Trayectorias Afro: The Movement of Enslaved and Free Afro-descendants in New Spain, 1500–1750

Trayectorias Afro is a relational database documenting the spatial and social mobility of enslaved and free people of African ancestry in colonial New Spain (present-day Mexico and parts of the southwestern United States), ca. 1500–1750. The dataset is derived from notarial records — bills of slave sale, manumission letters, wills, property inventories, and donations — held in twelve archives across Mexico. The 2026 version includes 3,917 enslaved individuals, 4,957 non-enslaved persons (buyers, sellers, witnesses, and other associated individuals), 31 slaveholding institutions, 3,339 source documents, and 339 geographic places. The dataset captures individual-level data including personal names, physical descriptions, socioethnic classifications (calidades), ethnonyms, marital status, occupations, body marks, and behavioral and health records, as well as the spatial trajectories of persons across colonial territories and their relationships to one another and to institutions. The deposit includes nine core data tables, ten controlled vocabulary tables, and a machine-readable schema. This project complements existing slavery studies databases such as SlaveVoyages.org and Enslaved.org by emphasizing overland movement within colonial Mexico and centering the individual as the unit of record.《Trayectorias Afro》是一款关系型数据库，记录了公元1500年至1750年左右殖民时期新西班牙（今墨西哥及美国西南部部分区域）内非洲裔被奴役个体与自由民的空间与社会流动轨迹。该数据集的数据源为墨西哥境内12家档案馆所藏的公证档案，具体包括奴隶买卖契约、解放文书、遗嘱、财产清单与赠与凭证。2026版数据集共收录3917名被奴役个体、4957名非被奴役个体（含买卖双方、见证者及其他关联人员）、31家蓄奴机构、3339份源文档以及339个地理点位。数据集涵盖个体层面的多维度数据，包括个人姓名、体貌特征、社会种族分类（calidades）、族称、婚姻状况、职业、身体标记、行为与健康记录；同时完整记录了个体在殖民领地内的空间移动轨迹，以及个体间、个体与各类机构间的关联关系。该数据集归档包含9张核心数据表、10张受控词汇表，以及一份机器可读模式（machine-readable schema）。本项目作为现有奴隶制研究数据库（如SlaveVoyages.org与Enslaved.org）的补充，着重聚焦殖民墨西哥境内的陆上人员流动，并以个体作为核心记录单元。