From arrochelados to residents: Bourbon reformism and political integration in the governorates of Santa Marta and Cartagena, New Granada, 1740-1810

Abstract

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a particular kind of miscegenation occurred in the governorates of Santa Marta and Cartagena in the New Kingdom of Granada. The arrival of Bourbon reformism in the city of Cartagena in 1740, led by Viceroy Sebastián Eslava, had a major impact on the heterogeneous population who, the authorities considered, lived ‘without God or law’. Although, coercion existed in the population policies implemented to control people living in rochelas and/or arrochelados, it was not the main driving force that guaranteed mobilization of groups of people to specific locations called sitios de libres or ‘places of free people’. We consider a specific political maneuver by the Viceroy, involving insertion into the neighborhood and the vassalage of the free descendants of slaves and indigenous people, to lie behind this process. We also show how, once the ‘free people’ were included in the neighborhood and considered the King’s vassals, they began to seek greater political mobility.