Afro-Mexican Women in Saint-Domingue: Piracy, Captivity and Community in the 1680s and 1690s (Article)
Title: Afro-Mexican Women in Saint-Domingue: Piracy, Captivity and Community in the 1680s and 1690s
Author: Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva
Abstract: This article focuses on the experiences of women of African descent who were made captives (and in some cases, re-captives) after the 1683 buccaneer raid on the port of Veracruz, the most important port in the viceroyalty on New Spain (colonial Mexico). Although the raid is well-known to historians of piracy, its implications for women’s history and African diaspora studies have not been properly contextualized in a period of expanding Atlantic slavery. This paper proposes a close reading of contraband cases, parochial registers, slave codes and eyewitness accounts centered on Afro-Mexican women who were kidnapped to Saint-Domingue (colonial Haiti). A focus on displacement and resilience opens new narratives through which to understand women who transcended their captivity by becoming spouses to French colonists and free mothers to Saint-Domingue’s gens de couleur.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/issue
Primary URL Description: Homepage for the Hispanic American Historical Review
Access Model: Subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Hispanic American Historical Review
Publisher: Hispanic American Historical Review

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