1. Archivo General de la Nación México [hereafter AGNM], Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, “Antonio Bohórquez con Catalina de los Reyes, sobre casas” (1670).

2. See Archivo General del Estado de Oaxaca [hereafter AGEO], Alcaldías Mayores; AGNM, Inquisición; AGNM, Indiferente Virreinal; Archivo Histórico de Notarías Oaxaca [hereafter AHNO], Protocolos Notariales [hereafter PN], Diego Benaias, vol. 155; AHNO, PN, Diego Benaias, vol. 165.

3. Silva, Pablo Miguel Sierra, “From Chains to Chiles: An Elite Afro-Indigenous Couple in Colonial Mexico, 1641–1688,” Ethnohistory 62:2 (April 2015): 362CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Using parish and notarial records, Sierra Silva situates the historical actors Felipe Monsón y Mojica and Juana María de la Cruz, as an elite Afro-Indigenous couple who engaged in orthodox behavior in Puebla.

4. The legal and defense counsel stated that Catalina owned several dwellings near the episcopal complex. They referred to these properties using the language “casas de la morada de Catalina de los Reyes” and “ambas casas,” which suggests that perhaps Catalina owned a larger property that included two or more homes. The legal counsel also referred to the casa that Catalina inhabited. One witness, the alcalde ordinario Miguel de Medrano Sifontes, mentioned that he had arrested an Indian woman and a mulato shoemaker who cohabitated in a “tienda” (store) of Catalina's property. Because Oaxaca's notarial archive lost all records dated before 1680 in an archival fire in the 2000s, I have not been able to find any historical sources connected to these properties in question.

5. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fols. 89v. I rely on the term ‘African-descended woman’ to refer to Catalina or other individuals of African descent. The term used in this land dispute to refer to Catalina's social status is overwhelmingly ‘mulata,’ however, she also self-identified as parda on two occasions. I also use “Black” as a broad-based term for African-descended people across the Americas.

6. Williams, Danielle Terrazas, The Capital of Free Women: Race, Legitimacy, and Liberty in Colonial Mexico (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), 152–153CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Terrazas Williams provides an excellent example of free African-descended women who similarly disrupted the social landscape of Xalapa through their ownership of prime real estate in the city.

7. For examples of African-descended property owners in Antequera, see AHNO, PN, Diego Benaias, vol. 152, fol. 716, Venta de casas (1699); and AHNO, PN, Diego Benaias, vol. 143, fol. 98, Venta de esclavos (1686). The case study of Catalina de los Reyes builds upon our understanding of the experiences of propertied Black women in the Americas. I have identified at least 125 African-descended property owners (labeled as mulato, pardo, or negro) in Oaxaca's notarial records for the entire colonial period. Twenty-one of these individuals owned property between 1680 and 1700, roughly around the time of Catalina's land dispute. Of this number, eight African-descended women owned property in Antequera during this period.

8. See Terrazas Williams, The Capital of Free Women; Silva, Pablo Miguel Sierra, Urban Slavery in Colonial Mexico: Puebla de los Ángeles, 1531–1706 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gharala, Norah L. A., Taxing Blackness: Free Afromexican Tribute in Bourbon New Spain (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2019)Google Scholar; and Gutiérrez, María Elisa Velázquez, Mujeres de origen africano en la capital novohispana, siglos XVII y XVIII (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma de México, 2006)Google Scholar. Terrazas Williams's The Capital of Free Women reveals the multiple forms of social and economic capital that women held in the broader region of Veracruz. The Atlantic-facing port in which captive Africans entered the colony of New Spain and the sugar plantations in its surrounding regions undoubtedly created a unique setting for African-descended women to hold such capital.

9. Williams, Danielle Terrazas, “‘My Conscience is Free and Clear’: African-Descended Women, Status, and Slave Owning in Mid-Colonial Mexico,” The Americas 75:3 (July 2018): 526CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In contrast to Herman Bennett's findings for seventeenth-century Mexico City, my findings from slave sales and manumission letters indicate that more enslaved people were purchased and sold in Oaxaca than those who attained their legal freedom between 1670 and 1700.

10. Here, I use “Black” to refer to all women of African descent, regardless of their colonial categorization, such as parda, mulata, or negra.

11. For a discussion of African-descended women's dispossession, see Marisa J. Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).

12. Terrazas Williams, “My Conscience is Free and Clear,” 526. In this article and The Capital of Free Women, Terrazas Williams posits that although African-descended women in Veracruz appeared to lack economic capital, their social networks, navigation of the legal processes, and marriage and inheritance patterns reveal their social and cultural capital in this region, and broadly in Mexico.

13. Terrazas Williams, The Capital of Free Women, 8–9. I rely on Terrazas Williams's understanding of Black women's social legitimacy as a practice in which they re-envisioned their capital. According to Terrazas Williams, African-descended women mobilized their social legitimacy by achieving orthodox practices such as marriage and baptisms, “managing their finances, and guarding a public reputation that invoked responsibility.”

14. Antequera was the name of Oaxaca City from the city's founding in 1529 to the late colonial period.

15. Chance, John, Race and Class in Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1978), 54–56Google Scholar.

16. Chance, Race and Class, 68.

17. José Antonio Gay and Pedro Vásquez Colmenares, Historia de Oaxaca (Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1982), vol. 1, t. 2: 220–221 and 354–356; Chance, Race and Class, 73. Chance estimated that Antequera had 3,000 inhabitants in 1660. However, José Antonio Gay found that the city's population had increased to 6,000 residents by 1699.

18. Taylor, William, Landlord and Peasant in Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), 18Google Scholar.

19. Chance, Race and Class, 132. Here, I use the term “Black” to refer to free and enslaved people labeled as “negro” or “negra” in the historical record. Chance disaggregated this marriage data as follows: 346 marriages with free mulatos, 38 marriages with enslaved mulatos, eight marriages involving free Black people, and 27 marriages including Black captives. While there were similar numbers of mulato men (172) and women (174) in marriage registers, the data varies significantly for all other categories: 24 mulato bondsmen vs. 14 bondswomen; six free Black men vs. two free Black women; 21 enslaved Black men vs. six Black enslaved women.

20. Chance, Race and Class, 130–132; Archivo General de Indias [hereafter AGI], Patronato 230B, ramo 10, “Juan Francisco de Montemayor: tributos de indios: Oaxaca” (1662). Only 233 Black and mulato adults could be levied for tribute in Antequera in 1661. This number represents approximately 27 percent of the population eligible for tribute. Notarial records from Oaxaca City offer a more comprehensive understanding of Antequera's African-descended population: bills of slave sale, manumission letters, wills, and property inventories show that the slave population could have ranged from several hundred people to over a thousand enslaved men, women, and children. Further, there are many more slave sales than manumission letters for the late seventeenth century, which indicates that Spanish elites continued to rely on slave labor until the early eighteenth century. Catalina de los Reyes does not appear in notarial records from this period, nor in the 1661 tributary census.

21. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fols. 6v-7v.

22. Chance, Race and Class, 134.

23. Chance, Race and Class, 106–107.

24. Chance, Race and Class, 106.

25. Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 160. Taylor shows that most new landowners in Antequera invested “as little as 1,000 pesos on a heavily mortgaged estate worth over 20,000 pesos.” The estate was likely the only possession of these landowners and thus became their livelihood, which indicates that landholding men in Antequera probably rented out their properties just as Catalina likely rented rooms in her home.

26. For a discussion of African-descended women in Spanish America, see Velázquez Gutiérrez, Mujeres de origen africano; Velázquez, María Elisa and Undurruaga, Carolina González, Mujeres africanas y afrodescendientes: experiencias de esclavitud y libertad en América Latina y Africa, siglos XVI a XIX (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2022)Google Scholar; Aguilar, Maira Cristina Córdova, Población de origen africano en Oaxaca colonial (1680–1700) (Oaxaca: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Secretaría de las Culturas y Artes de Oaxaca, Fundación Alfredo Harp Helú Oaxaca, 2012)Google Scholar; and Smith, Sabrina, “Juana Ramírez, Eighteenth Century Oaxaca, New Spain (Mexico),” in As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas, Ball, Erica L., Seijas, Tatiana, and Snyder, Terri L., eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 207–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Velázquez's Mujeres de origen africano is a seminal work for understanding the lives, experiences, and portrayal of African-descended women in Mexico City. She also examines racial classifications and the portrayal of Black women in casta paintings that were produced in Mexico. Maira Cristina Córdova Aguilar published the first introduction to the study of the enslaved population in colonial Oaxaca. As such, her book includes vital information on the traffic of bondswomen in the broader Valley of Oaxaca. As a part of the broader volume As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas, Sabrina Smith's piece offers insight on the challenges and multiple meanings of freedom for mulato women in Mexico.

27. See Catherine Komisaruk, Labor and Love in Guatemala: The Eve of Independence (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013); Martha Few, Women Who Live Evil Lives: Gender, Religion, and the Politics of Power in Colonial Guatemala (Austin: Texas University Press, 2002); Nancy E. van Deusen, Embodying the Sacred: Women Mystics in Seventeenth-Century Lima (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017); Laura A. Lewis, Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft, and Caste in Colonial Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003); and Joan Cameron Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches: Afro-Mexican Ritual Practice in the Seventeenth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007). Catherine Komisaruk's study of late-colonial Guatemala reveals the multiple layers of violence, including sexual assault, that enslaved women faced in domestic and public settings. Martha Few and Joan Bristol's use Inquisition trials exposes the ways in which religious officials persecuted women of Indigenous and African descent. They also show how free and enslaved women manipulated slaveholders and colonial institutions, creating alternate forms of power.

28. A few works that emphasize the dynamic lives of African-descended women in Spanish America are Terrazas Williams, The Capital of Free Women; Komisaruk, Labor and Love in Guatemala; Tamara J. Walker, Exquisite Slaves: Race, Clothing and Status in Colonial Lima (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Nicole von Germeten, Violent Delights, Violent Ends: Sex, Race, and Honor in Colonial Cartagena de Indias (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013); and Kathryn Joy McKnight, “Blasphemy as Resistance: An African Slave Woman Before the Mexican Inquisition,” in Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World, Mary E. Giles, ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). Tamara Walker's study of clothing and status in the urban slaveholding society of Lima shows how enslaved women and men used elegant attire to simultaneously express notions of gender and challenge the dominant social hierarchy and Iberian culture in Lima. In contrast, Danielle Terrazas Williams focuses on a large number of free landholding African-descended women in Veracruz. Many of these women owned land and ran businesses; they also owned slaves, exposing the dynamism of the people who formed a part of the African Diaspora in Mexico, and broadly in Spanish America.

29. Michelle A. McKinley, Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization in Colonial Lima, 1600–1700 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Bianca Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial: Ordinary Litigants and Colonialism in the Spanish Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); María Eugenia Chaves, “La mujer esclava y sus estrategias de libertad en el mundo hispano colonial de fines del siglo XVIII,” Anales Nueva Época 1 (1998): 91–117; Kathleen J. Higgins, “Licentious Liberty” in a Brazilian Gold-Mining Region: Slavery, Gender, and Social Control in Eighteenth-Century Sabaná, Minas Gerais (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999); Frank T. Proctor, Damned Notions of Liberty: Slavery, Culture, and Power in Colonial Mexico, 1640–1769 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010); Ana Maria Silva Campo, “Through the Gate of the Media Luna: Slavery and the Geographies of Legal Status in Colonial Cartagena de Indias,” Hispanic American Historical Review 100:3 (2020): 391–421; Brian P. Owensby, “Legal Personality and the Processes of Slave Liberty in Early-Modern New Spain,” European Review of History 16:3 (June 2009): 365–382; Brian P. Owensby, “How Juan and Leonor Won Their Freedom: Litigation and Liberty in Seventeenth-Century Mexico,” Hispanic American Historical Review 85:1 (2005): 39–79; Herman Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570–1640 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003). McKnight's work on blasphemy, for instance, shows that while enslaved women's race and status of captivity often determined their treatment by the Inquisition, enslaved people used the colonial courts to expose the abuses of their enslavers. These survival strategies used by free and enslaved people often led to the loss of slaveholders’ property, meaning that it served as a path to legal or conditional freedom for the enslaved.

30. Nora E. Jaffary and Jane E. Mangan, Women in Colonial Latin America, 1526 to 1806: Texts and Contexts (Cambridge: Hackett, 2018), xx. Also see Michelle A. McKinley, Fractional Freedoms; Bianca Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial; Camillia Cowling, Conceiving Freedom: Women of Color, Gender, and the Abolition of Slavery in Havana and Rio de Janeiro (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013); Christine Hunefeldt, Paying the Price of Freedom: Family and Labor Among Lima's Slaves, 1800–1854 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); and Frank T. Proctor, Damned Notions of Liberty.

31. Asunción Lavrin, “In Search of the Colonial Woman in Mexico: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives, Asunción Lavrin, ed. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978), 41–43.

32. Lavrin, “In Search of the Colonial Woman in Mexico,” 42; Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva, “From Chains to Chiles.”

33. AGEO, Alcaldías Mayores, leg. 5, exp. 10, “Juana Díaz de Vargas contra Julian Vilchis, pardo” (1685); AGEO, leg. 34, exp. 4, “Donación y titulo de una tienda de Marcelina de Borja y Olivera” (1765); AHNO, PN, Diego Benaias, vol. 164, fol. 286v, Testamento (1712); AHNO, PN, Diego Benaias, vol. 165, fols. 1-4v, Libro de Diligencias (1712); AHNO, PN, Diego Díaz Romero, vol. 203, fol. 143, Testamento (1706); AHNO, PN, Carlos Joseph de Pinos, vol. 388, fol. 171, Recibo de dote (1754). Also see Velázquez Gutiérrez, Mujeres de origen africano, 174–214; Sabrina Smith, “The People of African Descent in Colonial Oaxaca” (PhD diss.: University of California, Los Angeles, 2018); and Susan Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America (West Nyack: Cambridge University Press, 2015). According to Velázquez Gutiérrez, free and enslaved women worked as seamstresses, healers, and vendors who sold fruit and vegetables in urban centers throughout colonial Mexico. In Mexico City, for instance, African-descended women worked as vendors in the Plaza Mayor. Building on her argument that enslaved women participated in the skilled trades of their slaveholders, Socolow adds that wives of artisans (regardless of social status) became artisans after their husbands’ deaths. The archival records from Oaxaca support these points. For example, a free woman named Juana Díaz de Vargas owned a general store in 1685. Similarly, the early eighteenth-century will of a wealthy Spaniard named Joseph de Saola y Olano shows that he owned a store that sold carved silver, paintings, chairs, tables, and desks. He also owned at least 15 bondswomen and bondsmen who likely labored in his store. Other shop owners, such as Nicolás de Robles and Salbador Vasquez relied on bondswomen to sell groceries and liquor in the city.

34. Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva, “Culto, color y convivencia: las cofradías de pardos y morenos en Puebla de los Ángeles, siglo XVII,” in Africanos y afrodescendientes en la América Hispánica Septentrional: espacios de convivencia, sociabilidad y conflicto, Rafael Castañeda García and Juan Carlos Ruiz Guadalajara, eds. (San Luis Potosí: El Colegio de San Luis, 2020), 385–386. In his analysis of seventeenth-century Puebla, Sierra Silva suggests that the term “African-descended elite” still implies a subordinate status to elites of European descent. This was also the case in Antequera for most African-descended property owners. The value of Catalina's home, however, was on par with properties owned by the wealthiest Spaniards in the city.

35. Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America, 9.

36. Rosalind Z. Rock, “‘Mujeres de Substancia’: Case Studies of Women of Property in Northern New Spain,” Colonial Latin American Historical Review 2:4 (1993): 430.

37. See Silvia Marina Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 1790–1857 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985); Allyson Poska, Women and Authority in Early Modern Spain: The Peasants of Galicia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Poska's analysis of women in Galicia, Spain, offers a valuable comparison to the status of women in Spanish America.

38. Kimberly Gauderman, Women's Lives in Colonial Quito: Gender, Law, and Economy in Spanish America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), 72–73. A wealthy woman named María married an obraje-owning elite man named Francisco Villacís in seventeenth-century Quito. When Francisco died, María inherited his obrajes, which he originally acquired from his parents. María later remarried an oidor (judge) of the Real Audiencia. In 1686, she was pulled into a lawsuit over her inheritance because the courts determined that her second spouse, the oidor, was responsible for managing operations of her obrajes.

39. Terrazas Williams, The Capital of Free Women, 152–153. This book provides numerous examples of Black women property owners in Veracruz, Mexico. Take, for example, the life and intergenerational wealth of María Pacheco, a free parda and recognized householder in Xapala, Mexico. Like Catalina, María Pacheco was a second-generation landowner and widow who acquired one of the largest and most central plots of land owned by an African-descended woman in colonial Xalapa. María probably inherited the property from her mother, a free mulata, at the turn of the eighteenth century. In 1707, María sold this land, which was located near the Convent of San Francisco, for the severely undervalued amount of 52 pesos and 4 reales, signifying her need to liquidate the property. María undoubtedly lost money in the home sale, but she and her mother are noteworthy. As Terrazas Williams argues, the visibility of these two African-descended women and their prime real estate changed the landscape in the center of Xalapa, emphasizing the Black geographies of the city. Likewise, the location of this property near the convent suggests that people from all sectors of the social order probably passed by, and even “envied” its African-descended landholders. To be sure, African-descended women inherited and passed down “literal and figurative forms of social legitimacy” in colonial Mexico.

40. Douglas R. Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Mexico City, 1660–1720 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 30–32. Also see Rachel Sarah O'Toole, Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012); Karen B. Graubart, “The Creolization of the New World: Local Forms of Identification in Urban Colonial Peru, 1560–1640,” Hispanic American Historical Review 89:3 (2009): 471–499; Karen B. Graubart, “Shifting Landscapes: Heterogeneous Conceptions of Land Use and Tenure in the Lima Valley,” Colonial Latin American Review 26:1 (2017): 62–84; Frederick Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524–1650 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974); Patrick Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz: Race, Ethnicity, and Regional Development (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001); and Taylor, Landlord and Peasant. In The Limits of Racial Domination, Cope argues that very few residents in Mexico City owned their homes. Rather, most buildings in the city were owned by the numerous convents and monasteries. He adds that there was a hierarchy in the kinds of dwellings (one-story vs. two-story). Not surprisingly, affluent tenants generally inhabited the upper floors of apartment buildings, whereas middle and lower-class populations rented out cuartos (single-room apartments). The lower story was typically reserved for street-facing workshops and stores. This also appears to have been the case in the urban centers of Lima and Trujillo, Peru. As Graubert argues, landholding (and casta) plebeians used the properties that they owned as a source of income.

41. See Terrazas Williams, “My Conscience is Free and Clear”; Sierra Silva, Urban Slavery in Colonial Mexico; O'Toole, Bound Lives; Sabrina Smith, “The People of African Descent in Colonial Oaxaca”; Martha Few, Women Who Live Evil Lives; Laura Lewis, Hall of Mirrors; Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches; Ana María Silva Campo, “Fragile Fortunes: Afro-Descendant Women, Witchcraft, and the Remaking of Urban Cartagena,” Colonial Latin American Review 30:2 (2021): 197–213; Nicole von Germeten, “Paula de Eguiluz, Seventeenth-Century Puerto Rico, Cuba, and New Granada (Colombia),” in As If She Were Free, Ball, Seijas, and Snyder, eds., 43–57; Kathryn Joy McKnight, The Mystic of Tunja: The Writings of Madre Castillo, 1671–1742 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997); and Kathryn Joy McKnight and Leo J. Garofalo, Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1550–1812 (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2010).

42. Patricia Seed, “The Social Dimension of Race,” Hispanic American Historical Review 62:4 (1982): 583. Also see Terrazas Williams, The Capital of Free Women. Seed's work shows that property was critical to defining any person's status, regardless of race. For example, mestizos and mulatos attained upward mobility through the acquisition of property.

43. Terrazas Williams, The Capital of Free Women, 73–79; Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 174; Lavrin, “In Search of the Colonial Woman in Mexico,” 43. See the example of the free morena, Teresa López, who relied on her status as the legitimate wife of a Spaniard to claim her son's rightful inheritance and ultimately secure her family's financial security in Xalapa. Other disputes could be over the invasion of land or even property boundaries.

44. Jessica Marie Johnson, Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020), 201.

45. Judith A. Gilbert, “Esther and Her Sisters: Free Women of Color as Property Owners in Colonial St. Louis, 1765–1803,” in Women in Missouri History: In Search of Power and Influence, LeeAnn Whites, Mary C. Neth, and Gary R. Kremer, eds. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004), 32–33.

46. AHNO, PN, Diego Benaias, vol. 144, fol. 46, Venta de solar (1687); AHNO, PN, Diego Benaias, vol. 149, fols. 319 (Venta de casas, 1694), 552 (Traspaso de censos, 1694); AHNO, PN, Diego Benaias, vol. 152, fol. 27, Venta de casas (1699); AHNO, PN, Diego Díaz Romero, vol. 190, fol. 105, Venta de casas (1691); AHNO, PN, Francisco de Quero, vol. 435, fol. 12v, Venta de solar (1698); AHNO, PN, Francisco de Quero, vol. 416, fols. 47 (Venta de solar, 1681), 103 (Declaración, 1682); AHNO, PN, Francisco de Quero, vol. 426, fol. 149v, Venta de casas (1689); AHNO, PN, Francisco de Quero, vol. 436, fol. 70, Traspaso de casas (1699). Notarial records from Antequera are unavailable for any period prior to 1680. A survey of the city's landowners between 1680 and 1700 shows that only eight African-descended women owned property in Antequera during this period. None of these women owned property that was valued at anything close to Catalina's property. In fact, most of these landowners had homes valued between 140 and 600 pesos, and only two landholding women, Petronilla Barrera, free mulata, and Augustina de Ovalle, mulata, owned property valued around 800 to 1,000 pesos, respectively.

47. Catalina did not disclose the names or identities of her parents in the land dispute. However, the value of her property and her frequent references to her father suggest that he must have amassed an incredible amount of wealth in the first half of the seventeenth century. Based on Antequera's parish records, several European and African-descended families carried the “De los Reyes” last name. It is possible that Catalina's father was a wealthy pardo, Spaniard, or Irish merchant in Antequera during the seventeenth century.

48. During this land dispute, Catalina was asked to submit the land deed to assess the property's value, but this document was not included in the archival record. I have estimated when Catalina inherited the property based on my reconstruction of her family and her statements in this civil case.

49. McKinley, Fractional Freedoms, 44; Kathryn Burns, Into the Archive: Writing and Power in Colonial Peru (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 71; Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 161. Catalina was probably in her forties or fifties when she engaged in a contentious land dispute with the bishop of Oaxaca in 1673. As Kathryn Burns and Michelle McKinley illustrate, notarial transactions, such as testaments and property transfers were contained in the notaries’ volumes (protocolos). Taylor adds that it is difficult to trace the backgrounds of landowners in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Antequera because many individuals were recent arrivals to the city. While some landholders were peninsular or creole Spaniards with ties to Mexico City, other families, like that of Catalina, disappeared from the historical record within one to two generations. I have not found any ecclesiastical documents related to this litigation in the archbishopric archive in Oaxaca City.

50. “México, Oaxaca, registros parroquiales y diocesanos, 1559-1988,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939L-5MQS-BB?cc=1909191&wc=3JYX-FM9%3A180465501%2C180608001%2C180608002 : 15 September 2022), Oaxaca de Juárez > Sagrario Metropolitano > Bautismos 1653-1680 > image 15 of 498; parroquias Católicas, Oaxaca (Catholic Church parishes, Oaxaca); “México bautismos, 1560-1950”, database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NT4D-KDQ : 15 March 2022), Carlos Devera, 1658. Based on their baptismal records, Melchor was likely born in 1648, and Joseph and Carlos were baptized in 1653 and 1658, respectively. The racial classification of Catalina and her husband does not appear in their children's baptismal records.

51. México, Oaxaca, registros parroquiales y diocesanos, 1559–1988, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939L-PRKY-S?cc=1909191&wc=3JYZ-RMS%3A180465501%2C180608001%2C182582201: 3 June 2015), Oaxaca de Juárez > Sagrario Metropolitano > Defunciones 1643-1702 > image 1 of 630; parroquias Católicas, Oaxaca (Catholic Church parishes, Oaxaca).

52. Poska, Women and Authority in Early Modern Spain, 163. While Poska focuses on Galician women whose living husbands were often absent due to occupational obligations or because of adultery, the idea that women served as de facto heads of households is significant because it shows that women understood and likely managed family finances, businesses, and the legal system.

53. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3.

54. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fols. 3-5. Also see Josefina Muriel, Los recogimientos de mujeres (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México e Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 1974); Nancy van Deusen, Between the Sacred and the Worldly: The Institutional and Cultural Practice of Recogimiento in Colonial Lima (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001); Bianca Premo, “Before the Law: Women's Petitions in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish Empire,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 53:2 (2011): 261–289; and René Johnston Aguilar, “De la casa de doncellas a la cárcel de mujeres: sexualidad y disciplinamiento en Santiago de Guatemala durante el periodo colonial,” Taller de la Historia 9 (2017): 12–27. Bohórquez led off his justifications for the expansion of the episcopal palace with a defamation of Catalina's character. His secondary reason stated that “es a propósito para que se dedique su habitacion, suelo y fabrica a beaterio o recogimiento de mujeres honestas donde profesen su celibasto y honestidad, a que se dedicaren y se recojan y depositen las que en la reputacion no vivieren conforme a buenas costumbres, que es otro caso en que debe ser compelido el dueño a que lo venda pues en esto debe preferir la causa publica.” Here, Bohórquez declares that Catalina's property would be transformed into a beguinage for “honest women” or a lay religious house to gather up women who did not live according to “good” customs. Recogimientos, however, were not solely for “honest women.” Sometimes they were used as protection for women whose husbands or male family members needed to be away.

55. Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America, 9.

56. For a broader discussion of the persecution of African-descended women in Colombia, see Ana Maria Silva Campo, “Roots in Stone and Slavery: Permanence, Mobility, and Empire in Seventeenth-Century Cartagena de Indias” (PhD diss.: University of Michigan, 2018). Silva Campo shows that religious officials were oftentimes motivated to portray and persecute African-descended women as religious and moral deviants in order to confiscate and sell their property. This practice not only generated revenue for inquisitors in Cartagena de Indias, but also benefitted the purchasers of African-descended women's property, who with the property also acquired the everyday and extraordinary items of these women.

57. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3 fol. 7v.

58. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fol. 9v.

59. The testimony indicates that the alcalde was searching for a “mestiza o mulata,” therefore it is unclear from this example whether city officials targeted African-descended women specifically, or all lower-class women of African and Indigenous descent.

60. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fols. 9v-12v.

61. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3 fols. 5v-6v.

62. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3 fols. 15-16v. Brian Joseph Madigan, “Law, Society, and Justice in Colonial Mexico City, Civil and Ecclesiastical Courts Compared, 1730–1800,” (PhD diss.: University of California, Berkeley, 2013), 138–144. Also see Fernando Jesús González, “Inmunidad eclesiástica (DCH),” Max Planck Institute for European Legal History Research Paper Series 13 (2020): 1–27; and Adriana López Ledesma, “La inmunidad eclesiástica en la Alcaldía Mayor de San Luis Potosí: ¿Un enfrentamiento entre fueros?,” Cuadernos de Historia de Derecho 2 (2010): 255–276. As Madigan describes, inmunidades referred to those who benefited from ecclesiastical asylum law. Those seeking asylum included “potentially innocent criminal suspects from rash, excessive, and especially violent punishment or retribution.” Generally, these suspects were people who were unfairly bound to debt, enslaved people who had fled mistreatment, or individuals who had accidentally killed another person. The Siete Partidas later extended restrictions on asylum to all criminals and debtors, with a select number of exceptional cases, including “those who burned, damaged, or otherwise ‘violated’ a church.”

63. Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches, 193–196; Samuel Parsons Scot and Robert I. Burns, Las Siete Partidas, Volume 5: Underworlds: The Dead, the Criminal, and the Marginalized (Partidas VI and VII) 1st ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). Bristol's discussion of the Inquisition case involving Lucas Mercado shows that a promotor fiscal was similarly concerned with the “gathering of Blacks, mulattoes and other people.” Witnesses in this case went so far as to describe firecrackers in the chapel that African-descended people built. In this case, the promotor fiscal arrested 20 people and took them to the archiepiscopal prison. Despite the cleric and commoners’ testimonies, the Inquisition case was ultimately dropped due to the lack of evidence. It is possible that the testimonies presented by religious officials in Catalina's case also lacked substantial evidence.

64. Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 166.

65. Guillermo S. Fernández de Recas, Mayorazgos de la Nueva España (Mexico City: Biblioteca Nacional de México, 1965), 455–457.

66. Chance, Race and Class, 161; Taylor, Landlord and Peasant, 156.

67. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fols. 3-5. Also see Aguilar, “De la casa de doncellas a la cárcel de mujeres,” 17–20; and Ana María Atondo Rodríguez, El amor venal y la condición femenina en el México colonial (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1992). In New Spain (Mexico) and the Kingdom of Guatemala, a casa de recogidas could serve multiple preventative and correctional purposes. For instance, the casa de recogidas in Guatemala was a colegio, cárcel de mujeres, casa de arrepentidas, and casa de doncellas. In Antequera, the Church most likely planned to build a correctional and preventative facility.

68. For a discussion of the use of gendered rhetoric in secular and religious spaces, see Jessica Delgado, “Sin Temor de Dios: Women and Ecclesiastical Justice in Eighteenth-Century Toluca,” Colonial Latin American Review 18:1 (2009): 116; Ann Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); and Pilar Gonzalbo, Las mujeres en la Nueva España: educación y vida cotidiana (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1987). As Delgado illustrates, colonial women were skilled at using gendered and religious rhetoric to defend themselves against public defamation. The religious authorities in Antequera ultimately slandered Catalina. During the litigation, she employed multiple strategies to combat the defamation of her character.

69. Allyson Poska, Women and Authority in Early Modern Spain, 164.

70. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fols. 16v-19v.

71. Terrazas Williams, The Capital of Free Women, 76–79. See Terrazas Williams's discussion of African-descended women in Xalapa who made claims to inheritance, that is, to property that was “theirs,” and how this gendered practice was central to their definition of power and status.

72. The local authorities also asked Catalina to hand over the deed of sale and the property title for her home. The records were held by the local scribe, Francisco de Medina. Unfortunately, Oaxaca's notarial records from the 1670s were lost in an archival fire. Hence, these documents are no longer available.

73. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fols. 21-22.

74. Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial, 37. Premo notes that failure to respond and ignoring a suit were common practices in the eighteenth century. These instances of “rebeldía” were so common that an individual could employ these strategies numerous times before they were considered “in contempt.”

75. Catalina did not write or sign her formal statement, but the text was written in the first person, indicating that she had dictated her statement because she could not write. The handwriting of her statement is also identical to others written by the public notary Francisco de Medina. This oral appeal was likely officially filed with the Audiencia within a few days. Approximately one year later, in July 1674, a mulato bricklayer named Antonio del Caysa appeared before the Audiencia to testify that Catalina was impoverished. As a resident of Mexico City, Caysa indicated that he had known Catalina for three years and that she did not have assets to support herself. Catalina probably relied on her kin networks to support her in Mexico City while she appealed to the Audiencia but also tapped into broader social networks in the viceregal capital after living there for several months.

76. Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial, 38. Also see Siete Partidas, 3:23:20 and 3:18:41; and Shirley Cushing Flint, No Mere Shadows: Faces of Widowhood in Early Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013).

77. Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial, 205. Catalina did not seem to have legal representation in the local courts. She received formal legal representation only from Juan Leonardo de Sevilla, who was a procurador of the Real Audiencia.

78. Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial, 62.

79. Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial, 122. Premo argues that female litigants who appealed to the royal courts in the late eighteenth century relied on long-standing legal statuses as faithful Catholic subjects. An examination of Catalina's land dispute indicates that she had employed these strategies since at least the late seventeenth century.

80. McKinley, Fractional Freedoms, 39.

81. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fol. 95v. The alcalde's auto described the order to remove Catalina as the “lanzamiento de dicha Catherina de los Reyes y de otras cualesquier personas que la ocuparen,” signifying that the authorities intended to throw Catalina and her tenants out of her home.

82. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fols. 34-35.

83. McKnight, “Blasphemy as Resistance,” 234–235. McKnight argues that the Church, state, and slaveholders shared this anxiety because enslaved people outnumbered them. Among the many mechanisms of social control, the state restricted the movement of captives and discouraged intermarriage.

84. Few, Women Who Live Evil Lives, 26.

85. Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, Annals of His Time, James Lockhart et al., eds. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 214–215.

86. Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination, 42.

87. Tamara J. Walker, “‘He Outfitted His Family in Notable Decency’: Slavery, Honour, and Dress in Eighteenth-Century Lima, Peru,” Slavery & Abolition 30:3 (2009): 384–385. Walker adds that this kind of scrutiny could even occur between and among free and enslaved people.

88. Ben Vinson III, Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 3; Danielle Terrazas Williams, “Finer Things: African-Descended Women, Sumptuary Laws, and Governance in Early Spanish America,” Journal of Women's History 33:3 (Fall 2021): 20; Nicole von Germeten, Profit and Passion: Transactional Sex in Colonial Mexico (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018), 71. Also see Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America, 152; Colin A. Palmer, Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico, 1570–1650 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976); and Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán. La población negra de México: estudio etnohistórico (Mexico City: Fonda de Cultura Económica, 1972). In his study of the Black militia in Mexico, Ben Vinson summarized the repressive tactics used to control the movement and behavior of African-descended people. The colonial state barred free people from the university and certain occupations, and even required that free people live with their employers. The state also denied African-descended people burials in important cathedrals and discouraged intermarriage.

89. Vinson, Bearing Arms for His Majesty, 3; Vinson, Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 13; Palmer, Slaves of the White God, 121–122. Palmer notes that enslaved people, for instance, were forbidden to bear arms, with the sole exception of knives without a point.

90. Terrazas Williams, “Finer Things,” 20; Vinson, Bearing Arms for His Majesty, 3; Colin A. Palmer, Slaves of the White God, 52–55. Terrazas Williams refers to sixteenth-century correspondence in which King Phillip III informed Juan de Mendoza, viceroy of Peru, of the “great quantity of negros, mulatos, and mestizos.”

91. Terrazas Williams, “Finer Things,” 20; Richard Konetzke, Colección de documentos para la historia de la formación social de Hispanoamérica. 1493–1810 (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1953), vol. 2, t. 1, 145.

92. AGNM, General de Parte, vol. 8, exp. 108, fol. 90v, “Reservación a Blas García, negro libre, del pago de tributo” (1641); AGI, Audiencia de México, 357, “Cartas y expedientes de los Obispados de Oaxaca” (1630–1692). Although Blas García was “very old and not useful for any ministry,” he was required to pay tribute for having gatherings of African-descended people in 1641. Similar reports were made in Oaxaca in the 1630s. For instance, friar Diego de Ibañez wrote to the crown, complaining that “en las casas de el notario del señor obispo llegó gran tumulto de gente . . . negros, mulatos, y otros.”

93. Vinson, Bearing Arms for His Majesty, 3.

94. Few, Women Who Live Evil Lives, 26–27.

95. Few, Women Who Live Evil Lives, 28; Thomas Gage, The English-American: A New Survey of the West Indies, 1648 (London: G. Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1928), 124; Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America, 151; Von Germeten, Violent Delights, Violent Ends, 144. Von Germeten argues that the attire and behavior of African-descended women not only led to confusion of social hierarchies but also infuriated colonial authorities in Cartagena. The nuances of Europeans’ fears included the portrayal of free African-descended women as sensual temptresses and a threat to the social order. The English Dominican friar Thomas Gage described mulatas and Black women in Mexico City as “so light, and their carriage so enticing, that many Spaniards even of the better sort (who are too prone to Venery) disdain their Wives for them.” Gage's use of the terms “enticing,” “venery,” and “disdain” underscores Europeans’ perceptions of African-descended women in Spanish America.

96. Terrazas Williams, “Finer Things,” 20. Also see Von Germeten, Profit and Passion, 71; and Socolow, The Women of Colonial Latin America, 152.

97. Terrazas Williams, “Finer Things,” 20; Konetzke, Colección de documentos para la historia de la formación social de Hispanoamérica, 145. According to Terrazas Williams, a 1612 law in New Spain reiterated a 1598 ordinance, in which the members of the Audiencia cited the “damages and dangers” of free and enslaved people in the colony.

98. Vinson, Bearing Arms for His Majesty, 3.

99. Von Germeten, Profit and Passion, 72.

100. Walker, Exquisite Slaves, 20.

101. Terrazas Williams, “Finer Things,” 12. Terrazas Williams argues that even the possibility of African-descended women wearing lavish attire incited racialized and gendered fears, which were part of imperial governance in sixteenth-century Spanish America.

102. Few, Women Who Live Evil Lives, 2–3. For a discussion of women who appear in the archival record as mujeres escandalosas, mujeres malas, or mujeres perdidas, see Pilar Jaramillo de Zuleta, “Las Arrepentidas,” in Placer, dinero y pecado: historia de la prostitución en Colombia, Aída Martínez y Pablo Rodríguez, eds. (Bogotá: Editorial Aguilar, 2002), 102; Lewis, Hall of Mirrors; Bristol, Christians, Blasphemers, and Witches; Von Germeten, Profit and Passion; Velázquez Gutiérrez, Mujeres de origen africano; and Muriel, Los recogimientos de mujeres. According to Martha Few, people from all sectors of the social hierarchy consulted with the “so-called mujeres de mal vivir.”

103. Von Germeten, Profit and Passion, 46. Colonial officials addressed these concerns with generally ineffective methods such as attempts to incarcerate public women and closing brothels. In Guadalajara, for example, the president of the high court proposed a new prison to “punish women of scandalous life.”

104. Pablo Rodríguez, “Servidumbre sexual: la prostitución en los siglos XV-XVIII,” in Placer, dinero y pecado, Martínez and Rodríguez, eds., 82. According to Rodríguez, an example of marginal activity outside of matrimony is if a woman had several lovers over the course of a few years.

105. Von Germeten, Profit and Passion, 7.

106. Von Germeten, Profit and Passion, 9.

107. Von Germeten, Profit and Passion, 26–27; AGNM, Clero Regular y Secular, vol. 2275, exp. 11, “Autos hechos contra Luisa de Espinosa por alcahueta de amancebados” (1567). In contrast to Catalina's dispute, a case from 1567 shows that Mexico City archdiocesan officials and their witnesses stated that a Black woman named Luisa de Espinosa procured men into her home to have sex with her daughter, as well as two other women. The testimonies all suggested that Luisa maintained a home brothel. The vagueness of the scandalous activities in Catalina's home do not permit an interpretation of Catalina and her behavior.

108. Velázquez Gutiérrez, Mujeres de origen africano, 232–234; McKnight, “Blasphemy as Resistance,” 231–233; Walker, Exquisite Slaves, 73. McKnight adds that enslaved people used blasphemy as a form of resistance that stemmed from syncretic religious practices. Inquisition trials about blasphemy also show the “power struggle” between captives, enslavers, the Church, and the state.

109. Few, Women Who Live Evil Lives, 100–128. Few shows that the public roles of these women made them vulnerable to accusations of sorcery with the Inquisition.

110. Silva Campo, “Roots in Stone and Slavery,” 48–51; Silva Campo, “Fragile Fortunes,” 207. Specifically, the Inquisition targeted people accused of heresy. Silva Campo argues that the confiscation of property was rooted in Roman and canon law. The objective of this practice was to punish people who subjected themselves to exclusion by their community by committing a crime. These women also faced imprisonment, the whip, and even temporary banishment from the city of Cartagena. Silva Campo offers many examples of free and enslaved women whose dispossession included the confiscation of property, which ultimately benefited individuals from various social classes. Silva Campo explains that the Inquisition established a permanent tribunal in Cartagena and searched for jurisdictional space in the city. Like Bishop Monterroso in Oaxaca, they searched for the most ideal house in Cartagena, one located in the plaza mayor. Due to the “excessively expensive” cost of that location, they proceeded to search for property in the Los Jagüeyes neighborhood, which was inhabited mainly by free African-descended people. Inquisitors specifically targeted African-descended women, accusing them of heresy, and as Silva Campo argues, they were generally punished more harshly than Spaniards by inquisitors. The Inquisition benefitted from these charges by auctioning confiscated property from the accused women. This enforcement of social control not only disempowered African-descended women in Cartagena through religious persecution, but it also likely cut off their livelihood because they may have conducted their business in their homes. Catalina experienced similar forms of dispossession based on the Church's perception of her moral deviance. However, records of her land dispute do not include any language that indicates she was accused of heresy, blasphemy, or sorcery.

111. Walker, Exquisite Slaves, 73. Walker argues that these public “interstitial zones” merited “attention and scrutiny” from enslavers, officials, and employers.

112. Walker, Exquisite Slaves, 48; Camp, Stephanie H., Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 60–68Google Scholar. Walker describes “secret parties” as sites of agency and empowerment for enslaved women and men because their practice of designing clothing and making instruments directly opposed the limitations of their condition of captivity.

113. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3 fols. 3-5; Walker, Exquisite Slaves, 74; Few, Women Who Live Evil Lives, 1–2. The term mujeres de mal vivir was used for women assumed to live evil lives. Specifically, this term referred to female sorcerers, magical healers, and clandestine religious leaders. Here, I follow Tamara J. Walker's use of Michel Foucault's concept of “panopticism” because the state or officials’ observance and scrutiny of an individual's behavior extended beyond prisons.

114. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fol. 32.

115. Chance, Race and Class, 34; AGI, Justicia 231, fol. 463; Gage, The English-American, 190–191. During his travels in New Spain during the mid seventeenth century, Thomas Gage's description of the “City of Guaxaca” noted that it “standeth threescore leagues from Mexico,” which equates to approximately 60 leagues. However, when the city of Antequera was established in 1529, the Royal Audiencia ordered that the province of Oaxaca be located 80 leagues or about 280 miles from Mexico City, which is roughly halfway between the viceregal capital and Guatemala. I rely on the Audiencia's estimate of this distance because it accurately depicts the distance between Mexico City and Oaxaca.

116. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fols. 2 and 58. Catalina granted her son, Melchor de Vera, a power of attorney to handle the dispute on her behalf before she filed her appeal on September 20, 1673. Catalina most likely moved in with her son, because a year later, she still claimed that she did not have enough money to return to her home in Antequera.

117. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fol. 31.

118. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3.

119. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fols. 70-71. Here, “mujer muy quieta” refers to a woman who is reserved.

120. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fol. 69.

121. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fols. 72-73.

122. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fol. 105.

123. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fol. 107.

124. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fol. 108.

125. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fol. 108. The land dispute continued until January 1677 with litigation including a sum of 22 pesos that Bohórquez insisted Catalina needed to return because her home was likely leased while the Church held possession of it.

126. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fol. 68. The defense counsel frequently referred to the “violent despoilment” that Catalina experienced when she was removed from her home. Catalina's son Melchor was already living in Mexico City at the time of this case; she likely ended up staying there with him for several years because of the “vexation” she had experienced in Antequera.

127. México, Distrito Federal, registros parroquiales y diocesanos, 1514–1970, database with images, FamilySearch.org, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6DL8-9ZKD :7 December 2021), Cuauhtémoc > La Santa Veracruz > Defunciones y entierros 1622-1681, 1758-1823 > image 787 of 984; parroquias Católicas, Distrito Federal (Catholic Church parishes, Distrito Federal. Even after the Audiencia handed down its decision in November 1675, Bohórquez continued to litigate with Catalina until January 1677 over the 22 pesos that he insisted she owed the Church.

128. See McKinley, Fractional Freedoms, 2; and Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial, 44. McKinley describes enslaved litigants in Lima as “legal protagonists” who created and shared legal knowledge with their social networks and used this knowledge to claim personhood and virtue. I rely on this framework to conceptualize Catalina's legal tenacity in Antequera. It is also possible that Catalina engaged in what Bianca Premo considers “jurisdictional jockeying” to pit the local courts and Real Audiencia against each other to achieve the best possible outcome for herself and her family.

129. AGNM, Tierras, vol. 112, exp. 3, fols. 22-26v.