The Legal Infrastructure for the Enslavement of the Aucas of Chile in the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

This article takes the example of auca slavery in Chile during the seventeenth century to argue that legality can provide the infrastructure that historically enables the enslavement of individuals and groups through its traditional repertoire of intellectual and institutional resources. As noted in the case of auca slavery, these legal resources may include, among other possibilities, doctrines that justify the existence of a particular form of unfree status; categories that ascribe to individuals or groups the circumstances that render them unfree; and procedures for certifying an individual’s unfree status, transferring the ownership of unfree individuals and resolving disputes over the ownership of enslaved individuals or over their free or unfree status.