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chapter 14 Religious Women of Color in Seventeenth-Century Lima: Estefania de San Ioseph and Ursula de Jesu Christo Alice L. Wood Seventeenth-century Franciscan narratives from Spanish Peru contain two valuable portraits of religious women of color. The first, the “Vida de Estefania de San Ioseph” written by the Franciscan chronicler Diego de Cordova Salinas, was published in his Coronica de la Religiosissima Provincia de los Doze Apostoles del Perú in 1651. The second, the story of Ursula de Christo, is found in an unpublished manuscript entitled “Espejo de Religiosas” (1698), which is preserved in the Convent of San Francisco in Lima.1 The stories of Estefania de San Ioseph and Ursula de Christo demonstrate that even under restrictive conditions women of color could find creative—indeed, inspirational—expressions of religious faith. Both women stand out in these narratives as remarkable and admirable individuals. The narratives also show that at a time when the lives of few women—let alone women of color—were recorded, the women were considered so exemplary and such a credit to the Franciscan order that their stories were preserved with care and detail. Moreover , the lives of the religious women Ursula and Estefania illustrate that the history of the Catholic church in the Americas is incomplete without consideration of the contributions of women of color. The city of Lima and its environs was undoubtedly the largest population center in colonial Peru. Called the “City of Kings,” Lima was the seat of both vice-regal and ecclesiastical authority for most of South America.2 Frederick Bowser has estimated that by the mid-seventeenth century,approximately thirty thousand persons of color lived in Peru, two-thirds of them (twenty thousand) most likely concentrated in the metropolitan area around Lima,the total popu- Religious Women of Color in Seventeenth-Century Lima 287 lation of which was fewer than thirty-five thousand.3 Bowser also estimates that probably 10 percent of the population of color in Peru was free (or about two thousand in Lima) by the mid-seventeenth century. Population estimates for the period are uncertain, however, because most censuses did not distinguish between free blacks (negros) and slaves. Tax laws encouraged free persons of color to avoid enumeration in order to escape paying tribute, and most persons who had lighter skin found it to their advantage to be categorized as Spanish if possible.4 Estefania and Ursula were natives of Peru, and both were born into slavery. It appears also that both were of mixedAfrican and European ancestry.Although an elaborate caste and color nomenclature existed in the Spanish colonial world, neither text gives much information about the women’s skin color. Estefania’s mother was a slave described as a morena from Portugal. “Morena” was a term used in Spain to identify someone of “Moorish” or North African ancestry or of a dark complexion. In the Americas, the term generally meant “dark,” but often it was applied to a woman of mixed African and European parentage, as did the words parda and mulata.5 There are no indications in the text about Estefania’s complexion; she is only referred to by name or as “this woman” (esta mujer). Ursula, however, who was referred to as “morena, negra criolla,” was probably fairly dark-skinned. Her father is named in the text but not described at all. Her mother, also named, is described as “a black Creole slave” ([una] negra Criolla esclava).Most Spaniards in colonial Peru would have used the term negro or “black” to refer to anyone of African descent, slave or free. In the text of the “Espejo,” Ursula was referred to as negra, and she is quoted as referring to herself as una negra. When translating the original texts, I will use the term black for “negro” or “negra” even though in actual usage the term referred in general to people of color, not just to those with very dark skin. “Creole” (criollo/criolla) was a term used in the colonial period as an adjective to indicate that a person—not an Indian—had been born in the New World. Scholars reserve the term, however, to refer specifically to the American-born colonists of Spanish descent and custom,thus distinguishing them not only from European Spaniards but also from other colonial populations of Africans, Indians, and those of “mestizo,” or mixed parentage. I shall use the term Creole in this latter sense. Although the majority of African slaves in Peru worked in...

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