Paula de Eguiluz

Paula de Eguiluz (fl. 1636) was a healer of African descent in present-day Santo Domingo. Well known as a health-care practitioner in one of the largest slave cities in the New World, she was tried for witchcraft three times. She had an important impact on the community of African healers.

Early life

De Eguiluz was born in present-day Santo Domingo. Her mother, Guiomar, was an enslaved woman for a man named Diego de Leguizamón. De Eguiluz lived with her mother until her teenage years, when she was bought by Íñigo de Otaza. She was enslaved to him for many years and later sold to a man named Juan de Eguiluz, in Havana.

Cartagena

Living in Cartagena, Colombia, de Eguiluz was surrounded by a significant population of enslaved African women and African inhabitants. Owing to the flow of people coming and going, there was a substantial number of healers and ritual specialists in the city, as there was also much disease. The Spaniards and Creoles saw these women as the cause of disease.

De Eguiluz learned about remedies and rituals to help heal others. She was accused and tried for witchcraft three separate times, between the years 1623 and 1636.

Cuba and trials

First trial: 1624

The first time de Eguiluz was accused of witchcraft was around 1624. Reported to the Spanish Inquisition by her Cuban neighbors, the charges against her included killing a newborn by sucking on its navel, jumping out of a window to avoid a blow from her master but suffering no injuries, practicing erotic magic, and having a pact with the devil as a member of a witches' gathering. De Eguiluz brushed off the accusations as resulting from the jealousy of "people who hate her because her master loves her and they see her well-dressed". She flaunted her wardrobe, which the Cuban Holy Office functionaries inventoried as including nine skirts, seven bodices, six shirts, and four headscarves. All of her clothing was new and expensive, far beyond expectations for an enslaved woman. She owned (and presumably wore, despite the tropical climate) heavy wool skirts lavishly dyed in blue, scarlet, dark green, and dark gold. She also had damask skirts, dyed blue or yellow, and decorated in silver. Her bodices were equally luxurious, in bright combinations including blue with gold braid, green and scarlet with silver buttons, and white and yellow with silver braid.

After three months and thirteen hearings, De Eguiluz understood what the Inquisitors wanted to hear as her testimony: the story of the Witches' Sabbath. They would not settle for any explanation unless it included a confession of witchcraft. De Eguiluz complied, and spoke of her pact with the devil, though none of it was true. She was convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to 200 public lashes of the whip and two years in a hospital, wearing a sambenito.

Second trial: 1632

The second time de Eguiluz was arrested was in 1632. There was suspicion that she had returned to witchcraft and made another pact with the devil. In the eight years between her first and second periods of imprisonment, even as she served her penance, she took advantage of her taste of freedom, earning an income as a healer and washerwoman, as well as taking part in love affairs and socializing with other Afro-Caribbean women who dealt in erotic magic, powders, remedies, and possibly even witchcraft and occult-influenced sexuality. As was traditional in Cartagena and other cities in the Iberian Peninsula and Spanish America, due to a popular interest in manipulating emotions and sexuality via potions and spells, women of various social classes and nationalities gathered to confer, support each other's efforts in relationships with men, and buy and sell nostrums to help attract and keep men's interest and patronage. De Eguiluz and her peers and clients regularly spoke of their magical practices as attempts at achieving "good love", although the Inquisitors described the relationships the women craved as "dishonest friendships". Most of the experts in erotic magic in Cartagena were African-descended freedwomen and slaves, working in domestic servitude or in menial jobs. These women practiced divination in an effort to learn about potential lovers who could give them gifts or alleviate their financial worries, however temporarily. Motivated by emotional cravings and sexual desires as well as financial expediency, they cast binding spells and tied knots to keep these men with them. Invocations calling on souls in purgatory and hell demanded that the men feel pain in their most sensitive and vital organs if they left the women. They also discussed "stupefying" men to make them more compliant. De Eguiluz taught her comrades incantations that could reignite the "flames of love" in a disaffected lover. She also knew how to make potions that would "get rid of a man's love" when he was no longer wanted.

During her second trial, she had 21 hearings, in which she developed a script of what the Inquisitors wanted to hear. By this time, however, she has made friends and connections within her local area, and she used them to try and help reduce her sentence. She also provided the Inquisitors with a list of names of people suspected of witchcraft, which led to the arrest of 21 women. In her testimony, de Eguiluz mentioned her experience with herbs, recipes, and healing, stressing the fact that her intention was to heal, not harm.

Third trial: 1634

In 1634, a prosecutor decided to review de Eguiluz's previous trial. Some of the women whom she had named were angry and wanted to testify against her. Five of them claimed they had confessed to witchcraft because de Eguiluz had convinced them to. De Eguiluz did not talk as much during this trial, fearing that, due to its seriousness, it could lead to her execution. She emphasized her work as a healer, calling herself a "curandera".

Further reading

• McKnight, Kathryn Joy., and Leo J. Garofalo. Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1550–1812. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 2010.