Infrastructures of Black Political Knowledge between Sevilla and Mexico City
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2024
This chapter explores how free-born and liberated Black people in the Spanish Americas invested significant resources to defend and expand the meanings of Black freedom and political belonging in the Spanish empire. In particular, when facing repressive policies introduced by local or municipal authorities or disturbances of their freedom enacted by private individuals, free born and liberated people often deftly negotiated various legal jurisdictions and expended social and political capital to carefully craft petitions for royal justice and grace. The chapter traces the development of infrastructures of Black political knowledge, and how people and communities learned about events and political discourses in faraway places and exchanged ideas and news in their daily lives that they later might deploy in their own petitions. With a focus on the cities of Sevilla and Mexico City, the chapter traces a history of infrastructures of Black political knowledge through the activities of Black religious confraternities, and the significance of Black petitioning to speculate about the possible moments of fellowship and exchange between Black petitioners from different cities in the Spanish empire, and the impact of any such exchanges on Black political ideas about freedom in this period.
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