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, Agustin Lao-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 fnd 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 ruf 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-Pacifc 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-’ wills, testaments, been under historical erasure. Since the turn of and bequests to their families and, often, to ethnic the twenty-frst 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 specifcally 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 ofer 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 conficts be‐ Creole American men and women heard via of‐ tween maroons and colonial Spanish authorities, cial letters and legal documents, such as wills and which I discuss briefy 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 specifcally 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, of 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. Although we cannot rights they could under such systems. Although know, as Wheat points out, why they might have this is true, one of the real joys of a text like this is intended, if indeed they did, to escape “back” to discovering how people who arrived in the New slavery in Cartagena, it is hard not to see at least World almost exclusively as slaves were not mere‐ some aspects of their self-presentation in Porto‐

3 H-Net Reviews ly passive victims but negotiators with varying ture of and Hispanophone-descen‐ amounts of agency in terms of their lives, their dent people living in the . Its cover beliefs, their property, and especially their state(s) presents a detail from a “digital mural project” by of freedom. Some of these were slaves who were self-identifed “social art practitioner” John able to buy their freedom; rent themselves out Leaños; dated 2001, the mural is called “Last one and keep a small portion of the profts; or even, as to cross the Digital Divide is a rotten egg!” (John in the case of the slave in Gordon’s “Confessing Jota Leaños Digital Mural Project). Leaños, chac‐ Sodomy,” get the colonial court to give them per‐ cording to his Web site, belongs to a “mainly hy‐ mission to “sell” themselves to fairer masters. brid tribe of Mexitaliano Xicangringo Güeros My only quibble with this collection is with called ‘Los Mixtupos’ (mixt-up-oz).” Leaños is a the title using the term “Latino” rather than member of “Los Cybrids,” three /a artists “Latin American” or even “South American.” Al‐ who are part, as he puts it, of “ tecno-críti‐ though this may seem a small thing, distinctions ca.” As they see it, these artists’ work is to demys‐ in terminology (even when the terms themselves tify celebratory mythologies of technology that sometimes seem overly totalizing) are necessary purport to put the “world” at our (white, privi‐ to get at continuities. To be clear: making distinc‐ leged) fngertips. The detail on the book’s cover tions between Hispanophone Latin American peo‐ references the mapping of (brown) bodies onto ples and the Latino/a communities that have es‐ circuit boards to one side of the mural, while on tablished themselves for generations in the Unit‐ the other side a stands behind a series of ed States helps to clarify the important histories ghostly Chicano/a child images leaping playfully of and continuities between, say, Mexicans and into the midst of the wreckage of unidentifable . If, as many scholars urge, we but clearly industrial parts. Leaños glosses the must think in genuinely trans-American ways, mural by noting that poor people often fall be‐ Latin Americanists too would do well to think tween the (industrialized) cracks of the “Digital through such distinctions. Divide.” The presumed openness of the digital world will not automatically ofer poor people the Afro-Latino Voices represents an invaluable social mobility we might imagine.[4] resource for thinking not just about blackness in but also about historical difer‐ Ramón de la Campa’s excellent essay “Latin, ences between, for example, the experiences and Latino, American” opens the frst section, “Histori‐ racial politics of Afro-Latin Americans and those cal Futures.” Here he examines how the “Latino” of African Americans and their translation into has existed at least from the late 1800s at the very diferent sets of racial politics. This is the crossroads of many diferent “American imaginar‐ segue I fnd most useful in thinking about these ies,” from the classic essay “Our America” (1892) two collections together. Especially in the last ff‐ written by the hero of Cuban independence José teen years or so, the term “Latino” as it is used in Marti to queer, conservative Mexican American the United States has often been (mis)used to essayist Richard Rodríguez’s Brown: The Last Dis‐ mean one monolithic unity, suppressing the depth covery of America (1998). Although La Campa in‐ and variety of historical, racial, and political dif‐ sists on the essentially “opaque” nature of the U.S. ferences between, for example, , term “Latino/a,” he aims to particularize its refer‐ , , and Dominican Ameri‐ ents by, for example, focusing on America’s “split cans. Technofuturos, a big and ambitious collec‐ states,” those countries where up to half the popu‐ tion of essays, aims to tease out some of those dif‐ lation live in the (former) North but send remit‐ ferences in order to present a more complex pic‐ tances and often travel back and forth from the

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(former) South, creating a diferent kind of imag‐ in reconceptualizing the “technologies” of race ined nation even as actual state-controlled bor‐ and gender at work across the Americas in this as- ders grow more rigid. In a thought-provoking yet understudied area. move toward the end of the essay, the recognition La Campa’s essay might well have served to of such old/new sites of investigation should, La open the next section, titled “Globality,” which Campa reasons, yield new ways of reading (and contains essays that aim to situate “Latino/a” and imagining) the Americas. This calls for new ways “Chicana/o” as terms that must be understood in of reading traditional canons, an argument he the context of a globalized and mobile Americas. makes against the “American” conservative insu‐ The authors in this section examine just such larism of writers as diverse as Rodríguez and split-state experiences as La Campa discusses. For pragmatic philosopher Richard Rorty. example, Arturo Arias’s “Central American Dias‐ This kind of work can confound, along the poras: Transnational Gangs and the Transforma‐ way, seemingly immutable dualities, such as tion of Latino Identity in the United States” is a “North” and “South,” as well as bring to the fore fascinating look at the ways Central American still relatively under-theorized areas, like the criminal activity was transformed and made study of U.S. Afro-Latinos/as and Afro-Latin Amer‐ more powerful by the deportation from the Unit‐ icans. For example, although Technofuturos col‐ ed States to Guatemala and El Salvador of, bor‐ lects essays across Chicano/a and Latino/a experi‐ rowing from poet Maya Chinchilla, “Central- ence and history in the United States, it is one of American Americans,” young members of Los An‐ only a few collections to begin to pay attention to geles’s Mara Salvatrucha and 18th Street gangs. Afro-Latinos/as in the United States. Two such es‐ Arias reveals the deep-rooted histories that entan‐ says can be found in the frst section. Agustín Laó- gle Central America with the United States. (My Montes’s “Afro-Latinidades: Bridging Blackness only reservation here is that his description of and Latinidad” postulates, in the spirit of the sec‐ these two countries as “a sort of Wild West” tion’s title, a historical tracing of Afro-diasporic sounds a bit like fevered U.S. imaginings about the experience both to Latin America (here, Afro-Lati‐ entirety of Mexican and Central American life, no Voices could provide an important resource) as and is much too generalized to belong in an essay well as in the United States. Such attention to his‐ as detailed as this [p. 176].) Erika Marquez’s torical diferences and similarities would, Laó- “Transmigrant Sexualities: The Closet and Other Montes suggests, trouble the U.S. black-white bi‐ Tales by Colombian Gay Immigrants in New York nary that continues to make invisible Afro-Latino/ City” adds to the growing body of work on queer a experience in the United States. Jossiana Ar‐ Latin American/Latino/Chicano sexualities, trac‐ royo’s following essay “Technologies: Transcultur‐ ing out the diferences between Latin American/ ations of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Arturo A. Latino and U.S. queerness. She examines how the Schomburg’s Masonic Writings” highlights the im‐ framing concepts of “identity” and “the closet” do portant Afro-Puerto Rican bibliophile’s negotia‐ not fully theorize “sexile” (exiles because of their tions of Caribbean and African American notions sexual orientation) Colombians who now negoti‐ of race, manhood, and nationality via his activi‐ ate their queerness in very diferent queer com‐ ties in black and Afro-Latino Masonic lodges. munities of New York. Scholarly attention to Afro-Latin Americans has The third and fnal section, “Writing Self,” I gotten underway only in the last ffteen years or fnd to be the weakest of the book. In a gesture so; add to this the fact that a unifed study of U.S. that seems almost automatic in many Latino/a Afro-Latinos/as still exists in something of an em‐ and Chicano/a essay collections, this section in‐ bryonic state, and the work in Technofuturos aids

5 H-Net Reviews cludes mainly what have come to be thought of as (: University of Minnesota Press, “testimonial” pieces, some straightforward, others 2003), 89. more literary. The weakness of the section issues [2]. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, not just from the sense that including such writ‐ Emory University, www.slavevoyages.org (ac‐ ing seems now almost obligatory rather than cessed September 30, 2010). thoughtful, but also from many of the essays [3]. See also Charles Medina, “Caught between themselves, where either the writing itself or the Rivals: The Spanish-African Maroon Competition concepts informing the “testimonial” sometimes for Captive Indian Labor in the Region of Esmeral‐ seems murky or even self-indulgent. Of the more das during the Late Sixteenth and Early Seven‐ successful attempts is Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez’s teenth Centuries,” The Americas 63, no. 1 (July “An AIDS Testimonial: It’s a Broken Record/Ese 2006): 113-136. Medina examines marronage as a Disco Se Rayó.” It is a performance piece meant to set of long-term strategies and activities reaching be set to music (a fact the reader does not fnd out far beyond the act of escaping enslavement. Flight until the end of the piece), which although evoca‐ was only the frst, if essential, step in a process tive, illustrates the difculty in reading silently with many possible outcomes. The maroons of Es‐ what is meant to be performed. Ramón Solórzano meraldas used numerous approaches--collabora‐ Jr.’s “Accent Generación: Technological Choice and tive, competitive, and even predatory--in their ef‐ the Spanish Option in Post-9/11 América” provides fort to thrive under adversarial and hostile condi‐ an interesting scholarly discussion of Spanish-lan‐ tions (ibid., 115). guage use in the United States, but seems strange‐ ly placed in a section devoted to personal medita‐ [4]. John Jota Leaños Digital Mural Project, tions on the Latino/a self. http://www.leanos.net/projects/digital_mural/cy‐ brids/index.html (accessed September 30, 2010). Although it is difcult to bring together a text meant for historical research in the early modern period of the Hispanophone and Lusophone Americas with a collection of critical work on the twenty-frst century question of “whether La‐ tinidad and Latino/a studies can operate within a larger transnationalist, global, and/or hemispher‐ ic context” (p. 3, Technofuturos), there are ways in which these two volumes can complement each other. As the editors of Technofuturos emphasize, such work necessitates thinking about the past(s), present(s), and the future(s) of constant fows and stoppages of bodies, ideas, commodities, and economies across the Americas not only from the U.S.-centric viewpoint of studies of recent immi‐ gration to the North, but also via deep and com‐ plex histories, always incomplete, of the Americ‐ as. Notes [1]. José F. Buscaglia-Salgado, Undoing Em‐ pire: Race and Nation in the Mulatto Caribbean

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Citation: Tace M. Hedrick. Review of McKnight, Kathryn Joy; Garofalo, Leo, eds. Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1550-1812. ; Mirabal, Nancy Raquel; Lao-Montes, Agustin, eds. Technofuturos: Critical Interventions in Latina/o Studies. H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews. December, 2010.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31145

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