difficult to carry out. Vast distances between both Spain and the Americas, and within the rapidly expanding empire, delayed the application of colonial policies. Competing jurisdictional claims also slowed the process, allowing individuals to slip through the cracks. The Spanish legal system was porous and diffuse, lacking a codified series of laws, especially before the Recopilación de Leyes de Indias (1681). Authorities constantly consulted one another and debated policies, providing many openings for individual action. Much if not most of Spanish civil and criminal law was applicable to the Indies, but there was also the question of its relationship to Amerindian customary practices. Expansion of the empire brought with it a host of new administrative questions. In theory, regulations for governing stemmed from the king, but in practice the royal councils reviewed the issues and made recommendations for the monarch to either reject or issue the appropriate decrees. Although the laws derived from the king and royal council, they were often initiated in response to local problems, resulting in legislation that was based on reactions to particular cases that could be applied to others and subsequently cited in new contexts. Royal decrees supporting and creating new laws proliferated, and officials on the ground would determine how and if to respond. In this sense, the formulaic acknowledgment of obedezco pero no cumplo (I obey, but I do not carry out the order) could allow for a degree of flexibility in colonial settings, so that peoples’ actions, lawsuits, and sense of identity became situational and fluid to adapt to the circumstances.2 Debates concerning one part of the Spanish world could have empire-wide repercussions, as they were cited in debates at court to define and restrict peoples living under Spanish rule. The cases of Moriscos in the Americas provide one such lens through which to examine the relationship between the formulation of legal identities through everyday negotiations and the debates at court to produce policies. The concurrent descriptions of seminomadic indigenous groups such as the Chichimeca, Chiriguanos, or Araucanos with those concerning alárabes and Moriscos following the Alpujarras uprising reveal how Spanish jurists and theologians were defining customary practices with policies in mind. Arguments about whether it was licit to enslave either Moriscos or Amerindians drew heavily from ethnographic descriptions.3
Due to the gap between expected and real enforcement of the legislation, Morisco emigrants crossed the Atlantic and played a role in colonial society. Both enslaved and free Moriscos found in the openings in the legislation a way to pass clandestinely. But for Spanish authorities, even the possibility of their presence raised concerns and fears that were already inflamed by a preoccupation with justifying imperial rule and establishing a model Catholic republic. Bishops and inquisitors complained about the difficulty of policing frontier regions and invoked the specter of new Christian settlement at the edges of empire. They issued edicts stigmatizing Morisco practices that were preached publicly, conveying a broader sense of urgency to the local population. These fears entered denunciations arising from feuds over position in the colonial hierarchy, as the consequences of possessing a Morisco lineage involved material losses and could affect a family for generations. In a system that encouraged heated disputes over encomiendas, due to their nonhereditary nature, families had powerful incentives to exclude their rivals.4
LEGISLATING EMIGRATION, A POROUS WEB: 1492–1548
During the sixteenth century, anxieties over legitimate title crept into the royal decrees or cédulas that regulated emigration to Spanish America. According to even the earliest of these laws, settlement of the Spanish colonies was in theory limited to old Christians. These attempts to restrict the presence of new Christians of Muslim and Jewish descent stemmed from concerns that they would undermine Spanish missionary efforts and introduce heterodoxy into a land where Spanish missionaries and theologians hoped to impose Catholicism easily. Spanish authorities’ fears became heightened in response to the Reformation. The Crown’s internal policies toward the Moriscos played a role in the articulation and enforcement of laws concerning emigration. In Spain, legislation restricting the Moriscos and apprehension surrounding their presence increased during the sixteenth century. This dynamic also possessed a transatlantic dimension.
The earliest decrees regulating emigration to the Spanish Americas issued by the Crown in 1501 were included in the instructions given to Friar Nicolás de Ovando, who was appointed first governor of Hispaniola. These instructions stipulated, “As we with great care have to carry out the conversion of the Indians to our holy Catholic faith: if you find persons suspect in matters of the faith present during the said conversion, it could create an impediment. Do not consent or allow Muslims or Jews, heretics, or anyone reconciled by the Inquisition, or persons newly converted to our Faith to go there, unless they are black slaves … who were born in the power of Christians, our subjects and native inhabitants.”5 These restrictions were echoed in the cédulas that regulated the colonization and settlement of the new Spanish territories. In 1508 King Ferdinand ordered the Casa de Contratación not to permit either the “children and grandchildren of the converts of Jews and Muslims, or the children of those executed or reconciled by the Inquisition” to travel to or trade in Hispaniola.6 Orders for the settlement of Florida and Bimini, issued by Queen Juana in 1514, specified that “new Christians [who are descendants] of Muslims and Jews can neither populate nor reside in the said islands under penalty of the loss of their property and of our favor.”7 Despite complaints about the shortage of Spanish settlers in the newly conquered regions and specific requests for Morisco or North African labor, the Crown maintained officially that only old Christians could settle in the Western Hemisphere.
It is unclear how enforceable these decrees against Morisco migration to the Americas were. Prior to the adoption of the statutes of limpieza de sangre in 1548, religious interests were less important than policies that would benefit imperial expansion and the Royal Treasury. Royal licenses and habilitaciones provided loopholes in the contradictory royal decrees restricting emigration. For example, in 1509 King Ferdinand issued a general license to Castilian converso communities paying the composición.8 Some local officials in the Caribbean and in New Spain initially favored projects involving Morisco artisans and laborers. Following the arrival of these early new Christian emigrants, competition in the recently established colonial settlements placed pressures on their presence. Growing resentments tested the limits of religious tolerance as conversos and Moriscos, due to their legal status as prohibited persons, became increasingly vulnerable to denunciation.
Local authorities in the Caribbean islands lodged complaints about new Christians that resulted in renewed decrees to restrict their presence. In 1539 Charles V ordered officials to address “what has been seen by experience: the great damage and disadvantage that results from transporting to our Indies the children of burned and reconciled Jews and Muslims and those who are newly converted.”9 This decree, upon its public proclamation from the steps of Seville’s cathedral, ordered that none of these individuals could pass to Spanish America “in any manner.”10 Yet it also provided an exception for purchasing a royal license, so that some could travel without penalties.11 This permitted slaveholders to purchase licenses for their Morisco and North African slaves to accompany them to Spanish America, with the provision that they be returned to Spain after a specified number of years. Members of the Granadan Morisco nobility were also exempt from most legislation regulating Moriscos, and they could bear arms and wear silk in accordance with their high status. Some may have legally purchased licenses to cross the Atlantic.12
During the first half of the sixteenth century, royal policies toward the broader Morisco population in Spain were also less stringent. This may have had repercussions on their ability to cross the Atlantic. Following their initial forced baptism in 1499–1501 the Granadan Moriscos were granted a “period of grace” exempting them from full inquisitorial scrutiny, so that they could be fully instructed in Catholicism. In 1526 Charles V granted them the right, like the conversos, to pay a tax in exchange for certain privileges and allowed them to continue some of their practices for a forty-year period.13 Nonetheless, ecclesiastical authorities issued periodic prohibitions of Morisco customs that included food, dress, language, and dance, and the terms of this agreement had to be renegotiated continuously. Even in 1526, during Charles V’s stay in Granada, a panel of theologians in the royal chapel of
