George Liele: Liberated slave and African American Baptist Missionary to Jamaica

Liele introduced Baptist witness to Jamaica and served as pastor and educator of churches in Kingston and Spanish town cities there. Further, Liele was responsible for the conversion and baptism of another African American, Moses Baker, who migrated to Jamaica in 1783 and was a leader in establishing Baptist churches in western parishes in Jamaica. Beyond his work in Jamaica, Liele’s ministry reached as far afield as Nova Scotia, Canada, and Sierra Leone, Africa, through the influence of his protege, David George, who was first known as David, until he changed his name to “David George” in honor of his friend and mentor George Liele.

Wearing Pink in Fairy Town: The Heterosexualization of the Spanish Town Neighborhood and Carnival Parade in Baton Rouge

The Spanish Town parade is currently the largest Carnival parade in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with hundreds of thousands of attendees dressed in pink costuming, cross-dressing, and wearing pink flamingo paraphernalia. This chapter traces the queer origins of the Spanish Town parade to the racially integrated bohemian gayborhood of Spanish Town in the 1980s. Using interviews, archival research, and participant observation, I argue that current LGBTQ residents of Baton Rouge, even those who have never lived in Spanish Town, claim a vicarious citizenship to the neighborhood and parade through an understanding of the queer origins of the parade in the 1980s and the parade’s beginning in a gayborhood. This vicarious citizenship is tempered by the heterosexualization of the contemporary Spanish Town parade. Although LGBTQ residents still attend the parade in large numbers, there is more ambivalence about the homophobic imagery in the parade and the consumption of gay culture by heterosexual parade participants.

Plantations

Chapter Three explores women’s roles in propelling the growth of Jamaica’s plantation economy. It uses a rare collection of letters authored by a female planter, Mary Elbridge, to explore the varied agricultural activities of women living in the island’s rural regions. This chapter complicates a narrative of plantation slavery that centers on sugar cultivation. Although some women did cultivate sugar, others worked as ranchers, grew pimento, ginger, cotton, and provisions. Regardless of the size of their agricultural ventures, women relied intensively on the labor of enslaved people. This chapter scrutinizes their exploitative, coercive, and violent treatment of captive Africans during the volatile era of the Maroon War. Female inhabitants in Spanish Town, the seat of the colonial government, were especially involved in the livestock industry, and many operated ranches on the outskirts of the town. Altogether, women planters and ranchers contributed to the growth of a symbiotic and incredibly profitable plantation economy.

War

By the late 1730s, the Jamaicans had grown weary of battling with the Maroons. The shortage of white militia and British regulars, along with the Maroons’ proficiency in guerrilla warfare and their knowledge of the terrain, led to high white casualties and heavy expenses. In the treaties of 1738-39, the Jamaicans granted autonomy to the Maroons. In return, the Maroons agreed to live in isolated reservations and serve as slave catchers for the whites. They would preserve white freedom and black slavery. But in July 1795, the turmoil by the Trelawney Town Maroons in the northern mountains caught the colony by surprise. The St. Domingue rebellion, just a day’s sail from Jamaica, created paranoia. The Jamaican elite did not worry unduly about a few hundred Maroons in the distant northwest village of Trelawney Town, far from the urban centers of Spanish Town and Kingston. Rather, the fear loomed that the uprising would “corrupt” the slaves who comprised 90 percent of the population. This chapter describes the exigencies that led the island to instigate war against the Maroons.

Puro tlaxcalteca? Ethnic Integrity and Consciousness in Late Seventeenth-Century Northern New Spain

“The pueblo of San Estevan de Tlaxcala is inhabited by pure blood Tlaxcaltecan Indians who founded it during the conquest of this country. . . . These Indians speak Spanish and are civilized.” So observed don Nicolás de Lafora, a military engineer accompanying the Marqués de Rubí’s inspection tour of New Spain's northern presidios, as he approached San Esteban and the adjoining Spanish town of Saltillo, in present-day Coahuila, in June 1767. A decade later, fray Agustín de Morfi, chaplain to newly appointed commander general of the Provincias Internas don Teodoro de Croix, echoed Lafora's assessment, linking San Esteban's ability to preserve its privileges for the better part of two centuries to the community's pureza de sangre, preserved through the great care its residents took to avoid “mixing” with the castas (mixed races) that “infected” Saltillo.