African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
1 videocassette (24 min.), Documents the history of the Cimarrones, the few African slaves who escaped from the Spanish conquistadores to live in freedom in Peru. Reenacts an incident that took place on May 8, 1808, when one band of Cimarrones ambushed a caravan of Spaniards on the way to execute two slave prisoners.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
414 p., Never-before-told story of the first black explorer and adventurer in America, Esteban Dorantes. An African slave, Dorantes led an eight-year journey from Florida to California in the early 16th century -— three hundred years before Lewis and Clark ventured west. Includes "Camino Real: The Royal Road to Mexico City, 1536," "Dorantes and the Archive of the Indies," and "Cuba: 1527-1528."
México, D.F.: Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Históricos
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
227 p., Contents: Consideraciones preliminares -- Conflictos entre normas y prácticas -- Pequeños roces cotidiannos -- Imágenes construidas en la frontera de las normas -- La literatura y la iconografía : comicidad, exotismo, devoción -- Consideraciones finales.
Argues that free African and African-descended women participated in Spain's colonization of the Caribbean to a degree that has not been fully recognized. Regularly described as vecinas (heads of household) and as spouses to Iberian men in key port cities, free women of color played active roles in the formation and maintenance of Spanish Caribbean society during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, not as peripheral or marginalized figures, but as non-elite insiders who pursued their own best interests and those of their families and associates.
