Political Economy, Praxis, and Aesthetics: The Institutions of Slavery and Hacienda at the Jesuit Vineyards of Nasca, Peru

Summary

At the time of its expulsion from the Spanish Empire in 1767, the Society of Jesus was among the largest slaveholders in the Americas. The two Jesuit Nasca estates (San Joseph and San Xavier) were their largest and most profitable Peruvian vineyards, worked by nearly 600 slaves of sub-Saharan origin. Their haciendas and annex properties throughout the Nasca valleys established agroindustrial hegemony in the region. This paper explores the political and economic dynamics among enslaved subjects on these 17th and 18th century estates through a consideration of the day-to-day. An approximation of the quotidian specifies the local conditions of coercive colonial institutions within an emerging global economy. Such a consideration for the political economy of the institutions of slavery and the hacienda is enhanced through an aesthetic approach to power and enslaved praxis, probing the dynamic construction of meaning and hierarchy within enslaved communities through both strategic and habitual practices.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Expanding the Intellectual Envelope Comparative Approaches to Political Economy   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

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PaperId(s): 281