Sovereign Joy
Afro-Mexican Kings and Queens, 1539-1640

An exploration of how Afro-Mexicans affirmed their culture, subjectivities and colonial condition through festive culture and performance.

Miguel A. Valerio (Author)

9781009078207, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 21 September 2023

282 pages
27 x 18 x 1.9 cm, 0.476 kg

'A phenomenal book of scholarly detective work that painstakingly reconstructs Afro-Mexican cultural practices and legacies that have been long-lost, misinterpreted, and obscured over time. Sovereign Joy is a rich testament to how expanding our interpretive toolset can lead us to recover the very sounds, emotions, feel, and texture of colonial life that have long been considered ephemeral and fleeting. An absolutely amazing work.' Ben Vinson III, author of Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico

Sovereign Joy explores the performance of festive black kings and queens among Afro-Mexicans between 1539 and 1640. This fascinating study illustrates how the first African and Afro-creole people in colonial Mexico transformed their ancestral culture into a shared identity among Afro-Mexicans, with particular focus on how public festival participation expressed their culture and subjectivities, as well as redefined their colonial condition and social standing. By analyzing this hitherto understudied aspect of Afro-Mexican Catholic confraternities in both literary texts and visual culture, Miguel A. Valerio teases out the deeply ambivalent and contradictory meanings behind these public processions and festivities that often re-inscribed structures of race and hierarchy. Were they markers of Catholic subjecthood, and what sort of corporate structures did they create to project standing and respectability? Sovereign Joy examines many of these possibilities, and in the process highlights the central place occupied by Africans and their descendants in colonial culture. Through performance, Afro-Mexicans affirmed their being: the sovereignty of joy, and the joy of sovereignty.

List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Sovereign Joy
1. 'With their king and queen': Early Colonial Mexico, the Origins of Festive Black Kings and Queens, and the Birth of the Black Atlantic
2. 'Rebel Black Kings (and Queens)'?: Race, Colonial Psychosis, and Afro-Mexican Kings and Queens
3. 'Savage Kings' and Baroque Festival Culture: Afro-Mexicans in the Celebration of the Beatification of Ignatius of Loyola
4. 'Black and Beautiful': Afro-Mexican Women Performing Creole Identity
Conclusion: Where did the black court go?
Appendix
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Hispanic & Latino studies [JFSL4], History of the Americas [HBJK]