“This woman’s resistance to her son’s paying tribute”

Abstract

This article focuses on how women of African descent responded to colonial taxation. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, free Afrodescendants were subject to a royal tribute tax based on their African ancestry. This tribute was also based on genealogy, gender, and family. The article argues that women petitioners referred to their marriages as evidence of their exempt tributary status, as they sought to mitigate the effects of tribute. Without denying their African ancestry, free mulatas asserted their family histories. These petitions caused colonial officials to re-examine what women of African descent owed the Spanish crown.