Black Mexico: Race and Society from Colonial to Modern Times

by Ben Vinson, Matthew Restall

Overview

The essays in this collection build upon a series of conversations and papers that resulted from "New Directions in North American Scholarship on Afro-Mexico," a symposium conducted at Pennsylvania State University in 2004. The issues addressed include contested historiography, social and economic contributions of Afro-Mexicans, social construction of race and ethnic identity, forms of agency and resistance, and contemporary inquiry into ethnographic work on Afro-Mexican communities. Comprised of a core set of chapters that examine the colonial period and a shorter epilogue addressing the modern era, this volume allows the reader to explore ideas of racial representation from the sixteenth century into the twenty-first.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826347015
Publisher:	University of New Mexico Press
Publication date:	09/01/2009
Series:	Diálogos Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Ben Vinson III is professor of history and Director of the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico, Flight: The Story of Virgil Richardson, A Tuskegee Airman in Mexico, and coauthor of African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean.


Matthew Restall is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History and Director of Latin American Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Restall is also the author of Invading Guatemala: Spanish, Nahua, and Maya Accounts of the Conquest Wars (coauthor), Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, The Maya World, and The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatán.

Table of Contents

Illustrations xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction: Black Mexico and the Historical Discipline Ben Vinson III 1

Section 1 Entering the Colonial World

Slave Rebellion and Liberty in Colonial Mexico Frank "Trey" Proctor III 21

Negotiating Two Worlds: The Free-Black Experience in Guerrero's Tierra Caliente Andrew B. Fisher 51

Black Aliens and Black Natives in New Spain's Indigenous Communities Pat Carroll 72

From Dawn 'til Dusk: Black Labor in Late Colonial Mexico Ben Vinson III 96

Colonial Middle Men? Mulatto identity in New Spain's Confraternities Nicole von Germeten 136

Potions and Perils: Love-Magic in Seventeenth-Century Afro-Mexico and Afro-Yucatan Joan Bristol Matthew Restall 155

Section 2 Engaging Modernity

"Afro" Mexico in Black, White, and Indian: An Anthropologist Reflects on Fieldwork Laura A. Lewis 183

My Blackness and Theirs: Viewing Mexican Blackness Up Close Bobby Vaughn 209

The Thorntons: Saga of an Afro-Mexican Family Alva Moore Stevenson 220

The Need to Recognize Afro-Mexicans as an Ethnic Group Jean-Philibert Mobwa Mobwa N'djoli 224

Glossary 233

Bibliography 241

Contributors 266

Index 269