archive

In 2013, reading from Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s His­toria ver­dadera de la Con­quista de la Nueva España, for a graduate seminar about colonial cities and fes­tivals led by my soon-to-be adviser, Lisa Voigt, I came across a line – just one line – that men­tions a pro­cession of “more than fifty” Black men, women, and children led by “their king and queen.” Intrigued by this passage, I began the research that ulti­mately led to my first book, Sov­ereign Joy: Afro-Mexican Kings and Queens, 1539–1640.

Bibles, however, are also folders and full archives of indi­vidual persons and some­times their families.

Born of nineteenth-century nation­alist projects, colonial Latin American studies long focused on iden­ti­fying proto-national sub­jects and aes­thetics to help establish a his­torical lineage for Latin American national identities.