ABOUT THIS BOOK

Many of the earliest Africans to arrive in the Americas came to Central America with Spanish colonists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and people of African descent constituted the majority of nonindigenous populations in the region long thereafter. Yet in the development of national identities and historical consciousness, Central American nations have often countenanced widespread practices of social, political, and regional exclusion of blacks. The postcolonial development of mestizo or mixed-race ideologies of national identity have systematically downplayed African ancestry and social and political involvement in favor of Spanish and Indian heritage and contributions. In addition, a powerful sense of place and belonging has led many peoples of African descent in Central America to identify themselves as something other than African American, reinforcing the tendency of local and foreign scholars to see Central America as peripheral to the African diaspora in the Americas. The essays in this collection begin to recover the forgotten and downplayed histories of blacks in Central America, demonstrating the centrality of African Americans to the region’s history from the earliest colonial times to the present. They reveal how modern nationalist attempts to define mixed-race majorities as “Indo-Hispanic,” or as anything but African American, clash with the historical record of the first region of the Americas in which African Americans not only gained the right to vote but repeatedly held high office, including the presidency, following independence from Spain in 1821.

Contributors. Rina Cáceres Gómez, Lowell Gudmundson, Ronald Harpelle, Juliet Hooker, Catherine Komisaruk, Russell Lohse, Paul Lokken, Mauricio Meléndez Obando, Karl H. Offen, Lara Putnam, Justin Wolfe

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Lowell Gudmundson is Professor of Latin American Studies and History at Mount Holyoke College. He is the author of Costa Rica Before Coffee: Economy and Society on the Eve of the Export Boom, a co-author of Liberalism Before Liberal Reform, and a co-editor of Coffee, Society, and Power in Latin America.

Justin Wolfe is the William Arceneaux Associate Professor of Latin American History at Tulane University. He is the author of The Everyday Nation-State: Community and Ethnicity in Nineteenth-Century Nicaragua.

REVIEWS

“This enlightening collection is destined to become essential reading for all those interested in the history of race, particularly as it pertains to the black presence in Central America. With its meticulous research, rich interpretive frameworks, and broad chronological sweep from the early colonial period into modern times, Blacks and Blackness in Central America will change how we think about racial mixture, nation-building, African survivals, black identity, and the development of society in Latin America. Thanks to this book, ‘Afro-Central America’ will become standard language in the vocabulary of the African Diaspora.”—Ben Vinson III, author of Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico

“This important collection of essays puts Central America firmly on the African Diaspora map. Blacks and Blackness in Central America is the one-stop volume that gathers together the leading scholars of the topic. They offer clear windows into their many years of research and discovery, collectively convincing the reader that Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica were far from marginal to the historical trajectories of people of African descent in the Americas.”—Matthew Restall, author of The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan

“... [T]aken together, the essays in the volume go a long way toward addressing the complicated and messy topic of the history of blacks in Central America, and they certainly have the potential to lead to studies that will indeed transform the ways we think about the Atlantic world, race in Central America, and the construction of national identities.”

-- Elizabeth W. Kiddy History: Reviews of New Books

“A trailblazing effort, this volume represents an important contribution to Central American historiography and African diaspora studies. It should be considered required reading for students and specialists alike.”

-- Andrew Fisher H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews

“All the essays in this excellent volume, whether in colonial or post-colonial contexts across Central America, offer a new vision of blacks and blackness in the region.”

-- Dario A. Euraque Ethnic and Racial Studies

“[A] captivating addition to the growing historiographical discussion on race. Africans have populated the shores of Central America since the 1500s. Yet rarely has a single work brought together such diligent contributing authors who provide the depths of discussion in such fascinating, unraveling ways.

-- Margery Coulson-Clark Journal of the North Carolina Association of Historians

“[A] major contribution to the scholarly literature. . . .”

-- Anne S. Macpherson American Historical Review

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Gente Ladina

Mestizaje

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