Esclavos de la ciudad letrada: Esclavitud, escritura y colonialismo en Lima (1650–1700) (review)

Esclavos de la ciudad letrada explores three key research questions: the extent to which Lima’s Afro-Peruvian population was able to interact with the written word; the role that the written word (and legal documents in particular) played in the daily life of this population during the colonial period; and the manner in which access to the written word may have defined relations (especially gender relations) within this sector of the population.

In order to realize these goals, Jouve Martín draws on the rapid rise in historical studies that have focused on slaves and free blacks in Peru and in Latin America more widely, adopting an approach that is heavily inflected by subaltern studies, in particular the work of influential authors such as Spivak and Beverley. He combines such approaches with those of New Literacy Studies to offer what he describes not as a ‘visión de los vencidos’, but rather an attempt to ‘entender ese terreno intermedio en el que se produjo el contacto entre individuos que poseyeron posiciones sociales distintas y capacidades de representación diversas’ (13). The author thus hopes to provide a model for the study of interactions between black populations elsewhere in Latin America and the written word, an area that has received little attention when compared to similar interactions involving the indigenous population.

The work consists of six chapters, in addition to an introduction, a conclusion, and a meticulously prepared bibliography that gives a very full relation of texts published in Europe, the United States and Latin America in the main methodological areas outlined above. Chapter 1 (‘Lima negra’) offers a rich and engaging account of the social conditions of blacks in Lima during the seventeenth century, usefully supplemented by maps and charts to illustrate the highly diverse nature of Afro-Peruvian society of the time. Chapter 2 (‘Esclavos de la ciudad letrada’) considers the presence and functions of written texts in colonial Lima, and the means through which the Afro-Peruvian population came into contact with them. In Chapter 3 (‘Negros, escribanos y escribas’), the author focuses on the relationship between the Afro-Peruvian population and Lima’s scribes, while Chapter 4 (‘Esclavitud, resistencia y cultura legal’) focuses on recourse to legal texts as a means of assertion and contestation, particularly in relation to white colonial and ecclesiastical elites. Chapter 5 (‘Escritura y vida comunal’) considers the role of the written word as a key means by which different sectors of the Afro-Peruvian population established internal differences; and the final chapter (‘Muerte y escritura’) examines wills, which tended to be used by women far more than men, revealing important gender differences with regard to Afro-Peruvian society of the time, and in particular, access to the written word.

While I recognize the achievements of each of these chapters in bringing to public attention material that is genuinely original, the work raises several issues. The first of these is a methodological problem: Lima’s position as viceregal capital in the second half of the seventeenth century means that it can hardly function as the ‘normalidad’ (16) that Jouve Martín seeks, for access to written texts and demographics alike (the Afro-Peruvian population comprised up to 50 per cent of the city’s inhabitants during the seventeenth century) show marked singularity in temporal and geographical contexts. The author recognizes this on several occasions, noting the very considerable differences between life as a free black in Lima and as a slave on a hacienda (plantation), and the portrayal of the diversity of Afro-Peruvians’ experiences, both in relation to the written word and more generally, is one of the work’s strengths.

The archival work that underlies this study is of unquestionable value; what is less clear is the extent of the corpus on which the author draws to come to a series of fairly broad conclusions: the explicit acknowledgement...