'History of Abuse Colonial Lima, Peru'

The Global Studies Seminar welcomes Trey Proctor presenting, "Female Slave Litigants, Gendered Rhetoric, and Abuse in Colonial Lima, Peru." Abstract – Imperial Spanish legal codes empowered slaves to accuse their masters of cruelty (sevicia or maltrato) in court and have those complaints investigated and adjudicated by colonial magistrates. The consideration of such sevicia cases from late-colonial Lima, Peru, 
allows for the in-depth consideration of the legal culture of slavery in late-colonial Spanish America, long an area of interest for scholars of comparative slavery, and
 of master-slave relations more generally. The contests that animate these case files over the treatment of slaves reveal much about the
nature of late-colonial slavery and ongoing social discourses on the acceptable treatment of the enslaved. “Female Slave Litigants” focuses specifically on the explicitly gendered arguments that female slaves and/or their representatives presented before colonial courts in attempts to prove abuse. Historians have long recognized slavery as a profoundly gendered institution, one in which many scholars would argue that women faced a double burden as enslaved persons and as women. This essay, however, extends that discussion to explore how slave women themselves employed colonial gender norms surrounding proper womanhood relative to work, family, and sexuality to argue that some slave women faced particularly gendered forms of abuse. The question becomes, then, did those gendered arguments prove successful, did colonial society come to understand proper treatment of slaves as dependent upon the sex of the slave? Bio Frank “Trey” Proctor teaches courses in the history of Latin America and the Atlantic World. His research and teaching interests focus on Mexico, colonial Latin America, and Comparative Slavery. Proctor’s research focuses on the lived experience of slaves of African descent and master-slave relations in Spanish America. His first book, “Damned Notions of Liberty”: Slavery, Culture, and Power in Colonial Mexico, 1640-1769 (University of New Mexico Press, 2010) explores those issues in Mexico. His next book project will explore similar questions from the perspective of the Spanish Empire in an attempt to move away from “national” histories. His talk today comes from research conducted in Lima, Peru. Part of that research will soon be published as “An “Imponderable Servitude”: Slave versus Master Litigation for Maltratamiento or Sevicia (Cruelty) in late Eighteenth-century Lima, Peru” in The Journal of Social History. In addition to his work on slavery, Proctor also recently published an article on the histories of pet-keeping, popular culture, and laughter in late-colonial Mexico City entitled “Amores Perritos: Puppies, Laughter, and Popular Catholicism in Bourbon Mexico City” which appeared in the Journal of Latin American Studies. In 2005, Proctor joined the Denison faculty after teaching at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA for two years. Professor Proctor earned his BA from University of California at Davis, his MA from the University of Arizona, and his PhD from Emory University.