The earliest decrees regulating emigration to the Spanish Americas issued by the Crown in 1501 were included in the instructions given to Friar Nicolás de Ovando, who was appointed first governor of Hispaniola. These instructions stipulated, “As we with great care have to carry out the conversion of the Indians to our holy Catholic faith: if you find persons suspect in matters of the faith present during the said conversion, it could create an impediment. Do not consent or allow Muslims or Jews, heretics, or anyone reconciled by the Inquisition, or persons newly converted to our Faith to go there, unless they are black slaves … who were born in the power of Christians, our subjects and native inhabitants.”5 These restrictions were echoed in the cédulas that regulated the colonization and settlement of the new Spanish territories. In 1508 King Ferdinand ordered the Casa de Contratación not to permit either the “children and grandchildren of the converts of Jews and Muslims, or the children of those executed or reconciled by the Inquisition” to travel to or trade in Hispaniola.6 Orders for the settlement of Florida and Bimini, issued by Queen Juana in 1514, specified that “new Christians [who are descendants] of Muslims and Jews can neither populate nor reside in the said islands under penalty of the loss of their property and of our favor.”7 Despite complaints about the shortage of Spanish settlers in the newly conquered regions and specific requests for Morisco or North African labor, the Crown maintained officially that only old Christians could settle in the Western Hemisphere.
It is unclear how enforceable these decrees against Morisco migration to the Americas were. Prior to the adoption of the statutes of limpieza de sangre in 1548, religious interests were less important than policies that would benefit imperial expansion and the Royal Treasury. Royal licenses and habilitaciones provided loopholes in the contradictory royal decrees restricting emigration. For example, in 1509 King Ferdinand issued a general license to Castilian converso communities paying the composición.8 Some local officials in the Caribbean and in New Spain initially favored projects involving Morisco artisans and laborers. Following the arrival of these early new Christian emigrants, competition in the recently established colonial settlements placed pressures on their presence. Growing resentments tested the limits of religious tolerance as conversos and Moriscos, due to their legal status as prohibited persons, became increasingly vulnerable to denunciation.
Local authorities in the Caribbean islands lodged complaints about new Christians that resulted in renewed decrees to restrict their presence. In 1539 Charles V ordered officials to address “what has been seen by experience: the great damage and disadvantage that results from transporting to our Indies the children of burned and reconciled Jews and Muslims and those who are newly converted.”9 This decree, upon its public proclamation from the steps of Seville’s cathedral, ordered that none of these individuals could pass to Spanish America “in any manner.”10 Yet it also provided an exception for purchasing a royal license, so that some could travel without penalties.11 This permitted slaveholders to purchase licenses for their Morisco and North African slaves to accompany them to Spanish America, with the provision that they be returned to Spain after a specified number of years. Members of the Granadan Morisco nobility were also exempt from most legislation regulating Moriscos, and they could bear arms and wear silk in accordance with their high status. Some may have legally purchased licenses to cross the Atlantic.12
During the first half of the sixteenth century, royal policies toward the broader Morisco population in Spain were also less stringent. This may have had repercussions on their ability to cross the Atlantic. Following their initial forced baptism in 1499–1501 the Granadan Moriscos were granted a “period of grace” exempting them from full inquisitorial scrutiny, so that they could be fully instructed in Catholicism. In 1526 Charles V granted them the right, like the conversos, to pay a tax in exchange for certain privileges and allowed them to continue some of their practices for a forty-year period.13 Nonetheless, ecclesiastical authorities issued periodic prohibitions of Morisco customs that included food, dress, language, and dance, and the terms of this agreement had to be renegotiated continuously. Even in 1526, during Charles V’s stay in Granada, a panel of theologians in the royal chapel of that city banned Morisco practices and ordered the activation of an inquisitorial tribunal.14 Yet inquisitorial prosecution of Morisco cases did not gain momentum until after Philip II’s reign began in 1556.15 During this early period, bishops oversaw the conversion of the Moriscos in their dioceses, and missionaries such as the Jesuits and Franciscans also actively proselytized among the Moriscos in Granada.16
LEGISLATING EMIGRATION, THE NET TIGHTENS: 1548–1621
During the reigns of Philip II and Philip III, policies restricting the movement of Moriscos intensified across the Spanish world. This was tied to changing peninsular dynamics, from Counter-Reformation politics, to the adoption of the purity of blood statutes, to growing suspicion of the loyalty of the Moriscos. This larger political context played a role in policies affecting emigration to Spanish America and also in how Spaniards were defining their nation and empire.
While the purity of blood statutes appeared in Spain in the late fifteenth century, they gained ground during Philip II’s reign. They required that anyone applying to hold a prestigious post, or to attend university, provide documents testifying to their old Christian ancestry. Applicants for these positions had to prove their limpieza de sangre—that none of their ancestors descended from Muslims or Jews. These statutes delimited the official boundaries of who could hold power and status in the Spanish world. The resulting prevalence of limpieza discourses also produced and reinforced a link between concepts like heresy and faithfulness, and their physical transmission to future generations through bodily fluids.17
The political climate toward the Moriscos in Spain was shifting, and they appeared increasingly in protonationalistic discourses about loyalty and fears concerning the vulnerability of Spain’s Catholic empire. By the mid-sixteenth century some Spanish authorities had become frustrated with the slow progress of the assimilation of the Morisco population. By this time, the growth of the Ottoman Empire, Berber incursions on Spanish outposts in North Africa, and worries that the Moriscos would ally with either North Africans or French Protestants who were active in the Mediterranean, prompted some Spaniards to fear increasingly that Moriscos would become a fifth column in Spain.18 The Crown and local authorities issued further restrictions and enforced them more rigorously. In Valencia anxieties had already taken hold in the 1540s as peace with the Ottomans failed and North African corsairs conducted raids along the coast. Valencian authorities issued laws distinguishing between local Moriscos and those born in Granada, Aragon, and North Africa.19 In 1560 a royal decree barred Moriscos from owning African slaves. In addition, any African slaves who had previously belonged to Moriscos were prohibited from being taken to the Americas.20 In Granada, increasing restrictions on the Morisco population contributed to the second Alpujarras uprising of 1569–72. News of the revolt spread across the Spanish world, and fears of Morisco presence extended with it. Once the rebellion had been suppressed and the remaining Moriscos were expelled from Granada and resettled across Castile, suspicion extended to Morisco communities across Spain. Moriscos were now conflated increasingly with the Granadans and cast as rebels and apostates.21
By the mid-sixteenth century the Crown continued to express concern over the arrival of converts from Islam and their descendants in the Spanish Americas and intensified its efforts. Charles V issued a series of decrees during the 1550s that illustrate the difficulties of enforcing royal policies toward emigration. It is evident