This Day in Labor History: August 8, 1635

On August 8, 1635, a slave named Maria was killed by her master in the Philippines and he is later executed for it. This is a window into issues of sex slavery and colonialism, a topic which deserves more attention in our larger consideration of labor history.

When we talk about slavery in human history, we don’t talk about enough about the sexual labor side of it. First, and we must always remember this, if we aren’t talking about slavery as a labor system, we are missing the entire point of why it exists. Yes, slave societies find ways to demean the slave and in a place like the United States, which is what frames the references for most readers of this, that was largely around. Racism and labor control worked together great for whites. But to make our stories about slavery primarily about race is ahistorical because it just misses why slavery existed to begin with. People in colonizing societies wanted controllable labor in as close to permanent status as possible. And while there are as many types of slavery in human history as there are other types of labor systems, everywhere Europeans showed up moved toward something like chattel slavery under a racialized regime.

It’s not exactly a misconception that sex slavery wasn’t part and parcel of slave labor systems. Certainly we recognize that sexual exploitation was part of the ways in which slaves were treated horribly. And again, because of the unique racial politics of the United States with its one-drop rule and such, the mixture of European and African DNA caused a sort of crisis, spoken or not, even among slaveowning communities about just how much interracial sex was happening. But we don’t quite emphasize enough that actual sex slavery was central to the entire enterprise. Usually, the term “sex slavery” has to do with a more modern concern with sex trafficking and while we can argue whether that is an appropriate term to describe what is happening, we should spend more time on the historical realities of sex slavery. I say that because sex slavery was everywhere. From the moment Europeans landed in the Americas or Africa or Asia or the other places they were stumbling upon beginning in the 15th century, they demanded sexual labor from women and sometimes from men.

This was certainly true in the Philippines as much as anywhere, which was under Spanish control.

Maria was a slave owned by a man named Francisco de Nava. He was an artilleryman in the Spanish military, based in Manila. She was from India and he had taken her from there. That was common for sex slaves–they got picked up in this newly globalized world and moved wherever the master demanded. She was a virgin, supposedly, which is why he wanted her. De Nava was open about the fact that he was using her for sex. He claimed he was going to marry her in exchange for her sexual labor, but that part of the contract was evidently not realized. No great surprise there.

What we know here is that Maria was not happy with this arrangement, whatever it in fact was. She did what other sex slaves did over time–offered themselves to others they felt would do a better job of protecting them. For example, we know when Harriet Jacobs, who became famous for her slave memoir, was under attack by her master who wanted to have sex with her but because of community concerns couldn’t quite force her, she started an affair with a different white man who was higher in the hierarchy (in fact, he would later be in Congress) as a way to offer herself some level of protection. Maria went to a different man named Juan de Aller to ask him to buy her, saying it would be better than her current situation.

Now, it’s not entirely clear why Maria was able to access other powerful people in Manila. But there were broader concerns about the lack of morality among Spanish men. Going back to 1608, King Felipe III outlawed the transportation of sex slaves–female slaves more broadly but this was the type of situation he was talking about–but he had no way to enforce this. One of the excellent bits in Lav Diaz’s Magellan film from 2025 is that it shows that while men such as Magellan might be under the marginal control of kings, those men had a lot of contempt for the royals and their agents. Diaz, a Filipino director, was absolutely unsparing in his look at Magellan and Gael Garcia Bernal gave a great performance. It’s not a typical biopic in the boring Hollywood fashion. Rather, it gives actual insight into people like this and while sex slavery is not at the center of it, the rapacious desire of European men for Native women is definitely in the film.

So concerns about the morality of Spanish men and what it meant for the empire was there, very much including in Manila, where many complained about men such as de Nava. What we do know is that a woman named Maria de Francia, wife of the governor’s nephew, stepped in with active support from the archbishop in Manila, to free Maria. De Nava was incensed by this interference. There were rumors that he was married back in Spain and this may have influenced the decision to free her. So Nava went to Francia’s house and demanded his woman back. Her men responded by beating him and putting him in the stocks. It seems to have really disturbed him, though which part of it all is hard to say. Maybe he really loved this woman, at least by whatever a man like this would mean by love. It’s hard to say, but he was seen as a madman increasingly and an order went out to treat him as insane rather than a criminal.

Alas, shortly after this, when Maria was riding in a carriage, which she evidently now could being under Francia’s care, Nava went up to it, stopped the horses, opened it up, and stabbed Maria to death. Some reports include an argument, where he challenged her and she responded with a statement of her independence before he killed her. It’s hard to know. But this is one of the few real stories from the history of sex slavery we can tell. So I’m glad I told it,

Nava was executed for the murder.

This is the 610th post in this series. Previous posts are archived here.