Colonial Blackness: A History of Afro-Mexico (Blacks in the Diaspora) - Tapa blanda

Oct. 2013 * Bulletin of Latin American Research * [T]his text, compelling and persuasive both in theoretical argumentation and use of primary sources, is a major achievement in understanding and reframing Afro-Mexican history. It is highly recommended for the sophisticated specialist already familiar with more conventional studies of Afro-Latin American history, and one who is also necessarily conversant with the terminology of postmodern and postcolonial studies. Vol. 17.1, Winter 2008 * Colonial Latin American Historical Review * What light is shed upon old topics when new sources are examined! In this major work on Afro-Mexican and, really, general Spanish American history, Bennett prowls through the neglected Mexican archival records [and] uncovers a vibrant black community developing its own customs and practices. . . . In place of a weak, shattered individualistic society . . . Bennett's Afro-Mexicans were a community that soon counted a majority of freedman living in an urban setting. What a contract with the Afro-Cuban slave society evolving to the east. . . . Highly recommended. * Choice * A fascinating study . . . Bennett . . . challenges mission historians to go beyond those generalizations that often marginalize people and to examine not only the written sources about such groups but also to examine their behavior, creatively using archival sources that are available. -- Larry Nemer * Missiology *

Asking readers to imagine a history of Mexico narrated through the experiences of Africans and their descendants, this book offers a radical reconfiguration of Latin American history. Using ecclesiastical and inquisitorial records, Herman L. Bennett frames the history of Mexico around the private lives and liberty that Catholicism engendered among enslaved Africans and free blacks, who became majority populations soon after the Spanish conquest. The resulting history of 17th-century Mexico brings forth tantalizing personal and family dramas, body politics, and stories of lost virtue and sullen honor. By focusing on these phenomena among peoples of African descent, rather than the conventional history of Mexico with the narrative of slavery to freedom figured in, Colonial Blackness presents the colonial drama in all its untidy detail.