Paula de Eguiluz Inquisition Trials

Record summary

Paula de Eguiluz was an enslaved woman tried by the Cartagena tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition in the 1620s and again in the 1630s. The surviving proceedings discuss healing, love magic, alleged sorcery, African-derived practices, and the coercive dynamics of inquisitorial testimony. The case matters for comparing colonial categories of witchcraft with Afro-Caribbean religious knowledge and forced cultural translation. Interpretation remains difficult because the record was produced by inquisitors, translated or standardized their vocabulary, and does not provide an unfiltered account of Paula’s own practice.