Chapter 6 traces how, in the aftermath of these reforms, the Neogranadian church, at the parish level, became an Indigenous and grassroots organisation. One aspect of this transformation was institutional, as it came to be better staffed, organised, and equipped. Another was ideological, as the lessons of the Jesuit experiments with missionary methods were extended across the archdiocese, centring everyday practice, popular devotion, and social institutions. But the most significant aspect was led by Indigenous people themselves, as the shift away from punitive policies and towards a more inclusive Christianisation, coupled with the implementation of a more effective language policy, created space and opportunities for people in rural parishes to interact with Christianity in new ways. This went much further than the authorities had intended, as they learned when they sought to rein in some of these changes, and it transformed the New Kingdom of Granada forever.

Chapter 5 draws on notarial records and census reports (padrones) to track the ethnic language used to describe Afro-descended residents of Veracruz and other Gulf Coast cities and towns. Comparing this data to published studies of other Mexican and Caribbean areas, I argue distinctive African ethnic labels retained meaning in coastal communities longer than they did in the Mexican interior, reflecting patterns of usage in the Caribbean. This was true not only among individuals, but collectively in the form of confraternities. As late as 1667, at least five confraternities in Veracruz continued to use language of African ethnicity, while confraternities elsewhere in Mexico had long since abandoned ethnic language. The final section of the chapter uses the admissions records of the Hospital Nuestra Señora de Loreto to examine the size and shape of Veracruz’s Caribbean-born population. Because the records include birthplace information for the hospital’s predominantly free-black women who were its patients between 1684 and 1695, they allow us to understand more tangibly the intersections of Mexican-Caribbean networks and ethnic labeling.

Lays out the theoretical interventions of the book as detailed in the book abstract.

This chapter studies the performances Afro-Mexians staged for Mexico City's celebration of the beatification of Ignatius of Loyola. The chapter illustrates how Afro-Mexicans engaged with the material culture of baroque festive culture. The chapter also investigates the kind of dance and music that may have accompanied Afro-Mexican festive Black king and queen and other performances. The chapter thus higlights how Afro-Mexicans continually managed to perform "with their king and queen" despite ever-present suspicions about their motives. It contends that they did this through the kind of negotiations they constantly carried out with colonial officials and religious orders. The chapter thus illustrates how Afro-Mexican used festive culture to negotiate their standing in colonial society.

I conclude the book by musing why Festín is the last source about Afro-Mexicans’ festive practices, when most of the sources from other latitudes are posterior. Through the analysis of a 1699-1702 Inquisition case that shows Mexicans of all “especie” (kind) acting in concert, I propose that the case may demonstrate the natural result of creolization: the incorporation of different cultures into a new one. Thus Afro-Mexicans, who had gone from Africans to Afro-Mexicans, become simply Mexicans. This scenario underscores the kind of cultural intimacies Afro-Mexicans developed with other groups and further complicates Mexican narratives of mestizaje.

This chapter studies the performance "more than fifty" blacks staged "with their king and queen" in Mexico City in February 1539. To contextualize the performance, I draw a wide diasporic net that illuminates the origins of this festive tradition in the Atlantic. As the earliest known example of this performance in the Americas, the text that describes it centers Mexico as a key player in the cultural transformations that gave birth to the modern Black Atlantic.

This chapter analyzes the performance ten "creole Black women" staged for the arrival of viceroy Diego López Pacheco in 1640. The performance is described in the only colonial text dedicated in its entirety to Black festive performance. The chapter thus studies the only surviving text for the kinds of performances Afro-Mexican staged for the arrival of new viceroys. In their performance the women reenacted the biblical story of the Queen of Sheba's visit to Solomon. By embodying the biblical Black queen, the women inscribed this performance within the Afro-Mexican tradition of festive Black kings and queens. This chapter is the first analysis to study this text from a Black perspective.

This chapter analyzes two instances where Afro-Mexicans' confraternal and festive customs were used against them. The chapter seeks to illustrate how the Iberian world's growing anti-Blackness affected Afro-Mexicans' confraternal and festive practices. Compared to these instances of persecution, the significance of the other performances studied in the book comes to the fore.

uses the biopolitical and socio-environmental perspectives on health constructed in the previous chapters to reinterpret municipal responses to plague. This chapter argues that when Netherlandish cities took action against epidemic spread, they applied pre-existing health policies. It challenges two scholarly biases, namely of crisis and of government. First, actions to prevent spread of the plague are often interpreted as radical innovations, yet many subjects targeted in plague ordinances were usual suspects and recurring problems; already regulated outside the context of plague because they were perceived as posing a (combined) threat to physical and moral communal well-being. Cities employed various strategies, from quarantine and street sanitation to spiritual measures and culling dogs. Secondly, there is a clear need to move beyond a top-down perspective and complicate the playing field of daily dealings with an epidemic through networks of plague care, which are discussed here by focusing on the role of hospitals, medical officials and confraternal caregivers, especially the Cellites.

Recent publications on Venice have started looking at the history of the migration from Dalmatia, Albania and Greece to Venice. The migrants came from the Balkans ravaged by wars and poverty to the metropolis which needed men for its army and rowers for its galleys. The increased influx of migrants began in the decade between 1430 and 1440 due to the Turkish threat. This chapter concerns itself with the manner in which the migrants affected the urban tissue of Venice in the fifteenth century. Which parts of Venice were inhabited by which migrant groups and what can this tell us about the socio-anthropological makeup of the city? After all, the impact the migrants was demographic and socio-economic. More specifically, the foundation of particular confraternities can be linked to particular ethnic groups. This chapter demonstrates the manner in which the cult of certain saints and devotional practices including the translation of relics affirmed Venice as the Mediterranean powerhouse.