3 - Purchasing Freedom

Summary

This chapter explores how enslaved people developed legal know-how about Castilian laws of slavery and freedom, and shared and exchanged such information with others. In particular, the chapter focuses on the history of enslaved Black people’s determination to raise capital or credit to purchase their liberty from their enslavers. The chapter explores how enslaved Black men and women often plotted their paths to liberty through economic decisions by focusing on the lives of enslaved Black people who resided in the towns along the Camino Real in New Spain between Veracruz and Mexico City during a time of economic boom in the late sixteenth century. Notarial records that cataloged the self-purchase and liberation of enslaved people in port towns of the Spanish Atlantic often reveal how enslaved Black people developed social ties and capital among kin, friends, and charitable residents, and consorted with people from varied socioeconomic backgrounds who lived or passed through the places where they resided. These records index a history of conversations about strategies to obtain liberty among enslaved Black people and relationships across different socioeconomic spheres that allowed for some enslaved people to access precious credit to pay for their liberty.