“In a War Against the Spanish”: Andean Protection and African Resistance on the Northern Peruvian Coast

Abstract

In 1641, the rural guard of colonial Trujillio on the northern Peruvian coast, accompanied by “many Indians,” attacked a cimarrón (fugitive slave) encampment led by two congos, Gabriel and Domingo. Indigenous men wished to end the fugitives’ raids on their fields and families. Towards this end, they guided the Spanish lieutenant magistrate and his company to the cimarrón settlement hidden in the hills above the Santa Catalina valley. Indigenous leaders and commoners of the Mansiche reducción—or colonial indigenous village—who maintained lands in the Santa Catalina valley, testified that “negros cimarrones” (fugitive “blacks”) had been assaulting local inhabitants and stealing from valley since 1633. Yet, Mansiche reducción had not registered a previous complaint indicating that fugitive slaves and indigenous people in Santa Catalina had not to this point been antagonistic.