Slavery in New Spain

As did bishops of other orders, they opposed the unjust and illegal treatment before the audience of the Spanish king and in the Royal Commission afterwards.

[2] A bull promulgated by Pope Urban VIII on 22 April 1639 prohibited slavery in the colonies of Spain and Portugal in America.

Many slaves gained freedom by escaping and taking refuge in the mountains of Orizaba, Xalapa, and Córdoba in the state of Veracruz, where they became known as Cimarrones, or maroons.

Many enslaved Africans died during what became known as the Middle Passage, and others in the New World because of harsh conditions, especially in Caribbean colonies and South America.

While women were sometimes used in the fields, they also filled numerous domestic service positions, acting as wet nurses, washerwomen, cooks, maids, seamstresses, or took personal care of masters and mistresses.

In the absence of effective civil courts where a complaint of mistreatment could be filed, Afro-Mexicans saw the Inquisition as a way to alleviate this miserable situation.

Before the army of Hernán Cortés went into Colhuacan, the soldiers asked the crown from Veracruz to allow them to send slaves from Spain for the service and sustenance of their troops.

These laws strictly forbade the practice of slavery in the future and mandated a review of existing cases of servitude.

However, freedom was granted to those in servitude, and the possibility arose that Spanish law would agree by exception to the captivity of Indians who were hostile to the colonists.

The decline of the indigenous population was serious and to avoid stopping production in 1580, Viceroy Martín Enríquez de Almanza advised the purchase of black slaves on behalf of the king, to distribute them at cost to miners, owners of sugarcane fields and mills and other Spanish businessmen.

Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla directed that this provision was published by José María Anzorena on October 19, 1810, in Morelia, by Ignacio López Rayón in Tlalpujahua on October 24, 1810, by José María Morelos through the Bando del Aguacatillo on November 17, 1810,[9] and by Miguel Hidalgo through a pamphlet published in Guadalajara on November 29, 1810,[10] who also published and ordered to print the Decreto contra la esclavitud, las gabelas y el papel sellado on December 6, 1810, in the same square.

[11] When Hidalgo died, the abolition of slavery was ratified by López Rayón in the Constitutional Elements in April 1812 and by José María Morelos in the Sentiments of the Nation in September 1813.