ABSTRACT
In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when slaves from Asia found themselves in Spain, they were usually called Chinos. Many of these Asians, however, preferred to identify themselves as Indios, a term that was generally understood in Spain to designate the indigenous people of the country’s colonies. The reason for this preference was simple: the term Indio connoted freedom, while Chino was associated with slavery. Hence, enslaved people from Asia willfully self-identified as Indios—even if they were from Macao, for example—in order to gain the legal protections afforded to colonial subjects. Asians who proclaimed themselves to be Indios were using the term in specific reference to the Crown’s sustained efforts to prevent colonists from enslaving the indigenous people of its conquered territories. Asian slaves also benefited from the general lack of knowledge about the political geography of Asia, and the resulting confusion over the categorization of the peoples of Asia. Ultimately, the Indio identity was a means for these individuals of Asian origin to be recognized as subjects rather than chattel.
