve in the colonial city by way of their interactions with influential urban actors. Felipe Monsón y Mojica, a militia captain, chile vendor, and confraternity leader, is the protagonist of this narrative. Intrinsically, this is also the life story of Juana María de la Cruz, an urban Indian from a peripheral neighborhood who managed to emancipate her husband, Mon-són. Together they established a powerful commercial network in chile

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Published by Duke University Press

362 Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva

products, reshaped the cultural practices of Puebla’s San José parish, and consolidated a religious confraternity. Throughout this article, I argue that formal, church- sanctioned unions between indigenous individuals and people of African descent held extraordinary cultural, political, and eco-nomic potential for both parties. The remarkable marriage between Mon-són and de la Cruz elucidates just how Afro- indigenous unions facilitated access to greater credit, commercial networks, and social status within the colonial city. Procreating children born of “free wombs” did not necessarily factor into these interactions, nor did “passing” into a higher socio- racial category.

By specializing in the commercialization of indigenous agricultural products—most notably, chile peppers—Monsón and de la Cruz formed an elite urban household that actively subverted colonial notions of par-dos, morenos, and indios as inferior peoples. At first glance, they operated as an elite Afro- indigenous couple through the most orthodox behavior: Catholic matrimony, notarized loans and testaments, pious bequests and reputable home ownership. Yet the documentary evidence of their experi-ences contradicts what we think we know about Afro- indigenous couples. Put simply, ex- slaves and common indigenous women were not supposed to serve as creditors for Spanish clergymen, benefactors for prominent reli-gious confraternities, and demanding patrons for master artisans.

More than forty years ago, Colin Palmer and Gonzalo Aguirre Bel-trán brought to our attention the fascinating topic of Afro- indigenous unions. Both scholars focused on Viceroy Martín Enríquez’s 1574 letter to the Crown in regard to the procreative unions between black men and “very weak and very attracted” native women.1 Palmer hypothesized that these interactions could be understood as a series of individualized alli-ances between members of subordinated groups that could theoretically threaten “Spanish domination.”2 However, in emphasizing the legal and reproductive aspect of these unions, the entire terrain of Afro- indigenous social interactions, political motivations, and cultural implications was left largely untouched. In addition, neither scholar contextualized these inter-actions within the political, demographic, and cultural fluctuations of a specific urban context, as I intend to do for seventeenth- century Puebla.

This article invites us to reconsider the allegedly conflictive nature of interethnic dynamics in Spanish America and, more specifically, the vice-royalty of New Spain (colonial Mexico). In an older historiography focused on the indigenous colonial experience, Africans and their descendants were portrayed as aggressors and intruders, particularly in rural areas. Other scholars have noted that people of African descent were tenuously accepted into rural indigenous spaces until their presence became inconvenient to

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From Chains to Chiles 363

native ruling councils, at which time the latter could use phenotypical traits to justify their expulsion.3 More recently, Matthew Restall has reconcep-tualized Afro- indigenous relationships within a “harmony- hostility dia-lectic,” articulated within the arenas of identity, community, and cultural change.4 Restall’s framework has been useful in deconstructing the conflic-tive discourse found in official colonial correspondence, especially in light of extensive evidence of coexistence between indigenous groups and people of African descent. In this same vein, Robert Schwaller has urged us to con-sider that during the early colonial period, most mulatos living in Mexico City may have actually been born of unions between indigenous women and men of African descent.5

This revisionist shift has led scholars to reexamine official correspon-dence from municipal bodies (both Spanish and Indian) as discursive strate-gies and not necessarily as reflections of everyday interactions. For instance, Rachel Sarah O’Toole has dismantled the assumption that seventeenth- century Afro- indigenous exchanges were rare and endemically violent in Peru’s Trujillo and Chicama valleys by focusing on everyday workplace and commercial interactions found within notarial and criminal proceedings.6 Similarly, Patrick Carroll has argued that Afro- indigenous relationships in New Spain were largely harmonious because indigenous social acceptance was based on “ethnic identification,” not “racial phenotype.”7 According to Carroll, people of African descent who adopted “barrio ways” could theoretically become incorporated into an indigenous ethnicity within an urban context. Herman Bennett has argued a similar point for urban slaves espousing a “reconstituted” urban ethnicity, one rooted not in land, lan-guage, or self- governance but in “religious brotherhoods, the militia, com-munal autonomy, spouse and sponsor selection, and local ties.”8

This article engages these debates by positing that Afro- indigenous couples could merge multiple urban ethnicities into expansive social net-works within a single household. It also deviates from previous studies on interethnic interactions in that it is concerned neither with the biological procreation of Afro- indigenous children nor with excusing Afro- Poblanos’ social mobility. As colonial actors within a charged political space, Mon-són and de la Cruz combined the diverse ethnic institutions at their disposal (temazcales, pardo confraternities and militias, etc.) to establish themselves as non- Spanish patrons in a cosmopolitan city. Through their extensive documentation, they defined themselves as Catholics, spouses, creditors, chile vendors, free people, citizens, and so on.9 Thus, in many ways, Ben-nett’s search for black domesticity, cultural vitality, and community for-mation through Catholic structures is at the heart of this study. Yet follow-ing Bianca Premo’s suggestion, it is my intent to assign “historical value

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to cross- caste” affinities that bound individuals together through “nonbio-logical affective ties.”10 By delving into Monsón and de la Cruz’s individual desires, motivations, and preoccupations, I move away from essentializ-ing characterizations that situate colonial actors solely within racialized boundaries and reproductive expectations.

Ultimately, this essay privileges amicable relationships between people of African and indigenous descent at an elite level. I focus on Monsón as an extreme example of the type of social mobility that a freedman could attain through the social networks at his disposal. Scholars of the African diaspora have often critiqued the historiographical emphasis on “social climbing” that is attributed to exogamous marriage in colonial studies.11 Yet rarely are the underlying complexities of Afro- indigenous unions situated within these critiques, nor are these unions understood in light of neighbor-hood politics. In critiquing an emphasis on social mobility, scholars have been remiss in not considering that Afro- indigenous interactions fostered community formation, in turn leading to ever more influential social net-works. Here, I am concerned with the motivations, strategies, and successes that underpinned one formal and highly successful Afro- indigenous union and that couple’s impact on the city of Puebla.

Nomenclature and Methodology

In this article, I will make use of racial and ethnic terminology that was present during the colonial period while also advancing modern concepts to represent specific types of interactions. For instance, I define pardo/a as an individual of partial African descent and will use that term instead of mulato/a. In seventeenth- century Puebla, both terms lacked genealogical exactitude in that they identified individuals who had one parent of African descent without specifying the other’s background.12 I acknowledge that both terms appear in Novohispanic colonial documentation, and individu-als (such as Monsón) often made use of both.13 The descriptor mulato was of much older Iberian provenance, while pardo, as a racial label, only emerged during the 1620s.14 It is essential to understand the timing of this develop-ment. As the transatlantic slave trade to Puebla peaked during this decade and the next, slave- owning elites increasingly associated individuals of African descent with chattel slavery. The creation of new ethnic labels must therefore be read as an Afro- Poblano strategy to distance themselves from such a negative association at a crucial moment in their history. It should be emphasized that free individuals, particularly those of considerable status, preferred the term pardo. I feel that this historical and well- documented preference for such a form of self- identification deserves further recogni-

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tion by historians today. Children born to prominent families of African descent in colonial Puebla used the pardo/a label throughout their lives. Alternatively, a person of humble means could begin life described as a mulato/a and, through personal labor, intellect, social connections, and so on, come to self- identify or be described as a pardo/a toward the end of his or her life.

The term Afro- indigenous, the most important concept to this study, is taken to represent relationships between individuals of African descent and indigenous people. Of course, the concept can also extend to the chil-dren born of such unions, whether legitimated by the church or not. Robert Schwaller has provided a fascinating entry point to recognizing such indi-viduals: their polyglotism and cultural fluidity as residents of sixteenth- century Mexico City.15 I follow Schwaller’s interest, although I am more interested in using Afro- indigenous conceptually rather than biologi-cally, to deconstruct the hazy characterization of urban life among castas (people of mixed race), a term that does not appear in the colonial docu-ments I use. Simply put, Afro- indigenous couples navigated different cul-tural, social, and political contexts and expectations through their ascribed obligations as members of native cabildos (councils) and ethnically specific parishes, participants in free- colored militias, and sisters/brothers in reli-gious confraternities. Whereas some individuals labeled as mestizos could claim access to illustrious Spanish or Indian ancestors in order to embed themselves in elite colonial aggrupations, most people in Afro- indigenous unions could not by virtue of the linkage between Africanness and slavery.16 To this one must add the constraints that elite Spaniards presented to people of African descent through racially restrictive guilds, universities, seminar-ies, and so on.

The structural limitations imposed on Afro- indigenous couples are largely reflected in the historiography of colonial Puebla. People of African descent are almost invisible in the city’s colonial chronicles, while the indige-nous appear as an amorphous collective devoid of individuals, motivations, or aspirations.17 As a result, the historiography of Monsón and de la Cruz is decidedly poor. Neither spouse is ever mentioned in the city’s extensive Spanish- language chronicles. In fact, the only extant historiographical ref-erence to either of them is found in one line of Puebla’s seventeenth- century indigenous annals. Despite her extraordinary wealth (as we shall see), for the most part de la Cruz remains a mystery to us, even within the Nahuatl- language annals of the Puebla- Tlaxcala valley.18 The indigenous chroniclers of Puebla generally excluded women from their recounting of local history, except for the occasional reference to a vicereine’s arrival or death.

In light of the lamentable lack of information on both protagonists,

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this article proposes a simple, alternative methodology by which to study outstanding people of African descent within the urban Novohispanic context. This approach is grounded in a regional study of slavery through Spanish- language colonial documentation (notarial, municipal, parochial, judicial, etc.).19 This traditional corpus of information is then comple-mented by cross- referencing names, titles, and family histories with pub-lished native- language sources in search of references to Afro- Poblano men and women. In this particular case, the Nahuatl- language annals of the Puebla- Tlaxcala valley have preserved an urban indigenous perspective of the individuals and events that shaped the region’s colonial development. Men and women of African descent formed an integral part of this alternate colonial experience. As a result, the study of these native annals becomes necessary to the comprehension of the Afro- Poblano colonial reality, par-ticularly in light of (1) the absence of self- constructed Afro- Poblano narra-tives and (2) the generalized omission of pardos and morenos from Spanish histories. This approach has proved fruitful for this particular case study, as Puebla’s Nahuatl annals reference a crucial moment of Monsón’s life (not mentioned in any other document). Similarly, only through a careful reconstruction of the Monsón de la Cruz notarial documents do we come to understand the sociocultural, political, and economic strategies available to the urban indigenous women who married men of African descent.

Slavery, Freedom, and the Temazcal

The ethnohistorical field has made great strides over the past twenty years in dissecting the testaments of indigenous nobles and commoners to reveal a complex colonial existence in rural and urban New Spain.20 However, as members of a smaller population deprived of a noble class (in the context of Novohispanic slavery), people of African descent rarely possessed the means to produce such documentation. Monsón, on the other hand, had sufficient resources to draft at least two wills, amend them, and ensure that his memory would be preserved through the foundation of a chaplaincy and numerous donations to religious institutions. Most importantly, Monsón’s wills open a fascinating window into his relationship with his indigenous wife.

De la Cruz was born during the mid- seventeenth century, a time of great changes for the indigenous people of Puebla. While groups from Tlaxcala, Cholula, and Texcoco formed the majority of the city’s popula-tion during the mid- sixteenth century, they were soon followed by waves of Spanish immigrants (especially from the town of Brihuega) and a con-siderable influx of African slaves circa 1590.21 By the end of the sixteenth

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century, Puebla’s nonindigenous population numbered no less than twenty thousand people, including twenty- five hundred slaves.22 In 1601, a royal edict prohibiting native labor within the city’s hellish textile mills stimu-lated the growing demand for African slaves. That same year, the diverse indigenous groups of Puebla managed to establish their own cabildo during this period of flux. In fact, as early as 1647, bishop Juan de Palafox demon-strated concern not for the survival of the indigenous municipal council but for its inclusion of people of mixed ancestry.23 The native cabildo did sur-vive the seventeenth century, but the city changed radically. Puebla’s mixed and African- descent population had grown exponentially, and by the early 1680s equaled the combined Spanish and Indian population.24

Thus the world of Juana María was one of linguistic, cultural, and occu-pational diversity. The daughter of indigenous parents, Juan and Pascuala de la Cruz, she was born and raised Catholic in the peripheral barrio of Santa Ana.25 People from the nearby altepetl (city- state) of Tlaxcala initially settled this neighborhood, although they would eventually spread through-out the entire eastern riverbank of the city.26 In all likelihood, Juana María identified as Tlaxcalan, although this attribute certainly did not impede her from socializing with people of all backgrounds within the bustling city. In seventeenth- century Puebla, the development of local barrio cults through specific confraternities and their respective saints often superseded racial and ethnic barriers.27

As we shall see, religion played a significant part in Juana María’s life and may explain how she and Felipe may have first come into contact with one another. Originally, the Santa Ana barrio and its Tlaxcalan residents belonged to the religious jurisdiction of the San Pablo neighborhood, which had been settled by Nahua groups from Texcoco and Tlatelolco.28 In 1641, the Santa Ana neighborhood was incorporated into the vibrant and multi-racial San José parish as part of bishop Palafox’s secularization campaign.29 By realigning the boundaries of Puebla’s parishes and wresting the regu-lar orders’ hold of the urban indigenous population, Palafox fractured the political ties that bound local caciques, indigenous nobles, and the influen-tial regular orders.30 According to Lidia Gómez García, “This jurisdictional displacement also implied the establishment of new loyalties. This is evident in the Anales de fiscales de San José, which indicate that a new set of rela-tionships began, first and foremost with the Spanish, mestizo and mulato parishioners of San José, who began the construction of the capilla de indios. Likewise, construction on the church of the lord Santiago, was also begun in the Cholulan barrio of the same name.”31 For the indigenous residents of the Santa Ana barrio (who technically became parishioners of San José), secularization enabled “new political actors,” such as fiscales (elected civic-

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religious leaders), to augment their power and establish new patron- client networks with members of the secular church at the expense of the older native leadership and the regular orders.32

This rupture in the fabric of indigenous politics allowed other actors to establish valuable relationships with particular sectors of the city’s native elites at a moment of unprecedented pardo and moreno demographic and political growth. In the expanded San José parish, enslaved and free Afro- Poblanos consistently resorted to indios fiscales as marriage witnesses, but only after the 1640 secularization of Puebla’s parishes.33 As Afro- Poblanos gradually established themselves as journeymen, store owners, and mas-ter artisans during the second half of the seventeenth century, these inter-actions enabled nonelite Indians to secure powerful allies within the urban sphere.34 As a result, Afro- Poblanos had vested and localized interests in the growing rift between the indigenous inhabitants of the San Pablo and Santa Ana neighborhoods. In 1651, New Spain’s viceroy was forced to decree (and then confirm this edict that same year) that the indigenous officials of the San Pablo barrio were to cease harassing Santa Ana residents for wax and other goods.35 Evidently, San Pablo’s officials were quite reluctant to relin-quish the power they had traditionally exercised over the Tlaxcalan resi-dents of Santa Ana. In the absence of a pan- indigenous ethnicity, the inclu-sion of mestizos, Spaniards, and people of African descent as allies against rival neighborhoods incentivized local barrio affiliations.

In all likelihood, then, the San José parish church, on the northern edge of the city, served as the initial point of contact between Monsón and de la Cruz. Throughout his life, Monsón distinguished himself as a devout Catholic, and not merely in the formulaic religious prose of his time. He actively participated in the Santa Expiración confraternity, a notable reli-gious brotherhood located within Puebla’s central parish, the Sagrario.36 Still, he repeatedly identified as a parishioner of San José. Unfortunately, we know next to nothing regarding Monsón’s upbringing, his parents, or even if he had been raised as an orphan or hijo de la Iglesia. With certainty we can only state that he was born enslaved in the city of Puebla and that his mother was a slave, presumably of African descent.37

As for his ascription as a pardo or mulato, such terms did not clarify whether his father was of European, African, Asian, or indigenous descent. The crux of the matter is that Monsón never acknowledged his parents in his multiple wills or in any other extant documentation. Perhaps he never knew them or was sold away from his family at an early age. And yet many individuals of African descent in Puebla (especially creoles) took great pains to note the backgrounds, names, and even ethnicities of their par-ents in official documents.38 What is clear is that slavery had been a crucial

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aspect of Monsón’s life and one that he and his wife concealed in later tes-taments. His only admission to having been subjected to slavery appeared in his first will, written in 1682: “As ordered by our Holy Mother Church, I am legitimately married and veiled with Juana María de la Cruz, with whom I am making married life. And when we contracted matrimony the aforementioned did not bring a dowry, nor did I have any capital as I was a slave of Joseph de Higueras at the time . . . furthermore my wife earned the amount of money with which I was freed.”39 This last piece of information was systematically omitted from testaments that Monsón and de la Cruz drafted later on. De la Cruz also played a part in this strategic omission. In her own will (drafted four years after Monsón’s death), she never men-tioned her husband’s enslavement and only noted that neither she nor he had brought “any capital” to their household when married.40 And yet the couple’s decision to excise Monsón’s prior juridical condition from future documentation is fascinating in that it did not alter prior knowledge of his enslavement. News of Monsón’s freedom would have elicited joy and con-gratulations from his friends and loved ones, but it could not efface his public reputation (“pública voz y fama”) as an ex- slave.41 By excising his experiences as a slave, Monsón may have been simply trying to distance himself from memories of bondage. More pragmatically, his prior enslave-ment had no bearing on his dealings with the city’s public scribes and their preconceived notions of what a successful pardo could or could not be. So why rehash, reenact, and remind a colonial official of his prior debasement?

Just how de la Cruz obtained the undisclosed amount money for Mon-són’s liberation is unknown to us. However, in another clause from the latter’s will it is suggested that the de la Cruz family possessed significant capital. In an uncharacteristically open revelation in his first testament, Monsón stressed once and again that his household’s rise to prominence was due to his wife’s personal help, dedication, and work.42 He even men-tioned that, having defaulted on his obligations, de la Cruz contributed no less than twelve thousand pesos to his cause!43 Who, then, was Juana María de la Cruz? Why did she not call herself an india principal (of noble indige-nous ancestry) if she and her family possessed such considerable sums of money? And just who were her parents, the humbly named Juan and Pas-cuala de la Cruz?

Juana María’s father, Juan de la Cruz, was possibly the same per-son who loaned Monsón (and other prominent pardos) significant sums of money during the late seventeenth century. Here the lack of the hon-orific “don” may indicate that despite their wealth, the de la Cruz family could not claim ties to the indigenous nobility. In fact, there is the pos-sibility that Juan de la Cruz was mestizo (and thus ineligible for office in

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Puebla’s native cabildo) but that his wife was indigenous, thereby allowing Juana María to claim to be india.44 In 1671, the merchant Juan de la Cruz awarded a 588- peso loan to Monsón, by then already a well- established freedman.45 Unfortunately, such a common name as Juan de la Cruz pre-cludes us from definitively confirming that Monsón’s creditor and father- in- law were indeed the same person.46 In the event that they were, however, the story of the Monsón de la Cruz household suggests not only that pardos and indios were working as petty merchants and vendors but that at an elite level, Afro- indigenous interactions were becoming quite profitable.

For proof of their success, we turn to the inventory of this elite house-hold at the time of Juana María’s death in 1688. In what turned out to be a massive listing, the couple’s executors found no less than 9,250 pounds of chile ancho, chile jamanqui, and chile pasilla in addition to fifteen crates of copal, ninety- four salt petates, and various measures of ayacote and chi-chimeco beans, shrimp, tobacco, and achiote. In an earlier will, Monsón and de la Cruz stipulated that they held more than two thousand pesos in produce alone.47 The couple stored their wares just off the central plaza, in a room sheltered by the city portals.48 While we may never know whether Monsón and Juan de la Cruz were in business prior to Juana María’s wed-ding, it is evident that Felipe and Juana María became well- known suppliers of indigenous products to the greater Poblano public.

Yet as we have outlined, the Monsón de la Cruz union transcended commerce and politics. The couple literally cemented their legacy through the construction of a large building complex in the San José neighborhood, at the north end of the city. As early as 1665, they already owned a two- story house just off the main street that led to the public plaza. The house was clearly Monsón’s greatest pride in life, as he time and again declared that it was “a new stone- and- mortar building, on the street that runs from the San Pablo barrio to the orchards of Formicedo.”49 Over no less than twenty- three years of marriage, the couple invested twelve thousand pesos in their seven- room, two- patio complex that included horse stables, fruit orchards, and a private well! In addition, the Monsón de la Cruz estate included its very own temazcal, “in which people continually bathed.”50

How do we interpret the existence of a native steam house within the confines of Monsón and de la Cruz’s urban complex? De la Cruz was an indigenous woman; the temazcal was part of her native culture. Yet for Monsón, the use of the pre- Hispanic steam house was also deemed suitable. During the late seventeenth century, colonial physicians argued that Afri-cans and people of mixed race enjoyed corporal characteristics in tune with the “humors” needed to withstand such treatments.51 In New Spain, local governments attempted to restrict temazcales because of their connotation

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as sites for homosexual activity and sexual promiscuity, if not outright pros-titution.52 Yet temazcales also served as communal sites for much needed cleansing, relaxation, and socialization for the urban masses.53 It is clear that the San José community, indigenous and otherwise, benefited from the quotidian medicinal uses of the Monsón de la Cruz steam house. In effect, the ownership of a private steam house heightened the social prominence that this esteemed Afro- indigenous couple had attained over their lifetime. Monsón and de la Cruz not only catered indispensable agricultural prod-ucts to the greater Puebla community in the central plaza; they also extended their influence to the city’s northern San José neighborhoods through the very public use of their private quarters. In the deliberate construction of an intimate space for non- Spaniards, the Monsón de la Cruz family solidified their reputations as leaders not only of the San José neighborhood but also of a broad population of African, indigenous, and mixed descent.

Euphemisms, Credit, and Status

Monsón and de la Cruz’s urban estate served as a valuable, physical manifes-tation of their success in commerce. But what of their reputations among the greater Puebla society? Turning exclusively to Monsón, how did Poblanos view this extremely successful freedman? Perhaps more importantly, how did he see himself? While many of these answers remain subjective, certain elements of Monsón’s status are evident in the city’s notarial archives. Ref-erences to freedmen, however, are scarce in these sources.54 This absence has been interpreted as evidence either of their numerical insignificance vis- à- vis the Spanish and Indian constituents of the dual republic model or of their peripheral position as propertyless and thus indiscernible actors in the colonial economy. These perspectives on freedmen have been undoubt-edly heightened by the conspicuousness of slaves as possession, collateral, and status marker within Spanish America’s notarial archives.55 Monsón’s reality, however, could not have been further removed from these stereo-types. Since at least 1660 and until his death in 1683, Monsón conducted numerous notarial transactions on his own behalf with people of all colors and strata.

Within these notarial contracts, Monsón presented a public persona that challenged the racial statutes of his day. As early as 1660, he already identified as a free man, but that in itself was not remarkable for a city as large and diverse as Puebla. On the other hand, the fact that in every contract Monsón claimed citizenship is of significance considering that Puebla’s city council attempted to strip free Afro- Poblanos of their rights and privileges in 1635.56 The decree, unenforceable in the long run, reflected the Spanish

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elite’s fear of empowering an increasingly African population at the height of the transatlantic slave trade to Puebla.57 Tamar Herzog identifies a simi-lar process of civic disenfranchisement in early seventeenth- century Cara-cas, as citizenship became disassociated from land grants and residence, instead acquiring characteristics of Europhilic “social repute.”58 A simi-lar process took place in Puebla, which perhaps explains why free Afro- Poblanos began using the pardo/a label more consistently during the 1630s in order to secure their rightful privileges as municipal residents.59 While racially based legislation of this nature was coterminous with the very foun-dation of the colonial city, in Puebla the mid- seventeenth- century preoccu-pation with pardo rights reflected a new social anxiety as the descendants of slaves could (and did) accumulate sufficient capital, both monetary and social, to challenge the hegemonic discourse of Spanish power and privi-lege. Unions with wealthy indigenous families certainly made this possi-bility a reality.

The study of mundane notarial documentation allows us to further understand the socio- racial context that Monsón encountered during the second half of the seventeenth century. In one such loan (or carta de obli-gación), he described himself not as a pardo but as someone having “pardo skin color.”60 This is a distinction of some significance and one found fre-quently in notarial data among successful men of African descent.61 Numer-ous other free Afro- Poblanos also made use of this color- conscious strategy in their notarial documents. For instance, Diego de Cobos, Diego López, Ana de Santiago, and Sebastián González were all free contemporaries of Monsón who identified as having pardo “skin color.” Whether a polite euphemism for mulato or not, Monsón rejected an essentializing term of racial identification and transformed it into a mere descriptor of skin color. He then identified as a free neighbor of Puebla and as a chile and produce vendor within the central square.

By contrast, Monsón’s ascription as a chilero, or a chile pepper vendor, distinguished him as a specialist within a unique merchant group in the city’s history. Chileros sold a distinctly native product; their clientele was widespread and afforded them the opportunity to interact with people of all ethnicities.62 Monsón fell precisely within this category and conducted his business within the central plaza. His status as a tratante (produce ven-dor) located him somewhere between the secondhand stands of the flea market and the opulent merchants of the portals. Furthermore, as chile ven-dors, Monsón and de la Cruz also participated in the development of a distinctively urban brand of popular Catholicism. Since at least the early seventeenth century, Puebla’s chileros congregated around a humble shrine erected on the wall separating the cathedral from the central plaza.63 Every

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day and night, the chileros would take flower and candle offerings to pray the rosary before the makeshift altar and an image of Christ the Redeemer.64 The popular devotion to this particular image, painted by a man of Asian descent (chino de nación) circa 1612, demonstrates how individuals of all backgrounds could successfully participate in the creation of highly local-ized religious traditions in the cosmopolitan city. Monsón and de la Cruz took advantage of this fact and perhaps even used the chilero local cult to mold the public’s acceptance of their participation in this lucrative branch of commerce.

To obtain their produce, the Monsón de la Cruz family probably pur-chased wholesale from indigenous producers and Spanish hacienda owners outside Puebla. Several rural parish priests owed them an undetermined amount of money (at the time of Monsón’s death in 1684), suggesting that these clergymen served as their suppliers. For instance, Father Sebastián Sánchez, the curate of San Juan Aguacatlan, regularly supplied Monsón with crates of eggs in addition to orange blossom water (presumably for confectionary purposes). Upon her husband’s death, de la Cruz requested that Sánchez satisfy his financial obligations to her estate. In his response to “Señora Juana Moxica,” Sánchez asked the widow to accept his pawned set of silver plates (which the couple already held) as payment for his debt. In addition, Dr. Juan González of Tlatlauquitepeque, Father Joseph Zurita of Suchipango, and Father Diego de Mirón of Ayutla were also indebted to the widow. These clergymen supplied the Monsón de la Cruz household with essential products from the Puebla hinterland, and particularly from the Sierra Norte. As a result, these commercial networks likely also reveal long- standing commercial connections that linked the de la Cruz family with the more remote indigenous hinterland.

Evidently, the couple’s familial and commercial connections made Monsón worthy of substantial credit, as stipulated by various notarial con-tracts in his name. In 1665, Captain Juan Valera, a future regent (regidor) of Puebla, confidently loaned Monsón one hundred pesos knowing that the latter could repay the debt.65 That a freedman could supply such quantities of money was impressive, but the fact that Monsón used “some houses of recent construction in the San Joseph barrio” as his personal collateral was simply outstanding. Five years earlier, Monsón’s reputation was already sufficient to earn him an 1,123- peso bond from Juan López García, a mer-chant based in the city of Celaya, 234 miles away.66

Yet how could a freedman command such credit as a petty chile ven-dor? Here I especially detect Juana María’s influence and possibly that of her merchant father, Juan de la Cruz. Monsón’s 1,123- peso debt was to be paid in just under six months, suggesting that he was receiving a consider-

Ethnohistory



able amount of merchandise on credit and expecting to sell it for a profit quickly. Considering the limited credit that most freedmen could hope to access on their own, Monsón evidently benefited from his father- in- law’s patronage as a fellow merchant. In essence, by 1660 Monsón had become the public face of a powerful merchant family. For reasons unknown to us, Juana María (despite being fluent in Spanish) preferred to delegate meet-ings that involved notaries to her husband. Scholars of New Spain’s mer-chant elite will argue that these are trifling sums of money, yet for the com-mon person (and particularly for the freed pardo), such quantities often exceeded one’s entire life earnings. In the Puebla context, obligations of more than two hundred pesos were often reserved for the manumission of enslaved family members whose relatives were then held to often impos-sible repayment terms.67

We do not know whether Monsón ever secured another slave’s free-dom, but he and his wife certainly possessed the financial capabilities to do so. Most elite Spanish households in Puebla de los Ángeles maintained con-siderable slave retinues as ostentatious displays of financial and social power. Moreover, unlike some prominent Afro- Poblanos, Monsón did not possess slaves of his own.68 Perhaps his own personal experience as an enslaved person had marked him sufficiently to reject reentering the world of chattel slavery. In any case, de la Cruz did not own any slaves either, which is why the couple’s testaments are bereft of any reference to slave owning. Thus the couple’s rejection of chattel slavery, and its implied dominion, carries pro-found cultural implications. Monsón and de la Cruz would find honor else-where, as in their adoption of two indigenous orphans, Felipe and Matías Monsón.69 In appealing to Christian virtue, the Monsón de la Cruz family also enhanced their social credentials by elevating a religious brotherhood to prominence within New Spain’s second city.

Monsón’s participation in the Expiración de Cristo brotherhood, one of five Afro- Poblano brotherhoods in colonial Puebla, deserves special attention considering the role he played as mayordomo, or head administra-tor. Expiración, which was known as “the confraternity of the mulatos” in the early 1630s, had its own chapel beside the church hospital of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception.70 Unfortunately, the minutes and member-ship records of Expiración have not been located, preventing us from speci-fying whether individuals of other ethnic groups participated in its activi-ties. Considering Monsón’s role in the brotherhood, there is little doubt that Expiración catered to a broad array of urban dwellers from a variety of backgrounds.71 Nonetheless, during the early 1680s, the group’s leader-ship presented itself as an Afro- Poblano vanguard, since it was led by Mon-són and Bartolomé de Santander, “free pardos, citizens, and administrators

Ethnohistory



of the confraternity.”72 A late seventeenth- century eyewitness, the Spanish chronicler Miguel de Alcalá, extolled the brotherhood’s annual Holy Fri-day procession “from the chapel of the pardos” as an event of “great splen-dor, all due to the care of its mayordomos.”73 Through indirect references of this sort, it is clear that Monsón succeeded in earning the esteem of his contemporaries for his “diligent and punctual” work within Expiración’s ranks. Notably, his marriage to an indigenous woman did not affect his eli-gibility as administrator of the brotherhood. As a “position of great respect and respectability,” mayordomo obligations were “best met by those with organizational and leadership abilities (i.e., the ability to avoid debt in the first place by securing an income for the confraternity), good connections and patronage networks, and personal wealth.”74

In this regard, Monsón may have actually benefited from his wife’s commercial networks, as he commissioned two native master artisans to erect a side altar in the brotherhood’s name in October 1682. Monsón’s elec-tion of a pair of indigenous master artisans to complete a religious ornament for his confraternity forces us to reconsider the nature of patron- client rela-tions in urban New Spain.75 Douglas Cope’s portrayal of elite Spaniards as protective, intrusive, and competitive employers for lower- status plebeians is undoubtedly still a useful tool for understanding the structure of urban labor relations.76 However, Bennett has done well to point out that patrons’ apparent control of their racially diverse clients did not extend into the pri-vate realm of personal relationships (especially in relation to spouse selec-tion). In privileging parochial sources over Cope’s notarial data, Bennett argues that “ethnic Africans and mulattos manifested little actual depen-dency on the Spaniards with whom they shared social intimacy.”77 How-ever, even Bennett’s critique is limited by his tendency to structure urban interethnic relations in relation to Spaniards. What of patron- client rela-tionships between indigenous elites and middling Afro- Poblanos? Between prominent pardos and struggling indigenous artisans? As we advance our understanding of urban colonial history, the African diaspora, indigenous barrio politics, and so on, it is of paramount importance to simultaneously craft a history of Afro- indigenous interactions.

In this case, a pardo administrator wields a notarial document that forces two indigenous master artisans to fulfill their obligations to his con-fraternity. Diego Lázaro and Juan Lázaro, an Indian father- and- son team of master woodworkers from Puebla’s Santiago neighborhood, had already received 424 pesos for a “white side altar for an image of Our Lord Christ of the Expiration.” However, by October 1682, the artisans had only com-pleted half of the side altar (colateral), and their unspecified deadline for the project had lapsed. Evidently, Monsón had initially come to a verbal

Ethnohistory



agreement with the Lázaro family but resorted to the notarial process due to the latter’s negligent delay. As the representative of a religious corpora-tion, Monsón appealed to Spanish bureaucratic norms to secure a binding two- month contract with the artisans. At the risk on relying on negative evidence, this intriguing document suggests that formal patron- client inter-actions between people of African and indigenous descent were common in the seventeenth- century city. Moreover, this direct link between San José and Santiago residents echoes bishop Palafox’s secularization campaign. By serving as a “new political actor” in his role as the leader of a pardo con-fraternity, Monsón facilitated contact between Puebla’s barrios while ele-vating his confraternity’s standing throughout the city.78

Man of the Sword

Despite the impressive paper trail left behind by Monsón, one crucial aspect of his life is absent from this corpus of Spanish- language documentation. In late May 1683, Monsón became Captain for the pardo militia of Puebla de los Ángeles. Earlier that month, Lorenzo de Graff, also known as Loren-cillo, had led a devastating pirate raid on the port of Veracruz. News of the attack, which claimed three hundred lives and eight hundred thousand pesos in material losses, sent shock waves throughout the viceroyalty.79 For New Spain’s population of African descent, the attack on Veracruz was particularly devastating. Unsatisfied with the thousands of pesos in cash, ornaments, and jewelry looted from the port, the pirates forced the local Afro- Veracruzano population to board their vessels. Approximately fifteen hundred pardos and morenos, many of whom had “managed to gain liberty in New Spain, or else were freeborn there,” were taken as captives to be sold throughout the Caribbean.80 As the major urban center closest to the port, Puebla received some of the first news of the attack, along with ransom letters for its wealthiest citizens.81 One can only imagine how particularly painful the experience must have been for those with siblings, parents, and friends residing in Veracruz. The raid demanded an immediate response, leading to Monsón’s unprecedented appointment as military leader for the city’s pardos.

Remarkably, the only extant references to Monsón’s ascension to his military charge are found in the indigenous annals of Puebla. Written by the native governor Don Miguel de los Santos or a close member of his retinue, these yearly registers, or xiuhpohualli, present a collective memory of the most significant events in Puebla’s history as perceived by one specific ethnic group and one neighborhood.82 Most of the entries can only be catalogued as short, undescriptive phrases recording a meteorological event, a crimi-

Ethnohistory



nal’s execution, or the arrival of an important political figure.83 Monsón’s inclusion in the Puebla annals follows this trend: “Auh in imoztlayoc ypan tonali biernes yc matlactli onnahui 14 tonali mani metztli mayo ocacoque yancuican bandera yn mulatoz auh yn oquis yn icapitan se mulato ytoca felipe monso y mojica chilero” (The next day, Friday, the 14th day of May, the mulattoes for the first time raised a banner, and their captain turned out to be a mulatto named Felipe Monzón y Mujica, a chile- vendor).84

The entry establishes Monsón’s tripartite personality as a man of Afri-can descent, a military captain, and a merchant. It is difficult to assess the chronicler’s personal opinion of Monsón based on one line of text, although a degree of racial consciousness is evident throughout the annals. Afro- Poblanos appear consistently identified as mulatos or tliltique (liter-ally, “blacks” in Nahuatl), whereas indigenous people, such as Juana María de la Cruz, are understood to be the point of reference.85 During the 1680s, a minimum of seventy thousand people lived in Puebla, half of whom were castas.86 Thus terms such as negro, mulato, and chino would have been more than familiar to the indigenous chronicler, as would his own personal inter-actions with Afro- Poblano individuals. By the same token, the author of the annals admittedly could have used the less injurious terms moreno and pardo. For the most part, however, entries regarding Puebla’s sizable African and mixed- race population are neutral, only turning hostile with respect to the latter’s political interference in the election of the indigenous municipal council.

In an eighteenth- century bilingual (Spanish- Nahuatl) copy and trans-lation of this particular set of annals, the pardo community/militiamen “name” Monsón as their leader, while in the original versions Monsón “turns out to be” captain.87 While either reading may simply represent a variation of the perspective held by the different authors or copyists, there is the possibility that pardo community leaders (particularly during an emer-gency) independently volunteered a candidate they considered apt for the task at hand.88 As we have seen through his inventories and notarial con-tracts, Monsón certainly enjoyed the financial and social credentials neces-sary to outfit such an expedition.89 In fact, Monsón’s wealth and extensive credit networks appear to have been fundamental to his charge, as military leaders frequently had to arm and clothe their soldiers at their own expense. The question of collective pardo agency, however, remains unresolved. Was Monsón’s captaincy an Afro- Poblano nomination merely validated by the authorities, lobbied by the de la Cruz family, or imposed by the influen-tial councilmen of the Spanish municipal government? Monsón’s appoint-ment was likely requested and well received by all three groups, although other prominent pardos could have also served well in this capacity. There

Ethnohistory



appears to have been no opposition to his nomination from within the Expi-ración confraternity. In addition, Monsón could count on the backing of his former creditor Valera, now a city regent, to curry favor with the Spanish municipal council.

Perhaps most importantly, Monsón’s ascent to the rank of militia cap-tain empowered the Monsón de la Cruz family fiscally and judicially. By securing this coveted position, Monsón would no longer pay tribute, a con-siderable boon for mixed- race households and one that was often extended to distant relatives and even friends.90 Similarly, by virtue of his military service, Monsón would have also briefly enjoyed an exemption from facing charges in civil courts, a privilege known as fuero militar.91 In 1683, the extension of these military rights catapulted Monsón and de la Cruz into a position of true political, commercial, and social power. In this regard, Monsón served as a leading precursor for what would become an influen-tial and affluent free- colored military elite based in the city of Puebla during the eighteenth century.92

Conclusion

The social, commercial, and historiographical elements of this study could lead to the suggestion that Monsón was merely a successful mixed- race individual immersed in an urban indigenous world. With de la Cruz by his side, Monsón would have been gradually accepted into her Tlaxcalan neighborhood and community. There are many elements in this story that could support such a theory. In form and function, the Monsón de la Cruz temazcal represented a physical connection with an indigenous past that was still very much present in the San José barrio at the end of the seven-teenth century. The annals where we first learn of Monsón likewise rep-resented a native form that, having survived decades of colonial rule, had successfully adapted to continue preserving an indigenous memory of the city. Even the chile varieties that Monsón and de la Cruz sold were distinctly native. Finally, the native orphans whom they adopted could certainly lead to the claim that Monsón had been willfully absorbed into the city’s indige-nous community.

However, the nuances of Monsón’s life suggest otherwise. He was born enslaved in a city that profited immeasurably from the transatlantic slave trade. Having experienced slavery himself, he represented generations of Afro- Poblanos who had provided the city with the forced labor that Crown officials had deemed too unsafe for the native population, let alone the colo-nizers. Upon securing his freedom, he and his wife constructed a reputable commercial base at the heart of the Spanish city in the central plaza. As a

Ethnohistory



chilero, he formed part of a unique commercial and socioreligious group that contributed to the formation of a popular brand of Catholicism in Puebla. Religion was central to Monsón’s life, especially in his roles as a confraternity leader and a religious benefactor. Finally, as a highly respect-able and successful pardo merchant, Monsón became the military captain for an explicitly Afro- Poblano corporation. Monsón’s military service and privileges certainly bolstered the de la Cruz family’s standing, despite Mon-són’s unfortunate death only a year after his appointment.

What, then, can we learn from this remarkable case study? First of all, it is clear that previous assumptions of endemic violence between par-dos, morenos, and indios need to be reconsidered within the urban colo-nial context. While the history of Monsón and de la Cruz may represent a far- fetched example of Afro- indigenous cooperation, coexistence, and suc-cess, it is by no means an exception to the rule. The development of a mas-sive mixed- race population in seventeenth- century Puebla is demonstrative of large- scale interaction between two sectors of society that socialized with a degree of intimacy that we have only begun to recognize. Finally, the story of Captain Felipe Monsón y Mojica and Juana María de la Cruz also reveals a new approach to the study of indigenous women in colonial urban centers. Unlike their scant or indirect references to her husband, the Puebla chroniclers’ records are completely silent with regard to de la Cruz. Only through the study of her enslaved spouse do we learn anything regard-ing this remarkable woman. Of course, this realization opens entirely new fields of inquiry. Who were these indigenous women? What motivated them to marry the slaves of Puebla? Why do we know so little about them?

In conclusion, I have suggested that for a considerable number of urban dwellers, these unions presented a viable pathway not only to economic suc-cess, political power, and social influence but also to nurturing domesticity. Afro- indigenous relationships were bred on residential proximity, child-hood interactions, and simple trust and were thus openly exposed to the fluctuations in barrio politics, marketplace interactions, and family rival-ries. What is extraordinary about this particular case study is that its two protagonists managed to weave an extensive interracial, cross- parish, com-mercially lucrative social network and tap its full potential. Monsón’s rise to prominence in pardo religious and military organizations was facilitated, not obstructed, by his marriage to a powerful indigenous woman. De la Cruz benefited from her husband’s leadership in the Expiración confrater-nity and Puebla’s pardo militia to better access a male- dominated notarial arena. Finally, when the stress of commerce, confraternities, and politics became overwhelming, husband and wife could always retreat and relax in their own urban temazcal.

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Notes

1 Colin Palmer, Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico, 1570–1650 (Cambridge, MA, 1976), 60–62; Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, La población negra de México (México, D.F., 1972), 256–57.

2 Palmer, Slaves of the White God, 60. Enríquez highlighted the instrumentality of such unions, whether formalized or not, in creating generations of free, mixed- race children at a time when the viceroyalty desperately needed laborers.

3 Deborah Kanter, “‘Their Hair Was Curly’: Afro- Mexicans in Indian Villages, Central Mexico, 1700–1820,” in Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds (Durham, NC, 2006), 164–80.

4 Matthew Restall, “Black Slaves, Red Paint,” in Beyond Black and Red: African- Native Relations in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque, NM, 2005), 4–10.

5 Robert Schwaller, “‘Mulata, hija de negro y india’: Afro- Indigenous Mulatos in Early Colonial Mexico,” Journal of Social History 44, no. 3 (2011): 896–98.

6 Rachel Sarah O’Toole, Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru (Pittsburgh, PA, 2012), 73.

7 Patrick Carroll, “Black- Native Relations and the Historical Record in Colonial Mexico,” in Beyond Black and Red (Albuquerque, NM, 2005), 252.

8 Herman Bennett, Colonial Blackness: A History of Afro- Mexico (Bloomington, IN, 2009), 147.

9 Bennett, Colonial Blackness, 10, 216. In this respect, I share Bennett’s critique of a historiography that has mostly defined people of African descent in relation to slavery.

10 Bianca Premo, “Familiar: Thinking beyond Lineage and across Race in Spanish Atlantic History,” William and Mary Quarterly 70 (2013): 297.

11 Ben Vinson III, Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free- Colored Militia in Colo-nial Mexico (Stanford, CA, 2001), 225–26; Bennett, Colonial Blackness, 145–46.

12 Frank T. Proctor, Slavery, Culture, and Power in Colonial Mexico, 1640–1769 (Albuquerque, NM, 2010), 40–41.

13 The term moreno was a euphemism for negro, the latter carrying heavy connota-tions of slavery and illegitimacy. Throughout this article, the term Afro- Poblano will reference both pardos and morenos when discussing contexts and situa-tions that impacted both groups.

14 Archivo General de Notarías del Estado de Puebla (hereafter AGNP), Notaría 3, box 49, August 1625, fol. 1305r. By contrast, the term mulato could already be found in local ordinances from the 1550s. See Efraín Castro Morales, Suple-mento del libro número primero de la fundación y establecimiento de la muy noble y muy leal Ciudad de los Ángeles (Puebla, Mexico, 2009), fol. 245v.

15 Schwaller, “Mulata, hija de negro y india,” 900. 16 Maria Elena Martínez, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and

Gender in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, CA, 2008), 152. 17 Mariano Fernández de Echeverría y Veytia, Historia de la fundación de la ciu-

dad de la Puebla de los Ángeles en la Nueva España, ed. Efraín Castro Morales (Puebla, Mexico, 1962); Miguel de Alcalá y Mendiola, Descripción en bosquejo de la imperial, cesárea, muy noble, y muy leal ciudad de Puebla de los Ángeles (Puebla, Mexico, 1997), 43–44.

18 Camilla Townsend, ed. and trans., Here in This Year: Seventeenth- Century Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala- Puebla Valley (Stanford, CA, 2010), 125; Lidia

Ethnohistory



Gomez García, Celia Salazar Exaire, and María Elena Stefanón López, ed. and trans., Anales del Barrio de San Juan del Río: Crónica indígena de la ciudad de Puebla, siglo XVII (Puebla, Mexico: ICSyH/BUAP, 2001), 104–5.

19 The following archives have been consulted for this article: Archivo Histórico Judicial de Puebla (AHJP), Archivo General de Notarías del Estado de Puebla (AGNP), Archivo Histórico Municipal de Puebla (AHMP), Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Archivo del Sagrario Metropolitano de Puebla (ASMP), Archivo de la Parroquia del Señor San José (APSJ), and Archivo de la Parroquia del Santo Angel Custodio (APSAC).

20 Notable examples include Robet Haskett, Indigenous Rulers: An Ethnohistory of Town Government in Colonial Cuernavaca (Albuquerque, NM, 1991); Kevin Terraciano, The Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford, CA, 2001); and James Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest (Stanford, CA, 1992).

21 Ida Altman, Transatlantic Ties in the Spanish Empire: Brihuega, Spain, and Puebla, Mexico, 1560–1620 (Stanford, CA, 2000), 34.

22 Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 144. 23 Ibid., 116. 24 Peter Gerhard, “Un censo de la diócesis de Puebla en 1681,” Historia Mexicana

30 (1981): 561–64. 25 AHJP, exp. 2463, fol. 69v. 26 Alcalá y Mendiola, Descripción, 43–44. 27 Lidia Gómez García, “Las fiscalías en la ciudad de los Ángeles, siglo XVII,” in

Los indios y las ciudades de Nueva España, ed. Felipe Castro (Mexico City, 2010), 178–79.

28 Alcalá y Mendiola, Descripción, 43–44. 29 Echeverría y Veytia, Historia, 215. 30 Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, Politics and Reform in Spain and Viceregal Mexico:

The Life and Thought of Juan de Palafox 1600–1659 (Oxford, 2004), 69–72. 31 Lidia Gómez García, “El impacto de la secularización de las parroquias en los

pueblos indios del obispado de Puebla, siglos XVII– XVIII,” in Palafox, Obra y Legado: Memorias del ciclo de conferencias sobre la vida y obra de Juan de Palafox y Mendoza (Puebla, Mexico, 2011), 224–25; translation mine; I am responsible for any errors or misinterpretations of the original.

32 Ibid., 225–26. 33 APSJ, Libro de matrimonios de morenos, 1629–1657, fols. 21r– 46v; APSJ, Libro

de matrimonios de mulatos, negros, y chinos, 1658–1692, fols. 12v– 17v. One particularly active fiscal, Marcos Juan, served as a witness to at least twenty marriages involving Afro- Poblanos in San José between 1641 and 1649. Numer-ous other humbly named indigenous officials consistently participated as wit-nesses in pardo and moreno formal unions throughout the 1650s and 1660s, thereby strengthening parish and barrio affiliations. Other than noting their use of the Spanish “double first name” and the lack of the honorific “don,” estab-lishing the social rank of San José’s fiscales (Juan Pascual, Hernando Antonio, Juan Martin, Juan Cristobal, and Juan Diego) is beyond the scope of this article. Only one fiscal, Pedro Vázquez, held a Spanish patronymic, but by the mid- seventeenth century its relevance was probably muted within the urban context.

34 While a full discussion of these sources is impossible within this space, pre-liminary research on the city’s marital registers offers tantalizing evidence of colonial Afro- indigenous interactions. For instance, the earliest extant mar-

Ethnohistory



riage book (1585–1615) for the Afro- Poblano population reveals that men of partial African descent married indigenous women 52 percent of the time. See Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva, “El matrimonio negro en Puebla, 1585–1615: ¿Afro- criollismo o mestizaje?” (paper presented at the Congreso Diáspora, Nación, y Diferencia, Veracruz, June 2008).

35 AGN, Real Audiencia, Indios, cont. 9, vol. 16, exps. 36, 119. 36 AGNP, Notaría 4, box 218, 1682 Testamentos, fols. 16r– 16v. 37 Pablo M. Sierra, “Urban Slavery in Colonial Puebla de los Ángeles,” PhD diss.,

University of California– Los Angeles, 2013, 90–107. More than ten thousand slaves, overwhelmingly West Central African, were sold in the Puebla slave mar-ket during the first four decades of the seventeenth century.

38 Bennett, Colonial Blackness, 185. A similar process of “rooting” took place among the mulato population of eighteenth- century Michoacán.

39 AGNP, Notaría 4, box 218, 1682 Testamentos, fols. 15r– 17v. 40 Although I have been unable to locate Monson’s specific carta de libertad, pre-

vious research on slave- owning networks in Puebla has revealed that Monsón’s former owner, Joseph de Higuera, was a member of the powerful Higuera Mata-moros family.

41 My thanks to one of the anonymous reviewers of this article for this important point.

42 “La compra del sitio de la dicha casa . . . ha sido con la ayuda, solicitud y trabajo de Juana María de la Cruz, india, mi mujer legítima.” AGNP, Notaría 4, box 218, 1682 Testamentos, fol. 16v.

43 Ibid., 16r. 44 APSJ, Libro de matrimonios de españoles, 1672–1681, fol. 13v. On 4 February

1674, María de San Diego married Joseph de la Cruz, both of them mestizos from the San José parish. The bride declared herself to be the “legitimate daugh-ter of Juan de la Cruz, the deceased mestizo, and Pascuala de la Cruz.”

45 AGNP, Notaría 4, box 205, 1671 Mayo, fol. 190r; AGNP, Notaría 4, box 208, 1675 Varios, fol. 114v.

46 In the notarial documents I have located, Juan de la Cruz never signs his name, a common practice for creditors (but not for borrowers). As a result, comparing signatures to identify his activities is not possible.

47 AGNP, Notaría 4, box 218, 1682 Testamentos, fol. 76r. To compare the opu-lence of the urban colonial context versus that of the rural, see the case of Capt. Lázaro del Canto, in Matthew Restall, The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan (Stanford, CA, 2009) 153–56.

48 AHJP, exp. 2463, fol. 170r. 49 AGNP, Notaría 4, box 218, 1682 Testamentos, fol. 76v. 50 “Y pasando a el otro [patio] que es separada su entrada se advierte quatro apo-

sentos [y] un temascale en que continuamente se baña gente.” AHJP, Exp. 2463, fols. 103r– 103v.

51 Natalia Silva Prada, “El uso de los baños temascales en la visión de dos médicos novohispanos,” Historia Mexicana 52 (2002): 13.

52 Zeb Tortorici, “Heran Todos Putos: Sodomitical Subcultures and Disordered Desire in Early Colonial Mexico,” Ethnohistory 54, no. 1 (2007): 54–55. Despite their negative appraisal of the temazcales, the sixteenth- century authors of the Codex Tudela still conceded that “if someone became sick, he would come to bathe in this hot place that held water inside” (quoted in Tortorici, 53).

53 Silva Prada, “El uso de los baños temascales,” 14.

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54 Frederick Bowser, “The Free Person of Color in Mexico City and Lima: Manu-mission and Opportunity, 1580–1650,” in Race and Slavery in the Western Hemi-sphere (Princeton, NJ, 1975), 331–35.

55 Eleven manumissions, 4 slave exchanges, 2 slave donations, and the purchase of 121 slaves were recorded in one of Puebla’s six notarial offices for the year 1675. By contrast, free Afro- Poblanos are only represented in seven apprenticeship contracts, four house rentals, one land sale, and one will for the same year. See AGNP, Notaría 4, boxes 208–9.

56 AHMP, Actas de Cabildo, vol. 18, fol. 152r, 1635/12/10. In this regard, the Span-ish cabildo’s decision to restrict Afro- Poblano claims to citizenship mirrored and reinforced the xenophobia rampant in New Spain during the early seven-teenth century. The University of Mexico, for instance, “prohibited the matricu-lation of Indians, mulattos and illegitimate mestizos” in the 1630s. See Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 152.

57 Sierra Silva, “Urban Slavery,” 107. No less than 7,800 African slaves were sold on the Puebla slave market between 1595 and 1639.

58 Tamar Herzog, Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America (New Haven, CT, 2003), 47–48.

59 For multiple examples of this dynamic, see AGNP, Notaría 4, boxes 151–52. 60 AGNP, Notaría 4, box 205, 1671/05/29, fol. 190r. 61 See AGNP, Notaría 4, box 223, 1685 Enero, fol. 17r.; box 208, 1675 Varios, fol.

117r; box 209, 1675 Testamentos, fol. 85r; box 205, 1670 Diciembre, fol. 1551r. 62 References to chileros are rare in the city’s documentation. The only other refer-

ence in my data set is found in AGNP, Notaría 3, box 111, 1660 Testamentos, fol. 113v.

63 Fernández de Echeverría y Veytia, Historia, 130. 64 Ibid. 65 AGNP, Notaría 4, box 196, 1665/11/21, fol. 1278r. 66 AGNP, Notaría 4, box 188, 1660/05/14, fols. 518r– 519r. 67 Consider the case of Ana, Joseph, and Lucas Vergara, free pardos and siblings

who had gone into debt in order to buy their mother’s freedom. See AGNP, Notaría 4, box 150, 1635 Marzo, fols. 389r– 390r.

68 AGNP, Notaría 4, box 174, 1650 Testamentos, fols. 83r– 84v; box 165, 1640 Tes-tamentos, fol. 2r; AHJP, exp. 1622.

69 AHJP, exp. 2463, 1688/04/15, fol. 75v. During their lengthy marriage, the pardo captain and his wife did not procreate any children of their own.

70 In 1631, Marta Rodriguez, a free black woman, donated four religious portraits to the “confraternity of the mulatos, [which was] founded in the hospital of Our Lady.” AHJP, exp. 1622, fol. 4r.

71 For instance, an ancient confraternity, founded in 1583 within the Jesuit College of the Holy Spirit, catered to Puebla’s indigenous and African- descent popu-lation. See Rosario Torres Domínguez, “Los colegios regulares y seculares de Puebla y la formación de las élites letradas en el siglo XVIII,” PhD diss., Univer-sidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2013, 66.

72 For a more thorough examination of Afro- Poblano brotherhoods and the San-tander family’s participation in them, see Sierra Silva, “Culto, color, y conviven-cia: Las cofradías de pardos y morenos en Puebla de los Ángeles, siglo XVII,” in Los afrodescendientes en el México virreinal (San Luis: El Colegio de San Luis, forthcoming 2015).

73 Alcalá y Mendiola, Descripción, 140–41. Positive valuations of Afro- Poblanos

Ethnohistory



are rare within Puebla’s Spanish chronicles. For the most part, the population of African descent is simply never mentioned in such texts. By the late eighteenth century, the confraternity had fallen on hard times, but the memory of the illus-trious pardos of the seventeenth century remained strong. Writing at the end of the colonial period, Fernández de Echeverría y Veytia (Historia, 521) noted that Expiración “was a very ancient” brotherhood “with records going back to the primitive times in which the hospital was still here and [the brothers] displayed their holy image in a splendorous Holy Friday procession.”

74 Nicole von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers: Confraternities and Social Mobility for Afro- Mexicans (Gainesville, FL, 2006), 53.

75 AGNP, Notaría 4, box 219, October 1682, fols. 925r– 926. 76 Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial

Mexico, 1660–1720 (Madison, WI, 1994) 89–93. 77 Bennett, Colonial Blackness, 45, 152. 78 Monsón spared no expense to improve Expiración’s chapel. In April 1682, he

agreed to forgive a three thousand– peso debt that the brotherhood had incurred if the brothers committed to complete another side altar for “an image of Our Lady of the Afflicted.” By September of that same year, husband and wife pre-sented a joint will in which Monsón asked to be buried in the brotherhood’s chapel. In addition, they decided to fund a chaplaincy with three thousand pesos to be used to celebrate one hundred annual masses for the salvation of their souls. Finally, Monsón and de la Cruz agreed that upon either spouse’s death the other would request a one thousand– peso mortgage to be placed on their house in order to fund a religious celebration of an annual mass in their memory. See AGNP, Notaría 4, box 218, 1682 Testamentos, fols. 16r– 16v.

79 David Marley, Sack of Veracruz: The Great Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor, ON, 1993), 62.

80 Ibid., 59. 81 Ibid., 57. 82 Townsend, Here in This Year, 30–31. 83 My sincerest thanks to Edmundo Hernández and Tomás Amaya for their invalu-

able assistance with these Nahuatl documents. 84 Townsend, Here in This Year, 124–27. 85 Ibid., 43–44. 86 Gerhard, “Un censo de la diócesis de Puebla,” 532–36. 87 Gómez García, Salazar Exaire, and Stefanón López, Anales del Barrio de San

Juan, 105. 88 Vinson, Bearing Arms, 55–57. 89 Ibid., 67–68. 90 Ibid., 143–46. 91 Ibid., 173–75. 92 Ibid., 29–30, 52–60, 246n85. Ben Vinson notes that Lorencillo’s 1683 raid

catalyzed the military organization and enrollment of free morenos and par-dos across the viceroyalty but particularly within the Puebla diocese. Among the notable pardo men who participated in Puebla’s eighteenth- century free- colored militias were Nicolas de Vertel and various members of the Santander family.

Ethnohistory


From Chains to Chiles: An Elite Afro-Indigenous Couple in Colonial Mexico, 1641-1688

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