Rumour, Royalty, Revolt: Mexico City’s 1612 Slave Conspiracy in the Atlantic Context

Abstract

ABSTRACT Mexico City’s 1612 slave conspiracy is a striking event in the history of slavery in Mexico and the Americas. Over the last twenty years, this event has received attention from Mexicanist scholars but has been overlooked by a broader trend of Atlantic slave conspiracy scholarship which has flourished in the same period. This article shows that our understanding of the 1612 conspiracy is strengthened by drawing upon trends in the historiography on Atlantic slave conspiracies. This is done by synthesizing developments in scholarship on two areas: Spanish fears of New Christian subversions and African slavery in early colonial Mexico. Doing so not only provides a renewed analysis of the 1612 conspiracy but also widens the geographic and temporal scope of Atlantic slave conspiracy scholarship, with 1612 predating all but one other known conspiracy and being the first example discussed from Mexico. This method leads to the assertion that due to religious millenarian worldviews, longstanding Spanish concerns regarding moriscos and conversos deeply influenced how Afro-Mexicans were viewed in 1612.