Valero, Miguel A. "Fear and Loathing in New Spain: Anti-Blackness in Colonial Mexico." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/anti-blackness-in-colonial-mexico. [Date accessed].

Anti-Blackness in colonial Mexico

Looking at the Spanish Empire as a locus to understand the development of biopower in the early modern world.

Download the transcript
Miguel A. Valerio
Washington University in St. Louis

Fear and Loathing in New Spain: Anti-Blackness in Colonial Mexico | Watch the full talk

Presented by Miguel A Valerio at Region and Enmity: A RaceB4Race Symposium in 2021

Miguel A. Valerio discusses anti-Black matters and events in Colonial Mexico City and the racialization of slavery more broadly in connection to the people of African descent in colonial Mexico and the Atlantic at large. He traces how New Spain’s anti-Black ethos stems from the racialization of African slavery and how it led to the maligning of Afro-Mexicans’ clamor for justice and their festive traditions. Valerio looks at the Spanish Empire as a locus to study the development of biopower in the early modern world. Through Alonso de Sandoval’s 1627 treatise on slavery manual titled De Instauranda Aethiopum Salute, or “On bringing salvation to Africans,” he highlights Sandoval’s concluding thoughts on why slavery is just for Africans.

Further learning

Recommended

Reading list

Staging Islam and Shakespeare

Ambereen Dadabhoy’s course asks students to investigate how individual, cultural, and political Muslim identity is manufactured in Shakespeare’s canon.

Ambereen Dadabhoy
Reading list

Teaching the refugee experience with graphic texts and video games

These narratives, read and experienced alongside historical texts, can deepen student understanding of today’s refugees fleeing war, violence, conflict, and persecution.

Mayte Green-Mercado
RaceB4Race Highlight

Rethinking race in museum exhibitions

Exhibition curation can function as a pipeline to diversify the field, introducing prospective students to medieval materials and helping them build their CVs, but there needs to be cross-institutional collaboration.

Andrea Myers Achi