Forbidden Passages
THE EARLY MODERN AMERICAS
Peter C. Mancall, Series Editor
Volumes in the series explore neglected aspects of early modern history in the western hemisphere. Interdisciplinary in character, and with a special emphasis on the Atlantic World from 1450 to 1850, the series is published in partnership with the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute.
Forbidden Passages
MUSLIMS AND MORISCOS IN COLONIAL SPANISH AMERICA
Karoline P. Cook
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS Philadelphia
THIS BOOK IS MADE POSSIBLE BY A COLLABORATIVE GRANT FROM THE ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION.
Copyright © 2016 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-8122-4824-1
CONTENTS
1. Who Were the Moriscos? Introducing a Transatlantic Story
2. Into the Atlantic: Justifying Title and Establishing Dominion
3. Forbidden Crossings: Emigration Legislation and Morisco Responses
4. “These Hidden Heretics”: The Politics of Morisco Religiosity
5. Healers and Diviners: Morisco Practitioners in the New World
6. “Polvos del Gran Turco”: Moriscos and Magical Practice in Spanish America
7. Honor, Lineage, Ovandina: The Dynamics of Accusations and Religious Intolerance
8. Images of Muslims and Moriscos in Spanish America
Forbidden Passages
Map 1. The Iberian Peninsula, the North African coastline, and the Canary Islands
Map 2. The Viceroyalty of New Spain and the Caribbean
Map 3. The Viceroyalty of Peru
Introduction
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Spanish authorities restricted emigration to the Americas to long-standing Christians, individuals who could prove they descended from families that had been Catholic for at least three generations. Due to the Crown’s preoccupation with maintaining religious orthodoxy across an expanding empire, frequent royal decrees prohibited Moriscos or Iberian Muslims, many of whom had been forcibly baptized at the beginning of the sixteenth century, from settling in Spanish America. But these laws, like so many others during the period, faced uneven enforcement. The extensive legislation prohibiting Morisco emigration has led many historians to assume that no or very few Moriscos settled in Spanish America. However, the rich parallel historiography concerning Spanish and Portuguese conversos in the New World, who were subject to the same legislation as Moriscos, suggests that individuals evaded the restrictions by a variety of means and settled in the forbidden territories. That the royal decrees were reissued on a regular basis also indicates that controls on emigration were not so tight in practice and that individuals discerned openings through which to slip unnoticed.
Moriscos, both free and enslaved, traveled clandestinely from Spain to Spanish America. Colonial sources reveal their mobility both geographically through the crossing of the Atlantic and socially as they forged new lives for themselves. While the numbers of Moriscos appearing in the archives are relatively low, representing only the denounced, their presence had a significant impact on colonial Spanish American society and the everyday workings of empire. Indeed, even small numbers could induce powerful anxieties about defining nation.1
Understanding the attitudes projected onto Moriscos and North African Muslims by sixteenth-century Spaniards can reveal how Spaniards were coming to understand empire and their place within it. For some commentators, the presence of Muslims and Moriscos in Spanish America challenged prevailing notions that Spain was a Catholic empire whose goal and justification rested on the conversion of indigenous peoples to Christianity. Some Spanish officials were actively defining their role as members of a nation on the verge of acquiring preeminent status through conquests overseas and the incorporation of a new continent and its inhabitants into its
