This article presents a methodology for identifying the influence of free Black women in a set of Spanish legal documents. In response to a 1574 decree imposing tribute on them, Panamá’s free men and women of African descent collectively petitioned for exemption on the basis of their poverty and decades of uncompensated military service. They presented sworn depositions from twenty of the city’s Spanish notables in support. This essay analyzes those depositions for patterns of grammatical and orthographic variances and interruptions that point to the influence of free Black women—who formed the majority of the city’s free Black population—in the preparation and performance of the successful legal case.
Karen B. Graubart (Wed,) studied this question.