Luis Benedicto Juárez Luévano

From Enslaved to Free: The Accelerated Transition of the Labor Force in the Mining and Agro-Pastoral Region of Zacatecas (New Galicia), 1550–1750

This project examines slavery’s rapid decline and labor reorganization in the mining-agropastoral region of Zacatecas, New Galicia, between 1550 and 1750. It asks why slavery contracted even as mining and agricultural production expanded, and how labor relations were reconfigured through durable forms of dependency among legally free people. The study argues that enslaved people of diverse origins and colonial classifications (calidades)–including those recorded as negros, mulatos, moros, chinos, and indios–were crucial to the region’s mining and agrarian development, particularly after the displacement and demographic collapse of Indigenous Chichimeca nations. From the seventeenth century onward, however, migration, manumission, the purchase of freedom, and the growth of the legally free population contributed to a shift toward other asymmetrical labor relations involving naboríos, indios de repartimiento, criados, and sirvientes. Drawing on notarial, judicial, treasury, parish, and private records from Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, and Jalisco, the project reconstructs individual and family trajectories across birth, marriage, work, sale, manumission, and death. By combining regional history, microhistory, and historically informed dependency studies, it shows how coercion and restricted mobility persisted beyond the formal boundary between slavery and freedom.

since 2022
Research Collaborator and Database Contributor, "The Circulation of Free and Enslaved Afro-descendants in New Spain: A Digital Humanities Workshop" (Trayectorias Afro), University of California, Irvine, University of California, Merced, and National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), United States and Mexico

2017
Graduate Research Fellow, FONDECYT Project No. 1130585, "Slavery and Labor in Santiago, Chile, 1776–1823," University of Chile, Chile (MA thesis conducted within the project; Principal Investigator: Dr. Celia Cussen)

2017
Scholarship-Funded Teaching Assistant for "History of the Americas during the Enlightenment and Independence Period," BA in History Program, University of Chile, Chile

since 2021
Doctoral Candidate in Early Modern and Modern History, University of Hamburg, Germany

2022
MA in American Studies, with a specialization in History of the Americas, University of Seville, Spain

2017–2019
Graduate Studies in the MA Program in Social Ethics and Human Development, Alberto Hurtado University, Chile

2018
MA in History, University of Chile, Chile

2015
BA in History, University of Chile, Chile

2013
BA in History, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico

Articles and Chapters

• Forthcoming. "Trajectories of Enslaved People in the Mining-Agropastoral Region of Zacatecas: Reconstructing Lives from Documentary Fragments (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries)." Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation, thematic dossier.
• Forthcoming. Invited review contribution to the Book Symposium on Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Adrian Masters, The Radical Spanish Empire: How Paperwork Politics Remade the New World (Harvard University Press, 2026), Notas de Antropología de las Américas, special issue. Expected publication: 2026.
• 2015. "¿Esclavos africanos y afrodescendientes en Aguascalientes, México? El caso particular de la villa de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de las Aguas Calientes, siglos XVII–XVIII.” In Estudios Afrolatinoamericanos 2: Actas de las Cuartas Jornadas del GEALA, edited by Juan Francisco Martínez Peria and María de Lourdes Ghidoli, 53–64. Buenos Aires: Ediciones del CCC, Centro Cultural de la Cooperación Floreal Gorini.

Theses

• 2022. MA Thesis. " ‘…el verdadero valor de d[ic]ho muchacho, /por ser muy rubio/ son los d[ic]hos setenta y dos pesos y no más…’. Ser esclavo y mulato en la alcaldía mayor de Aguascalientes, reino de la Nueva Galicia, 1653–1750." University of Seville, Spain.
• 2018. MA Thesis. "La transición de la fuerza de trabajo en la alcaldía mayor de Aguascalientes. Siglos XVII y XVIII." University of Chile, Chile.
• 2013. BA Thesis, "Los esclavos, africanos y afrodescendientes, en la villa de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de las Aguas Calientes (1650–1750)." National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico.