Supplies, Status, and Slavery: Contested Aesthetics of Provisioning at the Jesuit Haciendas of Nasca

What is it about?

The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century wine- and brandy-producing estates owned by the Society of Jesus in Nasca, Peru, held a large enslaved population of diverse sub-Saharan origins. Enslaved actors, together with a minority of black freepersons and itinerant indigenous and mestizo laborers, relied on goods and foodstuffs supplied by their Jesuit administrators along with products they provisioned themselves. The aesthetic worlds of the estates were contested through the ways in which these actors engaged and provisioned themselves, making use of material culture and foodways to strategically manipulate their statuses and produce meaning reflective of their diverse origins and entanglements.

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Photo by Dan Cristian Pădureț on Unsplash

Photo by Dan Cristian Pădureț on Unsplash