At the Heart of the Borderlands

Africans and Afro-Descendants on the Edges of Colonial Spanish America

Cameron D. Jones, Jay T. Harrison, Cameron D. Jones, Jay T. Harrison

• Publisher: UNM Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780826364753
• eBook ISBN: 9780826364777
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African American History
• Index: History

At the Heart of the Borderlands is the first book-length study of Africans and Afro-descendants in the frontiers of Spanish America. While people of African descent have formed part of most borderlands’ histories, this study recognizes and explains their critical contribution to the formation of frontier spaces. Lack of imperial control coupled with Spain’s desperation for settlers and soldiers in frontier areas facilitated the social mobility of Afro-descendants. This need allowed African descendants to become not just members of borderland societies but leaders of it as well. They were essential actors in helping to shape the limits of the Spanish empire. Africans and Afro-descendants built, opposed, and shaped Spanish hegemony in the borderlands, taking on roles that would have been impossible or difficult in colonial centers due to the socio-racial hierarchy of imperial policies and practices.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. “Se Llaman Gente de Razón”: Afro-Descendants in Early Spanish California, 1769–1821 by Cameron D. Jones
• Chapter 2. Black Fugitive Strategies: Slavery and Self-Emancipation in the Spanish Gulf Coast Borderlands by Christina Marie Villarreal
• Chapter 3. The Moving Border: Black Experiences in CaribbeanFrontiers and North American Borderlands in the Late Seventeenth Century by Joseph M. H. Clark
• Chapter 4. The Case of María Faustina Trejo: Fluid Racial Categories in Jalisco’s Highlands, 1781–1815 by Anne M. Reid
• Chapter 5. From Slavery to Citizenship? San Benito, Sanctuary Policy,and the Law on the Ground by Mark W. Lentz
• Chapter 6. “Lords of the Land”: Maroon challenges to Spanish Sovereignty in Panama and Hispaniola, 1520–1610 by Robert C. Schwaller
• Chapter 7. Mine Owners, Moneylenders, Enslavers, and Litigants: Free-Black Miners and Black Mining Dynasties in the Colombian Chocó,1744–1784 by Juliet Wiersema
• Chapter 8. African Maroons and Native Peoples on the “Atlantic” Borderlands of Colonial Quito by Charles Beatty-Medina
• Chapter 9. Fugitive Time, Space, and Refusal in the Pacific Andes by Rachel Sarah O’Toole
• Chapter 10. Aqueous and Dry Borderlands: Africans and Their Descendants in Colonial Rio de la Plata by Alex Borucki
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index