2026/03/05 by Carolin Schmitz · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Colonialism, slavery, and trade #Early Modern Women Writers #Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices
paper · doi:10.1093/pastj/gtag009
openalex publication_date 2026/03/05 · openalex created_date 2026/06/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/26
Abstract María Phelipa de la Cruz, a Black, mostly free, woman healer from Tenerife, was tried four times between 1712 and 1729 by the Tribunal of the Inquisition of the Canary Islands, accused of sorcery and superstitious practices. This article uses the rich source material surrounding María Phelipa for a microhistorical analysis that reveals the entanglement of healing, mobility, and belonging in the Canary Islands, a distinctive colonial setting between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. María Phelipa’s trajectory was marked by an intense mobility across the islands and, at one point, the Atlantic, mainly prompted by two adversarial forces: sentencing to exile (four times) by the Inquisitors, and her consistent defiance of these orders. The scope of this article is to reveal the particular position a Black woman embodied through healing and movement in a colonial society, and how she navigated its structure, in a geographical, social, and institutional sense. In doing so, the various forms of mobility evident in María Phelipa’s life are explored: (i) her biographic trajectory; (ii) her legal mobility; (iii) her social mobility as a healer attending to patients across the Canarian society; (iv) her movements during exile through institutions of confinement and care. The article ultimately argues that María Phelipa’s interconnected mobility was intimately linked to her status of integration and that healing played a crucial role in making her both highly mobile and highly integrated.