8. The Will of an Indian Oriental and her Chinos in Peru (1644)

In her 1644 will, a widow named Leonor Alvarez made arrangements for her funeral and granted freedom to four people whom she had held as slaves. Alvarez identified herself as the “Peruvian daughter of gentile parents from Oriental India.” She had been married to one Hernando Gutierrez, of Chinese origin, and the people she freed were from Africa and Asia. Leo Garofalo places this document in the context of Lima’s complex racial demography, which included significant numbers of people from East, Southeast, and South Asia, both free and enslaved. The will provides a glimpse into the life or Asian men and women who had migrated either freely or by force to South America.