explores the lived experience of slavery from the perspective of slaves themselves to reveal how the enslaved may have conceptualized and contested their subordinated social positions in New Spain's middle colonial period (roughly 1630-1760s). Relying heavily on trials from civil, ecclesiastical, and Inquisitorial courts, the study offers a detailed examination of some of the central issues to the culture of slavery—labor, family, cultural community, individual and collective agency, and access to liberation—to provide a more integrated picture of slavery in colonial Mexico.