Kind of long. Not being able to post on Twitter or the blog has me backlogged. Dive in at your leisure!
Research Haul: My obsession with the Works Progress Administration continues now into the Puerto Rican Reconstruction Administration, the island’s version of the WPA which tackled infrastructure and reconstruction in the wake of the Depression and a series of hurricanes. As far as I can tell they did not interview formerly enslaved people although they could have (slavery didn’t end in PR until 1873). But research continues on what exactly the PRRA was.
What they did do that was similar to the mainland WPA is publish a “guide” to the island. Some selections (from the Broward County Library Digital Archives except the final image which is from the HathiTrust edition where it is available in full-text):
One of the structures the PRRA/WPA rebuilt was the Casa Blanca, the home conquistador-settler Ponce de Léon never occupied because he was killed by the Calusa in Florida when they resisted his demands. The Living New Deal website has one of the more accurate descriptions I’ve seen on a digital history site:
“Between 1935 and 1939, WPA crews conducted historic restoration and renovation work at this site, Casa-Torre de Ponce de León, built in 1521 for the notoriously brutal conquistador who died before ever occupying the residence. It is better known as Casa Blanca, or “White House.” WPA work included roof repairs, installation of lighting, and creation of a garden. It now houses a museum with information about early colonial life on the island.”
Ran across this 1871 text by Samuel Hazard (Samuel Hazard, Cuba With Pen and Pencil. Hartford, CN: Hartford Publishing Company, 1871) with sketches from his travels in the Cuba and beyond. Hazard was writing, reading, and sketching from a white traveler-tourist gaze of an island where the slave trade didn’t end until 1865 and slavery lasted until 1886. Selections below:
He also did one for Santo Domingo and Haiti (Samuel Hazard, Santo Domingo, Past and Present, with a Glance at Hayti. London: Marston, Low & Searle, 1873).
And some review of the development of the asiento, the contract generated by the Spanish and sold to European slave trading entities. The first asiento on record was issued in 1518. It was held by Portuguese trading from Cape Verde in 1518. It then was bid on and held by the British, Dutch, French (not necessarily in that order). But this is of interest to me because the very first asiento holder isn’t a country or empire. It is just a man. Lorenzo de Gorrevod, Governor of Bresse (in France) and majordomo of Charles V had the first asiento. And the first ships aren’t just dots on a map. They are the route by which enslaved Africans ended up in Puerto Rico. There is a case in Tanodi of three men, African descent although unclear if they are African born, claiming they are free. So there is also that—Africans born in Iberia or on the continent arriving as laborers, sailors, and soldiers in Puerto Rico as well. David Wheat’s discussion of this is instructive and I keep coming back to it (David Wheat, Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016). This 1518 contract is also the one that allowed Christian slaves to be sold in the Americas as opposed to permitting slavery and slave trading under the excuse that those enslaved were not Christian (heathens), a legacy of the Christian-Islam wars of the century before.
Striking to me is this—that the first contract for the trans-Atlantic slave trading economic complex that became the asiento was just a man. A man, friends with another man, who had a tip about how to make some money and some power to make it happen.
And just like that, here we are, living in the world that slaves made.
It is also what makes me an abolitionist. If a thing can be made so easily, a thing can be unmade as well.
On the asiento there is:
The Early Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: Emperor Charles V · African Laborers for a New Empire: Iberia, Slavery, and the Atlantic World · Lowcountry Digital History Initiative https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/african_laborers_for_a_new_emp/emperor_charles_v
The Map of Blood and Fire: The Explosion of the African Slave Trade from History is a Weapon https://www.themapofbloodandfire.com/map/1528/1128
Asiento de Negros (a pretty thorough breakdown of the different asiento holders and their countries): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiento_de_Negros#Dutch,_French_and_British_competition
Things I’m watching:
Deeply enjoyed this video/event: Dark Lab presents Black and Indigenous Metropolitan Ecologies, Portland x Atlanta
More videos: COLOQUEO - Caribe taíno: ensayos históricos sobre el siglo XVI con Jalil Sued Badillo. Moderador: Jorge Nieves Rivera Producción: Pablo L. Crespo Vargas y Albeyra Rodríguez
More things I #amreading:
“This is our time”: Mayra Santos-Febres on Changing Narratives About Race Across the Americas — The Latinx Project at NYU https://www.latinxproject.nyu.edu/intervenxions/mayra-santos-febres-on-changing-narratives-about-race-and-social-equity-across-the-americas
Activity Log:
Building a Resources page to replace my DH the Blog teaching docs. Check it out here: https://github.com/jmjafrx/resources#resources. If you want to add to it, you can fork and suggest (or drop me a line via email).
Rebuilt my How to Cite page for this space and beyond. If you’re looking for it from elsewhere (as in you searched for http://dh.jmjafrx.com/citation/ and it came up blank) you can find it here: https://github.com/jmjafrx/resources/blob/main/docs/jmj-how-to-cite.md#how-to-cite
Around the web:
Alarmed Louisiana Residents Turn to Vaccines in ‘Darkest Days’ of Pandemic - The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/us/louisiana-vaccines-covid-delta.html
more soon,
jmj