Blacks in Colonial Veracruz: Race, Ethnicity, and Regional Development

by Patrick J. Carroll

Beginning with the Spanish conquest, Mexico has become a racially complex society intermixing Indian, Spanish, and African populations. Questions of race and ethnicity have fueled much political and scholarly debate, sometimes obscuring the experiences of particular groups, especially blacks. Blacks in Colonial Veracruz seeks to remedy this omission by studying the black experience in central Veracruz during virtually the entire colonial period. The book probes the conditions that shaped the lives of inhabitants in Veracruz from the first European contact through the early formative period, colonial years, independence era, and the postindependence decade. While the primary focus is on blacks, Carroll relates their experience to that of Indians, Spaniards, and castas (racially hybrid people) to present a full picture of the interplay between local populations, the physical setting, and technological advances in the development of this important but little-studied region.

Genres: History

256 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2001

Reviews

[Sean Mccarrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book did several things very well. In describing the black population of Veracruz, it gave a good history of the region, and also it tied together the economics and social sphere of Blacks in Veracruz in a way that most books do not. However, I thought, for a book that was clearly written in the Annales style, it could have gone a bit more into the geography, or even used more individual testimonies and stories to paint the picture the author fell just short of trying to paint.