The Introduction describes Veracruz as a central node in trade and migration networks that spanned the early modern globe, but also as a city that nonetheless is not typically afforded a status alongside other colonial American ports, like Havana, Philadelphia, or Cap-Français. In examining Veracruz’s social history more closely, the Introduction argues we can illuminate not only the distinctive social and cultural world of its inhabitants, but through the city’s relationship to ports in the Caribbean, an entire regional system that mediated the definition of colonial categories like race, caste, ethnicity, religion, and status in the seventeenth century, especially for Africans and their descendants. It then situates the book’s contributions at the intersection of three fields of historical scholarship--Latin American, Caribbean, and Atlantic--and offers a detailed outline of the book’s chapters.