Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru

Bound Lives chronicles the lived experience of race relations in northern coastal Peru during the colonial era. Rachel Sarah O'Toole examines the construction of a casta (caste) system under the Spanish government, and how this system was negotiated and employed by Andeans and Africans.



Royal and viceregal authorities defined legal identities of “Indian” and “Black” to separate the two groups and commit each to specific trades and labor. Although they were legally divided, Andeans and Afric...