In Buenos Aires, on October 26, 1759, Don Alonso Isidro Rodriguez de la Peña replied in writing to the charge that he held the parda Francisca Marigorta in illegal bondage. After fleeing from his household, Francisca had found temporary refuge with a sympathetic neighbor, Don Bernardo Quiroga. The neighbor had then written to the defensor general de pobres, indios y esclavos (the defender of the poor, Indians, and slaves), Don Pedro Gonzalez Cortina, to lay out Francisca’s claim that she was a free woman held illegally as a slave. According to this unofficial advocate, Francisca had been born to a free mother in the interior city of San Juan and was therefore free from birth.
Francisca claimed that she had come to Buenos Aires from her native San Juan as a free servant in Rodriguez de la Peña’s household. Once relocated in Buenos Aires, however, her employer began to “treat...
