to all things “Moorish” in material culture. By the first decade of the sixteenth century, after the first Alpujarras rebellion when Granadan Muslims rose up against violations of the surrender treaties negotiated after the 1492 conquest of that city, many were forced to choose between exile and baptism. “Morisco” began to be applied to a few of these converts from Islam, although the label “newly converted from a Muslim” (nuevamente convertido de moro) was more common. Nonetheless, by the mid-sixteenth century, the term Morisco gained greater currency and was being conceived of broadly as a quasi-legal category, to define converts to Catholicism from Islam. In practice, Morisco described a range of people. Some descended from voluntary converts in medieval Iberia who had gained privileges under Christian rule from their new status, including exemption from certain taxes. During the sixteenth century many of these Castilian Moriscos petitioned the Crown to be considered old Christians, having converted before the forced baptisms at the turn of the sixteenth century.9 Others attempted to continue to practice their versions of Islam in secret, as was the case with many of the Granadan and Valencian Moriscos who were swept up in the waters of mass baptism. This was a difficult proposition, as the Granadan and Valencian Moriscos were increasingly subject to restrictions on not only their religiosity but also their cultural and regional practices. North African baptized slaves, known as berberiscos, were also sometimes referred to as Moriscos in contemporary documents. Prior to baptism, they were also sometimes called alárabes, as occurred with Estevanico. The derogative term “moro” (Moor) that was applied to Muslims throughout the early modern Spanish world denoted a category separate from that of Moriscos and also had legal implications.10 For sixteenth-century Spaniards, Muslims were not subject to the same rights and privileges as Christians, and the Moriscos who rose up in protest during in the second Alpujarras rebellion in 1569–72 were labeled moros and apostates, thereby subjecting them to enslavement, something that was not permissible for Christians. In the Philippines, moro referred to members of the Muslim population of the islands who were also subject to enslavement, unlike many other indigenous groups under Spanish rule.
As a legal category, defined according to religious terms and varying geographically, Morisco could invoke some protections despite its marginal connotations. For example, Moriscos could also claim status as baptized Christians who were not subject to enslavement and who were legitimate members of the body politic. During the period leading up to the expulsion, some Castilian Morisco communities, supported by their parish priests, defended themselves as good Christians and loyal subjects against those making arguments against them. In contrast, proponents of the expulsion focused on exclusionary and protoracist imagery, defining Moriscos as Muslims and apostates who were excluded from the emerging Spanish nation. How Moriscos and old Christians understood this label and applied it to themselves and to others therefore varied greatly.
By examining Morisco as a legal category, I am concerned with the meaning that the debates over the status of Moriscos in Spain held for contemporaries and their transformation and repercussions in communities across the Atlantic. My focus is on how individuals labeled Moriscos negotiated their public reputations, both as they faced secular and religious authorities’ attempts to categorize them and in daily interactions in their communities. Spanish jurists and theologians, and people on the streets, became increasingly invested in defining and describing customs and behavior, in ways that had legal implications. Descriptions of a range of peoples, from Muslims and Moriscos to Amerindians, were invoked in the realm of imperial policy at the Spanish court and universities, in the courtroom, and in published works that connected customs to groups of peoples, making arguments about their status. I am interested in how the category of Morisco was conceived of and invoked in a New World context. What did it mean to be a Morisco and to be deemed a Morisco in the Americas? How did images of and ideas about Moriscos and Muslims circulate overseas? How did they enter into daily interactions “on the ground” as Spaniards, Africans, and indigenous peoples negotiated the spatial and ethnic boundaries of a new colonial society? How did individuals conceive of and define community in the early modern Spanish world, and how were such conceptions set in motion to include and exclude people? Accusations of Morisco descent were leveled in disputes over offices and encomiendas. The legal makeup of the category Morisco, as construed by religious and cultural practice that was constituted publicly, pointed to who could enjoy certain rights or be denied others.
In the pages that follow, I trace how legislation and attitudes concerning Moriscos in Spain crossed the Atlantic, assuming new forms and meanings in Spanish America. Debates over the legal status of Moriscos in Spain that ranged from restrictions on their religious practices, to whether or not they could be enslaved, influenced Spanish policies and attitudes toward indigenous peoples. The label “Morisco” held public meaning, constituting evidence that could be brought into court and reflected the “public and notorious” nature of an individual’s gestures, speech, and performance in charged settings such as during Mass. Contemporaries tied Catholic religiosity to trustworthiness in business and personal relationships and loyalty to the Crown.
Few historians have studied the ramifications of Morisco emigration to Spanish America, and to date no scholars have delved into the wealth of archival documentation on Moriscos in the Americas to produce a monograph on the subject.11 In contrast, a rich parallel historiography on the conversos, Iberian converts from Judaism and their descendants, has surveyed their religious practices, social relationships, and transatlantic commercial networks. Historians working on this subject have examined how individuals continued to practice their faith in the face of increasing persecution and have focused on periods of intense inquisitorial repression during the union of the Spanish and Portuguese Crowns. Works on the conversos suggest how migration to the Americas brought a number of advantages to those wishing to escape increasing inquisitorial surveillance in Spain. The benefits of remaining within a familiar Iberian culture may also have attracted free Moriscos to the Americas. Moriscos and conversos did emigrate to Ottoman lands following their expulsion from the Peninsula, but they were not always welcomed by the societies where they settled.12
Before the 1570s, conversos who wished to live as Catholics, or to continue practicing their faith without the constant pressure of the Inquisition, could do so in territories where the tribunals in Peru and Mexico were not yet officially established.13 Ecclesiastical authorities’ complaints about the difficulties of regulating religiosity on the frontiers of the expanding Spanish Empire suggest that areas far from Lima and Mexico City provided greatest respite from inquisitorial control. An obsession with purity of blood arising from the statutes of limpieza de sangre and stemming from competition over offices between old and new Christians in Spain also intensified in Spanish America with the establishment of inquisitorial tribunals.14
The creation of empire and patterns of settlement produced an interconnected world as individuals and ideas crossed the Atlantic. Morisco emigrants, as both individuals who struggled to join a community that was increasingly restricting their activities, and as fictive entities who fueled authorities’ fears and sparked denunciations, shed light on the negotiated nature of empire in the Spanish world. Yet there was no single pattern that emerged in the Americas, and the range of experiences under consideration requires close analysis of a series of case studies that reveal how Moriscos negotiated their status, religious practices, and relationships. Through a thorough examination of colonial legislation, inquisitorial records, and court cases it becomes possible to reconstruct individual actions and explain how they illuminate broader imperial relationships. Such cases shed light on issues of religious identity, honor, and local power struggles, including the role that images of Muslims played in Spanish ideologies of conquest and in the uneven consolidations of colonial rule. Furthermore, the presence of Moriscos in Spanish America, as well as the circulation of knowledge about them, complicates notions of what it meant to be a Spaniard and part of an early modern Spanish world. Morisco presence requires us to rethink the colonial category of Spaniard (español) by troubling its implication of an “old Christian” who possessed purity of blood and formed part of a unified Catholic society. Moriscos and conversos formed part of the Republic of Spaniards, despite attempts to racialize these categories and exclude them from membership in the emerging nation and empire. Moriscos also appear in colonial
