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Reviewed by:
  • Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1550–1812
  • Leo Cabranes-Grant
Kathryn Joy Mcknight and Leo J. Garofalo, eds. Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1550–1812. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009.

In their introduction to this highly informative array of documents, the editors claim that their anthology "offers for the first time a book-length collection of [End Page 226] narratives of people of African descent in the early modern Ibero-Atlantic world" (ix). To the extent of my knowledge, this assessment rings true. Recent additions to the increasing field of Afro-Atlantic studies centered in Latin-American and Caribbean perspectives include specific explorations—like Herman L. Bennet's Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570–1640 (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2003) or panoramic surveys—like George Reid Andrews's Afro-Latin America: 1800–2000 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004)—but it has been harder to find a gathering of primary sources that enables both students and professors to draw their own conclusions and speculations in the classroom. This collection has been designed to work as a pedagogical tool that showcases the complex network of institutions and subjectivities that supported and resisted the effects of the Middle Passage. The book addresses (among others) issues of gender, economic production, cultural genres, legal and social management, discursive practices, and religion. The multiple locations covered here range from the Caribbean to Central, North and South America, Africa, and Europe. The editors also recruited a similarly diverse team of scholars to frame each document with concise explanations of its historical context. Maps, a glossary, and a healthy bibliography supplement these selections effectively.

The editors' decision to present the original documents in a bilingual format brings to the picture the importance of translation—both as trope and skill—for intercultural research. Many of these documents were marked by translation from the start. When Don Diego I, king of Kongo, requests an investigation of a plot against his rule, it becomes evident that the king "had imported both the legal forms and the experts to conduct them" from Portugal. (8) Juan Roque's will in Mexico reveals his efforts to preserve both his black identity and his devotion to Catholicism. Slaves from Providence Island near the Nicaraguan coast were extremely dexterous at negotiating religious differences between Catholic Spanish and Portuguese authorities and Protestant Dutch and British merchants. In all these cases, translation has become a mode of life, a daily processing of contrasting ideas and beliefs.

A major strength of this collection is its emphasis on agency, the capacity of Afro-Latino subjects to access and occasionally manipulate to their advantage the crevices of the political system that contained them. A letter from Alonso de Illescas exemplifies how a maroon community in Ecuador confronted the Spanish crown. A series of fascinating letters by Queen Njinga of Ndongo gives us an intriguing glimpse into the mind of a woman that utilized both military and diplomatic means in order to contain Portuguese interventions. In Southern Spain, the wives of black soldiers and sailors pressed the Spanish authorities for the recognition of their right to follow their husbands and daughters to the New World. In Lima, slaves and black married women complained against their abusive masters and husbands. Two Afro-Puerto Rican soldiers (father and son) that voluntarily opposed the Napoleonic armies in Seville in 1808 sent a memorial demanding to receive job promotions promised to them. When Luiz da Costa accuses his master of rape, it is the slave that has to stand trial (his sentence was lenient, especially if we consider that sodomites were burned in Lisbon frequently enough). It seems that da Costa was willing to face the judgment of [End Page 227] the Inquisition because that was his only recourse to stop his master's sexual aggressions. What happens when the residents of El Cobre in Cuba persist in asking for their right to be recognized as a pueblo while maintaining their status as royal slaves? By spotlighting these instances in which a black or mestizo subject intentionally supplied his or her voice for the archival records, the editors take a crucial...

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