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."
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
306 p., This dissertation concentrates on the relationship between law, literature, and slavery in the Hispanic Caribbean of the Early Modern Period. The analysis is based on two letters and a treatise, Resolución sobre la libertad de los negros y sus originarios, en estado de paganos y después ya cristianos (1681), that were written by Capuchin friar Francisco José de Jaca, while he was serving as a missionary in the Caribbean region. His writings set the stage for a discussion of how Spanish hegemonic legal thinking is challenged and redefined from an alternative transatlantic narrative.