Commentary No. 051
- transcription
- translation
- commentary
Date: 1557, January 24. Santo Domingo City.
Theme: A female Black slave testified as witness against a Spanish or criollo settler accused of rape against a Mestizo young girl in Santo Domingo City
Source: Archivo General de Indias, Justicia 103B, 3874R. – 3875R., CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Dominican Colonial Documents Collection
Within the overall social order of mid sixteenth- century La Española, based on colonialism and slavery (or colonial slavery), official moral and legal codes seem to have intersected with the social, legal, and racial status of persons in complex ways, and that led to some instances in which people of different social or racial status would be given similar standing when it came to the testimonies of plaintiffs and defendants and their respective witnesses.
Or so seem to indicate the documents of a judicial criminal inquiry conducted in Santo Domingo City in 1557 against a man named Pedro Gutiérrez who was accused of a brutal rape against a six-years old girl named Leonorica (or little Leonor). The incident occurred in the city in the early afternoon while the stepmother or female adult in charge of the girl’s custody left their house, a moment that the perpetrator, a male neighbor residing next door, reportedly took advantage of to take the girl to his house and abuse her. The damage to the girl was so evident that the crime was reported to the authorities by the girl’s custodian that same afternoon, and by the end of the day judicial officials were already taking depositions from witnesses.
One of the witnesses interviewed by the authorities that afternoon was Marica (or little Maria), a Black female slave of the judge president of the audiencia of Santo Domingo who was apparently, for some reason unknown to us, serving at the house of Gutierrez, the defendant. Marica testified about having been shown the young girl that afternoon with blood on her garment by an Indian woman named Catalina, who served at the girl’s house, and told by the same Indian that Gutierrez had abused the girl. Marica also testified that she had heard Gutierrez promising to give Catalina a payment of two reales in exchange for silence about what had happened. Catalina adamantly and defiantly rejected the offer.
The incident shows that there were some occasional limits, within the colonial moral order, to what a Spanish settler or La Española creole man could do to Black or Indian women of enslaved or servant status to exert pressures on them, for example, to hide what they knew about an incident like the one described, especially women over whom he did not have legal property rights within the slavery system.