families.
REQUESTS FOR MORISCOS DENIED
Local authorities in Spanish America on a number of occasions requested that the Crown send Moriscos to help settle and build colonial towns and fortifications. Reputed to be skilled artisans in Spain, Moriscos were sought to start silk-raising production in New Spain and to build fortifications in Havana and along the northern coast of South America in the area that is today Venezuela. These requests were eventually denied by the Crown, and Moriscos were not officially granted licenses to pass to the Americas to carry out these activities. However, as the cases of interpreters show, their perceived usefulness enabled some to make the journey anyway, supported by powerful Spaniards in need of their services.
During the early years of Spanish colonization of the Caribbean islands and mainland, the granting of licenses and the enforcement of emigration restrictions was more fluid. Officials of the town councils and royal courts composed a stream of letters to the Council of the Indies, lamenting the small Spanish population and requesting that more emigrants be recruited to populate and settle the new towns.88 From the late 1550s to 1575, African slaves were transported to Havana to construct the fort of La Fuerza, and approximately two hundred slaves continued to work on urban military constructions into the seventeenth century. According to Alejandro de la Fuente, in 1596, some of the forty-five forced laborers on Havana’s forts were Muslim and Turkish slaves.89 These Havana slaves also included the Mandinga and Wolof peoples of the Senegal Valley, deemed Muslims and potentially rebellious. In the seventeenth century the neighboring Fulo, also thought to be Muslims, joined the Mandinga and Wolof as slaves in Spanish America.90 The Spanish Crown placed some restrictions on their importation to the Americas, but a number nevertheless were also forcibly taken across the Atlantic. In Havana, local officials were aware of the presence of Muslims laboring as royal slaves, and in the 1650s ordered slave owners to declare their Muslim and North African slaves.91
Demands were similar along the northern coast of South America, in the defense of the coastline of what is today Venezuela. By 1600 fears of Dutch incursions along the Caribbean basin led local officials to petition the Crown for assistance in defending their towns and islands. In 1604 the engineer of the Cartagena fortifications Juan Bautista Antoneli examined the salt pans of Araya, a haven for Dutch smugglers. Antoneli determined that the salt mines should be inundated via canals linking the ocean with the low-lying salt-producing areas, in order to discourage the Dutch who had been actively loading their ships with salt. Approaching the eve of the expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain, Antoneli requested that the Junta de Guerra de Indias allow between five and six hundred Moriscos from southern Spain to travel to Araya to construct the canals that he hoped would drench the salt pans, rendering them useless to the Dutch.92 While gaining initial support from the Junta de Guerra, Antoneli’s project was soon abandoned due to lack of funds.
Moriscos were noted for their skills as artisans in Spain, and some local colonial officials considered bringing them to Spanish America to work on a number of projects. This was in sharp contrast to Crown policies. In 1537 the bishop of Mexico Friar Juan de Zumárraga requested that a group of married Moriscos be allowed to travel to New Spain to teach indigenous peoples the delicate art of raising silkworms and producing silk. Zumárraga hoped sericulture would provide both a civilizing activity and a source of income for the indigenous peoples congregated in the newly founded mission communities.93 However, the Crown rejected his request to grant Granadan Moriscos licenses. The intricate wooden ceiling and door carvings on churches in the new city parishes and countryside doctrinas also suggest the work of Morisco carpenters and artisans in Spain. However, recent art historians have found evidence that Amerindians trained by Spanish artisans and clerics, not Moriscos, participated in their construction in the Americas.94 If Moriscos ever did labor on these, they most likely would not have been officially listed as Moriscos in the records, after requests like those of Zumárraga were turned down by the Crown. The churches of the doctrinas were well inland, in close proximity to indigenous dwellings, unlike the fortifications that drew galley slaves who were bound by royal decrees to return to their ships in the more cosmopolitan ports such as Havana, Callao, or Veracruz.
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Due to the concerns over title and dominion, the Spanish Crown sought to control and limit access to indigenous peoples to only devout Catholics who could prove good social standing, pious behavior, and eventually trace their lineage back several generations to old Christian families. While there was some demand for Moriscos and North Africans to labor in the Americas, primarily as slaves, but also as interpreters and artisans, due to their perceived linguistic abilities or skills as carpenters or silk workers in Spain, the Crown’s concerns with evangelization took precedence. Throughout the sixteenth century, Spanish monarchs issued a number of royal decrees restricting emigration. However, enforcement wavered during the early conquests, and free emigrants obtained false licenses or crossed the Atlantic in a variety of clandestine ways.
Unfree emigration accounted for the presence of many Moriscos in Spanish America, and the status of slaves plays into the discussions over the social standing of suspected Morisco encomenderos and wealthy office holders. This is a very different dynamic from the one that conversos faced. Although Jews in medieval Iberia could in theory be enslaved under similar conditions as Muslims, no such cases in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain or Spanish America were uncovered during my research. As potentially enslaveable, Moriscos faced a very specific set of circumstances that defined their social status. Actions, dress, customs, and appearance mattered, and descriptions of individuals in the courts emphasized some elements over others in determining if someone had been a slave, whether someone could be enslaved, or whether they could possess honor and the accompanying benefits.
CHAPTER 3
Forbidden Crossings
Emigration Legislation and Morisco Responses
In 1577, Diego Herrador, a shoemaker residing in Mexico City, stood before inquisitors, charged with passing to New Spain with a false license. Inquisitor Licentiate Francisco Santos García accused Herrador that he, “being of the caste and lineage of Moriscos and the grandson of a quemado on his mother’s side, made a false report that he is an old Christian of pure blood and ancestry, and that no one of his lineage has been punished by the Holy Office.”1 During his trial, the shoemaker described how he obtained his false license. Herrador’s case was eventually dismissed because inquisitors learned that they no longer had the jurisdiction to prosecute cases of false licenses and had to restrict themselves to matters of the faith. It is unclear what happened to Herrador after this ruling, yet it reveals the openings in the legislation that allowed “new Christians” to reach the Americas despite prohibitions. Knowledge of the strategies that prospective emigrants could use to cross the Atlantic spread not only among those searching for false licenses but also across various sectors of colonial society, as royal decrees were read publicly and officials aired their complaints. The anxieties created by the frequent breaches of the restrictions on Morisco emigration paved the road for future conflicts over status in colonial society.
Initially, the royal decrees were enforced only sporadically, as practical concerns with populating the islands and mainland of the Americas took precedence over religious imperatives. However, the situation changed by the end of the sixteenth century with the rising Spanish presence. Royal decrees demanding the policing of interior regions and the establishment of inquisitorial tribunals created a vigilant atmosphere that individuals could exploit in their competition over offices and encomiendas, as new generations of Iberians emigrated to the Americas and came into conflict with the self-styled first conquerors and settlers. Individuals banned from settling in the New World employed various strategies to evade the restrictions. There is ample evidence that despite prohibitions, Moriscos did have the means to travel freely to Spanish America, in the event that they or powerful sponsors desired to do so.
Official policies, based on ideals
