Damned Notions of Liberty

Slavery, Culture, and Power in Colonial Mexico, 1640-1769

Bibliographic Data

ID2777971
AuthorsMichele Reid-Vazquez (0000-0002-9583-5486, Georgia State University, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume92
Issue4
Pages755-757
Publication date2012-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00182168-1727854
OpenAlexW2323115480
LanguageEN
Citations received9

In this well-researched study, Frank T. Proctor III explores the culture of slavery in central New Spain (especially Mexico City, Morelos, and Querétaro) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Analyzing records from Inquisition, ecclesiastical, and civil courts, he examines the intersecting themes of labor, community, identity, and agency. His work emphasizes how the use of “public” and “private” transcripts, a concept derived from James Scott, characterized slaves’ responses to performances of power within the slave system. For instance, a bondsman and bondswoman might be silenced under the threat of continued physical violence to themselves or a family member; however, beyond the owner’s gaze, they would verbally condemn these actions. According to Proctor, these dual responses, especially those enacted in private, reveal “the lack of ideological domination by the elite” (p. 6). Moreover, slaves’ reactions shed light on the spaces within which they sought to “expand their control over labor, family, cultural beliefs, and even access to manumission,” rather than attempt to dismantle slavery’s conceptual under pinnings (p. 8; original emphasis). In this way, Proctor seeks to redirect scholarly attention away from prevailing Atlantic world revolutionary narratives of liberty and focus on a time period when slaves’ perceptions of freedom were far more circumscribed.The opening chapters detail the ways labor, community, and culture shaped identity. Chapter 1 addresses how the nature of slave labor in New Spain dictated the lives of bondsmen and bondswomen as sugar workers in and around Morelos, and textile workers in the areas of Mexico City and Querétaro. Refuting several existing scholarly consensuses, Proctor argues that instead of a decline in slavery after the end of the slave trade in 1640, “the institution remained fairly constant well into the eighteenth century,” particularly in the sugar industry (p. 15). He also contends that African slaves, rather than Indians, comprised a majority of the labor force in the colony’s woolen textile industry. In chapter 2, Proctor concentrates on urban slave communities by comparing patterns of slave marriages before and after 1650. Endogamy prevailed among Africans’ marriage partners until the end of the slave trade in 1640, and creole slaves tended to chose nonslave and nonblack spouses. After 1650, marriage between creole slaves became the norm, particularly among slave women, whereas bondsmen tended to marry non-slave women, which expanded the free population of color. Proctor explains that these unions produced a racial landscape where free blacks numerically exceeded the slave sector, and mulattoes formed the majority of Afro-Mexicans, both slave and free. This context, however, seems to counter Proctor’s claim that slave identity was not rooted in a quest for freedom. Rather, the expanding free black population suggests that, at the very least, bondsmen pursued liberty for their children by marrying nonslave women. Furthermore, although beyond the scope of this study, the existence of a large free community of color begs the question of what role maintaining personal liberty played in the identity of free Afro-Mexicans.Proctor turns his attention to the intersections of magic, medicine, popular culture, and racial identity in chapter 3. Employing Laura Lewis’s framework of “sanctioned” versus “unsanctioned” society, ranging from official Spanish institutions to indigenous alternative sites of knowledge, Proctor contends that mestizos, blacks, and mulattoes all engaged these realms, particularly as consumers of varying forms of witchcraft. The opening sections carefully explain the economic, demographic, and cultural contexts of slave community formation. His main point is that racial identity, for slaves and other colonial subjects, must be viewed through a multifocal lens that includes cultural practices, honor, and occupation.The next two chapters shed light on the issues of violence and resistance. In chapter 4, Proctor investigates how varying forms of punishment and mistreatment provoked slave blasphemy, which included “dangerous utterances and exclamations” against Christianity (p. 97). Although slaves most certainly protested and accommodated their socio-legal condition “to make their lives as livable as possible” (p. 97), the author asserts that their use of blasphemy in the face of castigation should not be seen as an act of resistance to the social structure because slaves did not use this strategy universally. Proctor contends that these transgressions should, instead, be viewed as a way to understand the hegemonic practices and negotiations of everyday master-slave relations. He should also keep in mind that slaves engaged in multiple, if not universal, tactics to contest, adapt to, and survive within a colonial system that permeated social and cultural relations. Chapter 5 explores “the war within slavery” (p. 150) by highlighting three areas of resistance — rebellion, running away, and nonviolent departure. Proctor drives home the point that slavery involved negotiated, albeit unequal, power relations between slaves and masters.Proctor’s final chapter calls for a reconsideration of the term freedom for the Spanish colonial period. He traces slaves’ access to freedom via colonial law, manumission, and liberty suits brought by slaves. Cases that came before the courts, such as claims of manumission denial, assertions of free birth, and accusations of mistreatment by slave owners demonstrated “the near limitless nature of master power regarding manumission and the severely restricted access slaves had to liberation” (p. 174). The author cautions scholars to resist equating slaves’ pursuit of manumission through the court system with desires for personal freedom precisely because a variety of factors, particularly gender, age, and master-slave relationships, contributed to slaveholders’ decisions regarding the liberation of slaves.Overall, Proctor has produced a fine study of the impact of the complex conditions, processes, ideologies, and practices on the lives of slaves in central New Spain. It is a welcome addition to the scholarship on slavery, race relations, and culture in colonial Mexico

Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy) · Art · Colonialism · Elite · Identity (music) · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Social science · Sociology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Cuban History and Society · Gender Studies · Historical Studies in Latin America · Law

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