Negro Slaves in Early Colonial México

I the widow Catalina Vélez Rascón do hereby promise to pay to you, Diego de Villanueva, alderman of this City of los Angeles, 1,100 pesos of pure gold . . . for six slaves (piezas de esclavos), to wit: the Negro Lorenzo, ladino, born on the Island of Tercera (in the Azores), his wife Antonia, Negress, born in Biáfara, with a young mulatto daughter of hers named María, plus a Negro called Manuel, born in Zapa, and a Negress Catalina, born in Portugal, with a young Negro daughter of hers named Paula, making six slaves in all, all of whom were disposed of in public auction as part of the estate of Francisco Muñoz, deceased, in two lots, and were sold to my son-in-law Don Juan de Zúñga, bidding on my behalf. . . . Given in this city of los Angeles on the 16th day of July in the year of the birth of Our Savior Jesus Christ 1554.¹

THE notarial archive of the Mexican city of Puebla de los Angeles, virtually complete from 1540 on, is a treasure-house of information about social and economic life in the early colony. Many of its earliest documents are, however, in deplorable physical condition, unindexed and chronologically unorganized, which makes them extremely difficult and time-consuming to consult. In order to remedy this condition and make the archive more accessible to scholars both in Mexico and elsewhere, I have indexed and extracted from microfilm the substance of over 1,600 documents executed between 1540 and 1555. These will probably appear in a two-volume collection published by the Editorial Jus in Mexico City. The documents make fascinating reading. There are wills, dowries, contracts, law-suits, partnerships, promissory notes, rentals, powers of attorney, as well as bills of sale itemizing every imaginable kind of property from real estate to livestock to produce to general merchandise.²

Though slavery, both Indian and Negro, is only one of many topics upon which the collection can shed new light, I propose in this short article to explore what the local documents of the period can tell us about Negro slavery in Puebla between 1540 and 1556.

Concerning the daily treatment of Negro slaves, the documents are

A sample notarized document from the Puebla archive, dated April 29, 1553, the substance of which is translated in the footnote on the following page. As can be readily seen from the plate, many of the documents have been attacked by bookworms and mildew.

of course silent, but the records frequently mention their names, state of health, approximate age, sex, knowledge of Spanish, physical defects (if any), temperament, occupational skills (if any) and the prices paid for them. There are also some interesting references to their tribal origins in Africa.

The Negro slave trade in mid-sixteenth century Puebla does not appear to have been very heavy, to judge by the small number of individuals, (less than 240) documented over a 16-year period. This is due in part to the fact that Indian slave labor was plentiful right up until 1542 when the controversial royal decrees (the Nuevas Leyes) prohibited the enslavement of Indians except as punishment for rebellion against Spanish rule. Ironically the suppression of the great uprising in Jalisco in 1541–2 produced a flood of such ‘legitimate slaves’ (esclavos de buena guerra) and several Indians from Jalisco were sold in Puebla in the years immediately following.

Moreover in Mexico as elsewhere the use of Negro labor was less marked in the temperate highlands than in tropical coastal regions where sugar and cotton plantations required a cheap and abundant labor supply. However, our tabulation shows a noticeable rise in sales in the 1550’s, which suggests that the trade in Negro slaves was starting to increase even in Puebla at about this time.

From our detailed records of the period it is clear that Puebla’s economy depended in its early years upon the following agricultural staples: wool, hides, wheat, corn and cochineal (a dye purchased from the...