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Memories of the Future: Across the Afro-Hispanic and US

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Memories of the Future: Across the Afro-Hispanic and US Kathryn Joy McKnight, Leo Garofalo, eds.. Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1550-1812. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009. xxxvii + 377 pp. $57.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-87220-994-7. Nancy Raquel Mirabal, Agustín Laó-Montes, eds.. Technofuturos: Critical Interventions in Latina/o Studies. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007. ix + 420 pp. $39.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-7391-2578-6. Reviewed by Tace M. Hedrick Published on H-LatAm (December, 2010) Commissioned by Dennis R. Hidalgo (Virginia Tech) Although a discussion of book covers does not of African, native, European, and even Chinese usually constitute a part of a scholarly review, I sixteenth-century fnery. They fourish the broad find that in the case of the two collections re‐ hats of European gentlemen in their hands, and viewed here, each book’s most excellent cover art as José F. Buscaglia-Salgado notes in his Undoing helps to illuminate the conceptual aims of their Empire: Race and Nation in the Mulatto Carib‐ respective editors. On the cover of Afro-Latino bean, each of the three men “is wearing a but‐ Voices is Adrián Sánchez Galque’s 1599 painting toned shirt with gorgueras and puñetas, the ruff of three maroons, or escaped slaves, titled Mu‐ and sleeves that were fashionable adornments in latos de Esmeraldas. Painted on the occasion of a the attire of Spanish gentlemen of the time.” They treaty between the Spanish colonial authority and wear necklaces of seashells from the coast, but a maroon community or palenque known as Es‐ their shirts are covered with Andean highland ru‐ meraldas in what is now Ecuador, the portrait anas or ponchos, and over these “they have rich shows the representatives of this community as and colorful cloaks of Chinese silk ... as references proud, important men, dressed in a combination to trans-Pacific trade.”[1] Finally, these men sport H-Net Reviews huge, fabulous Amerindian gold earrings and and translated into English on facing pages. Thus nose rings piercing the tops as well as the lobes of we read/hear the wishes, protests, demands, and their ears and their noses. All proudly carry petitions from African royalty, such as Queen spears. It is a glorious painting of what the editors Njinga (spanning the early 1500s to around 1550 of Technofuturos might call, in Cuban scholar Fer‐ in what is now known as Angola); bozales (newly nando Ortíz’s term, “transculturation”: those arrived African slaves in Spanish and Luso-Amer‐ times where cultures forcibly conjoined bleed to‐ ica); cimarrones or “maroons” (escaped slaves gether. and their families who set up independent palen‐ Afro-Latino Voices is part of a fairly recent ques); and free Afro-Andalusians fghting for the and much larger project that both conceptualizes Spanish Crown. We can read enslaved, freed, and and grants subjectivity to those whose lives have freeborn Afro-Latin Americans’ wills, testaments, been under historical erasure. Since the turn of and bequests to their families and, often, to ethnic the twenty-first century, research on the transat‐ confraternities of other African and African-her‐ lantic slave trade has been greatly enhanced by itage peoples in the colonial New World. The doc‐ Cambridge University’s 1999 multisource data‐ uments point to their defenses of their rights as base, which itself has over the last ten years been well as litigations against the church, local colo‐ greatly expanded, and, in 2006, the whole collec‐ nial authorities, and the Spanish Crown. The ar‐ tion was made available on an open-access Web rangement of the compilation is specifically meant not only for scholars but also for students; site, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.[2] each set of documents is accompanied by a brief Much of what constitutes new data on this Web but thorough scholarly and historical background site shows that Latin American slaving expedi‐ and, sometimes, interpretation of the events sur‐ tions were greatly underrepresented in the 1999 rounding the documents. In their introduction, database. For the scholars who write in the two the editors suggest thematic ways in which the collections I review here, such work as has been book could be organized for teaching, and pro‐ done over the last ten to ffteen years has aided in vide a set of maps at the front, more resources for opening up standard scholarly discourses of Latin teaching at the end of the chapter bibliographies, American as well as U.S. Latino/a, Chicana/o, and I and throughout the text a glossary of italicized would even venture to say African American stud‐ words which might not be familiar to readers. Fi‐ ies. Such openings result in sometimes messier nally, the editors offer reading strategies to stu‐ but often more nuanced ways of thinking about dents and teachers alike. the “Americas,” producing new synchronic and di‐ achronic local, nation-state, and global histories. The book’s organization begins with “Politics and Wars,” which moves from the above-men‐ Afro-Latino Voices is a compendium of the tioned Queen Njinga’s letters through Central “voices” (primary sources) of African and Afro- African slave wars and to the early conflicts be‐ Creole American men and women heard via offi‐ tween maroons and colonial Spanish authorities, cial letters and legal documents, such as wills and which I discuss briefly below. The second section, petitions dictated (or more rarely self-written) to entitled “Families and Communities,” is intended a third party, as well as records from Spanish to show the ways Africans and African-heritage American interrogations and inquisitions of peoples built and maintained mutual aid societies, African and Afro-Latin American subjects. Al‐ and how they entered into the legalities of Span‐ though the introductions to the sections and to the ish colonial inheritance laws. In this section, book overall are in English, the documents them‐ María Elena Díaz’s “To Live As a Pueblo: A Con‐ selves are presented in Spanish and Portuguese tentious Endeavor, El Cobre, Cuba, 1670s-1790s” 2 H-Net Reviews shows how over the course of a century the slaves belo as “performances” of what they thought the of the copper mines of Santiago del Prado were Spanish governor would want to hear. “deprivatized” when the mine, along with the The fourth and fnal section deals specifically slaves themselves, became the property of the with documents detailing legal trials, where Afro- Spanish Crown. Although still slaves, these people Spanish and Luso-Americans are either accused could, and did, take advantage of their new status of a crime or accuse their masters, or in some cas‐ as royal slaves to petition for various preroga‐ es both. Ana Teresa Franchin’s “The Case of Javier; tives, including, as the author notes, “the option to Esclavo, against His Master for Cruel Punishment, become a pueblo” (p. 127). This, among other San Juan, Argentina, 1795” and Richard Gordon’s things, allowed them to litigate as a community “Confessing Sodomy, Accusing a Master: The Lis‐ directly before the Crown for the right not to be bon Trial of Pernambuco’s Luiz da Costa, 1743” sold away, removed, or “re-enslaved.” That the show how slaves could be accused and accusers at community survived such an attempt when the the same time. Franchin examines a case of a run‐ mine was reprivatized in the 1770s, and then away slave who turned himself in so that his again was given collective emancipation by the judges would understand the extent of the pun‐ Crown in 1800, makes for fascinating reading. ishment which his master had (illegally, as it turns The third section, “Religious Beliefs and Prac‐ out) put him through. Gordon discusses a case of a tices,” shows the diversity of ways that Afro-Latin slave sodomized by his master who was to face Americans negotiated with the power of the the Lisbon Inquisition as a “sodomite” and con‐ Catholic Church; tried to protect the remains of vince them that he was an unwilling victim. their own African beliefs; and even, as in David These are salient texts in humanizing slaves, Wheat’s “A Spanish Caribbean Captivity Narra‐ maroons, and former slaves as multifaceted ac‐ tive: African Sailors and Puritan Slavers, 1635,” tors. For example, both Kathryn Joy McKnight’s coped with dealing with Puritan settlers. In “Elder; Slave, and Soldier: Maroon Voices from Wheat’s chapter, two biafara, or West Coast the Palenque del Limón, 1634” and Charles Beatty- Africans enslaved as sailors and based in Cartage‐ Medina’s “Maroon Chief Alonso de Illescas’ Letter na, relate the tale of their capture by Dutch pi‐ to the Crown, 1586” show these men not just as es‐ rates and resale to English Puritan colonists living caped slaves negotiating the autonomy of their on Providence Island, off the Caribbean coast of community, but also as people who, in their strug‐ what is now Nicaragua. Escaping the island, four gle with colonial authority over the entire area, beafada (Western African language group) slaves mixed with as well as attacked and enslaved the and several Europeans, shipwrecked on the shore local Amerindians.[3] As the editors point out, of Granada, Nicaragua, were brought to the gover‐ part of what makes a compilation like this valu‐ nor of Portobelo. Two of the recaptured slaves, able is that one can trace the ways, even in heavi‐ besides giving much valuable information about ly mediated texts such as Inquisition documents, Providence and its inhabitants to the Spanish, by which these men and women learned to use claimed their experiences with the Puritans were the language and values of the Creole, Portuguese, so terrible (especially in terms of the heresies they and Spanish Peninsular legal and religious sys‐ witnessed) that they were eager to identify them‐ tems to defend themselves and to assert whatever selves as Catholic slaves.
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