Sovereign Joy: Afro-Mexican Kings and Queens (1539-1640)

Dr. Miguel Valerio | University of Maryland College Park

In this talk. Dr. Valerio will discuss his recent book, which explores the performance of festive black kings and queens among Afro-Mexicans. This fascinating study illustrates how African and Afro-creole people in Colonial Mexico transformed their ancestral culture into a shared identity. By analyzing literary texts and visual culture, Dr. Valerio will tease out the ambivalent and contradictory meanings behind these public processions and festivities that often re-inscribed structures of race and hierarchy. Were they markers of Catholic subject-hood? What kind of corporate structures did they create to project standing and respectability? Sovereign Joy examines many of these possibilities, highlighting the central place occupied or Africans and their descendants in colonial culture.