Africans in Pueblos de Indios: Methodological Approaches to Socio-Laboral Dynamics and Human Ties through Data from Colonial Charcas, 1500s–1700s

Afro-indigenous interaction and relationships are an undeniable reality of daily life in colonial Hispanic-American societies. Despite involving the majority of the population in colonial Latin America, this reality has not received sufficient attention in the historiography. To the present day, studies tend to prioritize the analysis of ethnicized and racialized groups separately, or in their relationship with Europeans and their descendants. I propose a repositioning of the historian’s gaze and a readjustment of the methodological approach to the phenomenon and the sources. I start from the evidence and analysis of rich data for colonial Charcas (Bolivia). My paper presents a selection of these materials to show the scope of the contact in the concrete setting of the pueblo de indios, where Afro-indigenous interactions and relationships occurred despite the official prohibitions that sought the separation of these populations and the popular prejudices linked to the ideas of condición and calidad. I argue that in this way, it is possible to give a more complete, complex, and reliable picture of the socio-laboral dynamics and human ties of the colonial past of Charcas, and by extension the rest of colonial Latin America.