Sodomy, Slavery, and Childhood in Early Colonial San Luis Potosí: A 1602 Criminal Case

This article examines a 1602 criminal case prosecuted in the frontier town of San Luis Potosí, in which Sebastián, a free Indigenous adult, and Diego, an enslaved Black child between six and eight years old, were both tried for sodomy. Drawing on the criminal proceedings preserved in the Archivo Histórico del Estado de San Luis Potosí, the analysis explores how colonial hierarchies of age, legal status, calidad, and gender intersected to create extreme vulnerability and shape juridical outcomes. The case reveals the slaveholding colonial legal system's “fantasy of consent”: its apparent disinterest in distinguishing coercion from consent when prosecuting sodomy involving minors. By recovering Diego's mediated yet irreplaceable voice from the archive, this study contributes to the historiography of African-Indigenous relations, enslaved childhood, and the regulation of sexuality in early colonial New Spain.