11 - Juana Ramírez, Eighteenth-Century Oaxaca, New Spain (Mexico)

Summary

In eighteenth-century New Spain, free and enslaved African descent women challenged the social order by negotiating their social identities in various colonial spaces. Juana Ramirez was a freed African descent woman who was labeled as both a mulata and an Indian woman in the historical record. In 1761, Juana was interrogated by inquisitors in Antequera for transforming herself into a tall, white figure. In the context of this Inquisition case, Juana’s legal and social statuses were questioned, and local authorities reported that Juana was a mulata criolla and that she was not a “pure” Indian woman. The authorities also indicated that they initially could not pinpoint her social status and thus, they initially referred her case to the Juzgado General de Indios. The uncertainty of Juana’s ethnic background suggests that she possibly proclaimed her indigenous identity to attain her legal freedom at an earlier point in the eighteenth century. By analyzing Juana’s behavior in enslavement and freedom, this chapter highlights how African descent women navigated the Spanish colonial courts and relied on self-fashioning to secure their state of freedom in the Spanish colonial world.