A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and the forbidden are its inhabitants. Los atravesados live here: the squint-eyed, the perverse, the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulato, the half-breed, the half dead, in short, those who cross over, pass over, or go through the confines of the normal.
-Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands.
All we know about the life of Leonor Álvarez comes from a few statements she made in her testament five days before she died in Lima, on the 23rd of October of 1644 (Garofalo 2020, 131-140; see Diego Luis 2024, 183-184; Lúcio de Souza 2019, 193.). In spite of the paucity of her declarations, it becomes evident that Leonor embodies the fluidity and liminality of borderland identities as conceptualized by Gloria Anzaldúa––she is an atravesada.
Leonor was an India Oriental whose precise origins or age at the time of her death are unknown. In her will, she tells us that she was married to a Chinese man named Hernando Gutiérrez and lived in the socio-cultural borderlands of Lima with other mongrels like herself. It is also clear that this atravesada, like many other forcefully displaced colonial subjects, yearned to experience familial and affective bonds. Sensing that she had little time left to live, Leonor begged her designated heir, Isabel China, to devote some of her inheritance to the offering of masses for her soul–– not out of obligation but out of her own desire. Leonor states in her will:
although I was married to Hernando Gutierrez, I had no children whatsoever. I have other heirs, and by right I name as my universal heir in the sale of everything Isabel China so that she has and inherits with the blessing of God and mine and with the charge to pay what is contained in this my testament and the rest of the good that she wants to do for my soul and is her will, not because they ask it of her but because she can and wishes to do it. (Trans. Garofalo 2020, 137)
[aunque fui casada con el dicho Hernando Gutiérrez no tuve hijos ningunos. Tengo otros herederos que de derecho nombro por mi universal heredera en el remate de todos ellos a la dicha Isabel China para que la susodicha los haya y herede con la bendición de Dios y la mía y con el dicho cargo de que paga lo contendido en este mi testamento y el demás bien que quisiere hacer por mi anima y que fuere su voluntad sin que por esto se le pidan y tome cuenta, sino que se pudiere y quisiere lo haga porque esto es mi última y final voluntad.] (Archivo Arzobispal de Lima, Testamentos, Legajo 26, Expediente 2, 8v-9r)
Without further context–– and given Leonor’s affective tone–– it would be natural to assume that Isabel was a younger friend, or perhaps the daughter of a neighbor.
The nature of the relationship between Leonor and Isabel, however, could not even hint at a reciprocal emotional bond. Isabel China was Leonor’s slave. What’s more, Leonor did not inherit Isabel from her husband or another kin. She purchased Isabel and enslaved her son Marcos and her youngest child, Gracia de la Ascensión, who was nine years old at the time Leonor’s will was written. Leonor recalls:
I purchased Isabel China, born in the city of Canton. She was sold to me by Juan Domingues, Vizcayno [Basque]. She has a daughter named Grace de la Ascension, born in this city, who is nine years old. Therefore, after my days I give them freedom so that Isabel spends from my goods and property the quantity of 200 pesos of eight on my burial, masses and candles [paper is broken] and other expenses and costs [paper is broken] of which all should come from the said 200 pesos giving her permission to sell from my possessions those which she believes sufficient for it and to pay for my burial and mass and costs and if there is extra to do something good for my soul and in this form I leave her free. (Trans. Garofalo, 2020, 136)
[yo compré a Isabel China natural de la ciudad de Cantón que me la vendió Juan Domínguez, vizcaíno = y la suso dicha tiene una hija nombrada Gracia de la Ascensión, criolla desta ciudad de edad de nueve años y no embargante [que] ambas eran mis esclavas, las he criado y tenido por compañeras mías y así desde luego para después de mis días las doy libertad en bastante forma con calidad que la dicha Isabel degastan de mis bienes y hacienda gasta en cantidad de 200 pesos de a ocho en mi entierro misas y cera [roto] y otros gastos y costas que [roto] [de]llo hubiere que en todo venga usar los dichos doscientos pesos dándole lugar a que venda de los dichos mis bienes los cuales pareciere ser bastantes para ello y paga el dicho mi entierro y misa y gastos y costas si algo sobra y hará bien por mi ánima y en esta forma la dejo libre.] (Archivo Arzobispal de Lima, Testamentos, Legajo 26, Expediente 2, 7v.)
Leonor explicitly emphasized Isabel’s Asian origin by calling her “China,” a strategic choice that reinforced her status as a transpacific Asian captive—someone who could be legally enslaved in colonial Perú. While Isabel preferred to be called by her mistress’s surname, Álvarez, Leonor’s insistence on her Chineseness underscored her desire to establish the legitimacy of her ownership. This distinction is not merely cultural; it reflects colonial legal boundaries. The New Laws of 1542 prohibited the enslavement of indigenous peoples, rendering their labor more protected, but Asians—particularly those arriving via the Manila-Acapulco galleon—remained tradable and enslav able under different legal frameworks until 1672, when Chino slavery was abolished in New Spain (Scott 1994, 140). Children from Canton, like Isabel, were sold into the European slave market after being kidnapped by Portuguese traders. They could also be sold by their own parents or guardians when their families suffered calamities, such as the 1601 rice famine, in which about a thousand children were sold into slavery (see Seijas 2014, 37 and 55). These children were then taken by Portuguese dealers to Macao where they were redistributed to other parts of Asia, though not before being baptized by Iberian missionaries, who would have substituted their Cantonese names with new Christian ones (see Souza 2019, 51-55, 184-198). Isabel had another name that has been buried by slavery and forceful baptisms. Someone like Isabel would have been taken from Macao, to Manila, where she would have been coerced to embark on the dangerous transpacific journey to Acapulco. In Acapulco, she would have been sold to a dealer who would have taken her to Lima, where she found her ultimate owner. Again, by emphasizing Isabel’s origin in Canton, Leonor not only claims ownership but also navigates the complex legal landscape that differentiated her from indigenous slavery—clarifying her right to own Isabel within the sanctioned system of slavery.
Leonor’s affectionate tone towards Isabel and her daughter Gracia is betrayed by her deliberate actions to keep Isabel and Gracia in bondage until the end of her own life (see Luis 2024, 184). But it is difficult to overlook Leonor’s efforts to diminish her own agency as a slave owner, as she feels compelled to justify the condition she thrusted on them. “Even though both were my slaves,” Leonor states, “I have raised them and had them as my companions. Therefore, after my days I give them freedom” (Trans. Garofalo 2020, 136) [y no embargante [que] ambas eran mis esclavas, las he criado y tenido por compañeras mías y así desde luego para después de mis días las doy libertad] (Archivo Arzobispal de Lima, Testamentos, Legajo 26, Expediente 2, 7v.) Without knowing anything more about Leonor, we could judge her statement of fellowship with her slaves as disingenuous. But Leonor’s own origins complicate this interpretation.
Taking the sparse information we have about Leonor and following Sadiya Hartman’s call to fill in documentary gaps with historical possibilities—what she refers to as “critical fabulation”—I imagine Leonor to be a former slave herself (see Hartman 2008, 11). Leonor would have been captured as a young child by Portuguese raids from a Muslim community in the Malay archipelago, taken to Manila, and from there to México. Like Isabel, decades later, Leonor would have been baptized and re-named by missionaries in Manila. These well-meaning men in robes, such as the Franciscan Marcelo de Ribanedeira, would have been relieved to see that a “mora” [Moor] had been Christianized (see Seijas 2014, 73). Better an enslaved Christian than a free Moor. Like all other Asian subjects arriving in Mexico from the Philippines, Leonor would have been lumped into the category of “China,” along with a diverse range of Asians from the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. We know that Leonor arrived in Perú in the early years of the 1600s (Souza 2019, 255). She is likely to have joined affinity groups in Perú who were connected by the shared experience of surviving the months-long and treacherous transpacific voyage (Luis 2024, 179-186). The census of Lima of 1614 records about one hundred fourteen “Indios Chinos.” Thirty-eight were from mainland China, fifty-six were from the Portuguese ruled parts of Asia—namely, Diu, Goa, and Malabar in India, and Malaysia, Java, and Cambodia. Twenty were from Japan. The rest were from the Philippines, China, and Burma (Garofalo 2020, 132).
Who was Leonor’s Chino husband Hernando Gutiérrez? We know that he was “of the Chinese nation” [“de nación chino”], from mainland China, and that he died at an unspecified time. Leonor offered no other information about her husband, but the fact that she was Isabel’s buyer and not her husband probably means that she would have been already widowed by that time. Like many other enslaved women—Asian, Indigenous, and Black—Leonor could have been freed by her late husband. There are many examples of Chinos in Lima purchasing women they marry and then freeing them or vice versa (Luis 2024, 182). But it is also possible that her husband did not manumit her during his lifetime; that she was freed in his will. If this had been the case, she would have perfectly learned the practice of “owing” your kin, who in turn, “owed” her affection.
I imagine a Leonor—a cultural mestiza and atravesada—yearning for affective bonds with other atravesadas, “the squint-eyed, the perverse, the queer, the troublesome, the mongrel, the mulato, the half-breed” (Anzaldúa 1987, 3). Given her own suspect origins and unknown family history, Leonor seeks to find something akin to kinship among those who shared her transpacific background and fluid identity. But never having experienced a relationship of affection between equals, Leonor turns to the same system of slavery that ripped her away from her own family and community and ultimately landed her in a state of alienation and solitude. Having heard the reputation of providing good Chinos for service, Leonor approaches Juan Domínguez, the reputed Basque slaver in Lima, and asks him to sell her a girl from China who could serve her loyally as the daughter she and her Chinese husband never had. Leonor is unaware of the irony of her actions. She is plainly driven by her longing to overcome solitude in what remains of her life and the hereafter.
Leonor’s identity and narrative, even in its confabulated form, leave us unfulfilled. After learning about this atravesada who navigates multiple borders—geographical, racial, cultural, and emotional—and embodies the fluidity and liminality that define a borderland identity, we want more. We want to hear a triumphal story about a woman who, against all odds, comes to the rescue of other atravesadas and invites them to become her adoptive daughters. Instead, we confront a paradoxical figure: a woman whose longing for unbounded affection is intertwined with an inability to fully grant herself in the role of a mother she never had; a woman who wishes for more than the compelled, obligatory performance of care; an atravesada who remains figuratively enchained to the system of slavery and, in turn, enchains other atravesadas into cycles of obligation that forever elude her desire for an unpurchased embrace.