Africans to Spanish America expands the spatial and chronological contours of the African diaspora. Emphasizing the period before 1700, the anthology examines how slaves and free blacks used African cultural ties as well as Spanish social and religious practices to self- identify, establish communities, and reshape colonial society. Geographically, the collection links discussions about the invention of African and black identities in the Atlantic world to Spain’s Pacific colonies. In the introduction, editors Sherwin K. Bryant, Rachel Sarah O’Toole, and Ben Vinson III explain that the anthology also seeks “to situate African- descended peoples in their own narratives, over and above the more traditional themes that have heretofore dominated the field” (p. 9). Using archival research in Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Spain, and the United States, the contributors stress the numerous African, black, casta, Christian, and professional identities that African- descended peoples constructed.
The anthology is divided into three...
