Blacks in Colonial Veracruz

Beginning with the Spanish conquest, Mexico has become a racially complex society intermixing Indian, Spanish, and African populations. Questions of race and ethnicity have fueled much political and scholarly debate, sometimes obscuring the experiences of particular groups, especially blacks. Blacks in Colonial Veracruz seeks to remedy this omission by studying the black experience in central Veracruz during virtually the entire colonial period.The book probes the conditions that shaped the lives of inhabitants in Veracruz from the first European contact through the early formative period, colonial years, independence era, and the postindependence decade. While the primary focus is on blacks, Carroll relates their experience to that of Indians, Spaniards, and castas (racially hybrid people) to present a full picture of the interplay between local populations, the physical setting, and technological advances in the development of this important but little-studied region.

Carroll’s book is a solid, welcome addition to the scholarly literature on slavery and society during the colonial period and the Wars of Independence in Mexico and Latin America in general. . . . With its high level of ambitions and wide perspectives, the book is clearly a most valuable one., Carroll makes an important contribution to better understanding of the colonial experience and the reality of the past and present racial discrimination in Mexico. . . . His writing is most inspired when he describes and interprets the lives of colonial Afro-Veracruzanos and their role in Mexican society.

Patrick J. Carroll is Joe B. Frantz Professor of History at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi.