The Story
The Forgotten History of Afro-Yucatan: A Talk by Matthew Restall
Matthew Restall, the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Latin American History and Director of Latin American Studies at Pennsylvania State University, spoke at William and Mary on Thursday, October 22. The late afternoon talk filled its room with a mix of students and professors.
The subject of the talk was drawn from Restall’s recently published book, titled The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan.
Professor of History Kris Lane introduced Restall briefly, discussing the books he’s written and edited as well as his professional career.
Current books and papers written on the history of the Yucatan lack a discussion of the African population that lived there during the colonial period. Most scholarly work imagines the history of the Yucatan as the meeting of Spaniards and Mayas, without any additional groups involved.
“Until this book,” said Restall, “there’s no English language study of Afro-Yucatan at all. Even in Spanish, there are just a few studies, essays, only in Yucatan, on small aspects of the topic.”
According to Restall, Afro-Yucatecans actually made up about one half of a percent of the total Yucatan population, equivalent to the percentage of Spaniards in the total population.
“[The Afro-Yucatecans] can’t be dismissed as being demographically insignificant, because they’re matching Spaniards about one for one as early as 1580," said Restall. “That remains true throughout the colonial period."
By the 1790s, there were about 50,000 people of African descent or mixed ancestry, about 12 percent of the total population of Yucatan, and very much spread out through the colony.
“Ninety-percent of Maya villages,” said Restall, “have people of African descent living in them.”
Restall said that his research raises completely new issues regarding the character of the population of the Yucatan. “By the end of the colonial period, [the indigenous community] is no longer Maya, they’re Afro-Maya. Over that long period of time, you’re creating a multi-racial, mutli-ethnic community.”
He admitted that the discipline he sees this most affecting is not history, but anthropology.
Restall discussed somewhat extensively how his research came about. He said he first stumbled onto the existence of an African population in the Yucatan somewhat by accident.
“As the years went by, I gathered more and more material,” said Restall. “I just kept finding documents.”
Eventually, he realized that he had a book’s worth of material. He showed, during a slide show presentation, some of the maps and images included in that book.
“The book is an extended, hundreds of pages argument to convince the reader that Afro-Yucatans occupy a middle position in colonial society,” said Restall.
The idea, according to Restall, is that the African population was able to interact with both Spaniards and Maya, in terms of where they lived, the occupations they held, whom they married, the land they purchased, etc.
Restall explained that some of his research came from Inquisition records, especially for people tried for bigamy. “In bigamy cases,” said Restall, “you do get these rather-open ended questions. People provide a lot of information about their lives.”
He told two of the stories that have made their way into his book, those of Manuel Bolio and Isabel Toquero. Bolio, explained Restall, was part of the large Yucatan population that was actually born in Africa. Toquero, on the other hand, was a person of mixed African and indigenous descent.
According to Restall, Toquero was caught committing adultery with her brother-in-law by her husband in 1700. She and her lover leapt out the window.
“The naked lover manages to grab his hat and nothing else,” said Restall. “[He] gets away, but the husband proceeds to beat his wife with her lover’s hat and various other objects.”
Toquero managed to get away, and worked in the large city of Merida for sometime, until, when she attempted to marry a second time, she was caught and tried for bigamy. He also seemed to derive a good deal of his material from parish records.
Students and faculty also had a chance to ask questions of Restall, on subjects like the cultural ramifications, the breakdown of jobs by ethnic groups and why Afro-Yucatecans were able to occupy that middle space.
“The next project is Belize,” said Restall, “particularly the interaction between Yucatan and Belize. I realized that for Afro-Yucatecans, Belize is very much a part of their world. There’s not supposed to be a crossing of that border, but there is.”