Bio Statement:
My Ph.D. thesis, From Shipmates to Soldiers: Emerging Black Identities in Montevideo, 1770-1850, focuses on the impact of mutual experiences and social networks on identity formation among Africans and their descendants. This work casts new light on the thousands of Africans who arrived in Montevideo and Buenos Aires at the peak of the slave trade. In addition, it gives center stage to a single black writer who left a comprehensive record of this time: Jacinto Ventura de Molina (1766-1841). I argue that black identities emerged from shared slave routes, the reshaping of ethnic boundaries, and participation in organizations ranging from Catholic brotherhoods to colonial militias. I explore experiences that bonded free blacks and slaves to each other and to the larger societies in which they found themselves. The slave trade, Catholic black lay brotherhoods, African-based associations, and black military service were crucial and overlapping fields of experience. While previous historiography has focused on one or another of these fields at a time, I show how individuals operated across these interconnected organizations.
My work on Jacinto Ventura de Molina, a free black who lived in early nineteenth-century Montevideo, exemplifies my commitment to interdisciplinary research in the Black Atlantic. In 2006, William Acree (Romance Languages and Literatures, Washington University in St. Louis) and I set out to publish a selection of Molina’s manuscripts. We edited these writings from both historical and literary perspectives. The result was a volume published in two editions, one in Montevideo and the other in Madrid.
I enjoy working alongside scholars of Africa, Europe, and the Americas in collective historical endeavors such as Voyages: Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database and The African Origins Project. My role as a contributor to these international datasets has enlarged my understanding of working collaboratively with scholars from different generations, areas studies, and interests.
Currently, I am revising my dissertation for publication and writing an article on the volume and dimensions of the slave trade to Venezuela. My next book project is entitled Slaves, Silver and Atlantic Empires: The Slave Trade to the Río de la Plata, 1680-1812. I plan to study the connections between slave arrivals in the Rio de la Plata and the remittances of silver from this region to the Atlantic world. In the process, I will analyze how Spanish imperial expansion intertwined with the slave trade. My new objects of inquiry are the Atlantic empires in the era of Atlantic slaving and the people caught up in these historical forces.
Books:
Abolicionismo y tráfico de esclavos en Montevideo tras la fundación republicana, 1829-1853. Montevideo: Biblioteca Nacional, 2009, 218 pp. [link]
Esclavitud y trabajo. Un estudio sobre los afrodescendientes en la frontera uruguaya, 1835-1855. Montevideo: Pulmón, 2004 and 2009, 320 pp. [Co-authorship with Karla Chagas and Natalia Stalla]. [link]
Edited books:
Jacinto Ventura de Molina, Los caminos de la escritura negra en el Río de la Plata. Madrid: Iberoamericana-Verbuet, 2010, 286 pp. [selection of writings of Jacinto Ventura de Molina co-edited with William Acree, introduced by George Reid Andrews]. [link]
Jacinto Ventura de Molina y los caminos de la escritura negra en el Río de la Plata. Montevideo: Linardi y Risso, 2008, 256 pp. [selection of writings of Molina co-edited with William Acree, introduced by George R. Andrews]. [link]
Articles:
The Slave Trade to the Río de la Plata. Trans-imperial Networks and Atlantic Warfare, 1777-1812, Colonial Latin American Review 20, 1 (April 2011): 81-107. [link]
The ‘African Colonists’ of Montevideo. New Light on the Illegal Slave Trade to Rio de Janeiro and the Río de la Plata (1830-1842), Slavery and Abolition 30, 3 (Sept. 2009): 427-444. [link]
Tensiones raciales en el juego de la representación. Actores afro en Montevideo tras la fundación republicana (1830-1840), Gestos 21, 42 (Nov. 2006): 33-56. [link]
Entre el aporte a la identidad nacional y la reivindicación de las minorías. Apuntes sobre los Afrodescendientes y la esclavitud en la historiografía uruguaya, História Unisinos 10, 3 (Sept.-Dec. 2006): 310-320. [Brazil] [link]
¿Es posible integrar la esclavitud al relato de la historia económica uruguaya?, Boletín de Historia Económica 3, 4 (Oct. 2005): 42-51. [Uruguay] [link]
Courses Taught:
Undergraduate
Graduate
