Supplies, Status, and Slavery: Contested Aesthetics at the Haciendas of Nasca

Summary

The coastal wine and brandy-producing estates owned by the Society of Jesus in Nasca held captive a large enslaved population in the 17th and 18th centuries. With a combined population of nearly 600 slaves of diverse sub-Saharan origins, San Joseph and San Xavier de la Nasca were the largest and most profitable of the Jesuit vineyards in the viceroyalty of Peru. These estates were also home to black freepersons and itinerant indigenous and mestizo wage laborers who engaged, exchanged goods, developed intimate relationships, and even married enslaved persons tied to the estates. Enslaved actors made use of goods supplied by their Jesuit administrators along with products that they provisioned themselves, grew in their own gardens and fields, made locally by craft specialists on the estates, or obtained through exchange with free residents and visitors who connected the estates to a broader colonial market. The aesthetic worlds of the estates were contested through the ways in which enslaved actors engaged with each other and their free neighbors, provisioned themselves, and made use of material culture, often strategically manipulating their statuses and making meaning in ways reflective of their diverse origins and entanglements.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Status and Identity in the Imperial Andes   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15976