To Be Free and Lucumí: Ana de la Calle and Making African Diaspora Identities in the Peruvian Colonial

Abstract

This article explores how a free morena of casta lucumi, Ana de la Calle, identified herself in early eighteenth-century Trujillo, Peru and highlights the interstitial nature of African diasporic identities in colonial Spanish America. By explaining how castas such as lucumi marked an elevated status within an Atlantic world context, the article underlines how enslaved women constructed their identities within and beyond enslavement.