An “Imponderable Servitude”: Slave versus Master Litigation for Cruelty (Maltratamiento or Sevicia) in Late Eighteenth-century Lima, Peru

Imperial Spanish legal codes empowered slaves to accuse their masters of abuse or cruelty (sevicia or maltrato) in court and have those complaints investigated and adjudicated by colonial magistrates. Those masters found guilty of abusing a slave could, by law, be compelled to sell the offended slave to an owner who might treat them better. The consideration of such sevicia cases from late-colonial Lima, Peru, allows for the in-depth consideration of the legal culture of slavery in late-colonial Spanish America, long an area of interest for scholars of comparative slavery, and of master-slave relations more generally. The contests that animate these case files over the treatment of slaves, particularly in terms of acceptable alimentation and/or corporal punishment, and over the potential sale of slaves, reveals much about the nature of late-colonial slavery and ongoing social discourses on the acceptable treatment of the enslaved. The in-depth examination of this body of these sources reveals a compelling paradox that saw slaves expanding the types of complaints that magistrates might hear under the rubric of sevicia; a colonial judiciary ready to hear a broader array of cases brought by slaves but unwilling to expand slave legal agency at the expense of master dominion; and, slaveholders who unanimously decried the ability of slaves to bring such suits against them but generally willing, ultimately, to acquiesce to slave demands to seek new masters.