A Great Conspiracy of Witches: Religion, Race, and the Right to Wealth in Early Cartagena de Indias
Speaker: Assistant Professor Ana Silva
Date: September 20, 2021
Time: 6:00PM
Address: Nelson Mandela Auditorium, Global Education Center
In March of 1634, the tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition in the port city of Cartagena de Indias (in present-day Colombia) confiscated property from supposed heretics for the first time. On this occasion, the inquisitors confiscated houses and movable goods from a group of formerly enslaved women of African descent whom the tribunal had accused of witchcraft. The Inquisition transformed real estate ownership in the city by selling the formerly enslaved women's property to men of European and Christian ancestry. This talk introduces the long-term process by which gender, race, and Catholicism gradually came to define who had the right to accumulate wealth and to establish lineages and a patrimony in Cartagena de Indias during the seventeenth century.
Our first ISA faculty lecture will be given by UNC History Assistant Professor Ana Silva who researches race, gender, religion, and the law in colonial Latin American cities.
This event will be following COVID-19 protocols and will have limited seating. First come, first serve.
