“The House that Binds: Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Peru” Rachel Sarah O’Toole, UC Irvine

The Household that Binds: Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Peru Talk by Rachel Sarah O’Toole (UC Irvine)

To demonstrate how enslaved and freed people in Colonial Peru contracted their freedom, O’Toole reconstructs three women’s family histories from pieces of notarial records, parish entries, and judicial cases. She agrees that archival practices silence black subjects (Trulliot 1997) and recreate violence on black subjectivities (Fuentes 2016), But also wonders if historians can do more to counteract colonial logics of criminal and civil archives. In her presentation, Rachel Sarah O’Toole demonstrates how manumitting and freed women countered affective labor demands of seventeenth century slaveholders. This study focuses on the Colonial city of Trujillo, on the Northern Peruvian coast.

*Light refreshments served*

Event Co-Sponsored by LAIS