O toole - war

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"In a War against the Spanish": Andean Protection and African Resistance on the Northern Peruvian Coast Author(s): Rachel Sarah O'Toole Reviewed work(s): Source: The Americas, Vol. 63, No. 1, The African Diaspora in the Colonial Andes (Jul., 2006), pp. 19-52 Published by: Academy of American Franciscan History Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4491177 . Accessed: 22/04/2012 13:27 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Academy of American Franciscan History is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Americas. http://www.jstor.org

Transcript of O toole - war

Page 1: O toole - war

"In a War against the Spanish": Andean Protection and African Resistance on the NorthernPeruvian CoastAuthor(s): Rachel Sarah O'TooleReviewed work(s):Source: The Americas, Vol. 63, No. 1, The African Diaspora in the Colonial Andes (Jul., 2006),pp. 19-52Published by: Academy of American Franciscan HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4491177 .Accessed: 22/04/2012 13:27

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Academy of American Franciscan History is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend accessto The Americas.

http://www.jstor.org

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The Americas 63:1 July 2006, 19-52

Copyright by the Academy of American Franciscan History

"IN A WAR AGAINST THE SPANISH": ANDEAN PROTECTION AND AFRICAN RESIS-

TANCE ON THE NORTHERN PERUVIAN COAST*

n 1641, the rural guard of colonial Trujillo on the northern Peruvian coast, accompanied by "many Indians," attacked a cimarr6n (fugitive slave) encampment led by two congos, Gabriel and Domingo.' Indige-

nous men wished to end the fugitives' raids on their fields and families. Towards this end, they guided the Spanish lieutenant magistrate and his company to the cimarr6n settlement hidden in the hills above the Santa Catalina valley.2 Indigenous leaders and commoners of the Mansiche

reducci6n-or colonial indigenous village-who maintained lands in the Santa Catalina valley, testified that "negros cimarrones" (fugitive "blacks") had been assaulting local inhabitants and stealing from valley since 1633.3 Yet, Mansiche reducci6n had not registered a previous complaint indicating that fugitive slaves and indigenous people in Santa Catalina had not to this point been antagonistic. Rather, the cimarrones' leaders, Gabriel and Domingo, had a history of trading with the valley's indigenous farmers who

* This article has benefited from the careful critique of four anonymous reviewers for The Americas. Additionally, I thank Kathryn Burns, Sarah Chambers, Anne Marie Choup, Leo Garofalo, Ann Kakaliouras, Danielle McClellan, and Ben Vinson III for their suggestions and criticism of various ver- sions. Research for this article was funded by a Villanova University Faculty Summer Research Fellow-

ship and Research Support Grant (2004), a Short-Term Research Fellowship from the International Sem- inar on the History of the Atlantic World at Harvard University (2003), an Albert J. Beveridge Grant for Research in the History of the Western Hemisphere from the American Historical Association (2003), a

Fulbright Fellowship to Peru (1999), and Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the Vatican Film Library, Saint Louis University (1996).

"Real Provisi6n compulsoria y citatoria para traer los autos seguidos contra unos cimarrones y sultedores de caminos," Archivo Departamental de La Libertad (ADL). Corregimiento (Co.). Criminales (Cr.). Legajo (Leg.) 245. Expediente (Exp.) 2500 (1639), f. 1; "Querella...sobre que le d6 y pague 400 pesos que le cost6 una esclava Felipa de Tierra Firme que lo ahorc6 sin causa ninguna," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 246. Exp. 2533 (1642), f. 1; "Expediente...contra unos negros de Francisco Benites llamados Gabriel y Domingo; sobre salteamientos y hurtos de ganados mayores y menores, de maiz y otras legum- bres," ADL. Cabildo (Ca.). Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), f. 2.

2 ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 245. Exp. 2500 (1639), f. 2-2v; ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), f. 23.

3 "Expediente.. .contra Juan Laizaro negro y Juan Esteban mulato sobre haber salteado y robado a unos indios pasajeros," ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1353 (1642), f. 23.

19

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were members of the Mansiche reducci6n.4 So why, after years of tolerat-

ing fugitive slave activity in the Santa Catalina valley, did the indigenous villagers and leaders of Mansiche join the Spanish assault? How did the resistance of congos cimarrones against the impositions of slavery clash with the struggles of indigenous villagers and laborers against the demands of Spanish landholders?

The participation of indigenous villagers in the Spanish entrada (military venture) against cimarrones and indigenous accusations of fugitive attacks

provide an entry into two interdependent points regarding indigenous- "African" relations in rural environs, a critical yet understudied issue in colonial Spanish American history.5 First, the northern coastal case illumi- nates how African slaves complemented, but did not replace, indigenous laborers in commercial Andean rural economies. Historians have noted the decline of northern indigenous communities and the rise of African-descent

populations, yet this article explore the interactions of these co-existent

groups in the arid valleys of Peru's northern coast.6 Second, when indige- nous communities and enslaved or fugitive Africans clashed over scarce resources, they did so according to their distinct locations in colonial law and their places in the local economy. As members of colonial reducciones, indigenous communities sought to defend their Crown-appointed rights against the expanding Spanish estates. As other scholars have noted, the

Republic of the Indians offered a legal location for "Indians" to defend land and water resources and combat excessive colonial impositions.' As the Crown mandated, indigenous people who paid tribute, performed required labor, and converted to Catholicism were vassals to the King and thus

4 ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1353 (1642), f. 23.

5 Significantly, research is expanding with the recent publication of Beyond Black and Red: African- Native Relations in Colonial Latin America, Matthew Restall, ed., (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005). I employ "African" to name people born in Atlantic Africa, a region that included extensive linguistic and cultural contexts, kingdoms, states, and networked communities. Nonetheless, the colonial term negro articulated an enslaved or subordinate position while slave trade casta categories such as angola and congo labeled European perceptions that enslaved and free people would transform into Diaspora identities. "African," therefore, is an unsatisfactory gloss, but one that serves to underline the possibility of an auto-identity rather than a colonial one as well as the distinction between criollos born in the Americas and those from the greater Atlantic world.

6 Noble David Cook, Demographic Collapse: Indian Peru, 1520-1620 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press, 1981), p. 120; Susan Ramirez, Provincial Patriarchs: Land Tenure and the Economics of Power in Colonial Peru (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), pp. 82-83; Ileana Vegas de Ciceres, Economia Rural y Estructura Social en las Haciendas de Lima durante el Siglo XVIII (Lima: PUCP, 1996), p. 35.

7 Karen Spalding, Huarochiri: An Andean Society Under Inca and Spanish Rule (Stanford: Stanford

University Press, 1984), p. 158; Ann Wightman, Indigenous Migration and Social Change: The Foras- teros of Cuzco, 1570-1720 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), p. 12.

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deserved royal protection.8 In addition to their use of colonial courts and the Catholic Church, this article suggests that northern coastal indigenous com- munities survived the hacienda usurpations of resources by trading with enslaved Africans and their descendants. Indigenous farmers and communi- ties also employed enslaved or fugitive Africans and criollos (born in the Americas) as itinerant laborers as another strategy for enduring Spanish con- fiscations of land and water. Likewise, enslaved Africans and free people of color supplemented their hacienda food rations by trading with indigenous neighbors in an ongoing development of mutually beneficial relationships. Thus, this article suggests that regardless of the demographic decline of indigenous populations or Spanish royal mandates to separate "Indians" from "negros," rural people developed local economic and labor practices that defied legal expectations and colonial impositions.9

Yet, when the northern coast experienced a series of environmental dis- asters, Spanish estate owners, indigenous communities, and enslaved Africans turned to distinct survival strategies. After an earthquake in 1619, the northern coastal valleys experienced severe flooding in 1624. The earth- quake had destroyed the earthen walls of the irrigation canals, a critical infrastructure of the desert agriculture on the coastal plain.10 Without proper irrigation, the fields could flood with contaminated waters and could not be cultivated. Compounding the resulting labor deficiency in the coastal reduc- ciones, indigenous men sought alternative employment on neighboring estates and distant cities. Simultaneously, some Spanish estate owners, suf- fering from a lack of income, choose to not feed their slaves. Subsequently, hacendados allowed increased mobility in order for slaves to forage and to trade for food. By the late 1630s and 1640s, Trujillo's municipal council and indigenous communities along the northern coast reported an agricultural crisis as foodstuffs in the city were in short supply." Enslaved laborers, who

8 Brooke Larson, Cochabamba 1550-1900: Colonialism and Agrarian Transformation in Bolivia (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), pp. 67-68.

9 By placing Indians in quotation marks, I underline the colonial construction of this term that

attempted to reduce a wide range of indigenous communities into a singular category. 10 Alberto Larco Herrera, Anales de Cabildo. Ciudad de Trujillo. Extractos Tomados de los Libros

de Actas del Archivo Municipal (Lima: SanMarti y Ca., 1907-1920), cites ff. 366-366v, 33, 102v-103; 162-164v; 8-15v, 22-23; 184-185; "Obedecimiento pero no su cumplimiento de los corregidores de Safia

y partido de Chiclayo...de la Real Provision despachado por el virrey sobre la repartici6n de los indios

yungas y serranos para la reedificaci6n de Trujillo-la misma que habia quedado averiada por los efec- tos del terremoto que asol6 y destruj6 la ciudad," ADL. Co. Asuntos de Gobierno. Leg. 267. Exp. 3106 (1622), f. 8v; "Mandamiento...para que se tome las cuentas a los receptores de la alcabalas encabezon- adas de esta ciudad y villas de Santa y Caxamarca y valle de Guadalupe," ADL. Co. Juez de Residencia.

Leg. 275. Exp. 3441 (1637). " In 1632 the vecinos of Trujillo complain of the poverty, land sterility, and ruined city resulting

from the 1619 earthquake. See Larco Herrera, Anales, cites ff. 162-164v. Again in 1639, the Trujillo veci-

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had been able to trade labor for food with indigenous communities, were no longer able to sustain themselves on the margins of the hacienda economy. Indigenous communities, squeezed by the continuing demands for tribute and labor as well as the aggressive raiding of desperate fugitive slaves, allied with colonial officials to strike out against Gabriel, Domingo, and their congo "war against the Spanish."12

With close attention to how indigenous and African laborers experienced these dramatic economic shifts, this article examines the northern Peruvian coast to challenge a colonial historiography that often separates the experi- ences of "Indians" from slaves. Historians of coastal Andeans argue that epi- demics, El Nifio flooding, tribute demands, and rapid expansion of Spanish estates pushed most indigenous communities to sell their irrigated valley lands and become wage laborers (peons or yanaconas) or retreat to remote, less desirable, environs.13 Yet, indigenous people simply did not disappear from the northern coast or abandon their colonial settlements, but employed their legal associations with colonial reducciones to defend themselves in the mid-colonial period. Simultaneously, coastal Andeans searched for alter- native labor opportunities and market venues as indigenous people did throughout the Spanish Americas.14 On the northern coast, indigenous strategies also included relationships with enslaved and free Africans and their descendants whose numbers increased along with the Spanish landed estates. Indigenous people continued to rely on the protections afforded to "Indians" under colonial Spanish law. For example, as Spanish landholders expanded their holdings during the seventeenth century, indigenous leaders demanded re-counts of their tribute-paying members, insisted that hacenda-

nos complained of the resulting poverty from the earthquake. See Larco Herrera, Anales, cites ff. 8-15v. In 1643 the Trujillo cabildo claimed that there was no public jail in the city since the 1619 earthquake. See Larco Herrera, Anales, cites f. 100. Anne Marie Hocquenghem, et al "Eventos El Nifio y lluvias anor- males en la costa del Periu: siglos XVI-XIX," Bulletin de l'Institut Frangais d'Etudes Andines 21:1 (1992), p. 148.

12 "Visita por los del Consejo Real de las Indias la residencia ...," Archivo General de las Indias (AGI). Escribania. Leg. 1189 (1648). In 1642 the slaves on a Chicama hacienda revolted. See "Auto...

para que vaya al Chicama valle ha hacer las diligencia necesarias sobre la muerte de Salvador, mulato esclavo...hecho por Francisco de Cervantes, a causa de haberle dado muchos azotes y otros mal- tratamientos," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 246. Exp. 2530 (1642), f. 24; Larco Herrera, Anales, cites f. 140v.

13 Manuel Burga, De la Encomienda a la Hacienda Capitalista. El Valle de Jequetepeque del Siglo XVI al XX (Lima: IEP, 1976), pp. 52, 64, 67, 80, 93, 119; Nicolas Cushner, Lords of the Land: Sugar, Wine, and Jesuit Estates of Coastal Peru, 1600-1767 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980), pp. 15, 23, 82; Keith Davies, Landowners in Colonial Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984), pp. 25, 35, 50, 53, 62; Susan Ramirez, The World Turned Upside Down: Cross-Cultural Contact and Conflict in Sixteenth-Century Peru (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 10, 37, 43.

14 Larson, Cochabamba, Chapter Two; Wightman, Indigenous, Chapter Five; Ann Zulawski, They Eat from Their Labor: Work and Social Change in Colonial Bolivia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995), pp. 84, 146-147.

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dos provide labor to clean the shared irrigation canals, and defended the bor- ders of their communal holdings.15 Likewise, indigenous Andeans- detached from the colonial reducci6n joined other laborers on Spanish land- holdings as contracted yanaconas, which entitled them to land, water, and sometimes positions of authority.16 Distanced from tribute and mita obliga- tions of their original reducciones, hired indigenous laborers guarded new privileges of cash wages and land access on the haciendas that separated them from mitayos (indigenous men serving mita) as well as enslaved African laborers.17 On the northern coast, however, a significant population of enslaved and free Africans offered additional market opportunities to indigenous communities while simultaneously providing a judicial reason for indigenous people to demand legal protections against potentially threat- ening "negros."

In contrast, the rural environs offered enslaved Africans and their descen- dants limited economic opportunities and few institutional protections as mandated by colonial law. For example, in late sixteenth and early seven- teenth-century Mexico City, Herman Bennett has argued that Africans claimed corporate inclusion into colonial society as Catholics.18 Yet, in greater Trujillo, clerics avoided hacienda parishes composed of slaves because of the dispersed nature of the estates as well as the difficulty of col- lecting their fee from the hacendados.19 Furthermore, indigenous reduc-

" These tactics are familiar to Andean historians: Steve Stern, Peru 's Indian Peoples and the Chal-

lenge of Spanish Conquest: Huamanga to 1640 (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), p. 90; Thierry Saignes, "Indian Migration and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Charcas," in Ethnic-

ity, Markets, and Migration in the Andes: At the Crossroads of History and Anthropology. Brooke Larson, Olivia Harris, Enrique Tandeter, editors (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), p. 169. As Ale-

jandro Diez Hurtado has indicated, coastal indigenous leaders employed secular courts and religious con- fraternities to protect and to define their transformed colonial communities. Alejandro Diez Hurtado, Fiestas y Cofradias: Asociaciones Religiosas eIntegracidn en la Historia de la Comunidad de Sechura

Siglos XVII al XX (Piura: CIPCA, 1994), pp. 83, 182. 16 For yanacona strategies on the coast, see Cushner, Lords, p. 82; Davies, Landowners, p. 35; Vegas

de Ciceres, Economfa, p. 133. "7 For similar strategies of indigenous laborers see Zulawski, They Eat, pp. 176-177, 195; Larson,

Cochabamba, pp. 84. 86; Wightman, Indigenous, pp. 82-85.

18 Herman L. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole Con- sciousness, 1570-1640 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003). For fugitive men and women

seeking out their spouses or lovers, see "Expediente seguido por don Bartolom6 de Billavicencio, Alcalde de la Santa Hermandad de Trujillo, contra Juan, negro, esclavo de Francisco Guerra Yafiez; sobre estar oculto y escondido en casa de Juan Rubio," ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1325 (1618); "Expediente seguido por don Pedro de Silva Campo Frio, Capitain de Infanteria y Alcalde de la Santa Hermandad de

Trujillo, contra Ventura, negro esclavo del doctor don Diego Garcia de Paredes; sobre huida del poder de su amo," ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1339 (1624).

'9 Archivo Arzobispal de Lima (AAL). Apelaciones de Trujillo. Leg. 14. Exp. 1 "Chicama/Trujillo. Autos seguidos por fray Diego de Salazar, mercedario, cura que fue del pueblo de Paijain, contra el fiel

ejecutor Francisco Antonio de Leca para que le pague 360 pesos de le debe del tiempo en que como tal

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ciones may have maintained control over "Indian" cofradias in the valleys of the northern coast excluding Africans and their descendants from another possibility of articulating a colonial corporate identity.20 Another possibility was enlistment in colonial militias that may have offered legal protections to free Africans and their descendants. On the northern coast, enslaved and free Africans, negros, and mulatos who served as assistants to the rural guard (Santa Hermandad) were awarded with the uniform of a cape and sword or were paid for their work.21 Yet, the colonial militias with corporate rights described by Ben Vinson III were not established in the northern coastal val- leys until the later seventeenth century and then only in the regional capital of Trujillo.22 Other scholars of the Andean African Diaspora and slavery societies have explored how Africans and their descendants (enslaved and free) seized on legal protections and ecclesiastical justifications to manumit themselves and their families.23 Again, without access to urban courts, offi- cials, and patrons, rural slaves were less likely to gain these freedoms. As such, this article builds on a historiography of African Andean agency to expand the focus to enslaved and free Africans and their descendants who were unable to access the corporate rights ensured by colonial law and

cura administr6 los sacramentos y dijo misa en su hacienda de Licapa, en el valle de Chicama, como anexo de su curato," (1670/1672); "Autos de demandas del Sargento Mayor don Valentin del Risco y Montejo contra fray Lorenzo Montero, cura del pueblo de Santiago de Chicama." Archivo Arzobipsal de

Trujillo (AAT). Causas Generales. Leg. 4 (1725). Frederick Bowser, African Slave in Colonial Peru 1524-1650 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), pp. 126, 299.

20 While there is documentation of cofradias for indigenous men and women in the reduccidn

parishes, I have found no record of organized confraternities for enslaved Africans and their descendants in the rural valleys. Bowser has suggested that cofradias were primarily urban institutions in seven-

teenth-century Peru as indicated by the active memberships in the city of Trujillo. Bowser, African, pp. 248, 250.

21 Bowser, African, pp. 197, 199, 204. 22 Ben Vinson III, Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico

(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). Free men of color in Paita and Piura, important ports on the far northern Peruvian coast, appear to have been members of a local militia in the early seventeenth cen-

tury as in Callao and Lima. See Bowser, African, pp. 309, 310. It would not be until the later part of the seventeenth century when free men of color enrolled in Trujllo's militia. See "Receptoria en forma para hacer probanza ante las justicias de la ciudad de Trujillo,...," ADL. Ca. Ordinarias (Ord.). Leg. 23. Exp. 490 (1670).

23 Carlos Aguirre, Agentes de su propia libertad: Los Esclavos de Lima y la desintegracion de la esclavitud 1821-1854 (Lima: PUCP, 1993); Peter Blanchard, Slavery & Abolition in Early Republican Peru (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, Inc.; 1992); Maria Eugenia Chaves, Honor y libertad: Discur- sos y Recursos en la Estrategia de Libertad de una Mujer Esclava (Guayaquil a fines del periodo colo-

nial) (Sweden: Departamento de Historia e Instituto Iberoamericano de la Universidad de Gotemburgo, 2001); Christine Hiinefeldt, Paying the Price of Freedom: Family and Labor Among Lima 's Slaves, 1800-1854 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Jean-Pierre Tardieu, El Negro en el Cusco: Los caminos de la alienacidn en la segunda mitad del siglo XVII (Lima: PUCP/Banco Central de Reserva del Perti,1998); Los Negros y la iglesia en el Peri: siglos XVI - XVII. 2 tomos (Quito: Centro Cultural Afroecuatoriano, 1997).

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Catholic practice. Excluded from the legal protections afford to "Indians" and the corporate possibilities of the urban environs, I argue that enslaved and free Africans (with their descendants) developed economic relations with indigenous populations and Diaspora affiliations to survive the imposi- tions of rural slavery.

By asking how indigenous laborers and enslaved Africans dealt with a shared crisis of agricultural production from distinct legal locations in colonial Spanish American society, this article seeks to disrupt an unresolved historio- graphical separation between "Indians" and blacks. Colonial laws dictated the separation of "Indians" from non-indigenous populations with the establish- ment and the maintenance of the "Republic of the Indians" and the "Republic of the Spaniards" that hypothetically included Africans and their descendants. Yet, this article demonstrates the fiction of African inclusion in the Spanish republic and the ambiguous relation of blacks to the "Indian" republic. This close analysis of the labor demands, economic practices, and survival tactics of indigenous and enslaved people in the northern coastal valleys suggests that colonial law did not uniformly dictate the economic practices of the colonized. Yet, indigenous people strategically seized on their legal protections, espe- cially when their economic livelihoods were threatened by local agricultural crises. "Indian" tactics, however, were not solely dictated by their legal loca- tions as indigenous communities called on their rights within the "Republic of the Indians" when necessary or useful. Thus, indigenous-African antagonism implicitly assumed by previous scholarship was not natural or inevitable, but a result of Spanish colonial structures articulated as legal protections and demands of local landholders on the northern Peruvian coast.

GREATER TRUJILLO AND THE NORTHERN PERUVIAN COAST

Located between the viceregal capital of Lima and Pacific-Caribbean ports on the Panamanian isthmus, the northern Peruvian coast's geography informed its colonial economy. By the late sixteenth century, Spanish colo- nizers established cattle ranches, wheat farms, and sugar estates in the fer- tile, irrigated lands of the coast.24 Colonial indigenous communities attempted to maintain a system of managed streams and earthen canals that crisscrossed the valleys, including Santa Catalina (inland from the cor- regimiento capital of Trujillo) and Chicama (directly to the north). During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, members of Trujillo's

24 Fr. Reginaldo de Lizairraga, Descripci6n del Peru', Tucumdn, Rio de la Plata y Chile (Madrid: His- toria 16, 1986 [1609]), p. 73; Antonio de la Calancha, Crdnica Moralizada del orden de San Augustin en el Peru, (Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1974 [1638]), p. 1230.

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indigenous reducciones cultivated corn, potatoes, garbanzos, and other foodstuffs on private lands in the Santa Catalina valley that adjoined a few Spanish estates.25 Water was critical and coastal reducciones continued to maintain the irrigation system, with erratic assistance of Spanish hacenda- dos until the end of the colonial period.26

Spanish landholders purchased or usurped indigenous lands and water, private and communal, in the Chicama valley increasingly throughout the seventeenth century as local and migrant people joined African slaves as laborers on the rural estates. In the smaller Santa Catalina valley, indigenous reducciones maintained communal land holdings and individual farms that supplied the regional capital. In both cases, indigenous communities adapted to the colonial market economy even as tensions among Spanish estate owners and indigenous communities grew with hacienda expansion. The Spanish estates' success fluctuated. Throughout the seventeenth century, landholders and merchants loaded flour, wheat, soap, hides, preserves, and sugar onto vessels that returned with slaves, textiles, and wine from Pana- manian and Pacific ports.27 As the colonial estates grew (in stops and starts), so did the populations of enslaved and free Africans and their descendants until the mid-seventeenth century decline in the transatlantic slave trade into the Spanish empire. As the Portuguese withdrew from supplying the Span- ish empire with enslaved Africans in the 1640s, the northern coast experi- enced a parallel agricultural crisis due, in part, to a lack of labor.28

Like other mixed economies, mixed economies of the northern coast fos- tered multiple labor arrangements on Spanish properties. Susan Ramirez and

25 Pedro de Cieza de Le6n, Travels of Pedro de Cieza de Ledn (London: Hakluyt Society, [1553], 1864) p. 234; Modesto Rubifios y Andrade, "Noticia previa por el Liz. don Justo Modesto Rubifios y Andrade, cura de M6rrope, afio de 1782," Revista Histdrica [Lima] 10:3 (1936), p. 320.

26 "Autos seguido por don Nicolas Moran Protector de los naturales de la provincia de San'a, contra don Marcos Vitores, presbitero, por agravios inferidos a los indios," AAT. Causas Generales. Leg. 6 (1737); "Expediente seguido por el sargento mayor don Valentin del Risco y Montejo, duefio de la hacienda Chiquitoy, sobre que concurran los demas hacendados a los reparos del rio Chicama, 1730" ADL. Co. Ord. Leg. 220. Exp. 1793 (1730).

27 An6mino, "Fragmento de una Historia de Trujillo," Revista Histdrica 8:1 (1925), pp. 97, 98; Balthasar Ramirez, "Descripci6n del Reyno del Piru del sitio temple. Prouincias, obispados, y ciudades, de los Naturales de sus lenguas y trage," in Quellen zur Kulturgeschichte des priikolumbischen Amerika (Stuttgart: Streker and Schroder, [1597] 1936), p. 29; Antonio Vazquez de Espinosa, Compendium and

Description the West Indies (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, [1621]1942), pp. 390, 393, 394; Fray Diego de Ocafia, Un Viaje Fascinante por la America Hispana del Siglo XVI (Madrid: Stvdivm, [1605?] 1969), p. 66; Jos6 A. del Busto Duthurburu, Historia maritima del Peru. Siglo XVI-Historia Interna, t. 3 (Lima: Editorial Ausonia, 1972), p. 543. For purchases of Castilian products in Panama see Susana Aldana, Empresas coloniales: Las Tinas de Jabon en Piura (Piura: CIPCA/Instituto Frances de Estudios Andinos, 1989), p. 59.

28 Herbert Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 28.

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Manuel Burga have demonstrated that small and medium-sized farms depended on indigenous wage laborers who worked alongside slaves.29 As Spanish estates transformed the northern coastal economy, indigenous labor- ers and community members benefited from distinguishing themselves from African slaves. Similarly, in rural Morelos (Mexico), Spanish estate expan- sion absorbed indigenous lands, but the re-formed communities (congrega- ciones) employed their rights to defend and even to expand their landhold- ings during a crisis in the sugar economy in the first half of the eighteenth century.30 Likewise, in rural Oaxaca indigenous populations employed colo- nial courts and royal protections to defend land titles that had been estab- lished in the sixteenth century before Spaniards expanded into the valley.31 Although free African descendants, slaves, and indigenous villagers labored on estates, ranches, and farms, indigenous villagers did not necessarily adopt enslaved Africans and other non-locals into their communities.32 In other instances, indigenous laborers and farmers would choose to incorporate free people of color into their communities or ally with fugitive slaves against Spanish colonizers.33 Additionally, the emerging scholarship on the sugar- growing regions of C6rdoba and Veracruz suggests mixed labor economies of indigenous and African, free and enslaved, workers.34

To explain the mixed economies, indigenous and African populations appear to be proportional during the first half of the seventeenth century on the northern Peruvian coast. In 1604, Spaniards and mestizos constituted

29 Ramirez, Provincial, pp. 45, 83, 163; Burga, De la Encomienda, p. 115. 30 Cheryl English Martin, Rural Society in Colonial Morelos (Albuquerque: University of New

Mexico Press, 1985), pp. 27, 51, 88 31 William B. Taylor, Landlord and Peasant in Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford: Stanford University

Press, 1972), pp. 29, 66, 84, 107. 32 Patrick Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz: Race, Ethnicity, and Regional Development (Austin:

University of Texas Press, 2001), pp. 35, 50, 62, 72-73, 78; Ward Barrett, The Sugar Hacienda of the Marqueses del Valle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1970), pp. 74, 87-99.

33 Ann Zulawski has suggested that yanaconas associated with and were even absorbed into free and enslaved communities of color in an agrarian frontier region of Alto Peru. Zulawski, They Eat, p. 192. Jane Landers, "Black-Indian Interaction in Spanish Florida," Colonial Latin American Historical Review 2:2 (Spring 1993), p. 158; Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), p. 98; Daniel H. Usner Jr., Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), p. 93.

34 Martin, Rural, pp. 25-26, 51, 60-61; Ramirez, Provincial, pp. 83, 163. As such, revisiting ques- tions posed for colonial Lima by Jesds Cosamal6n Aguilar, Indios detrds de la muralla. Matrimonios indigenas y convivencia inter-racial en Santa Ana (Lima, 1795 - 1820) (Lima: PUCP, 1999); Emilio

Harth-terr6, Negros e Indios: Un Estamento Social Ignorado del Peru Colonial (Lima: Editorial Juan Meja Baca, 1973); Luis Millones, "Poblaci6n Negra en el Peru. Analisis de la posicion social del Negro durante la dominacion espafiola," in Minorias Etnicas en el Peru (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Cat6lica del Perui, 1973). For C6rdoba and Veracruz, see Adriana Naveda Chavez, Esclavos negros en las hacien- das azucareras de C6rdoba 1690-1830 (Jalapa: Universidad Veracruzana, 1987).

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28 "IN A WAR AGAINST THE SPANISH"

twenty-seven percent of the population, with free and enslaved "negros " and mulatos as thirty-four percent, and "Indians" as thirty-nine percent of Tru- jillo's total population, including its surrounding farms.35 Populations for rural environs are difficult to estimate because parish data is not coterminous with estate inventories. For example, colonial inspectors recorded indigenous laborers on rural haciendas and parish priests kept track of indigenous parish- ioners, but neither documented enslaved Africans and their descendants. Landholders inventoried their slaves but did not record the number of indige- nous workers or specify the identities of seasonal laborers or itinerant arti- sans. As Frederick Bowser noted, information that allows a correlation between the size of landholdings and "the proportion of African to Indian labor" is "rarely available," further revealing the difficulty of analyzing inter- relations between these rural populations.36 Furthermore, parish records, ecclesiastical investigations (such as those conducted by Inquisition courts and idolatry extirpation judges), and documentation of religious confraterni- ties are rare for the northern Peruvian coast. Rural notaries and indigenous scribes were active, but their records have been misplaced or lost. Estate accounts and overseer correspondence, moreover, most likely exist in private archives and are not readily accessible to the researcher. Thus, I rely mainly on criminal cases supplemented by urban notary records and ecclesiastical documentation from local and national Peruvian archives emphasizing eco- nomic and social strategies rather than cultural or religious practices.37 Doc- uments of conflict are a challenging source for the researcher interested in understanding affinities, yet judicial cases provide rich details of daily life and examples of the ways in which rural inhabitants defined their communi- ties. Contextualizing indigenous and African relations in an expanding sugar economy reveals that just as strategies and interactions of rural laborers were not uniform, neither were the categories that bound them.

35 An6mino, "Fragmento," pp. 90-93; Miguel Feij6o de Sosa, Relacidn descriptiva de la ciudad y provincia de Truxillo del Peru' (Lima: Fondo del Libro. Banco Industrial del Peru, [1763] 1984), pp. 29- 30.With the exception of scattered calculations of indigenous communities to assess tribute obligations, there is no other census until 1763 when, again, Trujillo's magistrate counted the inhabitants of the city and its surrounding valley. During his visita of inspection tour between 1782 and 1785, Bishop Martinez

Compafi6n estimated that the population of the Trujillo and Safia regions was nine percent Spanish, 56

percent indigenous, 14 percent mixed descent, and 21 percent African and African-descent people. Obispo Baltasar Martinez Compafi6n, "Estado que demuestra el ntimero de Abitantes del Obpdo de Trux- illo del Perui con distinci6n de castas formade pr su actual Obpo," en Trujillo del Peru', v. 2 (Madrid: Bib- lioteca de Palacio de Madrid, 1985-1991).

36 Bowser, African, p. 95. 37 The research base of this article includes one hundred and fourteen criminal cases, seventeen civil

cases, and eleven other judicial investigations from the courts of the corregidor and cabildo housed in the Archivo Departamental de La Libertad. Notary entries were collected as part of a ten-year sample of extant records. Viceregal correspondence as well as reports and mandates from Trujillo's magistrate and the municipal council provide regional and viceregal contexts.

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EXCHANGE AND CONFLICT: INDIGENOUS FARMERS AND ENSLAVED LABORERS

Spanish labor demands on the northern Peruvian coast encouraged contact between African slaves and indigenous villagers. In the early seventeenth century, Spanish landholders had grown increasingly desperate for laborers.38 On the one hand, indigenous reducciones were no longer able (or willing) to

supply the assigned number of mitayos to work as herders and agriculturists on Spanish properties.39 Spanish estates appear to have suffered from this lack of labor. On the other hand, Spanish landholders were not able to afford a sufficient number of slaves for their estates.40 One result was an increased mobility of indigenous laborers migrating to and from the coastal valleys as African slaves negotiated a certain level of autonomy among the rural estates. In this context, Africans and their descendants traded, celebrated, and inter- mingled with indigenous inhabitants in moments that may have appeared to local authorities as activities of vagrant and unattached people.41 In particu- lar, colonial officials considered contact between people of African descent and indigenous communities to be dangerous to the colonial order.42 Illus- trating these colonial concerns, in 1603, Trujillo's cabildo recorded a royal

38 For coastal landholders demanding that highland men travel to the coast to perform mita see "Mandamiento de...Theniente de Corregidor en el valle de Chicama..." ADL. Co. Asuntos de Gobierno.

Leg. 266. Exp. 3069 (1604); "Real provisi6n..." Archivo General de la Naci6n (AGN). Derecho Indigena. Cuad. 69 (1621).

39 For indigenous communities and individuals protesting Spanish demands for mitayos see "Pro- visi6n confirmatoria de la repartici6n de mitayos del pueblo de Paijain y Licapa..." ADL. Co. Asuntos de Gobierno. Leg. 266. Exp. 3072 (1606); "Expediente seguido por Diego de Sequeira, protector de los nat- urales por lo que toca a la defensa de los indios de Guafiape..." ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 240. Exp. 2264 (1614); "Expediente seguido por el protector de los naturales por lo que toca a Ant6n Cipen, natural de Magdalena de Cao..." ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 241. Exp. 2298 (1617); AAT. Padrones. Leg. 1 (1619), ff. 17-18.

40 Ramirez, Provincial, pp. 142, 163. 41 The Crown and colonial authorities viewed independent actions of laborers unattached to a patron

as a sign of disorder. In particular, royal officials objected to the mixture of people from distinct stations. For example, in 1599, the viceroy complained that "loose people" who migrated from Spain were creat-

ing disorder and abuse among indigenous populations. Vatican Film Library (VFL). Colecci6n Pastells, Roll 13, Vol. 76. (Peru) v. 7 (1599), f. 224. In 1608, the Crown suggested to the Peruvian viceroy that colonial authorities would need to think of the governance of negros, mulatos, and mestizos whose num- bers were multiplying. Kontezke, Coleccidn, vol. 2, t. 1, pt. 1, p. 145. In 1610, the Trujillo cabildo com- manded that all the free negras and mulatas in the city attach themselves to a "master" or a patron. ADL. Protocolos. Morales. Leg. 181 (1610), f. 13. In 1632, Lima officials lamented that a large number of free mulatos, negros, and zambahigos did not have an occupation, roots, or fields to earn money to pay trib- ute. Ernesto German Peralta Rivera, "Informe Preliminar al estudio de la Tributaci6n de Negros Libres Mulatos y Zambahigos en el Siglo XVII peruano," in Atti del XL Congresso Internazionale degli Amer- icanisti (Genoa, 1975), p. 436 citing AGI. Audiencia de Lima, Leg. 158.

42 In Trujillo, local officials complained in 1606 that fugitive slaves created disorder on the public highways and, in particular, among indigenous and African-descent travelers. Larco Herrera, Anales, cites ff. 105-107. In 1639, the Trujillo cabildo complained that because of the continuing lack of a public jail, the bailiffs had to put indigenous and African-descent men together presumably in the same cell or

holding area. Larco Herrera, Anales, ff. 22-23. The Crown continued its interest with separating

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30 "IN A WAR AGAINST THE SPANISH"

c6dula that ordered the removal of negros, negras, mulatos, and free mulatas from the countryside where they caused harm to the indigenous popula- tions.43 In 1627, the Trujillo cabildo declared that armed fugitive slaves threatened the indigenous workers on local haciendas.44 Attempts by Spanish landholders and colonial officials to control a mobile and diverse populace of potential laborers, however, underlines the extent to which Africans and indigenous people seized on opportunities afforded by local markets and labor demands.45 In the process, they commingled, exchanged goods, and associated beyond the bounds of colonial expectations.

Local authorities sought to keep order in the rural areas by persecuting thieves and errant laborers, but did not strictly control the movements of African slaves. For example, Anton Angola was responsible for his labor time. On the weekends he lived in the house of Felipe, a Spaniard, outside of Chocope, a crossroads settlement in the Chicama valley, and on Monday mornings, he was supposed to report to another household for his weekly work assignment.46 While similar to the practices of urban slavery, the dis- tances of the countryside may have produced more independence as rural slaves owned horses and traveled into the highlands to trade or along the coast to find work.47 The general mobility of coastal slaves easily melded into fugitive slave activity as enslaved Africans and their descendants inde-

pendently sought new owners or patrons, sometimes without the permis- sions of their current masters.48 Fugitive slaves who had been captured by colonial authorities confessed to traveling on extensive circuits. In one case, this included the viceregal capital of Lima, the highland town of Huamanga, and finally the northern coastal valleys.49 Africans and their descendants, therefore, seized opportunities of mobility afforded by the desperate demands for labor by Spanish landholders. Enslaved men (and some

Spaniards, mestizos, and mulatos from living in indigenous towns with an order in 1646. Konetzke, Coleccidn, v. 2, t. 1, pt. 2, p. 401.

43 Larco Herrera, Anales, cites ff. 238v-242. 44 Larco, Anales, ff. 59-60v. 45 In 1609, the Crown ordered the Peruvian viceroy to reduce the loose numbers of mulatos, zam-

baigos, free negros, and mestizos living in Spanish towns and make them pay tribute or tasa. Konetzke, Coleccidn, v. 2, t. 1, pt. 1, p. 143.

46 "Auto...del caso de un negro esclavo de Juan Baptista de Espinosa que mat6 dos indios por robarle y quitarle lo que tenia en valle Chicama," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 243. Exp. 2393 (1626), f. 16v.

47 Bowser, African, pp. 103-104; Hiinefeldt, Paying, pp. 74. 126; "Expediente seguido por Diego de Alarcon...sobre las cuchilladas que dieron a Pedro negro esclavo del ingenio de Chicama," ADL. Co. Cr.

Leg. 243. Exp. 2407 (1627), f. 2. 48 ADL. Protocolos. Escobar. Leg. 143 (1640), f. 103. 49 "Expediente...contra varios negros zimarrones esclavos por haber hufdo del poder de sus amos y

haberse resistido cuando fueron aprehendidos por las autoridades," ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 78. Exp. 1284

(1609).

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women) escaped from their owners, who were often Spanish and moved around in a rural environ still inhabited by indigenous people in the early seventeenth century.

Rural laborers, African and indigenous, also, lived next to each other and built affinities and relationships. Spanish colonial law may have prohibited African (as well as Spanish) habitation in indigenous villages or reduc-

ciones.50 Yet, technically, Crown mandates did not specify who could inhabit non-reducci6n rural settlements. Moreso, local authorities probably could (or would) not have been motivated to discourage indigenous and African people who lived next to each other as their labor and market activ- ity fueled rural economies. Rather than the separations articulated by Span- ish law, rural settlements brought together Africans and "Indians." Con- verging around crossroads settlements, indigenous farmers and herders serviced colonial inns and enslaved people gathered for markets and work. Around the inn on the northern edge of the Chicama valley, indigenous and African-descent people lived next door to one another. One resident, Maria Angola, was a free African woman who worked in the fields and the house- hold of dofia Maria de Valberde, but lived apart in her own rancho or rustic house."' Maria Angola's immediate neighbors included an indigenous woman from Ch6pen (a local indigenous reducci6n) and an indigenous ladino (or Spanish speaker) from the city of Trujillo. In settlements not defined by reducci6n directives, rural Africans and indigenous people lived in close proximity, suggesting the possibilities of interactive community net- works and daily life left undocumented or lost to the record.

Like free people, enslaved Africans were not confined to Spanish estates and often traveled to neighboring indigenous villages or crossroads settle- ments to trade.52 Suggestive of this contact, enslaved and free people of African-descent frequented the rancherfa de indios, or the indigenous neighborhood, near the Dominican monastery and the colonial inn on the road from the Chicama valley to the city of Trujillo. There, and throughout the Chicama valley, slaves bartered small livestock for corn grown by

50 Ivlian de Paredes, Recopilacidn de leyes de los Reynos de las Indias (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispainica, [1681]1973), Lib VI. Titulo III. Ley xxi "Que en Pueblos de Indios no vivan Espafioles, Negros, Mestizos, y Mulatos," p. 200v.

51 "Expediente seguido por el Protector de los Naturales de esta ciudad, por lo que toca la persona de Maria Juliana, india natural del pueblo de Chep6n y otras personas..." ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 244. Exp. 2446 (1631), f. 2.

52 Slaves lived in rancherias, or clusters of small houses, and very rarely (if at all) in locked bar- racks. See "Mandamiento del corregidor de Trujillo para que se haga averiguaci6n de la pendencia de dos negros..." ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 240. Exp. 2281 (1615).

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32 "IN A WAR AGAINST THE SPANISH"

indigenous farmers and other supplemental foodstuffs as well as tobacco, clothing, and other necessities not provided by estate owners.53 Commonly, African and criollo slaves often purchased chica (corn beer) from indige- nous producers; this was a product probably not supplied (or only irregularly supplied) by Spanish hacienda owners.54 This trading relationship was not accidental; enslaved men and women may have needed to supplement their diet with foodstuffs that only indigenous producers could provide. In fact, trade between indigenous farmers and African laborers was a necessary component of the rural economy. Some enslaved people kept their own small livestock, but it is unclear whether they were awarded provision grounds.'5 It may have been that estate owners were reluctant to share their water resources (a scarce commodity on the arid coast) or that administra- tors incorporated food production into the routine of hacienda work tasks. In any case, most hacienda owners supplied slaves with rations purchased locally or grown on the estates.56 In contrast to slaves, indigenous people had official rights to land and water as members of a reducci6n or as con- tracted yanaconas on haciendas and grew foodstuffs not only for themselves, but for sale.57 Thus, Spanish landholders may have relied on the abilities of African slaves and indigenous inhabitants to trade as the exchanges of food- stuffs allowed enslaved populations to sustain themselves or to supplement their rations. Regardless, hacendados tolerated contact among enslaved laborers, indigenous workers, and coastal villagers that supported a rural economy of small holders and expanding estates.

Exchanges between enslaved laborers and indigenous farmers were a crit- ical part of the informal economy. Because rural notary records or inspec- tions of country markets are unavailable in this region, criminal charges of theft reveal an informed arrangement of trade and exchange among indige- nous and African laborers. One such case was filed by the widow of Juan Cipirnin, a member of the Uchop parcialidad (an occupational and adminis- trative division) of Magdalena de Cao (an indigenous reducci6n in the Chi-

53 See "Autos de la visita hecha por don Bartolom6 de Villavicencio, corregidor de Trujillo, a las estancias, ingenios, trapiches y pueblos de Chicama" ADL. Co. Asuntos de Gobierno. Leg. 266. Exp. 3074 (1607), f. 7.

54 "De la pendencia entre Hernando Cacho esclavo de Andres Careaga y Juan Bran, esclavo de Juan Hernandez," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 240. Exp. 2258 (1614)

55 "Expediente seguido por el sen'or com. de la caballerfa, don Juan Joseph de Herrera Garcia de Zarzosa, alcalde provincial de la Santa Hermandad de esta ciudad, contra el negro Joseph Manuel de casta arara, su esclavo sobre haber matado a pun'aladas a otro negro, su esclavo, Leandro, de casta cara- belf." ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 83. Exp. 1481 (1720).

56 Pablo Macera, "Los Jesuitas y la agricultura de la cafia," Nueva visidn del Pera, p. 215; Cushner, Lords, pp. 91-92.

57 ADL. Co. Asuntos de Gobierno. Leg. 266. Exp. 3074 (1607), ff. 6, 7, 8v, 12, 17, 18v, 23, 28v, 30v.

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cama valley), against Mateo, a congo slave.58 According to the plaintiff, Mateo congo incorrectly believed that Juan Cipirin, an indigenous man, had taken a horse from him (though witnesses strategically hinted that the slave himself had stolen the horse in Trujillo). Angry that Juan Cipirin would not admit to pilfering the mare-or, if the enslaved congo had indeed stolen the horse, perhaps worried that the animal would be recognized in Trujillo- Mateo killed Juan Cipirin on the road out of the valley towards the regional capital. While this conflict might be interpreted to suggest that Africans attacked indigenous people, thus bolstering the argument that the separation of the "Republics" was necessary for an orderly society, the murder in fact hints at a more complex relationship between the victim and the assailant.59 Juan Cipirnin's wife and other indigenous community members testified that they recognized the congo slave when he rode up to the settlement and demanded to see Juan. The slave's familiarity with the Uchop parcialidad indicates that Juan Cipirin and Mateo congo had sufficient contact to trade, or that they at least knew about each other's livestock, for the Crown did not forbid commercial exchanges between indigenous and African inhabitants. Rather than the murder defining these relations, Juan Cipiran and Mateo's conflict (combined with the witnesses' testimonies) suggests a transaction that had gone sour rather than an outright theft or predatory attack.

Judicial cases concerning botched trade agreements also reveal more sub- stantial connections than mere commerce between itinerant indigenous laborers and African slaves. In 1611, Martin Catacaos, an indigenous mule- teer, accused Sancho, a slave, of stealing one of his mules.60 However, the resulting testimony does not suggest a case of mere theft. From the sugar mill of Facala in the upper Chicama valley, Martin Catacaos accompanied Sancho's ailing father to Trujillo, where the older man died shortly there- after. Sancho kept one of Martin Catacaos' pack animals while the indige- nous muleteer took the slave's sick parent to Trujillo for treatment.61 While

58 "Expediente seguido por Juana Quispe, india mujer lex. de Juan Cipirin, difunto, indio natural Cao con Matheo negro esclavo de Juan Gutierrez de Farias, residente en valle Chicama," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 242. Exp. 2375 (1625).

59 For justification of the separation of the repdiblicas because Africans and their descendants were

aggressive and abusive to indigenous people, see Bowser, African, pp. 151, 265. 60 "Mandamiento del corregidor de Trujillo para que Martin Catacaos, indio arriero y morador de

Trujillo, haga informaci6n sobre el hurto y muerte de una mula hecho por el negro Sancho, esclavo de Francisco de Guzmin," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 239. Exp. 2230 (1611).

61 For non-Indians in rural areas, medical attention consisted of food donations from the local priest. See "Informaciones de oficio y parte: Juan L6pez de Saavedra, cura propietario, vicario y juez eclesiis- tico y comisario de la Santa Cruzada del pueblo de Mochumif, obispado de Trujillo," AGI. Audiencia de Lima. Leg. 245. No. 12 (1652), f. 3 and "Autos de la visita pastoral efectuada a la doctrina de Mochumi desde el 25 abril 1646. Cura de la doctrina," AAT. Visitas. Leg. 1 (1646), f. 17.

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the accusations were contentious, the indigenous man did not counter with a charge that Sancho attempted to take advantage of his goodwill or his nature as suggested by colonial laws protecting innocent "Indians" from

"dangerous blacks" would suggest. As a migrant from a coastal village fur- ther north, Martin Catacaos did not have the immediate support of his

indigenous leader and reducci6n who may have testified or assisted him with judicial procedures. Instead, Martin Catacaos was a muleteer who, though identified with his reducci6n by his last name, relied on other con- nections and affinities that he had made as an independent laborer, includ-

ing his relationship with Sancho, the hacienda slave. Neither party articu- lated why they had entrusted each other with valuable property (a mule) or

ailing kin, as Sancho had entrusted his dying parent to Martin Catacaos' care. Yet, their initial exchange and resulting judicial case suggest an affin-

ity that emerged from their shared working relations on the coastal hacienda.

In addition to coming together to trade, rural laborers also mingled during and after Sunday Mass and public fiestas such as Corpus Christi. Slaves trav- eled to rural crossroads settlements as well as indigenous towns where

parishioners sponsored religious events that were not celebrated in hacienda

chapels.62 Estate owners tolerated, and perhaps encouraged, baptized African slaves and indigenous inhabitants to join together during activities that

proved their shared Catholic identities. Religious events like market

exchanges reveal moments when enslaved Africans and colonized "Indians"

intermingled. Rural laborers regardless of their status as enslaved Africans, colonized "Indians," or more commonly another category, traveled through- out the northern valleys to work, to trade, or to carry out errands for acquain- tances. Local colonial officials read this level of mobility as evidence of criminal conduct and resistance to colonial rule. Yet, conflicts between Africans, free and enslaved, and "Indians," on or off the reducci6n, provide evidence of their mutually beneficial contact. More so, indigenous laborers and enslaved Africans responded to the current labor market in the northern coastal valleys. Spanish landholders required laborers and thus were willing to tolerate a certain level of mobility of their slaves who sought to support themselves independent of their owners. Still, colonial authorities articulated an expectation that mixtures of indigenous and African peoples indicated dis-

62 "Expediente seguido por Manuel, mulato esclavo...contra Miguel y Antonio, negros esclavos de Juan Rubio," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 240. Exp. 2282 (1615); "Expediente seguido por Bartolomd Gonzales, labrador del valle de Chicama, con Juan Pizarro, mestizo y otros; sobre pufialadas a un esclavo suyo Francisco," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 241. Exp. 2304 (1617); "Expediente seguido por don Luis Roldain Davila, vecino y Alguacil Mayor de Trujillo, contra un negro esclavo," ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1321 (1618); ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 243. Exp. 2407 (1627).

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order (as discussed above), and elites imagined that chaos ensued from labor- ers who appeared to be without a patron. Thus, "Indian"-African associations surfaced as conflictual in the judicial arena or within colonial law, but these contacts were most likely regular, reliable, and mutually useful.

DIVIDED COMRADAS: YANACONAS, MITAYOS, AND SLAVES ON RURAL ESTATES

The Spanish demand for laborers, enslaved or "Indian," blurred official colonial boundaries between the indigenous reducci6n and the rest of the dynamic rural markets and coastal environs. By the first decade of the sev- enteenth century, Spanish landholders urged the Crown to force highland mitayos into traveling to the coast as local reducciones could not or would not fulfill their assigned quotas.63 In the valleys, colonial indigenous leaders complained that widespread and repeated epidemics had severely reduced their populations.64 More suggestive are their complaints that indigenous men had migrated to surrounding haciendas where they seized on the oppor- tunities of the coastal economy to contract their labor as yanaconas or skill laborers in flour and sugar mills, independent managers of farms and ranches, or simply agricultural laborers.65 Thus, some indigenous laborers transformed their labor arrangements in the colonial economy by removing themselves from the onerous demands of the reducci6n to become domestic workers, miners, muleteers, and artisans.66 Yet, as yanaconas met Spanish labor demands and complicated rural hierarchies, they did not build affini- ties with African slaves or indigenous mitayos.

In this new context of the colonial hacienda, yanaconas assumed leader- ship positions of estate workers who included independent laborers and reducci6n members as well as enslaved African laborers. As indigenous and

63 ADL. Co. Asuntos de Gobierno. Leg. 266. Exp. 3069 (1604); "Pedimiento de Juan Arias Tinoco, para que se la otorgue testimonio de los indios mitayos y ganaderos de hacienda Facala," ADL. Co. Ped- imientos. Leg. 285. Exp. 3695 (1613); Archivo General de la Naci6n (AGN). Derecho Indigena. Cuad. 69 (1621), f.1.

64 "Testimonio de las diligencias de la visita de los indios de Repartimiento de Callanca de la juris- dicci6n de la ciudad de Trujillo," AGN. Derecho Indigena. Cuad. 687 (1606); "Expediente seguido por don Antonio Chayguac, Cacique principal del pueblo de Mansiche... se suspenda dar indios...," ADL. Co. Asuntos de Gobierno. Leg. 266. Exp. 3073 (1607); "Auto seguido...contra el maestro de campo don Cristobal de Ar6stegui, corregidor que fue de Safia, sobre ciertas diferencias en las cobranzas de los trib- utos de Jayanca y

Ttlcume," AGN. Derecho Indigena. Cuad. 72 (1622).

65 ADL. Co. Asuntos de Gobierno. Leg. 266. Exp. 3074 (1607), ff. 2v, 6, 11, 18, 21v, 27. 66 For highland yanacona strategies see Wightman, Indigenous, p. 6; Karen Powers, Andean Jour-

neys: Migration, Ethnogenesis, and the State in Colonial Quito (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), p. 51. For indigenous laborers seeking work outside of their assigned reducciones see Larson, Cochabamba, pp. 82 - 83; Zulawski, They Eat, pp. 125, 148.

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36 "IN A WAR AGAINST THE SPANISH"

African laborers-free, forced, and enslaved-sought to build new strategies for survival, and in some cases advancement, they acted in concert bonded by their attachment or shared experiences on a Spanish estate. For example, during the perceived disorder of Carnival celebrations in 1626, witnesses reported that a yanacona overseer directed indigenous and enslaved laborers under his charge against indigenous men who worked on an adjoining farm. The victims testified that the yanacona overseer, Fabian, had led his group "like soldiers" indicating not only the threatening nature of the "Indians and blacks" who descended to steal chickens and guinea pigs, but their cohesive assault.67 In this case, witnesses perceived indigenous laborers and African slaves as a collective. Indeed, like slaves, yanaconas were often migrant laborers (albeit under distinct circumstances) separated from their original communities and without local allegiances. Furthermore, contracted indige- nous laborers and African slaves may have shared similar subsistence needs as both worked on the haciendas that were not fully provisioned. These, and other circumstances, may have encouraged allegiances between yanaconas and their subordinates, indigenous or African.

Shared workplaces allowed sustained contact between African and indigenous laborers, and perhaps even possibilities of long-term, formal relationships. Through parish records for the rural settlements starting in the late seventeenth century it is only possible to document a single African- indigenous marriage, a 1685 union between an unidentified enslaved man and an indigenous woman who had migrated to the Chicama valley from the highland town of Cajamarca. Nonetheless, the combined parish records for Ascope, an indigenous town, and the Facala hacienda indicate an increased number of people identified as "zambo," a person of African-indigenous descent, suggesting the probability of previous African-indigenous unions before the later seventeenth century.68 Additionally, other factors may have deterred rural inhabitants from formalizing their unions, such as lack of clergy, high marriage fees, and difficulties in obtaining permission from slave owners.69 Nonetheless, the absence of documentation does not pre-

67 "Expediente seguido por Ant6n, indio contra Fabiin, indio yanacona en la chacra de Francisco de Candia; sobre hurto de mis de 50 gallinas, cuyes, en compania de otros negros," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 243. Exp. 2390 (1626), f. 2.

68 AAT. Parroqufas rurales. Ascope & Facala. 69 The magistrate and other colonial officials also accused Gregorio de Paz and Pedro de Biamonte,

both mulatos, of stealing not only clothing and horses from an indigenous woman, Lucia de las Angeles, of the Guadalupe asiento. One of the men testified that he had intended to marry the indigenous laborer in Trujillo. "Mandamiento de...Teniente de Corregidor y Justicia Mayor del partido de Chiclayo, para que Salvador Diaz, con la Vara de Real Justicia, prenda a Gregorio de Paz, mulato, Pedro de Bracamonte y a la india Lucia y los ponga en la carcel pdblica de Guadalupe," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 243. Exp. 2421 (1628).

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clude the possibilities of African and indigenous marriages and godparent- age in the coastal valleys.

Rural indigenous laborers and Africans slaves (as well as their descen- dants) may have had to seek legitimization of their unions in Trujillo where they were more likely to be able to register and to sanctify their relation- ships.70 In 1625, Juan Bautista, a slave, and Mariana Angel, a mestiza who was reported to dress as an "Indian," fled to Trujillo where they hoped to pass as a married couple. In addition to the crime of "stealing" Mariana Angel, her employer denounced Juan Bautista as a fugitive slave who had committed many robberies and assaults against indigenous people in the countryside and roads in the Jequetepeque valley north of Trujillo and Chicama.71 Yet, witness Maria Suarez, an indigenous ladina woman, testified that Juan Bautista and Mariana Angel had peaceably sought accommodations in her house as hus- band and wife. She did not suspect the travelers were criminals as they explained that they had come to Trujillo so that Juan Bautista could ask the Franciscans to purchase him, a common strategy given the fluidity between enslavement, independence, and freedom in the northern coastal valleys.72 The innkeeper's testimony indicates that Mariana Angel was most likely choosing to accompany Juan Bautista. As for Mariana Angel's identity, she may have been taken for a mestiza because of her familiarity with Spanish and other urban cultural practices that did not match her "Indian dress."73 A fugitive from her patron, Mariana Angel may have also been attempting to

disguise herself. Still, Juan Bautista and Mariana Angel presented themselves as a married couple and thus suggest the possibility of consensual unions between African and indigenous descendants that the lack of rural parish records for the first half of the seventeenth century leaves open to question.

Despite the existence of long-term relationships and contact on hacien- das, indigenous laborers and enslaved Africans also maintained certain dis- tinctions. During another instance of raucous pre-Lenten celebration, a group of "negros" (as described in the criminal case) came looking for

70 Archivo Sagrario. Libro de casimientos de mixtos (1619-1753). 71 "Denuncia de Alonso Siguenza Villarroel, contra el negro Juan Bautista esclavo del Cap. Juan

Garcia de Aguilar, vecino y residente en asiento de Guadalupe; sobre hurto de una mestiza del dho asiento, Mariana," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 242. Exp. 2371 (1625).

72 For more discussion of fugitive slaves seeking new owners see Bowser, African, pp. 192-195.

73 David Cahill, "Colour by Numbers: Racial and Ethnic Categories in the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1532- 1821," Journal of Latin American Studies 26:2 (May 1994), p. 335; Rachel Sarah O'Toole, "Castas y rep-

resentaci6n en Trujillo colonial," in Mds alld de la dominacidn v la resistencia: Estudios de historia

peruana, siglos XVI-XX, Paulo Drinot and Leo Garofalo, editors (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2005), pp. 48-76.

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38 "IN A WAR AGAINST THE SPANISH"

chicha in the inn of Francisco Cajamarca, a migrant from a highland town. According to indigenous witnesses, the inn outside of Trujillo was already full of celebrating self-identified "indios criollos," acculturated, Spanish- speaking indigenous men, who claimed that the "negros" appeared in a mil- itary formation with sticks, asking to fight rather than to drink.74 Francisco Cajamarca denied entrance to the newcomers and, in response, some "negros" grabbed him by the hair and shouted threats, a strong attack on his public honor. The indigenous revelers, according to their testimony, rushed to the defense of the tavern keeper, while one "negro," Jorge tried to deter his fellows from entering the drinking establishment. According to one informant, Jorge told his associates that the indigenous men were comradas, or "fellows" and therefore should be left in peace.75 Lending credence to Jorge's claim, Juan Cristobal, an "Indian criollo" from Trujillo testified to the magistrate that he knew Jorge, as well as another African and their owner.76 Jorge's choice of the word "comrada" and Juan Cristobal's knowl- edge of the slave's owner suggest that the two men knew each other from a shared workplace. Also, their mutual pursuit of chicha, a laborers' drink, indicates a common status.77 Nonetheless, Jorge and Juan Cristobal were obviously choosing distinct company during the fiesta and a shared work- place did not deter violence among indigenous and African men.

The distinctions of colonial law and rural labor practices provided indige- nous laborers the means to maintain a separate status, even as they worked alongside African and African-descent slaves. Crown regulations protected yanaconas as agricultural workers by regulating their yearly wages, ensur- ing a "letter of contract," and prohibiting their patrons from employing them in the sugar mill.78 Colonial authorities, at least according to Crown man- dates, were to monitor hacienda managers to ensure that indigenous labor- ers were promptly paid and to punish slaves for stealing from yanaconas.79 In contrast, local authorities did not inspect the work and the living condi- tions of rural enslaved laborers who were not legally afforded provision grounds or other terms of a written labor contract. Furthermore, while yana-

74 "Mandamiento...para que se haga informaci6n del hecho ocurrido en el rancho de Francisco Caxamarca por unos negros donde salio herido un negro," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 242. Exp. 2348 (1623), ff. 3-3v.

75 ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 242. Exp. 2348 (1623), f. 3v. 76 ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 242. Exp. 2348 (1623), f. lv. 77 Indigenous, African, and other laborers drank chicha, a locally produced beverage, rather than

wine, an exported drink. For African laborers drinking chicha, see "Expediente...contra Pasqual de Mora, mulato; por haber herido a Joan Bran, su esclavo con una tacana," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 241. Exp. 2342 (1622), f. 5.

78 ADL. Co. Asuntos de Gobierno. Leg. 266. Exp. 3074 (1607), ff. 2, 2v. 79 ADL. Co. Asuntos de Gobierno. Leg. 266. Exp. 3074 (1607), ff. 2v, 3v, 5.

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conas may not have chosen to leave their communities, and landholders were known to avoid paying requisite wages, indigenous laborers hypothet- ically could choose another patron at the end of their contract as Crown offi- cials declared that the Spanish pay indigenous laborers fairly for their work.80 In contrast, the Crown only protected enslaved men and women from extreme physical abuse and mandated that owners provide food and

clothing, and treatment for illnesses, but did not interfere with labor arrange- ments between slave and master.81 In fact, in the northern coastal valleys there is little indication that colonial authorities enforced these Crown pro- tections of enslaved Africans and their descendants. Yanaconas, therefore, had reasons to distinguish themselves from slaves (African, criollo, or

mulato) who did not enjoy the intervention, however sporadic, of colonial officials or the recognized authority, however ignored, of the colonial

cacique (indigenous leader) or the assigned protector de naturales (a local

Crown-appointed lawyer of indigenous people).

The colonial rights afforded to indigenous laborers help to explain why yanacona Lorenqo Payco, who worked on a Chicama valley ranch, called on official protection while invoking Spanish cultural and legal preconceptions of the "predatory slave."82 The indigenous laborer complained that a "black" slave had stolen clothing and chickens from his house while he was at Mass.83 Fulfilling a Crown-recognized duty to protect indigenous inhabitants, the pro- tector de los naturales filed an official criminal complaint in Trujillo's cabildo court. Either he or the indigenous laborer carefully noted the presumed victim's activity as practicing Catholicism in the moment of his victimization. The rural guard, often the sole representatives of colonial law in the country- side, also defended indigenous laborers while persecuting African slaves. In the Trujillo valley, deputies helped to catch another "black" thief when two

indigenous laborers complained that he had stolen clothing and silver from their houses.84 Furthermore, yanaconas and mitayos on a Chicama sugar mill were quick to report to Spanish neighbors that a slave had killed the Spanish overseer in a disagreement about a work task. Other slaves on the hacienda were not asked to testify while numerous indigenous witnesses detailed the

8o For 1601, see Cushner, Lords, pp. 14, 81. For 1607, see Larco Herrera, Anales, cites ff. 153-154.

81 Konetzke, Coleccidn, tomo I, pp. 237-240. 82 Bowser, African, p. 147. 83 "Expediente seguido por don Ger6nimo de Villegas, protector de los naturales de esta ciudad, por

la persona de don Lorenzo Reyes, indio natural del Valle de Chicama, contra Pedro negro esclavo de Antonio Franco y de otro negro, esclavo de Manuel Gudifio," ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1344 (1636), f. 1.

84 "Expediente seguido por don Antonio Solano de Suazo, Alcalde de la Santa Hermandad, contra don Francisco negro criollo esclavo," ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1336 (1626).

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40 "IN A WAR AGAINST THE SPANISH"

attack to the investigating magistrate.85 Colonial sanctioned rights, thus, sepa- rated "Indians" from "Africans" on the coastal estates. Indigenous identity, therefore, provided advantages for indigenous laborers (as well as reducci6n members) who appeared more often as agents in judicial cases because of their rights as protected subjects. Enslaved Africans and their enslaved descendants who were not afforded the same colonial privileges.

What, then, were the elements of contact or points of fissure between rural laborers on coastal estates? In the early seventeenth century, Spanish landholders transformed the labor economy of the northern valleys by pres- suring indigenous communities to relinquish their land and water resources so that reducci6n "Indians" became indigenous yanaconas. Some estate owners developed sugar mills, but most continued to sell flour, wheat, and livestock from their ranches and farms to Pacific regional markets.86 Land- holders of these mixed estates could not yet afford to purchase a large number of adult slaves, valued at five hundred pesos on the northern coast, so coastal haciendas relied on a mix of labor practices as well as laborers.87 Enslaved men (and some women) inhabited, therefore, an indigenous soci- ety where mitayos were still part of the rural labor force, but contracted indigenous laborers assumed supervisory positions and even managed ranches and farms on their own. Also, yanaconas though separated from their colonial reducciones, continued to submit obligatory tribute payments and to call on colonial protective mandates in colonial courts. Thus, hired indigenous laborers on rural estates had significant (and suggestive) contact with African slaves and their descendants, but did not form a shared identity with these newcomers who did not constitute a protected collectivity in

practice or in law on the northern coast.

"IN A WAR AGAINST THE SPANISH":

INDIGENOUS DEFENSE AND AFRICAN RESISTANCE

Indigenous laborers were not the only native coastal inhabitants to defend and to define their protected status as "Indians." Faced with the demands of

Spanish estates that increasingly included the presence of enslaved Africans and their descendants, indigenous communities employed colonial mandates to defend the rights of their reducciones, and in doing so underscored their

85 "Mandamiento del gobernador Fadrique Cancer, corregidor de Trujillo para que se averigue la muerte de Cristobal de Olmedo, mayordomo del trapiche de Diego Gomez de Alvarado por sus negros esclavos," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 239. Exp. 2254 (1613).

86 Ramirez, Provincial, p. 71. 87 Ramirez, Provincial, p. 163.

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RACHEL SARAH O'TOOLE 41

colonial position as "Indians." Indigenous communities appealed to royal protection such as in the case of the reducci6n of Paijan, whose members petitioned the viceroy to stop the regional magistrate from taking more laborers from their already reduced numbers. The reducci6n, with some notarial assistance, declared that the magistrate took indigenous laborers "without having an order or a provision" of the viceroy that was necessary for the allocation of mitayos.88 Even in declaring that they were unable to supply the required number of mitayos, coastal indigenous communities acknowledged their obligation as "Indian" communities to send forced laborers, albeit in reduced numbers.89 Indigenous communities also employed the protector de los naturales to defend mitayos against Spanish abuse and to force landholders to pay appropriate wages.90 In 1609, the indigenous leader of Chicama and the indigenous colonial official of Mag- dalena de Cao employed royal mandates to defend community members from labor exploitation by a local hacienda owner.91 In doing so, indigenous communities seized opportunities afforded by colonial courts that, in turn, defined them as "naturales" or "Indians" deserving protection. In the context of encroaching Spanish estates, indigenous leaders asserted their rights as colonial subjects within the Republic of the Indians.

Indigenous leaders and communities also employed their colonial status to separate themselves from enslaved Africans as well as free people of color. In 1621, Chicama indigenous leaders asked the viceroy to enforce the separation between non-"Indians" and indigenous people in order to avoid abuse.92 In doing so, the heads of the indigenous reducciones called on Crown orders, as reiterated by Trujillo's town council, to remove "negros, negras, mulatos, [and] free mulatas" living in "Indian towns" (pueblos de indios) and other rural envi- rons where they caused "notable harm" to indigenous and Spanish people.93 By calling on colonial authorities to enforce these mandates, indigenous leaders contributed to discursive, if not actual, separation of indigenous reducciones or

88 The cacique of Paijan reported that members were "absent" so the reduccidn could not fulfill its mita requirement. ADL. Co. Asuntos de Gobierno. Leg. 266. Exp. 3072 (1606).

89 An epidemic in Mansiche and Huanchaco inhibited the reduccidn from supplying required mitayos. ADL. Co. Asuntos de Gobierno. Leg. 266. Exp. 3073 (1607).

90 ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 241. Exp. 2298 (1617); ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 240. Exp. 2264 (1614). 91 "Expediente seguido por don Pedro de Mora, cacique principal de Chicama y don Antonio de

Jalcaguaman, alcalde ord. del Magdalena de Cao contra Pedro de Santiago, espafiol residente en dho valle sobre maltratos recibidos," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 238. Exp. 2214 (1609).

92 "Petici6n de Don Diego Mache, cacique del pueblo de Santiago y segunda persona del valle de Chicama, para que se cumplan las provisiones y autos obedecidos de la prohibici6n a los Espafioles de hacer campafias y arrendar las tierras que los caciques, principales e indios, tienen," ADL. Co. Asuntos de Gobierno. Leg. 267. Exp. 3103 (1621), f. 3.

93 Larco, Anales, cites ff. 238v-242.

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42 "IN A WAR AGAINST THE SPANISH"

pueblos de indios from the rest of the colonial population.94 In doing so, indige- nous populations defined themselves as dependents of Spanish colonial author- ities by evoking the danger represented by enslaved and free people of color. As part of this protective strategy, indigenous leaders pursued court cases against fugitive slaves and secured commissions from Trujillo's magistrate to capture escaped slaves who threatened, or were constructed as threatening, the Crown protections of the colonial reducci6n.95 Again, indigenous communities were paid for capturing fugitive slaves who also presented a problem to Span- ish landholders and other regional elites.96 In this way, indigenous communi- ties may have been constructing a separation from free and enslaved people of color while associating themselves with powerful patrons: the owners or the beneficiaries of the expanding rural estates.97

That indigenous communities constructed conflicts involving enslaved Africans according to particular strategies of protection still reveals continu- ing contact among slaves and indigenous laborers. During a weekend bor- rachera in the Chicama valley, members of the reducci6n of Santiago de Cao assaulted Francisco Mandinga, a slave who had joined their gathering.98 At first, the assembled members of the Santiago de Cao community urged Fran- cisco Mandinga to accept their invitation to drink. Santiago de Cao reducci6n members knew Francisco Mandinga enough to ask him to join their gather- ing. Yet, they did not instruct or protect him once he had entered their charged socio-political space, as borracheras were still a means for indigenous people to conduct community business. Apparently, he provoked their ire when he chose the wrong seat inside the gathering. In addition to Francisco Mandinga and probably others like him, members of the Santiago de Cao reducci6n still considered other indigenous men as outsiders. A forastero (indigenous migrant) who was drinking with the group testified that he did not get involved or attempt to stop the Santiago de Cao members from beating Fran- cisco Mandinga.99 Similarly, other migrants and yanaconas who were present

94 See the 1604 declaration that Indians were not to live outside of their reducciones and the 1618

ruling that Indians should not leave their reduccidn to move to another. Paredes, Recopilacidn, Libro VI. Titulo III, f. 200. Konetzke, Coleccion, vol. 2, tomo 1, pt. 1, pp. 63, 64.

95 "Expediente seguido por don Andr6s Pay Pay Chumbi, principal del Cao, contra Alonso Sinchez que llama cuchara, mulato esclavo de Jean de Garcia Calder6n, sobre haberle quitado la mujer," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 241. Exp. 2329 (1621), ff. 50, 84v.

96 "Auto del maestro de campo don Pedro de Salazar y Figueroa, corregidor para que se reciba infor- maci6n de los delitos cometidos por dos negros cimarrones que salteaban en el camino real que va a Simbal y que fueron cogidos por una quadrilla de indios dirigidos por Tomas principal y alcalde de los naturales del Mansiche," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 247. Exp. 2583 (1657).

97 Thanks to Ben Vinson III for the reminder of what indigenous communities had to gain by cap- turing fugitive slaves.

98 ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 241. Exp. 2304 (1617). 99 ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 241. Exp. 2304 (1617), f. 3v.

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explained that they were afraid of the indigenous men from Santiago de Cao who may have been targeted during the fray.•" In this context, the bystander status of hired laborers suggests they were "indigenous" enough to be pres- ent at the Santiago de Cao borrachera. Yet, indigenous yanaconas were asso- ciated with the surrounding haciendas where they worked and were not mem- bers of the local reducci6n. Likewise, Francisco Mandinga was not a reducci6n member and his owner was engaged in a protracted struggle with local indigenous reducciones. (He had argued over the payment for the cap- ture of an escaped slave with the principal of Magdalena de Cao; a nearby reducci6n with kinship ties to Santiago de Cao.101) In addition, the landholder was actively pressuring the reducci6n to provide more laborers to his hacienda.102 Thus, reducci6n members associated both indigenous laborers and an enslaved African with an encroaching hacendado, but constructed Francisco Mandinga as a more accessible and likely target of their discontent.

Still, indigenous communities had tenuous, yet occasionally constructive, relations with fugitive slaves who had more clearly distanced themselves from their owners. In 1611, an indigenous farmer in the Santa Catalina valley contracted Francisco Ballano to work in his fields. The enslaved man later claimed that he had been looking for work as an "independent" slave whose wages would benefit his owner.103 As such, Francisco Ballano was among an undetermined number of individual enslaved men and women who sought to negotiate better arrangements with a new owner or a patron, including indige- nous people who still had land yet needed more labor. 104Such was the case in the Santa Catalina valley where a fugitive slave group led by Gabriel and Domingo (whose attempted capture began this article) intensified their raid- ing in the late 1630s and early 1640s, and indigenous people still maintained communal and private lands. When the magistrate accused Francisco Ballano of being a runaway, Ballano claimed to have legally contracted his labor with the indigenous farmer. Yet, illustrating the ambiguity of Francisco Ballano's

00 ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 241. Exp. 2304 (1617), f. 5. 101 ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 241. Exp. 2329 (1621), f. 84v. 102 See "Expediente seguido por...indios naturales del Magdalena de Cao contra Bartolom6 de

Miranda, vecino Trujillo labrador valle Chicama sobre que ocupe dos personas para la guarde de sus

ganados," ADL. Co. Ord. Leg. 179. Exp. 890 (1630). 103 "Expediente seguido por Juan de Paz, cl6rigo de menores ordenes, sacristan mayor de la Santa

Iglesia por la persona de su procurador contra Pedro Suarez indio sillero; sobre haber tenido oculto y escondido a un negro suya en una chacara," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 239. Exp. 2227 (1611).

104 For capture of fugitive slaves working without permission of their owner see ADL. Protocolos. Escobar. Leg. 143 (1640), f. 103 in which an owner contracted a merchant to find his fugitive slave in Lima. See "Mandamiento...para que se averigue el tiempo que anda huido el negro Juan Bran, esclavo de Juan Hernandez, morador en Cajamarca," ADL. Ca. Ord. Leg. 16. Exp. 343 (1616) that describes how Juan Bran went in search of another owner and was declared a cimarr6n.

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44 "IN A WAR AGAINST THE SPANISH"

status, indigenous witnesses did not declare whether he was a slave legally selling his labor or an escaped slave. The dissemblance of local agriculturists and agrarian laborers suggests that they accepted Francisco Ballano since they had not reported the fugitive as ordered by colonial law or invoked the Crown protections of indigenous communities.105 Though temporary, Pedro Suarez and other indigenous farmers incorporated the fugitive slave into their rural economy in a mutually beneficial relationship.

Indigenous communities and fugitive slaves had many points of contact in rural areas. Fugitive slaves sought out arid hillsides and remote ravines that provided refuge and safety for their rustic houses where they would meet indigenous herders and firewood collectors.106 Indigenous communi- ties knew the locations of fugitive slave settlements and were aware of the routes escaped slaves routinely traveled to indigenous fields, Spanish haciendas, and even local towns.'o7 In the rural environs, contact between rural indigenous people and fugitive slaves developed partly from routine trade as in the instance of the group led by two congo men described in the introduction of this article. The escaped slaves had established a settlement in the hills above the Santa Catalina valley where men and a few women recognized the authority of "Captain Gabriel" and his "Lieutenant" Domingo. The fugitive community may have cultivated small plots with hoes they purchased from indigenous farmers or laborers.'18 But, they prob- ably relied on trade for their subsistence. Fugitive slave women ground corn for cornmeal and chicha probably for the consumption of the community, but they may have sold a portion of the alcoholic drink to surrounding indigenous communities and rural laborers.109 With these funds (and other monies), Domingo regularly purchased goods that the community could not

105 In 1560, the Crown issued orders to the Viceroyalty of Peru that prohibited Spaniards, Indians, or

negros from hiding cimarrones. Konetzke, Coleccidn, I, pp. 384 - 388.

'06 ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), f. Iv; "Mandamiento del Almirante Martin Zamalvide, Corregidor y Justicia Mayor de Trujillo, para que los cuadrilleros aprehendan a muchos negros cimar- rones que andan sueltos cometiendo dafios y agravios a los indios naturales en los caminos de la sierra," ADL. Co. Asuntos de Gobierno. Leg. 267. Exp. 3147 (1646), f. 2.

107 For indigenous knowledge of cimarrdn settlements see ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 245. Exp. 2500 (1639), f. 2. For fugitive slaves traveling into the fields and settlements in the cultivated valleys see ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), ff. 17v, 21v, 23v, 28v. Fugitive slaves sometimes learned to travel in iso- lated areas from indigenous people. For example, originally from southwestern Africa, Cristina angola first escaped from her owner's ranch with an indio mitayo who most likely showed her the way in the

dry wasteland between the Pascamayo and the Chicama valleys. ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 78. Exp. 1284 (1609). 108 ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), f. 23.

109 ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), ff. 18v, 21v, 28v. One of the leaders of the settlement, Domingo congo, encountered Geronima, a negra criolla from Cajamarca and a fugitive, by the main water resevoir in Trujillo. He was on horseback with two containers of chicha. ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79.

Exp. 1350 (1641), f. 17v.

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RACHEL SARAH O'TOOLE 45

make including tobacco, soap, and bread from indigenous men as well as urban slaves.110 As confessed by Isabel, a ladina from angola land (south- west Africa), Gabriel had his "dealings" or "business" with the indigenous people of the Santa Catalina valley for years."1 As in the case of Francisco Ballano (the fugitive slave who sought work from indigenous farmers in the Santa Catalina valley), indigenous communities constructed when and where they would accept and even encourage contact with fugitive slaves.

African resistance to Spanish slavery, however, did not always coincide with indigenous strategies. Fugitive slaves were reliant on indigenous communities in a manner not always welcomed by local inhabitants. In addition to trading and farming, the fugitive slaves led by Gabriel and Domingo survived by steal- ing from indigenous inhabitants and travelers. In the Santa Catalina valley, the group stole corn, yams, and beans from fields, robbed cattle from corrals as well as chickens, turkeys, pigs, and clothing from rural, predominately indige- nous, households.112 In the adjacent Chicama valley, solitary fugitives, or groups of two or three survived, it appears, by stealing from valley fields including those of Spanish haciendas that may have been cultivated by indige- nous laborers for their own sustenance.113 Initially, there may have been reasons for indigenous communities to tolerate an occasional theft of corn or goats as fugitive slaves like Francisco Ballano may also have supplied itinerant labor.114 Furthermore, Gabriel and Domingo's fugitive slave group initially robbed indigenous traders from the highlands who were not necessarily considered members of local communities."115 Nonetheless, indigenous people who toler- ated theft in favor of beneficial trade joined Spanish attacks against fugitive slave encampments when cimarrones began to more aggressively raid the com- munities that had at least tacitly supported them.

Gabriel and Domingo's fugitive encampment may have been forced or may have chosen to shift from trading to raiding. By 1641, Gabriel and

10 ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), ff. 18v, 26, 30; ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 245. Exp. 2500 (1639), ff. 10-11v.

I" ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), f. 23. 112 ADL. Asuntos de Gobierno. Leg. 267. Exp. 3147 (1646), f. 2; ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350

(1641), ff. 18v, 22, 22v, 26, 29, 30. 113 ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), ff. 15, 31, 31v, 32v, 34v. 114 For another case of fugitive slaves hiring themselves out for wages, see Carlos Lazo Garcia, Del

Negro seiiorial al negro bandolero, cimarronaje y palenques en Lima, siglo XVIII (Lima: Biblioteca Peruana de Historia, Economia y Sociedad, 1977), p. 51.

"115 ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), ff. 1,4; ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1353 (1642), ff. Iv, 2. An indigenous artisan in the Santa Catalina valley testified that he met an "indio of the highlands who was brother of the foreman of Yagon whose name he does not remember." ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1353 (1642), f. 4.

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46 "IN A WAR AGAINST THE SPANISH"

Domingo's community was no longer eating well and had resorted to a diet of snails, a mainstay for indigenous communities during famine.116 Also, the predominately male cimarr6n group had not been able to defend themselves from the colonial rural guard who succeeded in capturing a few fugitive women. The captives explained that increased Spanish attacks had forced the settlement's leaders to focus on defensive warfare rather than obtaining food, causing members to defect.11"7 Thus, the group had begun to raid more often because of increasingly limited options as witnesses testified that Gabriel and Domingo sent a party every four days from their hillside settlement to appro- priate foodstuffs."8 As Spanish haciendas expanded into areas that had pre- viously been habitations for fugitive slaves or indigenous herders, cimarrones may no longer have been able to cultivate lands that were capable of marginal production."9 Spanish encroachment may have also pressured indigenous agriculturists to develop lands that bordered and perhaps overlapped with fields, pastures, and woods that fugitive slaves may have depended on for cultivation and had, perhaps, previously foraged without consequence.120

Most likely, an agricultural crisis in the northern coastal valleys explained the cimarr6n shift in tactics. Gabriel and Domingo's encampment had almost doubled its members (and therefore its needs) between 1639 and 1641, perhaps because Spanish estate owners were unable to feed their slaves. After the 1619 earthquake and then severe flooding in 1624, the Tru- jillo municipal council and indigenous communities along the northern coast repeatedly reported, well into the late 1630s and 1640s, that laborers were scarce as were foodstuffs.'21 Trujillo's slaveholders may have been suffering

116 ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), ff. 27, 30. C6sar A. Galvez Mora, Juan Castafieda

Murga, and Rosario M. Becerra Ortega, "Caracoles terrestes: 11,000 Amos de tradition alimentaria en la costa norte del Peril," Cultura, Identidad y Cocina en el Peru (Lima: Escuela Profesional de Turismo y Hoteleria. Facultad de Ciencias de la Comunicaci6n, Turismo y Sicologifa. Universidad San Martin de Porres, 1993).

117 ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), f. 30. "8 ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), f. 2. 119 In the fugitive settlements surrounding Lima, cimarrones cultivated fields. Lazo Garcia, Del

Negro, pp. 18, 19. 120 Fugitive slaves near Lima planted crops, fished, hunted, and sold firewood as well as reed bas-

kets and mats to subsist. When local haciendas began to recover from an economic crisis in the later part of the eighteenth century, fugitive slaves lost marginal lands that had been the basis of their survival. Vic- toria Espinosa Descalzo, Cartografia de Lima (1654-1893) (Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Seminario de Historia Rural Andina, 1999), pp. xx; Victoria Espinosa Descalzo, "Cimarronaje y palenques en la costa central del Peril: 1700-1815,"

in Primer seminario sobre poblaciones inmi- grantes. Actas. Lima, 9 7 10 de mayo de 1986. Tomo 2 (Lima: Consejo Nactional de Ciencia y Tecnolo-

gia, 1988), p. 31. 121 In 1632 the vecinos of Trujillo complain of the poverty, land sterility, and ruined city resulting

from the 1619 earthquake. See Larco Herrera, Anales, who cites ff. 162-164v. Again in 1639, the Trujillo

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from a lack of income because the earthquake had ruined coastal irrigation canals usually maintained by indigenous reducciones, which now faced a severe lack of members.122 Without proper irrigation, the land became ster- ile and the fields flooded with contaminated waters. It was within this con- text that Trujillo's municipal council reported that armed fugitive slaves robbed and assaulted indigenous and African laborers on the surrounding haciendas.123 It is probable that this local crisis pushed slaves to escape into the uncultivated wilderness and indigenous communities in marginal valleys such as Santa Catalina.124 To return to the tactics of Gabriel and Domingo's encampment, the decline in local agricultural production may have also

adversely affected marginal economies thus provoking fugitive slaves into more antagonistic raiding of indigenous communities that had once been tol- erant of their presence.

The changes in the northern coastal economy were accompanied by a shift on a transatlantic scale. The origins and the experiences of Africans who were

forcibly traded from Atlantic Africa to the Pacific were undergoing a radical transformation that may also explain the increase in robberies and assaults associated with fugitive slaves on the northern Peruvian coast. From the six- teenth into the seventeenth centuries, enslaved Africans in Peru had origi- nated primarily in the Senegambian region with significant numbers also from Southwestern and Central Africa.125 Yet, on the northern Peruvian coast, the sales of men and women from the Kingdom of Kongo and other princi- palities in Southwestern and Central Africa, as recorded by Trujillo's

vecinos complained of the resulting poverty from the earthquake. See Larco Herrera, Anales, cites ff. 8-

15v. In 1643 the Trujillo cabildo claimed that there was no public jail in the city since the 1619 earth-

quake. See Larco Herrera, Anales, cites f. 100. Anne Marie Hocquenghem, et al "Eventos El Nifio y llu- vias anormales en la costa del Peni: siglos XVI-XIX," Bulletin de l'Institut Frangais d'Etudes Andines 21:1 (1992), p. 148.

122 Larco Herrera, Anales, cites 366-366v, 33, 102v-103; 162-164v; 8-15v, 22-23; 184-185; "Obe- decimiento pero no su cumplimiento de los corregidores de Safia y partido de Chiclayo...de la Real Pro- vision despachado por el virrey sobre la repartici6n de los indios yungas y serranos para la reedificaci6n de Trujillo--la misma que habia quedado averiada por los efects del terremoto que asol6 y destruj6 la ciudad," ADL. Co. Asuntos de Gobierno. Leg. 267. Exp. 3106 (1622), f. 8v; "Mandamiento...para que se tome las cuentas a los receptores de la alcabalas encabezonadas de esta ciudad y villas de Santa y Caxamarca y valle de Guadalupe," ADL. Co. Juez de Residencia. Leg. 275. Exp. 3441 (1637).

123 "Visita por los del Consejo Real de las Indias la residencia ...," AGI. Escribania. Leg. 1189

(1648). In 1642 the slaves on a Chicama hacienda revolted. See "Auto... para que vaya al Chicama valle ha hacer las diligencia necesarias sobre la muerte de Salvador, mulato esclavo...hecho por Francisco de

Cervantes, a causa de haberle dado muchos azotes y otros maltratamientos," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 246. Exp. 2530 (1642), f. 24; Larco Herrera, Anales, cites f. 140v.

124 Espinosa, Cartografia, pp. xiii, xiv, xxxvii, lxiv; David Barry Gaspar, "Runaways in Seventeenth-

century Antigua, West Indies," Boletin de estudios latinoamericanos y del Caribe 26 (1979), p. 9. 125 Bowser, African, pp. 40-43.

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48 "IN A WAR AGAINST THE SPANISH"

notaries, markedly increased in the 1630s and 1640s.126 This period coin- cided with the conquest of Matamba by a rebel chiefdom previously under control of the Kingdom of Kongo, one of the main suppliers of enslaved

congos and angolas sold to Portuguese slave traders at the port of Luanda on the southwestern Atlantic African coast.127 The defecting leader (and other communities seeking protection) employed forms of the Imbangala kilombo, an initiation society or warrior fraternity that included substantial military training, charms of supernatural assistance, and the tactic of sending out small squadrons who attacked without warning.128 In the Americas, Africans from these regions, congos and angolas, adapted war camps or hideouts to become quilombos, palenques, and other fugitive slave settlements and

encampments.129 On the northern coast, these strategies emerged as indige- nous and Spanish observers described how men from Gabriel and Domingo's group attacked in military formations while playing drums, throwing lances, and shooting firearms.130 Previously, fugitive slaves on the northern coast from Central Africa and Senegambia had traveled in small bands to forage in

indigenous fields and coastal haciendas. The changing tactics of the encamp- ment, therefore, could have reflected the large majority of members who

originated from the southwestern interiors of Kongo and other kingdoms during this period of military conflict in southwestern Africa.

Indigenous witnesses also claimed that a group of three or more cimarrones from southwestern Africa attacked rural indigenous settlements including the reducci6n of Paijan in the Chicama valley. In addition to stealing clothing and textiles, the fugitive slaves raped indigenous women in front of their hus-

126 Rachel Sarah O'Toole, "Inventing Difference: Africans, Indians, and the Antecedents of 'Race' in Colonial Peru (1580s-1720s)" Ph.D Dissertation. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2001; Appendices B and C.

127 Anne Hilton, The Kingdom of Kongo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), pp. 110-111; Joseph C. Miller, "Central Africa During the Era of the Slave Trade, c. 1490s- 1850s," in Central Africans and Cul- tural Transformations in the American Diaspora, Linda Heywood, editor (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2002), pp. 26, 36-37

128 Joseph C. Miller, Kings and Kinsmen: Early Mbundu States in Angola (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 232, 237, 240-241.

129 Stuart Schwartz, "Rethinking Palmares: Slave Resistance in Colonial Brazil," in Slaves, Peas- ants, and Rebels: Reconsidering Brazilian Slavery (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), p. 125; Robert Nelson Anderson, "The Quilombo of Palmares: A New Overview of a Marron State in Seven- teenth-Century Brazil," Journal of Latin American Studies 28:3 (1996), pp. 555, 557, 565; John Thorn- ton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1992), pp. 100-102.

130 ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), ff. Iv, 23, 27v; "Expediente seguido por don Andr6s de Careaga Provincial y alcalde de la Santa Hermandad de Trujillo ciudad contra don Francisco Noifiez de Balsera y Juan Quespo sobre ocultaci6n de negros eslavos y no entregarlos," ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1351 (1641), f. 1.

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bands.'31 Fugitives who confessed and indigenous witnesses identified the assailants as Juan Mosanga, Manuel angola, Mateo angola, Pasqual of congo land, and a "negro called Xinga."132 African identities were much more com- plicated than the labels attached by Spanish slaveholders, and colonial judicial investigations often identify the accused, not necessarily the guilty. Nonethe- less, it is possible that the fugitives from the Chicama valley shared a certain model of the quilombo or military base based on standards of secretive male warrior society with strict gender divisions.133 As an offensive military insti- tution, armed attack by the all-male fugitive slave groups may have included the sexual assault against indigenous village women. However, in this case, indigenous people did not accuse Gabriel and Domingo's group, perhaps reflecting a more long-standing relationship between indigenous villagers in the Santa Catalina valley and the neighboring fugitive settlements. Addition- ally, members respected Gabriel and Domingo as their "captain" and "lieu- tenant," and thus may have followed distinct interpretations of the adapted quilombo formation.134 Regardless, the attacks in the Chicama valley by the smaller fugitive group strongly suggest a marked turn in relations between fugitive slaves and indigenous communities and laborers.

By the late 1630s and early 1640s, indigenous communities in both the Chi- cama and the Santa Catalina valleys repeatedly complained of fugitive slaves who robbed and assaulted in fields and on highways. Yet, Spanish officials were relatively ineffective until 1641 when "many Indians" joined the Spanish attack against the group led by Gabriel and Domingo in the Santa Catalina valley.'35 According to colonial authorities, the rural guard was unable to locate Gabriel and Domingo's encampment until local indigenous farmers offered assistance. Until 1641, indigenous agriculturalists in the Santa Catalina valley claimed to not know the exact location of the fugitive slave's settlement.136 In contrast, the indigenous laborers in the Chicama valley were able to lead the rural guard to the refuges of fugitive slaves who attacked reducciones as well as haciendas.'37 Again, the varying level of indigenous assistance may reflect

'31 ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), f. 8. 132 ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), ff. 32, 32v, 34, 34v. 133 Miller, Kings, p. 232; ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1640), ff. 18v, 22, 23v, 30. 134 For a fascinating discussion of internal disagreements, hierarchies, and choices to employ more

aggressive tactics within a Cartagena palenque that experienced a similar influx of malembas from south- western central Africa see Kathryn Joy McKnight, "Confronted Rituals: Spanish Colonial and Angolan 'Maroon' Executions in Cartagena de Indias 1634," Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 5:3 (2004).

135 ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), f. lv. 136 ADL. Co. Asuntos de Gobierno. Leg. 267. Exp. 3147 (1646), f. 2. 137 "Expediente seguido por Andr6s de Careaga, Alcalde de la Santa Hermandad, contra Juan Gomez

de Cabrera, mayordomo que fue de la hacienda de Facalai; sobre haber herido...," ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 245.

Exp. 2513 (1640), f. 34.

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the distinct relationships between indigenous communities and fugitive slave groups. The captain of the rural guard positioned his men in the Gasfiape ravines in the Chicama valley to successfully capture a number of fugitive slaves.138 The rural guard chose the Gasfiape location with the assistance of

indigenous laborers and others from the nearby Facala hacienda, one of the

largest sugar estates in the Chicama valley. Facala's yanaconas, Alonso Loxa and others, were so familiar with one of the notorious fugitives, Pasqual "of congo land," that they could track his footprints.139 Indigenous laborers remembered Pasqual both as a former slave on the Facala hacienda and as a leader of the attacks during which he had insulted them and other indigenous men.140 More pointedly, the indigenous laborer acted in defense of his reduc- ci6n, Paijan; he and others identified Pasqual as one of the fugitives who raped three indigenous women in front of other indigenous men, who were perhaps their partners, husbands, or fathers.141 Like other indigenous men who would join Spanish officials to capture fugitive slaves, Alonso Loxa acted in his best interest to defend his person and his community against African antagonists who had been pushed to the margins of a slavery society.

The reduction of indigenous landholdings increased the stakes for reduc- ciones as well as indigenous laborers who attempted to defend limited resources and to assert personal security against any outsiders including indigenous yanaconas, Spanish hacienda owners, and African slaves. At the same time, enslaved African men and women (including some born in the Americas) resisted the impositions of slavery by seeking out independent work relations and by removing themselves from the control of owners.

Negotiating the desert terrain as solitary individuals or organized settle- ments, cimarrones established alternative communities that, in some regions of the Americas, would last for decades if not centuries.142 For rural slaves with little access to the courts, patronage, and wage labor offered by urban environs, cimarronaje was a common strategy especially during periods of famine or crisis when hacienda owners abandoned their obligations to enslaved laborers. By 1641, two captured women testified that their leader Gabriel congo, was engaged in a "war against the Spanish." Similarly, Kathryn McKnight identified how malembas (also from southwestern Africa) led a community of fugitive slaves against an indigenous village in

138 ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), f. 2. 139 ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), f. 7v. 140 ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1351 (1641), ff. 1, 5. 141 ADL. Ca. Cr. Leg. 79. Exp. 1350 (1641), f. 8. 142 For example, see Kris Lane's discussion of the fugitive slave community of Esmeraldas on the

Pacific littoral. Kris Lane, Quito 1599: City and Colony in Transition (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002), p. 23.

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retaliation for their betrayal of the group to Spanish authorities.143 Likewise, Gabriel's war had little to do with the survival of indigenous communities or the indigenous laborers' defense of their honor. Indigenous communities, however, still strategically employed their protective Crown status while indigenous laborers called on Spanish patrons or their representatives to defend themselves. Furthermore, indigenous agriculturists also captured fugitives around their fields to underline a division of strategic choices rooted in colonial locations of "Indians" versus those of enslaved Africans.44

CONCLUSIONS

Indigenous communities did not disappear from the northern coastal val- leys as Spanish haciendas expanded and enslaved African populations grew. In contrast to the Chicama valley, the Mansiche community expanded their holdings in the Santa Catalina valley and survived additional Spanish estate development with renewed fugitive slave activity.145 Yet, as reducciones increasingly came under attack, indigenous people defended their commu- nities against fugitive slaves pushed to raid for survival. In addition, divi- sions between Africans and indigenous people widened on the estates where contracted indigenous laborers accessed new patronage networks not avail- able to Africans and their descendants or even indigenous workers still attached to their reducciones. Such colonial protections were not available to enslaved or free Africans. Yet, these legal distinctions were not the source of conflict. Instead, conflicts among Africans and indigenous people were contingent on how they accessed scarce resources in an expanding sugar economy through exchanges of labor and attempts of theft.

Indigenous and African laborers faced distinct challenges and therefore developed alternative, and sometimes clashing strategies. Africans and their descendants challenged the pressures of slavery. Indigenous people negotiated the demands of tribute and mita. "Indian" communities and laborers employed the protections at least nominally offered by the Spanish Crown and erratically enforced by local colonial officials. Africans and their descendants adapted southwestern African military strategies to an ongoing siege against Spanish slaveholders. In the process, indigenous people separated themselves from African laborers, enslaved and fugitive, who employed strategies of offensive war camps and itinerant trading that threatened "Indian" colonial adaptations.

143 McKnight, "Confronted," paragraph 127.

44 ADL. Co. Cr. Leg. 245. Exp. 2500 (1639), ff. 3, 3v.

145 ADL. Protocolos. Viera Gutierrez, Pedro. Leg. 258 #472 (1655), ff. 704-705v; "Compulsa de las cuentas de las retasas de indios de Trujillo...," ADL. Hacienda. Compulsas. Leg. 131. Exp. 161 (1688), ff. llv-19.

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Conflicts among Africans and indigenous people, therefore, occurred in the context of increasing colonial pressures on reducciones. Unlike the explana- tions of Spanish colonizers, there was not a natural antagonism between indigenous and African people. Contemporary historical interpretations have also drawn attention to the intermediary status of enslaved or free Africans who served their owners by intimating, assaulting, or punishing indigenous people as soldiers, overseers, or personal assistants.'46 Yet, such interpreta- tions recreate static or fixed identities for dynamic communities of indigenous or African people whose situations changed as haciendas expanded. Instead, Spanish slaveholding practices on the northern Peruvian coast fostered mutu- ally beneficial contact between Africans and neighboring "Indians" who traded, exchanged, and lived in close proximity to each other. Yet, when envi- ronmental disasters produced local crises in irrigation and agricultural pro- duction, the informal and contingent relationships between slaves and indige- nous laborers gave way to legal justifications of differences and new alliances. Indigenous peoples, regardless of their location in colonial reducciones or colonial estates, could call on their protected status as "Indians" in ways that was not yet replicated for enslaved Africans and their descendants. Siding with colonial authorities to remove African fugitives was a temporary but effective solution. Yet, by analyzing the context of economic and demographic changes in the northern coastal valleys, this article argues that subaltern rural people- indigenous and African--employed changing strategies to survive distinct impositions of colonialism and slavery. Divided by multiple geographic, eco- nomic, and cultural boundaries of greater Trujillo, indigenous people defended themselves not because they saw Africans as intermediaries of Spanish colo- nizers, but because of a prudent colonial strategy within a particular regional context. Likewise, enslaved, fugitive, and free Africans conducted "a war

against the Spanish" that disrupted affinities with indigenous communities but provided a Diaspora solution to the exploitation of Andean slavery.

University of California Irvine, California

RACHEL SARAH O'TOOLE

146 Bowser, African, pp. 7, 147, 150, 151-153. Laura Lewis' critical study of the gendered construc- tions of difference reiterates the status of Africans as intermediaries between Spanish colonizers and

indigenous people. Laura Lewis, Hall of Mirrors: Power Witchcraft, and Caste in Colonial Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 69, 72, 101.