| Summary: | This article will show the role of free women in the San Benito de Palermo sisterhood founded in 1646. This research paper explores the social role in such a corporation: the composition by gender, the organizational structure in the system’s positions, the contribution of its female members -“cofradas”- in alms collection, their attitude and pious, festive and ludic behaviours in festivities, solemn parades and processions. This work is founded on their accounting books, registries and election meeting acts performed during the XVIIIth century. It is its goal to evaluate the role of women in brotherhoods and sisterhoods established by blacks and mulattoes, specifically those ones devoted to San Benito de Palermo, whose main feature is having a larger female membership as in those other found in most of the Hispanic world, where San Miguel el Grande, in New Spain’s Bajío, was not an exception. Current historiography requires more case studies to confront the established premises and give new insights to evaluate, as in this case, the importance of women in the operation of a religious corporation during the Ancien Regime.
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