Maria reports that the widow who claimed to own her is held at Petit-Goave

Isabel Pacheco, a widow of mixed African descent taken at Veracruz, was being held at Petit-Goave with her two children, aged twelve and fourteen, in November 1684. Earlier that year a young black woman named Maria, whom Pacheco had held in slavery in the Mexican port, was picked up during a Spanish incursion and taken to Azua and then to the city of Santo Domingo, where she reported Pacheco’s situation to the president. Since 1680 anyone who escaped a French enslaver on the island was granted refuge and freedom on the Spanish side, and people in the French settlements knew it. Maria’s case was awkward, because under Spanish law Pacheco still owned her, and she was ordered to stay in Santo Domingo until Pacheco’s position was settled. In the same month the president reported that the French settlements were full of black people from the sack of Veracruz.