Latin American History Commons^™

The Disappearing Mestizo, Book Review, Andrew Rosa

History Faculty Publications

The Disappearing Mestizo: Configuring Difference in the Colonial New Kingdom of Grenada. Joanne Rappaport. Duke University Press, 2014, 368 pp., $25.99, paper. By probing “when and how” an individual was considered a mestizo (a person of mixed heritage) in the early colonial New Kingdom of Grenada (modern-day Columbia), Joanne Rappaport’s Disappearing Mestizo: Configuring Difference in the Colonial New Kingdom of Granada (Duke University Press, 2014) adds to the growing scholarship on racial difference in colonial Spanish America.

After Spanish Rule: Book Review, Charlotte M. Gradie

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Charlotte Gradie.

Thurner, Mark and Andrés Guerrero, eds. After Spanish Rule: Postcolonial Predicaments of the Americas. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.

El Que No Tiene Dingo, Tiene Mandingo: The Inadequacy Of The "Mestizo" As A Theoretical Construct In The Field Of Latin American Studies - The Problem And Solution, Andrew Rosa

History Faculty Publications

At a recent lecture at Temple University titled The African Presence in Puerto Rico, a young African woman from the island proclaimed to the audience that the Black experience in the United States is indeed unique and, because of her "mestizo" heritage, acculturation, racism, and struggle were not a part of her historical experience. As I looked on the face of my beautiful African sister, my heart shattered into a thousand little pieces. The lessons passed down to us from our African ancestors in the oral tradition-el que no tiene Dingo, tiene Mandingo-have finally fallen on deaf ears. Their struggle …

Discovering The Chichimecas, Charlotte M. Gradie

History Faculty Publications

The European practice of conceptualizing their enemies so that they could dispose of them in ways that were not in accord with their own Christian principles is well documented. In the Americas, this began with Columbus's designation of certain Indians as man-eaters and was continued by those Spanish who also wished to enslave the natives or eliminate them altogether. The word “cannibal” was invented to describe such people, and the Spanish were legally free to treat cannibals in ways that were forbidden to them in their relations with other people. By the late fifteenth century the word cannibal had assumed …