6 - African-Descent Women and the Limits of Confraternal Devotion in Colonial Lima, Peru

Summary

Abstract

African-descent women played essential roles in confraternity life in colonial Latin America. At the same time, however, confraternities often imposed strictures on African-descent women by tying their place within organizational hierarchies to their legal condition, marital status, and ancestral makeup. The unfortunate, uncomfortable truth was that, no matter how hard they worked or how much they sacrificed for confraternities, there were limits to what African-descent women's confraternal devotion could yield them. But what alternatives did they have outside of these institutions? To address this question, this chapter examines a small collection of eighteenth-century records from Lima's national archive that feature inventories of material possessions belonging to free women of African descent. Taken together, within and across each inventory, these diverse devotional items provide an opportunity to think about African-descent women's extra-confraternal devotional practices in colonial Lima.

Keywords: Peru, African diaspora, black Catholicism, women, extra-confraternal devotional practices, material culture

African-descent women played essential roles in confraternity life in colonial Latin America. From New Spain to Peru, Brazil, and other parts of the region, in contexts both rural and urban, they collected alms, cared for sick members, and were front and center in ceremonies, festivals, and public performances (as well as behind the scenes preparing for and cleaning up after them). These roles provided enslaved and free women alike opportunities to preserve ties to their communities and ancestors, wield autonomy and social influence, and to shape narratives about their histories and cultural identities. At the same time, however, confraternities often imposed strictures on African-descent women by tying their place within organizational hierarchies to their legal condition, marital status, and ancestral makeup. As I have shown elsewhere, in the context of nineteenth century Lima, even when they devoted their time and resources to confraternities, at the expense of pursuing individual freedom and family formation, enslaved women could find their leadership positions usurped by free women who were married to high-ranking men within those same organizations. The unfortunate, uncomfortable truth was that, no matter how hard they worked or how much they sacrificed for confraternities, there were limits to what African-descent women's confraternal devotion could yield them.