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Colonial Blackness: A History of Afro-Mexico
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.
- GenresHistoryRaceNonfiction
227 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2009
About the author
Herman L. Bennett
4 books9 followersHerman L. Bennett is Professor of History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is author of Colonial Blackness: A History of Afro-Mexico and Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570-1640.
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June 30, 2025
ONCE A CHRISTIAN SLAVE IN MEXICO, NOT FOR VERY LONG!
This book is important if you want to try to understand how slavery worked for Black Africans in Mexico. One thing is sure. It did not work the same as in North America under the English and then British authority. It did not work the same as in other South or Mesoamerican countries, including the West Indies. But in Mexico, like in so many other countries in the Americas, there are no serious archives about slavery: number of captured Africans in Africa, number of Africans actually and forcefully embarked in Africa, how many ships departed from Africa, how many ships arriving in the Americas, number of embarked Africans and delivered Africans, the destinations of these Africans, their names, ethnicity, origins, languages, religions, or any data about them apart from sex and estimated age. And the most important word here is “estimated.” They were granted names, and that was the first difference between the British Protestant procedure on the one hand and the Spanish, Portuguese, and French Catholic procedure(s) on the other hand. On the Catholic side, Christening was a rule. The slaves had to be baptized, and thus given some Christian names sanctified by the christening ritual. On the Anglo-Saxon side, there was no christening (just haphazard name-giving), and certainly no ritual of any sort, except the imposition of a name of any sort, according to the caprice or caprices of the buyers.
We know today what entering the fifth century of slavery, segregation, discrimination, etc. has produced in the USA. The Blacks, no matter how much hybridized, are still classified as Africans and are still the victims of rejection, discrimination in health, school results, jobs and qualifications, employment, and all sorts of social protection. Affirmative action has been repeatedly rejected in the USA, including by the Supreme Court, like the case pending in 1973-74 at the University of California at Davis, where I arrived in September 73. We don’t see that in Mexico, to the point that some people consider the Black Africans to have become invisible in Mexico. How can we reconstruct a history that explains this fact? That’s the challenge.
But there are no archives of the slave trade or slavery. The author had to find a way to circumvent this handicap and find some feasible records enabling these Afro-Mexicans to be recaptured in their Africanity. He chose, but there was no choice since it was the only possible resource, to go into the records of the courts, both the religious courts (local and Inquisition) and the political courts (local and Crown). What kind of trials can be found there? And that is the second difference with North America. Since these slaves are Christians they have to abide by all the rites and obligations of their Christianity: christening of course, then religious education, participating in the various services (choir boys for example), and all the religious rites and sacraments: First and Solemn Communion, and then regular communion based on proper confession, marriage, going to church for services every time it is needed (on Sundays, for Nativity, Passion, Assumption, and some other celebrations). What may have become an exception (as compared to none at all before) in the 19th century in the Protestant USA was a Christian right from the very start in Catholic Latin America. That implied that any time there was a problem for the slave, this very slave could go to court and get into a lawsuit. This also implied the slave owners had rights as proprietors, but not beyond clearly defined lines. Violence was common, even killing a slave for any reason, but in this case, anyone could sue the slave owner, or the European culprit for abuse of violence, including at the initiative of a religious court or a political court, including the Inquisition and the Crown (its representatives). One instance is quite important. All slaves, no matter where they may be, had the right to be free on Sundays to fulfill their religious obligations, among which marital or matrimonial duties were at the top of the list.
So, Herman L. Bennett is exploring the cases he came across in these registers or records. Slaves versus slave-owners of course, but also all sorts of problems in the neighborhoods where the slaves lived and here we hit a third difference: in Mexico, and in Latin America (including Louisiana before being sold to the US) there is a very high level of manumission, hence a great number of ex-slaves or their descendants who managed to get freed by this procedure: they bought up their freedom, or someone bought up their freedom in their place, and stead. They were granted their freedom on any occasion, particularly after some satisfactory service. Many slaves, at least the household slaves, were not confined to a clearly defined space. They could go around to purchase goods, or to deliver messages or goods. What’s more, they could be used as a guarantee by their owners in some commercial transactions, and this was particularly important since it granted the slaves a social and economic value. If they had such a value, then why not have it all? It encouraged and developed the consciousness and the desire to be an individual who could control his life or destiny. It is not a desire, a simple wish, a deeper frustration, pure alienation. It builds in their minds the consciousness that they are good enough to guarantee a deal. And they should be good enough to be free because they already have and are a social entity due to this kind of use.
That's where we have to be prudent because these courts and these cases concern only some people, a minority, and the majority are not directly concerned. But they are under the influence of such cases. In these cases, they can have witnesses, and some of them can be slaves, and their words are just as valuable as the words of free people. Among the free people, there might be hybridized or creolized descendants of slaves who would be considered black in North America, since ONE drop of black blood makes you black in this country. And that brings us to another dimension and difference: neighborhood and family connections are important. Cousins, nephews, uncles, aunts, and neighbors are natural witnesses in any case, and they are recognized, no matter whether they are free, slaves, or have any level of black blood in their veins. The “cousin” relation between two people who are living in a common law or official marriage, or who want to get a license to marry, is essential because the catholic church tries to control inbreeding or consanguinity. For a religious court, it is a sin; for a royal court, it is a misdemeanor or even a crime. Yet licenses may be granted in such situations for various local reasons, or because it is too late since the people applying for a marriage license have already entered some common law marriage, hence an unofficial sexual relationship with even one or two children. A license might make the sin or misdemeanor negligible. There is no obligation for a slave to marry a slave, and some slaves think marrying a non-slave might be enough to get free, which is not the standard rule. In the same way, a child born from a slave mother is not necessarily a slave, sold away by the mother’s slave owner. The child has to be christened first thing after the delivery and birth, and then all possibilities are open.
But Herman L. Bennett insists on the symbolic dimension of this situation. Africans arrived in the Americas with their surviving African symboleracy, which will be deculturized when they arrive, but only on the surface. A deeper layer will survive and be projected into the symboleracy they have to integrate. They have to become Christian slaves. They are thus acculturized into this new symboleracy of Mexican Christian society. Bennett is conscious that there is a transfer from the gods and spirits of their original symboleracy, gods and spirits who survive in the deeper subconscious of the slaves who adopt on the surface a Christian look centered on Jesus Christ, and that is where Bennett could go slightly further, by taking into account the third element, the Indians, mostly female Indians since the males have been eliminated by the Spanish genocide et culturicide (whereas woman were only the victims of the epidemics more than the military violence. These Indians, mostly women are concerned here, were also obliged to shift from a Maya, Aztec, or some other cultures and languages present in Mexico to the Christianized surface. Same problem as before. The old Indian symboleracy is deculturized on the surface, though kept at a deeper level, and they have to become Christians and be acculturized into Christianity, on the surface, of course, with the deeper Indian symboleracy kept subconsciously. Mexico is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, therefore the Holy Virgin Mary, and yet she has been replaced by the Blessed Virgin Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the Virgin Mary has thus been Mexicanized. These two situations transfer some god or spirit from the older symboleracy, that are deculturized as Indian and acculturized into Jesus Christ (or vice versa, if you want, the result is the same), who is acculturized into the symboleracy of the Black Mexican or the Indian Mexican under Spanish Christian rule. Both the Afro-Mexican and the native Mexican are endowed with the very special ideology of Jesus Christ, love, and the promise of a paradise after death, the Messianic Jerusalem, which they certainly did not have before.
Let us think of the obligation for dead Mayas to descend into Xibalba and face the Death Lords and their testing trials, if not ordeals. Few can survive these trials and emerge to climb the sacred Ceiba tree towards true paradise, “chaan.” Note in the following dictionary entry by John Montgomery in the Dictionary of Maya Hieroglyphs, available online at http://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/dict... (Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. FAMSI) strong homophony links this paradise to a vision of a "captor", a supreme being who holds man in mastery, but also to the number "four" (strongly symbolic in Maya because they are the four cardinal points) and the "serpent" whose symbolism is even more complex and certainly ambiguously hostile since it is the Feathered Serpent, Kukulkan, the controversial god of human destiny. Let us note in the glyph (without covering all its symbolism) the three oblique bars, then the three liquid beads (blood, sperm, water) and the three vertical bars, three times three, and this number "three" is the symbol of the blood self-sacrifice required by the gods and voluntarily given to the gods.
CHAAN/KAAN (chaan/kaan) (T561c) 1> noun "sky"; chaan in Ch'olan, kaan in Yucatec 2> noun "captor" <> (John Montgomery) Homophonous or semi-homophonous with chan/kan "four" and "snake."
(Peter Mathews) CHAN/KA'AN (chan/ka'an) (T561) 1> noun "sky"; chan in Ch'olan, ka'an in Yucatec 2> noun "captor" <> Homophonous or semi-homophonous with chan/kan "four" and "snake."
Important research is to be done in older forms of these deculturization-acculturization procedures and patterns to find how the transfer is possible. Jesus Christ is sacrificed on the cross and corresponds, for one instance only, to Jun Nal Ye, the Maize God of the Mayas who was sacrificed a long time ago and was revived by the Hero Twins, who were both thrown into a furnace and their ashes thrown into a river for them to resuscitate and come back to the Death Lords for vengeance, and they revive the Maize God who will die in every fall and resuscitate in every spring provided humans present him with enough blood offerings. Note how Jun Nal Ye is revived by the blood of humans being sacrificed or self-sacrificing for him, as opposed to Jesus shedding his own blood and dying to regenerate the human species out of sin, if they want to share communion in this blood-exchanging rite, the Eucharist and communion. The transfer is nevertheless symbolically easy.
It is more complex with Africans, but we have to go into the Vodun tradition coming from Africa, and the Christian saints, God, and Jesus are transferred into the gods, spirits, and saints of the Vodun tradition ((donation of blood from the requester and the priest – some would say sorcerer or witch – officiating on the requester’s request). That would explain why the deculturization-acculturization procedure worked so easily in Latin America. The transfer is a blood offering. We can represent this double transfer (see below). The two cycles are simultaneous in the two human beings concerned and reciprocally supported by the two human beings again. "I do it, you do it, and then we ask a priest to marry us in this new common vision and project." The Christianization of the two Indian and Black African sides makes them man and wife, hence human. That's by far the best side of the book, and people curious about concrete real cases will find hundreds of them in the book, some described and discussed at length. That’s why racial elements are just ethnic characteristics that do not imply any inferiority or superiority. These elements are just identifying traits that do not carry any discrimination. No possible comparison with the USA, where the police, at times, some vigilantes still kill young black males at street corners for any reason you can think of.
[The Graph cannot be uploaded.]
For the readers who want to see this discourse in literature, I would advise looking for Anne Rice and the few books dealing with it, particularly Merrick, a novel bringing the Vampire Louis and the witch Merrick together using black magic connected with old temples in Guatemala. It deals with a mask from long ago and the Indian civilizations of the first millennia after JC. That mask gives you the power to see beyond the surface of reality, hence, to communicate with the dead since Louis wants to communicate with Claudia, the child he turned into a vampire a long time ago, and Lestat de Lioncourt has been obliged to destroy her because a child turned into an eternal vampire is a very bad perverse idea.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
This book is important if you want to try to understand how slavery worked for Black Africans in Mexico. One thing is sure. It did not work the same as in North America under the English and then British authority. It did not work the same as in other South or Mesoamerican countries, including the West Indies. But in Mexico, like in so many other countries in the Americas, there are no serious archives about slavery: number of captured Africans in Africa, number of Africans actually and forcefully embarked in Africa, how many ships departed from Africa, how many ships arriving in the Americas, number of embarked Africans and delivered Africans, the destinations of these Africans, their names, ethnicity, origins, languages, religions, or any data about them apart from sex and estimated age. And the most important word here is “estimated.” They were granted names, and that was the first difference between the British Protestant procedure on the one hand and the Spanish, Portuguese, and French Catholic procedure(s) on the other hand. On the Catholic side, Christening was a rule. The slaves had to be baptized, and thus given some Christian names sanctified by the christening ritual. On the Anglo-Saxon side, there was no christening (just haphazard name-giving), and certainly no ritual of any sort, except the imposition of a name of any sort, according to the caprice or caprices of the buyers.
We know today what entering the fifth century of slavery, segregation, discrimination, etc. has produced in the USA. The Blacks, no matter how much hybridized, are still classified as Africans and are still the victims of rejection, discrimination in health, school results, jobs and qualifications, employment, and all sorts of social protection. Affirmative action has been repeatedly rejected in the USA, including by the Supreme Court, like the case pending in 1973-74 at the University of California at Davis, where I arrived in September 73. We don’t see that in Mexico, to the point that some people consider the Black Africans to have become invisible in Mexico. How can we reconstruct a history that explains this fact? That’s the challenge.
But there are no archives of the slave trade or slavery. The author had to find a way to circumvent this handicap and find some feasible records enabling these Afro-Mexicans to be recaptured in their Africanity. He chose, but there was no choice since it was the only possible resource, to go into the records of the courts, both the religious courts (local and Inquisition) and the political courts (local and Crown). What kind of trials can be found there? And that is the second difference with North America. Since these slaves are Christians they have to abide by all the rites and obligations of their Christianity: christening of course, then religious education, participating in the various services (choir boys for example), and all the religious rites and sacraments: First and Solemn Communion, and then regular communion based on proper confession, marriage, going to church for services every time it is needed (on Sundays, for Nativity, Passion, Assumption, and some other celebrations). What may have become an exception (as compared to none at all before) in the 19th century in the Protestant USA was a Christian right from the very start in Catholic Latin America. That implied that any time there was a problem for the slave, this very slave could go to court and get into a lawsuit. This also implied the slave owners had rights as proprietors, but not beyond clearly defined lines. Violence was common, even killing a slave for any reason, but in this case, anyone could sue the slave owner, or the European culprit for abuse of violence, including at the initiative of a religious court or a political court, including the Inquisition and the Crown (its representatives). One instance is quite important. All slaves, no matter where they may be, had the right to be free on Sundays to fulfill their religious obligations, among which marital or matrimonial duties were at the top of the list.
So, Herman L. Bennett is exploring the cases he came across in these registers or records. Slaves versus slave-owners of course, but also all sorts of problems in the neighborhoods where the slaves lived and here we hit a third difference: in Mexico, and in Latin America (including Louisiana before being sold to the US) there is a very high level of manumission, hence a great number of ex-slaves or their descendants who managed to get freed by this procedure: they bought up their freedom, or someone bought up their freedom in their place, and stead. They were granted their freedom on any occasion, particularly after some satisfactory service. Many slaves, at least the household slaves, were not confined to a clearly defined space. They could go around to purchase goods, or to deliver messages or goods. What’s more, they could be used as a guarantee by their owners in some commercial transactions, and this was particularly important since it granted the slaves a social and economic value. If they had such a value, then why not have it all? It encouraged and developed the consciousness and the desire to be an individual who could control his life or destiny. It is not a desire, a simple wish, a deeper frustration, pure alienation. It builds in their minds the consciousness that they are good enough to guarantee a deal. And they should be good enough to be free because they already have and are a social entity due to this kind of use.
That's where we have to be prudent because these courts and these cases concern only some people, a minority, and the majority are not directly concerned. But they are under the influence of such cases. In these cases, they can have witnesses, and some of them can be slaves, and their words are just as valuable as the words of free people. Among the free people, there might be hybridized or creolized descendants of slaves who would be considered black in North America, since ONE drop of black blood makes you black in this country. And that brings us to another dimension and difference: neighborhood and family connections are important. Cousins, nephews, uncles, aunts, and neighbors are natural witnesses in any case, and they are recognized, no matter whether they are free, slaves, or have any level of black blood in their veins. The “cousin” relation between two people who are living in a common law or official marriage, or who want to get a license to marry, is essential because the catholic church tries to control inbreeding or consanguinity. For a religious court, it is a sin; for a royal court, it is a misdemeanor or even a crime. Yet licenses may be granted in such situations for various local reasons, or because it is too late since the people applying for a marriage license have already entered some common law marriage, hence an unofficial sexual relationship with even one or two children. A license might make the sin or misdemeanor negligible. There is no obligation for a slave to marry a slave, and some slaves think marrying a non-slave might be enough to get free, which is not the standard rule. In the same way, a child born from a slave mother is not necessarily a slave, sold away by the mother’s slave owner. The child has to be christened first thing after the delivery and birth, and then all possibilities are open.
But Herman L. Bennett insists on the symbolic dimension of this situation. Africans arrived in the Americas with their surviving African symboleracy, which will be deculturized when they arrive, but only on the surface. A deeper layer will survive and be projected into the symboleracy they have to integrate. They have to become Christian slaves. They are thus acculturized into this new symboleracy of Mexican Christian society. Bennett is conscious that there is a transfer from the gods and spirits of their original symboleracy, gods and spirits who survive in the deeper subconscious of the slaves who adopt on the surface a Christian look centered on Jesus Christ, and that is where Bennett could go slightly further, by taking into account the third element, the Indians, mostly female Indians since the males have been eliminated by the Spanish genocide et culturicide (whereas woman were only the victims of the epidemics more than the military violence. These Indians, mostly women are concerned here, were also obliged to shift from a Maya, Aztec, or some other cultures and languages present in Mexico to the Christianized surface. Same problem as before. The old Indian symboleracy is deculturized on the surface, though kept at a deeper level, and they have to become Christians and be acculturized into Christianity, on the surface, of course, with the deeper Indian symboleracy kept subconsciously. Mexico is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, therefore the Holy Virgin Mary, and yet she has been replaced by the Blessed Virgin Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the Virgin Mary has thus been Mexicanized. These two situations transfer some god or spirit from the older symboleracy, that are deculturized as Indian and acculturized into Jesus Christ (or vice versa, if you want, the result is the same), who is acculturized into the symboleracy of the Black Mexican or the Indian Mexican under Spanish Christian rule. Both the Afro-Mexican and the native Mexican are endowed with the very special ideology of Jesus Christ, love, and the promise of a paradise after death, the Messianic Jerusalem, which they certainly did not have before.
Let us think of the obligation for dead Mayas to descend into Xibalba and face the Death Lords and their testing trials, if not ordeals. Few can survive these trials and emerge to climb the sacred Ceiba tree towards true paradise, “chaan.” Note in the following dictionary entry by John Montgomery in the Dictionary of Maya Hieroglyphs, available online at http://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/dict... (Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. FAMSI) strong homophony links this paradise to a vision of a "captor", a supreme being who holds man in mastery, but also to the number "four" (strongly symbolic in Maya because they are the four cardinal points) and the "serpent" whose symbolism is even more complex and certainly ambiguously hostile since it is the Feathered Serpent, Kukulkan, the controversial god of human destiny. Let us note in the glyph (without covering all its symbolism) the three oblique bars, then the three liquid beads (blood, sperm, water) and the three vertical bars, three times three, and this number "three" is the symbol of the blood self-sacrifice required by the gods and voluntarily given to the gods.
CHAAN/KAAN (chaan/kaan) (T561c) 1> noun "sky"; chaan in Ch'olan, kaan in Yucatec 2> noun "captor" <> (John Montgomery) Homophonous or semi-homophonous with chan/kan "four" and "snake."
(Peter Mathews) CHAN/KA'AN (chan/ka'an) (T561) 1> noun "sky"; chan in Ch'olan, ka'an in Yucatec 2> noun "captor" <> Homophonous or semi-homophonous with chan/kan "four" and "snake."
Important research is to be done in older forms of these deculturization-acculturization procedures and patterns to find how the transfer is possible. Jesus Christ is sacrificed on the cross and corresponds, for one instance only, to Jun Nal Ye, the Maize God of the Mayas who was sacrificed a long time ago and was revived by the Hero Twins, who were both thrown into a furnace and their ashes thrown into a river for them to resuscitate and come back to the Death Lords for vengeance, and they revive the Maize God who will die in every fall and resuscitate in every spring provided humans present him with enough blood offerings. Note how Jun Nal Ye is revived by the blood of humans being sacrificed or self-sacrificing for him, as opposed to Jesus shedding his own blood and dying to regenerate the human species out of sin, if they want to share communion in this blood-exchanging rite, the Eucharist and communion. The transfer is nevertheless symbolically easy.
It is more complex with Africans, but we have to go into the Vodun tradition coming from Africa, and the Christian saints, God, and Jesus are transferred into the gods, spirits, and saints of the Vodun tradition ((donation of blood from the requester and the priest – some would say sorcerer or witch – officiating on the requester’s request). That would explain why the deculturization-acculturization procedure worked so easily in Latin America. The transfer is a blood offering. We can represent this double transfer (see below). The two cycles are simultaneous in the two human beings concerned and reciprocally supported by the two human beings again. "I do it, you do it, and then we ask a priest to marry us in this new common vision and project." The Christianization of the two Indian and Black African sides makes them man and wife, hence human. That's by far the best side of the book, and people curious about concrete real cases will find hundreds of them in the book, some described and discussed at length. That’s why racial elements are just ethnic characteristics that do not imply any inferiority or superiority. These elements are just identifying traits that do not carry any discrimination. No possible comparison with the USA, where the police, at times, some vigilantes still kill young black males at street corners for any reason you can think of.
[The Graph cannot be uploaded.]
For the readers who want to see this discourse in literature, I would advise looking for Anne Rice and the few books dealing with it, particularly Merrick, a novel bringing the Vampire Louis and the witch Merrick together using black magic connected with old temples in Guatemala. It deals with a mask from long ago and the Indian civilizations of the first millennia after JC. That mask gives you the power to see beyond the surface of reality, hence, to communicate with the dead since Louis wants to communicate with Claudia, the child he turned into a vampire a long time ago, and Lestat de Lioncourt has been obliged to destroy her because a child turned into an eternal vampire is a very bad perverse idea.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
September 29, 2013
This is definitely a book in which the reviews, if well written, would come in handy. Not having yet read the reviews however, I can only explain this book as a series of trials concerning bigamy among members of the African diaspora in Mexico during the Colonial Era. The author makes a few interesting points however, including points about how large the free black population in Mexico was, their use of the Church to create social systems or maintain social systems, and the enforcement of the Casta system on a rare and sporadic basis by the elite who were growing fearful of the mestization of the black community in Mexico. These points could have made good pillars for a strong argument, but instead, the author introduced a series of unending court cases with brief and overwrought analysis. I trust the opinion of the person who recommended it, but I do think the book achieves what it would like or what it could.
April 9, 2014
after reading reviews in scholarly journals, I'm glad to know I wasn't the only one that thought this book was terrible
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews