Beyond Babel: Translations of Blackness in Colonial Peru and New Granada

322 Pages·2020·10.621 MB·English

by  Larissa Brewer-García

Beyond Babel
In the seventeenth-century, black linguistic interpreters and spiritual
intermediariesplayedkeyrolesintheproductionofwritingsaboutblack
menandwomen.FocusingonPeruandthesoutherncontinentalCarib-
bean, Beyond Babel uncovers long-ignored or lost archival materials
describingtheexperiencesofAfricansandtheirdescendantsinthetrans-
atlantic slave trade and the colonial societies where they arrived.
Brewer-García’s analysis of these materials shows that black intermedi-
aries bridged divisions among the populations implicated in the slave
trade, exerting influence over colonial Spanish American writings and
emergingracialhierarchiesintheAtlanticworld.Thetranslatedportray-
als of blackness composed in collaboration with these intermediaries
stood in stark contrast to the pejorative stereotypes common in literary
andlegaltextsoftheperiod.Thisbookreconstructsthecontextofthose
translations and traces the contours of the notions of blackness they
created,whichwerecharacterizedbyphysicalbeautyandspiritualvirtue.
Larissa Brewer-García isAssistant Professorof Latin American Litera-
tureattheUniversityofChicago.
Afro-Latin America
Serieseditors
GeorgeReidAndrews,UniversityofPittsburgh
AlejandrodelaFuente,HarvardUniversity
Thisseriesreflectsthecomingofageofthenew,multidisciplinaryfieldofAfro-Latin
AmericanStudies,whichcentersonthehistories,cultures,andexperiencesofpeopleof
AfricandescentinLatinAmerica.Theseriesaimstoshowcasescholarshipproducedby
different disciplines, including history, political science, sociology, ethnomusicology,
anthropology, religious studies, art, law, and cultural studies. It covers the full tem-
poralspanoftheAfricanDiasporainLatinAmerica,fromtheearlycolonialperiodto
thepresentandincludescontinentalLatinAmerica,theCaribbean,andotherkeyareas
intheregionwhereAfricansandtheirdescendantshavemadeasignificantimpact.
A full list of titles published in the series can be found at: www.cambridge.org/afro-
latin-america
Beyond Babel
Translations of Blackness in Colonial Peru and
New Granada
LARISSA BREWER-GARCÍA
UniversityofChicago
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Para La Boquilla, Cartagena de Indias
y
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Contents
List of Figures pageix
Acknowledgments xi
Note on Transcriptions and Translations xv
Introduction: Linguistic and Spiritual Mediations inthe
Earlier Black Atlantic 1
1 Black Types between Renaissance Humanism and Iberian
CounterReformation Theology 34
2 The Transatlantic Slave Trade and Spanish American
Missionary Translation Policy 74
3 The Mediations of Black Interpreters in Colonial Cartagena
de Indias 116
4 Conversionand theMakingof Blacknessin Colonial
Cartagena de Indias 164
5 Salvation andtheMakingof Blacknessin Colonial Lima:
Úrsula de Jesús 207
Coda: Negros literarios 247
Appendixes 251
Bibliography 269
Index 299
vii