The Brink of Freedom: Improvising Life in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World 9780822374107

Citation preview

THE

BRINK OF

FREEDOM

THE

BRINK OF

FREEDOM Improv ising Li fe in t h e N in et een t h- C en t u ry At l a n t i c Wo r ld David Kazanjian

Duke University Press · Durham and London · 2016

© 2016 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞ Designed by Courtney Leigh Baker Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro by Copperline Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kazanjian, David, [date]—author. Title: The brink of freedom : improvising life in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world / David Kazanjian. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2015044447 isbn 9780822361510 (hardcover : alk. paper) isbn 9780822361701 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn 9780822374107 (e-book) Subjects: lcsh: African Americans—Colonization—Liberia— History—19th century. | Liberia—History—19th century. | Mayas— Mexico—Yucatâan (State)—History—19th century. | Yucatâan (Mexico : State)—History—19th century. Classification: lcc dt633 .k393 2016 | ddc 966.62/02—dc23 lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044447 Cover design by Natalie F. Smith

Contents

Introduction Atlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities · 1 Part I · Liberia: Epistolary Encounters Prelude · 35 1 “It All Most Cost Us Death Seeking Life” Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities · 53 2 “Suffering Gain and It Remain” The Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 91 Part II · Yucatán: Una Guerra Escrita Prelude · 133 3 “En Sus Futuros Destinos” Casta Capitalism · 155 4 “Por Eso Peleamos” Recasting Libertad · 191 Coda: Archives for the Future · 227 Acknowledgments · 239 Notes · 243 Bibliography · 285

Index · 315

Introduction

Atlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities

My dear Father: I again sit to write you, as it always affords me pleasure to do so, and when I am writing I feel somehow as though I am near and conversing (with you) consequently, I derive pleasure from it . . . Dear Father, Please be good enough to send me a Grind Stone, and a Corn Mill, and the tools I mentioned in my other letter, as such things cant be had (got) here. I have sent to New York once or twice for a Mill but can’t get one out by order, and now I beg you to send me one. Mother joins me in love to Jim Thornton, Pa Noel, George Carpenter, Jenny, Fanny, and Ellen. She says tell Jenny, Fanny and Ellen to remember the advice she gave them before she left, respecting their duty to their Master, and that they must seek the Kingdom of Heaven and its (his) righteousness and all things shall be added to them. I have sent enclosed in your package a letter to Mr. Fulton your neighbor, likewise one to Mr. Barney. As I did not know their given names I merely put their titles, tell them you will receive any thing they wish to send me. Also one to Revd. D. Wells, of New York, a correspondent of mine. I received a letter from him by the Mary Wilkes appointing me the agent for the Presbyterian Mission at Settra Kroo. . . . And now my dear father I close by wishing that He who conducted Israel through the (and) Red Sea may protect, defend, and bless you, and be unto you at all times as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. Your affectionate son. —G. R. Ellis McDonogh to John McDonogh, March 26, 1847

Most Esteemed Señor Don Francisco Camal We poor indians have been lied to by the Spaniards, on repeated occasions, because of this we warn you Sir, not to believe their lies: we indian rebels, we seek nothing but the most wonderful freedom; this is what we seek, in the name of the one true God and our comrades, the indian leaders; so that there is no tax for the indian, just as there is no tax for the Spaniards, who also don’t pay obvenciones; the only tax we ought to pay to the Priests, we indians and also the Spaniards, are 10 [pesos] for marriage, and three for baptism, and if there is any more, we will not pay it; and this is what the Spaniards say is so terrible that we have lied about. —Cecilio Chi, Lorenzo Chan, Jacinto Pat, Manuel Tzib, Crescencio Poot, Luciano Be to Francisco Camal, December 11, 1847

1847: On the Brink During July of 1847, eleven delegates met in Monrovia for a convention to declare Liberia an independent nation-state and to draft a constitution. Those delegates were among the thousands of black settlers from the United States, most former slaves, who in 1822 began to colonize lands dispossessed from native West Africans. Ancestors of the dispossessed had moved into the region at least as far back as the thirteenth century. By the nineteenth century, coastal ethno-linguistic groups such as the Kru, Vai, Manes, Dei, Bassa, Gola, and Kissi had become tradespeople, with many participating actively in the transatlantic slave trade. The colonization they confronted was conducted by the American Colonization Society (acs), a private philanthropy run by white Americans, most of whom sought both the gradual abolition of slavery in, and the removal of all blacks from, the United States, although some affiliated with the acs sought the removal of just the rebellious or otherwise “troublesome” among the enslaved to better assure the stability of slavery. The president of the constitutional convention itself, Samuel Benedict, had been born a slave in Georgia in 1792, and with acs sponsorship had emigrated to Liberia with his family in 1835 after purchasing his freedom. It is from the acs that the convention’s delegates declared their independence.1 Yet when black settler G. R. Ellis McDonogh sat down in Monrovia on March 26, 1847, to write a letter to his former master John McDonogh, he did not mention the dispossession of West Africans, the buildup to the constitu2 · Introduction

tional convention, or anything about the efforts to declare independence.2 As we can see from my first epigraph above, when the letter was published in the acs’s official newspaper The African Repository and Colonial Journal during the very month the convention met, the contrast between Liberia’s emergence as a nation-state and Ellis’s affective and quotidian concerns could not have been more stark.3 Ellis’s affectionate address to his former master—who may have been his biological father—no doubt reflects a tactical effort to secure the grindstone and corn mill he urgently needed. But it is also a part of the epistolary return to the United States that Ellis stages throughout the letter, with imagined journeys as well as greetings shared and memories offered: “when I am writing I feel somehow as though I am near and conversing, consequently I derive pleasure from it,” “Mother joins me in love to Jim Thornton, Pa Noel, George Carpenter, Jenny, Fanny, and Ellen,” “remember the advice she gave them before she left.” In fact, in other letters Ellis explicitly expresses a desire to return in the flesh to the United States.4 Still, Ellis also catalogues his colonial accomplishments in his March 26, 1847, letter, mentioning with apparent pride the abundant crops he has grown and, as we can see in the epigraph, his role as a missionary among native Africans at Settra Kroo (today, Setra Kru), more than one hundred miles southeast of Monrovia. Ellis’s fellow settler and brother Washington Watts McDonogh shared this pride in the colonization of Liberia, writing the previous year to the master they shared that “I will never consent to leave this country for all the pleasures of America combined together, to live, for this is the only place where a colored person can enjoy his liberty, for there exists no prejudice of color in this country, but every man is free and equal.”5 One thus wonders exactly how the successes and freedoms G. R. Ellis McDonogh and Washington Watts McDonogh celebrate articulated with their understanding of the dispossession of native West Africans or their apparently fond memories of, as well as imagined and literal returns to, the land of their enslavement. What, in other words, did freedom mean from the quotidian yet self-reflective, epistolary perspective of black settlers like the McDonoghs? July 1847 is also remembered as the beginning of la Guerra de Castas, the Caste War, a massive Maya rebellion against Creole authority across the Atlantic Ocean on the Yucatán Peninsula that continued on and off until at least 1901, displacing or killing hundreds of thousands of Yucatecans. Spaniards had first colonized the region in the early sixteenth century, and their so-called Creole descendants—also known in Spanish as Yucatecos, Españoles, and blancos, or in Yucatec Maya as dzulo’ob—had steadily dispossessed the Maya majority, securing tribute from them for the church and conscripting their labor for the brutal sugar industry, often with the help of Maya leaders called batabs in Yucatec Atlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities · 3

Maya and caciques in Spanish. In fact, the division between Maya and Creole was never as sharp as it might retrospectively seem, as Spaniards and Maya as well as Afro-Yucatecos had mixed and mingled for centuries. Still, conflict flared up on July 26, 1847, when the batab of the village of Chichimilá, Manuel Antonio Ay Tec, was executed by Yucatecan officials for supposedly conspiring to lead a Maya revolt against local leaders allied with the Creole state. On July 30 Cecilio Chi, the batab of nearby Tepich, responded to this crackdown on dissent, which had spread to his town, by leading a massacre of most of Tepich’s Creole residents. He was soon joined by Jacinto Pat, the batab of neighboring Tihosuco and Telá, among others in directing a large-scale uprising that terrified Creoles would quickly describe as a Caste War of indios bárbaros against blancos, or barbaric Indians against whites. However, on December 11, 1847, when the Maya rebels Cecilio Chi, Lorenzo Chan, Jacinto Pat, Manuel Tzib, Crescencio Poot, and Luciano Be wrote the letter quoted in my second epigraph to a local government official named Francisco Camal, they did not take the tone of bloodthirsty revolutionaries bent on seizing the Yucatecan state.6 Writing with formal recognition of Camal’s power—“Most Esteemed Señor Don Francisco Camal”—they seem most concerned with correcting the “lies” “the Spaniards” had been telling about their uprising. Their tone as well as their apparent distinction between themselves and Camal on one hand and “the Spaniards” on the other may well betray a tactical effort to win Camal—whose name, also spelled Caamal, suggests he had Maya heritage—over to their side. In their own account of the uprising they defend their pursuit of freedom, or libertad, which they then immediately define in the most quotidian terms as a reformed tax code. Yet they do not even call for the abolition of taxes. Rather, they declare that “poor indians” must be allowed to pay the same amount as Spaniards rather than the higher rates they had been paying. One wonders in what sense a reformed tax code could be lofty enough to be called something as “wonderful” as “freedom” (tan buena como la libertad), dire enough to start a bloody uprising over, and strong enough of a demand to make in response to a Creole crackdown that had so recently and spectacularly claimed the life of Manuel Antonio Ay Tec, among many others. How, simply put, did these rebels’ correspondence represent the libertad for which they fought? Preoccupied with quotidian concerns, poised on the margins of what historians and literary critics have called the Atlantic world, caught up in racial capitalist systems of accumulation and dispossession, set at the apogee of nineteenth-century liberalism, in pursuit of something they call “freedom” yet largely judged today to have failed in their efforts, black settlers in Liberia and 4 · Introduction

Maya rebels in Yucatán seem to linger on the brink of freedom. This brink is figured by the signal date both flashpoints share: 1847, a year that wavers on the verge of, or perhaps falls forever short of, the celebrated 1848. What did living a free life mean, on the brink? How was that meaning crafted? How might we even go about answering such questions of the seemingly routine, epistolary archives left by these apparently disparate flashpoints?7 These are the central questions this book attempts to answer, out of a deep conviction that the texts I examine here still have much to teach those of us who find ourselves—with frustration, anger, excitement, urgency, or awe—on the brink of freedom’s future.

Transversals Why and how might we consider nineteenth-century Liberia and Yucatán together? Beyond their calendrical coincidence and their quotidian pursuits of something called “freedom,” they seem entirely distinct and disconnected, even set on distant edges of the Atlantic world. I know of no individual historical actors who participated in both Liberian colonization and the Caste War, no migrants or travelers who moved between Liberia and Yucatán during this period, no significant exchange of goods between the two regions. In one instance, we have centuries of transatlantic chattel slavery—a trade in which native West Africans had participated—setting the stage for the partly forced, partly voluntary migration of freed slaves and free blacks from the United States to West Africa, followed by colonization, black settler conflict with white rulers as well as native West Africans, and formal independence. In the other instance, we have centuries of Spanish settler colonization and conflict with a Maya majority, followed by negotiated power-sharing among Maya communities, the Catholic church, and Creole politicians and landowners; periodic conflict among those very groups; and eventually the violent and protracted Caste War. Direct comparisons, parallels, or even analogies—Maya to native West Africans, black settlers to Spanish conquistadores, or acs officials to Creole rulers—simply do not hold here. Indeed, the ways historians and literary critics typically study the nineteenthcentury Atlantic world proactively separate Liberia from Yucatán, making it not entirely clear how both could even be included in this geographic framework.8 Many Atlantic world scholars center their research on Europe and North America, occasionally including the Anglophone Caribbean or Haiti’s revolution while relegating Africa and Latin America to peripheral concerns.9 Others urge us to keep North Atlantic worlds relatively separate from South Atlantic worlds, Atlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities · 5

a division exaggerated in the stubbornly monolingual fields of U.S. literary and historical studies.10 Alternately, while Atlanticists have long accepted that the transatlantic chattel slave trade connected far-flung corners of the entire region, local, national, or continental frames still dominate the study of other aspects of the Atlantic world.11 In particular, indigeneity in the Americas is often hived off from such Atlanticist approaches, either confined to “inland,” continentalist, or nationalist perspectives or framed within the inaccurate “red to black” narrative, in which the colonization and genocide of native peoples are presumed to have tragically succeeded and then given way to the enslavement of Africans and nation-state formation.12 Latin American studies scholars have been more willing to consider the integral and ongoing role of indigeneity, and to connect Latin America to Iberia, itself peripheral to even Eurocentric literary and historical studies. Yet regionalism often still predominates, hiving studies of nationstates like Mexico or locales like Yucatán off from larger networks. Additionally, outside studies of the Caribbean and Brazil, Latin Americanists still too often ignore the history of African-descended peoples, especially when it comes to Mexico.13 Meanwhile, historians of Liberia have focused exclusively on the U.S.Liberia axis and the West African region, while historians of Yucatán, for their part, have become increasingly devoted to microhistories of the peninsula.14 Finally, even the currently vibrant fields of Afro-diasporic studies and settler colonial studies do not give us the terms with which to study, in nineteenthcentury Liberia, the black settler colonization of slave-trading indigenous Africans, or in nineteenth-century Yucatán a violent revolt by Maya rebels against Spanish Creoles—many of whom on both sides were mestizo—conducted in the name of white, black, and Indian Yucatecans rather than in the interest of Indian sovereignty.15 Yet the fields of world-systems analysis, global history, and connected history have long taught us to be suspicious of apparent disconnections between regions, periods, and peoples. While nineteenth-century Liberia and Yucatán do not share historical individuals, direct economies of exchange, or literary traditions, they do share a particular conjuncture in what Fernand Braudel calls a world-economy (a geographic zone diverse in religions, languages, and political units but linked by a division of labor and flows of capital and labor); what Immanuel Wallerstein calls a capitalist world-system (characterized not only by global markets, exchange for profit, and wage labor, but also by the perpetual accumulation of capital); what Giovanni Arrighi calls a cycle of accumulation (a distinct period of financial expansion involving the growth of commodity production followed by the accumulation of money capital); and what Cedric Robinson calls a racial capitalist world-system (the articulation of 6 · Introduction

capitalism with racism and nationalism).16 Further, if we take up Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s provocation to “seek out the at times fragile threads that connect the globe,” we find that West Africa and Yucatán were connected by, for example, the centuries-long traffic in and transit of African-descended people who came into close contact with indigenous peoples of the Americas; by the circulation of ideas about state formation and settler colonialism among and within Spanish, British, French, and U.S. empires; and by the recourse black settlers and Maya rebels took to the epistolary form as a political and intellectual genre of communication, reflection, and struggle.17 Additionally, scholars of the oceanic and the littoral—particularly the Indian Ocean—have shown how seas and ports link far-flung regions at large scales that are often difficult to discern; along the way, they have provincialized the Atlantic as it has traditionally been conceived by highlighting other regions and cross-regional connections.18 Still, these macromaterialist perspectives depict systems, cycles, circulations, and connections from such a wide angle that they do not address the quotidian scale from which scribes like G. R. Ellis McDonogh, Washington McDonogh, Cecilio Chi, Lorenzo Chan, Jacinto Pat, Manuel Tzib, Crescencio Poot, and Luciano Be wrote. What is more, these perspectives fail to consider the ways in which such writings do not simply document who-did-what-where-whenand-why, but also reflect speculatively on the global systems within which their scribes lived. The Brink of Freedom contests the limits of such frameworks in order to reveal too easily overlooked connections between nineteenth-century Liberia and Yucatán, to view the racial capitalist world-system from a new perspective, and to elaborate a way of reading archives for speculative reflections on one of the nineteenth century’s most pervasive, nimble, overdetermined, and elusive concepts: freedom.19 Considered alongside each other, nineteenth-century Liberia and Yucatán make visible transversals that cut across putatively distinct Atlantic world regions and networks, and unsettle commonplace conceptions of freedom. From the Latin transvertere (trans meaning “across” and vertere meaning “to turn”), the verb transverse means to turn across or athwart, to turn into something else, to turn about, or to overturn. A transverse is thus not simply a line that cuts across, but also an unruly action that undoes what is expected.20 In this sense, then, taken together Liberia and Yucatán counter or transgress established distinctions between Anglo and Spanish Atlantics, between chattel slavery and indigenous dispossession, between African American/African and Spanish/Indian social relations. Liberia and Yucatán certainly offer different points of entry into a worldsystemic cycle of racial-capitalist accumulation; each is differently global, if you Atlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities · 7

will. Read alongside each other, however, their archives reveal the quotidian level upon which such globality was apprehended and critically reflected upon. What is more, their critical reflections challenge nineteenth-century conceptions of freedom as something embodied by the nation-state and national citizenship. I thus offer a different way of doing connected history by attending principally to the speculative reflections that both epistolary archives offer. When Creole commentators on the Caste War claim to take up a perspective “traversing the ocean’s waves,” when a Maya rebel leader writes of spilling his blood “so that my children might see the world,” and when an American black settler in Liberia writes a letter he calls “a communication from a transmarine stranger,” they alert us to archives replete with such transversals.21 Transversals cannot be apprehended by the usual comparativist methods, however.22 Typically, comparative projects presume stable terms against which objects of analysis can be compared. With roots “in the encyclopedic ambitions and evolutionary models” of eighteenth-century thought—which we could no doubt trace back even further—modern comparativism in particular has often forged Eurocentrism and American exceptionalism by setting norms against which cultural others could be compared and judged.23 Such comparativism in fact animates much of how the American Colonization Society itself, as well as many black settlers, viewed the native West Africans whom they attempted to convert to Christianity while appropriating their land for what the colonizers considered to be more efficient use. Black settlers were presumed by most African colonizationists to be “returning” to their ancestral land as Africans civilized by their contact with the Western world, and thus as both examples for and agents of the enforced civilization of native Africans. This presumption effectively compares African Americans to Africans as subjects who shared an essential African kinship. As we will see at the beginning of chapter 1, Edward Wilmont Blyden made such an argument when he inaugurated Liberia College in 1862 with these words: “Perhaps this very day, one century ago, some of our forefathers were being dragged to the hold of some miserable slaver, to enter upon those horrible sufferings of the ‘middle passage,’ preliminary to their introduction into scenes and associations of deeper woe. Today, their descendants having escaped the fiery ordeal of oppression and slavery, and having returned to their ancestral home, are laying the foundation of intellectual empire, upon the very soil whence their fathers were torn, in their ignorance and degradation.”24 African Americans are destined to lead the benevolent colonization of Africans in Liberia, Blyden claims, precisely because of their comparable kinship. The problem here is as much with the comparativist gesture as it is with the content of the imperialist claim. 8 · Introduction

By contrast, comparativism has also been used to assert irreducible difference and cultural relativism, often in the name of respecting the specificity of each unit being compared. Yet such comparativism still presumes a stable and objective position of comparison (the historian, the anthropologist, the cultural critic) as well as universal units of comparison (kinship, literature, gender, race, class, nationality), and so is also implicated in the exercise of colonial power.25 This is precisely the logic that underwrote the extensive efforts of early Spanish colonizers of Yucatán to record and systematize the Yucatec Maya language. On the one hand, the colonizers believed that Indian languages were distinct and valuable in their own right, and so they made efforts not just to learn those languages but to write grammar books and dictionaries for them. On the other hand, as William F. Hanks shows, this effort effectively converted the very words of Yucatec Maya: “This consisted in the transformation of Maya language from the pagan, idolatrous code that (to Spanish ears) it had been into a revised and reordered language fitted to the discursive practices of an emerging community of Christian Indios. In concrete terms, this entailed creating in Maya very powerful discourse markers such as the cross, the quadrilateral spatial grid (oriented from east to west), dates, titles, signatures, and the naming of places and persons.”26 Spanish colonizers compared Spanish to Yucatec Maya, found them both valuable and culturally distinct, and proceeded to shape the latter in the image of the former so as to more effectively colonize the Maya. Again, the comparativist method is as implicated in this process as is the content of the claims about Yucatec Maya’s relative value. Instead of comparativism, then, in The Brink of Freedom—as we have already begun to see—I trace the transversals that connect Liberia and Yucatán by reading black settler colonization and the Caste War appositionally. The word appose derived both as a variant spelling of the word oppose in which it originally meant “to examine” or “to argue against,” and as a distinct term from the Latin root ponere in which it meant “to put one thing to another thing,” “to juxtapose.”27 Grammatically, apposition is a form that places two terms alongside each other, without a coordinating conjunction to explain how they are related; or, as the Oxford English Dictionary has it, “the putting of distinct things side by side in close proximity.” As a literary form, apposition creates understandings that other forms of connection—such as analogy, causality, contrast, or comparison— do not. For instance, one of the most famous instances of literary apposition in the history of the black Atlantic (which I discuss in more detail at the end of chapter 2) occurs in the last two lines of Phillis Wheatley’s 1773 poem “On being brought from africa to america”: “Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain, / May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.”28 We cannot decide exactly Atlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities · 9

what is being said to whom here: are only “Christians” told that “Negros” can be saved, or are both “Christians” and “Negros” linked in sin and potential salvation? This appositional equivocation opens understanding up beyond the stark, racialized, and religious terms this young, enslaved poet had to confront on a daily basis. Taking inspiration from the formal power of such apposition, with The Brink of Freedom I suggest that by placing two calendrically coincidental flashpoints alongside each other without linking them through the familiar coordinating conjunctions, we can attend to the elusive, vibrant, and agonistic meanings of freedom that transverse these edges of the Atlantic world. In the rest of this introduction, I will explain in more detail the transversals that connect Liberia and Yucatán. First, both have been criticized as failures because they did not become stable nation-states that successfully expressed freedom in the terms of liberal, democratic national citizenship. However, if we attend to the epistolary archives left by nonelite black settlers and Maya rebels who wrote of their global conjunctures in markedly quotidian terms, we encounter an entirely different kind of success: a body of literature that critically reflects upon the very meaning of freedom. Second, these Liberian and Yucatecan letters become the means by which subjects, to whom normative ideas of freedom were imputed, challenge those norms and unfix freedom itself. Third, these archives can teach us not only how a racial capitalism animated by conceptions of blackness and indigeneity articulates readily with nineteenth-century liberalism, but also how freedom can be imaginatively remade in and through that articulation. Finally, to glean these transversals we need to teach ourselves to read seemingly everyday documents not only with a historicist’s eye for their empirical content but also with an eye for their critical, theoretical reflections. I will thus seek to show how archives can answer not only the familiar questions of who did what, where, when, and why, but also the speculative question of how freedom might be ongoingly remade.

First Transverse: Success, Otherwise Liberia and Yucatán are not only geographically peripheral to the way the Atlantic world has been studied; they are also unheralded. For unlike the widely researched, “heroic” conjunctures from the Atlantic world’s long nineteenth century—such as the American Revolution and Civil War, the Haitian Revolution, Latin American independence from Spain, the French Revolution, and the various European 1848s—Liberian colonization and the Caste War have often been judged “failures,” particularly in light of the two regions’ ongoing struggles. 10 · Introduction

For instance, Marie Tyler-McGraw ends her careful study of Virginians’ role in Liberia with a common refrain: The settlers . . . had created an early-nineteenth-century American republic and become early national Americans through a frontier experience, resistance to colonial authority, and the rituals of nation-making. Yet they had failed in the impossible task of their larger aims—they had been unable to westernize an African population that greatly outnumbered them and that was unwilling to become part of the new nation. After a century in which most ordinary settlers and their leaders had responded as inventively as possible to an almost unending series of difficulties, they had not Christianized even their portion of Africa, prospered as a nation among nations, or made themselves respected and welcomed in the United States.29 Setting consolidation of a national state, liberal citizenship, and Christianization as (admittedly “impossible”) standards for success, Tyler-McGraw unsurprisingly finds failure in the history of Liberia. Claude A. Clegg III concludes his thoughtful book, The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Liberia, by extending this judgment to the present: Sometimes, the price of liberty meant no liberty at all, for poverty, sickness, conflict, exile, and death were their own prisons. Indeed, Liberian colonization was expensive to many on both sides of the Atlantic, and no single person or group—neither Quaker, free black, slave, African, nor colonizationist—seemed to enjoy freedom without paying a price for it, or causing others to do so . . . As of November 2003, fighting [in the Liberian Civil War] was still flaring in the countryside, and international peacekeepers had yet to arrive in substantial numbers. What is clear, however, is that the past was not truly the past, but very much the present state of things in Liberia.30 As Clegg suggests, recent decades have been marked by civil wars (1989–97 and 1999–2003), and continuing social divisions between so-called AmericoLiberians (those considered descendants of the black settlers) and so-called indigenous Liberians or natives (the ethno-linguistic groups considered descendants of dispossessed West Africans). Present conflict thus echoes with the past’s failure to realize freedom as a stable national polity. In Yucatán’s case, writes prominent U.S. historian of the Caste War Terry Rugeley: Atlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities · 11

Violencias often have no definite or discernible stopping point, but simply fade into some semblance of normal life, and like certain cancers manifest a high incidence of recurrence. Far from ushering in a renaissance, these [Caste] wars have brought national humiliation . . . the dismemberment of Yucatán, the death of its dream of national independence, and for many years a freeze on tendencies toward a more racially inclusive society.31 Rugeley understands the Maya rebels’ efforts during the Caste War as raw violence, and their aim as “national independence.” Since the former failed to realize the latter, the “more racially inclusive society” that might have been possible without the uprising was thwarted “like certain cancers” might be said to thwart the health of a body. This summary (and simile) judgment seems only confirmed by the peninsula’s ongoing, racialized class distinctions between Maya and whites; between peasants and metropolitans; and between the service workers who labor for, and the local and international bourgeoisie who direct and consume, the Yucatán’s booming tourist economy. Linked as putative failures, these two unheralded flashpoints seem destined to be considered examples of disillusionment, their respective presents disappointing outgrowths of their singular pasts, their pasts never quite heroic enough to be considered part of “1848.” This is not, however, what I found in the archives I examined. While scholars tend to look to philosophical treatises for insight into seemingly abstract questions like the meaning of freedom, in The Brink of Freedom I turn primarily to one of the most widespread genres of writing during the nineteenth century: the epistolary form. For nonelites involved in the black settler colonization of Liberia and in the Caste War of Yucatán—those who did not directly control the states that would govern their respective regions—letters became a central means of communicating with kin and allies, making demands upon former masters and current foes, waging war, and seeking advice. Even for those who could not write, amanuenses were available on the streets of Monrovia or in the villages of Yucatán to put words to page. For those who had rudimentary writing skills, letters graphically communicate the sonic textures of cadence and accent in English, Yucatec Maya, and Spanish. Sometimes characterized by steady and smooth cursive lettering, other times bearing the labored marks of unsteady penmanship, and often lacking consistent spelling or punctuation, the grammar and syntax of these letters vary wildly, interrupting the universality of the genre with irreducible particularities. They are often difficult to read, such that they resist the easy consumption of skimming or surveying. The very materiality of these letters embodies this complex articulation of 12 · Introduction

generic convention with particular realization. The paper on which they are written is often thin and cheap, evincing an ephemeral existence that has, perhaps against the odds, survived in contemporary archives. Most conform to the period’s standard, folio style of a single sheet of paper folded in half or thirds, with the content on one, recto side and the address and any postal marks on the verso side of the last page, which itself functioned as an envelope before separate envelopes became commonplace. Individual letters often bear marks of their particular production: letters translated into Spanish from Yucatec Maya include prefaces, notes, and postfaces from the translator; Liberian letters later published in the acs’s official newspaper were often edited to put the acs in the best light; and undateable notations in distinctly penned ink or pencil punctuate individual letters, offering explanation or information from untraceable sites of authority.32 The exchange of letters formally holds out the promise of direct, rational, and authentic communication.33 Many historians have looked to such putatively private genres to flesh out the common “experience” of history, as distinct from the lofty, official realm of heroes, leaders, battles, and treaties.34 However, the epistolary archives I have examined defy the category of subjective “experience,” and are instead characterized by indirection, misdirection, performance, mediation, chance, and affect. Although letters might seem intimate and private, they usually combine artifice with a strong sense of a public audience, more like a staged enactment than a transcription of the head or the heart.35 Indeed, such nineteenth-century letters were publicly performed; they were read out loud, passed around among communities of readers on plantations, in villages, or in government offices, even published in periodicals. Rather than interpreting these quotidian combinations of generic convention and situated particularity as mere repositories of empirical detail, or as representations of authorial self-possession, or as windows into private feeling, I find in their too easily overlooked pores heterodox performances of the very meaning of freedom.36 That is, I cull deeply theoretical and highly speculative thought from an apparently mundane salutation like G. R. Ellis McDonogh sending his mother’s love “to Jim Thornton, Pa Noel, George Carpenter, Jenny, Fanny, and Ellen,” or a seemingly practical reference to tax rates or the need for a grindstone, or a few rich words like “we seek nothing but the most wonderful freedom” surrounded by descriptive quotidiana. Consequently, when I attend to other genres more firmly under the control of these conjunctures’ elites—such as periodicals, folletines or serialized novels, constitutional debates, and philosophical treatises—I show how they might be read from, and interAtlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities · 13

rupted by, the more quotidian and speculative perspectives of the epistolary archives themselves. By approaching nineteenth-century Liberia and Yucatán from these epistolary angles, in turn, I suggest that we can discern not only more complex pictures of black settler colonization and the Caste War but also an Atlantic scene of varied, unrealized, often equivocal, but nonetheless visionary critical reflection on the very meaning of freedom, reflection that still speaks to the present, reflection that gestures toward our very own futures. Thus, the “failures” that marginalize Liberia and Yucatán conceal a more profound if diffuse “success”: archives full of imaginative, critical reflection on how to live a free life. In this sense, these two 1847s do not so much fall shy of the heroic freedom struggles of 1848, nor do they overshoot or lay forever in the wake of 1776 or 1789 or 1804, as they are poised on the brink of freedom: toward the edge, at the margin, or on the very verge of what freedom might still come to be. The quotidian and speculative aspects of these archives bear some relationship to what Michel de Certeau called “practices of everyday life.” De Certeau rebelled against the social sciences’ study of organized systems of social, economic, and political practice in order to focus our attention on the way what he called “users” (rather than “consumers”) operate, act, or utilize things by “poaching in countless ways on the property of others.”37 As he writes: For example, the analysis of the images broadcast by television (representation) and of the time spent watching television (behavior) should be complemented by a study of what the cultural consumer “makes” or “does” during this time and with these images. The same goes for the use of urban space, the products purchased in the supermarket, the stories and legends distributed by the newspapers, and so on. The “making” in question is a production, a poiesis—but a hidden one.38 The mass-mediated culture to which we see black settlers in Liberia and Maya rebels in Yucatán actively respond as epistolary “users” is indeed newspapers, as well as political proclamations, constitutions, and folletines through which hegemonic nineteenth-century policies of liberalism and capitalism were proffered by the regions’ ruling elites. What de Certeau calls “poiesis,” in turn, comes to us through letters written to the settlers’ and rebels’ former masters, rulers, ongoing antagonists, and kin. De Certeau even offers this relevant example of “everyday practices”: For instance, the ambiguity that subverted from within the Spanish colonizers’ “success” in imposing their own culture on the indigenous Indians 14 · Introduction

is well known. Submissive, and even consenting to their subjection, the Indians nevertheless often made of the rituals, representations, and laws imposed on them something quite different from what their conquerors had in mind; they subverted them not by rejecting or altering them, but by using them with respect to ends and references foreign to the system they had no choice but to accept. They were other within the very colonization that outwardly assimilated them; their use of the dominant social order deflected its power, which they lacked the means to challenge; they escaped it without leaving it.39 It might seem odd to bring such an account to the Caste War of Yucatán, which was in fact a massive and violent uprising of “indigenous Indians” who proved themselves to be very much in possession of “the means to challenge” their colonizers. Yet as my second epigraph indicates, and as we will learn in chapter 4 from the letters written by Maya to their antagonists, the rebels sought neither to separate from nor to eradicate the Creoles. To the contrary, they actively pursued recognition by, and participation within, the Yucatecan state with which they were at war. In particular, as we have already seen, they repeatedly demanded what seems like the merely reformist restructuring of tax rates that had been applied unevenly to whites, Indians, and Afro-Yucatecos. As I will argue, these demands were uttered, to use de Certeau’s terms, “with respect to ends and references foreign to the system” against which they revolted. It might seem even more odd to bring de Certeau’s example to Liberian colonization or the migration of emancipated slaves to a land where they were told they could live their freedom and in which they became colonizers of native West Africans. Yet when one reads the hundreds of letters written by the settlers to their former masters, families, and friends back in the United States—and as we see in my first epigraph—one encounters not simply an emergent Liberian nationalism nor a commitment to leave servitude behind in the pursuit of a fresh free start, but rather an effort to live free by continually returning—imaginatively, through poiesis—to the United States and its enslaved life. One also encounters countless ways the settlers are unsettled by the native Africans they were meant to convert and dispossess, leading the settlers at times to trouble, or be troubled by, the colonizationist practices the acs charged them with. By attending to the quotidian texture of the archives left by these flashpoints, then, we can rethink what we mean by, and how we judge or measure, the successes and failures of social movements. However, the archives of Liberia and Yucatán differ from de Certeau’s “everyday practices”—which are predominantly European—in their worldliness. Atlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities · 15

The peripheral status of both regions in the Atlantic world, as contemporary critics have mapped it, obscures the ways they were networked into a wide range of historically and geographically global political, economic, and ideological systems. I thus attend to traces of what I call quotidian globalities: histories of racial capitalism reaching back to the early modern period and stretching well beyond the geographic boundaries of anything we might call an Atlantic world, represented in everyday texts and couched in seemingly banal terms. From Liberia, we read correspondence, often written by barely literate scribes or even by amanuenses on behalf of those who could not write, describing and asking after the fate of friends and relatives, chronicling material needs, complaining about neighbors, and expressing hopes and fears that also make extensive use of the Bible as well as the history of Atlantic chattel slavery—all of which is marshaled to invest newly free lives with meaning. From Yucatán, we see references to early modern Iberia and the colonization of South Asia used to make sense of the Caste War as a whole and to reformulate seeming banalities like the rates Maya are charged for baptisms and weddings. In both flashpoints, I attend to the ways documents invoke and repurpose the period’s global discourses of liberalism and capitalism to claim “freedom” as something that might be lived on a daily basis. These quotidian globalities have affinities with, even as they ultimately differ from, the direction in which James C. Scott has taken de Certeau’s notion of the “everyday.” Scott’s concept of “everyday forms of resistance” opened up the study of “the small arsenal of relatively powerless groups,” such as “foot-dragging, dissimulations, false compliance, feigned ignorance, desertion, pilfering, smuggling, poaching, arson, slander, sabotage, surreptitious assault and murder, anonymous threats, and so on.”40 For Scott, the everyday is a scene of conscious action by self-conscious subjects who act intentionally to subvert clearly defined norms or loci of power.41 In this respect Scott’s search for such “everyday forms” is in concert with the Latin American subaltern studies of historians like Florencia E. Mallon, whose Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru sought to understand “subalterns as conscious actors rather than simply as those acted upon.”42 Relatedly, Christopher Hager’s important study of nineteenth-century African American writing, Word by Word: Emancipation and the Act of Writing, shares my concern with texts about quotidian freedoms written by nonelites: “Living amid profound uncertainty, the men and women we are about to meet used writing to pursue, doggedly if not always successfully, some modicum of justice; some security for themselves and their families; some deeper understanding of themselves and their world.”43 Hager, like Scott and Mallon, is after the lived experiences and subjective identities of those who 16 · Introduction

wrote the texts he studies: a modest and limited reconstruction, as he puts it elsewhere, of “an enslaved or newly emancipated person’s thoughts and feelings based on a brief manuscript.”44 Jace Weaver extends such efforts across an even wider geographic and temporal range in his The Red Atlantic: American Indigenes and the Making of the Modern World, 1000–1927. In the spirit of Marcus Rediker’s, Peter Linebaugh’s, and Paul Gilroy’s impactful studies of Atlantic world radicalism in transit, Weaver carefully excavates vast histories of “the circulation of information, material culture, . . . technology” and literature by and about native peoples, embodying those histories in the life stories of individual Atlantic world “indigenes” who traveled the globe.45 The Red Atlantic recovers particular indigenous captives, slaves, prisoners, soldiers, sailors, statespeople, celebrities, and authors, making them cosmopolitan protagonists in famous as well as forgotten historical events. Still, my account of quotidian globalities in The Brink of Freedom differs from the work of Scott, Mallon, Hager, and Weaver in that I do not seek out the consciousness of subalterns as volitional actors; nor do I catalogue the ways such subjects resisted clearly defined loci of power, whether that resistance is called counterhegemonic, a means of class struggle, a cultural front, or any other unified mode of opposition; nor do I recover the self-understandings or biographical details of individual, cosmopolitan actors. Rather, my focus is more textual than subjectival, more speculative than empirical. I read documents as philosophical texts. That is, I consider how the archives I examine reflect upon their nineteenth-century flashpoints and Atlantic contexts without attempting to derive those reflections directly from the prior intentions or actions of individuals or collectivities.46 Even the globality of the black settlers and Maya rebels on whose documents I focus is notably textual and speculative. Rather than writing about lives spent in transit, “mobile elements . . . in between the fixed places,” as Gilroy describes black Atlantic cosmopolitanism, their texts reveal to us situated, local, subaltern flashpoints that only seem delinked from the globe: in the act of writing a letter about needing a grindstone, wanting lower taxes, insisting on cultivation for subsistence, or drawing pasts and futures into their shifting presents.47 By attending to archived traces of quotidian globalities that trouble the combined effects of nineteenth-century liberalism and racial capitalism, I cull answers to the less heroic and voluntaristic if still expansive questions I mentioned at the beginning of this introduction: what did living a free life mean in nineteenthcentury Liberia and Yucatán, and how was that meaning crafted? Answers to these questions, I want to suggest, open possibilities for our own futures, possibilities I address most directly in this book’s coda. Atlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities · 17

Consequently, my sense of the “everyday” is closer to Thomas Holt’s in “Marking: Race, Race-Making, and the Writing of History,” an essay that sought to understand how “the act of representation that is the marking of race . . . pervades not only the dramatic and global phenomena of our world but is part of the ‘ordinary’ events of everyday life and is perpetrated by ‘ordinary’ people.”48 Holt did not just advocate the study of how “everyday acts of name calling and petty exclusions are minor links in a larger historical chain of events, structures, and transformations anchored in slavery and the slave trade.”49 He also called on us to “elaborate the nexus between the remote or global levels of that experience and its immediate or micro-local expressions.”50 Drawing on Henri Lefebvre, he wrote that “at any given historical moment, the everyday has already been created within a determined global space, and global relations are already the product—at least in part—of everyday existence.”51 The quotidian globalities I examine carry this overdetermined valence. Perhaps just as important, however, they display the incalculability, contradiction, and contingency at the limits of the seemingly most coherent systems that structure the histories I study, such as the acs’s scheme of African colonization, the Liberian constitutional convention’s plan for independence, the Yucatecan Creole vision of civilizing the Maya, or the presumptive aims of a large-scale rebellion like the Caste War. As Holt writes, “Knowability must commence by acknowledging and marking the areas of seeming incalculability in human behavior. And it is precisely in the everyday that one encounters lived contradictions and contingencies.”52 Though “human behavior” is no more my object of analysis here than are the intentions of everyday resisters or subaltern consciousness, I do claim that the quotidian globalities I trace shine with “contradictions and contingencies,” or what I will more often call equivocation. While we are accustomed to thinking of the equivocal as the misapprehended, the prevaricated, or the mistaken, the term literally refers to speaking in multiple directions at once (from the Latin aequus, equal, and vocare, to call). As such, we can think of moments of equivocation as apparent failures concealing unexpected successes. The equivocal refuses to forge mere equivalences, offering a freedom from formal equality through iterations of difference that do not resolve into the similar. In sum, then, Liberia and Yucatán are connected on a transverse of unheralded, epistolary, quotidian, equivocal, and—as I will discuss in more detail below—speculative reflection.

18 · Introduction

Second Transverse: Freedom, Unfixed This brings us to the second sense in which Liberia and Yucatán are connected on a transverse: in both instances “freedom” was imputed to and—because of its very incalculability, contradictions, and contingency—unfixed by the subjects I consider here, in and through their epistolary reflections. The acs gave Liberia its very name (from the Latin liber, free or independent). It also functioned as an aggressive booster of the venture and, in most cases, arranged for the emancipation, deportation from the United States, and settlement in West Africa of American slaves in the name of freeing them from slavery, “freeing” the United States from black people, and using settlers as agents of Christianity and liberal capitalism to “free” Africa from its putatively blighted state. In Yucatán, libertad was an ubiquitous term among liberal Creoles, who gained independence from Spain in 1821 and even declared independence from Mexico during multiple, short periods between 1821 and the start of the Caste War in 1847. They sought to bring freedom to the peninsula’s Maya masses by “civilizing” them, which meant incorporating them into liberal capitalist social relations as wage-laborers, principally on sugar plantations. Both imputations of freedom were meliorist, progressivist, and teleological. They were “policies,” in the sense that Fred Moten and Stefano Harney give to that term, before the concept of “policy” had even come into its post-Fordist vogue: “By policy, we mean a resistance to the commons from above, arrayed in the exclusive and exclusionary uniform/ity of imposed consensus, that both denies and at the very same time seeks to destroy the ongoing plans, the fugitive initiations, the black operations of the multitude.”53 The texts I examine here suggest that black settlers in Liberia and Maya rebels in Yucatán studied the terms of these policies, troubled their assumptions, and unsystematically recast their aims. In a sense, then, these settlers and rebels left behind archival traces that unfixed “freedom” from the policies of those who sought to fix it and govern them, improvising life in something like the ways Moten and Harney imagine: As an operation from above designed to make the multitude productive for capital, policy must first deal with the fact that the multitude is already productive for itself. This productive imagination is its genius, its impossible, and nevertheless material, collective head. And this is a problem because plans are afoot, black operations are in effect, and, in the undercommons, all the organizing is done. The multitude uses every quiet moment, every peace, every security, every front porch and sundown to Atlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities · 19

plan, to launch, to improvise an operation . . . This is the first rule of policy. It fixes others. In an extension of Michel Foucault, we might say of this first rule that it remains concerned with how to be governed just right, how to fix others in a position of equilibrium, even if this today requires constant recalibration. But the objects of this constant adjustment provoke this attention because they just don’t want to govern at all.54 Something like, but perhaps not exactly. For I do not claim here that Liberia’s black settlers or Yucatán’s Maya rebels constitute anything quite so coherent as a “collective head,” an “undercommons,” or even a “multitude.” Or perhaps I should say that they are more hydra than collective head, more uncommon than undercommons, that their multi- does not nominalize with the confidence suggested by the suffix -tūdō. The archival traces I consider in The Brink of Freedom are unsystematic and equivocal. Their improvised operations typically cease after undoing efforts to fix freedom, offering potent ellipses rather than anything approaching an alternative or counterhegemonic plan, pulling back rather than advancing to seize the state. As Moten and Harney put it above, “they just don’t want to govern at all.” In fact, one of the aspects of the Caste War that has confounded historians is the apparent retreat by Maya forces at the end of their initial 1847–48 offensive, when many Creoles feared the rebels were on the brink of seizing the principal cities of Mérida and Campeche. Terry Rugeley makes clear that “the idea that the Mayas almost expelled Hispanics from the peninsula” was mostly a myth generated during the early years of the war by terrified Creoles to exaggerate the Maya threat, obscure prior Creole injustices, justify subsequent Creole counteroffensives, and induce the United States to come to the Creoles’ aid. But the rebels’ disinterest in claiming the Creoles’ metropolitan centers speaks not simply to their lack of military prowess or strategic purpose, as Rugeley also suggests.55 The imputation of the lack of a grand, heroic plan along the lines of more celebrated nineteenth-century Atlantic world figures—such as Toussaint L’Ouverture, Jean Jacques Dessalines, Simón Bolívar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Shaka Zulu, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, or Louis Auguste Blanqui—forecloses our ability even to notice, much less to interpret, the abundant poeisis that fills the letters Maya wrote during the war. If we set aside the expectation of such grand plans—which after all often end up looking like the very “policies” of which Moten and Harney are so astutely critical—then we will be able to discern traces in the archives of efforts to imaginatively remake what freedom might mean.56 Relatedly, nineteenth-century Liberia is usually understood with reference 20 · Introduction

to the country’s early black settler elites, such as Edward Wilmont Blyden. As I argue at the beginning of chapter 1, men like Blyden followed Moten and Harney’s rule of policy as they sought to fix freedom in laws, constitutions, and standards of citizenship. By contrast, most of the letters from Liberians I discuss were written by people who did not concern themselves with Liberia’s independence, its constitution, or the consolidation of its national state. For instance, Nancy Ann Smith and Samson Ceasar, whose letters I discuss in chapter 2, reflect as insistently on the slavery from which they were formally freed as they do on the freedom bestowed upon them. As we will see, their recursive reflections on servitude animate freedom with a certain life, and their lives with a certain freedom. Alongside the letters from Maya rebels who shared the mid-nineteenth century with them, the letters from Liberia dwell on the brink of freedom, well shy of plans to enact Moten and Harney’s “exclusive and exclusionary uniform/ity of imposed consensus.” Taken as a variegated and diffuse whole rather than as the products of individual heroes or leaders with policies to enact, and read for their quotidian globalities, the archives I examine in The Brink of Freedom unfix and imaginatively remake freedom by performing what Judith Butler has called the restaging of the universal: The main terms of modernity are subject to an innovative reuse—what some might call a “misuse”—precisely because they are spoken by those who are not authorized in advance to make use of them . . . The reiterative speech act thus offers the possibility—though not the necessity—of depriving the past of the established discourse of its exclusive control over defining the parameters of the universal within politics. This form of political performativity does not retroactively absolutize its own claim, but recites and restages a set of cultural norms that displace[s] legitimacy from a presumed authority to the mechanism of its renewal. Such a shift renders more ambiguous—and more open to reformulation—the mobility of legitimation in discourse. Indeed, such claims do not return us to a wisdom we already have, but provoke a set of questions that show how profound our sense of not-knowing is and must be as we lay claim to the norms of political principle.57 Butler here highlights efforts by social movements to claim discursive practices that have been used against them. These movements reformulate and repurpose those discursive practices such that their power derives not simply from claiming a presumptively foundational universality held by elites, but rather from the improvisatory efforts of the movements themselves. Those efforts do Atlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities · 21

not merely refine or expand already existing norms of political principle, nor do they produce new fixed norms. Rather, they render such norms more ambiguous, equivocal, or not-known, and in that they point toward reformulated futures. For instance, when Nancy Ann Smith writes “Please read this in the presence of all your servants” in a letter from Liberia to her former master John McDonogh on May 31, 1844, her words claim his voice, the voice of universality, to tell her still-enslaved kin what she has come to know about freedom since being emancipated and deported.58 In chapter 2 I explain how such an utterance is neither a repetition nor a recognition of McDonogh’s mastery, but rather an innovative reuse and an ambiguous reformulation of universality itself. When seven Maya from a rancho (or small settlement) called Haas in the south of the Yucatán Peninsula write to Creole priest and commissioner Canuto Vela on April 7, 1850, that “The agreement made with us is clearly understood, for this we are fighting. That no tax will be paid, by white, black or indian,” they do not simply act as if they are now governing their rancho.59 Rather, they “provoke a set of questions that show how profound our sense of not-knowing is,” making us reflect upon how and in what terms such subalterns could speak in the name of a “white, black or indian” multitude and why, when they do so speak, they would concern themselves with tax policy. In chapters 3 and 4, I trace this utterance’s quotidian globality to a history of casta that dates to the sixteenth century and reaches as far as South Asia. I also explain how, in Butler’s terms, this utterance “recites and restages a set of cultural norms that displace legitimacy from a presumed authority to the mechanism of its renewal.” Rather than offering a common multitude, undercommons, policy, strategy of resistance, or subaltern consciousness, then, the archives I consider in The Brink of Freedom are connected on a transverse in this second sense: they critically reflect upon, unfix, and innovatively reuse the “rules of policy” or the “norms of political principle” that claim “freedom.”

Third Transverse: Freedom, Remade I have already edged into the third sense in which Liberia and Yucatán are connected on a transverse. Taken together, they revise our understanding of how these rules and norms cohere at the complex articulation, during the nineteenth century, of what Cedric Robinson has called “racial capitalism” and what Immanuel Wallerstein has called “centrist liberalism.” Robinson’s Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition is one of those rare texts that attends at once to historicity and futurity, to past and potential, seeking what its first 22 · Introduction

paragraph describes as an “immanent mode of social resolution.” It tracks what Stuart Hall would call, in a kindred analysis, the “articulation” of racism, nationalism, and capitalism across vast scales of time and space.60 This tracking always proceeds with an eye both to social forces that generate powerful regimes of exploitation and to collective efforts to undo and reconfigure those regimes—the “new opportunities” and “new ‘historical’ agents” to which Robinson refers in this crucial passage: The historical development of world capitalism was influenced in a most fundamental way by the particularistic forces of racism and nationalism. This could only be true if the social, psychological, and cultural origins of racism and nationalism both anticipated capitalism in time and formed a piece with those events that contributed directly to its organization of production and exchange . . . The tendency of European civilization through capitalism was thus not to homogenize but to differentiate—to exaggerate regional, subcultural, and dialectical differences into “racial” ones . . . Eventually, however, the old [feudal] instruments gave way to newer ones, not because they were old but because the ending of feudalism and the expansion of capitalism and its world system—that is the increasingly uneven character of development among European peoples themselves and between Europeans and the world beyond—precipitated new oppositions while providing new opportunities and demanding new “historical” agents.61 Robinson’s insistence that racism and nationalism both “anticipated capitalism in time” and “formed a piece with” its ongoing development allows him to reveal—to borrow again from Thomas Holt—the work race did for and against capitalism.62 Capitalism helped to make racism and racism helped to make capitalism, but raced subjects also at times sought to unmake both capitalism and racism in the name of race—all on scales at once extensively global and intricately local, in which the past both conditioned the present and burst forth from it to articulate unforeseen futures. “Racial capitalism” and “Black Marxism” are Robinson’s names for these geographically capacious, historically specific, and politically visionary dynamics. As I argue in the prelude to part II, however, Robinson gives too much credence to what I earlier called the “red to black” narrative, in which the genocide of native peoples precedes and gives way to the racial slavery of black people (the fourth section of chapter 6 of Black Marxism is even titled “Black for Red”). As a result, readers of Robinson have gone even further than he did in presuming that the “racial” of “racial capitalism” was predominantly the differentiation Atlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities · 23

of black from white through the transatlantic chattel slave trade and its legacies. Connected on a transverse, nineteenth-century Liberia and Yucatán belie this presumption, forcing us to consider how capitalism differentially racializes linked parts of the globe. Again, this is not a comparative or analogical connection; I do not compare the ways black settlers or native West Africans are racialized to the ways Maya are racialized. Nor is it a causal connection; I do not argue that Liberia’s black settlers had contact with the Yucatán’s Maya rebels, nor that the actions of one directly altered or influenced the actions of the other. Rather, by attending to this transverse I show how racial capitalism drew on long and diverse global histories of race—what Robinson calls capitalism’s tendency not to homogenize but to differentiate by drawing on histories that anticipated capitalism in time—that cannot be said to have originated in, or derived primarily from, the transatlantic chattel slave trade. In part I, I show how the Liberian colonization movement’s presumptive isomorphism—blacks belong in Africa, whites in America—is unsettled by African-descended settlers’ accounts of their encounters with native West Africans. In part II, I give an account of what I call “casta capitalism” in order to show how the articulation of racism with capitalism defied the “red to black” narrative by incorporating both Maya and black people who lived and labored among each other throughout Yucatán and its neighboring regions. In turn, I show how during the Caste War Maya and AfroYucatecos sought to disrupt casta capitalism’s force. I hope, ultimately, to offer a more variegated scene of racial capitalism in the Atlantic world, one that is itself articulated with global histories of race and capitalism extending well before the nineteenth century and beyond the Atlantic. What of racial capitalism’s articulation with the nineteenth century’s most powerful political ideology, liberalism? In The Modern World-System IV: Centrist Liberalism Triumphant, 1789–1914, Immanuel Wallerstein extends his epochal history of systemic, global capitalism to the long nineteenth century. The central feature of that period, he argues, is the rise and consolidation of “centrist liberalism,” a “geoculture” characterized both by the “faith in progress via productivity” and by strong, centralized national state apparatuses that achieved hegemony on a global scale. As he explains, If during the period 1789–1848 there was a great ideological struggle between conservatism and liberalism, conservatism failed in the end to achieve a finished form, as we shall see. After 1848, liberalism would achieve cultural hegemony in the world-system and constitute the fundamental core of the geoculture. In the rest of the long nineteenth century, 24 · Introduction

liberalism dominated the scene without serious opposition . . . We have sought to explain how it is that liberalism has always been a centrist doctrine, neither of the left nor of the right. We have argued that none of the three ideologies [conservatism, liberalism, or socialism] was in practice antistatist, although all three pretended they were. And we have tried to demonstrate the ways in which centrist liberalism “tamed” the other two ideologies, transforming them into virtual avatars of centrist liberalism. In that way, we could argue that by the end of the long nineteenth century, centrist liberalism was the prevailing doctrine of the world-system’s geoculture.63 The principal means for the accomplishment of this hegemony, he argues, was first, “the creation of ‘liberal states’ in the core regions of the world-system”; second, the transformation of “the doctrine of citizenship from being one of inclusion to being one of exclusion”; and third, “the emergence of the historical social sciences as reflections of liberal ideology and modes of enabling the dominant groups to control the dominated strata.”64 Wallerstein here usefully deemphasizes the specificity of liberalism as a particular ideology, in its putative distinction from conservatism or socialism, and treats it rather as a hegemonic geoculture whose political forms of appearance—national citizenship and the nation-state—accommodated multiple ideologies whose differences, in the long history of capitalism, are less significant than their combined hegemonic effects. However, the unquestioned Eurocentrism of this analysis and the panoramic perspective world-systems theory generally takes combine to obscure not only the dynamics of what Robinson calls “racial capitalism” but also the quotidian globalities through which marginalized subjects in the Americas and Africa understood, and struggled to undo, hegemony. The Brink of Freedom functions at a different scale, examining quotidian discourses while acknowledging that “centrist liberalism” sets the stage for the period. I show how the archives of nineteenth-century Liberia and Yucatán register both the materialization of what Wallerstein calls “centrist liberalism” and the ways its edges fray or its reach falls short.65 For so many of Liberia’s black settlers, as I mentioned at the beginning of this introduction, the establishment of the nation-state was hardly a concern. They focused their attention, rather, on ways of living free that evaded citizenship or detoured the emergent state. For instance, soon after black settler Samson Ceasar arrived in Monrovia on January 1, 1834, he wrote back to the United States about other formerly enslaved immigrants who “walk around Atlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities · 25

from morning till evening with out doing one Stroke of work.”66 On October 19, 1842, Washington McDonogh—the brother of G. R. Ellis McDonogh, both of whom I mentioned at the beginning of this introduction—similarly wrote from Monrovia to his former master of how “on arriveing here I found all ashore and woundring all over town . . . they are here getting drunking and laying about and doing nothing.”67 These scenes on the streets of Monrovia happen at too small a scale and with too much texture for Wallerstein’s concept of “centrist liberalism” to capture. In chapters 1 and 2, I show how letters like Ceasar’s and McDonogh’s do capture that scale and texture, urging us to consider what kind of un/freedom such everyday practices of life might entail. When the rancho Haas correspondents I mentioned above wrote on April 7, 1850, to demand a life in which “it will not be necessary to buy land, the white, the black or the indian can plant their milpa wherever he wants, and no one will prohibit it,” from the perspective of the hegemony of centrist liberalism they stand in the way of progress (large-scale agriculture) by defending a soon-to-be-outdated way of life (the milpa). As I argue in chapter 4, however, we should see their demand as conditioned by a thorough knowledge of the values and practices of centrist liberalism itself—which can be recognized in vigorous, racialized forms among their Creole antagonists—and as calibrated to recast casta distinctions among whites, Indians, and blacks with an eye to a future that escapes the terms of centrist liberalism. The third sense in which the quotidian globalities of nineteenth-century Liberia and Yucatán are connected on a transverse, then: they reveal the articulation of racial capitalism and centrist liberalism, cut through the limitations of those conceptual frames, and remake freedom amid that articulation. This transverse becomes especially evident in the prelude to part II and again in chapter 4, when my account of the Yucatecan indigenous figure of Chilam Balam—as it appears in Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism as well as a range of nineteenth-century texts from Yucatán—links race and casta. Combined with the first transverse I discussed above, that Liberia and Yucatán are putative failures whose quotidian and speculative successes have been all too easily ignored, as well as the second transverse, that in both cases freedom was unfixed by those to whom a certain fixed freedom was imputed, The Brink of Freedom tracks a lively scene of visionary thought about freedom in an unheralded Atlantic world. Rather than a “concept” or a “policy,” “freedom” emerges from this study as a powerful, nimble, equivocal term coursing through and overflowing beyond the nineteenth-century Atlantic world.

26 · Introduction

Fourth Transverse: Speculation, Overread In the passage from de Certeau I discussed above, he mentions that “the ‘making’ in question [of everyday life practices] is a production, a poiesis—but a hidden one.” As the passage continues, “a hidden one, because it is scattered over areas defined and occupied by systems of ‘production’ (television, urban development, commerce, etc.) and because the steadily increasing expansion of these systems no longer leaves ‘consumers’ any place in which they can indicate what they make or do with the products of these systems.”68 To the extent such poiesis is “hidden” in nineteenth-century Liberia and Yucatán, the hiding is not due to the lack of “any place” for its expression. Indeed, as we will see, the epistolary archives I consider are replete with scenes in which freedom is imaginatively remade. These scenes are hidden, I want to suggest, because of the limits of the methods that historical and literary studies of the Atlantic world typically bring to bear on their archives. Let me make a case, then, for attending to what I call the speculative dimensions of the archives I examine.69 It might seem odd to valorize the speculative in these nineteenth-century conjunctures, since the word speculation in English has taken on a variety of negative connotations. Most colloquially, “speculation” seems to indicate overly abstract, unsystematic, too-whimsical thinking: thinking that is not “concrete” enough, meaning not descriptive or material enough. More rigorously, the account of “speculation” Ian Baucom famously offered in his influential 2005 book Specters of the Atlantic has shaped the negative valuation of “speculation” among nineteenth-century and Atlantic world critics. Baucom powerfully critiques what he calls the “speculative culture” or “speculative discourse” that finance capital made hegemonic in the world-system beginning in the seventeenth century. He writes: The typical and the average, I have been arguing, are the primary categories within which finance capital and the speculative culture apposite to the triumph of such a regime of abstract accumulation express their operation. Finance capital and its culture of speculation finds itself at once secured and articulated by that theory and practice of insurance that exists to reexpress the (after)lives of persons and things not as themselves but as a suppositional, aggregate mode of being in the world.70 His primary example of this “speculative culture” is the 1781 case of the British slave ship Zong, from which over 140 slaves were thrown overboard on the instruction of the ship’s captain so that the ship’s owners could collect insurance Atlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities · 27

on the slaves’ lost lives. The rendering of the enslaved as insurable objects is not only a speculative economic practice for Baucom; it is also an ever-intensifying epistemology and ontology. As he writes, intensification assumes less the form of concentrating the operations of finance capital in one or other signature event than that of distributing its modes of speculation, speculative epistemologies, and abstract value forms more fully across the global spectrum, by finding for itself, in the terms I earlier used, ever more points of application along the exchange networks of the globe. Intensification, here, manifests itself as the ever more exhaustive, ever more total, every [sic] more complex, ever more ubiquitous, and (because ever more ubiquitous) ever more unremarkable penetration of the world by the cultural logic of finance capital.71 Yet Baucom also insists that the archive of the Zong case ought not be read only as a particular example of finance capital’s universalization of the logic of “the typical and the average.” The understanding of the archive as a repository of particular instances that the historian can use to generate more general truths itself replicates the logic of “the typical and the average,” and hence the speculative force of finance capital. He thus proffers a kind of double reading of the archive, one that treats it both as the repository of exemplary events, or events that exemplify more general truths, and as the echo of “singular and unverifiable” aspects of such events whose meaning can never be fully accounted for, insured, typified, or averaged.72 In effect, he posits an excess that cannot be speculated upon, a kind of living potentiality that can lead us out of the cruel logic of “the typical and the average,” beyond finance capital’s reach. In his hopeful quest for the “singular and unverifiable” in and among “the typical and the average,” Baucom casts into doubt one of the central presuppositions of Georg Lukács’s influential theory of reification: that capitalism is inexorably driven to turn all the living particularities that animate relations among people into the undifferentiated and universalized form of relations among general and abstract things. Baucom here implicitly echoes not only Cedric Robinson’s claim that “the tendency of European civilization through capitalism was thus not to homogenize but to differentiate,” which I invoked above, but also a point that Gillian Rose made in The Melancholy Science. Rose reminded us that Marx almost never used the word Verdinglichung, or “reification,” on which Lukács puts so much pressure, and certainly not in his account of the valueform in the first chapter of the first volume of Capital. There, Marx does not say that relations among people become relations among homogenized things, but rather that relations among people take the phantasmagoric form of relations 28 · Introduction

among things: “The commodity-form, and the value-relation of the products of labour within which it appears, have absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the commodity and the material [dinglich] relations arising out of this. It is nothing but the definite social relation between men themselves which assumes here, for them, the phantasmagoric form [phantasmagorische form] of a relation between things.”73 Phantasmagoria—a term that was coined at the turn of the nineteenth century to name an early mobile projector that cast hazy, shadowy images with backlighting technology—is not a figure for what Baucom calls “the typical and the average.” Rather, its specters are animated by so much opaque particularity that they seem monstrous and threatening. Less the conversion of living people into generic and abstract things [die Dinge], the value-form’s aesthetic, if it has one, is phantasmagoric; it does not simply average away all particularity, it rather recasts and revivifies particularity. For Robinson, race is one such particularity: a problematic feature of the capitalist value-form, but also (as we saw Holt suggest above) a potent site from which to antagonize capitalism. If “the cultural logic of finance capital” is thus not so all-abstracting, or “reifying,” then how might we follow the route Baucom marks for us out of “the typical and the average,” toward this potent, “singular and unverifiable” antagonism? I would like to suggest that this route can lead where even Baucom does not go: back to the concept of speculation itself. For speculation has a much more capacious set of meanings than Baucom admits, a set of meanings that should not be reduced to finance capital’s cruel logic of “the typical and the average.” Through the seventeenth century, the word speculation primarily meant both the contemplation or consideration of an existing subject, and the conjectural anticipation of a subject to be. It thus named a recursive mode of thought, one that reflected upon how something has become what it has become, and how that thing could become something else. In fact, perhaps the most influential, “proper” nineteenth-century philosophy of freedom proudly declared itself speculative. G. W. F. Hegel preferred “speculative thinking” (das begreifende Denken or das spekulative Denken) as the name for what we have come to call, often too formulaically, “dialectical thinking”: the comprehension or beholding of the ongoing, recursive, dynamic, open-ended, and strictly unpredictable relationships between unities and distinctions. When Hegel took up “speculation” at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the word had the strongly negative connotation I referred to above: overly abstract, unsystematic, too-whimsical thinking, or—as social theorists, activists, and policy makers still say today—thinking that is not concrete enough, meaning not descriptive or material enough. But Hegel chose Atlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities · 29

the term as a way of challenging what he considered the too-abstract practices of formalist and empiricist thinking. What if discourse we have grown accustomed to reading as quotidian, concrete, descriptive, and material also offers a certain speculative comprehension or beholding of the ongoing, recursive, dynamic, open-ended, and strictly unpredictable relationships between unities and distinctions? How would we read for such discourse? In chapter 2 I will show in detail how the epistolary archives of Liberia prompt a rereading of Hegel’s speculative philosophy. For now, I want to mention that in the Phenomenology of Spirit, when Hegel calls on his readers to leave behind the comforts of formalism or empiricism for speculation, he figures each mode of thinking as a reading of the grammatical sentence. For formalist and empiricist thought, “The Subject is assumed as a fixed point to which, as their support, the predicates are affixed by a movement belonging to the knower of this Subject, and which is not regarded as belonging to the fixed point itself.”74 Here, the sentence unfolds from subject to predicate, such that the subject is a fixed and abstract ground whose meaning is given by the predicate, and the predicate can be replaced by any number of meanings without overly troubling the subject itself. For instance, such thinking can be figured by sentences like this: freedom is national citizenship; or freedom is emancipation from slavery. Freedom is a stable subject here, forever available to be filled by new predicates. By contrast, speculative thinking calls on us to interpret as if we were reading a different kind of sentence, a speculative sentence: “Starting from the Subject as though this were a permanent ground, [the speculative sentence] finds that, since the Predicate is really the Substance, the Subject has passed over into the Predicate, and, by this very fact, has been upheaved.”75 Such a sentence does not so much make claims about what the subject is; rather, it asks us to think of how the subject ongoingly becomes. What if we encountered our archives as if they were structured like this kind of speculative sentence, as if they continually upheaved that which they seemed merely to describe? In The Brink of Freedom, I suggest that Hegel was not the only nineteenthcentury theorist of such speculative thinking, that black settlers in Liberia and Maya rebels in Yucatán too theorized in the speculative mode. I argue that the most apparently concrete historical documents can offer deeply theoretical and profoundly speculative reflections on freedom. Because literary and historical critics of the period too often eschew the speculative mode, the nineteenthcentury texts I examine here seem destined to be read according to protocols that are common in social history and social theory, in which such texts offer the concrete or raw material for historical recovery and theoretical reconstruction. However, such protocols foreclose the possibility of reading these docu30 · Introduction

ments as theoretical treatises in their own right, in the root sense of the word theoretical: the sense of contemplation, as in “beholding a spectacle.”76 Throughout The Brink of Freedom, I hope to show how this reading practice can both supplement and function as a productive agon for more familiar historicisms. I also hope this reading practice might push us toward what Fred Moten calls “knowledge of freedom”: Is knowledge of freedom always knowledge of the experience of freedom, even when that knowledge precedes experience? If it is, something other than a phenomenology is required in order to know it, something other than a science of immediate experience, since this knowledge is highly mediated by deprivation and by mediation itself, and by a vast range of other actions directed toward the eradication of deprivation. Perhaps that knowledge is embedded in action toward that which is at once (and never fully) withdrawn and experienced.77 Here “knowledge of freedom” is not simply a learned trait or an observed characteristic; rather, “knowledge of freedom” is performative. However, that performativity is neither illocutionary nor perlocutionary—it is not a saying that is at once a doing—but rather it is an “action toward” both what has been experienced and what has yet to be experienced, an ongoing improvisation with and across apparently opposed and discontinuous idioms of freedom.78 “Knowledge of freedom” is thus also speculative: it paradoxically precedes its own becoming. Such action is “improvisational,” Moten explains, in this sense: There is an enduring politico-economic and philosophical moment with which the black radical tradition is engaged. That moment is called the Enlightenment. This tradition is concerned with the opening of a new Enlightenment, one made possible by the ongoing improvisation of a given Enlightenment—improvisation being nothing other than the emergence of “deconstruction in its most active or intensive form.” That emergence bears a generativity that shines and sounds through even that purely negational discourse which is prompted by the assumption that nothing good—experientially, culturally, aesthetically—can come from horror. The Afro-diasporic tradition is one that improvises through horror and through the philosophy of horror, and it does so in ways that don’t limit the discursive or cultural traces of the horror to an inevitable descriptive approach toward some either immediately present or heretofore concealed truth. There is also a prescriptive component in this tradition, which is to say in its narrative and its narratives, that transcends the Atlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities · 31

mythic and/or objectifying structures and effects of narrative while, at the same time, always holding on to its impossible descriptive resources. A future politics is given there so powerfully that it’s present as a trace even in certain reactions that, in the very force and determination of reaction, replicate horror’s preconditions. . . . I’m after another recitation of that improvisatory and liberatory trace.79 Central to Moten’s notion of improvisation here is an implicit critique of a certain historicism that I would like to make explicit. If we read our archives as just descriptive documents, we effectively foreclose a key feature of the radicality of what Moten, following Cedric Robinson, calls the black radical tradition: that this tradition does not just record, confirm, lament, reject, or even critique Enlightenment notions of freedom and the horrors to which those notions have been attached; the radicality of the black radical tradition consists also and crucially in its prescriptive relationship to the Enlightenment and its horrors. A very old word in the Romance languages, prescription means “to write beforehand” or “to write on the front,” and it has come to mean an injunction or a rule. Originally, however, prescription meant the extinction of a title or right through disuse as well as, paradoxically, the establishment of title or right through uninterrupted use.80 In this more archaic sense, the term signals not just an injunction, then, but an injunction that potentially negates and crafts anew. To say, as Moten does, that this “prescriptive component” of the black radical tradition is “improvisational” is to emphasize the unexpected, perhaps fleeting, perhaps resonant aspects of that dynamic of negation and recrafting. The Latin adverb improviso marks above all a kind of suddenness, in particular the suddenness of a sound or motion that negates what is provided or foreseen (im-provisus), but negates it by moving through the foreseen and altering it, rather than moving around or away from it entirely. In The Brink of Freedom, then, I am after archived, quotidian globalities in which the knowledge of how to live a free life is improvised. Attention to such improvisation is foreclosed, as Moten suggests, when we take “an inevitable descriptive approach toward some either immediately present or heretofore concealed truth.” For the quotidian globalities to which I will attend are not, in fact, primarily descriptive, but rather are intensely speculative. To read them, we will need not simply a historicist perspective, but rather a method attentive to how speculative modes of thought appear in our historical archives. We will need not only to answer the familiar questions of who-did-what-where-whenand-why, but also to consider how the texts to which we typically turn for such answers reflect upon their own doings.81 32 · Introduction

I have structured The Brink of Freedom with all these concerns in mind. Part I addresses Liberia while part II addresses Yucatán. Each of the two parts begins with a prelude that situates the flashpoint historically and reviews the arguments I offer. In these preludes I include brief passages from each part’s primary archives in order to put in play the critical lexicons that guide my interpretations in the chapters. The second prelude also connects my account of Liberia to my account of Yucatán, elaborating the transversals I discuss in this introduction. Like a prelude to a musical score, then, my preludes are both prefatory and improvisational, introducing motifs that I will rework and elaborate throughout the subsequent chapters. When I presented early versions of this research at various venues, I often encountered a question that is also a kind of charge that must be taken seriously if we are to challenge and supplement historicism with an attention to the speculative dimensions of archives: what if I am overreading the documents I examine? On its face, the charge of overreading typically means that the overreader has attributed a meaning to a text that would have been impossible for the context in which the text was written, or for the people who wrote the text. The charge also suggests that the overreader has an inadequate knowledge of history, that they have improperly assigned contemporary meanings to a noncontemporary text, that their perspective is unduly clouded by contemporary presuppositions.82 But what of the presuppositions of the charge itself ? The charge of overreading presumes a strict separation between historically contextualized reading and ahistorical reading, which in turn presumes that one can adequately determine the context in which a text was written, and linger in that context with the text, in a kind of epistemic intimacy. That is, the charge presumes that one can read as if one more-or-less inhabited the same historical scene as the text one is reading. In this sense, as a kind of time travel, the charge of overreading ought to belong in the genre of science fiction, which is also called speculative fiction. And yet it could never be of that genre, because its very presuppositions and claims are nonspeculative; the reading it claims not to “overdo” offers itself as sensible and moderate, as realist rather than speculative.83 I do not propose here that we cease being historicist. Indeed, I hope the reader will find me to be responsible throughout The Brink of Freedom to the rich and complex histories I consider, as well as to the important research of contemporary historians without which I could not have written this book at all. But I do want to suggest that we also learn to read for the scenes of speculation in our archives. Practicing here what Derrida called paleonomy—taking old-fashioned or debased terms like “overreading” and elaborating their meanAtlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities · 33

ing to such an extent that they come to mean otherwise — I call for overreading archived quotidiana for the scenes of speculation it so often entails, scenes all too often eclipsed by the single-minded pursuit of answers to the questions of “who did what, where, when, and why.”84 Overread, these scenes appear rather as the comprehension or beholding of ongoing, recursive, dynamic, open-ended, and strictly unpredictable relationships between unities and distinctions, relationships within which a seemingly abstract concept like freedom was continually improvised. Let me then offer The Brink of Freedom as a case for, and a practice of, overreading.

34 · Introduction

Part I · liberia

Epistolary Encounters

Prelude Seal: A dove on the wing with an open scroll in its claws. A view of the ocean with a ship under sail. The sun just emerging from the waters. A palm tree, and at its base a plough and spade. Beneath the emblems, the words REPUBLIC OF LIBERIA, and above the emblems, the national motto, THE LOVE OF LIBERTY BROUGHT US HERE. — Description of the national seal of Liberia

At Liberia’s 1847 constitutional convention, one of the last orders of business was the adoption of a national seal, and so the assembled representatives agreed on the guidelines quoted above in the epigraph.1 While this description seems straightforward, the image meant to set the seal on the new nation-state’s identity actually condenses a range of antagonisms and equivocations that threaten to break the seal itself. The motto is apparently spoken from the perspective of Liberia’s African American settlers, more than half of whom were slaves emancipated on the condition of their deportation from the United States to West Africa — the “us” who have been “brought” to Africa by “the love of liberty.” Consequently, the motto is not uttered by native West Africans, whose land

Figure prelude 1.1. National Seal of Liberia, from Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston, Liberia, vol. 1, London: Hutchinson, 1906, 218.

the settlers and their white American sponsors appropriated and whose access to the franchise in Liberia was subject to these colonial conditions: “He or she shall have remained in the Colony at least three years immediately preceding the election at which the privilege is claimed, and shall have during that continuous period exhibited a uniform course of civilized life” and abandoned “all the forms, customs, and superstitions of heathenism,” as testified to by “three creditable and disinterested persons (who shall have had an opportunity of noticing the conduct and life of the party or parties).”2 Over a century and a half of subsequent struggles between the black settler-colonists and their descendants— who would eventually be known as Americo-Liberians—and native West Africans was foreshadowed by such conditions. The constitutional convention’s sketch of the seal’s “emblems,” or visual elements, also features Liberia’s colonial foundations. The call for “a ship under sail” is typically rendered as a full-rigger with three square-rigged masts, depicting the arrival of black settlers from the United States (figure prelude I.1).3 The “plow and spade” at the base of “a palm tree” combine the agricultural aspirations of Liberia’s founders with their expectation that the palm offered a 36 · Part I Prelude

readily exploitable resource. Most depictions of the plow show a walking model complete with a cast-iron or steel moldboard and a gauge wheel, innovations made in the 1830s and 1840s by such American entrepreneurs as Cyrus McCormick and John Deere.4 The seal’s plow thus figures the agricultural skills settler-colonists brought with them from the fields and farms of North America, and then struggled to adapt to the region’s unfamiliar climate and soil. The “dove on the wing with an open scroll in its claws” adapts an ancient theological image famously cited in Genesis 8:6–13, where Noah sends a dove from the ark “to see if the waters were abated” and sees it return with “an olive leaf,” as well as in Mark 1:6–13 and Luke 21–22, where the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus “like a dove” during his baptism by John.5 By replacing the olive leaf with “an open scroll,” the seal foregrounds Liberia’s nineteenth-century missionary efforts, combining biblical scenes of salvation and rebirth with an Enlightenment figure for literacy and the legal polity. The “sun just emerging from the waters” gives rebirth itself a naturalist accent. Indeed, the typical rendering of the seal’s docile landscape—a bay and a shore, emptied of its inhabitants—exemplifies nineteenth-century colonial naturalism, in which settlers are seemingly invited to occupy virgin land.6 The very name Liberia—from the Latin liber, meaning free, itself the root of the word liberty—was selected by the colony’s white governors, who worked for the American Colonization Society (acs), the private benevolent organization that founded the colony and arranged most of the emancipations and deportations of the settlers. The acs’s colonization scheme had roots in the late eighteenth century. In the United States, colonizationists such as Thomas Jefferson, John Thornton, St. George Tucker, Ferdinando Fairfax, and Samuel Hopkins proposed emancipation and deportation of black people to a variety of locations (including west of white settlement in North America, South and Central America, Haiti, and Africa) as a way to reduce slavery, eliminate what they considered the unacceptable presence of blacks in a white nation, and spread capitalism and Christianity to lands they understood as heathen. The acs’s specifically private, corporate colonial structure had precedent in the European joint-stock companies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one of the most powerful of which—the British East India Company—effectively ruled India from 1757 until 1858, overlapping with the acs period in Liberia. The acs’s primarily philanthropic mission, however, links it even more closely with the St. George Bay Company, which established British colonialism in West Africa in 1790 and was succeeded in 1792 by the Sierra Leone Company. Both of these British corporations grew out of the London-based Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, a philanthropy founded in 1786 initially to aid Liberia: Epistolary Encounters · 37

indigent so-called Lascars, or Indian subcontinental sailors, and later African diasporans by transporting them to West Africa; “black,” in this context, flexibly figured a wide range of racialized subjects. The acs was thus part of a global corporate and philanthropic colonial conjuncture that accelerated the expansion and accumulation of racial capitalism during the long nineteenth century.7 The acs was founded in 1816 by American white nationalists who were also abolitionists, with the help both of proslavery forces who wanted a way to deport free blacks and rebellious slaves, and of some free blacks who had given up hope of living a free life in the United States.8 The acs appropriated the first of its land in western Africa from indigenous leaders through fee simple treaties that had very different meanings to the two parties: to the acs representatives, the treaties conferred land as property in exchange for a one-time payment of cash and goods; to the Africans, who did not think of large tracts of land as private property, the treaties simply allowed the Americans to live on the land and to engage in trade. More fee simple treaties would later be signed with the Dei, the Gola, the Condo, the Grebo, and the Kru, while other tracts of land would be appropriated without treaty.9 The acs sent the first black settlers from the United States to West Africa in 1820; by the end of the nineteenth century, some sixteen thousand would colonize Liberia.10 In this context of white nationalist activism, land appropriation, and settler colonialism, then, the meaning of the motto’s “liberty” is not simply—as has often been assumed—the emancipation of African Americans from chattel slavery. Yet the colonial elements of Liberia’s history that are so strikingly embedded in the seal and motto are also punctuated by a certain, persistent equivocation. Most noticeably, while the settlers seem to author the motto and its colonial power, they are also authored by it as the object us, of the verb brought. This equivocal settler agency raises the questions of whose love and what kind of liberty are proper—and, consequently, whose love and what kind of liberty are improper—to Liberia. As if in response to the equivocal freedom of this colonial enterprise, this entanglement of the proper and the improper, the seal has refused standardization over the years, appearing in various forms on stamps, currency, buildings, books, government documents, and web sites (figures prelude I.2, prelude I.3, prelude I.4, and prelude I. 5). Frequently, the motto The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here appears not above the emblem but beneath it, switching places with the words Republic of Liberia. Occasionally, a cape with a lighthouse is depicted in the background, behind the ship. Sometimes, the ship sails toward the north, while at other times it is pointed south. The seal’s studium most strikingly meets its punctum, however, in the figure of the bird and its scroll.11 While the shore and its implements are clearly in the 38 · Part I Prelude

Figure prelude 1.2. Liberian one-dollar bill, 1862.

Figure prelude 1.3. Liberian three-dollar bill, 1880. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, American Colonization Society Papers.

foreground and the ship on the sea is clearly in the background, the perspective flattens when one’s eyes meet the bird, such that one cannot tell whether it is over the sea or over the land, whether it is coming or going. Although some versions of the seal show the bird clutching an unraveled scroll in its claws, as the constitutional convention apparently decreed, others—such as the oftenreproduced sketch by Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston, the British botanist and colonial administrator who spent his life trying to secure British power in Africa—depict the bird holding a sealed letter in its beak (figure prelude I.1).12 Liberia: Epistolary Encounters · 39

Figure prelude 1.4. Detail, Liberian five-dollar bill, 1991.

Figure prelude 1.5. Detail, Liberian three-cent stamps, 1949. Courtesy of the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum.

Not surprisingly, interpretations of the bird and its scroll or letter vary widely. Is the bird delivering the emancipation of the very slaves who would become settlers? Or is it flying away, sending word of Liberia’s independence to the world?13 Ultimately, the Liberian seal’s claims to closure and singularity are broken by its iterability, by the differences generated from its necessary reproduction: “It is its sameness which, by corrupting its identity and its singularity, divides its seal.”14 Liberia’s 1847 constitutional convention marked a turning point in the nationstate’s history. A colony over which no imperial power formally claimed sovereignty became a sovereign polity.15 A select group of that colony’s inhabitants— “Negro” immigrants “twenty-one years of age possessing real estate”—became enfranchised citizen-subjects, and in the process expropriated and disenfranchised the region’s indigenous inhabitants, who would then begin a decadeslong struggle over their own place in the new nation-state.16 For the rest of the nineteenth century, Liberia’s development would be framed by the familiar terms of national citizenship and state formation. The seal’s idealized words and images thus gesture forward to Liberia’s juridically codified future. Yet the antagonisms and equivocations condensed into the seal, “corrupting its identity and its singularity,” also gesture backward, toward the colonial Liberia of 1822–47 and the early national period that was caught in its wake, an underexamined period when the liberty that brought the settlers from the United States and the freedom they came to live in Liberia were as yet unsettled. Part I, “Liberia: Epistolary Encounters,” looks to a Liberian archive from this period that bears the traces of this as-yet-unsettled liberty and its uncanny lexical partner, freedom: the hundreds of letters written by formerly enslaved black settlers to their former masters, principally, but also to their families and friends in the United States. This epistolary archive of colonial and early national Liberia is full of detailed descriptions of quotidian life that may seem either ephemeral or underdeveloped when compared to the moment of national independence and the codification of national citizenship. Yet, as I suggest in the introduction, when we read with an eye to the letters’ theoretical work we can see how those descriptions are often interrupted by speculative reflections on the meaning of freedom. Sometimes in the form of just a word or a phrase, and other times as an extended meditation, such reflections offer an equivocal, epistolary encounter with freedom that evades strictly historicist interpretation. Consequently, to read attentively for this encounter we need a hermeneutic that picks up where the historicism that characterizes early American Studies usually leaves off. In this prelude, I will first consider some instances of the speculative dimension of the epistolary archive of early Liberia and the questions raised by an attention to it, and I will then offer a hermeneutic for those questions. Liberia: Epistolary Encounters · 41

Reading the Epistolary Archive On October 19, 1842, Washington Watts McDonogh wrote from Monrovia to his former master, John McDonogh of New Orleans, that “on arriveing here I found all ashore and woundring all over town . . . they are here getting drunking and laying about and doing nothing So you see that there is no dependance to be placed on them.”17 By judging his fellow settlers’ lack of ambition, Watts McDonogh makes himself seem industrious in the eyes of his former master. But this passage also ought to make us wonder what “woundering all over town” meant or felt like on the streets of Monrovia to those who had so recently been unfree. What kinds of conversations, arguments, hopes, worries, and plans did these settler-colonists articulate while “getting drunking and laying about”? We do not have ready, empirical answers to these questions, but perhaps these are not questions that can best be answered empirically. Watts McDonogh’s letter offers us the chance to reflect on the various ways the formerly enslaved lived what they had been told, and perhaps thought themselves, would be a free life in Liberia. After six more years in Liberia, Watts McDonogh speculated further on such a life in another letter to his former master: I am still in the land of the living and enjoying the rightes of man for although I am in a land of darkness I have nothing to fear. My wants are few and of course easily supplyed. Not like you who are living in a land of milk & honey and yet never satisfied. I have lived in the same land myself and had the pleasure of enjoying all that the heart could wish for or that would make one happy and yet I was not willing to denie myself of the lease thing. But alas, what a change has taken place. Things that seemed to have been of so much value to me in those times are no more to me than idle dreams.18 In a certain sense, this passage’s criticism of “idle dreams” is consistent with the ascetic stance Watts McDonogh took against “woundering,” “getting drunking,” and “laying about” in his 1842 letter. However, here he also speculates more openly about what freedom in Liberia came to mean. Indeed, Watts McDonogh offers a certain critique of the ideal of a free life. He suggests that “the rightes of man” can mean one thing in “a land of milk & honey” and something completely different in “a land of darkness.” Such “rightes” are thus not abstract ideals but material practices of “living” that change as their context changes. In the United States, overconsumption generates dissatisfaction, while in Liberia having “few wants” allows for a different relationship to desire. Watts McDonogh does not elaborate on this different relationship, nor does he discuss 42 · Part I Prelude

the constant conflict between settler-colonials and indigenous peoples, though the colonial figure of “the land of darkness” implicates him in that conflict. He does, however, insist that his values have somehow been transvalued by being in Liberia, and so his letter presents us with the larger question of how formerly enslaved black settler-colonists were transformed—not just materially but also metaphysically—by their time in Liberia: “What a change has taken place.” On September 9, 1844, Abraham Blackford wrote a letter from Monrovia to his former master’s wife, Mary Berkeley Minor Blackford of Fredericksburg, Virginia. In the midst of a description of his journey from Fredericksburg to Richmond to Norfolk and, finally, to Liberia, he echoes some of Watts McDonogh’s reflections: “I has not been up the River as yet, but I has been inform that the land up thir is very good, but I am in hopes when I Goes up that I will make a living which it is my desires, for I believe an industrious person can live here. . . . since some of them [the black settlers he sailed with] has been ashore thy has been stealing but I am in hopes that I shall never be guilty of that thy is some of them sily enough to say they wish themselves Back.”19 Like Watts McDonogh, Abraham Blackford singles out for criticism settler-colonists whom he does not consider “industrious,” and in the process he reveals some of the ways ex-slaves lived their newfound freedom. Blackford seems less judgmental in his account than Watts McDonogh, such that he even tacitly admits to being tempted to steal: “I am in hopes that I shall never be guilty of that.” By raising the question of whom the settler-colonists are stealing from, perhaps he even points to their theft of land and goods from native West Africans. Toward the end of his letter, in and through a description of a quotidian encounter, Blackford discloses that his hopes are informed not only by the ideal of an “industrious” life in Liberia, but also by an intimate encounter with death: “I was a coming home one night from the Methodist church and I heard a crying over the street—and when I come to find out thy has been a woman died very sudden which was supposed to be well about half hour ago, she was not prepared for death I think, and I am studing about it every day.”20 No doubt ex-slaves had extensive experience in the range of meanings death can have, but by noting that this “woman . . . was not prepared for death,” Blackford suggests that those meanings too are different in Liberia, that they call for renewed reflection. This letter thus prompts us to consider what it would mean for the ex-slave to “study” death “every day,” and how such study would inform the free life—be it “industrious” or not—the settlers hoped to live. His very next sentence leaves us where Watts McDonogh left us: with speculative questions, unanswered, about what freedom might entail in early Liberia: “Nothing more at present to say, but remainds your acquaintance.”21 Liberia: Epistolary Encounters · 43

On October 24, 1849, Henrietta Fuller wrote from St. Paul’s River, Liberia, to John McDonogh, the former master she shared with Watts McDonogh. By reflecting on the intimate relationship between life and death (as does Blackford) and by staging her own epistolary return to the United States (as do Watts McDonogh and Blackford), her account elaborates upon the questions Watts McDonogh and Blackford posed about the meaning of Liberian freedom: We have partially surmounted the difficulties & no are perfectly satisfied. We now are in the strictest sense of the word Free. We have A Church in our village where we worship God & a School house where our children are sent daily to recieve instructions. The individual whose deaths I have mentioned died in the triumps of faith & requested us to meet them in heaven. They left abright testimony behind them of being hiers to the Kingdom above. You will please remember us to all our acquaintances & especially to our colored friends & say to them that Liberia is the home for our race & as good a country as they can find, Industry & perserverenace is only required to make a man happy & wealthy in this our Adopted country.22 What, exactly, is “the strictest sense of the word Free”? By way of a partial answer, Fuller suggests that such freedom is at once full and delimited. Her celebration of black settler-colonial “Industry & perserverenace” in Liberia and her claim “that Liberia is the home for our race” are undercut by her qualification of that “home” as an “Adopted country” that is merely “as good a country as they can find.” We learn that such freedom consists in having “A Church” and “a School” in this adequate, adopted home. But it also entails a quotidian character of death, of dying “in the triumps of faith.” That manner of dying involves the desire both for a future kinship in “the Kingdom above” and for a lingering legacy among the living: they “requested us to meet them in heaven,” “They left abright testimony behind.” Notably, such a freedom seems to require an ongoing encounter with enslaved kin that is necessarily mediated through former masters: “You will please remember us to all our acquaintances & especially to our colored friends.” To be “in” the strictest sense of freedom is also, then, to be strictly entrapped or enclosed. Above all, however, the “word Free” is here ongoingly improvised in the wake of racial slavery, in the face of life and death, between the United States and Liberia. Taken together, these letters leave us to linger with a host of unanswered questions, as if the answers to those questions about the meaning of freedom in early Liberia were enclosed in the unopened letter held in the beak of the dove in Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston’s depiction of the national seal (figure prelude I.1), as if any answers we might provide would be as equivocal and uncertain 44 · Part I Prelude

as the perspective on the dove’s flight. How might we approach questions like these in the epistolary archive of early Liberia? Claude A. Clegg’s The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Liberia takes a historicist approach to nineteenth-century Liberia, in the tradition of social history, and thus offers one prevalent approach.23 In particular, Clegg draws often on the black settlers’ letters to generate a richly detailed account of the social origins, hopes, fears, and fates of the over two thousand black North Carolinians who went to Liberia between 1825 and 1893. The Price of Liberty is especially astute in how it balances the settlers’ struggles to leave chattel slavery behind with their complicity in a colonial enterprise whose legacy extends into Liberia’s late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century civil wars. Clegg focuses primarily on the vast amount of descriptive detail the letters offer about quotidian life. At times, however, he makes larger claims about the meaning of freedom in Liberia, claims I would like to consider more closely and critically. As he summarizes his project in the introduction: “This book posits that African American immigration to Liberia—and the fluid, ever-changing identities of the emigrants themselves—must be understood as being enmeshed in the constantly evolving meanings of slavery, freedom, colonialism, race, citizenship, and migratory patterns that characterized the development of nineteenthcentury Atlantic cultures.”24 For Clegg, these “identities” ultimately enmeshed with “constantly evolving meanings” to create liberal Liberian subjects who were active, willful agents of their own history—not subjects who were always in the right, politically or ethically, or even subjects who fully assumed their liberal agency, but subjects who nonetheless set out down the road toward individual autonomy and formal enfranchisement. This argument is particularly clear in the following passage: Liberia continued to mean different things to different people. Those who had come from America looking for liberty sometimes found a semblance of what they sought, but very few discovered absolute freedoms untempered by hardships and sacrifice. . . . Particularly for ex-slaves, freedom meant legalized personhood, civil rights, and a documented existence.In essence, it was the unfettered ability to create one’s own familial, communal, and civic relations in a land beyond the overbearing control of white people.25 As Clegg adds a few pages later, “Liberia, in all its cultural hybridity, . . . was freedom in all its idiosyncratic, contradictory, and selfish manifestations. It was an idea that each individual immigrant endowed with personalized meanings.”26 In these passages, freedom and liberty appear as universal capacities contained Liberia: Epistolary Encounters · 45

within the individual and realized formally as “legalized personhood, civil rights, and a documented existence.” That is, freedom stems from the individual’s will and desire and ends in—or at least aims for—the formal features of citizenship. This argument at once enables certain ways of thinking about the meaning of freedom in colonial Liberia and forecloses others. Consider again Clegg’s central claim: “Freedom . . . was an idea that each individual immigrant endowed with personalized meanings.” What kind of subject is it who confronts freedom and makes it his or her own, and how does this endowment happen? It would seem that “the individual immigrant” does this by endowing freedom with a personalized meaning that nonetheless shares a set of formal features: “legalized personhood, civil rights, and a documented existence.” But how does the individual endow freedom with personal meaning without having a certain freedom in the first place—namely, the freedom to endow? And what, then, is this freedom to endow that is prior to freedom, that acts on and even claims freedom? It seems that freedom here is at once a cause and an effect: the “individual” must have it in order to personalize it, to make it his or her own. But how is the freedom the individual has before personalizing freedom different from the freedom the individual personalizes? What is it, exactly, that these various expressions of freedom—pre- and postpersonalization, individualparticular and formal-universal—share such that they can be called by the same name, “freedom”? And what is the relationship between the particular freedom that is “one’s own” and the universal, formal freedoms of citizenship? Clegg’s text cannot answer these questions precisely because it presupposes an individual subject who desires to become the willful agent of his or her actions, and who in turn wills himself or herself to acquire the formal freedoms of citizenship. These presuppositions allow us to see in colonial Liberia the preconditions for, and tendencies toward, a liberal democratic nation-state of citizen-subjects. But what if freedom in colonial Liberia had other potentials, even potentials that were never formally realized or institutionalized? Christopher Hager’s Word by Word: Emancipation and the Act of Writing sees in the unheralded, quotidian writing of nineteenth-century African Americans a less institutionalized, more personal effort to write freedom than Clegg does. His attention to everyday manuscripts like letters and diaries and his focus on the textual traces of orality’s intimate relationship to the written word allow him to set his sights on an “emancipation” that does not tend inexorably toward national citizenship. Still, the “freedom” Hager finds in the pores of the manuscripts he considers resides in, or aims at the consolidation of, a willful, possessive individual: “the act of writing could spark new conceptions of one’s self and 46 · Part I Prelude

one’s freedom.” Yet we are also allowed a hint of other potentials: “Numerous times in the pages that follow, we will observe writers mingling words they said and heard, ones they thought and read. And in their capacity to record interior experience, if only as one track among several, written texts do offer something irreplaceable.” Perhaps such writing does track the recording of “interior experience” as a means or manner of making one’s self and one’s freedom. But what of the “several” other tracks Hager references? How might we read for these other “tracks” or “capacities,” and what would such a reading tell us about freedom?27 As Saba Mahmood has argued in another context, historical thinking in the West often presumes a form of agency that unequivocally celebrates “the capacity to realize one’s own interests against the weight of custom, tradition, transcendental will, or other obstacles (whether individual or collective).”28 Yet when we face social movements that do not fit comfortably into this presumption, she argues, we must begin to ask questions that do not presume this form of agency: “If the ability to effect change in the world and in oneself is historically and culturally specific (both in terms of what constitutes ‘change’ and the means by which it is effected), then the meaning and sense of agency cannot be fixed in advance, but must emerge though an analysis of the particular concepts that enable specific modes of being, responsibility, and effectivity.”29 Saidiya Hartman has proffered a kindred shift in our understanding of agency in Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route. Urging an attention to the “slipperiness and elusiveness of slavery’s archive,” Hartman writes of her “journey”: If I had hoped to skirt the sense of being a stranger in the world by coming to Ghana, then disappointment awaited me. And I had suspected as much before I arrived. Being a stranger concerns not only matters of familiarity, belonging, and exclusion but as well involves a particular relation to the past. If the past is another country, then I am its citizen. I am the relic of an experience most preferred not to remember, as if the sheer will to forget could settle or decide the matter of history. I am a reminder that twelve million crossed the Atlantic Ocean and the past is not yet over. I am the progeny of the captives. I am the vestige of the dead. And history is how the secular world attends to the dead.30 For Hartman, the past never ends, and slavery does not simply give way to the formal freedoms of the national citizen. Rather, the past lives with us, even awaits us, and our continuing encounters with it constitute another kind of unpredictable, uncodified, ongoing “citizenship.” Such citizenship is not controlled by “sheer will”; indeed, it makes Hartman “the relic of an experience,” as Liberia: Epistolary Encounters · 47

if she were part, rather than the master, of a living archive. She thus urges us to ask, “What was the afterlife of slavery and when might it be eradicated? What was the future of the ex-slave?”31 In the epistolary archive of colonial and early national Liberia—as we saw in the letters of Watts McDonogh, Blackford, and Fuller—we repeatedly encounter efforts to reflect on “the sense of agency,” the “afterlife of slavery,” “the future of the ex-slave,” and the very meaning of freedom, efforts that unsettle the presumptive power of “sheer will.” These efforts emerge from the letters’ speculative or theoretical moments, in the root sense of the word theoretical, the sense of contemplation or speculation, as in “beholding a spectacle.” In the midst of the descriptive discourse that fills the letters—accounts of the colony’s progress, of the goods the settlers need, of the conflicts between the settlers and the West Africans, or of the internecine disputes among settler factions and between the settlers and the acs government—authors will suddenly contemplate the meaning of freedom in Liberia, effectively beholding the spectacle of which they are a part. These reflections can be fleeting or sustained, decisive or allegorical, curiously oblique or strikingly direct, but they always sound a kind of interrogative backbeat to the descriptive discourse against which they are set and by which they are often engulfed. When the critic focuses exclusively on the archive’s descriptive discourse, as does Clegg, he or she enriches our empirical understanding of Liberia, but consequently obscures the archive’s speculative moments and leaves familiar presuppositions about the meaning of freedom unquestioned.32 To read for the letters’ theoretical or speculative moments, rather than just their descriptive contents, we first need to acknowledge—as I mentioned in the introduction—that the letters are highly mediated and elaborately performed. Specifically, while the vast majority of the settler-colonists’ letters are addressed to former masters, we cannot assume that these were their only addressees. Nineteenth-century letters were public texts rather than glimpses into individuated, private selves. Especially in households, in tight-knit communities, and on plantations with the free and the enslaved living side by side, letters to and from former slaves would likely have been read aloud to multiple listeners and passed around to multiple readers.33 As John Aiken wrote to his former master John McDonogh on August 7, 1846: “Oh Sir, your kind letter to me of January the 2d is received and I read it with tears of joy, to think that you write to one so low as me and call me your Dear Son. I read it to all your people here and it made us all to rejoice and tears to flow.”34 As we will see throughout part I, but particularly in the letters of Nancy Ann Smith in chapter 2, some letters explicitly direct their addressee to share particular sentences or senti48 · Part I Prelude

ments with additional addressees. For instance, writing on June 26, 1856, to his former master, Randall Kilby first chronicles the lives and deaths of those with whom he immigrated, and then concludes by insisting that his master deliver an admonition and a demand in his name: “I hope that all are well Excepting Elijah Hampton for the Five Lick he gave me and tell him to send me my half dollar He owes me for my Hound. I hope that Julius Gordon & family are well.”35 Kilby sends hopes to friends and makes claims upon antagonists through his former master, effectively transforming that legacy of mastery into both a vehicle of transatlantic kinship and a mechanism for reparation. What is more, many letters from Liberia were ultimately published in American newspapers, particularly the African Repository and Colonial Journal, the official organ of the acs (though this journal systematically excised most criticism of colonization, as well as most discussions of colonial discord and hardship). Black settlers in Liberia must have known of this practice, since the African Repository was available in Monrovia, so some may have written their letters with an eye toward an even larger reading public.36 We should also remember that the very conditions of archivization have undoubtedly allowed letters written to former masters to be overrepresented in the historical record. Slave masters were businesspeople who kept records that often ended up in governmental and academic institutions. Many of the settlers’ letters were sent to their masters in care of the acs, whose own records were deposited in the Library of Congress in 1913 and again, when the acs disbanded, in 1965.37 By contrast, black addressees would have been much less likely to have their letters preserved or publicly archived. The letters we read today, and their reflections on freedom, slavery, and Liberian life, are consequently haunted by an untold number of lost letters or “hidden transcripts” sent from Liberians to black Americans who had no secure access to the historical archive.38 Furthermore, the question of the authorship of even the extant, archived letters is just as complex as that of its audience. Manuscript sources reveal that some letters from different settlers were written in the same hand, suggesting that there were amanuenses in Liberia who mediated the letters—a fact confirmed explicitly in numerous letters, when amanuenses make their presence known.39 Thus while a crucial aspect of these letters is the encounter between masters and former slaves, this encounter is neither merely descriptive nor strictly dialogical or schematically dialectical. Above all, even when authorship is established, meaning remains intricate. As Hager has written, “[t]he layers of provenance and meaning” in everyday texts like letters “are precisely what require the kind of attention works of literature typically receive,” since such texts display “a convergence of voices, a Liberia: Epistolary Encounters · 49

mixture of conformity and originality, a balance of structure and play . . . both a submission to norms and the assertion of new meanings.”40 More specifically the letters from Liberia are difficult to read because they speculate on what Mahmood calls “the sense of agency” and what Hartman calls “sheer will,” “the afterlife of slavery,” and “the future of the ex-slave.” To read the speculative or theoretical dimension of the epistolary archive of colonial Liberia in this light, then, one must read beyond the descriptive elements for how the letters suddenly rework familiar conceptions of freedom, negating the expected in favor of an unsettled future. This potential may never take institutional form—as we have already seen, it may instead take the form of unanswered questions—but it nonetheless calls to be read as a critical beholding of the familiar spectacle of nation-state and citizen-subject formation as well as a site for the renewal of our very own discourses and practices of freedom to the extent that they are saturated by that familiar spectacle. Colonial Liberia in general, and the period’s epistolary archive in particular, calls to be read in this light precisely because the letters’ speculative moments were subsequently eclipsed by national-state independence and citizen-subject agency. In chapter 1, I show how such a reading practice exposes the limits of two pervasive interpretations of black settler-colonists in Liberia: a return-to-Africa interpretation, in which those settler-colonists are represented as freedomseeking ex-slaves returning to their ancestral homeland; and an anti-imperial interpretation, in which the settler-colonists and their white sponsors are represented as unjustly imposing their will upon innocent West African natives. First, I argue that two of the earliest Afro-diasporans to reflect on African colonization, Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano, themselves nuance these two interpretations and prompt us to reconsider Liberian settler-colonial discourse on “return” and “the natives.” I then pursue just such a reconsideration by examining the epistolary archive from the colonial and early national periods, tracing a nuanced body of thought about the relationships between the United States and Liberia as well as between American settlers and native West Africans. From this body of thought we learn how some settlers came to know an unsettled life, one that could not be settled by the formal freedoms of national citizenship, one whose freedom remained recursively concerned with servitude, one that risked—even if fleetingly and unintentionally—being estranged and undone. In chapter 2, I consider at length two intricate, epistolary encounters between Liberian settler-colonists and their contacts in the United States— Samson Ceasar’s letters to Henry F. Westfall and Nancy Ann Smith’s letters to her former master John McDonogh—in the hope of doing some justice to mo50 · Part I Prelude

ments in which black settler-colonists reflect critically on the fraught equivocations of the freedom that Liberia was meant to institutionalize. By reading the letters of Ceasar and Smith not simply as “concrete,” or empirical, accounts of life in mid-nineteenth-century Liberia, but rather as theoretical reflections on the ongoing, volatile concrescence of a free life, I suggest that Liberia’s epistolary archive interrupts and reworks the nineteenth century’s most influential speculative reflection on mastery, servitude, and freedom, that of G. W. F. Hegel. Ultimately, I hope to proffer a reading practice that supplements positivist historicism by allowing us to read apparently descriptive texts as rich, theoretical reflections on the meaning of a freedom lived in the wake of slavery and in the midst of colonialism. In a sense, then, “Liberia: Epistolary Encounters” lingers with the figure of the unopened letter fixed in the dove’s beak in Johnston’s depiction of Liberia’s national seal (figure prelude I.1), as well as the uncertain perspective on the dove’s flight, because these “emblems” figure the underread archive to which I turn as well as the equivocal freedom one can find there, if one attends to the archive’s speculative dimensions.

Liberia: Epistolary Encounters · 51

Chapter 1

“It All Most Cost Us Death Seeking Life” Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities

This is an auspicious day for Liberia, and for West Africa . . . Perhaps this very day, one century ago, some of our forefathers were being dragged to the hold of some miserable slaver, to enter upon those horrible sufferings of the “middle passage,” preliminary to their introduction into scenes and associations of deeper woe. Today, their descendants having escaped the fiery ordeal of oppression and slavery, and having returned to their ancestral home, are laying the foundation of intellectual empire, upon the very soil whence their fathers were torn, in their ignorance and degradation. Strange and mysterious providence! —Edward Wilmont Blyden, “Address at the Inauguration of Liberia College,” 1862

Edward Wilmont Blyden spoke these words in Monrovia to inaugurate Liberia College on January 23, 1862.1 Blyden was born free in St. Thomas in 1832, and emigrated to Liberia in the 1850s, where he quickly became a leading member of the recently independent country’s elite and subsequently became one of the most iconic settler-colonial representatives of early Liberia. In Blyden’s “scenes” of the enslaved introduced to “horrible sufferings” as if they were performed for the stage or composed on a canvas, we can likely recognize the aesthetics of the abolitionist movement. If an “inauguration” is “the formal introduction of something into public use,” as the Oxford English Dictionary suggests, then the “auspiciousness” of this day’s formal introduction of “intellectual empire” into public use lies in the symmetry framing the middle passage. On one side of the “miserable slaver,” Blyden offers the “ignorance and degradation” of Africans before slavery; on the other side, he offers the “deeper woe” of Afrodiasporans under slavery. As important to Blyden’s inauguration, however, is the discourse of return by which these symmetrical “scenes of subjection,” to borrow

Saidiya Hartman’s term, are recast and repaired. With the figure of return, Blyden transforms a static symmetry of subjection into a meliorist trajectory of freedom, in which the “descendants” of Africa “escape” slavery, reunite with a lost fatherland, and establish an imperial future. In this, Blyden also performs what I have elsewhere called—drawing on David Walker’s critique of the colonization movement in his 1829 Appeal—a “colonizing trick,” or the articulation of racial and national codification with formal equality in the figure of the imperial citizen.2 This imperial citizenship further founds, and is founded upon, a patriarchal kinship of “forefathers” and “fathers,” which supplants the presumably impoverished, extended kinships that thrived under slavery. Liberia College is here called upon to inaugurate an “intellectual empire” of Liberian citizenship with the black settler colonization of West Africa, displacing West Africans who are presumably still “ignorant” and “degraded” with Afrodiasporans who have been emancipated from slavery’s sufferings. “Return” is offered as the meliorist form of “intellectual empire”; it presents a counteraesthetic to Blyden’s scenes of subjection. Blyden’s “colonizing trick” did not, however, settle Liberia, which throughout the nineteenth century remained an unsettled state on many levels. As I mentioned in the prelude, between 1821 and 1847 it was a colony over which no state formally exercised sovereignty, having been founded and ruled by the private philanthropic organization the American Colonization Society (acs). In 1847, Liberian independence was declared by black American settler-colonists, many of whom had been freed from slavery so that the acs could deport and settle them on lands appropriated by coercive “fee simple” treaties with, or expropriated at gunpoint from, West Africans. The newly independent black settler-colonists, in turn, promptly disenfranchised those very West Africans. During its colonial years of forced settlement and conquest, then, Liberia was never formally settled by or as a state; in turn, after its independence Liberia disenfranchised its native inhabitants, generating antagonistic ethnic and class distinctions that have echoed throughout the country’s twentieth- and twentyfirst-century civil conflicts. However, those black settlers who came to live in colonial Liberia also lived unsettled states of being or life that cannot be reduced to the formal, political, and governmental history I just sketched and upon which they reflected in letters written to their former masters, families, and friends in the United States. These unsettled lives can be heard in a set of letters written by H. B. Stewart, a carpenter and Presbyterian minister freed and deported to Liberia at the age of forty-two. Stewart’s letters amplify the unsettling backbeat this epistolary archive sounds in and through even his Blydenesque representations of Africa 54 · Chapter 1

as an ancestral homeland, questioning the meaning of freedom in the afterlife of slavery rather than inaugurating “intellectual empire.” Stewart, his freeborn wife, and their eight children left Savannah on May 14, 1849, on the ship Huma and arrived in Greenville, Liberia—located about 150 miles southeast of Monrovia—on June 27, 1849. On the one hand, his twentytwo extant letters exhibit an unbridled enthusiasm for African colonization. Writing to acs treasurer Rev. William McLain on October 20, 1849, he declares: “I am truly thankful to god in inabeling me with my large family in coming to this Land of Liberty whear I can in Joy Equel Rights and Woshop my god without fear. the Laws Ear good and Ear farly adminesterd without parshality I has not seen Eny Riotus person Sines I have Ben in the plac infact I have seen Beter order hear sins I have Ben hear than at home the peope Sems to Be more frade of the Laws hear than at home.”3 Although in the next paragraph he admits to “a very great dissatisfaction here” due to the shortage of food and the prevalence of “the Acclamating fevers,” he still manages over the next few years to express enthusiasm, even casting it in the very “return to Africa” terms Blyden would use to inaugurate Liberia College. In a September 26, 1851, letter to Rev. McLain, Stewart writes: “The times take Courage and are Looking with Anxious Desire to the Day when the Long Despurse sons of ham will Return to the Land of there Four Fathers.”4 Indeed, as late as 1857 Stewart again draws on the figure of the Sons of Ham to ground his support for Liberia’s mission: “It is Scarcely needed for me to Say to you,” he writes to acs official Ralph R. Gurley on August 8, “how it made our hearts gladen with the Prospects of in no Distant Day, our feble hand will be again Strong then with more of the Sable Sons of ham. May they Be helpers in the Greate Work in the Civillisation of Down troden Africa.” 5 On the other hand, Stewart’s letters unsettle this enthusiasm. On December 19, 1856, he wrote to McLain about a settler who left his family in Liberia for the United States: “information of a Reliable Source have Reached us that Henry M. Mitchell, or Clarke as he Sometimes calls himself, who Left the Rpublic of Liberia Some 18 month Ago or more, has Abandoned the Idea of Returning Leaving his Lawful wife and Poor mother, upwards of 80 years of Eage upon the Charities of the Public if so, it’s horribly in the Extreme I hope it is not so.”6 On the same day Stewart wrote nearly identical lines to Gurley, adding that Mitchell “left here with the idea of Purchasing some of his Children in Georgia.”7 Five months later, he offered McLain an update on “the foul act of mitchell” who “ought to of been in Some Public Gazette that his villinay might be made known”: “Since writing to you Last, his mother Died. I had her Buried decently, his wife Speakes of Returning to the States.”8 Stewart here reveals that ongoing, transatlantic kinships could figure “life” as much or more than Blyden’s claims Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities · 55

of geographic ancestry and imperial mission. In fact, in 1857 even Stewart calls Liberia “a foreign Land” to Gurley, and in 1858 he writes of the United States as “home.”9 Finally, in the last of his extant letters—written on August 17, 1868, to acs secretary William Coppinger—Stewart himself contemplates a different “Return” than the one he enthusiastically trumpeted in 1851, foregrounding the exhaustion of grand paternal quests and the appeal of a more plural and diffuse sense of kinship: your Suggestion of my making a visit to the united States of america Strikes me faveable, for Several Reasons, first, I wants Rest. I have been preaching Every Sabbath for the last Eight years. Seconly, I have a Brother and three Sisters in Liberty County, Ga., with Some twelve or fifteen Children. Could or would the Society give me a free passage over in their Ship, and also my Wife . . . I will have friends when I arrive. If these Ends Could be met, I would be Ready to Leave on the Return Ship.10 Blyden’s 1862 embrace of Africa as a fatherland—apparently shared by Stewart himself in the early 1850s—loses its grip here. The proposed “Return” is unlocatable on Blyden’s map of “intellectual empire”; it does not form a symmetry of subjection, nor does it count down to freedom’s punctual arrival. Stewart’s epistolary speculations end not so much with “Ends” meeting as with the expectation of a freedom yet to come, as well as the unsettling suggestion that such freedom might come from the past as much as from the future, from slavery as much as from citizenship, from transatlantic kinships as much as from the return to a putative fatherland. From this perspective, consider an account Stewart gives in the September 26, 1851, letter to McLain I mentioned above—just a few sentences after writing about the moment “when the Long Despurse sons of ham will Return to the Land of there Four Fathers”—of a debate he witnessed in Greenville: I was much pleas in Lisening a few Eavning ago to a very anamating discussion in the Corse of a Lecture Between the Rev. James M. Priest & Dr. James Brown on the word Emulation, introduced By the former, that the word Emulation may be Applied in a Bad Sence or a Bad [good?] Sence. The Later Gentlemen (Dr. Brown) Disagreed that a good Emulation & a Bad Emulation that they Are not strcly Belonging to the same family, A contridiction in tearms &c. Sir, it was amusing To see how Each tride to sustained their point Jhonson & Webster & som time a Little Latin, and so you will see we are not asleep all ways.11 56 · Chapter 1

The Dr. James Brown of whom Stewart writes immigrated to Liberia in 1836, and eventually became a member of the town council of Monrovia and later of Liberia’s first Senate.12 In turn, the “James M. Priest” to whom Stewart refers could be the same man who later became vice president of Liberia (1864–68) as well as a member of Liberia’s Supreme Court.13 Beyond these details, it is difficult to learn more about the contours of this debate between two settler elites over the meaning and value of the word “emulation.” Nonetheless, Stewart’s 1851 account offers us something like an anti- or, more precisely, an anteinaugural for Blyden’s 1862 inauguration of an “intellectual empire.” While “emulation” can mean “imitation,” it also carries the sense of striving to equal or surpass another, from its Latin root aemulus meaning “competing with.” One wonders whether Liberia’s complex relationship to the United States—which was at once one of differentiation and imitation—informed this debate, and whether Stewart’s interest was especially piqued precisely because of his own equivocal understanding of Liberia and the United States as homelands of different sorts. If so, this “anamating discussion” about “the word Emulation” staged its own sort of return to the United States, as Brown, Priest, Stewart, and the rest of those in attendance reflected on the relationship between the two countries. The passage could even be said to cast into doubt the entire scene of applied knowledge and meliorist emancipation that underwrites African colonization by raising the question of whether one can differentiate between good and bad returns, whether emulation can ever be mastered enough to be properly “applied” to the development of freedom, and whether such mastery is itself a “contridiction in tearms.” In this “very animating discussion . . . on the word Emulation,” which returns to us from the epistolary archive of early Liberia, we can perhaps hear how return’s meliorist presumptions, so crucial to Blyden’s “colonizing trick,” are backbeat by their own undoing. With Stewart, that is, we can be “pleas in Lisening” to how each effort to settle such a question—“in a Bad sence or a [good] sence”—opens upon its own unsettlement. Unfortunately, much contemporary scholarship has foreclosed questions about Liberia’s unsettled lives because it has been organized around two conflicting, but decidedly settled, interpretations of the black settler-colonists: a Blydenesque return-to-Africa interpretation, in which those settler-colonists are represented as freedom-seeking ex-slaves returning to their ancestral homeland; and an anti-imperial interpretation, in which the settler-colonists and their white sponsors are represented as unjustly imposing their will upon innocent West African natives. As opposed as these two interpretations seem, they both emphasize histories of settlement over reflection on Liberia’s unsettled lives by taking for granted the willful autonomy of the settlers and the meaning Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities · 57

of the freedom they sought. In the case of the return-to-Africa interpretation, black American settlers are assumed to have settled their own freedom by leaving chattel slavery in the United States for national citizenship in the putative land of their forebears; in the case of the anti-imperial interpretation, black American colonists and/or their white sponsors are assumed to have settled their own imperial rule by rapaciously wresting land and freedom from West Africans.14 In this chapter, I unsettle Blyden’s “intellectual empire” as well as the stark choice between the return-to-Africa interpretation and the anti-imperial intepretation by attending to speculative dimensions of the epistolary archive of early Liberia. In this archive one rarely finds the settler-colonists simply or straightforwardly imagining Africa as their original homeland, or disdaining native West Africans as savages to be killed or converted, or writing of freedom as something to be calculated, owned, accumulated, authorized by a state, developed from capitalist relations of production, earned by the conversion of non-Christians, appropriated for individuals, or expropriated from others. Or perhaps I should say that one does find all of those tropes for Liberian freedom in the letters, yet those tropes are never simple or straightforward because they are persistently set in apposition to more equivocal and capacious accounts of the effort to live a free life in Liberia with, among, and against native West Africans and in the wake of slavery’s ongoing legacies. Consequently, we should read the letters contrapuntally, attending to the ways those familiar tropes—which seem to lend themselves either to the return-to-Africa interpretation or to the anti-imperialist interpretation—are continually undone. To limn this undoing, I first trace a genealogy of the two predominant interpretations of African colonization to the late eighteenth-century writings of two influential black diasporans: Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano. Their respective involvements with the British colony of Sierra Leone proved foundational for the acs’s colonization of Liberia, and at first glance they seem to fall neatly into—and thus to inaugurate—the anti-imperial interpretation (Wheatley) and the return-to-Africa interpretation (Equiano). By looking closely at Wheatley’s and Equiano’s texts, however, I argue that African colonization was, at its black diasporan foundations, a site of more equivocal thought about how to live a free life in the Atlantic world than either interpretation grants. I then turn to the epistolary archive in order to show how the settlers’ reflections on “return” and “the natives” elaborate this eighteenth-century tradition, generating a speculative body of thought about living unsettled states of being or life. From this archive we learn that living free in Liberia did not just mean returning to a putative African homeland or conquering and converting native West 58 · Chapter 1

Africans—although those meanings do circulate. Alongside those meanings— in and through them, contrapuntally—freedom in Liberia could also mean ongoing, improvised encounters with the legacies of chattel slavery; fragile and volatile interactions between settler and native; a life on the brink of death, as well as a death haunting life itself; and a future sought skeptically and critically. Consequently, instead of simply documenting the settlers’ quest for a settled state of freedom—embodied, for instance, by formal emancipation from slavery, national citizenship, evangelical Christianity, an autonomous will, hard work, violent conquest, or the accumulation of material wealth—this archive shows how intimately many settlers came to know an unsettled life characterized by a temporality more recursive and open-ended than progressive or teleological, and a territoriality for which “home” remained strange and unbounded.

An Ante-Inauguration: Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano On October 30, 1774, the enslaved African American poet Phillis Wheatley critiqued the African colonization movement in a letter to English merchant and philanthropist John Thornton. Thornton had asked her to serve with two black missionaries, Bristol Yamma and John Quamine, in Annamaboe, a slavetrading post in what is now Ghana. Writes Wheatley, You propose my returning to Africa with Bristol Yamma and John Quamine; if either of them upon strict enquiry is such, as I dare give my heart and hand to, I believe they are either of them good enough if not too good for me, or they would not be fit for Missionaries; but why do you hon’d sir, wish those poor men so much trouble as to carry me so long a voyage? Upon my arrival, how like a Barbarian shou’d I look to the Natives; I can promise that my tongue shall be quiet for a strong reason indeed being an utter stranger to the language of Anamaboe. Now to be serious, this undertaking appears too hazardous, and not sufficiently Eligible, to go—and leave my British & American Friends—I am also unacquainted with those Missionaries in Person.15 In this passage, as I have argued in The Colonizing Trick, Wheatley turns the tables on Thornton’s imperial presuppositions about Africans: “how like a Barbarian shou’d I look to the Natives.”16 She then lays claim to Anglo-America—“my British & American friends”—while wryly reminding Thornton that she does not happen to know all black diasporans: “I am also unacquainted with those Missionaries in Person.” Wheatley thus rejects the presumption of racial affiliation that undergirded much eighteenth-century colonizationist thinking, at Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities · 59

once exposing the imperial aspirations of the Sierra Leone project and asserting her role in Britain and America. By apparent contrast, consider the final chapter of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, first published in 1789. Equiano, who like Wheatley was enslaved as a child, describes his extensive involvement during the 1780s in the very colonization ventures that Wheatley abjures in her letter to Thornton, and he seems much more sanguine about the entire effort. Claiming the racial and national affiliation with West Africans that Wheatley questioned, he explains that he agreed to be “sent out as a missionary to Africa” by the British Sierra Leone Company “in hope of doing good, if possible, amongst my countrymen.”17 Equiano then describes his willingness to lobby the British government to support the colonization of Sierra Leone with emancipated slaves: These are designs . . . connected with views of empire and dominion, [and] suited to the benevolence and solid merit of the legislature. It is a pursuit of substantial greatness.—May the time come—at least the speculation to me is pleasing—when the sable people shall gratefully commemorate the auspicious aera of extensive freedom . . . As the inhuman traffic of slavery is now taken into the consideration of the British legislature, I doubt not, if a system of commerce was established in Africa, the demand for manufactures would most rapidly augment, as the native inhabitants would insensibly adopt the British fashions, manners, customs, &c. In proportion to the civilization, so will be the consumption of British manufactures.18 Equiano’s praise for “empire and dominion” over “insensible” natives makes him seem like an imperial agent of capital penetration and Christian conversion who justifies his intervention by representing himself as both British and African. However, upon closer consideration Wheatley and Equiano do not fit so neatly into these interpretations of African colonization: as hopelessly imperial or felicitously developmental. Consider a letter Wheatley wrote to the white colonizationist Samuel Hopkins on May 6, 1774, shortly before her letter to Thornton: I am very sorry to hear, that Philip Quaque has very little or no apparent Success in his mission. Yet, I wish that what you hear respecting him may be only a misrepresentation. Let us not be discouraged, but still hope, that God will bring about his great work, tho’ Philip may not be the instrument in the Divine Hand, to perform this work of wonder, turning 60 · Chapter 1

the African “from darkness to light.” Possibly, if Philip would introduce himself properly to them, (I don’t know the reverse) he might be more Successful, and in setting a good example which is more powerfully winning than Instruction.19 As in her letter to Thornton, Wheatley casts doubt on the African colonizationists’ presumption of racial affiliation between black diasporans and Africans by foregrounding the difficulty the two have communicating and by insisting that better introductions be made. Unlike in her letter to Thornton, however, here Wheatley also holds out the possibility of such communication across the Atlantic divide. This possible communication is asymmetrical, to be sure, but not unidirectional. Quaque is called upon to “introduce himself properly” and “set a good example,” but by distinguishing courteous exemplarity, couched in the conditional with the modal verbs would and might, from the pedantic noun instruction, Wheatley imagines unscripted encounters. In turn, “the African” is silent not because he or she has nothing to say, but rather because Wheatley recognizes that she does not know what “the African” might say (“I don’t know the reverse”), or she does not deign to say whether or how “the African” might have properly introduced himself to Quaque. African colonization here seems less the straightforward imposition of a Euro-American will upon innocent natives, and more an equivocal scene of encounter and communication, a scene whose unfolding is as important as it is fragile and fraught with risk. In turn, if we read the last chapter of Equiano’s narrative more closely, we can raise doubts about his apparently enthusiastic endorsement of colonization. Indeed, he explains that he was wary when he first was asked by the white British governor of Senegambia to become a colonial agent in Sierra Leone: “I at first refused going, and told him how I had been served on a like occasion by some white people the last voyage I went to Jamaica, when I attempted, (if it were the will of God) to be the means of converting the Indian prince . . . He told me not to fear, for he would apply to the Bishop of London to get me ordained. On these terms I consented to the Governor’s proposal to go to Africa.”20 Equiano is referring to his attempt to convert a Miskito Indian prince named George when they were shipmates bound from England through Jamaica to the Miskito coast of Central America; according to Equiano’s Narrative, the prince had originally been taken to England “by some English traders for some selfish ends.”21 This analogy between converting a Miskito prince on the way to Central America and converting Africans in Sierra Leone undercuts the presumptive racial affiliation between black diasporans like himself and native Africans, an affiliation Equiano had seemed to embrace by calling Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities · 61

Africans “my countrymen.” With this analogy, West Africans are more akin to Native Americans as non-Christians than they are to black diasporans as black or African. Equiano’s complex understanding of Indian and African affiliation should not surprise us, for the Miskitos were well known at the time as an Afro-Indian people, though subsequent essentializing of distinctions between indigenous people and African-descended people in the Americas has obscured that history.22 As Equiano continues, his effort to convert “the Indian prince” initially seemed to be succeeding, but then some white sailors on the ship began mocking the spectacle of an African talking about Christianity with an Indian. This eventually caused Prince George to spurn both Christianity and Equiano altogether. Equiano is thus wary of what he calls the “mock Christianity” of his presumptive white patrons, and is finally persuaded to go to Sierra Leone not so much because of his desire to follow his patrons’ plans to convert Africans in Africa, as because of his tactical interest in garnering some institutional recognition for himself in Britain: “He told me not to fear, for he would apply to the Bishop of London to get me ordained.” Equiano’s wariness turned out to be well warranted. In this last chapter of his narrative, he also refers obliquely to the complicated conditions under which he was driven out of the colonization movement. As he tells it, he was falsely and publicly accused of corruption by some well-placed white colonial officials, which forced him to resign his position. Upon closer consideration, however, we learn that Equiano might not have gone to Africa simply to convert natives and spread capitalism, or even to get ordained, and that he might have been accused of something other than corruption. One of the white officials who accused Equiano, Thomas Boulden Thompson, wrote a letter to the British Navy Board on March 21, 1787, claiming that Equiano had been an instigator of sedition: Thompson is appalled at “the conduct of [Equiano] . . . , which has been since he held the situation of Commissary, turbulent and discontented, taking every means to actuate the minds of the Blacks to discord; and I am convinced that unless some means are taken to quell his spirit of sedition, it will be fatal to the peace of the settlement and dangerous to those intrusted with guiding it.”23 If we read Thompson’s account against the grain of his overt intentions, we could say that Equiano was willing to agitate with others in Sierra Leone to challenge white visions of colonization. What that challenge consisted in remains unclear; we are left to wonder exactly what Equiano’s “means to actuate the minds of the Blacks to discord” might have been, and how a less-biased observer than Thompson might have described those “means” and that “discord.” Consider also a series of letters published in the London paper the Public 62 · Chapter 1

Advertiser in April 1787 by an anonymous person clearly aiming to drive Equiano out of Sierra Leone: To sum up all, should the expedition prove unsuccessful, it can only be owing to the over-care of the committee, who, to avoid the most distant idea of compulsion, did not even subject the Blacks to any government, except such as they might chus for themselves. And among such ill-informed people, this delicacy may have fatal consequences . . . [what is more] The assertions made by [Equiano] that the Blacks were to be treated as badly as West-India negroes, and that he was discharged to make room for the appointment of a man who would exercise tyranny to those unfortunate men, shew him to be capable of advancing falsehoods as deeply black as his jetty face.24 Again, if we read this letter against the grain and presume that Equiano did make some “assertions” that bothered colonial authorities, we could suggest that he did more on the ground in West Africa than he admits to in his narrative. His apparent willingness to challenge white rule in West Africa on behalf of black colonists and West Africans, to the point of generating a transatlantic critique of colonial racism that exceeds even his well-known critiques of the slave trade—“The assertions . . . that the Blacks were to be treated as badly as West-India negroes”—seems to have been at least as important to him as setting up trading routes and churches. It is as a result of this expansive critical activism that the full force of this anonymous detractor’s racism is marshaled to run Equiano out of West Africa altogether. On this view, Equiano seems less drawn by presumptive ties to his “countrymen” and more concerned with ongoing, transatlantic injustice. Although Equiano himself does not elaborate upon these details of his West African venture in the last chapter of his narrative, we can still read that chapter as a certain critique of African colonization. One of the literary devices he deploys most often in The Interesting Narrative is that of representing his initial naiveté in the face of white people followed by his subsequent shock at their “ill-usage” of him. Thus, Equiano’s representation of his imperial desire to help spread British culture, religion, and economics at the beginning of the chapter could be read as the critical staging of an initial, naïve trust in white intentions. In turn, his subsequent disillusionment at being defamed for his efforts, toward the end of the chapter, could be read as a performatively cautionary tale to black diasporans who might be tempted to believe white promises about African colonization. For Wheatley and Equiano, then, African colonization is caught in a comRecursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities · 63

plex geography captured neither by a foundationalist assertion of origins (the return-to-Africa perspective) nor by a strict binary between colonizer and colonized (the anti-imperialist perspective). These two black diasporans, writing at the beginning of the African colonization movement, teach us that both interpretations in fact simplify the history they try to capture. Specifically, if we marshal the most foundationalist notion of diaspora and argue that black settler-colonists really were returning to their origins in Africa, we participate in the imperial gesture that Wheatley questions so directly and that Equiano at once advocates and undermines. Furthermore, a foundationalist celebration of “return” erases the real violence done by black settlers and their white sponsors to West Africans. However, if we argue that black diasporans cannot be considered to be returning to Africa because in fact there is no connection between the diaspora and Africa, we ignore the potential lines of communication across the Atlantic divide that Wheatley mentions in her letter to Hopkins and that Equiano seems to have participated in on the ground in Sierra Leone. Additionally, a strict critique of return, which would position black settlers as simple agents of Western interests and West Africans as mere victims of Western imperialism, by itself is also not adequate because it represents the formerly enslaved settlers either as ignorant of what they were doing or as unabashedly rapacious and unreflective plunderers—representations that the epistolary archive of Liberia makes untenable, as we will see. This stark anti-imperialist perspective also participates in the nativist fantasy of West Africans as pure and untouched victims unprepared for their encounter with the capitalist worldsystem brought by imperial diasporan settlers. In fact, we know that by the turn of the nineteenth century West Africans had already been through centuries of volatile contact with the capitalist world-system, and had become savvy, if not always successful, manipulators of that system, including vigorous participants in the slave trade itself.25 This question of how to interpret a diasporan return to Africa was of course a venerable one throughout the twentieth century, extending from W. E. B. Du Bois’s work on Pan-Africanism, through the “Africa interest” period, to St. Clair Drake’s critical account of “Africa interest” in the 1950s, to Adelaide Cromwell and Martin Kilson’s underappreciated reformulation of “return” in their Apropos of Africa, to Carter Woodson and George Shepperson’s elaborations of diaspora, to Stuart Hall’s emphasis on “routes” over “roots,” to Paul Gilroy’s attention to Atlantic hybridities, to name just a few of the most important touchstones.26 One drawback of the flowering of such thought about “return,” however, has been a tendency in even more recent scholarship to represent this twentieth-century intellectual history as infinitely more subtle and complex 64 · Chapter 1

than the supposed back-to-Africa obsessions of the nineteenth century. For instance, in both “The Uses of Diaspora” and The Practice of Diaspora, Brent Hayes Edwards has shown us the richness of George Shepperson’s work on return. But Edwards follows Shepperson in tending to privilege twentieth-century thought at the expense of the putatively more simplistic and foundationalist thought of the nineteenth century.27 In “The Uses of Diaspora,” Edwards writes disapprovingly that “at times the ‘Africa interest’ [discourse] was inflected toward a return to the African continent itself, as in the nineteenth-century colonization and missionary movements, for instance.”28 Edwards’s presumption that “nineteenth-century colonization and missionary movements” were too caught up in a literal understanding of “return,” and that the most problematic of twentieth-century “Africa interest” discourse mimics these movements, appears to be a result of thinking about the nineteenth century in the terms of just a few, well-known, late nineteenth-century black intellectuals (he cites Blyden and Martin Delany). As was evident in Blyden’s address at the beginning of this chapter, after the Liberian state declared independence in 1847 we certainly do see the rise of a discourse of what Edwards calls “a return to the African continent itself ” both in Liberia and in various segments of the African diaspora. However, as I hope to show by way of contrast with Edwards, a rich challenge to both foundationalist celebrations of return as well as blunt dismissals of return can come to us from the early to mid-nineteenth century itself—from the other side, if you will, of the “Africa interest” period of the twentieth century as well as the return-to-Africa period of Delany and Blyden’s later nineteenth century. Wheatley’s and Equiano’s texts actually orient us toward this challenge. Just as the black settler-colonist and missionary Philip Quaque was Wheatley’s figure for the fraught and fragile possibility of linkages across the black Atlantic, so too does he make an appearance in the last chapter of Equiano’s narrative: Quaque is Equiano’s contact in Sierra Leone, the man to whom the white British governor of Senegambia sends Equiano. To the extent that we can read Wheatley’s and Equiano’s texts as converging on a subtle and equivocal attempt to grapple with what a free life under African colonization might have meant to black diasporans and West Africans alike, then the settlers themselves— figured in both Wheatley’s and Equiano’s texts by Philip Quaque—embody that convergence.29 The most extensive textual trace of these settlers in Liberia can be found in the archive of letters they wrote to their former masters, families, and friends in the United States. During Liberia’s colonial and early national periods in particular, these letters offer remarkably fecund if unsystematic accounts of the effort to live a free life through African colonization. Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities · 65

The Epistolary Archive: “Return” When one reads these letters—especially in the context of nineteenth-century U.S. advocates of colonization or of scholarly efforts in the twentieth century to frame Liberia’s history in “back to Africa” terms—one is immediately struck by the relative lack of discourse about a “return to Africa,” indeed by the rarity even of the very word return. When this word is used, it is usually by way of discussing a return to the United States by the many settlers who find themselves or others around them overwhelmed by Liberia’s difficult conditions and stricken by the separation from friends and family left behind in slavery. Even when settlers do represent Liberia as a homeland of sorts, that representation is undone by remembrances of their former lives, and at times by accounts of their own aspirations, or of the aspirations of others, to travel back to the United States. If Liberia is not, according to this archive, an African homeland to which African American settler-colonists imagined themselves simply “returning,” then what are the temporalities and geographies of the free life they sought there? The desire to return to the United States—either literally or in spirit, via salutations, remembrances, and even dreams—regularly punctuates this archive. For instance, shortly after arriving in Monrovia, Samson Ceasar—whom I will discuss at greater length in chapter 2—wrote this at the end of a February 7, 1834, letter to David S. Haselden, a clerk in his former Virginian hometown of Buchannon: “giv my respects to all inquiering friends if god Spares me I want to come to american in a few years.”30 On April 1, 1834, Ceasar closes another letter, also to David S. Haselden, with “I must come to A close I ever will feal bound to thank you for your attention to me in America I expect to return in two or three years if God sparse me.”31 Wesley J. Horland, writing from Bassa Cove to James Moore in Kentucky on January 18, 1846, declares both that “I am hapay to say this is a very good countray, and any man may make a living in this countray if he will,” and that “I expect to come to the U. States before long, if you think it advisabel.”32 In a second letter written one day later to Moore, Horland continues: “if the Lord is willing, I intend to see yore face once more. I do hope you will advise me what to do in this respect. I would like to come thare verry well; but I do not know the law that you have among you as yet. I would be glad if you would wright me all the newse. Write to my pepel for me.”33 Peyton Skipwith, who arrived in Liberia in 1833, writes: “I wonce had a notion of coming home and still have a notion but I want to go up to Sirrilione . . . If not will return back to America and give my respects to your family also to the people let my Mother know that you have received a letter from me. I don’t want you to say any thing to [her] about my being blind but let her know that I will return. 66 · Chapter 1

Dianah send her love to Miss Sally and all of the family and is very desirous of returning back again.”34 Peyton’s daughter Diana Skipwith also imagines such a return: “I should like to come Back thire a gain and the we expect of coming back again gave my love to ant Lizy and to ant Cissiah and to uncle Ned gave my love to awl encureing friends.”35 As Diana explains in another letter to Sally Cocke dated May 7, 1838, this expectation had a deep hold on her unconscious: “I wish that I could See your faice for I cannot take rest of nights Dreaming A bout you Some times I think I am thire and when I awoke I am hear in Liberia & how that dos greave me but I cannot healp my Self I am verry fraid I shal never see your faice a gain.”36 On July 11, 1858, Peter Ross wrote to Ralph R. Gurley, an acs agent, pleading for help in securing funds from the estate of his master, Captain Isaac Ross of Mississippi: “my Dear Sir, i would be glad to Com and see you. if you is willing and Can get money anogh to Com.”37 Ross and his kin in Liberia apparently thought carefully through this desire “to Com,” for he writes to Gurley on July 19: “i beg you all to see to it that we would Get sum of our money for we stan in kneed of it. our object is to buil a ship to sail Cross the atlantic osion there for we beg you all to help us. africa is a Good place. but we want to be much better.”38 By using the verb to come more often even than the verb to return when writing of going back to the United States, letters like these place the emphasis not so much on a turning back to what was before as they do on approaching anew: both a new approach and an approach to something that, while familiar, might have become different. That the verb to come can be used predictively, as a dative infinitive in the sense of an action whose completion lies in the future, further amplifies the sense in which “the U. States” to which many of these settlers imagine coming could be as much an unrealized ideal as a familiar place from their past.39 Additionally, the relationship between the verb to return and its subject is more secure and active than the relationship between the dative infinitive to come and its subject, since to come carries the sense of an action befalling or falling to someone. Diana Skipwith’s phrase we expect of coming back again bears a trace of this ambivalent subject-verb relationship, one that is not quite a passive construction but also one that falls short of a fully active subject performing an action willfully. Consequently, the temporality of the desires expressed by these letters cannot simply be described as a nostalgic preference for the prior familiarity of slavery over the present and future unfamiliarity of freedom. Rather, these settlers continually stage and restage imaginative returns to the United States that swerve between what life in Liberia might become after living in the United States and what life in the United States might come to be in the wake of living Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities · 67

in Liberia. That is, the letters veer between slavery and freedom in a context where neither state of being is as clear-cut as it might seem, and where daily life—in and through the letters’ very sentences—shifts between incomplete experiences of slavery and freedom. Rather than reading these letters as evidence of the back-to-Africa interpretation or the anti-imperialist interpretation of Liberia, and rather than presuming that they understand freedom or slavery as temporal or geographic states to which one authoritatively returns or toward which one decisively turns, we ought to attend to the turns or swerves that coming to be free entails. These letters’ surprising “returns,” then, are less about choosing slavery over freedom, or the United States over Liberia, than they are about seeing familiar “faces” from a new angle, in a new context, after an estranging experience. Such sight befalls these settler-colonists, taking them out of the life they had known and turning them toward the familiar as if it were other. We could thus read these swerves between Liberia and the United States as ongoing expressions of an inchoate and unpredictable effort “to be much better,” as Peter Ross writes. Even among settler-colonists who explicitly embrace Liberia as a homeland in their letters, a certain dissonant backbeat usually sounds through. H. W. Ellis was born enslaved in Virginia, lived in Tennessee and Alabama, and became a Presbyterian minister of such renown that the Synod of Alabama purchased, emancipated, and sent him, with his wife and daughter, to be a missionary in Liberia. Shortly after arriving in Liberia in 1847, Ellis began to correspond with Rev. William McLain, treasurer of the acs, with the initial goal of securing acs funding for a college. “As I cautiously take the liberty of writing, I humbly solicit the condescension of your honor and reverence to accept a communication from a transmarine stranger,” Ellis writes in his first letter to McLain on November 20, 1849.40 Since “stranger” meant both an unknown person and a foreigner, Ellis here effectively declares himself at once personally unknown to McLain and no longer quite American; as a “transmarine stranger,” Ellis also declares himself to be perpetually in motion across the Atlantic, poised between being in Africa and from the United States. This estranged state echoes throughout Ellis’s letters. On the one hand, they overflow with a seemingly heartfelt desire to build Liberia into a multiethnic, ecumenical, democratic republic, as in the letter to Rev. McLain from November 20, 1849: “Here we have excellent neighbours, both Americans and natives,” he continues; “here we have Virginians, Kentuckians, Tennesseeans, &c. we have (natives,) Golahs; Pezzeys, Bassas, Veys and Boatswains (often called Bosons,) choice people. The Methodists have a church here. Tell them (the people who may come) that I love them as my dear countrymen . . . Come and 68 · Chapter 1

be happy!”41 Writing again to McLain on April 15, 1850—as well as to his kin through McLain—Ellis sounds convinced that this “Africa” is his proper home: “I have a word of advice, and, I think, of consolation too, to my colored friends in Alabama. I am a pure and undefiled African, in every honorable sense of the word; I hope to live, labor and die in Africa.”42 On the other hand—directly addressing his “colored friends in Alabama” in a manner we saw in the prelude in Randall Kilby’s letter and will see again in chapter 2 in Nancy Ann Smith’s letters—Ellis also insists that Alabama is a certain homeland too: “I do not think it to be the will of our Heavenly Father that you should leave home and go to any place except Africa. If your superiors say, Go to Liberia, come right along. But, excepting Liberia, go to no place, from Alabama, under Heaven.”43 This split allegiance is also reflected in Ellis’s November 20, 1849, letter to McLain: That portion of our people who are intelligent and good, who love themselves as they should, love Liberia their country; they are worthy and useful citizens, and these are they who love America! Now there is this remarkable fact about it, that those of the above named quality love America from proper motives, and for proper reasons, but would not go back there upon any terms whatever; but you know that we, of course, have some trifling, indolent persons here, as well as every other place, who never were, nor ever will be any important use to themselves or country; these always are murmuring and grumbling, even in America; they grumble here—yea, every place!44 The category of “trifling, indolent persons” seems to emerge here as a way of differentiating two kinds of love for America: those who love Liberia also love America “from proper motives,” while those who “are murmuring and grumbling” about Liberia and, presumably, considering returning to America, love America for all the wrong reasons. Ellis’s effort to police a boundary between good and bad love of country, and his judgmental dismissal of Liberia’s black settler critics, betray his own unease about life in Liberia. Thus, though he describes himself as “a pure and undefiled African,” Ellis’s letters depict a Liberian life that oscillates between Alabama and Africa, a life that murmurs and grumbles with antagonism and impurity. This is not exactly what Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker have called a “revolutionary Atlantic,” for Ellis does not enlist in the kind of self-conscious radicalism they so carefully trace in The Many-Headed Hydra.45 And Ellis certainly does not proffer the kind of “cosmopolitanism” that Kwame Anthony Appiah has called “ethics in a world of strangers.”46 For the diverse unity Ellis at times celebrates in Liberia—“Here Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities · 69

we have excellent neighbours, both Americans and natives . . . Come and be happy!”47 —is neither nationally all-inclusive nor transatlantically extensive, as it excludes those “trifling, indolent persons” in America and in Liberia who “always are murmuring and grumbling,” and it both limits and compartmentalizes its reach: “excepting Liberia, go to no place, from Alabama.” Rather, Ellis names a state of being that remains critically estranged from—even when it seems to pursue—heroic collectivities and global networks. James W. Wilson also reveals murmurings and grumblings about Liberia in the very act of presenting it as the proper land for black freedom. In an August 5, 1858, letter to acs treasurer Rev. McLain, Wilson attempts to counter the public charges of two other settlers—James and William Watson—against the acs: “I Larn thire is a Report floting in the Unided States that the agent of the Colinizathion Socety had Pur saled them to Pucherd som Chep Calico & Brest Julls and on thir arivel thay Ware disopinted and thair by defroded out of thir money.”48 The case of “the Watson men,” as Wilson describes them, was that same year exposed on the propagandistic pages of the acs’s official organ, the African Repository and Colonial Journal, by A. M. Cowan, a white agent of the Kentucky Colonization Society. As Cowan put it, the Watson brothers “returned to slavery, believing that freedom to the negro in Africa is the greatest curse that could possibly befall him; and that had the Liberians the means of getting away, seven-eighths of them would gladly return to the United States and serve the hardest masters to be found in the South, feeling that the condition of the slave here is far preferable to that of the most favored of the inhabitants of Liberia.”49 Wilson similarly seeks to portray “the Watson men’s” criticisms of Liberia, and their return to the United States, as a self-evidently absurd embrace of slavery: I am all so despose to think he that Would not Work for his benifite will not Work for others unlest he is forst With the Whipe but if it is thir path to have som one to make thim work for a Liven Let it be so for as thir path is So shal it be un to you Sayes the Criptures as for my Part I do not know What William & James Watson Return for unlest it Was for the Whipe . . . I can not See What a man of Coller Want to go Back to the united States to Live for un Lest he has no Sol in him for Whare thire is a sine of a Sole With in a man it Panc for fredom in this Life & the Life to Com.50 In the process of insisting that “a man of Coller” can have freedom only in Liberia, Wilson reveals the unfreedom “the Watson men” encountered. It is as if their return to the United States threatens the very meaning of Liberia as freedom’s homeland for African Americans, such that both Wilson and Cowan 70 · Chapter 1

have to charge the Watsons with a love of slavery and, in Wilson’s hyperbolic terms, with soullessness. Nonetheless, “the Watson men’s” challenge to stark depictions of Liberian life continues, as a textual trace in the archive, to provide a backbeat to Wilson’s and Cowan’s polemics. This trace of “murmuring and grumbling” about Liberia reminds us that the free life for which one pants—“it Panc for fredom in this Life & the Life to Com”—is at once at hand and out of reach, resisting governmental or geographic settlement. In other letters, the notion of Liberia as the homeland of black freedom breaks down less spectacularly, over a number of years and across the written experiences of interconnected settler-colonists. Consider, for instance, the large, extended family that had been enslaved to the family of John Hartwell Cocke, of Jamestown, Virginia.51 Cocke had inherited a large plantation and over one hundred slaves from his wealthy father, but his education at William and Mary College and his religious views led him to become an ardent colonizationist as early as 1817. Cocke and his second wife Louisa Maxwell Holmes went to great lengths to “train” the slaves they hoped to emancipate and deport in skills that would supposedly help them in Africa. Cocke eventually sent eight former slaves to Liberia in 1833: Peyton and Lydia Skipwith, and their six children Diana, Matilda, Felicia, Martha, Nash, and Napoleon.52 The Skipwiths’ subsequent struggles across the Atlantic led Cocke to establish a colonization school of sorts on two plantations he purchased in Alabama. During the 1840s and 1850s, Cocke sent scores of his slaves to these sites, called Hopewell and New Hope, although he would eventually deem only a fraction of them sufficiently “trained” to send to Liberia. Among those whom Cocke emancipated and deported from the Alabama “school” as well as directly from Virginia during these decades were Robert Leander Sterdivant and his children Diana, Rose, and William; the brothers Richard Canon, James Nicholas, and Peter Jones; Julia Nicholas; and Peyton Skipwith’s brother Erasmus Nicholas, who had been owned by Cocke’s son, Philip St. George Cocke. Like H. W. Ellis, Erasmus Nicholas’s early letters convey an unsteady conviction that Liberia is his proper home. As he wrote to his mother from Monrovia on March 5, 1843: “on my first sight of this part of the world [manuscript torn] so Differrent to the part where I was born that it appeared to me as though I was in a new world, but since I have gotten nearly over the african fever I like the place better & Better for I find it is the only Place for the man of Colour.”53 However, as we learn in letters from his niece, Matilda Skipwith, and her father, Peyton Skipwith, by 1846 Erasmus had found Liberia to be too new of a “new world” and had returned to the United States: Matilda writes on October 23, 1844, to Sally Cocke that “Erasmus has Left us and gone to Philadelphia,” and Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities · 71

Peyton writes to his mother on June 27, 1846, that “Erasmus has not returned since he left here for the states & it appears as if I cannot receive any intelligence from him. I would like much to hear something of him if he is in the States. You will be please to write me by Mr. Williams and let me know whether you have heard any thing of him or no.”54 On July 4, 1848, Matilda suggests—at the end of a letter with different sections addressed to Sally Cocke and to her grandmother Lucy Nicholas Skipwith—that Erasmus did return to Liberia, only to leave again: “NB. Uncle Erasmus has been out to Liberia since you request that we should give you some account of him—he is now on his way to the States & will leave for Africa, again by the return of the ‘Liberia Packet.’”55 In this set of letters, “return” strays ever further from the “return to Africa” discourse of the colonization movement, becoming increasingly recursive and multidirectional. Erasmus’s comings and goings figure the ambivalence his extended family expresses about life in what he tried to understand as “the only Place for the man of Colour.” Elsewhere in his June 27, 1846, letter to his mother, Peyton Skipwith gives full vent to this ambivalence: “In your last to me you expressed an anxiety for me to come over, but I am afraid that I shall never be enabled to cross the atlantice again though I would like much to see you once more in the flesh . . . Dear Mother I find that the people are afraid to come to this country.” Drawn by and toward his mother, his fear that he will never see her in the United States resonates with the fear he admits other black Americans have about Liberia itself. In this context, Peyton’s next sentence—“I can assure you that any person can live here if they has a little money”—reads like a tepid endorsement.56 In a letter written to his former master Cocke on June 25, 1846, Peyton also reveals that James Nicholas “left this place for Jamaca & I have not been enable to hear from him since.”57 As James Nicholas’s brother Richard Canon elaborates in a September 29, 1844, letter to Cocke: “Brother James Could not Contente himself here & lift Some months, ago for Kingston, Jamaca & I has never been enable to heare from him Since theire he has been.”58 On August 13, 1857, Leander Sterdivant starkly puts James’s fate in the context of the fate of the rest of his kin in a letter also written to Cocke: “my self and 3 children are well diana and Rose are marrid the Rest that came out with me are all dead but James he went back.”59 However, Matilda’s letters do the most to undo her uncle Erasmus’s initial enthusiasm. After the deaths and departures of many of her relatives, on May 19, 1852, she also writes to Cocke: “I have seen a great Deal of trouble since the Death of my People and all my hold hart is on the Lord this is avery hard Country for a poor widow to get along.”60 A year later, on September 26, 1853, Matilda tells Cocke: “Please to give my Best Respects to all the family and now I will try 72 · Chapter 1

Indevr to tell them the state of my mind now I am left a lone in this Lonsum Cuntry now one to look up to . . . and sometimes I live in hopes to see you all again and then again it seemes that the way looks so gloomy and if I ar not see you now more in this world, I expect to meet you in hevin.”61 For these settlercolonists, then, Liberia was as much “Lonsum Cuntry” as homeland, as much “trouble” and “Death” as promised land. For some it was, paradoxically, a place to leave for the United States in search of life rather than a place to which freedom comes. Freedom here fails to be a state toward which one moves directly, a threshold one crosses definitively, or a subjectivity one achieves masterfully. Rather, freedom takes the form of Matilda’s “again and then again,” a return that is a repeated turning, paradoxically recursive and open-ended. Even those rare settlers who do write of Liberia in the most foundationalist of terms cannot be taken to represent a straightforward “return to Africa” perspective. Consider the letters of James Cephas Minor, who was apprenticed in a printing house in Fredericksburg, Virginia, by his master with an eye to sending Minor to Liberia with a trade. Soon after arriving in Monrovia, Minor writes to his former master on February 11, 1833, that “[w]e hope many months will not pass away before we shall see our harbour glittering with ropes that have been the bearers of the people destined to return to the land of their forefathers.” Repeating this optimistic view of diasporan returns to Africa later in the same letter and perfectly summarizing the period’s predominant argument for African colonization, Minor writes: “Africa is a land of freedom; where else can the man of color enjoy temporal freedom but in Africa? They may flee to Hayti or to Canada, but it will not do; they must fulfil the sayings of Thomas Jefferson, ‘Let an ocean divide the white man from the man of color.’ Seeking refuge in other parts of the world has been tried, it is useless. We own that this is the land of our forefathers, destined to be the home of their decendants.”62 However, thirteen years later, Minor writes to his former mistress of his own nostalgia for Virginia, which he calls “home,” and admits that many former slaves want to return to the United States: “George and James Marshall . . . myself, and Abram gets together, and sits down, and cherishes the recollection of home, and the remembrance of old acquaintances. The Marshalls talk of returning home, they had expected to have gone back in the vessel that brings this letter; but they have foregone their intentions for the present. George, however, was much inclined on returning, but James was not. I have advised them to be content, and turn their attention to some sort of occupation.”63 At the same time, on September 23, 1851, James Minor’s mother, Mary, writes to the Maryland Colonization Society agent who was responsible for transporting her to Liberia that “I have been at Africa A Long time & I wish to come home if I Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities · 73

can possibel. You will please Send me an answer.”64 James himself, some years later, imaginatively returns to the United States in a letter to his former mistress: “Very often, by reflection, I can take a view of Fredericksburg—Toppen Castle, Edgewood, and many other places, over which, I have walked, in your beloved country in the days of early youthhood.”65 This “reflection” refracts the shine of the “glittering ropes” in which James saw the promise of a “return to the land of their forefathers.” Through reflection James does not exactly replace Africa with America as his proper homeland; America is, after all, “your beloved country,” the country of his mistress. Rather, it is as if reflection itself functions as a kind of freedom. That is, reflection functions as a speculative mode of thought in which return is imaginative rather than literal, recursive rather than unidirectional, repetitive (“very often”) rather than punctual. Much like James Minor, William C. Burke—who had been emancipated and deported by his famous master, the Confederate general Robert E. Lee—writes in 1863 to acs agent Ralph R. Gurley that slaves seized during the Civil War could “be persuaded to seek a home in this the land of their fathers; it seems that they must ere long find a home somewhere.”66 That it could be difficult to persuade someone of such a claim, however, is suggested by Burke’s own desires to return to the United States, expressed six years earlier in another letter to Gurley: “There seem to be a good many persons going back in the fine fast sailing ship. I should have no objection of takeing a trip in her myself if I could effect any thing by so doing. I have not been very well during this rainy season, being Troubled with chills & fevers.”67 Burke further destabilizes his own, foundationalist claim about Africa by writing in an 1858 letter to Gurley, on the one hand, of the United States as “the Land of our nativity” and, on the other, of his desire to “Civilize and Christianize” “some native children” and “the heathen around us.”68 Burke’s epistolary oscillations among conflicting claims about nativity generate questions he seems unable to raise explicitly, much less to answer—questions to which I will turn in the next section: are African Americans native to Africa or the United States, and is the nativity of native Africans to be expunged or identified with? The letters of Mary Ann Clay and her niece Lucy Clay to the family of their former master Sidney B. Clay elaborate upon these questions. Enslaved in Bourbon County, Kentucky, until the death of their master, Mary Ann and Lucy were then emancipated and deported on the ship Alida, which sailed from New Orleans for Monrovia on February 13, 1851. Although they both lost their children on the voyage or during their first months in Liberia, on September 27, 1853, Mary Ann nonetheless writes that “I can asshure you that I am very much please with Liberia Since I have had the feaver, and I can asshure you 74 · Chapter 1

that I am more thankful for you for Sending us to the Land of our Four Fathers and where we can enjoy our freedom. It is true that I have been a great deal of afflicted Since I left America But I hope that I will Soon be well again.”69 On September 28, 1853, Lucy echoes Mary Ann’s hopes in the face of personal suffering, but complicates her aunt’s presumption that Liberia is “the Land of our Four Fathers”: “Myself and Aunt has been much afflicted since we have been here, but notwithstanding I feel quite satisfied with the place, and like it very well. I have not as yet regretted that I left my native home, though I have often been unwelcomly circunstanced. One of the children died with the smal pox on the voyage out, and two with the fever after their arrival here.”70 Opening up an equivocal gap between “the Land of our Four Fathers” and “my native home,” Mary Ann’s and Lucy Clay’s letters show how tenuously early black settler-colonists embraced the discourse of a return to Africa. Underscoring this tenuousness, according to letters in the Clay Family Papers, two other people enslaved by Sidney B. Clay refused deportation to Liberia, claiming to prefer drowning to such a fate, and thus were sold into further bondage in Texas rather than accompany Mary Ann and Lucy Clay on the Alida.71 Little is known about A. B. Hooper except that he visited Liberia in 1848, setting sail on the Amazon on February 5, apparently returned to the United States, and then sailed again to Liberia from Norfolk, Virginia, on January 26, 1850, on the Liberia Packet. Yet he too at once invokes and disrupts simple “return to Africa” discourse. On September 27, 1853, he wrote to Samuel Tillinghast, who had been a friend of Hooper’s master, Thomas C. Hooper, to say that “I am in the land of my Farthers.” Just two sentences later, however, he declares that his master “was a friend and a Farther to poor me when thir was none to watch over me he keep an eye on me for good. He advised me tho I was his little slave he [sic] treatment was that of a Farther.” Hooper concludes his letter with a message to his friends and kin: “tl all my colord Brothers to come home and take posesion of the land of our Farthers tell them to come and lett us Build up a great Republice to our Selfes. Sir I remain your obd Servant.”72 Pluralizing the meaning of the term Farther, Hooper splits the “return to Africa” perspective, effectively claiming both sides of the Atlantic as points of origin and diffusing foundationalist paternity into a discourse of diaspora. We have veered far, indeed, from Blyden’s symmetry of subjection and his meliorist trajectory of paternal freedom. For the settler-colonists who went to Liberia during its early years, then, the idea of Africa as a place to which African Americans could “return” was either absent or backbeat by its own undoing. On their epistolary stage, we read numerous speculative reflections from which a free life emerges less as a Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities · 75

formal state of manumission or citizenship in a settled nation-state, and more as an unsettled, ongoing state of improvised being that is recursively intimate with slavery and a diasporic Atlantic. The discourse of return in this archive is inflected less by the inevitably tragic, foundationalist dream of which Saidiya Hartman is so carefully critical in Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route: “return is what you hold on to after you have been taken from your country, or when you realize that there is no future in the New World, or that death is the only future.”73 Rather, in their imaginary and literal returns to the United States, these settler-colonists in Liberia hesitate on liberty’s threshold, such that the servitude they left continues to be a reckoning and the freedom they seek is to be found in returns to the United States staged from Liberia. Writes Hartman, “return and remaking, or restoration and transformation, can’t be separated into tidy opposing categories. Sometimes going back to and moving toward coincide.”74 In early to mid-nineteenth-century Liberia, the epistolary scenes of that coincidence stage encounters with—to borrow again from H. W. Ellis’s letters—the temporally and geographically strange, transmarine states of inchoate slavery and freedom.

The Epistolary Archive: “The Natives” Just as the letters frustrate the tendency to read African colonization from a straightforward “return to Africa” perspective, so too do they frustrate the tendency to read the settler-colonists as unabashed imperialists devoted solely to wiping out or converting and assimilating passive and innocent West Africans. For though we read extensively of settlers assuming their imperial righteousness and exercising their colonial power, we also read both of powerful West African efforts to counter colonization and of settler efforts to disrupt West African participation in the slave trade. Perhaps more strikingly, however, we read in these letters candid expressions of the settlers’ inability to make sense of native lives. At times, we even read of the subtle and equivocally acknowledged ways in which the settler-colonists’ assumptions about “the natives” are undone, and of moments in which the settlers themselves are moved and remade by the very “natives” they work so hard to move and remake.75 Black settler Alexander Hance can introduce us to this complex and uneven scene. Writing to acs president J. H. B. Latrobe in 1838, Hance depicts a settler community rife with division and conflict. Having recently returned to Cape Palmas from a short trip to the United States to recruit more settlers, Hance explains: 76 · Chapter 1

you will be informed of the present situation of the colony which at this time is far different to what it was when I left here for america. On my return it had altered so much that it really astonished me to see it in that time how the colony had fallen from its former prospects. And it now is in quite abad sutuation both in regard to provisions & Government . . . The colonist generally are very much disatisfied especially the new emigrants. They are all extremely so. I regret my trop to America, for the new emigrants connected with some of the old colonist would deprive me of my existance were it in their power. They have raised a great many false reports about me & have attempted to excommunicated me from the church.76 In this context of settler infighting and disaffection, West African resistance to colonization was unsurprisingly strong: “One fact is this: the natives do not like to be governed by a colored Man and they do just as they please almost.”77 Hance’s reference to a fault line between “the natives” and “a colored Man” is entirely at odds both with the official acs discourse of kinship between African Americans and Africans, and with Blyden’s dream of an “intellectual empire.” The letter thus exemplifies a persistent lesson of this archive, one Cedric Robinson and Thomas Holt alert us to in my introduction: that race is a fungible category, drawing liberally on, and articulating flexibly with, the social relations of a given conjuncture.78 Such tensions made settler-colonists rethink their ideas about their own ties to Africa (and they typically wrote of the continent as such), foregrounding their persistent unsettlement rather than their drive to settle. Peyton Skipwith— who as we saw above arrived in Liberia with his family in 1833—writes on April 22, 1840, to his former master John H. Cocke that “it is something strange to thank that those people of africa are calld our ancestors in my present thinking if we have any ancestors they could not have been like these hostile tribes in this part of africa for you may try and distill that principle and belief in them and do all you can for them and they still will be your enemy.” Peyton apparently questioned this “return to Africa” narrative because of the violence with which West Africans met the settlers’ own, often brutal attempts to appropriate West African land and transform West African cultures: I must say that the greaset war that ever was fought by man was fought at Headengton, a Missionary establishment about five miles from Millsburg it was said that a savage host of this man that we took occasion to against sent about four Hundred men to attack this place about day Break . . . it Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities · 77

has been said that a great number died but how many I do not no with the lost of one Native man Mortally wounded they then persued them and found the Generals body slightly intomed about twenty miles from the field of Battle his head was taken from his body and now made an ornament in the Hands of the Governor Buchanan the Battle lasted about one Hour fifteen minutes how this was done they had an over quanty of musket loded and had nothing to do but take them up and poor the Bullets in thire flesh and they would fall takeeng fingers and tearing the flesh assunder.79 Massacres like this grew not only out of the settlers’ efforts to seize land and convert “natives,” but also out of native resistance to settler disruption of West African trade, including native participation in the slave trade. As Peyton Skipwith explained to Cocke less than a year earlier, on November 11, 1839: A Slave dealer for somitime had a slave factory at Little Bassa and Gov. Buchanan after he came out orderd him away and said to him that he had no right to deal in Slaves in that teritory and that he must remove in so many days . . . he would not believe but still remaind and we went down and broke up the factory and brought away all the effects say in goods and destroyd about fifty puncheons Rum which was turn loose on the ground say the effect in goods &c to the amt of ten thousand Dollars after we had taken the goods or a part we had to contend with the natives which fought us two days very hard but we got the victory and form a treaty before we left with one of the chiefs but not with the other and only got four Slaves so we cannot say that we concluded a final peace without the other partys consent.80 By linking the conflict with the slave dealer to the sudden need “to contend with the natives,” Peyton seems to understand the participation of West Africans in the Euro-American slave trade. Perhaps this participation contributes to his deep disillusionment about the fact that “these people of Africa are calld our ancestors.” Peyton is not moved enough by this encounter, however, to question his own collaboration with white officials of the acs, like Buchanan, who police West African trade and appropriate West African land. Indeed, the very articulation of a certain antislavery activism with land appropriation through militarism and political double-dealing makes “the victory” a dubious one, which Peyton perhaps acknowledges by admitting that “we cannot say that we concluded a final peace without the other partys consent.” Like Peyton Skipwith, Sion Harris—a manumitted carpenter and farmer 78 · Chapter 1

who arrived in Liberia on the ship Liberia in 1830 when he was just nineteen— writes on January 5, 1848, of “Africa” as “the Land of our fore Fathers” and exclaims on May 20, 1849, that he would never be content to live in the United States again: “I can say that I thank God that I am at home in Africa. I found my family well. I never expect to contend with the collard man in America no more, if they come I will, if not well with me. I expect to die in Africa where the free air blows for here are Liberty . . . I have no more business in America.”81 But Sion Harris’s letters are most striking because of his apparent glee in writing extensive accounts of violent conflict with “the Enemy.” Like Peyton, he is untroubled by the linkages among antislavery activism, land appropriation, and colonial violence: “have broak up the great slaver factory and liberated a great manny slaves there was none of our men lost none crippled they burnt up a great many towns.”82 In fact, he seems content to secure his own settler-colonial “rights” at the expense of any consideration of native West African rights: “we have been appressed long enough we mean to stand our ground & contend for our rights until we die, O if my cullard friends would only believe and feel the love of liberty they would not Stay in the United Stats.”83 As Harris explains in an April 16, 1840, letter to Samuel Wilkeson of the Maryland Colonization Society, he participated in the very massacre Peyton Skipwith describes above, claiming for himself the honor of having secured the head of the general to which Peyton referred: “Many wished the head, but I reserved it for the Governor, with Greegrees, a great quantity which I delivered to the Governor.”84 In details that were excised by the acs when they published this letter in the African Repository, Harris writes of one of the indigenous leaders: “Goterah returned, back to the kitchen, which he siesed and shook with one hand, and brandished a Dreadful knife with the other about 6 inches broad. and about a hundred and 50 men came up to the fence, to whom he said letus go in. I took deliberate aim at him (he was half bent-shaking) and brought him to the ground cut off his knee shot him in the lungs and cut of his privets.”85 Harris seems untroubled by his own brutality, declaring that “I examined myself and saw all was right,” and admitting that he only prayed so that God would make the conditions more favorable for the battle.86 However, he does add a “P.S.” to this letter in which he undercuts his own professed connection to Africa and rejection of America: I desire to go to America to see my frinds who are in East Tenasee Knox County and I would like your advice about it whether it would be safe or right. I have no Family but My self and wife and means to come. If you think it difficult to go to tenesee I would like to visit a Merica any how Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities · 79

some where or other . . . I would be very glad to have a frind to exchange Curiosities with or give Curiosities for other little things because I have in my power to collect many One reason for my wishing to go see my frinds is I write and I write without answers.87 Harris’s loneliness is striking here, and though in subsequent letters he continues to criticize America and extol Liberia, the exuberance with which he colonizes West Africa fails to make up for his own sense of being out of place. In fact, this troubled articulation of loneliness with imperial violence is echoed in a brief paragraph he writes to his sister on November 29, 1849, at the end of a letter to acs treasurer Rev. McLain: “I dream of seeing you often & would like to see you, But I could not concent to come to America. My love to you & all the children. how large is John? I love him. I wish I could see him, when he grows up, he must send me a present.”88 Oscillating between violent, imperial enthusiasm and intimate, personal longing across many years, Sion Harris’s letters simultaneously assert settler-colonial right and unsettle that very assertion. Even as they seek to draw sharp distinctions between “natives” and themselves, the settler-colonists betray the fragility of the divide between colonizer and colonized, a fragility that the settlers cannot always instrumentalize for conquest—as do Skipwith and Harris—or conversion and assimilation. For instance, James Minor—whom I mentioned in the previous section—writes to his former mistress Mary B. Blackford in 1852 that “[t]he religion, habits, manners, customs, and dress of the unattended to portions of the aboriginees, among us, are so vague and insignificant, that the children are imbibing some of the lowest principles. We hope for better, if worse Come.”89 Though he is critical of “the aboriginees” here, Minor also reveals that new settler generations are already rejecting settler separatism by allowing themselves to be transformed by the very people they have displaced and disenfranchised. Diana Skipwith, Peyton’s daughter whom I also discussed above, explains in a similar vein to Louisa Cocke on May 20, 1839, that “there is not a Native that i have see that i think that i could make my self hapy with ware you to see them you would think that i am write in my oppinion all though they ar verry ingenious people they make some Beautiful Bags which i inted sending you all some.”90 At once eager to proclaim her lack of attraction to the “Native” and struck by how “ingenious” they are, Diana Skipwith perhaps offers an example of the attitudes of “the children” whom Minor criticizes: her “write . . . oppinion” is subtly, grudgingly undone by her own quotidian encounters. Other settlers are more than undone by “the natives”; they are in certain respects remade. After setting up a mission school well outside Monrovia—in 80 · Chapter 1

Settra Kroo—where he sought to convert “native children” religiously and culturally, Washington Watts McDonogh tells his former master John McDonogh on March 18, 1846, that “I am still striving to do all the good I can among the natives. I can speak a little of the Kroo dialect. I have been among them for nearly four years. Their language is very hard to learn. I can understand it better than I can speak it. But as the old saying is practice makes perfect.”91 Of course, language learning is by no means oppositional to imperial conquest. But I want to focus here on the intimate way Washington McDonogh allows his study of “the Kroo dialect” to shift his colonial values. His reflections at least raise the question of what kind of perfection his practice seeks. This perfection sits uneasily alongside the “victory” by war or treaty that Peyton Skipwith and Harris proclaim. On November 5, 1859, Seaborn Evans, who also worked to colonize native children, tells his former master Josiah Sibley that “It is Strang but it is the truth, the africans children lern the book faster than the Americans children, and the better it will be for us the Sooner we get the Africans civilized, and to lern them the book is the fastest way to do it.”92 William C. Burke also devoted himself to “trying to Civilize and Christianize” “some native children,”93 yet he admits to Mary C. Lee—the wife of his former master, Confederate General Robert E. Lee—on February 20, 1859, that “the aborigines of the country are the most healthy people to be found anywhere in the world,” and to acs agent Gurley that “the natives in this country may by no means be called a lazy people, for they work very hard at some seasons of the year.”94 Although both Evans and Burke humanize “natives” as a means to a more effective and thorough colonization, they also reveal intriguing hints of how “natives” themselves instrumentalized African colonization both by learning the cultures of the colonizer and by challenging colonial presumptions about native laziness. Even when they disparage the “natives” outright, the settlers betray the porosity of social and cultural boundaries in a settler-colonial context. On September 4, 1842, Washington McDonogh again writes to his former master: “It is true that it is very hot here middle of the [summer] but if a man is industrious after he becomes aclimated [he may] get a long very well but the most of the people that comes out here by the time they get over the fever they becoms some thing like the natives and wont work if they find that they can get along by stealing. I have seen numbers of them in cans [jails] for the like since I have been there.”95 Washington McDonogh hopes to show his former master how lazy and thieving “the natives” are, but by linking them with certain settlers he also hints at a potential challenge to the harsh regime of work acs officials and settler enthusiasts like Washington imposed on immigrants who arrived Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities · 81

mere months removed from chattel slavery. The ambiguous referent for the passages “they” and “them”—does he mean the black settlers or the natives?—ties the two groups together in a politics of refusal to work as well as in the state’s carceral power. Diana Skipwith further reveals how the fragility of the settler-colonists’ power was exposed by the very “natives” the settlers sought to control. As she writes to her former mistress Sally Cocke on March 6, 1843: I wrote you a long catalogue about the Natives customs which I am inhopes that you have found very amusing in conversing with one of them I ask him how was it that the could not read & write like white man (they call us all white man) & had not as much sence as the white man & he said that it was thire own foult that god give them the choice either to learn book proper as thy says or make Rice & thy told god they had rather make rice I labored with him & told him that it was a misstaken Idear altogether I farther told him that god had bless them with as many Sences as the white man and if thy ware to only put them in exersise that he would be the same as white man after talking with him some time he said in answer you tell true too much.96 It is difficult to tell whether Diana understands how this man is likely challenging her assumptions and making fun of her claims. She does acknowledge that “the Natives” have countered the racial formations settlers brought with them from the United States when she explains parenthetically that “they call us all white man.” She even seems to have accepted this appellation “white man” by including herself among those who can “read & write” and whom “the Natives” should emulate. The man’s response reads like a ruse, however, because at the very time when many settlers are on the brink of starvation, he wryly explains that God made his people choose between “rice” and “book proper” and that “it was thire own fault” they chose not to starve. That Diana’s response is to urge the man to “be the same as the white man” by choosing both “rice” and “book proper” may well have deepened the man’s sense of irony, as he observed how this former slave’s people both emulate “the white man” and go hungry. Perhaps his “answer” to Diana—that “you tell true too much”—was more of a challenge than Diana could fathom. As in the letter from Alexander Hance I discussed above, race emerges here neither as a stable biological nor a cultural form, but rather as a flexible construct that articulates with the social relations of the conjuncture in which it is lived and iterated. Indeed, we encounter an instance of what I called quotidian globalities in my introduction, in which subjects are made and unmade by race on extensively global and intricately local scales. 82 · Chapter 1

Finally, a letter written by Rev. Alfred F. Russell on July 3, 1855, from Liberia’s Clay-Ashland settlement to Robert Wickliffe of Lexington, Kentucky— the second husband of Russell’s former owner, Mary Owen Todd Russell— speculates at length about the very meaning of “nativity” in early Liberia, at once gathering and complicating the accounts I have considered in this section. Russell and his mother, Milly, had been emancipated and deported from Kentucky to Liberia in 1833 by their owner, Wickliffe’s wife Mary, who had inherited them from her own mother. Russell writes in reply to a letter he had just received from his former master, and although we do not have Wickliffe’s letter, it is not surprising that Russell describes it as “so unexpected.” 97 Wickliffe was a well-known and powerful proslavery politician; in fact, by 1830 he was Kentucky’s wealthiest man and largest slaveholder. So it is not clear what would have motivated him to contact his former slave, apparently for the first time, more than twenty years after Russell had been emancipated and deported by Wickliffe’s wife. As Russell explains in the letter’s opening lines, “we had ever held the impression that you were not well pleased with our Coming to Africa, and some how thought you opposed to both Collonisation & abolition.” Wickliffe’s letter was apparently solicitous, however, since Russell follows up with an apology—“Pardon us for this misjudgment of you”—and then leaves aside the odd nature of the correspondence, adopting a candid and familiar tone.98 Russell proceeds to offer a quite detailed evaluation of Liberia just eight years after it declared independence. Toward the end of the letter, Russell reflects upon the status of the most recent black American settlers in Africa, in the context of debates over how to define citizenship in Liberia: He that comes from Your shores to this Offspring of American benevolence, is no stranger or alien, aney more than I was. Their birth, tongue, education, religion, and Country is the same. The very Object and end of their Coming is the same with my own. The same Philanthropy that sent me, places them hear, on the very same footing, Condition & for the same Cause. I hold Liberia has no right now, to meat the American Emigrant more freighted with intelligence & industry than formerly, with unjust & unconstitutional naturalization laws. (We are all foreigners) because a party will hold office. The American emigrant bears no comparison with the Irish, Germans, Polls, with strange tongue & strange Religion. Pouring into your Country, bought by the Revolutionary blood of her Natural born sons, But who are our Natural inhabitants but our natives? for whom Liberia has eve made naturalisation rules. But time will work Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities · 83

all right. We have a splendid country, rich in soil, metals, & resources of maney kinds & large enough for all the blacks in America. They would not trouble me by coming Ten thousand a month. What starts as a gesture of inclusion for all new immigrants from the United States to Liberia leads to a recognition that “we are all foreigners.” Russell then draws a curious distinction between two different kinds of “foreigners”: those new black American immigrants to Liberia and European immigrants to the United States. His recognition that motley and multilingual European immigrants were attracted by “your country’s” “Natural born” militancy somehow then leads Russell to “our Natural inhabitants . . . our natives,” which in turn leads him to question Liberia’s ironic effort to restrict the citizenship status of native West Africans. Finally escaping from this jumble of descriptive and proscriptive claims about nativity with the optimistic phrase But time will work all right, Russell concludes by throwing the shores of Liberia wide open to all who may come from the United States. This passage interests me not as a statement of policy to clarify, but rather in its very resistance to clarity. That is, Russell is unable to control the figures of coming and going, of immigrant and emigrant, of American and Liberian, of native and foreign. They circulate recklessly, and it is as if that very recklessness gives him his hope. Of course, such recklessness would not last long in the increasingly settled nation-state of Liberia. Yet the trace of it in Russell’s letter ought to remind us of the unsettled states of being or life that survived during Liberia’s volatile and potent early years. That Russell himself would become a representative of Montserrado County in the Liberian Senate during the 1850s, and in the 1880s both vice president and president of Liberia before his death in 1884, deepens the import of his epistolary equivocations. As one who would become a representative of the Liberian state, he fails to state definitively his own understanding of Liberian freedom, and through that failure itself he leaves a trace of freedom’s ongoing, unsettled elaboration in Liberia’s epistolary archive. Certainly, the settler-colonists’ accounts of “the natives” expose their participation in brutal imperial land appropriation, political exclusion, economic disruption, and cultural repression. Yet these letters also reveal the fragility of settler-colonization in Liberia, to the point where the settlers’ own unsettled lives challenge Edward Wilmont Blyden’s enthusiastic inauguration of an “intellectual empire” in West Africa.

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“It All Most Cost Us Death Seeking Life” The rest of Rev. Russell’s letter to Robert Wickliffe reflects extensively on the very meaning of such an unsettled life. As Russell explains: “I live in Clay Ashland, a district bought by the Kentuckey Collonisation Society.” Clay-Ashland was named after Kentucky Congressman Henry Clay, whose plantation outside Lexington was called Ashland. Clay was an ardent supporter of African colonization because, as he put it on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1816, it would clear “our country of a useless and pernicious, if not a dangerous portion of its population,” namely free blacks and rebellious slaves.99 When Russell says the land was “bought” by the Kentucky Colonization Society, he references the “fee simple” treaties by which Colonization Society agents seized West African land from its native inhabitants, who did not even recognize the concept of property the Americans thought they were securing.100 Russell does not explicitly discuss this Liberian memorialization of Clay’s racist Whig nationalism or Liberia’s history of colonial land appropriation. However, he does insist that his fellow settlers have made Clay-Ashland so successful that it has become “an object of jealousey & hatred from maney who should encourage foster & protect, & not try to break it down.” He continues, “the people in [Clay-Ashland] are not inclined to bow to Old Chairs Tables or Combinations, they feel that they left masters & lords behind, and venture to contend for their equal & Constitutional rights.” In this passage, Russell describes Liberian freedom as a “feeling” for and a “venture to contend” with chattel slavery’s past, as much as a practical struggle with the difficult material conditions of Liberia’s present. By invoking the “Old Chairs,” “Tables,” “Combinations,” “masters & lords” to which his fellow settlers are “not inclined to bow,” Russell effectively summons the very servitude memorialized by the name of the town in which the settlers are venturing to contend for a new life. Though that past is summoned in order to be refused and transformed into something else, which Russell here names “equal and Constitutional rights,” such a refusal still contains within itself a certain recognition of the past’s continuing power. That is, he must acknowledge that past in some form in order to perform the refusal to bow to it. For this refusal to remain what Russell calls an inclination, the past itself must be kept alive and in sight, for that past is both dead (as an old “Chair” or “Table” is) and deadly (as a “master,” “lord,” or “Combination” might dispense disenfranchisement to the extent even of death). Paradoxically, then, the refusal to bow not only allows one to seek life but also commits one to keeping death itself alive, particularly the threat of one’s own death. To call this refusal an “inclination,” as Russell does, is at once to express confidence in the Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities · 85

refusal, as if it were a likely choice, and to be reminded of its tenuousness, as if it could just as easily be inclined otherwise, at the risk of the very life being sought. Perhaps this deep imbrication of life and death is figured by this passage’s attenuated formulation venture to contend, a phrase that describes not so much a direct contention as it does a potentiality: the effort it takes to begin such a contention, or the venture that is a condition of possibility for contending. In the next section of the letter, Rev. Russell delves even more deeply into the settlers’ feeling for the past as well as the paradoxical relationship between life and death. In the process, he makes a case for understanding freedom as a tenuous, unrealized potentiality that has thus far resisted any attempt to institutionalize or authorize it. As he continues, Coming to Liberia 22 years ago as I did, and becoming we all once thought a crippled youth. With no rich brothers, no resources. Seeing all around me, large families, influential and united & reunited by marriage, holding all the offices in the Country & the avanues to every immolument, working every thing aparently from hand to hand and into & for each other, and looking upon all else as a third rate thing. Made aney sky dark. This kissing the “big toe” and this very “big negro” business. Has to me been the greatest “night mair” that ever crippled the energies of Liberia, and to this day the roots and limbs of those combined and self seeking influences, sway a heavy sceptre, and to a Country in which all around, every chief is King, & to emigrants from where every master is Sovreign, men taught to bow before powers seen & influences felt, Espeshialy when the love of power & office is Concidered & well weiged—and then the possession of office from the foundation of both the Collony & the Republic in the same Channels—until what was once a favor, seemes to be now aright. Though the popular vote is heard of, the ignorant thoughtless & promised hord may be both voters, & jurymen. things are not as liberal as they might be Still the true heart of Liberia feels that if our independance is declared the battle of Liberty is still to be won. Due to a leg disease he contracted as a child shortly after arriving in Liberia, Russell walked with crutches for much of his Liberian life. But here he insists that an increasingly codified system of class and political privilege among black settlers presents a much more “crippling” obstacle to seeking freedom in Liberia than personal, physical ailments like his own. Remarkably, he figures that system in the language of servitude. The servile bowing he earlier said ex-slaves were not inclined to perform because they venture to contend for their rights is here precisely what “right” has come to mean to many of those very ex-slaves: 86 · Chapter 1

“men taught to bow before powers seen & influences felt . . . until what was once a favor, seemes to be now aright.” That is, some settlers have inclined toward the power of mastery and have even deftly articulated it with democracy and civil rights. Consequently, their efforts to restage life end up reiterating, even revivifying, all too familiar norms of power. And yet it is this very reiteration that provokes Russell to begin to theorize a kind of liberty that is neither achieved by nor reducible to the conventional procedures of democracy or the formal freedom of rights and national citizenship. At this point in the letter, liberty is no longer an individual matter at all. Whereas earlier Russell personified the feeling of freedom in individual settlers, here it is the idealized figure of “the true heart of Liberia” that feels an as-yet-unrealized liberty. This liberty proffers a kind of potential according to an improvisational logic I discussed in the introduction: what he calls “the energies of Liberia” represents “Liberia” less as a nation-state and more as a universal that exceeds institutional settlement, a freedom that remains open to articulation with ever-changing particulars, an articulation that repeatedly restages the universal itself.101 Rev. Russell’s letter can thus be read as a critical, speculative account of the equivocal volatility of an unsettled life in colonial Liberia, a life that seeks liberty. This does not mean that Russell is unrealistic, that he loses touch with the material reality of life in Liberia, or that he abandons the empirical analysis of practical problems for idealist abstractions; nineteenth-century Liberian history is replete with countless acs agents and bureaucrats who embodied just such an approach to its struggles. Rather, Russell turns to the critical and the speculative at precisely the moment when his account of Liberian life reveals how Liberian freedom has become too abstract, formal, conventional, and procedural. The letter suggests that when freedom assumes the abstract, settled forms of the national citizen and the nation-state, it begins to exhibit traces of the very mode of servitude it was supposedly excluding and overcoming. In this context, consider a passage from the beginning of Russell’s letter: Your letter bears to us the very information we have for years longed to recieve, telling us in detail the history and fate of most all White and Collored that was dear to us, and that we had left behind us, the story is a Melloncholy one. and after all leaves us the victory who chose Africa & became seekers of Liberty, so far as the Collored people are Concerned. Sinthia died 1836. Gilbert in 1839. Mother died of dropsey in 1845. George Crawford died suddenly in 1846. I was at that time away off in the interier of Africa preaching to the natives, on the Goulab and Pessa lines. We have suffered in Africa, and suffered greatley. It was so long before we Could Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities · 87

find Africa out, how to live in it, and what to do to live, that it all most cost us death seeking life.102 After expressing a mix of nostalgia and sadness for the life he left behind in the United States, Russell makes a bold declaration: “and after all leaves us the victory who chose Africa & became seekers of Liberty, so far as the Collored people are Concerned.” Whatever “information” Wickliffe communicated in his letter, Russell suggests it was so “Melloncholy” that it vindicated the choice his family made to leave for Liberia in 1833, a choice he represents as becoming “seekers of Liberty.” Yet this sense of vindication is immediately and paradoxically followed by a chronicle of family deaths that began just three years after his arrival in Monrovia, a chronicle that itself tells a melancholy story: “Sinthia died 1836. Gilbert in 1839. Mother died of dropsey in 1845. George Crawford died suddenly in 1846.” Russell’s missionary work “preaching to the natives, on the Goulab and Pessa lines” is then presented not as redemptive good works, but rather as melancholy in its own right: as that which prevented him from being with his kin when they died. It would seem that “the victory” these “seekers of Liberty” won to some extent restages the melancholy story Wickliffe told of life back in the United States, as the letter’s next sentences underscore: “We have suffered in Africa, and suffered greatley. It was so long before we Could find Africa out, how to live in it, and what to do to live, that it all most cost us death seeking life.” Russell’s letter here provokes a flurry of speculative questions. What kind of “life”—so close to “death” and yet with “Liberty” in its sights—did these emancipated slaves “seek” in “chosing Africa”? What life did Russell and his fellow black American settler-colonists “find out” that was at once a “victory” and a sufferance? How was that life lived, geographically and temporally, both as a “longing” for “information” from the United States and as “so long” a time in “the interier of Africa,” both as a “Melloncholy story” about what was “left behind” and as a series of deaths of those who left the United States for Africa? And what do the lives Russell and his kin came to live tell us about the freedom they sought? The passage seems to suggest that to “chose Africa” and become a “seeker of Liberty” as a settler-colonist came to mean seeking life in the midst of death, coming to the brink—“all most”—of paying for life with death. Coming to the brink of death is represented as an action that continually befalls one rather than an action that one either masterfully controls and manipulates or tragically suffers. From Rev. Russell’s letter—despite his individual role as a representative of the settler-colonial state—we thus learn that seeking a “Liberty still to be won” means remaining skeptical about its 88 · Chapter 1

institutionalization and speculative about its renewed performance, opting for the actively equivocal over the formally settled. Unlike Blyden’s meliorist trajectory of freedom, the temporality of this speculative thought, as we have seen throughout the epistolary archive of early Liberia, is recursive in that it continually returns—“again and then again,” as Matilda Skipwith wrote—to ongoing legacies of U.S. slavery. But that temporality is also open-ended, in that those returns are poised on the cusp of inchoate futures called “freedom” or “liberty.” In turn, the geography of that thought resists the symmetrical sense of home Blyden called “the very soil whence their fathers were torn.” It becomes a geography of the “transmarine stranger,” as H. W. Ellis put it, whose settlements refuse to settle.

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Chapter 2

“Suffering Gain and It Remain” The Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia

Dear Sir i hav [torn: taken?] my peen in hand to [torn: let?] you know how we are their is many of the mc kay family are suffered to death Mr W Mc Clain pleas to help us we ought not to complain they give us lots upon rocks and i can not get the hoe to the ground for rocks and there is woman that six and seven children settle on one fourth of and acre of land we hav arived their a year and can not serport our selves they do not give Land enough if corn would grow in africa their would be living there is 8 head dead from the tim we got of the Ship suffering gain and it remain Mr Mc Clain our tru friend pleas send us Pervision that will give us a start the five Dollars and all other money use it in the house the boxes all the agent take them Liberia is dark dark place flour is twelve ½ ct a pound meet twenty five and thirty ct a pound butter is fifty ct buying at that rate its dare we hav stir late and early July the 19 the 1858 g c mount Robert sport the town the cart is no profit for running the hills and mountain is so great valley no coin of beast can not up and down the hills up greate We plant a root it take twelve —unknown (McKay?) to Rev. William McLain, July 19, 1858

On July 19, 1858, someone in Liberia—apparently a black settler from the United States—wrote the letter transcribed in full above to the treasurer of the American Colonization Society (acs), Rev. William McLain (figures 2.1 and 2.2).1 The letter is unsigned, so I cannot say with any assurance who wrote it, though at some point someone—perhaps an archivist—wrote the name “McKay” in pencil at the end of the letter, and the opening lines of the letter itself suggest that this may be the author’s last name. At the top of the second page, crowded by the last lines of the letter, we learn the date of the letter and the apparent location of its drafting: “g c mount Robert sport the town,” or the town of Robertsport—sometimes written Robert’s Port—in Grand Cape Mount, the

Figures 2.1 (above) and 2.2 (right). Rev. McKay (?) to William McLain, 19 July 1858. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, American Colonization Society Papers.

northernmost coastal region of Liberia bordering Sierra Leone. Robertsport was named after Liberia’s first president, Joseph Jenkins Roberts, who was born free in Norfolk, Virginia, emigrated to Liberia in 1829, and quickly became a leader of the settler elites. I came across this letter in a collection of correspondence from settlers in the Library of Congress’s American Colonization Society Papers, which offer no other information on its author or context. It conforms to many of the formal features of the epistolary archive I have been discussing: it is written on the cheapest of paper from the period, which is thin and has a distinct blue color; it addresses a senior acs official; it complains about poor conditions and requests material aid; and the author’s lack of formal education, and likely exclusion from the emerging circle of black settler elites like Roberts, is reflected in the unsteady penmanship, the phonetic spelling, and the lack of punctuation. How can we read this document? Like Wheatley and Equiano’s texts, it does not fit neatly into either the return-to-Africa framework or the anti-imperial framework I discussed in chapter 1. It offers a critical apprehension of the colonization scheme—“Liberia is a dark dark place”—instead of triumphant proclamations of the “auspicious day,” “ancestral home,” and “intellectual empire” we saw from Edward Wilmont Blyden, and yet it still seeks “help” to continue the venture. We could draw from the letter’s details a material sense of how difThe Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 93

ficult life in Liberia was for black settlers from the United States, who “suffered to death” due to an unfamiliar topography that did not prove amenable to the agricultural skills they brought with them (“they give us lots upon rocks and i can not get the hoe to the ground for rocks . . . if corn would grow in africa their would be living . . . the cart is no profit for running the hills and mountain is so great valley no coin of beast can not up and down the hills”). We could also glean a sense of the high costs of provisions (“flour is twelve ½ ct a pound meet twenty five and thirty ct a pound butter is fifty ct buying at that rate its dare”), which were probably exacerbated by the corruption of acs officials in Liberia (“all other money use it in the house the boxes all the agent take them”) and their failure to give settler families adequate-sized plots (“there is woman that six and seven children settle on one fourth of and acre of land . . . they do not give Land enough”). Such readings would not be inaccurate. Yet in and through this descriptive content, the letter also speculates upon the meaning of freedom in Liberia in ways too easily obscured if we remain focused on the descriptive. The letter seeks aid “that will give us a start.” But a “start” of what, exactly? Though it begins formally (“Dear Sir”), the letter ends in mid-thought (“We plant a root it take twelve”), breaking the symmetry of salutation and valediction, refusing closure, eschewing arrival. Though it seems syntactically and grammatically irregular, the letter also rhymes: “lots upon rocks and i can not get the hoe to the ground for rocks,” “there is 8 head dead from the tim we got of the Ship suffering gain and it remain Mr Mc Clain.” The quotidian rhythm of hoes endlessly striking “rocks . . . rocks” parallels the repetition of the “dark dark place.” This letter sounds its way toward making sense of what Liberia has proven to be, a sounding that draws, no doubt, on an oral and biblical literacy that was common among even the least formally educated black settlers. Read speculatively, the letter offers us only questions, none of Blyden’s auspicious days or settled empires; only asymmetries and open ends, none of the applied emulation H. B. Stewart wrote of to McLain; no punctual emancipation or definitive return, but also no ultimate tragedy or decisive failure. Set in the middle of the letter, the phrase suffering gain and it remain offers a kind of focal point for this speculative sounding. It resonates with the oxymorons of profitable loss, persistent undoing, static unfolding, and open-ended recursivity. If the phrase suffering gain and it remain answers the question of “how we are” in Liberia—a question posed by a formerly enslaved settler in an epistle to someone who claims to distribute freedom—then how might we characterize this answer? By way of a response, in this chapter I turn to two sets of letters from two settlers to white acquaintances or former masters: Samson 94 · Chapter 2

Ceasar’s letters to Henry F. Westfall and Nancy Ann Smith’s letters to John McDonogh. By dwelling at some length on the speculative intricacies of these letters, I hope to elaborate not so much what concrete histories they describe as how they teach us about the ongoing, volatile concrescence of a free life, one that could be said to “suffer gain and remain.” Ultimately, I argue, these letters prompt us to revise the nineteenth century’s most elaborate and influential speculative account of such a life, at the crossroads of mastery and servitude: that of G. W. F. Hegel. This argument depends, however, on reading the texts of black settlers as theoretically rich, philosophical treatises just as we unquestioningly read Hegel’s texts.

“When They Come Here They Feal So Free” On January 1, 1834, Samson Ceasar arrived in Monrovia, Liberia, from Norfolk, Virginia, after a voyage of fifty-six days on the ship Jupiter.2 Formerly enslaved in what is now West Virginia, Ceasar was freed by his master on the condition that he leave the United States for Liberia. On June 2, in one of the many letters he sent from the Liberian capital to Henry F. Westfall—who may have been his former master, or rather an influential white man he knew while enslaved in West Virginia3 —Ceasar wrote: I must Say that I am afraid that our Country never will improve as it ort untill the people in the united States keep their Slaves that they have raised as dum as horses at home and Send those here who will be A help to improve the Country[.] as for Virginia as far as my knowledg extends I think She has Sent out the most Stupid Set of people in the place[.] while they have them their the cow hide is hardly ever off of their backs and when they come here they feal So free that they walk about from morning till evening with out doing one Stroke of work[.] by those means they becom to Sufer[.] people in the United States ort to have more regard for Liberia than to Send Such people here[.]4 Ceasar seems to be offering an extremely unforgiving account of his fellow, formerly enslaved immigrants in the name of an injunction to work harder, much as we saw Washington Watts McDonogh and Abraham Blackford do at the beginning of part I. From this perspective, he appears to us either as an aspiring colonial elite, an inheritor and advocate of a general Puritan work ethic, or an avatar of some future Liberian “talented tenth,” seeking what we saw Claude A. Clegg call “legalized personhood, civil rights, and a documented existence” in the prelude to part I. The Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 95

If we read further, however, we notice that Ceasar also criticizes “a grate many from North Carlina who are dregs in the place,” and that he celebrates “the most enterprising men that we have here[, who are] from Baltimo[re] and Charle[s]ton.” Reading these passages historically, we might argue that Ceasar is positing a distinction between black settlers from rural and urban areas in the United States, and that he—like the author of the letter with which I began this chapter—is quickly comprehending, albeit in judgmental terms, a key economic feature of Liberia’s first few years as a colony: that free and formerly enslaved rural blacks who immigrated with agricultural skills fared much less well in an unfamiliar climate on unfamiliar soil than those who came from urban areas like Baltimore and Charleston with merchant or trade skills.5 As one of those quotidian subjects whom social history has long culled from documents like letters and ship manifests, Ceasar here appears to us as an active historical agent who is consciously aware of his society even as he attempts to intervene in it politically—again, an embodiment of Clegg’s ideal individual. From this perspective, Ceasar’s letter offers a description of the material, or “concrete,” conditions faced by black settlers in Liberia. We, in turn, could draw on this description to theorize about the social consequences of those conditions. We might conclude, for instance, that the formerly enslaved settlers lacked a sufficiently developed set of economic or political skills to actualize their desire for freedom. Or we might argue that overly particularized identities— “formerly enslaved,” or “American,” or “African American”—led some settlers into conflict both with native West Africans, whose land they were appropriating, and with other, more universally minded settlers who more fully understood how to establish a modern nation-state of formally free citizen-subjects. None of these interpretations would be unreasonable, and some might be empirically correct. However, they all require us either to presume Ceasar desires to become a liberal individual, as Clegg suggests, or to read the letter as a description of “concrete” reality from which we, in turn, can theorize. By contrast, what if we read Ceasar’s letter as doing theoretical work of its own? How would such a reading proceed? We might begin by noticing that Ceasar writes with great care for the equivocal relationship between slavery and freedom—a relationship that the Liberia project was meant to make utterly clear—as well as with a deep concern about thinking through the potent joy and the potential suffering of those living that equivocation. When he claims that “while they have them their the cow hide is hardly ever off of their backs,” he decries the brutality of the slave masters’ treatment of the enslaved in the United States. When he continues with the words, “and when they come here they feal So free that they walk about from morning till evening with out doing 96 · Chapter 2

one Stroke of work,” he depicts a certain quotidian texture of Jubilee, a kind of improvised living on the streets of Monrovia, in which “feal[ing] So free” has an open-ended set of potential meanings ranging, for instance, from the refusal to work, to ecstatic celebration, to experimentation with mobility, to the reclamation of the rhythms of time itself. By linking these two utterances with a coordinating conjunction—“while they have them their the cow hide is hardly ever off of their backs and when they come here they feal So free”—Ceasar acknowledges that slavery and freedom, the “cow hide” and “feal[ing] So free,” are intimates of a sort: that they are recursively and differentially related to each other. Consequently, when he offers the stunning conclusion “by those means they becom to Sufer,” he amplifies an echo of the unfreedom of the “cow hide” in the midst of the new colony’s feeling of freedom. Indeed, the phrase one Stroke of work itself echoes the action of the cowhide when it strokes the enslaved. Having left behind the brutal rituals of embodied suffering under slavery, many immigrants to Liberia apparently improvised (“by those means”) with a freedom that exceeded any secure notion of being free (“So free”). Consequently, they “become to suffer” anew: which is not to say simply that suffering falls upon them from the outside, as it would upon a passive subject, but rather that they come to or arrive at sufferance, that they betake of sufferance, even that sufferance comes to suit them, without it having been an aim or a desire or a goal. Ceasar’s concept of sufferance elaborates the notion of “suffering gain and it remain” we encountered in the McKay letter with which I began this chapter. That is, in Ceasar’s representation of rural Virginian and North Carolinian immigrants becoming to suffer for feeling so free, we can detect an unstable boundary and an equivocal relationship between unfreedom and freedom, between the cowhide under chattel slavery in the United States and the feeling of freedom under the colonial conditions of Liberia—an equivocation upon which he sets out to speculate over the course of a two-year correspondence with Henry F. Westfall. Indeed, what better figure for this equivocal relationship is there than the archive composed of Ceasar’s letters themselves, six of which are known to have survived. All were written between 1834 and 1836, and all but one were written to Westfall, whom he sometimes addresses as “Dear Sir” and other times as “Dear Friend,” and who apparently rarely replied; as Ceasar complained in a letter from March 5, 1835: “I want to in form you that I hav received but two letters from you since I landed I hav written as many as a dozen to you you have no excuse for not writing.” Ceasar’s epistolary effort stages a thinking of freedom that is risky as well as insistently and unevenly recursive. That is, first, the letters themselves circulate—without any guarantee of arThe Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 97

rival or response—between Liberia and the United States; and second, in those letters Ceasar writes repeatedly of the equivocal relationship between freedom and unfreedom, as we saw in the June 2 letter, which cycles from slavery, to “fealing So free,” to renewed sufferance. This thinking of freedom is rarely teleological, either in the sense of a linear development or a strict dialectic. Ceasar does not simply represent Liberian freedom as underdeveloped, as a mere threshold to be crossed once proper work habits and governmental systems are established, although he does at times make these very claims in qualified terms. For instance, he writes in the June 2, 1834, letter, “that all that is wanting [in Liberia] is industry and good management and then we Shall be independent and can enjoy the comforts of life,” while he himself practices a missionary life that eschews economic industry and worldly comfort: “the world has not got my hart yet and I hope by help of god that it never will get the advantage of me for there is nothing in it worthy of our affection.” Alongside these occasional and qualified, developmentalist accounts of Liberian freedom, Ceasar also poses a more complex problem related to freedom: the settler-colonists (including, as we will see, even himself ) who “becom to Sufer,” in fact feel freedom too deeply rather than not enough: “they feal So free.” He thus suggests that black Americans who went to Liberia in its first few decades lived lives on the brink, on the edge, at the margin, or on the very verge of a life at once known and unknown, at once too close to slavery and too free. On the brink, Ceasar suggests to us, these settler-colonists improvised with freedom at great risk. But how, exactly, did they improvise?6 Ceasar repeatedly invokes this sense of living improvisationally when he reflects on the relationship between his enslaved life in the United States and his emancipated life in Liberia. In the first paragraph of the earliest of his extant letters, written on February 7, 1834, to Mr. David S. Haselden, Ceasar takes stock of his recent arrival in Monrovia after his fifty-six-day voyage during which he “was very Sick”: I hav Seen Agreate manys things Since I left home that I never would of Seen in Buchannon it brengs to mind the words of Solomon that the eye is not satisfide with Seeing nor the eare with hearing I must Say that I am as well pleased as I expeced to be in Liberia we hav most all had the fever and hav lost four of our number one woman about Seventy five two Children under twelve all So the Rev Mr Rigt one of our misenarys lost his wife and we may Say she is aloss to africa In this passage, Ceasar wonders at the world outside Buchannon—the town in Lewis County, Virginia, where he lived while enslaved—with both satisfaction 98 · Chapter 2

and regret.7 As his sentences flow seamlessly from “I am as well pleased as I expeced to be in Liberia” to “we hav most all had the fever and hav lost four of our number,” he links pleasure and loss in a kind of ongoing encounter. That encounter intensifies when he concludes this letter with an imagined return to the very slavery he left behind in Buchannon: “giv my respects to all inqueiring friends if god Spares me I want to come to america in afew years write to me as often as possble by So doing you will oblige your friend.” Faced with “Agreate many things” he had neither seen nor heard before, including a certain pleasure as well as no small amount of death, he delimits his formally free life in Liberia by imagining a return to the land of his enslavement. What kind of imagined delimitation is this? Ceasar’s reference to “the words of Solomon,” which come from Ecclesiastes 1:8, is telling here. Dating from the third century bce, Ecclesiastes depicts “the son of David, king in Jerusalem” (widely accepted to be Solomon) as a preacher or, perhaps, a teacher who speculates about the meaning of life as well as the possibilities for leading a good life.8 Initially, Ecclesiastes seems to decry the repetitive meaninglessness of life on earth, leading many to read this book as a dismissal of earthly life in favor of the spiritual. The first words of the book read: “The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains for ever” (Eccl. 1:1–4).9 However, the book later contemplates a pleasure-seeking life in the face of such meaninglessness, leading some to see in Ecclesiastes an Epicurean celebration of the carnal.10 Centuries of Jewish and Christian scholarly debates over how to read this book equivocate between these two readings.11 The full verse of Ecclesiastes 1:8 embodies this equivocation. It reads as follows: “All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.”12 Other translations of the verse shade the meaning differently. For instance, the King James Bible reads “All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing”; the Darby English Bible (1890) reads “All things are full of toil; none can express it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing”; the Basic Bible in English (1949) translation reads, “All things are full of weariness; man may not give their story: the eye has never enough of its seeing, or the ear of its hearing”; and the New International Version (1978) reads, “All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.” Does the verse suggest that no matter how much “man” sees or hears—and The Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 99

even though “all things are full of labour,” “toil,” or “weariness”—“man” still seeks the new? Or does it rather imply that such seeking is impossible for “man” to “utter” given his experience with the relentless limit of “labour,” “toil,” or “weariness”? Ceasar’s use of the passage elaborates this equivocation. On the one hand, he seems to stress a certain desire for the new by citing just the part of the verse that invokes the wonders of the world (“the eye is not satisfide with Seeing nor the eare with hearing”) and by introducing that citation with an appreciation of his “pleasure” in experiencing “Agreat manys things” outside Buchannon. Yet by immediately moving to an account of those who have succumbed to “the fever,” as so many settlers did in Liberia, he seems acutely aware of the very incessant passing away of generation after generation from which Ecclesiastes itself apparently deduces the vanity of life on earth.13 His concluding desire to return to the United States, in turn, would seem to delimit both the potency of the unknown world outside Buchannon and the formal freedoms of emancipation in Liberia in favor of the worldly familiarity of family and friends. Throughout his six letters, Ceasar repeatedly couples this sense of wonder at the wider world both with melancholy remembrances of all he has left or lost and with imaginative returns to the United States. In an April 1, 1834, letter to Westfall, he writes: Give my love to your wife and mothernlaw tell them to pray for me I often think of you all giv my love to Simon and Harison and to Bety tell them that I want them to have good education and good Religion Against14 I come to America Giv my lov to your Father and Step mother tell them I often think of them Tell them to pray for me Giv my love to the Boys and tell them if they ever want to see any thing to leave Buchannon giv my love to all the Children to Philip Reger with all his family and to Mr. Haselden and Goff and all inquireing friends With the phrase Against I come to America, Ceasar at once invokes and negates the possibility of his return. This letter itself—which is full of advice and salutations to missed family and friends—functions prosthetically, virtually delivering him to Buchannon and then negating that return by dismissing Buchannon as utterly devoid of “any thing” worth seeing. Ceasar’s June 2, 1834, letter to Westfall echoes this double gesture, expressing both his satisfaction with the world outside Buchannon and a certain longing for fond conversations: “There is not much Sickness in Liberia at this time god Still preserves our lives time would fail with me to tell all that I have Seen and heard Since I left Buchannon I often think about you the thousands of miles apart we have had Seet intercourse 100 · Chapter 2

together on Buchannon and I feal in hopes if god Spares us we will See each other in the flesh.” A few lines later he continues, “I want to get all the learning that I can for with out it we can do but little both in temperl and Spirituel matters your assistance to me will never be forgotten by me while I move on the globe as it respects my religious enjoyments I think I enjoy my Self as well as I ever have Since god Spoke peace to my Soul the more I See of the world the more I feal like Serving god.” In these passages, Ceasar both questions and celebrates his movement from servitude to his new life, effectively recasting that movement as ongoing and recursive rather than teleological or linear. Consequently, although as we have seen Ceasar criticizes “the most Stupid Set of people” who have arrived in Liberia from Virginia—those “who feal So free that they walk about from morning till evening with out doing one Stroke of work” and who “by those means . . . becom to Sufer”—he himself risks sufferance through his own mobile, improvised life as well as his imaginative, prosthetic returns. Certainly, he distinguishes between the refusal to work of “the most Stupid Set of people” and his own labor of “Serving god.” And yet, because his own freedom-seeking movements “on the globe” lead him repeatedly to imagine a return to the land of his servitude, those movements cannot be rigorously separated from the movements of the suffering immigrants who “feal So free that they walk about from morning til evening.” Sufferance haunts both kinds of mobility, making “work”—be it spiritual or earthly—a less determinative concept in Ceasar’s letters than it might at first seem. Rather than pursuing the march toward “legalized personhood, civil rights, and a documented existence” that we saw Claude A. Clegg impute to Liberian settlers in the prelude, then, Ceasar’s letters repeatedly invoke a recursive relationship between freedom and unfreedom. I have suggested that this recursivity delimits the formal freedom of emancipation in Liberia, and that it equivocates between a desire for the new (“Agreate manys things,” “all that I have Seen and heard Since I left Buchannon,” “the eye is not satisfide with Seeing nor the eare with hearing,” “while I move on the globe,” “the more I See of the world the more I feal like Serving god”) and a longing for a past at once alive and dead (“Buchannon,” “America,” “the United States,” “Give my love to,” “the fever,” “aloss to africa,” “if god Spares us we will See each other in the flesh”). Consequently, Ceasar’s improvised freedom is not simply a telos toward which a willful subject directly or dialectically moves, nor is it simply a form that an individual acquires as property or right, nor is it the guaranteed outcome of proper behavior. Rather, this freedom is an ongoing, vertiginous encounter with the unknown that also continually risks a return to servitude. Ceasar both reflects upon and enacts that risk by repeatedly returning—prosthetically, imaginatively—to The Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 101

the land of his servitude. His epistolary reflections speculate on freedom as itself a risky but irreducible component of any life we might call materially or concretely free. One reads this speculative encounter with freedom in the very form of Ceasar’s letters (figure 2.3). Neat, cursive words flow into even, straight lines of text that are precisely justified to both edges of the paper. Yet this careful crowding of words on a page is coupled with a strikingly breathless pace, for we encounter no punctuation. In fact, at the beginning of this section I interpolated five periods into a passage from Ceasar’s June 2, 1834, letter to help organize my own interpretation and to aid the contemporary reader’s comprehension, but that interpolation also suppresses the temporality of Ceasar’s handwriting. If punctuation distinguishes sentence from sentence, main clauses from subordinate ones, and subjects from predicates, shaping language into narrative by providing the temporality of beginnings and ends, pauses and continuations, then Ceasar’s ceaseless, unpunctuated sentences offer a figure for, which is also to say a certain practice of, his ongoing, vertiginous, risky encounter with freedom. His sentences materially and rhetorically enact the very recursive freedom his letter speculates upon.

“Tell Lydia” In his letter of April 1, 1834, to Westfall, Ceasar offers yet another qualification of his wonder at life outside Buchannon, this time by staging a particularly intimate return of sorts to the United States. Writing of someone connected to the Westfall family named Lydia, Ceasar jokes about sending her a gift, and then seriously commits to returning to the United States himself: Tell Lydia that their was A vessel from Jermany landed here About ten days Ago and I never saw better looking men in my life than some of them ware if She wants a Jerman and will write to me I will try to send hur one for I think they will suit hur Tell hur Above all things to get religion so that she may Save hur sole May the Lord bless you all and save you is my pray for Christ’s Sak I must come to A close I ever will feal bound to thank you for your attention to me in America I expect to return in two or three years if God Sparse me write to me as soon and as often as you can Excuse bad writing my pen is bad fare well Ceasar restages this scene two months later in his June 2, 1834, letter, in which he imagines personally bringing a German man back to America for Lydia: “tell Lydia that I expect She has all the learning She can get unless She goes to 102 · Chapter 2

Figure 2.3. Samson Ceasar to Henry F. Westfall, June 2, 1834. Accession number 10595. Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia.

Germany if She is not mared yet tell her to write to me and I will try and bring A German with me when I come to the United States.” Why is this fragment significant? We could answer that question in empirical terms. There was an active trade in textiles and other goods between Germany and Liberia in the early nineteenth century, so it is not surprising that Ceasar would have noticed the arrival of a German vessel at Monrovia in 1834. 15 Yet it is difficult to know exactly who this Lydia was, or why Ceasar would have attributed to her, even jokingly, a desire for German men. Westfall does not seem to have had a daughter named Lydia, and I have not found any evidence that Westfall enslaved someone named Lydia. There was, however, a Lydia Wilson from Lewis County, (West) Virginia—the county in which Buchannon was located—who was born in 1820, married to and widowed from Solomon P. Smith around 1837, and remarried in 1851 to John H. Westfall, a distant relative of Henry F. Westfall.16 Single and the right age in the early 1830s for Ceasar to joke about fixing her up and marrying her off, and apparently known well enough by the extended Westfall clan to marry John H. Westfall, Lydia Wilson may well be the Lydia of whom Ceasar writes. Given that the Westfalls were of Dutch-German ancestry, perhaps Ceasar’s association of Lydia with German men shows us how deeply knowledgeable he was about, and how attached he remained to, Westfall’s extended family and friends. Yet this knowledge and attachment also take a speculative form in his references to Lydia, a form through which freedom concresces, and thus a form to which we should also attend. Though he says that he feels ever bound to thank Westfall for his attention in America—an attention that culminated in an abrupt emancipation, deportation, and severance from a connection Ceasar’s epistolary efforts seek to renew—Ceasar nonetheless twice issues a directive, in the form of a command, to Westfall: “Tell Lydia. . . .” As such—in a manner reminiscent of the letter from Randall Kilby to which I referred in the prelude to part I—he at once reiterates, reverses, and recasts the relationship between himself, as former bondsman, and Westfall. This directive proposes an appropriation of Westfall’s very voice, demanding that Westfall speak for Ceasar to Lydia, that Westfall represent and perform—indeed, that Westfall temporarily embody—Ceasar’s interest in Lydia as well as his knowledge of Liberia, Germany, and Westfall’s own family and friends. By insistently appropriating Westfall’s voice, Ceasar does not only write of Lydia to Westfall. Nor does he only communicate concrete details about Liberia and Germany to Westfall. Nor does he only celebrate Liberian freedom. Nor does he only long for America. But also and rather, by directing Westfall to 104 · Chapter 2

perform a particular instance of colonial Liberia’s equivocal freedom, he enacts a reflection upon freedom itself. All of which leaves us with a challenge: to learn to read archives like Ceasar’s letters not simply as descriptions of the actual or confirmations of the ideal, but also and rather as speculative encounters with freedom’s ongoing, equivocal improvisation. Ceasar’s appropriation of Westfall’s voice is echoed in and even more elaborately enacted by another set of letters from colonial Liberia, to which I will now turn. When Nancy Ann Smith wrote to her former master in the 1840s, she speculated upon the meaning of freedom by staging an encounter between mastery and servitude. As we will see, Smith’s epistolary encounter posits a kind of freedom that does not await as an empirical accomplishment, a metaphysical “beyond,” a universal ideal, or even a restlessness overcome or out of which consciousness comes. Rather, Smith proffers an improvised epistolary performance of freedom as a possibility whose recursive relationship to slavery does not forestall but enacts and enables a critical apprehension of unfreedom as well as a future politics that has yet to arrive.

“Please Read This in the Presence of All Your Servants” On May 31, 1844, after nearly two years in the Liberian capital of Monrovia, Nancy Ann Smith wrote a letter to her former master John McDonogh, a Louisiana planter who had made his fortune as a young man with his own New Orleans mercantile business, and who was also the master of Washington Watts McDonogh and Henrietta Fuller, whose letters I discuss above.17 Addressing him as “Dear Sir,” she begins by informing him of her “good health” and requesting him “to give my best love to all my friends,” sixteen of whom she mentions by name. After also sending “love to Mrs. and Mr. Andrew Danford” and asking them to send her some molasses so that she can send back some of her preserves, she thanks McDonogh for sending along some seeds: “Yes, I have reason to rejoice, for you have done more for me than my father.”18 For the rest of the letter, Smith blends a certain recognition of her former master with a reevaluation of her life under slavery from the perspective of “being set at liberty” in Liberia. In the midst of this reevaluation, Smith makes a direct appeal to, and in the name of, McDonogh himself: “Please read this in the presence of all your servants, and tell them to look and see for themselves, that there is not another such man to be found under heaven as your master—no, there is none.” Smith then suddenly shifts her mode of address and writes directly to her enslaved friends and family: The Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 105

I suppose you think that I am free, and that you are in bondage, that is my reason for so saying; no, God forbid it. If that is your thoughts, you must all remember that I have been under the servitude of the same master; and I am no stranger to his ways and fashions. Yes, I thought the Sabbath was one of the most burthensome days I ever wished to see; but I find it was for my good, and if the same is going on now, I say it is the most, best and important thing that can be carried on by you; yes, I say never let your servants have too much pleasure on the Sabbath day, for it brings on sin and ruin. I have found, since I have been in Africa, that my custody on the Sabbath was for my good. Yes, and more than for my good, for it first taught me the way to God, and then enlightened my understandings: so all of you servants pay attention to your master, and go to school and learn. If such should not be obeyed, I think a little punishing would not be wrong. Smith then shifts her address back to McDonogh: I, myself, was sometimes missing out of school, when sometimes you would put me in the barn, but instead of putting me in the barn, you should have taken me out and given me a severe flogging for not attenting to what I have seen the use of, since I have been here. So if they refuse to go to school you must punish them, both old and young; for a man that is fifty is not too old to learn: but I suppose a man thinks himself too big to be among children. But if I, myself, needed understanding, I would go among dogs, if I thought they were capable of teaching me. While it might seem as if Smith’s letter confirms and reinforces McDonogh’s mastery, I would like to dwell on this passage for the rest of this section and suggest, to the contrary, that his mastery is undermined by her dissonant account of the ongoing, intimate relationships between the United States and Liberia, slavery and freedom, and mastery and servitude. When she writes of her “custody on the Sabbath” as “one of the most burdensome days I ever wished to see,” Smith refers to the complex system of gradual emancipation through which McDonogh put some of his slaves—“those who had faithfully served me,” as he wrote in one of his own published descriptions of this system.19 With stark calculations and contractual presumptions, McDonogh urged those “faithful” servants to work overtime for wages on their regular Sabbath Saturday afternoons off, and to bank those wages with McDonogh until they could “buy” the rest of Saturday from him. They were then advised to continue working for wages on Saturday until they could “buy” 106 · Chapter 2

their Fridays, and so on until they had purchased their entire week, and thus their freedom. According to McDonogh’s calculations, this process took about fifteen years per person, after which the emancipated could continue working to buy the freedom of their family members. Once free, they were deported to Liberia under the auspices of the acs; as McDonogh wrote, “I would never give freedom to a slave . . . to remain on the same soil with the white man.”20 McDonogh would then buy new slaves to replace those who had left. By this system seventy-nine people, including Smith, were emancipated and deported together, leaving New Orleans in early June 1842 on the ship Mariposa and arriving in Monrovia, via Norfolk, in July.21 Consider the passage I just quoted from Smith’s letter alongside a passage from McDonogh’s most extensive account of his colonization scheme: “A Letter of John McDonogh, on African Colonization,” which was published in the February 1843 issue of the African Repository and Colonial Journal.22 McDonogh’s own “Letter” lays out in elaborate, empirical detail how he “conferred” on his slaves their “freedom and happiness in Liberia, without loss or the cost of a cent to myself ” (48, 52). He defends what he calls his “experiment” (53) against proslavery concerns that it might be abolitionist by describing the moment he first presented the plan to his slaves: “When thus satisfied that the project was good in itself, and worthy of trial for various solid reasons, I determined to lay my plan before them, and explain it in all its bearings . . . This I did when church service was over, on a Sabbath afternoon observing to them, that having their welfare and happiness in this world, as well as the next, much at heart, I was in consequence, greatly desireous of serving them and their children; that in furtherance of those views and desires, I had a plan to propose to them” (49). So we are faced with a series of staged encounters: McDonogh’s supposed Sabbath afternoon address; McDonogh’s “letter” of 1843, which restages that address; and Smith’s own address, in her 1844 letter, both to McDonogh and to her enslaved kin. Whereas McDonogh’s “Letter” claims simply to describe a direct encounter with “you” (his slaves) for the edification of his intended readers (“the slaveholders of the State” [48]), Smith’s letter reaches out to the very same “you” through McDonogh, explicitly foregrounding McDonogh’s mediation: “Please read this in the presence of all your servants.” But—as we saw previously in the prelude and chapter 1 in the letters of Randall Kilby, H. W. Ellis, and A. B. Hooper, as well as in Ceasar’s letters in this chapter—her request is also a claim and an act. That is, she claims his voice in order to address her friends and family. Even if he refuses Smith’s request and reads the letter only to himself, McDonogh must perform Smith, he must embody her voice. Her apparently graThe Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 107

cious appeal to him is thus also an incitement of him; she provokes and directs his actions. Her letter can thus be read as a complex restaging of McDonogh’s own “Sabbath afternoon” address to his slaves, an address McDonogh himself describes in his own “Letter.” For McDonogh, freedom has a precise and calculable meaning. As he puts it in his 1843 “Letter,” instead of “mak[ing] you a gift of your freedom, which few masters could afford to do,” he proposes a rationalized exchange of time for wages, what he calls a “contract and agreement” into which the unfree somehow freely enter to produce their own freedom (52). We might ask, how could the unfree freely enter into such a “project,” whose very “object” is “freedom and happiness in Liberia” (52)? How could the supposed outcome of this “experiment” also be its precondition? What is this freedom that exists prior to freedom? McDonogh explains: “It cannot succeed if the most unlimited confidence and esteem does not mutually exist, as well on the side of the master as of the servant” (50). In a striking echo of the “Lordship and Bondage” section of G. W. F. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)—to which I will turn later in this chapter—McDonogh posits a scene of recognition and desire that is at once the condition of possibility for, and the substance of, the freedom this “contract and agreement” entails. Unlike Hegel’s lord and bondsman, however, for this master the “contract” “will cost him nothing . . . and afford him at the same time such high gratification, in knowing that he has contributed to making many human beings happy” (48), whereas for McDonogh’s enslaved the “contract” offers “your freedom in Liberia, in the land of your fathers” (50). By contrast, Smith’s letter stages a different sort of freedom, one McDonogh fails to master, one that delimits his mastery. In the passage I quoted at the beginning of this section, as she challenges her kin to consider her evaluation of McDonogh she also takes issue with a presumptive meaning of freedom: “I suppose you think that I am free, and that you are in bondage, that is my reason for so saying; no, God forbid it.” Freedom in Liberia is here transformed from a task pragmatically realized by McDonogh’s colonization scheme into a faulty supposition of McDonogh’s that Smith negates. Yet this negation is not in the interest of denying that there is freedom in Liberia. To the contrary, having celebrated “being set at liberty” from McDonogh’s servitude, Smith then makes the case that her struggles through McDonogh’s system had a potency yet to be realized: “It first taught me the way to God, and then enlightened my understandings.” Working prescriptively, if you will, Smith negates the supposition you are free in Liberia when it is spoken from America but leaves open the possibility of another iteration of being “free in Liberia.” This possibility is certainly equivocal when compared with McDonogh’s calculable emancipations, yet it is through this 108 · Chapter 2

very equivocation that Smith’s notion of freedom negates McDonogh’s calculations and improvises its own potential. As I argue above, settlers like Washington Watts McDonogh, Abraham Blackford, and Ceasar reflected—with some disdain—on the many ways black settler-colonials live their newfound freedom (“woundering,” “getting drunking,” “laying about,” “stealing”), and in the process privileged their own presumptive “industriousness.” Here Smith elaborates a theory of freedom’s potentiality without qualifying or preempting that potential with normative claims about idleness, criminality, and industry. Importantly, whereas John McDonogh insisted to the enslaved that Liberia was “the land of your fathers,” Smith makes no reference to Africa as an ancestral homeland. To the contrary, Smith writes to her enslaved friends and relatives—again through McDonogh, claiming and directing his voice—that Liberian freedom has not made her a “stranger” to the “ways and fashions” of his bondage. Since the word stranger in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries also could refer to a “foreigner,” when Smith writes “I am no stranger” rather than “I was no stranger,” she effectively claims that bondage in America is still to some extent her home. As we saw in chapter 1, references to Africa as a homeland by emancipated black settlers in colonial and early national Liberia are relatively rare, whereas white colonizationists incessantly invoke this racialized rhetoric of return; when the settlers do imagine a return or reference a homeland, almost invariably they are referring to the United States.23 For instance, in the only other letter of Smith that I have found, written to McDonogh on July 3, 1848, four years after the letter I discuss above, she expresses a desire to visit the land of her bondage: “I would be happy to come and see you but I am afraid I would be interrupted by the white [torn: people?] but if they would not you will be kind enough [torn] me no so i can come.”24 Thus although Smith urges her enslaved friends and family to participate in McDonogh’s system, she also admits to them that the Liberian freedom it offers remains paradoxically and recursively bound to slavery. When Smith calls McDonogh’s bondage “his ways and fashions” in the passage I quoted at the beginning of this section, she may be referencing the capricious, personal politics of plantation slavery. However, we can also consider the phrase his ways and fashions in light of Smith’s 1848 letter to McDonogh. That letter sounds a much more impatient, even desperate tone: “I hav writen to you several times and [. . .] not had the pleasure of received one frome you as yet.” Whereas the 1844 letter asked for nothing but an exchange of molasses for preserves with the Danfords, the 1848 letter, although only half as long, makes seven separate requests for “any things” that would help Smith survive economically. Also in 1848, Smith twice refers to leaving Liberia and returning The Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 109

to the United States. First, in the passage I just quoted, she expresses her own desire to visit the United States as well as a sense of being detained in Liberia by its white rulers. Later, she acknowledges that her brother has already returned to the United States: “my Brother I hav not seen here for tiw years he is gone to the states but I do not no where he is.” It would seem that, as was true for most settlers, high mortality rates coupled with deep poverty, the capricious control of white acs officials, and near constant conflict with West Africans had taken its toll on Smith by 1848. In this context, the salutation and the closing of her 1848 letter take on a more direct air, without the politesse of 1844: in 1848 Smith addresses McDonogh as “Dear Father,” and closes with “I hav nothing more at presant but re main your daughter, Nancy Ann Sm[torn].” Many of the other seventy-nine black settlers emancipated and deported by McDonogh also address him in their letters as “Dear Father” and conclude with “your son” or “your daughter.” Though possibly a convention of plantation society’s paternalistic social relations, this familiarity is just as likely a recognition of McDonogh’s blood relation to, and hence his sexual coercion of, many of his former slaves, possibly including Smith’s mother. Read in this light, Smith’s 1844 challenge to McDonogh’s private punishment of her when she skipped school—“instead of putting me in the barn, you should have taken me out and given me a severe flogging”—makes “the barn” visible as a site of potential sexual coercion.25 By making McDonogh speak her 1844 letter’s words to his slaves, then, Smith at once invokes and splits his voice of mastery, particularizing his claim to universality. That is, by making McDonogh ventriloquize an acknowledgment of the “ways and fashions” of his bondage to his slaves, Smith does not simply confirm or affirm his power. Rather, she effectively instrumentalizes him, turning the tables on his own social and sexual mastery. But this table turning is neither a repetition nor a reversal of his power; Smith neither simply assumes nor simply negates his mastery. Rather, her epistolary encounter with McDonogh at once writes to, through, of, and around him, claiming a freedom not reducible to the freedom McDonogh proffered. To put it schematically: her letter names his freedom as a servitude; it then claims a potent if equivocal freedom from his servitude; and finally it names that claiming as itself a crucial element of a freedom that nonetheless maintains a recursive relationship to slavery. In addition, Smith eschews the calculable and affective terms of McDonogh’s contract. What McDonogh calls an exchange offering “gratification” for the master and “freedom . . . in the land of your fathers” for the slaves, Smith calls a “custody on the Sabbath” and “one of the most burdensome days” that was also, paradoxically, “for my good”: “I have found, since I have been in Africa, that my custody on the Sabbath was for my good.” Strikingly, she does not say the 110 · Chapter 2

contract itself made her realize that McDonogh’s system was in fact and of itself a benefit instead of a custody or burden. Rather, she claims that remembering the custody and burden while in Africa allowed her to find such a “good.” Thus Smith’s “good” seems to consist neither in the immediate experience of laboring on the Sabbath nor in a definitive break from slavery to freedom nor in a final return from America to an African homeland. Rather, the “good” to which she refers seems to be her imaginative return to U.S. slavery from Liberian freedom, a return that leads her to understand both slavery and freedom differently, and further leads her to stress the continual entanglements of each in the other. As we gleaned in the prelude to part I from the letters of Washington Watts McDonogh, Abraham Blackford, and Henrietta Fuller, a certain ongoing, recursive relationship between U.S. slavery and Liberian freedom restages and renews what Fuller calls “the word Free.” What is more, Smith’s retrospective, recursive good is itself cast as a turn or trope that does not so much consolidate her individuality as a contractual subject as it takes Smith outside herself: “more than for my good,” she emphasizes, McDonogh’s system “first taught me a way to God” and then “enlightened my understandings.” Smith turns away from herself, troping on the “way to God” and to the light of “understanding,” and thereby offering her own answer to Watts McDonogh’s question of “what a change has taken place.” Finally, lest one still think Smith idealizes John McDonogh or his system when she suggests that “a little punishing” of slaves who fail to “go to school and learn” “would not be wrong,” notice how she then declares that she just as well “would go among dogs” for this kind of education. By the end of her address to “all your servants,” then—an address she wants McDonogh himself to speak—Smith has effectively transformed McDonogh from the best of all masters to a preferred dog among dogs. Smith’s epistolary encounter challenges McDonogh’s insistence on the direct and singular telling of freedom’s story.26 Her restaging of McDonogh’s address to his slaves about his plan for emancipation and deportation speculates on freedom as an ongoing, recursive, and tropic encounter (with the “ways and fashions” of servitude, with “the way to God,” with “enlightened understandings”) rather than as an event or an accomplishment (of return, manumission, independence, or citizenship). Her freedom is thus neither the achieved outcome of a formal system of emancipation like McDonogh’s nor an abstract and universal principle earned by the slave who esteems her master enough to go through his motions. Nor is it what Clegg calls “legalized personhood, civil rights, and a documented existence.”27 Nor is it an unfettered ability to create oneself anew through what Hartman calls, critically, “sheer will.”28 Her freedom is rather the continuing possibility of freedom, at once radically ungiven and The Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 111

recursively bound to the ways and fashions of unfreedom. This possibility is conditioned by the instance of its improvised epistolary performance, an instance paradoxically characterized by returns to slavery as well as openings to as-yet-uncodified ways of life.

Hegel, Liberia As speculative enactments of freedom written during the early nineteenth century, the letters of Samson Ceasar and Nancy Ann Smith prompt us to take a revisionist look at the period’s most widely recognized philosophy of freedom, that of G. W. F. Hegel. Susan Buck-Morss’s influential critique of Hegel in a black Atlantic context sets the terms any such return to Hegel must address. Buck-Morss makes a powerful case for the debt Hegel’s theoretical formulations on speculative knowledge owe to the Haitian Revolution.29 By carefully recovering a long-neglected intellectual history, she shows how “the idea for the dialectic of lordship and bondage came to Hegel in Jena in the years 1803–05 from reading the press,” especially the German-language paper Minerva, which extensively covered events in Haiti between 1804 and 1805 (49). Buck-Morss then asks a consequential question: “why is it of more than arcane interest to retrieve from oblivion this fragment of history, the truth of which has managed to slip away from us? There are many possible answers” (74). I interrupt this quotation mid-sentence because it brings us to the threshold of a decision anyone who is involved in archival research must make, and does make, though not always with Buck-Morss’s salutary acknowledgment of the question itself. There are indeed “many possible answers” to the question of what to do with our recovered archives, and though Buck-Morss offers one quite specific answer in the rest of her book, of which I will be critical below, she nonetheless offers this moment of decision as a moment of capacious possibility I take up with my archives in The Brink of Freedom. Ultimately for Buck-Morss, Haiti’s “concrete” radicalism opposes Hegel’s ultimately reactionary speculations. From the less familiarly heroic Liberian side of the Atlantic, however, this opposition between the concrete and the speculative does not hold. In this section I show how the epistolary archive of Liberia speculates in critical apposition, rather than in simple opposition, to Hegel. Returning to the quotation from Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History that I interrupted midsentence, consider Buck-Morss’s answer to her own question: “There are many possible answers, but one is surely the potential for rescuing the idea of universal human history from the uses to which white domination has put it” (74). Crucially, her “rescue” of “the idea of universal human history” 112 · Chapter 2

involves “juxtaposing” what she calls “Hegel’s moment of clarity of thought” to what she calls “realities,” “moments of clarity in action,” and “the concrete meaning of freedom” supplied by Afro-diasporic histories like the Haitian Revolution (75). The latter, she insists, are more “actual,” “real,” “historical,” “visible,” “realized,” and—her strongest claim—“universal” than Hegel’s speculative thought; as Buck-Morss puts it, “The actual and successful revolution of Caribbean slaves against their masters is the moment when the dialectical logic of recognition becomes visible as the thematics of world history, the story of the universal realization of freedom . . . Theory and reality converged at this historical moment. Or, to put it in Hegelian language, the rational—freedom— became real” (59–60). By contrast, she claims, Hegel suppresses the actual in his zeal for philosophy, whose universality in turn rings as hollow as an empty shell. Hegel’s “enthusiasm” for his “philosophical system” and his dismissal of the empirical lead directly to the Eurocentric racism Hegel famously serves up in his Philosophy of History (115). Thus, whereas there are “many possible answers” to the question of what to do with the archives contemporary historians recover from and for Atlantic history, there is only one possible answer to the question of what Hegel’s speculative philosophy means: While few today would define themselves as Hegelian, his assumptions are still widely shared. Violent political action determines what matters in the collective history of humanity. The idea of progress justifies the imposition of democracy on others as a military project. The division of humanity into advanced, civilized peoples and those who are backward and barbaric has not been abandoned. The purportedly secular schema of universal history as one path, forged by the developed (Christian) nations, which the whole world is destined to follow, is still ingrained in Western political discourse. Cultural racism has not been overcome. (118) Buck-Morss’s sharp juxtaposition between Hegel’s “thought” and Haiti’s “action” thus makes speculative thinking the impoverished purview of the great philosopher and Haiti’s archived actions at once richer and clearer, more real and more actual than such thinking. This juxtaposition is repeatedly reinforced in Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History by a figure for Haitian action that we have already encountered, and that has become a commonplace in contemporary social theory: the “concrete.” Consider these passages scattered throughout the text: Universal history refers more to method than content. It is an orientation, a philosophical reflection grounded in concrete material (x); Hegel’s The Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 113

philosophical system may climb to abstract levels (a student who heard his early lectures at Jena claimed he “could make absolutely nothing of them, had no idea what was being discussed, ducks or geese”), but his texts are full of the kind of historically concrete detail that theorists with a materialist bent like myself find particularly appealing . . . (6); the truly productive, “universal” experience of reading Hegel is not through a summary of the total and totalizing system, but through the liberation that one’s own imagination can achieve by encountering dialectical thinking in its most concrete exemplification (16); what if every time that the consciousness of individuals surpassed the confines of present constellations of power in perceiving the concrete meaning of freedom, this were valued as a moment, however transitory, of the realization of absolute spirit? (75) (all italics mine) “Concrete” has many synonyms in Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History: “everyday experience,” “practice,” “historical context,” “facts,” “real slaves revolting successfully against real masters,” “historical realities,” “historical events,” “literal reference,” “the actual and successful revolution of Caribbean slaves against their masters,” “revolutionary radicalism,” “lived experience.”30 But there is a curious paradox in the fact that, for Buck-Morss, such apparently empirical terms need to be supplemented by a figure like the “concrete.” Indeed, Buck-Morss draws on the work of Pierre-Franklin Tavarès and Jacques d’Hondt to suggest that Hegel’s involvement with Freemasonry led him to suppress all references to the “concrete” in an effort to dissimulate his participation in a secret society with revolutionary ideals (17): “Freemasonry is part of our story at every turn,” Buck-Morss writes in reference to d’Hondt’s work (62). I want to suggest that a certain, unacknowledged masonry figures in Buck-Morss’s own text, one that cements the opposition between historical facticity and philosophical speculation, excluding quotidian Atlantic world texts like the ones I consider throughout The Brink of Freedom from the latter. In Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History, Haitian action promises to save history from mere thought, to teach us, in effect, a freedom set in stone. But what does it mean to set freedom in stone? “Concrete” derives in part from the Latin adjective concretus, meaning “compact,” and the Latin infinitive concrescere, meaning “to grow together,” “to harden,” “to thicken,” “to condense,” “to curdle,” “to stiffen,” “to congeal.” In the hands of seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century logicians and grammarians, the English term concrete often referred to a word directly denoting a quality, as opposed to a word abstractly denoting the idea of a quality; the Oxford English Dictionary gives the 114 · Chapter 2

felicitous example of white, a concrete term, as opposed to whiteness, an abstract term. However, during this period concrete was increasingly used to mean things as opposed to qualities, states, or actions, such that the active quality of the term following from its Latin origins—the sense in which it marked a process by which disparate and fluid elements come together—was deemphasized in favor of an emphasis on the result of such a process, the “solid” outcome. This led logicians and grammarians eventually to abandon the term concrete altogether as, paradoxically, too general and abstract.31 The modern, English use of the term to refer to a construction material carries with it this tension between a process of coming together and a resultant solid material: concrete is produced by a chemical admixture in which fine and coarse aggregates like sand or gravel combine with, among various other elements, water and the binding agent cement, itself a mixture of various oxides. When Buck-Morss uses the figure concrete to mean irreducibly real and potentially universal “things,” “events,” or “facts,” she occludes the question of how any given “concrete” element has “grown together.” That is, when she privileges Haitian “reality” over Hegelian “abstraction” she sets Haitian freedom in stone without accounting for the accretion or concrescence—which is to say the processes of combination or the agents of agglutination—of that very freedom.32 At times in Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History, Buck-Morss does temper her enthusiasm for the concrete by rejecting “strict, positivist empiricism . . . because facts without concepts are meaningless” (110) and claiming “that facts are important not as data with fixed meanings, but as connective pathways that can continue to surprise us. Facts should inspire imagination rather than tying it down” (13–14). In this sense, such facts are like the sand or gravel of concrete: apparently dispersed and disorganized elements that can take many potential forms once they are connected or combined with “imagination”; which is to say, these forms are like the “porous”—a term Buck-Morss also frequently invokes— channels and pockets within set concrete.33 So to rescue universal history, to concretize dialectical thinking, to set freedom in stone, she admits, we need “concepts” like “imagination” added to the mix, especially if we are “to reimagine universal history out of bounds of exclusionary conceptual frames” (110). As Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History unfolds, Buck-Morss gives an increasingly specific prescription for how to mix “concepts” with “facts”—how, that is, “to reimagine universal history,” to set freedom in stone. This prescription is most evident in two crucial passages late in her text. Consider the first passage: It is in the discontinuities of history that people whose culture has been strained to the breaking point give expression to a humanity that goes The Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 115

beyond cultural limits. And it is in our empathic identification with this raw, free, and vulnerable state, that we have a chance of understanding what they say. Common humanity exists in spite of culture and its differences. A person’s nonidentity with the collective allows for subterranean solidarities that have a chance of appealing to universal, moral sentiment, the source today of enthusiasm and hope. (133) And then, consider the second passage: The politics of scholarship I am suggesting is neutrality, but not of the nonpartisan, “truth is in the middle” sort; rather, it is a radical neutrality that insists on the porosity of the space between enemy sides, a space contested and precarious, to be sure, but free enough for the idea of humanity to remain in view. Between uniformity and indeterminacy of historical meaning, there is a dialectical encounter with the past. In extending the boundaries of our moral imagination, we need to see a historical space before we can explore it. (150) Here, the real historical event is not the self-evident and irreducible actualization of freedom—not “real slaves revolting successfully against real masters” as such—as it had seemed earlier in Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History, but rather the raw material of freedom, its sand or gravel. How does this raw material become concrete? These passages are so saturated in the figurative that they provide both some of the most fecund and some of the most inscrutable occasions of Buck-Morss’s text. We might say that the historian mixes “universal, moral sentiment” and “the idea of humanity,” prepared formally and in advance, with Haiti’s “raw, free, and vulnerable state.” Or perhaps we ought to say that in certain, special instances the historical actors themselves distill (“give expression to”) “universal, moral sentiment” and “the idea of humanity” out of the “raw, free, and vulnerable state” in which they are engulfed, and that the historian’s theoretical work consists in a certain “empathic identification with,” which is also a certain see[ing] of, that distillation. Either way, and granting the potentially productive fecundity of these formulations, Buck-Morss’s final admixture or distillation is strikingly Hegelian in a certain sense: the raw, free, and vulnerable facts have combined with the formal and secure concepts “universal, moral sentiment” and “the idea of humanity” to generate the promise of freedom’s future. Has Haiti—which in the first part of Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History was so clearly juxtaposed to Hegel, like content to form, like the actual to the abstract—become Hegel’s Haiti once again? Has the opposition between Hegel and Haiti been overcome, 116 · Chapter 2

the space between them filled dialectically, forming a solid mass in the form of a secure telos? No doubt there are still differences between Hegel and Haiti, small voids and gaps that will allow Buck-Morss’s admixture to maintain its “porosity,” to remain susceptible to splitting or cracking, and thus to allow for the kind of sharp distinctions between Hegel and Haiti that Buck-Morss insists upon throughout Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History. But these differences become increasingly difficult to discern in her text. In fact, I want to suggest that we would have to work hard to distinguish this radically neutral admixture of universal, moral sentiment with the raw and free vulnerability of Haitian facticity from the very Hegelianism Buck-Morss decries. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, there is one more, crucial ingredient to Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History’s admixture, an ingredient that also resembles a certain Hegelianism, an ingredient that brings Buck-Morss’s fortified distinction between Hegel and Haiti well beyond the point of collapse. Strikingly, and with the quick work of a couple of paragraphs, she points out that freedom ultimately failed to set in Haiti when it became “unambiguously ethno-national”; that is, and these are my words, when it got too black. Soon after the revolution, and these are Buck-Morss’s words, Haiti gave up on the requisite “common humanity” in favor of “‘black dignity and black power,’ ” which allowed “the contribution to the cause of universal humanity that emerged in this event to slip from view” (146–47). As with Hegel’s infamous Philosophy of History, a too visible, too vigorous, too particularized blackness here names the limit of, and the condition of impossibility for, universal freedom.34 Sibylle Fischer offers a powerful counterpoint to Buck-Morss’s argument here, by attending to the political performativity of the claim to blackness in the Haitian Constitution of 1805: Disrupting any biologistic or racialist expectations, they make “black” a mere implication of being Haitian and thus a political rather than a biological category . . . The very act of calling all Haitians black, regardless of their phenotype, would for a long time be recognized as a radical break from the entrenched practice of distinguishing, at the very least, between mulattoes, blacks, and whites. It is a form of violent rupture that is not consummated in the singular act of destruction. Instead, in the repetition of speech, the memory of a struggle remains alive, as well as a hope for a different future. Through the act of renaming, the constitution of 1805 thus performs one of the most troubling paradoxes of modern universalist politics—the paradox that the universal is typically derived through a generalization The Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 117

of one of the particulars. Calling all Haitians, regardless of skin color, black is a gesture like calling all people, regardless of their sex, women: it both asserts egalitarian and universalist institutions and puts them to a test by using the previously subordinated term of the opposition as the universal term.35 The political performativity of the paradox Fischer foregrounds is less resolutely dialectical than either the Hegelianism Buck-Morss criticizes or the universalism she herself proffers as a desirable alternative to the “unambiguously ethno-national.” Repetition with a difference, ongoing struggle over the terms of life, and the invocation of an open-ended, future anteriority characterize Fischer’s interpretation of political blackness. By the end of Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History, Hegel emerges as a thinker of a salutary but too-abstract concept of universal history that the historian ought to find fully realized, or concretized, in historical events understood as empirical realizations of the too-abstract concept. For Buck-Morss, it is the finding of that realization that is the task of a universal historian. That is, the historian identifies raw if vulnerable acts of freedom, determines whether those acts have been properly mixed with the concepts of “universal, moral sentiment” or “the idea of humanity,” and then evaluates the extent to which that admixture has set freedom in stone—without, as it were, becoming too colored. Thus, historical events are understood as irreducibly real and actual, raw and potent. They are natural resources that, when properly universalized, can overcome overly particularized cultural collectives, be they French-colonial or black “ethno-nationalist.”36 What if we returned, then, to the moment of possibility and decision BuckMorss so effectively offers us in the wake of her singular efforts to recover Haiti from the intellectual history of Hegel: recalling the passage from Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History with which I began this section, “why is it of more than arcane interest to retrieve from oblivion this fragment of history, the truth of which has managed to slip away from us? There are many possible answers” (74). What if one other answer were this: fragments of history, like the Haitian fragments Buck-Morss culls from surprisingly transatlantic texts like the German-language journal Minerva Hegel was fond of reading, are not simply the vulnerable, empirical bearers of raw, real, and actual struggles for universal freedom from which philosophers like Hegel cull bad speculative abstractions and in which we, as historians or cultural critics, can see a good and secure universal humanity that need not slip into particularisms like “black power and black dignity.” Nor, as David Scott has argued so well, are such fragments 118 · Chapter 2

solely populated by recognizably revolutionary heroes setting out to seize the state or even to reform political structures, until they tragically fail to live up to their heroic promise to redeem the universal and, consequently, bring about our disillusioned renunciations.37 Rather, what would it mean to read such fragments as speculative encounters with freedom in their own right? What if, in and through all their apparently descriptive detail, such fragments could be said to theorize? We would then be charged with reading for such speculative, theoretical work in and through what we are so adept at finding and knowing as the empirical, the raw, the concrete. We might even be charged with rereading Hegel’s own speculative thinking from the perspective of those speculative fragments. In the rest of this chapter, I take up this charge. Buck-Morss focuses her criticism on the brief but perhaps most famous part of the Phenomenology of Spirit, the nine-page section entitled “Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage,” published just twenty-seven years before Ceasar wrote his first letter.38 For Buck-Morss, as for many others, the stakes of this section of the Phenomenology are clear: although Hegel never mentions what Buck-Morss calls “real slaves” (50), he does portray what he calls a “life-and-death struggle” (114) for recognition between two unequal moments, aspects, or shapes of self-consciousness: the lord and the bondsman.39 In the Phenomenology, the bondsman emerges from this struggle with a certain “freedom of self-consciousness,” whereas the lord remains locked in a futile dependence on the recognition of the bondsman. Of the lord, Hegel writes, the object in which the lord has achieved his lordship has in reality turned out to be something quite different from an independent consciousness. What now really confronts him is not an independent consciousness, but a dependent one. He is, therefore, not certain of being-for-self as the truth of himself. On the contrary, his truth is in reality the unessential consciousness and its unessential action.40 Of the bondsman, Hegel writes that “through work, however, the bondsman becomes conscious of what he truly is. . . . Through this rediscovery of himself by himself, the bondsman realized that it is precisely in his work wherein he seemed to have only an alienated existence that he acquires a mind of his own.”41 The bondsman’s “freedom of self-consciousness,” it is important to remember, is neither simply having a mind of one’s own nor can it be called self-will: “Selfwill is the freedom which entrenches itself in some particularity and is still in bondage.”42 Rather, it is a kind of independence that Hegel associates with Stoicism and mere “freedom in thought [that] has only pure thought as its truth, a The Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 119

truth lacking the fullness of life.”43 However, unlike the lord’s, this bondsman’s independence remains open to “the otherness within itself ” and thus is capable of encountering “the living reality of freedom itself ” by undoing itself, restlessly and ongoingly.44 For Buck-Morss, this is an abstract depiction of a concrete history about which Hegel learned from Haiti: “real slaves revolting successfully against real masters.”45 Many readers of Hegel have questioned the fruitfulness of reading what Hegel calls moments, aspects, or shapes—the lord and the bondsman—as historical individuals.46 Certainly, however, the intellectual history Buck-Morss so carefully outlines in the first part of Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History gives ample reason to read this brief section of the Phenomenology as, at least in part, an allegory of chattel slavery and its overthrow. Yet such a reading of the Phenomenology also relies on a sharp and static binary between the actual (“real slaves”) and the abstract (Hegel), in which the former becomes the privileged and essentialized source for the impoverished latter. Additionally, such a reading diverts our attention from other aspects of the Phenomenology in particular, and other aspects of the nineteenth-century struggle over the meaning of freedom in general: a struggle, I have been arguing, to which Afro-diasporic subjects like Ceasar and Smith contributed not only “actual,” “raw,” “vulnerable,” and “concrete” events, but also theoretical work and speculative reflection. By contrast and from the perspective of Ceasar’s and Smith’s epistolary reflections on freedom as a recursive, ongoing, vertiginous encounter—reflections that are themselves enacted by Ceasar’s ceaseless sentences, his appropriation of Westfall’s voice, and Smith’s shift of address through McDonogh—consider an aspect of the Phenomenology of Spirit that is often overlooked in favor of the lordship and bondage discussion. As I mentioned in the introduction, throughout this text Hegel distinguishes the speculative thinking he advocates (das begreifende Denken or das spekulative Denken) from other, nonspeculative modes of thinking—such as abstraction, formalism, or empiricism—by comparing the way each constructs and interprets the syntax and grammar of a sentence.47 For instance, early in the preface he writes: In such propositions [of nonspeculative thinking] the True is only posited immediately as Subject, but is not presented as the movement of reflecting itself into itself. . . . The Subject is assumed as a fixed point to which, as their support, the predicates are affixed by a movement belonging to the knower of this Subject, and which is not regarded as belonging to the fixed point itself; yet it is only through this movement that the content could be represented as Subject.48 120 · Chapter 2

This passage suggests that nonspeculative thinking proceeds mechanically and teleologically, from subject to predicate, where the subject is a fixed and abstract ground whose content or meaning is defined or revealed as what is given in the predicate, and where the predicate can be replaced by other, competing predicates to make other, formally identical but substantively different propositions. Kant was an exemplary practitioner of this kind of formalist thinking, Hegel argues, and Kant’s followers have exacerbated the worst of his nonspeculative tendencies: This formalism, of which we have already spoken generally and whose style we wish here to describe in more detail, imagines that it has comprehended and expressed the nature and life of a form when it has endowed it with some determination of the schema as a predicate. The predicate may be subjectivity or objectivity, or, say, magnetism, electricity, etc., contraction or expansion, east or west, and the like. Such predicates can be multiplied to infinity, since in this way each determination or form can again be used as a form or moment in the case of an other, and each can gratefully perform the same service for an other. In this sort of circle of reciprocity one never learns what the thing itself is, nor what the one or the other is.49 The problem with letting “detail” stand as the determinate elaboration of a stable form, Hegel here suggests, can be thought of as a problem of the nonspeculative sentence: a problem, that is, of allowing a fundamentally stable, putatively universal subject to be filled by an infinite variety of particularities or predicates. This subject is problematic because it stands as an unquestionable form that merely awaits a full or more perfectly detailed elaboration. As Gillian Rose describes the nonspeculative, propositional form of which Hegel was critical, “The grammatical subject is considered a fixed bearer of variable accidents, the grammatical predicates, which yield the content of the proposition.”50 From this perspective, the proposition “humanity’s universality is revealed in the Haitian Revolution,” which we could attribute to Buck-Morss, is a nonspeculative proposition; it treats the subject “human universality” as a stable, abstract ground to be fleshed out by or distilled from the predicate’s ever-changeable particularity. At one moment, the predicate can be properly exemplary of “human universality”; at another moment, it can be too “unambiguously ethno-national,” and thus readily—or, to use Hegel’s somewhat sarcastic term, gratefully—replaceable by another, particular predicate. To this Hegel opposes the speculative proposition, which understands the subject and predicate reflexively, as if they mirrored each other (the term specuThe Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 121

lative/spekulative itself coming from the Latin speculum, meaning “mirror” or “image”). Mirroring here can be taken not in the sense of copying or mimicking, but rather in the sense of an active relation that reveals both differences and surprising if fleeting unities. Consider this passage distinguishing nonspeculative thinking from speculative thinking, again by using the sentence as a figure for thinking itself: This Subject [of nonspeculative thinking] constitutes the basis to which the content is attached, and upon which the movement runs back and forth. Speculative [begreifendes] thinking behaves in a different way. Since the Notion is the object’s own self, which presents itself as the comingto-be of the object, it is not a passive Subject inertly supporting the Accidents [of a predicate]; it is, on the contrary, the self-moving Notion which takes its determinations back into itself. In this movement the passive Subject itself perishes; it enters into the differences and the content, and constitutes the determinateness, i.e., the differentiated content and its movement, instead of remaining inertly over against it. The solid ground which argumentation has in the passive Subject is therefore shaken, and only this movement itself becomes the object. The Subject that fills its content ceases to go beyond it, and cannot have any further Predicates or accidental properties. Conversely, the dispersion of content is thereby bound together under the self; it is not the universal which, free from the Subject, could belong to several others. Thus the content is, in fact, no longer a Predicate of the Subject, but is the Substance, the essence and the Notion of what is under discussion. . . . [T]hat which has the form of a Predicate in a proposition is the Substance itself. It suffers, as we might put it, a counter-thrust. Starting from the Subject as though this were a permanent ground, it finds that, since the Predicate is really the Substance, the Subject has passed over into the Predicate, and, by this very fact, has been upheaved.51 I follow Jean-Luc Nancy in translating the famous or infamous last word of this passage, aufgehoben, as “upheaved” rather than the more traditional “sublated” in order to emphasize the way in which speculation here seems to name thought that in Nancy’s words “wrests itself away from every given”—a translation that Michelle M. Wright also discusses, though to different ends, in Becoming Black.52 From a nonspeculative perspective, then, the subject of a sentence promises or poses as a passive universal to be stipulated—or fleshed out, as it were—by the particularities of the predicate. By contrast, from a speculative perspective the promise and posture of the subject of a sentence is continually 122 · Chapter 2

“shaken” or “upheaved” by a “movement” so forceful that the formal, grammatical distinction between the subject and the predicate breaks down—“the Subject has passed over into the Predicate”—allowing for reconfigurations of the very meaning of any given subject as well as any given predicate. It should be emphasized that Hegel distinguishes this speculative thinking from the everyday sense in which “speculation” was used in the nineteenth century, as well as from the more disparaging way Kant used the term. As he puts it in a passage from The Encyclopaedia Logic (1830), which explicitly returns us to the question of the “concrete” raised by Buck-Morss: The term “speculation” tends to be used in ordinary life in a very vague, and at the same time, secondary sense—as, for instance, when people talk about a matrimonial or commercial speculation. All that it is taken to mean here is that, on the one hand, what is immediately present must be transcended and, on the other, that whatever the content of these speculations may be, although it is initially only something subjective, it ought not to remain so, but is to be realized or translated into objectivity . . . very often those who rank themselves among the more cultivated also speak of “speculation” in the express sense of something merely subjective. . . . Against these views, what must be said is that, with respect to its true significance, the speculative is, neither provisionally nor in the end either, something merely subjective; instead, it expressly contains the very antitheses at which the understanding stops short (including therefore that of the subjective and objective, too), sublated [upheaved] within itself; and precisely for this reason it proves to be concrete and a totality.53 So speculative thinking is neither empirical thinking, subjective thinking, materialist thinking, abstract thinking, intuitive thinking, nor formal logic. To the extent that it “transcends” those modes of thinking, it does so in the interest neither of offering a universal formula for thinking nor of positing final definitions or absolutely unified concepts. Rather, speculation in this passage is the comprehension or beholding of the ongoing, dynamic relationship between unities and distinctions. As Hegel puts it, again in The Encyclopaedia Logic: “the subjective and the objective are not only identical but also distinct.”54 The speculative is “concrete and a totality,” then, not in the sense of a fact or event that either speaks for itself or needs to be combined with an abstract concept. The speculative instead apprehends the conceptual in a fact or event, as well as the facticity and eventfulness in a concept. It thus apprehends a dynamic process rather than a formally universal subject and a particular, determinate object. Its concrescence could be understood as the apprehension of both conThe Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 123

cretus (compact) and concrescere (to grow together, to congeal): the ongoing encounter between “the aspect of unity” and that of the “distinct.” Elsewhere in Phenomenology, as well as in Science of Logic (1831), Hegel describes the speculative sentence or proposition as a flexible or fungible mode of thought, one in which the subject and predicate of a sentence are related to one another plastically: “only a philosophical exposition that rigidly excludes the usual way of relating the parts of a proposition could achieve the goal of plasticity.”55 This passage suggests that the rigid exclusion of the usual paradoxically frees one from schematic thought, creating the possibility not of a determinate future, but rather of the future’s indeterminacy. As Catherine Malabou argues, “The dialectical process is ‘plastic’ because, as it unfolds, it makes links between the opposing moments of total immobility (the ‘fixed’) and vacuity (‘dissolution’), and then links both in the vitality of the whole, a whole which, reconciling these two extremes, is itself the union of resistance (Widerstand) and fluidity (Flüssigkeit). The process of plasticity is dialectical because the operations which constitute it, the seizure of form and the annihilation of all form, emergence and explosion, are contradictory.”56 The concrescence to which Hegel refers in the passage I quoted above from The Encyclopaedia Logic— concretus and concrescere at once—is in a sense, then, a plasticity. For as Malabou explains, “the adjective ‘plastic,’ while certainly in opposition to ‘rigid,’ ‘fixed’ and ‘ossified,’ is not to be confused with ‘polymorphous.’ Things that are plastic preserve their shape, as does the marble in a statue: once given a configuration, it is unable to recover its initial form. ‘Plastic,’ thus, designates those things that lend themselves to being formed while resisting deformation.”57 On this reading of Hegel’s plastic proposition, speculative thinking can be said to become or to concresce—but in a risky, potentially explosive way—more than to arrive or to set. Its movement is less a movement through difference and contradiction to fixed unity and resolution, than it is a movement whose unities and resolutions are themselves irreducibly volatile. Judith Butler attends most closely to the unusual way Hegel exemplifies speculative thinking by means of the figure of the sentence. Butler explains, as have other commentators on Hegel, that “when Hegel states, ‘Substance is Subject,’ the ‘is’ carries the burden of ‘becomes,’ where becoming is not a unilinear but a cyclical process,” and thus “to read the sentence right would mean to read it cyclically, or to bring to bear the variety of partial meanings it permits on any given reading. Hence, it is not just that substance is being clarified, or that the subject is being defined, but the very meaning of the copula is itself being expressed as a locus of movement and plurivocity.”58 Yet she pushes us even further than other commentators, proposing that Hegel’s reflections on 124 · Chapter 2

the sentence, as well as his own rhetorical style, are not merely examples of, but rather enactments of speculative thinking: Hegel’s sentences enact the meanings that they convey; indeed, they show that what “is” only is to the extent that it is enacted. Hegelian sentences are read with difficulty, for their meaning is not immediately given or known; they call to be reread, read with different intonations and grammatical emphases. Like a line of poetry that stops us and forces us to consider that the way in which it is said is essential to what it is saying, Hegel’s sentences rhetorically call attention to themselves.59 The rhetorical here does not describe the ontological so much as it continually assembles and disassembles it. This suggests that speculative thought does not so much demand a schematic propositional formula—a reproducible model of the Hegelian sentence—as it cultivates an attention to the propositional performance of thinking, in which the recursive or the reflexive functions as an opening to the accidental, the surprising, the unprecedented, and the ungiven. Speculative thinking, understood according to the figure of the sentence and enacted by rhetorical form itself, thus draws one away from the formal, the static, and the abstract, and toward the recursive, the reflexive, the cyclical, and the open. Ceasar’s ceaseless, unpunctuated sentences, his appropriation of Westfall’s voice, and Smith’s shift of address through McDonogh—which reflect upon the Liberian settler-colonists’ recursive, ongoing, and vertiginous encounters with freedom—can also be said to function speculatively in this sense. They are “read with difficulty” and they “call to be reread.” They force us to consider how the way in which they say is essential to what they say. And they perform a recursivity that opens upon the ungiven. Accordingly, they prompt us to read Hegel differently than Buck-Morss does on the way to setting Afrodiasporic enactments of freedom in stone. In focusing our attention on Hegel’s own speculative sentences, they also become consequential for one of the most enduring questions in modern scholarship on Hegel, the question of the telos of conceptual knowledge, often named the Absolute. For many readers of Hegel, this telos is a kind of closure or consolidation or arrival—of the development of the subject, of the elaboration of freedom, of history itself. This reading held sway in the nineteenth-century United States, most notably among some of the earliest U.S. interpreters of Hegel, the socalled St. Louis Hegelians: a loose group of historians, philosophers, and legal scholars inspired in the late 1850s by Henry Conrad Brokmeyer. Brokmeyer was a Prussian immigrant who worked his whole life on a translation of Hegel’s Greater Logic and who persuaded his influential friends—such as the educaThe Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 125

tors and philosophers William Torrey Harris and Denton Snider—to study, advocate, and implement Hegelian philosophy. With ties to the kindergarten movement, wider U.S. education policy, and the Concord Summer School, the group eventually founded the St. Louis Philosophical Society in 1866 as well as the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, which published the early work of more well-known American philosophers such as John Dewey, William James, and Charles Sanders Peirce.60 Some intellectual historians have even argued that the more commonly acknowledged pragmatist epistemology of these philosophers is rooted in their early encounter with the St. Louis movement’s Hegel. Certainly, well before the academic discipline of American philosophy came to be dominated by an Anglo-American analytic tradition that disdains continental sources, this group’s Hegel was at the intellectual center of most U.S. philosophy departments.61 Shamoon Zamir has even shown how W. E. B. Du Bois’s work unfolded as an ongoing encounter with the St. Louis group’s influential interpretations of Hegel.62 For the St. Louis Hegelians, America’s national culture, its federalist state structure, and its manifest destiny were historical realizations of Hegel’s abstract universal history. For instance, when the Civil War engulfed the country, they saw real historical redemption in the conflagration, which, they argued, promised to synthesize the extremes of abolitionism and proslavery into a superior, more universal humanity. Relatedly, in Brokmeyer’s A Mechanic’s Diary—a fictional account of the events of his life during the year 1856, envisioned as a kind of Westerner’s Walden—we are offered the following panegyric to manifest destiny, inspired by Hegel: Around me I see a people, drawn as it were, by lot of destiny from all the nations of the earth. The only condition attached for the individual to become incorporated is that he possesses the courage to forsake the old and adopt the new—to forsake the old, his home, the use and wont of his fathers, dare a perilous voyage and not tremble in the untrodden gloom of the wilderness. There is not a man or woman upon this continent whose blood is not freighted with this courage. They could not be fathers and mothers here without it. This people did not inherit a home; they built it; wrought it out with their own toil. It is new! They are furnishing it with new furniture—new implements. The same audacity that bore them beyond the wont and use of their father’s house, that caused them to claim a continent for their home, and the world for their enterprise, causes them to call in question every method, every implement transmitted from the past—because it is transmitted.63 126 · Chapter 2

Unlike Ceasar and Smith—for whom the past continually returns and freedom remains vertiginous—the past here is a static obstacle to be overcome, a drag on progress, a delay in the realization of freedom. The apparently ecumenical vision of this passage’s manifest destiny—“drawn . . . from all the nations of the earth”—is sharply delimited later in the text, when we learn through a reading of Alexander von Humboldt’s travel narratives how felicitously “the natives” of “the valleys of the upper Orinoco and the Amazon” were captured and forced into missions, just as “our people capture and tame bear cubs and other wild beasts and train them to do tricks.” For Brokmeyer, the supposed “natural liberty” of these “natives” need not be honored, because it allowed them to indulge in cannibalism “with natural freedom presiding over the feast.” Consequently, converting them and extracting all their knowledge of the region, “when science demands,” “was as essential to the accomplishment of the purpose of the journey as that which was rendered by Mr. Humboldt”: “But didn’t we deprecate the sacrifice [these natives] were compelled to make of their natural freedom? Of course, we deprecate merely! We accept the fruit of the sacrifice and then we deprecated!”64 Freedom, here, is neither a natural state nor a political state, but rather the individual’s struggle to realize knowledge as what he later calls “a concrete fact”: the freedom secured by such a political organization [as a government] for the individual happens to be only a possibility, not a reality, an abstraction and not a concrete fact . . . I accept such an organization for what it is, a guaranty for the possibility of freedom, but to render that possibility real is the task of my life, in the performance of which I need all the resources I have mentioned. To mistake this possibility for the reality, to strut about talking of natural freedom, of natural rights, it is this that I mistrust.65 Brokmeyer thus offers settler-colonial conquest as the exemplary concretization of freedom, where such conquest entails incessant forward movement, both physically and metaphysically, and the exploitation of all natural resources, including the “natives.” This freedom can be set in stone precisely because possibility can be made concrete, can be consummated, can arrive at a determinate telos. Brokmeyer’s Absolute is ever attainable; its attainment is freedom itself. Unfolding in the midst of its own scene of settler-colonial conquest, the speculative thinking of Ceasar and Smith veers sharply from this St. Louis Hegelianism. By continually risking imaginative, prosthetic returns to servitude, their letters—as do the letters I considered in chapter 1—unsettle the very settler The Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 127

colonization to which they are paradoxically bound by keeping the past alive in a present whose freedom is ever-restless. The letters of Ceasar and Smith also offer a robust, nineteenth-century instance of what we tend to think of as a contemporary, continental critique of Hegel’s teleology, recently exemplified by what Fredric Jameson has called the risk of the “narcissism of the absolute.” For Jameson, as for many other poststructuralist readers of Hegel, the movement of the dialectic—especially as posited by “that amphibious thing, the proposition (Satz or sentence)” in the Phenomenology—entails a deep “appreciation of failure and contradiction,” of “restlessness” (die Unruhe, a term Hegel often uses), eschewing “a banal and uplifting saga of inevitable progress” and any of the other “ideologies of noncontradiction,” such as empiricism.66 Yet to the extent that “the ideal of the speculative” in Hegel posits “the ultimate identity of the subject and object,” Hegel’s thought entails, even as it critically reveals, a dilemma, a limit upon restlessness: “Never truly to encounter the not-I, to come face to face with radical otherness.”67 This is not a critique of any and all totalities that might emerge from speculative thought: “we continue to try to make connections between isolated fragments of our thinking and of our experience,” Jameson accepts.68 Rather, when speculation treats restlessness or the not-I as a moment to be overcome—in the manner of the St. Louis Hegelians—even if it does so along the way of an infinite seeking, its aim becomes what Jameson forebodingly calls “the consummation of [Reason] itself.” Hegel himself refers to such “consummation” frequently, as in this passage from the “Freedom of Self-Consciousness” section of the Phenomenology: Reason, therefore, in its observational activity, approaches things in the belief that it truly apprehends them as sensuous things opposite to the “I”; but what it actually does, contradicts this belief, for it apprehends them intellectually, it transforms their sensuous being into Notions, i.e., into just that kind of being which is at the same time “I”, hence transforms thought into the form of being, or being into the form of thought; it maintains, in fact, that it is only as notions that things have truth. Consciousness, in this observational activity, comes to know what things are; but we come to know what consciousness itself is. The outcome of its movement will be that what consciousness is in itself will become explicit for it.69 Overtly, this section of the Phenomenology offers a powerful critique of the empiricist belief that things in the world have their own truth, independent of their encounter with any means of knowing them. But even granting such a critique, if an “outcome” like the one Hegel describes in this passage guides 128 · Chapter 2

speculative thinking, then the consciousness that “will be” emerges out of, or by leaving behind, die Unruhe—it becomes a consciousness for which die Unruhe tends toward consolidation. It is this tendency for speculative thinking to be guided toward a nonrestless totality, I would argue, that Ceasar’s and Smith’s letters eschew. It is thus not that these letters “are Hegelian,” nor that Hegel’s speculative thinking is a philosophical version of Ceasar’s and Smith’s “real,” empirical experience. Rather, the speculative thinking of these letters, written between 1834 and 1848, relates appositionally to Hegel (hence the title of this section, “Hegel, Liberia”) rather than conjuncturally (as in, for example, Buck-Morss’s titular “Hegel and Haiti”)70 in the sense that they encounter, interrupt, and recast our understanding of the speculative thought of freedom enacted in the texts published by Hegel between 1807 and 1831, and interpreted by the St. Louis Hegelians in the mid-nineteenth-century United States. Just a few years after the appearance of most of Hegel’s major works, Ceasar’s and Smith’s letters offer an epistolary encounter with freedom that conforms neither to the abstract sense of a universal bondsman’s struggle with a universal master, nor to the formal sense of the schematic development of a universal self, nor to the empirical sense of a particular slave’s encounter with a particular master to which we as critics bring concepts like “universal history” or “moral sentiment.” Rather, the letters’ ceaseless, forward flow and their formal reworking of the relationship between master and slave, coupled with recursive movements to and through slavery, allow them to theorize (paraphrasing Ceasar) a fealing So free that it becomes to Sufer even as it moves on the globe. As such, these letters speculate upon—which is to say they theorize and enact—the concrescence of an ungiven self.

P.S. “On Being Brought” and “All the Rest” Black settlers who left the United States to colonize Liberia uncannily retraced their ancestors’ Middle Passage. It is striking, then, that the equivocal “brought” in the motto from Liberia’s national seal, which I discussed in the prelude to part I (“The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here”) restages one of the Afro-diaspora’s most famous literary uses of that verb, a 1773 poem to which I referred in the introduction: Phillis Wheatley’s “On being brought from africa to america”: ’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too: The Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 129

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. Some view our sable race with scornful eye, “Their colour is a diabolic die.” Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain, May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.71 The irony of Wheatley’s poem turns on the equivocal agency of the verb brought. Is the “mercy” that “brought me from my Pagan land” to be straightforwardly celebrated or read ironically, even sarcastically, as an agent of violence? The latter, more critical interpretation gains ground when we listen for irony in the word Pagan, as if we were to read “so-called Pagan” into the italics. This irony intensifies if we hear a kind of mockery in the sing-song meter of mercy’s lessons—“That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too: / Once I redemption neither sought nor knew”—suggesting that these lessons were unnecessary before mercy patronizingly declared “my” land Pagan. After critically isolating eighteenth-century racism in the quotation, “‘Their colour is a diabolic die,’ ” the poem concludes with the final burst of powerful, italicized, appositional equivocation I mentioned in my introduction. Who is being told to “Remember” what? Are “Christians” being told that “Negros” can also be saved? Or are “Christians” and “Negros”—both linked with Cain by their status as italicized proper names—joined by their actual sin and their potential for salvation? Those “brought from Africa to America” in Wheatley’s poem are neither just the objects of the slave trade nor just the subjects of America. They balance on subjection’s edge, on the cut between becoming an African American subject and being subjected to racial slavery. So too do the Liberian seal and motto balance on an edge. They name neither a strict reversal of the wrongs of slavery nor a glorious return to African freedom, precisely because the settler-colonists seem at once to speak the motto and to be spoken by it. Yet these edges cut differently. Consider the disparity between the two subjects of the verb brought: Wheatley’s ironic “mercy” as the agent of the Middle Passage in America, on the one hand, and the motto’s agentless “love of liberty” as its uncanny Liberian echo, on the other. The word mercy, which derives from the Latin merces (reward, fee), always figures an imbalance of power between the bestower and the bestowed. As the Oxford English Dictionary has it, “Mercy: Forbearance and compassion shown by one person to another who is in his power and who has no claim to receive kindness; kind and compassionate treatment in a case where severity is merited or expected. . . . The clemency or forbearance of a conqueror or absolute lord, which it is in his power to extend or withhold as he thinks fit.”72 The ironic force of 130 · Chapter 2

Wheatley’s “mercy brought me”—its “systematic undoing of understanding,” to use Paul de Man’s definition of irony73 —arises when she claims it for her poem about the slave trade, a poem that ultimately transforms the forbearance of the lord (“mercy”) into an appositional command from an enslaved poet (“Remember, Christians, Negros . . .”). By contrast, the “love of liberty” does not perform such ironic undoings, as it yokes the Enlightenment ideal of liberty to the romantic presumption that affect will render truth. Its agentless “love” admits to neither the violence of conquest nor the legacies of slavery. In turn, the seal’s fully rigged ship, modernized walking plow, and literate dove confidently colonize the palm tree on its placid, uninhabited bay and shore. This colonial mise-en-scène combined with the motto’s meliorist narrative express the hope that the nation-state and the citizen-subject will set the seal on the love of liberty. Still, that hope frays as the studium of colonial confidence encounters its punctum in the uncertain direction of the dove’s flight and the ever-variable image of the scroll or letter in its beak. In this way, the motto and the seal to which it is tied resist the equivocal freedom they nonetheless express. In part I of The Brink of Freedom, I hope to have shown how reading the epistolary archive of early Liberia can bring a measure of ironic undoing to Liberia’s legacy, breaking its seal and restaging the love of liberty, but only if reading is not limited to what in my introduction we saw Moten call “an inevitable descriptive approach toward some either immediately present or heretofore concealed truth.”74 In and through the apparently quotidian details of the settlers’ letters, we can glimpse what Moten calls a “future politics” irreducible to what Clegg calls “legalized personhood, civil rights, and a documented existence” or Buck-Morss calls “the concrete meaning of freedom.”75 This future politics refuses to take the form of political agency for granted, lingering as it does with what Hartman calls “the afterlife of slavery” even as it glimpses freedom’s ungiven future. To paraphrase the McKay letter with which I began this chapter, this future politics suffers the gain of Liberia’s national development remaining open to freedom’s ongoing improvisation. On the brink of Liberia’s 1847 constitutional convention, Nancy Ann Smith theorized such a politics. “P.S.,” she writes at the end of her 1844 letter to John McDonogh: “My mother sends her love to you and all of your people. She is getting quite old, but firm in grace. George and Susan have joined the Baptist Church; also, Matilda and little Nancy. Old Man Peter is dead, and Thomas Young has a bad sore foot, all the rest is well.” Written after the main body of Smith’s letter, in the wake of her encounter with ongoing slavery, before Liberian independence, and alongside an explicit call to be read to the still enslaved, this postscript intercalates past and future, death and life, labor and repose. The Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia · 131

By sending “love” from her mother to her former master and his kin, Smith acknowledges and, through that acknowledgment, makes a claim on slavery’s coercive kinship. She also insists that ex-slaves like her mother are tied to — yet not exhausted by — that kinship, “firm in grace” as she is. Indeed, Smith foregrounds new and ongoing kinships, with and among George, Susan, Matilda, little Nancy, Thomas Young, and the Baptist Church, without denying the sufferance the colonization of Liberia entailed for all involved. What is more, she concludes by turning a figure for the absence of labor, “rest,” into a valediction that interrupts Washington Watts McDonogh’s disdain for those “woundring all over town . . . getting drunking and laying about and doing nothing” and takes up Samson Ceasar’s “fealing So free.” The restlessness of rest, here, is Smith’s challenge to what Ceasar calls Liberia’s “enterprising men.” Although even the restlessly restful live close to death, as Old Man Peter came to know, still the ex-slave improvises with life. She suffers gain and yet remains on the brink even in repose: “all the rest is well.” All the rest.

132 · Chapter 2

Pa rt I I · y u c atá n

Una Guerra Escrita

Prelude With great respect I wish to inform you that here in Yucatán we suffer the evils and harms of the Spanish. They kill the poor Indians as they kill animals, but not all the Spanish; they who did so were well known, whether great or small. For this cause the eastern Indians and all their companions in Yucatán rose up, but they did no harm to all the Spanish, only to those who were cruel to the Indians. Furthermore, for some time they have paid contributions but received poor treatment. Now, Sir, all that has ended, and it has been publicized that the medio contribution no longer be paid, neither for the Spanish nor for the Indians; that they will only pay three reales for baptism and three reales for marriages, the Indians as much as the Spaniards. This is the liberty [libertad] that the poor Indians of Yucatán were seeking. — Jacinto Pat to Modesto Méndez, July 11, 1848

The sober cover page of the inaugural issue of El Museo Yucateco, published in October 1841 in the western Yucatán port city of Campeche as a “scientific and literary periodical,”1 transports us from Liberia almost nine thousand miles across the Atlantic. As the image (figure prelude II.1) shows, the cover is dominated by an image of a table-globe set in a stand and turned so that only the words “Atlantic Ocean” (in English) are legible to the reader. These words appear on the

Figure prelude ii.1. Cover page of the inaugural issue of El Museo Yucateco, October 1841.

globe over a light patch representing the ocean, bordered by the bare outlines of Yucatán, North America, Greenland, Europe, and Northwest Africa—where Liberia can be glimpsed—all of which recede into heavy shading so that the rest of the globe appears shrouded in darkness. Above the globe is a quotation, in Latin, from the exordium of book three of Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things: “As bees will sample every flower the blooming meadows hold, So in your scriptures we devour all your words of gold.”2 In its introductory editorial, El Museo Yucateco announces its desire to “encourage our compatriots to love and study literary subjects,” and makes this promise: “Not a single word about politics: this is what we have offered our fellow citizens.”3 As a self-professed apolitical repository of learned science and art, El Museo Yucateco offers itself as a kind of clearinghouse for universal knowledge, a strategy often used by nineteenthcentury Spanish American periodicals to avoid state censorship. Graphically set in the Atlantic world, the journal imagines its voracious and hive-like readers— citizens all—enthusiastically imbibing global truths. El Museo Yucateco was founded and edited by the leading Yucatecan liberal intellectual and politician of the nineteenth century, Justo Sierra O’Reilly. Though Sierra O’Reilly may have hoped to avoid seeming political, this did not mean that he aimed to curate a static, paper-and-ink repository of dispassionate facts and figures. To the contrary, the periodical’s two-year run totaling almost seven hundred pages offers vividly narrated accounts of Yucatán’s history dating back to the sixteenth century alongside reflections on contemporary European literature and science. The cover page thus illustrates how the peninsula’s Creole elites saw themselves building a society actively networked to the wider Atlantic world and its florescent liberalism. Indeed, those Creoles cast their vision even farther. Another influential periodical of the 1840s, La Revista Yucateca of Mérida, printed reportage on the increasingly violent conflicts between Creoles and Maya alongside detailed accounts of global political events and cultural developments. Under the regular section title “Exterior,” La Revista Yucateca included subsections on events in France, England, Spain, Italy, China, Jamaica, and Cuba, among other nations. The other regular section, entitled “Interior,” offered subsections entitled “Mejico” (about events in Mexico outside Yucatán), “Noticias Varias,” and “Sobre Nuestras Cosas” (about events in Yucatán), which included frequent updates on Maya unrest in a subsubsection called “Bárbaros.” This interior/exterior distinction continually breaks down, however, as “Noticias Varias” also printed accounts of European political events and “Exterior” included articles on Latin American events, such as a translated report from a Paris newspaper called “Situación de la América.”4 From this serial, juxtapositional assemblage—which Yucatán: Una Guerra Escrita · 135

I will examine at length in chapter 3—there emerges a consistent theme: the contrast between the Atlantic world cosmopolitanism of Creole Yucatán and the putatively backward isolation of the Maya, themselves confined to La Revista Yucateca’s “Bárbaros” section. However, Maya in Yucatán were neither backward nor isolated from the rest of the world. During the 1840s, a decades-long history of intra-elite struggles for power on the Yucatán Peninsula, during which Creole powerbrokers armed Maya as soldiers to fight their battles for them, transformed into a large-scale Maya revolt against Creole authority. As I mentioned in the introduction, the moment of that transformation has traditionally been set as July 30, 1847, when Cecilio Chi—the Maya leader (batab in Maya or cacique in Spanish) of the village of Tepich—responded to violent Creole efforts to suppress dissent by organizing a revolt against his town’s Creoles. Quickly dubbed la Guerra de Castas by panicked Creoles, the war was most violent during its first decade, but it lasted through the end of the nineteenth century. By its end hundreds of thousands of Yucatecos had died or become refugees. The roots of the Caste War lay in deep soil that has been well excavated, especially in the last twenty years, by historians and anthropologists. Of course, Spanish and Creole violence against the Maya dated to the Conquest. The nineteenth-century rise of the brutal sugar industry and the hacienda system, run by Creoles and worked by Maya, generated wealth for large, independent landowners who increasingly sought to alienate and expropriate communal Mayan lands, which Creoles dubbed baldíos: literally, wastelands. Yet the conjuncture’s antagonisms were not Manichean. Creole landowners did not always receive the support of the Creole-controlled Yucatecan state or church, both of which relied heavily on cooperation with, and taxation of, Maya communities. In turn, those communities had been organized and reorganized into semiautonomous political entities for centuries, through Spanish colonization, Mexican independence, and brief periods of Yucatecan independence. The political and economic interface between Maya communities and the Yucatecan state and church had its own volatility, too, as tax burdens historically fell more heavily on Maya than on Creoles or Afro-Yucatecos. Fed by a British-controlled arms trade through Belize, the conflict thus arose out of a long, global history of colonial development.5 The effects of the Caste War stretched far into the world system of the nineteenth century. It restructured social, political, and economic development in Creole strongholds in the north and west of the Yucatán Peninsula and Maya strongholds in the south and east. It also restructured development in the vast zones between those strongholds, zones populated by Maya, Creoles, Afro136 · Part II Prelude

Yucatecos, and mestizos alike, as well as in Guatemala to the south and Belize to the southeast. Most immediately, the initial attacks of the Mayan rebels in the late 1840s and early 1850s hobbled the peninsula’s sugar industry. In ways that have rarely been acknowledged, the war contributed to the volatility of the mid-nineteenth-century global sugar economy, which struggled to secure stable sources of labor in the midst of West Indian slave revolts, emancipation, and the financial Panic of 1847 in Great Britain, all of which led to a collapse of production in established zones throughout the West Indies as well as the rise of new productive zones (such as Brazil and Guyana) and new technological advances.6 Adding to the regional impact of this conflict, captured Maya rebels were deported as slaves to Cuba, thousands of Maya refugees resettled to the Petén region of Guatemala, and Creole veterans of the war were enlisted to fight against Yaqui rebellions on the northern Mexican border. Yaqui rebels were themselves deported to Yucatán to work on henequen plantations at the turn of the twentieth century. Farther to the north, as U.S. congressional leaders debated whether to annex Yucatán after the U.S.-Mexico War ended in 1848, they openly lamented their inability to understand the peninsula’s conflictual “racial geography.”7 In the face of this opacity, Congress ultimately abandoned annexation altogether, much to the chagrin of many Creoles who advocated incorporation into the United States and thought themselves white even as the norteamericanos did not quite. Eventually, upon the ruins of the sugar industry, a henequen fiber industry took hold in haciendas in the north and west of the peninsula, financed primarily by U.S. capital from emerging multinationals like the Illinois-based International Harvester Company, which turned henequen into rope and twine for an international market that had become especially robust thanks to International Harvester’s own production of automated agricultural machinery.8 In The Colonizing Trick I have gone so far as to argue that this episode in Atlantic history taught U.S. capital a powerful lesson in neocolonialism: that it did not have to occupy a territory, either through extralegal white settlement or statesponsored annexation, to extract surplus value from it.9 Here, however, I shift perspective from the United States to Yucatán itself, to show how this massive Maya rebellion both responded to and shaped the nineteenth-century articulation of what—as we saw in the introduction— Immanuel Wallerstein has called centrist liberalism and what Cedric Robinson has called racial capitalism. For as Yucatecans fought each other in the cities, villages, and broad flat plains of the peninsula, another conflict flowed from the presses and pens of these combatants: una guerra escrita, or written war, over the past, present, and future of Yucatecan life itself. Yucatán: Una Guerra Escrita · 137

My epigraph vividly depicts the global terms of this Maya revolt, which respond to and repurpose Sierra O’Reilly’s El Museo Yucateco cover page. On July 11, 1848, Maya batab Jacinto Pat wrote to Modesto Méndez, the Creole corregidor or chief magistrate of Guatemala’s Petén region, of “the evils and harms of the Spanish” against which he was revolting.10 Pat invokes both the work race was doing for capitalism in Yucatán and the revolt’s efforts to restructure that work. To explain the injustices some Spaniards have committed against some Indians, Pat makes figurative use of the colonial distinction between Spaniard and Indian by applying it to a postcolonial moment, after independence from Spain, in which most Yucatecan “Spaniards” were born in Mexico and had longestablished cultural, political, economic, and genealogical ties to the peninsula’s Indians. Pat called those very Spaniards “whites” (blancos) just five months earlier, in a February 18, 1848, letter to Edward Rhys and John Kingdom, English contacts in Belize whom he cultivated as allies; explaining the war, he writes: “It is because the whites began it, because what we want is liberty and not oppression, because before we were subjugated with the many contributions and taxes that they imposed upon us.”11 As we will see in chapter 3, early nineteenth-century Creoles vigorously dispossessed Maya lands and restricted Maya political authority, all in the name of increased productive efficiency in export industries like sugar and an invigorated Creole liberalism that had emerged from the Spanish Constitution of 1812 and Mexican Independence in 1821. Those Creoles also fashioned a binary optic through which to view this liberal capitalist transformation, one that repurposed the colonial discursive practice of casta to sharply distinguish blancos from bárbaros. In this letter to Rhys and Kingdom, in a manner I will consider in detail in chapter 4, Pat discursively frees libertad from these Creole claims to it. Revising the racial distinction between blanco and indio that facilitated the very differential tax rates he decries, he articulates “Spaniard” with “white” but distinguishes “white” from the would-be English allies to whom the letter is sympathetically addressed. Linking the racialized language of centuries of Spanish colonialism with intricately contemporary concerns, Pat shows how the Caste War rebels reflected speculatively on the meaning of freedom, imaginatively repurposing both history and contemporary political economy. Additionally, Pat shows how Maya cast their concerns onto a global stage by addressing his July 11, 1848, letter to a Creole leader in Guatemala and his February 18, 1848, letter to Europeans ruling Belize—regions outside the direct control of either Yucatecan or Mexican authorities but linked to Yucatán by a long history of colonial governmentality.12 During the Caste War, Maya rebels issued grievances, made demands, and ne138 · Part II Prelude

gotiated terms with a steady stream of letters like the ones I have just discussed. Written in Yucatec Maya and Spanish, these letters were addressed to secular and ecclesiastical Creole authorities, who offered their own letters, articles in newspapers, public proclamations, and even epistolary novels in response. In part II, I examine this written war as a staged struggle over the past, present, and future of libertad in Yucatán. The struggle was “staged” in that Creoles and Maya invoked and improvised with nineteenth-century liberalism as well as discourses of casta and raza that reached back to the early modern period and stretched across the globe as far as South Asia. I show how this written war was an antagonistic and vibrant instance of what Florencia E. Mallon has called a “postcolonial palimpsest,” in which “racial struggles are reburied in a widening palimpsest of memory, only to be disinterred once again in another historical moment, reconstructed yet again and redeployed.”13 By revisiting the conflict between El Museo Yucateco’s “golden words” and Pat’s repurposed libertad, I show in part II how this written war reveals, to borrow again from Mallon, “racialization . . . from above and below.” As “liberal elites” confront an “insurgent liberalism” in the archives I consider, we are provoked to ask “what happens when, in the midst of a political confrontation or crisis, individuals or social movements deploy reified categories or images as motivation or explanation for action.”14 In particular, I ask what the libertad Pat refers to in his 1848 letter to Méndez meant for Maya rebels and their Creole antagonists. As both a symptom of and a challenge to a nineteenth-century Yucatecan form of racial capitalism I will call casta capitalism, this libertad is neither simply a set of material demands nor just an expression of overly abstract ideals. In a gesture we encountered throughout the epistolary archive of Liberia in part I, Maya invoke “libertad” speculatively, as a way of theorizing the quotidian globalities of their lives and recasting those lives into an as-yetuncodified future. As an instance of what Laura Gotkowitz has called “the presence of the old in the new,” Creoles turned to the by-then-old-fashioned discourse of casta to counter Maya resistance both to increasing capital penetration by nonindigenous property owners and to expanding restrictions on indigenous citizenship by the Yucatecan state.15 As we saw above in the letter from Pat, Maya rebels draw on quotidian globalities to forge a “subaltern use of race” by making claims for libertad in the language of both liberalism and casta, unmaking racism in the name of race. These claims exemplify what Judith Butler has called the restaging of the universal.16 As I explained in the introduction, Butler highlights efforts by social movements to claim discursive practices that have been used against them, to Yucatán: Una Guerra Escrita · 139

reformulate and repurpose those discursive practices such that their power derives not simply from a presumptively foundational universality held by elites, but rather from the improvisatory efforts of the movements themselves. In this sense, Maya claims during the Caste War do not simply oppose, resist, or subvert Creole hegemony; their frequent calls for tax equality and citizenship rights do not simply mimic liberal universalism; their invocations of race and casta are not simply particularist. Rather, partaking in discursive practices of liberalism and casta, the Caste War rebels “unfix” race in order to renew it.17 By setting the terms for ongoing economic and political engagement with and recognition by the state while also asserting indigenous systems of land use, those rebels claim a place in Creole modernity and capitalist relations of production. Yet they also displace modernity itself from the presumed legitimacy of the Creole state and Creole landowners. They thus practice an ongoing political poiesis—an imaginative remaking of living free on both quotidian and global scales, a living free unevenly connected to the very social formations from which it seeks to diverge. At times, like Liberia’s nonelite black settlers, they evade citizenship and detour from the emerging Yucatecan state; at other times, like aspiring Liberian elites such as Reverend Russell, they demand a place in those policies on terms they both set and reserve the right to reset. They do all this without, however, knowing in advance whether or how those renewals, displacements, and imaginative remakings will succeed.18 As did Samson Ceasar, Nancy Ann Smith, and countless other Liberian settler-colonists across the Atlantic Ocean, these Maya do not just offer us concrete demands; connected on a transverse, they also speculate upon what I called in chapter 2 the concrescence of a free life.

Chilam The very first sentence of chapter 6 of Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism, entitled “The Historical Archaeology of the Black Radical Tradition,” ends with an overdetermined, dangling pronoun that will help us begin to place nineteenthcentury Yucatán within the context of Robinson’s important concept of global, racial capitalism: “The role of Black labor in the expansion and preservation of capitalism was not, however, the whole of it.”19 What is “it” that “the role of Black labor” was not the whole of ? Could “it” refer to “the expansion and preservation of capitalism”? Or “the Black radical tradition”? Or “Black Marxism”? Or perhaps “racial capitalism” itself ? Black Marxism never quite specifies the referent for this “it,” which leaves the claim open to many rich possibilities. If “the role of Black labor” is not the whole of “it,” what else is this equivocal “it” made up of ? At first, in chapter 6, we seem to get an answer that sounds 140 · Part II Prelude

fairly familiar: “The transport of African labor to the mines and plantations of the Caribbean and subsequently to what would be known as the Americas meant also the transfer of African ontological and cosmological systems [and] African codes embodying historical consciousness and social experience.”20 Africa—or “Africa,” which is to say not just a place or a people but also a constellation of ideas, ideologies, and practices—as well as black labor make up at least part of what he calls “the whole of it.” Capitalism is racial capitalism because it instrumentalized black labor for so-called primitive accumulation. But capitalism itself was instrumentalized in the process, as African people shaped its political, economic, and ideological elements. Yet as it turns out, Robinson’s dangling “it” is made up of even more than black labor and African ontological and cosmological systems. Just before a short but crucial section of chapter 6 called “Reds, Whites, and Blacks,” he writes: “But the more authentic question was not whether the slaves (and the ex-slaves and their descendants) were human. It was, rather, just what sort of people they were . . . and could be. Slavery altered the conditions of their being, but it could not negate their being.”21 Robinson here refuses anything like what Orlando Patterson calls “social death,” foregrounding rather the ongoing life of the enslaved.22 At the same time, Robinson suggests that these slaves and the racial capitalism in which they were bound up pose questions that challenge us more deeply than does the question of who is human. As Saidiya Hartman has shown so precisely—and as we saw so vividly in Liberia—even when the question of humanity is answered in the most universal terms it can redound infelicitously upon the enslaved, granting them a freedom that is ever more tightly bound to new and vigorous servitudes.23 So Robinson leaves us with a question more “authentic” than the question of the humanity of the enslaved. This question, which in fact is a two-part question, is ontological as well as teleological: first, just what sort of people were the slaves, the ex-slaves, and their descendants; and second, just what sort of people could they become? Their sort, he seems to suggest, was and will continue to be in flux, as if their being were wrapped up in their becoming in a manner Black Marxism will attempt to explicate. Robinson then indicates just how complex this explication will need to be: “Long before the troubled American republic of the nineteenth century even became a possibility, a part of the answer began its unfolding. As we shall soon see, its historical imprint is still clear.”24 Black Marxism thus seeks to get clear about a part of the “unfolding” of the “historical imprint” of the answer to the authentic, two-part question of what sort these slaves, ex-slaves, and their descendants were and could be. That part-answer will, in turn, be added to “Black Yucatán: Una Guerra Escrita · 141

labor” and “Africa” to become part of the whole of it, where “it” refers, equivocally, to “the expansion and preservation of capitalism,” “the Black radical tradition,” “Black Marxism,” and/or “racial capitalism” itself. This variegated mereology suggests that capitalism is not so much a totality, in the Husserlian sense, as an ensemble of parts articulated with one another in a manner ever open to dis- and rearticulation; consequently, black radical challenges to capitalism work on, against, and through these articulated parts.25 Robinson’s dangling pronoun “it” thus points to a transverse, in the sense my introduction gave to that term: a transgression of established distinctions, here between Africa and the Americas, that also offers a fresh perspective, here on nineteenth-century apprehensions of freedom’s future. For where does Black Marxism send us to get to know the slaves, ex-slaves, and their descendants (“just what sort of people they were . . . and could be”) and to see a part of the unfolding of the historical imprint of the whole of it? The section “Reds, Whites, and Blacks,” which immediately follows Robinson’s two-part question and thus stands as the beginning of an answer, sets us down in sixteenth-century “Mexico, or New Spain (Nueva Espana) as it was then called.”26 Robinson tells us that the “aboriginal population would become the object of a most intensive exploitation by its Spanish conquerors,” and he presents his evidence for this exploitation as a kind of testimony from Yucatán: Chilam Balam, a native of the Yucatan, recalling the days of the preConquest, would write: “There was then no sickness; they had no aching bones; they had then no high fever; they had then no smallpox; they had then no burning chest; they had then no abdominal pain; they had then no consumption; they had then no headache. At that time the course of humanity was orderly. The foreigners made it otherwise when they arrived here.” The world for which Chilam displayed such poetic nostalgia ended quickly.27 The reference to Chilam Balam brings into relief an early modern scene of conquest and violence, a scene that offers another part of the whole of it, an unfolding of the historical imprint of an additional part that must be added to our understanding of black labor and Africa. The reference, in turn, leads to two linked claims. In chapter 6, again in the crucial section called “Reds, Whites, and Blacks,” Robinson writes: “The natives of the conquered lands were already a vanishing presence. The survival of New Spain’s economy was already being transferred to new hands.”28 The next section, called “Black for Red,” tries to make clear that Africans moved into the spaces vacated by the vanishing Indians, as transatlantic chattel slavery replaced the conquest and genocide of the 142 · Part II Prelude

indigenous peoples of the Americas. To account for the role race played for capitalism, then, Robinson offers a teleological narrative of primitive accumulation: black for red. The figure of the vanishing Indian has a long American provenance dating to the eighteenth century, when Thomas Jefferson was an especially influential proponent in his Notes on the State of Virginia.29 This figure is deeply implicated in the very colonialism Robinson is trying to critique, for it allowed white settlers to treat living Indian people as if they were always effectively dead, and the land upon which they lived as if it were already emptied, making the rise of a white settler nation like the United States seem to be a foregone conclusion. Episodes like the Caste War refute this narrative; nowhere in the Americas did Indians simply “vanish,” certainly not in Yucatán, though we should also acknowledge that from Mexico the story is too often told in reverse: Mexicanists regularly write as if there were and are no black people in Mexico, even though it had one of the largest populations of African-descended peoples in the Americas into the eighteenth century.30 Which is to say, Black Marxism remains to be read among Mexicanists. Robinson’s infelicitous account of the vanishing Indian sits uneasily, and yet suggestively, alongside Black Marxism’s more felicitous reference to Chilam Balam. We ought to be struck by a kind of intimacy at the end of the passage I quoted above, or at least a desire for intimacy, as Robinson drops the putative surname Balam. This is not Chilam Balam anymore, but Chilam, a sort of friend. Black Marxism’s desire for intimacy with Chilam is amplified by the indistinct time to which Chilam is assigned with the present participle “recalling” and the conditional “would write”: did Chilam “write” these words right after the conquest, or many years after the conquest, or even just the other day? It is impossible to tell from the passage. Both this indistinct time and the use of the familiar Chilam draw this “native” closer, as if Chilam were someone Robinson had just run into, or someone he had been wanting to catch up with. Chilam Balam speaks and is spoken, writes and is written, from an indeterminate space and time that Black Marxism hopes somehow to be with, a space and time from which the Indian may not have vanished. Robinson further represents Chilam Balam’s putative recollection as a “poetic” emplotment, and as poiesis this recollection entails an ongoing scene of imaginative remaking. Black Marxism’s personification of Chilam Balam thus at once conditions and unsettles his story of the fall of the red and the rise of the black. To follow Robinson to the Yucatán and begin to understand how it articulates with the multipart formation he calls racial capitalism, we must ask: who is this informant, this presumptive friend of Black Marxism, this Chilam Yucatán: Una Guerra Escrita · 143

Balam, this Chilam? What did he write, and when did he write it? First, Chilam Balam is not exactly “a native of Yucatan recalling the days of the pre-Conquest” in writing, as Robinson suggests. In Yucatec Maya, the word Chilam literally means “the one who is the mouth,” and could be translated as “prophet.” Los chilames were prophetic priests who interpreted messages from the gods for the people. The word Balam, in turn, means “jaguar,” and it is also a common Yucatec Maya surname. According to contemporary historians and anthropologists, there may well have been an important individual prophet from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century named Chilam Balam, who played a role in passing on more ancient Mayan traditions and in linking them to the period immediately before the Conquest; it seems as if this individual prophet, if he or she existed, may even have prophesied the arrival of the Spanish. There are, however, no written records that can be attributed solely to such an individual. We do know that, by the time of Spanish colonization, many towns in Yucatán had chilames who assembled books of Chilam Balam, which were compilations of prophecies, chronicles, historical narratives, rituals, creation myths, almanacs, and medical treatises. Once written on bark covered in lime, and periodically reproduced and revised when an edition became too fragile, many of these books were infamously burned by Spanish missionaries, and none of the pre-Conquest copies is known to survive today.31 But as the Yucatec Maya language was “converted” into the Latin alphabet, a few of the books continued to be copied, revised, and passed on for generations.32 Today, although there is ongoing scholarly dispute over manuscript authenticity, it seems as if nine such books of Chilam Balam, dating from the eighteenth century, survive either as eighteenth-century manuscripts, photographic reproductions, or copies made by hand in the nineteenth century, and they are named after the Yucatecan towns from which they derive: The Book of Chilam Balam from Maní, The Book of Chilam Balam from Tizimín, The Book of Chilam Balam from Chumayel, The Book of Chilam Balam from Kaua, The Book of Chilam Balam from Ixil, The Book of Chilam Balam of Chan Kan, The Book of Chilam Balam from Tekax, The Book of Chilam Balam from Nah, and The Book of Chilam Balam from Tusik.33 The passage Robinson quotes—which he cites from Alfred W. Crosby’s 1972 study The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492—comes from The Book of Chilam Balam from Chumayel, a town about fifty miles from Mérida in northwestern Yucatán.34 This book was compiled around 1782 by a Mayan man from Chumayel named Juan José Hiol, though others also seem to have had a hand in some of its parts, and it was no doubt a revised copy of earlier texts. Although the 1782 edition has been lost, a pho144 · Part II Prelude

tographic copy of it made in 1887 by Teobert Maler and a copy made by hand in 1868 by Karl Hermann Berendt are held in the Brinton Collection at the University of Pennsylvania Museum Library. From Maler’s 1887 photographic copy, we can tell that the eighteenth-century book of Chilam Balam from Chumayel was a small quarto volume of fifty-eight numbered leaves of paper made in Europe, with a leather cover.35 Although we cannot read the words of this photographic copy very well, the 1868 copy Berendt made by hand is legible and has been translated into Spanish and English and published numerous times in the twentieth century, making it perhaps the most famous extant Yucatec Maya document from the colonial period. It is just such a twentieth-century translation of the 1868 Berendt copy that Robinson quotes, via Crosby’s The Columbian Exchange, in Black Marxism.36 Berendt himself was a Danzig-born doctor who took up a position teaching surgery and obstetrics at the University of Breslau (now Wroclaw) in 1843. In 1848 he became a liberal member of the famous Frankfurt National Assembly, or Vorparlament, which set out to unify Germany under liberal principles. In the conservative reaction to both the assembly’s attempted reforms and the more radical revolts of the period, however, Berendt was removed from his professorship at Breslau and went into exile in the Americas in 1851. After living in New York briefly, he traveled throughout Central America and Mexico, where he fashioned himself into a natural historian, linguist, ethnographer, and archaeologist. Working for the Smithsonian Institution and the Peabody Museum, he studied and recorded Maya languages, copied colonial documents, and appropriated vast quantities of natural and archaeological material, as well as human remains, for his patrons in the United States. After a series of trips to New York in the 1870s to deliver his plunder to his sponsors, he purchased a coffee plantation in Cobán, Guatemala, in a region that was increasingly under the control of German coffee producers. It was on this plantation that Berendt died quite suddenly on May 12, 1878.37 Berendt’s travels throughout northern Guatemala and Yucatán—and consequently his imperial antiquarianism—were shaped by the ongoing Caste War. As he explains in his “Report of Explorations in Central America” (1867), published just one year before he copied The Book of Chilam Balam, his plan to travel from Belize east to Guatemala’s Petén region, Chiapas, and eventually the Pacific coast during 1866 was stalled in the Belize town of San Pedro Buenavista at a “farm of a mestizo from Yucatan” because of “the recently received news of a revolution which had broken out” in the Petén.38 Berendt’s account of this delay offers him the opportunity to reflect on the “racial geography” of the region and period:39 Yucatán: Una Guerra Escrita · 145

I was obliged to stop in San Pedro until messengers, sent through the wilderness, could procure from the corregidor of Peten the necessary number of carriers. More than a month passed before they arrived, a month lost for explorations, as the necessary vigilance over my baggage in an unclosed hut, among thieving negroes, forbade my being absent from the place. Some few reptiles, fishes, coleoptera, and molluscs were, however, collected. The villages in the neighborhood of this farm are of late origin, peopled by Indians from Yucatan, almost every one of them formerly engaged in the war of races which for the last twenty years has desolated that unhappy country.40 As refugees fled south from the conflict in Yucatán into the Petén, and other Maya uprisings developed in the Petén itself, the region was drawn into the Caste War’s wake. Populated too by blacks who worked in the logging industry, some of whom had migrated from free black or maroon communities in Belize and the wider Caribbean—Berendt’s “thieving negroes”—the Petén was networked into an economically and politically volatile region, which itself was networked to the wider Atlantic world. For the liberal Berendt, who had to leave Germany’s revolutionary 1840s thanks to the conservative reaction of the 1850s, this volatility was, however, primarily a roadblock to his linguistic and archaeological enterprise. Even Berendt’s eventual involvement with coffee production in Guatemala was shaped by the Caste War, which destroyed sugar production in Yucatán and so redirected international capital not only to other sugar producing sites like Guyana, Brazil, Cuba, and Trinidad but also to coffee production in Central America and henequen production in Yucatán.41 As Berendt elaborates upon the conflictual racial dynamics of the Caste War conjuncture in his “Report,” he reveals that Mayan rebels had their own understanding of the inconvenience he calls the “war of races”: I had the opportunity to become acquainted with many of [the Indian refugees from Yucatán in the Petén], and obtained interesting information as to their social and political condition. They are by no means hostile to the white man in general; their hatred is directed against the Mexican and Spaniard only, while they are friendly to other foreigners, and are remarkably frank and outspoken with such strangers as speak their language and know how to gain their confidence . . . To those who only know about the insurgent and independent Maya Indians from the reports of their barbarous warfare against the whites of Yucatan, it is highly surprising to see these ferocious warriors organizing themselves without 146 · Part II Prelude

any external influence as quiet settlers, laborious and orderly, submitting to their self-elected local authorities, honest in their dealings, rigorous against criminals among them, and by far the best class of people in either the British colony or Peten.42 According to Berendt, “the insurrection of the Yucatan Indians” is not motivated by some general Mayan hatred of “whites,” as we will see Yucatecan Creoles argue in chapter 3. Rather, the insurrection is the result of a discerning critique of “the Mexican and Spaniard.” Berendt also makes clear that these Indians are not the bárbaros referred to in La Revista Yucateca, for the term bárbaros had a very precise meaning to Spanish colonizers: Indians who refused to congregate and settle in towns where they would be available to colonial governance and conversion to Christianity. Rather, Berendt encounters “highly surprising” laborers organized into settled communities. Even Berendt’s efforts to qualify his relatively laudatory words about the Yucatec Maya in the Petén offer us a complex picture of the peninsula’s nineteenthcentury racial geography. First, he notes that those he extols “are Catholics, and are proud to show their abomination of the heathen worship of the Cruzes,” or the so-called Cruzob who carved out a relatively autonomous region around the Yucatecan town of Chan Santa Cruz (today’s Felipe Carrillo Puerto) where they resisted Creole efforts to control their affairs and advocated a set of syncretic religious beliefs and practices animated by the figure of the talking cross.43 Though this German liberal-in-exile distinguishes sharply between good and bad Indians, he nonetheless registers the agonistic political diversity among Maya factions in the midst of the war. Second, Berendt explains that some Maya in the Petén who reside alongside “negroes” are “poorly educated, unrestrained, and with but few necessities, lead a lazy and sensual life, much given to gambling and intoxication, and joining now and then in a petty conspiracy, or even in an open revolt.”44 It is the region’s black logwood workers, then, who degrade Maya among them: there are on the Belize river only woodcutting establishments belonging to merchants in Belize. These are either being actually worked under the direction of a foreman (usually a mulatto), or abandoned, the buildings being occupied by negroes, who make a scanty living cutting logwood on their own account, which they sell in Belize, bringing back brandy and dry provisions, their only food, as they are too indolent to plant anything in the fertile grounds around their decaying huts. Only where Yucatan Indians have settled among them, a cornfield, a banana plantation, or fruit-trees are to be found.45 Yucatán: Una Guerra Escrita · 147

Berendt fails to recognize the vast and vigorous economies of exchange that blacks and Indians forged in the region because he is so attached to a European racial hierarchy dating to Bartolomé de las Casas. Noble and productive Indians are worthy of his admiration when they are considered in isolation, and subject to his pity when corrupted by their proximity to black people. Against the grain of these overt racial hierarchies, however, we can glean from Berendt’s reflections a multiracial scene of labor, colonial settlement, and black and Indian autonomy. Black workers, themselves likely refugees from servitude in the wider Caribbean, labor both in the colonial logging industry and on “a cornfield” alongside Maya Caste War refugees in settlements at once articulated with a global economy and improvised as relatively autonomous “self-elected” communities. This “cornfield” in particular was likely a milpa, which as I will discuss in more detail in chapter 4 is a field in which peasants plant beans, corn, and squash together to provide sustenance and to keep the soil enriched. More broadly, however, milpa names a way of organizing economic, political, kinship, and gender relations on quotidian and seasonal scales that antagonize the kind of global capitalist development Yucatecan Creoles sought to establish on the peninsula. As such, it enacts the quotidian globality I have been tracing throughout The Brink of Freedom. Although Berendt’s itinerant antiquarianism throughout Yucatán made The Book of Chilam Balam from Chumayel available to twentieth-century scholars like Robinson, his own accounts of the Caste War conjuncture offer a very different story from Robinson’s “black for red” narrative. The Maya were not a people who, as Robinson’s “Chilam” suggests, existed edenically until nonMaya arrived and replaced them with African laborers who in turn allowed racial capitalism to develop. Rather, diverse Maya factions lived varying degrees of subjugation to and autonomy from the region’s “Mexicans and Spaniards,” working intimately with black laborers from the Atlantic world who brought to Yucatán and Central America their own histories of engagement with and resistance to the rise of racial capitalism. Furthermore, these Maya appear to have had a deeply historical awareness of centuries of colonization to which they respond both with accommodation as “laborious and orderly” workers and with resistance as cultivators of milpas who have not forgotten how to hate their colonizers. When Berendt writes of villages throughout the Petén “peopled by Indians from Yucatan, almost every one of them formerly engaged in the war of races which for the last twenty years has desolated that unhappy country,” he reveals one of the key features of the Caste War’s impact on what I will call the Yucatán’s casta capitalism: by destroying the peninsula’s sugar economy, consolidating autonomous communities, and moving south to the Petén, 148 · Part II Prelude

Maya partially withdrew their labor from early nineteenth-century Creole development and renegotiated their relationship to global capital. In turn, when Berendt complains of being delayed on his expedition due to “thieving negroes” who stole some of his baggage in San Pedro Buenavista, and when he disparages the “negroes, who . . . are too indolent to plant anything in the fertile ground around their decaying huts” unless the Indians help, he inadvertently betrays a multiracial scene in which blacks and Indians challenged the Yucatán’s role in global, racial capitalism. We can learn from Berendt’s “Report of Explorations in Central America” that the region’s black workers who withheld their labor from the Atlantic world’s chattel slavery lived and worked with Indians to forge alternative economies: “cutting logwood on their own account, which they sell in Belize,” as Berendt puts it, and cultivating autonomous milpa “where Yucatan Indians have settled among them.”46 To the very “Mexican and Spaniard” against whom the Maya “directed . . . their hatred,” this racial capitalist scene of subjugation and autonomy was an urgent object of study in which the now familiar figure of Chilam Balam also features. Consider, for instance, how Justo Sierra O’Reilly explains the causes of the Caste War in a series of articles he wrote for another journal he founded in Campeche, El Fénix: Periódico Político y Mercantil. Early in the series, Sierra O’Reilly offers an account of profetas yucatecos, or Maya spiritual leaders, who shaped the initial indigenous response to the Conquest. This account, published in 1848 a little more than a year after the Caste War broke out, explicitly claims that the “extravagant, incomprehensible, and ominous language” of these prophets helped to foster Indian barbarism during the sixteenth century, and implicitly suggests that such language continues to thrive in the mid-nineteenth century among Maya rebels. Principal among Sierra O’Reilly’s culpable profetas yucatecos is none other than Chilam Balam: “That prophet, who was called Chilam-Balam and who gained extraordinary respect in the court of the Xiues from Maní, had cloaked his remarkable prophecies in high-sounding, forbidding pageantry full of vain words and feelings that were beyond the grasp of the people.”47 In El Fénix, Sierra O’Reilly quickly passes from the specter of Chilam Balam’s “multitude” to descriptions of other profetas, but not before referring his readers to one of his earlier articles, entitled “Profetas Yucatecos,” published in October 1841 on the second page of the inaugural issue of El Museo Yucateco to which I referred at the beginning of this prelude. It is in this article that Sierra O’Reilly fleshes out his culpable specter. Published under Sierra O’Reilly’s favorite anagrammatic pseudonym José Turrisa, “Profetas Yucatecos” begins by acknowledging the power Chilam Balam has throughout the peninsula: “There are no old women, housekeepers, vergers, Yucatán: Una Guerra Escrita · 149

or chaplains in the villages or even the cities of this country who do not speak of dark prophecies or mysterious words that portend blood, catastrophe, earthquakes, and floods. When we were children, Chilam Balam was a terrifying man, a man who froze the blood in our veins. Who is Chilam Balam? What a phenomenal being he is, able to strike terror into the hearts of young and old alike.”48 The question the article poses, then, is not simply a historical one. It asks not just who the person of Chilam Balam was, but how the figure of Chilam Balam continues to haunt the entire peninsula, old and young, city and village alike. It quickly becomes clear that the pseudonymous Turrisa disdains not only Chilam Balam, whoever he might have been, but also the “terror” the very idea of him popularly evokes: We still hear reports of even more terrible and horrifying things in remote parts of the country, and these popular myths have been backed up and perpetuated by certain visionaries who, without bothering to find out if these stories are true, have allowed themselves to be swept along by the current of an extravagant, ridiculous tradition. Because, in fact, if Chilam Balam is what they think he is, then he must be from after the time of the conquest, because things are attributed to him that could only have happened in recent times.49 It is the transhistoricity of the figure of Chilam Balam that so concerns Turrisa here. This prophet’s power derives from his persistence since pre-Columbian times, and yet this persistence is also precisely what makes Turrisa doubt Chilam Balam’s very existence. “Profetas Yucatecos” thus sets out to discredit the figure of Chilam Balam; to demystify his “mysterious words” with the epistemological promise of Lucretius’s “golden words,” cited on El Museo Yucateco’s inaugural cover page; and to counter “these popular myths” with El Museo Yucateco’s own performatively apolitical commitment to universal knowledge. “Profetas Yucatecos” thus struggles to keep Chilam Balam subaltern. Reaching back into time with a historical gesture we will see repeatedly in Creole writings on the Caste War in chapter 3, the article describes its author’s visit to the archives of Mérida in search of an early modern text that could shed light on who Chilam Balam was. This text is held by a well-known padre Zúñiga, who, “if not crazy, is at least what the doctors call a monomaniac,” and who seems almost literally to live in the past: “The good man believed he was descended from the royal Gothic house of Spain, and he didn’t like the usurping of Don Sancho the Brave, nor the death of Don Pedro the Cruel at the hands of [Henry] of Trastamara, nor the accession of the Archduke of Austria or Phillip V; oh! that put him in a foul mood.”50 Indeed, padre Zúñiga embod150 · Part II Prelude

ies the seventeenth-century friars who so deftly articulated an Enlightenment thirst for knowledge with a colonial zeal for conquest and conversion: “he was a respectable man, peaceful and generous, and although he was given to fierce tirades against the indigenous people of this country, implying that they were descended, by degree or by force, from the Hebrews . . . he also claimed to be a learned man, well versed in the languages, habits and customs of the natives.”51 When Turrisa asks Zúñiga about Chilam Balam, he unfurls “an enormous roll of damp, almost illegible papers . . . in the Maya language.”52 Dated February 27, 1697, the document seems original and authentic: “except that it was not a copy but a rough draft of the first document of its kind.”53 Padre Zúñiga has apparently presented Turrisa with a manuscript very much like one of the books of Chilam Balam that Carl Hermann Berendt copied and Robinson quoted, via Crosby. The article describes it as an “excessively extravagant” book full of “violent,” “monstrous,” and “ugly” language, one that calls upon its gods for help in a struggle against “los blancos” or, writes Turrisa using the Maya word for whites, “tidzuloob” (or dzulo’ob as it would be written today, which derives from the more general Maya word for foreigner, dzul). Yet it is this very extravagance that somehow convinces Turrisa not to take the book seriously: But what we found very funny and what finally convinced us that the document was apocryphal was a sort of lamentation at the end of the prophecy that paints people of his race in the most odious colors, and curses them in the name of the living God should they come up with the disastrous idea of becoming independent; that is, should they return to the idolatry of their elders, abandon their villages, move back into the forest and go and live on the shores of Lake Petenitzá.54 Formally authentic, the manuscript is judged to be apocryphal because its author is so clearly Spanish for suggesting Chilam Balam does not want his people to rise up for independence. It is impossible, Turrisa presumes, that the real Chilam Balam would choose Christianity over a return to pre-Columbian “idolatry” or that he would warn Maya against leaving the pueblos into which they had been encouraged to settle since the Conquest and return to the “forest,” where they could become independent from Creole control. The document effectively represents the very scene of autonomy that Berendt lauds as common among “the insurgent and independent Maya Indians” in the Petén (“it is highly surprising to see these ferocious warriors organizing themselves without any external influence”) as a scene Chilam Balam rejects, and this is unimaginable for Turrisa.55 Yucatán: Una Guerra Escrita · 151

Because padre Zúñiga is enraged at Turrisa’s skepticism, the inquisitive Creole intellectual seeks out another of Mérida’s learned scholars, D. Pablo Moreno, who definitively rejects the manuscript in terms Turrisa accepts: he told us that Father Zúñiga’s manuscript . . . was nothing but a tissue of lies that were deliberately dreamed up to prevent the emigration of indigenous people who, attracted by the abundance and fertility of the lands in Petén and the Lacandones, left their villages and settlements in the Yucatán in the hope of improving their situation in a country that had not yet been subdued by the Spaniards . . . and that the manuscript in question, like certain very bad popular ditties written in Maya that were recited in the Indians’ villages and settlements, and even in the towns and cities, whether about Chilam Balam or the Caliph of Baghdad, had all been invented with an ulterior motive.56 The document is a “tissue of lies” because it enlists Chilam Balam to pacify his people. For Moreno and Turrisa, to the contrary, someone like Chilam Balam would have encouraged Maya to abandon pueblos in Yucatán where they lived with or near Creoles, and thus were available to the Creole state as taxpayers and to Creole landowners as laborers, in favor of a separate and independent existence in the Petén or the Lacandon. In its curious comparison of Chilam Balam to the Caliph of Baghdad, this passage perhaps invokes the Orientalist comic opera Le calife de Bagdad, written by François-Adrien Boieldieu and first performed in Paris in 1800. As a member of a liberal Yucatecan intellectual class that looked to European culture and politics—as the very cover of El Museo Yucateco suggests—Sierra O’Reilly may well have been familiar with this opera, which was for a brief time extremely popular throughout Europe. In the opera, the title character is a Muslim ruler who disguises himself as a commoner so that he can walk among the city’s populace and, eventually, seduce a common girl named Zétulbé. Musically, the score combined French ideas of eastern percussion with a medley of European musical styles, performing the paradoxical blend of cosmopolitanism with French fantasies of “the east” that characterized Orientalist efforts at colonial self-definition.57 In “Profetas Yucatecos,” this analogy repurposes early modern distinctions between Christians and Muslims by way of nineteenth-century European Orientalism in a manner I will consider more closely in chapter 3. As a result, Chilam Balam is cast as a capricious, tyrannical, and untrustworthy non-Christian who embodies all that Yucatecan Creoles hoped to define themselves against. Faced with the legendary possibility that Chilam Balam has real power— either as an effective rebel leader or as a force for the pacification, conversion, 152 · Part II Prelude

and relocation of Maya—Turrisa works in this essay to make him subaltern, even to make him an invention of the Spanish themselves. “In conclusion,” Turrisa writes, “we can be sure that what is said these days about Chilam Balam is just a fable, an ill-conceived tale that is even more poorly explained . . . Children and old women can sleep peacefully because their slumber will not be disturbed by the ominous words of Chilam Balam* or any of the other Yucatecan prophets.” The footnote to which this passage refers reads: “*We remember having read, but don’t recall exactly where, that Chilam Balam is an eastern name that is used as we use it these days; and that it was brought here by the first white settlers of Yucatán with an ulterior motive, as people say. We must respect the fact that people can believe whatever they choose.”58 Chilam Balam is not a real threat to Yucatán’s populace because he is merely a legend of poorly imagined ideas. Turrisa even suggests in his footnote that it was the earliest white settlers who themselves introduced this figure; he has read somewhere, though he cannot remember exactly where, that the very name Chilam Balam is an Oriental or eastern name. The phrase an eastern name59 here equivocally references both the eastern part of the Yucatán Peninsula, commonly associated with especially rebellious and “barbarous” Maya like the Cruzob, and the global “East,” leaving open the suggestion that the name Chilam Balam was carried from Europe by Spaniards themselves preoccupied—like the composer François-Adrien Boieldieu—with distinctions between East and West, Christian and Muslim. Under the guise of José Turrisa, Justo Sierra O’Reilly thus travels across time and space, assembling scraps of history to craft a racialized figure for Maya resistance that—he tries to convince Yucatecan readers anxious about the uprising outside their doors—can be readily dismissed. When Cedric Robinson writes of “Chilam” in Black Marxism, then, he is simply not offering a Mayan perspective on how Indians thrived before colonization and then suffered from Spanish colonial brutality. What is more, that perspective cannot function as evidence of the replacement of Indians by Africans in the Americas, as it does in the section from Black Marxism called “Black for Red.” Rather, Robinson reproduces a figure who had been translated, transcribed, and invoked countless times for centuries, more recently by a nineteenth-century German liberal-in-exile who became an imperial agent of ethnographic and archaeological power and knowledge (Berendt), as well as by a nineteenth-century Yucatecan liberal who became the intellectual voice of Creole efforts to suppress Maya rebels during the early years of the Caste War (Sierra O’Reilly). The “Chilam” whom Robinson represents as an individual “native of the Yucatan” who “would write” a history that Black Marxism needs to know intiYucatán: Una Guerra Escrita · 153

mately is, then, the name of a multipart social text: a legendary prophet as well as many prophets; a book as well as many books, made of Yucatecan lime and bark as well as European paper, copied many times by many hands, both Mayan and European, in a language at once Maya and Spanish; a history of Maya revolt at once local to Yucatán and global in its ties to European colonialism and to “1848s” throughout Europe and the Americas; a transnational conflict and contact zone whose very racial form was being continually cast and recast. This social text appears in Black Marxism as the unfolding of the historical imprint of a part of “the whole of it,” a part that Robinson says must be understood as an antecedent to our understanding of black labor and Africa. Yet as we have begun to see through Berendt and Sierra O’Reilly, Yucatán offers a scene of casta capitalism that is coterminous with, rather than a predecessor to, Robinson’s conception of a racial capitalism. If we are to read this social text of and in Black Marxism, if we are to take up Black Marxism’s desire for a certain intimacy with Chilam, and thus to understand how the Caste War conjuncture articulated with what Robinson calls racial capitalism, then we will need to look more closely at the written war between Yucatán’s Creoles and Maya insurgents. In the two chapters that follow, I take up this task. I begin chapter 3 by asking a deceptively simple question: why was the Caste War called “the Caste War”? By tracing the historical reach and geographic range of the concept-metaphor casta, I show how it indexes Creole efforts to repurpose the historical legacy of colonialism and cast the future of liberal capitalist development in Yucatán. Creoles drew on casta’s nimble globality to articulate race, liberalism, and capitalism in the pages of a lively but unruly periodical culture that included reportage, historiography, and folletines, or serialized fiction. This casta periodismo, in turn, reveals the lineaments of the powerful and yet tenuous social formation I call casta capitalism. In chapter 4, I turn to letters from Maya leaders and combatants during the first decades of the war. Writing in Spanish and Yucatec Maya, they speculatively appropriate and repurpose the Creoles’ articulation of race, liberalism, and capitalism, offering an effective and ongoing reflection upon and practice of libertad.60 In the archive of the Maya’s written war, libertad and casta are recast toward a future that is still—in many lively ways I turn to in the coda—our own horizon.

154 · Part II Prelude

Chapter 3

“En Sus Futuros Destinos” Casta Capitalism

If the very difficult and complicated task of assimilating the heterogeneous races that inhabit this land is to continue, we believe that the study we are submitting today will not be entirely useless. History teaches us that the goal of social integration has never been achieved easily or quickly, and it is therefore no surprise to see how slow the process has been in our case. In addition to the many natural and artificial obstacles that have been and will continue to be encountered in pursuit of this goal, there is one ethnographic fact that has perhaps not been considered in sufficient depth; a fact that, more than any other, might delay the total integration of indigenous and European races. This fact is the difference in skin color. This difference is so defining, and unjust attitudes that reject any legitimate union of whites and Indians are so widespread, that it is not hard to grasp how slowly we have advanced, and will continue to advance, toward a level of integration that can demolish the main argument for war between these groups. And yet, only the assimilation that we have been discussing is capable of solving many of those problems. —Justo Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán (1857)

Between November 10, 1848, and August 20, 1851, leading Yucatecan liberal Justo Sierra O’Reilly published a series of articles entitled “Considerations as to the origin, causes, and tendencies of the indigenous uprising, its probable results and possible remedy” in his Campeche periodical El Fénix: Periódico Político y Mercantil.1 Claiming to explain the causes of what had come to be known among Creoles as la Guerra de Castas, the Caste War, this series was republished in 1857 with a new prologue as a complete book, retitled The Indians of the Yucatán: Historical considerations as to the influence of the indigenous element in the social organization of the country.2 In the epigraph above, which comes

from the prologue, Sierra O’Reilly represents the “ethnographic fact” of “the difference in skin color” (la diversidad del color de la piel ) of Yucatecos as central to any explanation of the war.3 But he does not claim that “the difference in skin color” in and of itself causes the conflict, that people of different races are necessarily and essentially antagonistic. Rather, the passage suggests that an unwarranted focus on differences in skin color has kept both whites and Indians from the more natural, necessary, and modern course of racial mixing: “unjust attitudes that reject any legitimate union of whites and Indians.”4 Such mixing is, in turn, the principal means of securing Yucatán’s civilized future: “the very difficult and complicated task of assimilating the heterogeneous races that inhabit this land.”5 Since tierra (“land” or “earth”) could refer to Yucatán, Mexico as a whole, or even the entire world, the passage charts a future that is at once Yucatecan, regional, and global. Drawing on and elaborating the discourse of mestizaje or racial mixing, which was rooted in Spanish colonial practices dating to the Conquest but flourished throughout Latin America during the nineteeth-century nationbuilding boom, Sierra O’Reilly seems to counter the unfolding reality of a race war with a cosmopolitan, progressive commitment to multiracial hybridity. He thus offers his history of the Yucatán, beginning with the Conquest, as an essential aspect of this felicitous “social integration” or “development,” in which all Yucatecos would gain access to civilization’s freedoms through a carefully regulated intermixing: “the legitimate union.” Yet the advocacy of “legitimate union” itself presupposes an illegitimate disunion that must be rectified, a disunion between those Sierra O’Reilly calls “indigenous and European races.”6 To proffer his vision of legitimate union, then, Sierra O’Reilly has to establish, proleptically, the terms and the causes of this illegitimate disunion, terms and causes that he traces through a history of colonization dating to the sixteenth century. Consequently, both assimilative union and this proleptic presumption of a sharp and clear racial disunion are distinctive features of the Creoles’ liberal capitalism during the nineteenth century. From the 1840s to the end of the century, Sierra O’Reilly and many of his fellow Yucatecan Creoles would devote vast energy to this proleptic task. Marshaling their printing presses, they produced scores of periodicals principally for urban Creole and mestizo readers that cast the peninsula’s violent conflict as a race war between the centuries-old, essentialized forces of Spanish civility and Indian barbarism, a war that could only be settled by the ever more vigorous “assimilation” of the races. In fact, this division was never as stark as Caste War periodismo suggested. There were not only Creoles and Maya on all sides of the period’s multifaceted conflicts, but also Afro-Yucatecos and mestizos, and each 156 · Chapter 3

group was internally divided among the rural and the urban as well as the elite and the common. What is more, Maya, Spaniards, Creoles, Mestizos, and AfroYucatecos had been interacting on quotidian and structural scales for centuries. Creole periodismo thus turned this conflict into a Manichean Caste War as it unfolded. In the prologue to Los Indios de Yucatán, Sierra O’Reilly makes the stakes of this discursive enterprise urgent indeed; failing to account for and recast the “ethnographic fact” of “the difference in skin color” would lead to nothing less than the ruination of Yucatecan society: “To dismiss this question without pausing to consider it is to sign our own death sentence; it is to condemn our dying society to total ruin; it is to allow the Yucatán to disappear from among civilized nations.”7 As we will see, the trope of ruin does extensive work for Creole periodismo, investing the war with meaning as a war among castes over the future of civility itself. This written war depended, too, on the formal features of periodismo, particularly on its serial and juxtapositional logics.8 Yucatecan periodicals gathered on their pages an assemblage of local and global reportage, popular fiction, cultural criticism, government proclamations, and classifieds. Consequently, each element generated meaning not only from its content, but also from its relationship to the other elements set alongside it. For instance, the top half of the first page of the November 15, 1848, edition of El Fénix prints an installment of Sierra O’Reilly’s series on the origins of the war, discussing Francisco de Montejo’s efforts to conquer Yucatán in the 1520s. The bottom half of that same page prints a chapter of Sierra O’Reilly’s folletín, or serial novel, called La hija del judío (The Jew’s daughter), about the daughter of a family in colonial Mérida who is persecuted by Spanish authorities and struggles to regain her family’s wealth and to find a place in Creole society. On the third page of this issue, the editors add to this mix a report entitled “Guerra de los Bárbaros” about current troop movements and government efforts to counter Maya rebels in pueblos such as Tixcuitun, Ticum, Pencuyut, Tekax, and Tizimín. These three sections—“Historical considerations as to the origin, causes, and tendencies of the indigenous uprising, its probable results and possible remedy,” La hija del judío, and “Guerra de los Bárbaros”—would subsequently run alongside each other for years. El Fénix thus travels across time and space, gathering together Jews, Christians, Spaniards, and Maya from Iberia and Yucatán from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, not just to describe the past or to explain the present but also to cast Yucatán’s future, adding another layer to “the growing palimpsest of race in Latin America.”9 In this chapter I examine the effort by Yucatecan Creoles to invest the Caste War with meaning as a war about what Sierra O’Reilly calls “the difference Casta Capitalism · 157

in skin color,” raza, or casta. Although they can certainly be understood as architects of what we saw Immanuel Wallerstein call “centrist liberalism” in my introduction, these Creoles did not just adopt the progressive or meliorist temporality often associated with such liberalism, nor was their perspective confined to the Yucatán and its increasingly centralized state. Rather, they followed currents that ranged far and wide, both geographically and temporally, from early modern Castile to pre-Conquest Yucatán, from eighteenth-century France to (as we saw in the prelude) imperial Baghdad, even flowing through Scandinavia and South Asia if we trace all the routes traveled by their richest concept-metaphor, casta. In turn, they channeled those currents into the periodicals’ serial, juxtapositional form. I argue that attention to the expansive geographic and temporal globalities of the Creoles’ written war, embodied in their vigorous periodical culture, reveals the racialization of Yucatecan liberal capitalism at this conjuncture. In the face of organized Maya resistance to a massive, late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century wave of disenfranchisement and dispossession, liberal Creoles mobilized their periodical culture to represent a multifaceted conflict— in which Creoles, Maya, mestizos, and Afro-Yucatecos played diverse roles—as a race war between two utterly distinct and discrete peoples: civilized blancos and barbaric indios. Having recast the terms of the problem to be solved, these Creoles then proffered the solution Sierra O’Reilly outlines above: the assimilation of Indians into liberal capitalist civility. This often virulently militaristic plan for disenfranchisement, dispossession, and assimilation was at least as extensive and intensive as anything the Maya had faced under prior colonial regimes. As this casta capitalism sought to shape what one conservative commentary on the war, which I will discuss below, called “sus futuros destinos”—“the future destinies . . . the vast Indian race . . . shared with the descendants of the Spanish”—it exposed the vigorously exploitative power of nineteenth-century liberalism itself.10 This plan was also fragile, however, and as we will see in chapter 4 the Maya proved not only capable of matching Creole militarism on the ground, but also adept at speculating upon, appropriating, and recasting the terms of casta capitalism itself in a material and discursive struggle over freedom’s future on the Yucatán Peninsula.

Casta How did this conflict come to be called la Guerra de Castas soon after it began? What does casta mean during this flashpoint, both for Yucatán and for the global capitalism with which Yucatán was articulated? This question is neither 158 · Chapter 3

trivial nor simply semantic. Actually, the name ought to surprise us, because the term casta had largely fallen out of use by 1847, harkening as it did to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Spanish colonial ideologies typified by the period’s often examined casta paintings.11 An account of what we might call the global genealogy of this surprising, nineteenth-century use of the term casta is a first step toward discerning how Creole-driven capitalist development and Yucatecan liberalism were themselves articulated by Yucatecan periodismo in a global, racial frame. It would seem that the question of why the Caste War is called “the Caste War” has not only been difficult to answer; it has rarely even been posed. In those rare instances when the question is even asked, the streamlined answers typically make one of two assumptions. Either the war was an inevitable outburst of an antagonism, dating from the Conquest, between Maya on the one hand and Spaniards and Creoles on the other, such that the antiquated term casta signals the ancient nature of the conflict; or casta meant “race” and was a polemical representation of a conflict that was essentially either class-based (in which peasants were set against the elite) or politically sectarian (in which Creole and elite Maya factions fought each other and used common Maya as soldiers).12 These answers force us to choose between understanding the titular casta as either an ancient or a modern feature of the war; they also presume that the war’s name is at most a convenient or commonsensical reflection of the war’s material conditions. However, the leading contemporary U.S. scholar of the Caste War, Terry Rugeley, inadvertently hints that casta is more complex at this conjuncture in a rare reflection on the war’s name: “Even the term guerra de castas had an irregular application. (The vague term casta was used to refer to both the Hispanic/ Indian division and to a society divided into well-to-dos and rabble.) . . . The term guerra de castas was tossed around freely, too much so perhaps, and the overly liberal usage now makes it difficult to determine when a consciousness of this conflict took shape.”13 “Irregular,” “vague,” “difficult,” “overly liberal,” and “tossed around . . . too . . . freely”—it is as if the name of the conflict that is at the center of his research is an obstacle to a clear understanding of the conflict’s meaning, particularly the origin of “a consciousness of this conflict.” But it is precisely this difficult irregularity, this too liberal and too free signification of the term, that tells us so much. For although Creoles began widely using the name during the war’s earliest years, the conflict never had a univocal meaning that would correspond to something like a point of origin or a punctual consciousness. Rather, it was a war in which the term casta indexed both global historical legacies and conflicting nineteenth-century efforts to repurpose those Casta Capitalism · 159

legacies. The term was indeed “tossed around,” but in the sense that it was used in letters and articles and novels written by and between Creole and Maya participants in the war, letters and articles and novels that today make up an archive of efforts to theorize a struggle over the future of freedom in Yucatán. If we are going to consider the vague and difficult irregularity of the term Guerra de Castas not as an obstacle, à la Rugeley, but rather as an index of the conflict’s repurposed historical legacies, then we will need a more detailed account of the long and contested genealogy of the Spanish word casta. In a 1971 article on the category of caste, Julian Pitt-Rivers made some suggestive if unreflective comments about the curious use of casta in nineteenth-century Yucatán, comments that invoke the terms of the genealogy we need to construct: [Casta] is found now, as in English, indicating a certain type of social distinction and applying in particular to that which divides the population of Latin America into Indian and hispanic. This sense is quite different from that of lineage or clan or the categories of breed which were distinguished in the imperial epoch or the hierarchized occupational groups of the Hindus . . . This usage owed its entry into Latin America to an analogy with the distinction between coloured and white people in the United States. The reappearance of the term [casta] in Spanish was therefore anything but a simple revival of a usage which had fallen out of fashion but rather the invasion of a territory where the term once existed on the ethnographical level by the same word which, thanks to its sojourn on the far side of the world, had “made it” to analytical status and thereafter claimed the right to apply anywhere, even to the past where it confronts its defunct antecedents. This has occurred in historical studies of the imperial epoch or the nineteenth-century Yucatan where the “Guerra de Castas” is commonly translated as “The Caste War” (e.g., Reed 1964). It is difficult to say what exactly this expression is intended to convey in English; if it is not simply an anglicization of the Spanish name, it can be seen to depend on an analogy of the same type as that which beguiles the student who sets off for Polynesia hoping to find mana or for the northwest coast expecting a “potlatch society.”14 Pitt-Rivers suggests that casta began to be used in South Asia (“the far side of the world”) by Portuguese and British colonizers as an “ethnographic” term, by which he means a purely descriptive term for empirically existing social groups (“lineage,” “clan,” and “breed,” or what he later calls “the hierarchy of endogamous groups of Indian Society”).15 It was then transformed by scholars into an “analytic” term meant to distinguish between “Indians” and “hispanics” in 160 · Chapter 3

Latin America in a way purposefully analogous to the Manichean distinction between “coloured” and “white” in the United States. This transformation is flawed, he suggests, because the populations of Latin America have never been as Manichean as they are in the United States, and so cannot be analyzed aptly as castas. The use of casta for the Caste War of Yucatán, then, is historically and geographically misplaced and simplistic—a use of a term that only functions properly in South Asia (“on the ethnographical level”) in an improper way (as an “analogy” that attains “analytical status”) and an improper place (“the invasion of a territory”). For Pitt-Rivers, this impropriety is akin to a typical anthropology student’s use of concepts he or she learned in school to simplify more complex social formations encountered in the field, as it were, in Polynesia or the northwest United States. Pitt-Rivers’s distinction between accurate “ethnographic” uses of the term in South Asia and inaccurate “analytic” uses of the term in the Americas is historically unsustainable, as is his presumption that the United States is in fact a racially Manichean society that offered casta to scholars as a model for Latin America. However, his circuitous prose does effectively foreground the winding routes traveled by casta around the globe and across centuries, routes whose coordinates—Portugal, South Asia, Latin America—he accurately depicts as imperial (“the invasion of a territory”), but whose itinerary is more complex than he suspects. It is certainly “difficult to say” what casta in la Guerra de Castas names. Rather than a “beguiling,” juvenile error, however, that difficulty ought to spur us to follow the deep history and wide reach of “casta.” One aspect in particular of the Pitt-Rivers passage proves more apt than even he acknowledges; when he remarks that casta first led “an invasion of a territory” and “thereafter claimed the right to apply anywhere,” he points us toward the way the term’s imperial history articulated closely with liberal conceptions of freedom, as we will see. Let us then construct a genealogy of casta. There are two competing etymologies for the Spanish word. One—proffered by the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of “caste” and found at least as far back as Sebastian de Covarrubias y Orozco’s Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (1611)—claims that Iberian (that is, Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalán) forms of the word derived from the Latin word castus, which meant “pure” or “unpolluted” and which is also the root of the English word chaste. 16 Another etymology, offered by Joan Corominas’s Diccionario crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana (1954), explicitly refutes that derivation, claiming that the Iberian forms derive from the Gothic word kasts, which meant “a group of animals” or “a brood of hatchlings.” Corominas’s etymology further ties casta to terms for animal groupings in ScandiCasta Capitalism · 161

navian languages—also possibly derived from the Gothic—like the Swedish kast meaning “a group of herring.” Thus, whereas the Covarrubias and Oxford English Dictionary etymologies suggest that casta always carried a normative association with untainted descent or reproductive purity, Corominas’s etymology claims that casta was originally a more neutral term for animal groups.17 Corominas also ties casta to a cluster of words meaning “to throw, to fling,” such as the Old Norse kasta, the Islandic kast or köst, the Danish kaste, and the Swedish kasta. Indeed, the English verb cast—also meaning “to throw”—itself shares this genealogy.18 The link between “brood” and “throw” is intriguing, as we will see throughout part II, because both terms carry associations with futurity: “brood” names future generations while “throw” signals a motion toward. Crucially, casta thus does not just figure fixed, normative hierarchies and reproductive kinship, as is often assumed today: witness Pitt-Rivers’s desire to limit casta to “its defunct antecedents,” or Rugeley’s claim that the term marks “the Hispanic/Indian division into a society divided into well-to-dos and rabble.” Encoded in casta’s etymology is also a certain forward-looking potentiality that leaves its futuros destinos perpetually open to repurposing. By all accounts, Iberians made increasingly extensive use of this potent semantic constellation. As María Elena Martínez argues in Genealogical Fictions, the late medieval concept of limpieza de sangre (“purity of blood”) worked in Castile to define “‘Old Christian’ ancestry” putatively “unsullied” by either the Jewish heritage of the conversos or the Islam of the peninsula’s Muslim world. “By the middle of the sixteenth century,” Martínez writes, “the ideology of purity of blood had produced a Spanish society obsessed with genealogy, and in particular with the idea that having only Christian ancestors, and thus a ‘pure lineage,’ was the critical sign of a person’s loyalty to the faith.”19 In this context, the Spanish casta started to be used in Castile to refer to groups of plants, animals, and people, and even at times to signify proper propagation; the related castizo, for instance, meant “noble ancestry.”20 Martínez then tracks casta’s transportation to the Americas, showing how “in the colonial context, Spaniards came up with even more uses for the word.”21 By the late seventeenth century, an elaborate, colonial sistema de castas came to signify “a hierarchical system of classification in Spanish America that was ostensibly based on proportions of Spanish, indigenous, and African Ancestry.”22 What is more, the Spanish word raza—itself used with “negative connotations” in early modern Castile to signify “descent from Jews and Muslims”—developed alongside casta throughout the colonial period, both in the metropole and the colonies, in such a way that raza and casta can neither be rigorously distinguished from one another nor defined as if they ever had singular, stable meanings.23 During this same period, 162 · Chapter 3

Portuguese explorers and merchants began to use casta in South Asia to name what they saw as hierarchical social relations based on lineage. The English word caste was also, in the sixteenth century, being used in ways apparently related to the earliest Spanish and Portuguese uses; Sir Walter Raleigh used “cast” in his Discovery of Guiana (1595) both as a verb to mean “throw” and as a noun to mean something like “tribe.”24 By linking medieval Iberian encounters among Christians, Jews, and Muslims to early modern European encounters with the so-called East Indies as well as to early modern European encounters with the so-called West Indies, casta became something like a global concept-metaphor packed with ever-shifting meanings.25 What of the term’s fate in nineteenth-century Yucatán? El sistema de castas reached its height and was most widely deployed in Mexico in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After independence from Spain in 1821 and the series of early nineteenth-century Mexican and Yucatecan constitutions that claimed to end Spanish colonial hierarchies, casta fell into relative disuse. My research suggests that, apart from the flurry of references to the Caste War starting in 1847, it appears relatively infrequently in Mexico during the nineteenth century, in either official documents or more popular texts like newspapers. It also seems as if the term casta and the name Guerra de Castas were used primarily by Yucatecan Creoles, and not Maya leaders of or participants in the conflict. There is no word in Maya for casta, other than the loan word caasta and, as we will see in chapter 4, caasta is rarely used by Maya during the war. Rather than presuming that nineteenth-century Yucatecan uses of casta are imprecise, as Rugeley does, or improperly applied, as Pitt-Rivers does, we ought to understand what Rugeley calls casta’s “irregularity” as the term’s potent historical sediment, and consider the very circuitous route Pitt-Rivers tracks as the term’s potential for revivification during the war. If we ask, with Laura Gotkowitz and Thomas Holt, not “what race means” but rather about “the consequences of race and the work race does” during this flashpoint, then we can see power and potential in casta’s nineteenth-century equivocations and instabilities.26 As Kathryn Burns argues, “definitional drift” in the history of racial categories ought not alert us to avoid those categories so much as it “bespeaks complex histories marked by very local struggles as well as far-flung imperial rivalries” and, as we have seen in this section, wide-ranging genealogies.27 By tracking what Burns calls the “active trafficking in words over wide geographic expanses” and across what Sinclair Thomson calls “multilayered textures in the past,” we can discern, in Florencia E. Mallon’s terms, “how these various forms of racialization—from above and from below—took shape across the nineteenth century.”28 In Yucatán, Creoles shape race from above to forge a state-sponsored Casta Capitalism · 163

structure of national citizenship animated by a racialized universal egalitarianism. As we will see in chapter 4, Maya in turn draw on the quotidian globalities of their lives to cast Yucatán into a very different future.

Casta Periodismo Historians have most often represented Creole responsibility for the war in economic and political terms, arguing, for instance, that the Yucatecan state sought to balance liberal reforms with the need for the cooperation of Maya elite in securing Maya labor and land for Creole economic development; or that Creole landowners pushed the state to secure more and more Maya land for global industries like sugar; or that individual Creole and Maya leaders pursued their own interests and cynically enlisted common Maya to support those interests. Consequently, these accounts depict the Creoles as internally divided among diverse material interests, and the Maya as tactically allied with various Creole factions.29 While not incorrect on their own terms, such analyses nonetheless fail to capture the ways in which Creole periodismo coalesced into a remarkably consistent discourse by traveling across space and time to invest the war with meaning as a caste war, and how that investment in turn shaped the material realities of the peninsula. While serial print media began to be published in Mexico in the early eighteenth century, the nineteenth century is widely regarded as the golden age of Mexican periodismo.30 Crucial to the ideological struggles leading up to independence in 1821, Mexican periodicals burst on the scene in earnest after freedom of the press was declared at the Cortes de Cádiz with the Spanish Constitution of 1812. The Cortes was a legislative assembly that first met in Cádiz in 1810, with the French occupying much of Spain during the Peninsular War. Over three hundred representatives from across the Spanish empire eventually joined the assembly, including Indians and mestizos from the Americas. While the Constitution that emerged from the Cortes preserved the Spanish monarchy as a Roman Catholic state, it also invested the people with sovereignty in the name of the king and enshrined a host of liberal reforms, including “representative electoral bodies at various levels of government, restrictions on the power of the king, rights for the criminally accused, freedom of contract, and individual property rights,” as well as the abolition of “the Inquisition, seigniorial structures, Indian tribute, and forced Indian labor in America and personal services in Spain.”31 Quickly disavowed by the monarchy in 1814, and subsequently restricted in various ways throughout Mexico, the Constitution of 1812 nonetheless spurred liberal and radical movements throughout the Americas.32 164 · Chapter 3

In Yucatán, conflicts among conservatives, liberals, federalists, centralists, and those in favor of Yucatecan independence raged in scores of post-Cortés periodicals, which often lasted just a few months or years only to be refounded by the same editors under different titles. Published by at least ten different publishing houses in the period’s two centers of Creole power, Campeche and Mérida, these Yucatecan periodicals printed a remarkable range of genres, including poetry, serial novels or folletines, reportage from around the world, political and literary reflections, economic analyses, government and Church bulletins, polemics, manifestos, farcical sketches, comics, advertisements, and letters from readers.33 Rocío Leticia Cortés Campos has argued that during the initial decades of the Caste War these periodicals mixed genres especially vigorously, such that the years 1841–69 can be said to be a unique period of periodismo mixto or periodismo híbrido, mixed or hybrid periodicalism.34 Periodicals from this period were relatively cheap, readily available, and well suited to everyday consumption, ranging in size between approximately 17 inches by 8 inches and 5.5 inches by 4 inches. Appearing as often as every few days or as infrequently as once a month, some were numbered sequentially, so as to be assembled subsequently into a book, while others were published in regular, distinct editions or broadsheets of just a few pages.35 Printed and edited by the region’s leading Creole citizens, and designed to be read by an urban Creole and mestizo audience with a high degree of literacy in Spanish, these periodicals became the primary public theater for Creole representations of the Caste War.36 Benedict Anderson famously surveyed the nationalist effect of this kind of print assemblage in his Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, noting how newspapers bring together the seemingly disparate elements gathered on their pages with the calendrical coincidence of an issue’s publication date, the “mass ceremony” of its production and consumption as a commodity, and the vernacular languages in which periodicals were written. Anderson made particular note of the importance of the newspaper for what he called the “creole pioneers,” or settler-colonial “functionaries” and “printmen,” who played a central role in transforming the Americas from Spanish and Portuguese empires into national states.37 In nineteenth-century Yucatán, however, the national state and nationalist “consciousness” were not the primary effects of periodismo. Rather, the Creoles forged a more worldly Yucatán, which was intimately networked with contemporary global liberalism and with a long history of racial capitalism dating to the colonial period. What is more, the impact of print capitalism around 1821 was neither as sudden nor as singular as Anderson suggests when he infamously asks, “Why did the SpanishAmerican Empire, which had existed calmly for almost three centuries, quite Casta Capitalism · 165

suddenly fragment into eighteen separate states?”38 Not only was the SpanishAmerican Empire anything but calm for those three centuries, but also—as Ángel Rama and Kathryn Burns have shown—since the colonial period writing had been an essential technique of governance, urbanization, and pacification, often in the face of vigorous and active subaltern resistance. The periodical boom of the nineteenth century was thus an outgrowth of a colonial history of written governmentality that contributed, in turn, to the nation-building of the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries.39 As Creoles took up their pens and printing presses in the 1840s, they forged what we can call a casta periodismo, a print-culture racialization of the peninsula’s multifaceted antagonisms that transformed those antagonisms into an epic, Manichean struggle. Downplaying the kind of intra-Creole differences and disputes that had so characterized the early nineteenth century, Yucatecan periodicals consistently and incessantly rallied around the narrative of whites protecting Yucatán, and world civilization itself, from savage barbarians. Cortés Campos has gone so far as to insist that periodismo during the war was defined by a remarkably single-minded and consistent commitment to one ideological framework: “a pro-white, anti-indigenous ideology that was characterized by an idealization of whites and a criticism of Indians.”40 Yet the periodicals were more unruly than this. The prolepsis that characterizes this chapter’s epigraph from Sierra O’Reilly’s Los Indios de Yucatán—in which the ideal of racial assimilation is derived from a racial binarism that is retroactively posited as prior—is typical of the forced logics and labored rhetorical forms of Yucatecan periodismo. As they forged their narratives, Creoles also defended their violent system of centrist, liberal capitalist development as the means of securing civilization and what Sierra O’Reilly called “the legitimate union of whites and Indians” (la unión legítima de blancos e indios). Consequently, they careened wildly among lofty liberal principles like libertad and iqualidad, essentialist condemnations of los bárbaros, heavy-handed practices of land expropriation, steady efforts at indigenous disenfranchisement, and the militaristic exercise of Creole power.41 As we will see in the rest of this chapter, Yucatecan periodismo at this conjuncture struggled to gather these unruly efforts together. Read with an eye for its discursive gaps and fissures, the presumptive binarism of Creole racial ideology continually undoes itself. This casta periodismo thus appears as fragile and desperate as it does hegemonic and all-powerful. As we will see in the next chapter, the Creoles’ Maya antagonists recognized this fragile desperation, taking up their own pens—as colonized peoples had long done in the face of the written governmentality Rama chronicled—to reflect speculatively on freedom and to 166 · Chapter 3

engage a process of popular cultural and print “transculturation,” to borrow as Rama does from Fernando Ortiz.42 El Universal

One of the earliest, extensive deployments of the name Guerra de Castas comes not from Yucatán, but from an analysis of the war published in five installments in the conservative Mexico City paper El Universal during December of 1848, almost a year and a half after the start of the war.43 Entitled “Guerra de Castas,” the paper’s anonymous account of the war is, not surprisingly, a critique of Mexican liberalism. Yet in the course of that critique the article offers striking insights into the odd temporality of the concept-metaphor casta in the nineteenth century, particularly its seemingly anachronistic repurposing of the sistema de castas and its etymological link to reproduction and futurity. What is more, as we will see shortly, this conservative mobilization of casta shares much with subsequent accounts of the war in liberal Yucatecan Creole periodicals. As casta discourse cut across the familiar factional distinctions between conservatives and liberals, the concept-metaphor casta put race to work investing the peninsula’s conflict with meaning. “Guerra de Castas” argues that under Spanish rule social relations in Yucatán were peaceful and harmonious. El indígena (the Indian) knew to respect and even love the authority of the Spaniards, because such respect for authority is in the nature of el indígena and because the Spaniards asked only for a little tribute in return. El Universal longs for this system of “duties and burdens” (deberes y cargas) that allowed colonial rule to reproduce itself without extending “reason” (razon) to el indígena: a new element of order took hold . . . This element was the profound submission and respect of the Indians toward the Spanish race; a submission and respect that bordered on veneration. The Indian saw in the man of our race a being of superior intelligence, whom he believed solely worthy of the term “person of reason;” a guide indispensable to him in his ignorance, and a natural protector of his well-being and happiness . . . The respect for authority founded through such means, produced not only the complete submission of the Indians, but also even a true and positive love toward the government, which was the best guarantee of its stability and of the general peace . . . the annual tribute—the only burden that fell on them from the time of the old regime—had been reduced to the insignificant sum of 18 reales, and with just that they were completely free from any other service or civil or military burden. (December 9, 1848: 1–2)44 Casta Capitalism · 167

Despite its romanticization of what was in fact a violent and repressive history, this passage reveals some of the material content of the term casta’s history. As a monarchically ensured hierarchical order, el sistema de castas both distinguished the colonized from the colonizer—defining the Indian as a being distinct from the Spaniard—and allowed encomenderos access to capital (particularly land and labor, but also so-called tribute) in exchange for conquest in the name of the Crown.45 At the same time, el sistema de castas created a zone of relative autonomy for the vast majority of Maya in Yucatán. Though the colonial order did not recognize Indians as citizens—as would begin to be the case for adult Catholic male Indians in the wake of the Cádiz Constitution of 1812—it did allow Maya outside the major urban Creole zones of the north and west a large measure of self-government in the form of geographically expansive and officially sanctioned repúblicas de indios. Though unique to the Americas, the repúblicas had roots in medieval Iberian corporatism, in which different social groups were governed under distinct rules and obligations embodied in distinct fueros or legal systems. Maya elites secured their power by mediating contacts between the repúblicas and the Spanish church and state.46 To be sure, Spanish colonizers concentrated Indian populations and maintained contact with indigenous elites for the purposes of labor and tribute extraction. But what El Universal calls Indian “respect for authority,” “the complete submission of the Indians,” and “a true and positive love toward the government” can be understood, without the paper’s conservative filter, as a description of the articulation of a fixed casta hierarchy with the Maya autonomy enshrined in the repúblicas de indios. With independence and the rise of liberalism, El Universal grumbles on, los indígenas were told by liberal Creoles that they were citizens with rights, and that they ought to hate their Spanish rulers rather than love them, as well as love their own casta as a raza with its proper heroic leaders: However the time came when the fight for independence had to begin; and the leaders who were placed at the head of the movement, although of European origin, wanting to get the support of the vast Indian race, instead of attempting to unify them in a shared purpose and in the future destinies they shared with the descendants of the Spanish, with an unpardonable lack of foresight, began to infuse the Indians with hatred and a desire for revenge against the conquistadors’ race, which they presented to the Indians in incessant and ridiculous declamations, as if the Spaniards were the Indians’ great oppressor and mortal enemy. These leaders represented the property of individuals of the Spanish race as yet further 168 · Chapter 3

usurpations from the Indians, while ceaselessly invoking the memory of Moctezuma and other heroes of their caste; they desecrated the names of Hernan Cortes and of all the conquistadors, as well as the names of those who were originally from the mother country; they deplored the tyrannical oppression to which, they claimed, the majority of Indians had been subjected by the whites for 300 years . . . These constant declamations . . . produced, in the end, what they had to produce: . . . the disaffection against the whites that spread amongst the majority of the Indians; and those that did not participate in this disaffection still lost the old respect they had for the whites, which was the best guarantee of the peace. (December 9, 1848: 1)47 So liberal Creoles not only taught Indians to be dissatisfied with being colonized and to want rights they never had or needed, but they also taught those Indians to understand that dissatisfaction and desire for change in terms of casta and raza. The presumptive unity of El Universal’s idealized colonial era (“the common purpose” [el esfuerzo comun]) and its ability to reproduce itself (“their future destinies” [sus futuros destinos]) were shattered as liberals effectively invested the idealized casta with the conflictual raza. This investment sacrifices the future itself: “with an unpardonable lack of foresight” (con una imprevisión imperdonable). Imprevisión literally means the negation (im-) of what can be foreseen (previsión), of providence itself. The conservative position here, then, is not so much an anachronistic call for a return to the past as it is a lament about the loss of casta’s ability to reproduce hierarchical social relations. With “sus futuros destinos” no longer guaranteed, the future itself becomes an open question rather than a foresight. As we will see, this very lament also appears in liberal Creole accounts of the war. Soon, continues El Universal, Indians in Yucatán learned how false the liberal promises were: [The country] adopted, then, the dogma of equality, prescribed by that constitution; and as a result, the Indians were declared equal to the Spaniards and their descendants, in terms of the rights as well as the duties and obligations of citizenship . . . [soon,] nothing was left of the brilliant promises made to them; to the contrary, the unhappy Indians palpably felt that they had lost all the positive assets they had previously enjoyed, and that the champions of the new system offered them nothing more than a word in exchange for such a painful loss, a sonorous and seductive word, yes, though hollow and senseless, and above all without positive results. (December 9, 1848: 1–2)48 Casta Capitalism · 169

Strikingly, El Universal attributes to the Caste War’s Maya rebels a critique of formal equality (“nothing more than a word,” namely “equality”) that echoes Karl Marx’s own such critique, penned just five years earlier in his 1843 essay “On the Jewish Question.” For Marx, the merely formal equality of abstract rights (or what he calls “political emancipation”) falls short of substantive freedom (or what he calls “human emancipation”). While political emancipation ideally recognizes all people as citizens regardless of their religion, property ownership, or employment, it does not free people from being oppressed by religion, by landlords, or by bosses: “Hence man was not freed from religion—he received the freedom of religion. He was not freed from property—he received the freedom of property. He was not freed from the egoism of trade—he received the freedom to engage in trade.”49 Like El Universal’s “dogma of equality,” Marx’s “political emancipation” frees the state to recognize all people equally as citizens, but does not free people from being exploited by church, state, or capital. Of course, while for Marx “Political emancipation is certainly a big step forward” because it overthrows feudalism and sets the stage for a more substantive “human emancipation,” for El Universal the “dogma of equality” is wholly “without positive results.”50 El Universal thus insists that los indígenas were correct to offer their critique of “the new system” (el nuevo sistema), and that many others in Mexico share their critique: “We felt this undeniable truth in our country, shared not only with the indigenous race, but also with all the classes that make up our society” (December 9, 1848: 2).51 But unlike these non-Mayan clases, la raza indígena demanded the realization of the “dogma of equality’s” false promises, and when that failed to happen they became violent and turned against the whites whom the liberals had first taught them to hate, using “the new system” itself—including the ideas of freedom of speech, sovereignty, and majority rule—as a weapon against those who had made its illusory promises in the first place: The unruliness of public opinion and of the press . . . has converted the freedom of speech and of publication into a poisoned arrow that destroys not only the prestige but also the very existence of all authority.—The Indian once saw authority as a protective power, under whose shade he found shelter from the artfulness and force of villainy: afterwards, the Indian saw authority as nothing more than an oppressive power . . . the Indian has thus naturally reasoned:—1st. Sovereignty resides in the majority: we are the majority; therefore sovereignty resides in us. (December 9, 1848: 2) In effect, as we have already shown, these senseless orators have put everything in play to secure their objective. They have derailed history: they have 170 · Chapter 3

erased from history those brilliant features that proved more clearly than the light of the sun, those immense benefits of the conquest, to which even these same Indians were indebted: they have invented a thousand fictions and lies about imaginary horrors perpetrated by our race and, whipping up a frenzy, they have put the dagger in the hands of the savage, and have said: stab! (December 11, 1848: 1)52 Unfortunately, El Universal concludes, because of the barbaric nature and newly presumptuous beliefs of “la raza indígena,” their quite legitimate critique of liberalism turned violent. Here, the article reveals the underside of el sistema de castas’ presumptive harmony: the assertion of el indígena’s underlying savagery (“they have put the dagger in the hands of the savage” [han puesto el puñal en manos del salvage]). The only proper response—since independence obliterated the respect for authority that reigned so peacefully under the Spanish—is to strike back against the “savages” with even more brutal force to subdue their “lack of respect” (esta falta de respeto) (December 9, 1848: 2), and then to reeducate them in respect for authority and religion (December 14, 1848: 2; December 15, 1848: 1–2). As we will see shortly, liberal Yucatecos shared this prescription too. Casta and raza play powerful roles in this argument, roles that draw heavily on the terms’ historical legacies. El Universal’s nostalgia for the colonial era suggests that the old sistema de castas reproduced a peaceful society, and that the overturning of el sistema de castas led to dissatisfaction, disillusionment, and war. In effect, independence and liberal ideologies—“the new system”—posed a question that should never have been, the question of the futuros destinos of Creoles and Maya alike. They turned el sistema de castas into la Guerra de Castas, not only by proffering false promises of equality (“the dogma of equality” [el dogma de igualidad], December 9, 1848: 1) and sovereignty (“we are the majority; therefore sovereignty resides in us” [nosotros somos el mayor número; luego la soberanía reside en nosotros]), but also by teaching indígenas to think in newly racial terms: “they began to infuse the Indians with hatred and a desire for revenge against the conquistadors’ race . . . while ceaselessly invoking the memory of Moctezuma and other heroes of their caste; they desecrated the names of Hernan Cortes and of all the conquistadors . . . These constant declamations . . . produced, in the end, what they had to produce: . . . the disaffection against the whites.” The only way to reproduce Yucatán’s proper social relations into the future is to reinstitute what the sistema de castas represented: casta itself. In that way, the future that el sistema de castas had cast, if you will, could be rescued from the violence cast by el nuevo sistema. As it turns out, the liberalism El Universal decries did intensively attack Casta Capitalism · 171

los indígenas, perhaps with more intensity than the Maya had faced since the sixteenth-century arrival of the Spanish. To the horror of conservatives, many midcentury Yucatecan liberals embraced what Marx would have called “political emancipation” in the form of a more extensive recognition of Maya as citizens. Yet the citizenship they offered itself demanded a more complete assimiliation than had thus far been expected of the Maya under the structure of the repúblicas de indios, to which I referred above. In Yucatán, the repúblicas enjoyed an even higher degree of autonomy than in much of the rest of Mexico. They thus came to represent symbolically, and to express practically, Maya resistance to assimilation even as they shaped and guided the extensive social, political, and economic interactions between Creoles and Maya throughout the peninsula. The 1812 Constitution replaced the repúblicas, which covered relatively large geographical spaces and in which Indians alone held political rights, with ayuntamientos, or municipal councils, which were organized in towns with a population of at least one thousand but in practice were also organized in even smaller villages and in which both Indians and Creoles were enfranchised. In Yucatán, as Karen D. Caplan has written, “the new ayuntamientos were not intended to serve a representative but merely an administrative function, and they were intended to reflect the desires of individual citizens, not of the commons. Thus, for indigenous people, the ayuntamientos represented a new and possibly disruptive way of designating authority within villages, especially in that they raised the possibility of sharing power with—or losing power to—local nonindígenas.” What is more, as post-Cortes liberalism took institutional shape during the first half of the nineteenth century, Creole elites in Yucatán “saw indigenous villages as the untapped resource that could facilitate the launching of a new market-oriented boom in what had long been an extreme periphery of the Spanish American economy. They embraced the notion of universal citizenship because it offered them access to previously inaccessible indigenous resources and labor. And yet their more tenuous control over indigenous villages at the outset made the implementation of that ideal both difficult and dangerous.”53 When we examine early accounts of the war by advocates of the very liberalism El Universal decries, we find an elaborate deployment of casta’s wide-ranging geographical and temporal genealogy functioning as a way of tenuously managing just this dangerous difficulty. L a R e v i sta Y u c at e c a

Consider, for instance, La Revista Yucateca, the liberal weekly published on and off in Mérida between 1847 and 1849 to which I referred briefly in the prelude to part II. In its prospectus, the editors complain that other periodicals fail 172 · Chapter 3

to take a sufficiently capacious perspective, both geographically and thematically. For instance, they declare, El Boletín Comercial ignores foreign and even Mexican news in order to print only local acts and laws; El Registro, one of Sierra O’Reilly’s papers, devotes all its attention to literature, history, and the arts—including “descriptions of ruins” they note—and so abrogates its role as “people’s courts” ( juzgados por el público); many periodicals are too devoted to the particular perspective of one political party or another; and still other periodicals are too fixated on Yucatecan concerns, failing to consider the politics of other nations as well as the light that critical, philosophical reflection could shed on its readers’ understanding of humanity more generally. La Revista, by contrast, intends to consider all these perspectives—the local and the global, literature and politics, news and critical reflection—because of the “grave dangers” facing la patria, or Yucatán, including “the most horrific anarchy” of its “feverous agitation.”54 As the periodical makes clear, these dangers are embodied by the rebel Maya population, los bárbaros, whose attacks and sundry outrages it regularly reports alongside other stories from around the globe. The introduction to the first issue elaborates upon the wide vision La Revista plans to take in order to counter los bárbaros: Journalism, which in our current civilization enjoys the elevated status it has earned, is justly considered to be the vehicle for all human knowledge, the rapid transmitter of all that is known, all the latest inventions. In the fields of politics, the arts, and science it represents what the telegraph is to great distances, what the steamship is to the vast expanses of the ocean. It goes everywhere, always at the forefront of intellectual progress, and must be studied in order to write an all-encompassing history. These truths, which no one will dare to deny, suffice to endorse this medium.55 This revista understands periodismo in general, and Yucatecan reviews in particular, as the “vehicle” by which human knowledge reaches across “great distances,” traversing “the vast expanses of the ocean.” Like a telegraph or a steam engine, the periodismo of La Revista Yucateca’s “progressive intellectuals” brings the world to Yucatán and Yucatán to the world, rendering universal truths along the way. Written in the wake of Yucatán’s declaration of independence in 1840, the lack of any reference to Mexico in the prospectus or the introduction underscores the way La Revista networks Yucatán directly to the globe, thereby linking Yucatecan regionalism, which took the form of an incipient nationalism during the peninsula’s brief periods of independence, and liberal cosmopolitanism. La Revista offers an assemblage of news reports on current events from Casta Capitalism · 173

around the world as well as short essays that analyze those events and, occasionally, folletines. It rarely makes explicit connections between or among the elements of its assemblage. Instead, the formal simultaneity of its presentist elements accretes such that the periodical proleptically crafts the problem (a race war) that its solution (liberal capitalism) is designed to address. As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, this assemblage is not so much a historically unprecedented, print cultural effort to imagine a national community in Benedict Anderson’s terms, as it is both a nineteenth-century elaboration of a long Spanish colonial history of “lettered” techniques of governing as well as a specifically nineteenth-century, regional and racialized liberal cosmopolitanism. The serial, juxtapositional form of this effort appears immediately, on the second page of the first edition, with the section “Noticias Exteriores. Europa” (“Exterior News. Europe”) declaring that it has brought foreign news to “this corner of the world” from a French newspaper published in New York called Correo de los Estados-Unidos. This section’s first report, on conflicts in Spain, offers a rousing defense of Spanish “liberals” against their royalist “enemies.” The second, on Great Britain, decries anti-Semitism and the colonization of Ireland, and mourns the death of Irish activist Daniel O’Connell. Subsequent reports on France and Portugal strike similar mid-nineteenth-century liberal terms. The next section, “Interior,” reports on the U.S.-Mexico War, and while it sides with Mexico it still finds fault on both sides, keeping Yucatán at a distance from Mexico. The first discussion of Yucatecan conflicts appears next, on page nine, under the heading “Sobre Nuestras Cosas” (On our matters). Foreshadowing the conservative account El Universal would give one year later, La Revista’s editors decry liberalism’s excesses: The roots of the problem reach back many years: ever since the Spanish constitution of ’12, ideas have been circulating that sooner or later were bound to lead to the disastrous evils of anarchy. That code opened the doors to the freedom of the press in the colonies; it led to the distribution of the Social Contract and the Philosophical Dictionary, and these and a thousand other books that wise critics and judicious impartiality scattered on the earth sowed their ideas in souls who were in no position to realize their errors.56 How did the Spanish Constitution’s freedoms, particularly the freedom of the press, end up leading Yucatán toward anarchy? Principally because Yucatecos copied the liberal principles and practices that were appropriate to Europe—embodied in this passage by the Spanish Constitution of 1812, Rousseau, and the philosophes—without accounting for the specificities of Yucatán. As 174 · Chapter 3

becomes clear by the end of the article, and throughout La Revista’s entire run, chief among those specificities is the barbarism of los indios: “souls who were in no position to realize their errors.” This article ends up not only questioning the Maya’s failure to properly balance libertad and the law, but also warning Yucatecan Creoles against becoming as barbaric as the Maya in the fight against them: “Speaking of justice, are its principles being observed in what is being done these days to those same Indians? If they are caught, well and good, they should be questioned, and if they are criminals they should be punished, that’s as it should be. But when they go into their homes, and take what is theirs and violate their women and daughters, what is that? Isn’t that just like the accusation of barbarism that we throw back in their faces?”57 The concern, here, is that Creole military tactics have something of the barbarism for which the Creoles are constantly criticizing the Maya—the barbarism they “throw in the face of ” the Maya as an “accusation.” To throw something in the face of another is to flaunt or expose to another their own failings, to present those failings to them, to challenge them to face their failings. But if you enact those very failings yourself, you have come to look like those you have challenged; you throw in their face the very behavior you have displayed, the very face you have shown, if you will. The saying “thrown in the face of ” is thus overdetermined by the figure of the face, as the distinction between the visage of civility and the visage of barbarism threatens to collapse. This risk in turn becomes an occasion to reassert the distinction between barbarism and civility, for the passage still charges the Creoles with judging and castigating the Maya for their continued barbarism, and effectively calls on the Creoles to firmly tutor the Maya in the ways of civility. Just over twenty pages after this “Sobre Nuestras Cosas” section, La Revista offers another section on Yucatán entitled “Cronica de la Peninsula,” under which are included the subsections “Congreso,” “Camara de Diputados,” “Senado,” and “Barbaros.” The “Barbaros” subsection itself reports: “Five guerrilla units of a hundred men each, commanded by Don Manuel Oliver, are headed in pursuit of the armed group that is on the move between Valladolid and Tihosuco. This group burned most of a ranch, whose name we do not remember, but which is the property of Sr. Rivero, who emigrated from Valladolid and lives in this city. The group murdered the servants they found at the ranch.”58 Undifferentiated bárbaros simply wander between the town of Valladolid and the village of Tihosuco, laying waste to the property of individual Creole landowners such as Sr. Rivero and destroying proper social hierarchies by killing the presumptively Mayan servants who worked for him. Yet this report poses and leaves unanswered the very question raised by the Casta Capitalism · 175

earlier “Sobre Nuestras Cosas” section: what distinguishes bárbaros from sirvientes, rebel guerrillas from loyal “hombres, al mando de D. Manuel Oliver”? The other subsections in “Cronica de la Peninsula” offer no answer in their dry, bureaucratic summaries of legislative life: “The congress, in session on that day proceeded with the election of ministers . . . ,” “Following the motion sponsored by the alternate Sr. Lic. D. Valerio Rosado, Sr. D. Manuel Carvajal has taken his seat in that chamber.”59 The sections before and after “Cronica de la Peninsula” situate this question in a larger context that only complicates it, offering a juxtapositional assemblage in which the bárbaros are not simply an element of peninsular politics but rather one in a series of global upheavals. Immediately before “Cronica de la Peninsula,” we find “Noticias Varias,” with a description of a conflict in Veracruz between Mexican and U.S. forces and a report on Pope Pius IX. After “Cronica de la Peninsula,” under a section called “Exterior,” La Revista reprints an unattributed report on a French attack against los cochinchinos, or Kampucheans in southeast Asia, and an English attack against los chinos, the Chinese in Canton. The report is starkly critical of these two Asian forces; it calls the sovereign of Kampuchea “pompous and sacrilegious” for taking the title King of the Sky, and defends English attempts to counter Chinese pirates, protect Christians in China, and gain access to trade in Canton. Yet the section also blurs the distinction between civility and barbarism that organizes coverage of Yucatán. “The most curious feature of this adventure,” the article says about the conflict in Canton, is the resistance “the Chinese people” showed to their own imperial commissary: “In the city there were many posters that denounced Ki-Ing [the imperial commissary] as a traitor who had sold out to the barbarians.”60 “Screaming furiously and throwing stones”61 at the English factories, and seeking to burn the commissary’s palace and drag his corpse through the streets of Canton, these Chinese demonstrators are at once barbaric actors and denouncers of English barbarism. What is barbarism, exactly, here? The article seems unable to answer this question, letting the “curious characteristic” of this conflict remain most curious indeed. A few pages later, in another “Cronica de la Peninsula” section, La Revista Yucateca again at once asserts and confuses the distinction between civility and barbarism with back-to-back reports on the two principal Maya leaders of the Caste War’s earliest years, Jacinto Pat and Cecilio Chi: el coronado.—This is the name that was taken by Jacinto Pat, one of the main instigators of the Indian conspiracy against the other races. Now convinced that the mad enterprise upon which he has embarked cannot 176 · Chapter 3

prosper, this brutal revolutionary, who has delusions of being a king, has set up camp with his court in the Bacalar desert. A fitting place for such a king and such people. He will probably not leave that place, and it is also true that he will be pursued in his extensive palace. cecilio chi.—He still has a force of some two hundred men, with which he puts up as much resistance as he can; however, it is clear from his defensive tactics that, among those of his kind, he is an Indian of great skill and courage. Soon, however, in spite of all that, his exploits will come to an end if the government troops manage to catch up with him in a place from which there is no way out and he cannot outwit his pursuers, as he has been doing, and escape.62 Pat is the dangerously comic fool here, at once precipitous in his revolutionary fervor and antiquated in his pretensions to royalty. His followers are equally foolish, acting like a “court” blindly following their ruler. Repurposing liberal critiques of absolutism, which thrived among Creoles during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as they lobbied for independence from Spain, this salvo against Pat attempts to write him into defeat as an outdated relic. Even the title of the passage refuses to name him as anything but a nominalized past participle: El Coronado, “the crowned.” By contrast, Chi—the titular subject of the second passage—embodies qualities that could be assimilated into a greater Yucatecan future. He leads “men” with “great skill and courage,” and is even apt to outwit and escape the government’s troops. Defeating Chi will consequently demand the most of the Creole forces; it may even make them better. These reports work juxtapositionally to define barbarism by drawing distinctions among Maya rebels, offering the promise of what we saw Sierra O’Reilly call “the very difficult and complicated task of assimilating the heterogeneous races that inhabit this land” (la muy difícil y complicada labor de asimilarse las razas heterogéneas que pueblan esta tierra) in the epigraph to this chapter. Yet even as the reports assert such distinctions, their formal seriality also undoes them by bringing into view contradictory scenes from around the world. Papers like La Revista set themselves a difficult task indeed, as they sought to discern barbarism among their Maya antagonists and set it in a global context. As anyone from the region around Valladolid, Tepich, and Tihosuco would have known well, Pat and Chi were both in fact relatively wealthy batabs or caciques who had long governed their communities by mediating between the Maya masses and the Creole church, state, and landowners. The task of fashioning them into distinct figures for the barbaric and the assimilable thus falters on Yucatecan terms as well. That many other publications from the period made Casta Capitalism · 177

precisely the opposite distinction, calling Chi the barbarian and Pat the reasonable Indian, shows how the period’s periodismo struggled to forge a distinction between civility and barbarism that would impute meaning to the Caste War. As 1847 wears on, and the war intensifies, La Revista Yucateca’s reports on los bárbaros become both more frequent and more rhetorically elaborate. Consequently, the distinction between los bárbaros, or those the periodical also calls the rebellious Indians (los indios sublevados), and the civility they supposedly upheave becomes both more forceful and more unstable, appearing as urgent as the battles being waged across the peninsula. With a tone of desperation, the editors write this reflection: we who can see the scenes at Tepich, Tixcacalcupul and Tihosuco, who know that these hordes of savages are getting stronger, and that the towns of Saban, Tiholop and Ichmul are already in the hands of those who have declared this barbarous war whose goal is the extermination of our race, will some among us remain indifferent? Will those who stoke the fires of discord not be silent? Won’t everyone listen to the lament of our country? . . . Because with each passing day the future looks darker, because we love Yucatán, because we are inspired by nothing more than selfless patriotism, that is why our pen slips from our hand.63 Sandwiched between accounts of Maya attacks and Creole deaths in Valladolid, Tihosuco, Tizimin, Yaxcabá, Tekax, Peto, as well as reports on political conflicts in France, England, China, Borneo, and the efforts of Jews to gain citizenship rights around the globe, this reflection on Yucatán’s progressively “darker future” at once highlights and despairs of Yucatecan periodismo’s effort to cast the war as one of a “barbarian, savage enemy that threatens to exterminate the white race” (enemigo bárbaro y salvaje que amenaza con el exterminio de la raza blanca). Consequently, the war is situated as crucial to the future destiny of liberalism and capitalism throughout the globe.64 El Fénix

Perhaps the most influential liberal account of the Caste War to appear in Yucatecan periodicals—to which I referred in the prelude and at the beginning of this chapter—was Justo Sierra O’Reilly’s thirty-three-month-long series of articles on the origins of the Caste War, published in his Campeche paper El Fénix: Periódico Político y Mercantil and then republished in book form in 1857 under the title Los Indios de Yucatán. In the epigraph to this chapter, from the prologue to the collected edition, Sierra O’Reilly acknowledges the liberals’ shaky authority when he calls for a fuller commitment to “the very difficult 178 · Chapter 3

and complicated task of assimilating the heterogeneous races that inhabit this land.” As he explains further in this prologue: “One of our most critical reasons for publishing El Fénix was the pressing and essential need to fully examine the underlying causes of the current Indian rebellion, in order to find a solution to this immense evil, whose consequences cannot yet be calculated.”65 However, when the series ended on August 20, 1851, Sierra O’Reilly had produced an oddly indirect way to “examine the underlying causes of the current Indian rebellion.”66 Apart from the brief 1848 introduction and the 1857 prologue, nowhere in the series do we find a direct discussion of the war itself, much less an enumeration of its causes. In fact, the series hardly mentions any events after 1812 and never uses the name Guerra de Castas, instead devoting the majority of its pages to the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Sierra O’Reilly reaches deep into the past, as he explains, because “In ancient times, events were not carefully documented by our elders, and we have hardly any way to confirm them. For more recent events, we have many ways to discover the truth.”67 The more remote and neglected the past, the more likely it is to hold answers for the present. The less directly the present is invoked, the more likely the reader is to see the causes of its conflict in the past. “Ancient events,” he argues, led to the 1812 Constitution and, in turn, to Maya rebellion: “Furthermore—and this is the main reason [for this research]—the serious questions that were raised by the Spanish constitution, the development of modern ideas, and the spread of certain philosophical and social doctrines have undoubtedly had a profound impact on attitudes among Indians in recent times.”68 Specifically, when the Cortes abolished “forced labor and domestic service” (las mitas y servicios personales) it opened a route to political equality that Indians gladly took: “for the Indians of the Yucatán it was a true path to political rights that was not entirely forgotten over the course of later events.”69 But as he elaborates in the 1848 introduction to his series, Indians misused these “political rights” because of their own savage nature and the improper way Yucatecan liberals advocated it to them: “There are no insults scathing enough to sufficiently condemn the conduct of those naïve or hypocritical men who, feigning impeccable liberalism and noble philanthropy, pandered to the rude mass of Indians who, through their own inability or thoughtlessness, never stopped to examine the methods or the ultimate impact of their projects. How many of those miserable people have thus fallen victim to the brutal ferocity of the barbarians?”70 Although the passage directs its criticism at liberals who naively believed an “impeccable liberalism” and “noble philanthropy” could flourish among the Maya, and thus suffered the violence of the uprising, we can also discern the imputation of illiberalism to the Maya themselves. As a Casta Capitalism · 179

“rude mass,” Indians are incapable of individuation. Their unwavering ferocity and unquestionable brutality make them nearly impenetrable to liberalism, and any Creole who thinks otherwise is simply “naïve,” or incapable of the serious work such penetration will require. Since Maya have sullied liberalism with their own savage purposes, then, the only response left for the Creoles is equally savage: “for that very reason we must resist with all our strength and make our enemies pay a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye, and a head for a head.”71 This putatively greatest of all nineteenth-century Yucatecan liberals thus does not merely echo El Universal’s conservative critique of Maya appropriations of liberalism and the weak liberals who proffer it; he militarizes the response to those appropriations, urging Creoles forcibly to reclaim liberalism from its indigenous usurpers. What, then, does Sierra O’Reilly find in the past to support this critique of liberalism in its contemporary, Mayan guise? The series begins with the years immediately before the Conquest and ends with Mexican independence from Spain, more than twenty years before the start of the war itself. It is filled with ethnographic accounts of indigenous cultures, critical evaluations of the rapaciousness of the Conquistadors and the savagery of the Indians, and meticulous descriptions of internecine political disputes among Spanish and Creole leaders. In the end, it does not so much enumerate what it calls “the underlying causes of the current Indian rebellion” (las causas que han provocado la actual rebelión de la raza indígena) as it composes a meandering, three-hundred-yearlong, historical characterology of Spaniards and Indians in order to decry the excesses of each and make the case for a liberal future in which “the assimilation,” or “legitimate union of whites and Indians,” will set Yucatán on the road to civilization. Indians are consistently barbarous; Spanish conquistadores and their Creole offspring are alternately barbarous or naïve; Mexico City centralists invariably act in their own interests while failing to understand Yucatán’s specific needs and concerns; and the few sensible Yucatecan liberals who are intellectually enlightened and worldly, yet know how to keep the great masses of Maya in their place while tutoring and assimilating them, are never adequately heeded by the Yucatecan political class. This narrative would read more like a haphazard polemic full of rough stereotypes and encyclopedic summaries than an account of the causes of the war were it not for its chronological scaffolding and a recurrent figure that acts as what Michel Foucault calls a “statement,” a functional regularity giving meaning to the entire discourse: the figure of ruin.72 Chapter by chapter, the series marches through major events in Yucatán’s history, populated by famous Spanish and Creole leaders, as if the very orderly march of time itself could transform 180 · Chapter 3

disparate events and individuals into a causal sequence. Punctuating this march with the regularity of a slow-tempo metronome, Sierra O’Reilly invokes the Maya ruins scattered throughout the peninsula. At the beginning of Los Indios de Yucatán, he gives us a framework for reading these recurrent ruins: the Caste War threatens Yucatán with ruination, and this ruination is at once embodied in and foretold by the region’s many ancient, crumbling pyramids and temples. At a moment when antiquarians like Karl Hermann Berendt and John Lloyd Stephens were enthusiastically hunting, describing, sketching, gathering, and stealing Yucatán’s ancient Maya ruins, which they consider glorious embodiments of the region’s cultural riches, Sierra O’Reilly sees in those very ruins both evidence of the Maya’s destruction of their own former greatness and a portent of the Maya’s destruction of Yucatán’s future.73 Bucking also the nineteenth-century trend, particularly in Mexico, by which archaeological evidence was marshaled as an epistemological foundation for mestizo nation-building, this Yucatecan nation-builder instead attacks the Maya on behalf of white civility with historiographic weapons of stone he fashions from the ruins.74 In both the 1848 introduction and the 1857 prologue, Sierra O’Reilly repeatedly and floridly describes the ruination the Maya rebels let loose on the peninsula during the revolt. The very first paragraph of the prologue warns: “To dismiss this question [of the causes of the rebellion] without pausing to consider it is to sign our own death sentence; it is to condemn our dying society to total ruin; it is to allow the Yucatán to disappear from among civilized nations.”75 In the introduction we learn that the Maya capacity for reducing Yucatán to ruins, and thereby seeking revenge on the descendants of the Conquistadors, knows no bounds: Faced with rebellious Indians shaking deadly axes in one hand and flaming torches in the other, the white man was terrified and confused . . . the frenzied rampage of the barbarians as they reduced villages, towns, and cities to rubble, destroying the temples and monuments of our civilization; the blood, the smoke from burning ruins, and the thunderous din of that raging torrent all helped to spread anguish and desolation among the descendants of the ancient race of conquerors . . . and what had taken more than three centuries of hard work to build was reduced to massive ruin, its industry destroyed, its wealth plundered, its population diminished.76 Not only do the rebel Indians terrorize whites, reducing their villages, houses, and cities to rubble, but they also “destroy . . . the temples and monuments Casta Capitalism · 181

of our civilization.” Who is the referent for this “our,” ancient Maya or contemporary Yucatecos? Are these temples and monuments colonial (Catholic churches and Spanish statues) or ancient (the pyramids Berendt and Stephens made internationally famous)? The passage equivocates as Sierra O’Reilly collapses time, blaming Maya rebels for ruining both contemporary and ancient civilization. He effectively makes their transhistorical nature one of ruination itself. For though this ruination has recently struck the peninsula, it had been manifesting for centuries under Spanish colonialism. In the series’ introduction and prologue, then, the ruinous violence of the war itself is attributed to an Indian barbarism reaching back centuries. Throughout the rest of the series, Sierra O’Reilly periodically activates this transhistorical trope of ruination by reflecting upon the meaning of Yucatán’s ancient ruins. For instance, in an early ethnographic chapter he writes: The monuments and traditions of those peoples show us how advanced their power and civilization was. The vast, colossal ruins to be found all over the peninsula are irrefutable proof of their advances in terms of social conditions, the promotion of the fine arts, agriculture, and mechanical works. Though their language could not be described as rich and harmonious due to its lack of words to express abstract ideas, it was capable of nimble forms of expression and lofty, high-sounding phrases. Their theogony was more figurative and symbolic than either the Greek or the Roman versions. Their laws, though riddled with rude errors and crude superstitions, provided a surprising level of regularity. Their astronomical and chronological calculations surpassed those of the ancient Egyptians. They were tough, independent, proud, and warlike. Their history is full of remarkable events, bloody wars, and glorious achievements.77 “The vast, colossal ruins” “to be found all over the peninsula” disseminate well beyond their pervasive physical presence in this passage, for they function both as a sign of the greatness of the region’s ancient peoples and as proof of their fatal flaws. On one hand, the monuments’ sheer size and ubiquity prove that the ancient Maya had developed advanced social, artistic, agricultural, technical, and astronomic skills. On the other, the monuments’ very ruined state also figures that civilization’s impoverished language (“could not be described as rich and harmonious due to its lack of words to express abstract ideas”), inconsistent laws (“riddled with rude errors and crude superstitions”), and tendency toward self-importance and violent self-destruction (“They were tough, independent, proud, and warlike,” “Their history . . . of bloody wars”). Sierra O’Reilly never explicitly ties these ancient “bloody wars” to what he calls in the introduction 182 · Chapter 3

the contemporary Caste War’s “raging torrent.” Rather, he quickly pivots to the more antiquarian question of whether the peninsula’s ruins were made by ancestors of the region’s contemporary indios or whether they were constructed by a people who died off long before the conquistadors arrived. After reviewing opposing theories on this question—including those of the American Stephens and the Austrian Emanuel von Friedrichsthal, both of whom traveled Yucatán during the 1840s—he claims to remain agnostic, and returns to a chronicle of conflicts between the conquistadores and the Maya. Yet the question of the history and meaning of Yucatán’s ancient ruins soon reasserts itself, in chapter 5: “in Yucatán there is a very important fact that we cannot ignore and that we must consider as the basis or origin of other no less serious facts. We are referring to the existence of numerous gigantic ruins of vast ancient cities.”78 No other region in the Americas has as many ancient monuments in such a concentrated space, nor as “exquiste and delicate” examples of architectural artistry as, for example, “the splendid ruins of Uxmal.” Sierra O’Reilly delights in the fact that knowledgeable antiquarians travel from Europe and the United States just to see these monuments. However, and despite claims to the contrary by the more notable of these foreigners, he declares that the architects of this ancient civilization have little or no connection to the raza indígena that was conquered by the Spanish: “Whether they were the work of a race that is now extinct, or of the earliest generations of the people that our forefathers found when they occupied this country, the truth is that the memory of those primitive builders was lost and that the ruins were ruins even for the Indians who were here at the time of the conquest.”79 The conquered indios whose descendants now populate the peninsula were more likely the slaves of the indios who constructed these great monuments, he adds. Nineteenthcentury indios are thus only connected to the monuments by the powerful force of ruination itself. In effect, the series disseminates ruination across its pages, allowing it to connect materially and historically distinct people, places, and events—the peninsula’s ancient civilization, the Maya of the Conquest, and nineteenth-century Maya in revolt—through the kind of serial, juxtapositional form we have seen throughout this chapter. Holding together Sierra O’Reilly’s curiously indirect account of the causes of the Caste War, then, is a nineteenth-century Yucatecan expression of what in German has been called ruinenlust: not merely an appreciation of ruins, but a rapturous, obsessive, and disquieting passion for them. Ruinenlust began to rage in Europe during the Renaissance, when a pervasive concern with the modern spurred a fascination about the crumbling past as that from which the modern differentiates itself as well as that which haunts Casta Capitalism · 183

the modern with its own, potentially ruined future. By the eighteenth century, Europe was in the grip of this ambivalent passion for ruins. As Diderot wrote in 1767, at once describing and exemplifying this passion: “Our glance lingers over the debris of a triumphal arch, a portico, a pyramid, a temple, a palace, and we retreat into ourselves; we contemplate the ravages of time, and in our imagination we scatter the rubble of the very buildings in which we live over the ground; in that moment solitude and silence prevail around us, we are the sole survivors of an entire nation that is no more. Such is the first tenet of the poetics of ruins.”80 However, Sierra O’Reilly’s ruinenlust is not an occasion for self-reflection or self-criticism, as it seems to be for Diderot. Rather, it helps him to sever contemporary Maya from the archaeological traces of ancient civilization and figure them as ruinous bárbaros. Such a claim would have been quite astonishing to early Spanish colonizers, who had a very specific definition of bárbaros: namely, Indians who refused to settle in designated towns and convert to Christianity—refused, that is, to accede to the Spanish colonial process of reducción.81 To them, the Maya of the colonial period were clearly descendants of a pagan but settled civilization. Yet Los Indios de Yucatán does not simply weigh in on a colonial debate over which Indians were bárbaros and which were not. Its dissemination of ruination across this serialized history of the causes of the Caste War crafts the figure of the modern bárbaro, if you will: a racialized indio, one who is essentially violent and debased, utterly distinct from civilized whites, and therefore subject either to assimilation or eradication. Faced with massive, organized Maya resistance to capital penetration and liberal reforms to the repúblicas, Los Indios de Yucatán revels in a ruinenlust that repurposes colonial discursive practices of casta for liberal capitalism, firing a salvo in the Caste War’s guerra escrita. As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, when Sierra O’Reilly’s study ran serially in El Fénix under the title “Considerations as to the origin, causes, and tendencies of the indigenous uprising, its probable results and possible remedy,” it was printed alongside news reports on the Caste War, folletines, and even classified advertisements to forge a juxtapositional and serial logic. I would like to conclude this chapter by considering that logic in more detail. For instance, in the middle of page 3 of the December 25, 1848, issue, sandwiched between the regular “Guerra de Barbaros” section and an installment of Sierra O’Reilly’s “Consideraciones,” one finds an article entitled “Of Interest to Land Owners” [Interesante a los proprietarios de fincas]: It is well known that many owners of rural and urban property in this country have suffered great distress as a result of being pestered by their 184 · Chapter 3

creditors for payment of contractual capital and returns. We know that property rights are sacred; but we also know that when properties cannot be exploited the creditors’ demands will successfully complete the process that the barbarians began, and which we shall regret for many years to come. During the American war the national government issued a decree concerning this important matter which, based as it is on principles of fairness, should be taken into consideration; it should also be kept in mind that the ruinous results of that war cannot be compared to what the Yucatán has suffered during these devastating times. We hereby include that decree and refer it very seriously to the attention of the appropriate parties in the hope that the problem we are referring to can be at least partially remedied.82 This brief article concisely performs the casta capitalism Creoles constructed so vigorously in and through the Caste War. It is written in defense of the peninsula’s large landowners, who it says are struggling to run their “rural and urban property” ( fincas rústicas y urbanas) profitably because of the Maya uprising, and thus are facing the loss of their land to creditors. These landowners had systematically established the conditions for the rebellion, with their increasingly vigorous expropriation of Maya lands, brutal instrumentalization of Maya laborers for their booming export industries, and their appropriation of political power in indigenous communities as ayuntamientos supplanted the old repúblicas. Yet the article proleptically represents the landowners as victims of both “the creditors” and “the barbarians,” the former finishing the ruinous work started by the latter. By calling for national state intervention on behalf of these landowners against their creditors, the article proffers a centrist-liberal solution to the twin crises of credit-driven bankruptcy and indigenous uprising. By citing the Mexican state’s intervention on behalf of landowners who suffered a similar fate during the U.S.-Mexico War, the article also asserts an analogy between the American invasion of Mexico and the Maya revolt in Yucatán, suggesting that both are led by foreign forces. Set on the middle of the page, as if it were the hub connecting all the other elements of El Fénix’s assemblage, “Of Interest to Land Owners” graphically articulates casta with global capitalism and centrist liberalism. The wide geographical and long historical reach of this articulation becomes further evident when we consider that the Sierra O’Reilly passage I quoted above, in which he declares that contemporary Maya were not descendants of those who built the ancient cities now in ruin across the peninsula, ran with the “Of Interest to Land Owners” article on December 25, 1848, alongside recCasta Capitalism · 185

ommendations from a government commission on how to suppress the Maya rebellion and a report on the recapture by Creole forces of Jacinto Pat’s home town, Tihosuco, as well as chapter 12 of the serial novel La hija del judío (The Jew’s daughter). As I have mentioned, La hija del judío was written by Sierra O’Reilly under his pseudonym José Turrisa and appears throughout the entire run of El Fénix, typically along the bottom third of the page. The Yucatecan periodicals I have been discussing were a primary venue for the publication of such folletines or novelas por entregas: serial fiction that was initially published in installments and only later collected and republished under one cover as a discrete novel.83 In this, they were part of a mid- to late-nineteenth-century, Atlantic-worldwide boom in serial fiction.84 This boom had immediate roots in an early nineteenth-century periodical practice of publishing inserts or supplements of simple folded sheets of paper printed on both sides, offering “true crime” tales and other fiction as well as analyses of important news items, cultural criticism, and social gossip. Called feuilleton in French, this practice quickly spread throughout Europe and the Americas. During the 1830s, this sort of serialized fiction was expanded from the supplement format, and publications devoted primarily to publishing serialized fiction sprung up throughout the Atlantic world. Expanding on the success of the feuilleton, publishers began in the late 1830s to produce longer stories in fewer, stand-alone installments and, eventually, in stand-alone editions under one paper cover. For instance, New Orleans—which was tightly connected to Yucatán through trade networks across the Gulf—had a lively feuilleton or story-paper culture in its numerous French-language newspapers as well as popular fiction serialized in Spanish-language papers.85 Northeastern U.S. cities also hosted papers that serialized original and pirated fiction in Italian, Yiddish, and German, as well as publishing houses with what Michael Denning has called “fiction factories,” whose collective workforces produced scores of so-called novelettes about such timely topics as the U.S.-Mexico War.86 The 1860s saw the birth of the classic “dime novel” from Erastus and Irwin Beadle’s New York publishing house, and the 1870s saw a boom in colporteur or “ten Pfennig” novels in Germany. In Yucatán, in addition to La hija del judío, Sierra O’Reilly serialized Un año en el hospital de San Lazaro (One year in the San Lazaro Hospital)—an epistolary folletín centering on a leper named Antonio who takes up residence in Mérida’s San Lazaro hospital—in El Registro Yucateco between 1845 and 1849. Some installments of Un año were published in 1845 alongside Rafael Carvajal’s short María, la hija del sublevado (Maria, the rebel’s daughter), set amid a 1761 Maya uprising and published under the pseudonym Adolfo Ecárrea de Bollra. 186 · Chapter 3

The 1860s saw a number of stand-alone Yucatecan folletines about the Caste War, including Pantaleón Barrera’s Los misterios de Chan Santa Cruz: Historia verdadera con episodios de novela (The mysteries of Chan Santa Cruz: A true history with novelistic episodes) (1864), published under the pen name Napoleon Trebarra, and General Severo del Castillo’s Cecilio Chi (1869).87 These folletines were precisely not what Cortés Campos calls “a gift strategy devised by publishers who, aware that readers became bored and soon tired of the same news every day, decided to include literary writings to provide the Yucatecan reader with a form of relaxation.”88 Rather, they were a crucial element of casta periodismo’s assemblage, what we might call a casta folletinismo offering allegories of the past that helped to remake the present. Amy E. Wright notes that folletines like Sierra O’Reilly’s, although they are set in the past, are often narrated from the perspective of the present, allowing them “to maintain an explicit comparison of the present to the past . . . so that readers will be conscious of the similarities and differences between past and present events . . . [and] to raise historical awareness among his readers.”89 However, I want to suggest that the folletines do not simply describe discrete pasts that are clearly either similar to or different from the present of the periodicals’ reportage, and thus are not merely stable elements of a comparison. Rather, the folletines function allegorically. As Paul de Man argued, literature does not accomplish a figural totalization, whereby the author or the text controls its figurative language to a designed effect. Rather, figurative language exceeds and potentially undermines such designs. Allegory thus names a particular relationship to the past staged by literature: “Whereas the symbol postulates the possibility of an identity or identification, allegory designates primarily a distance in relation to its own origin, and renouncing the nostalgia and the desire to coincide, it establishes its language in the void of this temporal difference.”90 It is this lack of correspondence between the figurative and the literal that allows the past to be so readily delinked from its context and recast in and for the present in the assemblage of the periodico. In turn, this recasting is never entirely stable, and thus always runs the risk of slipping out of the control of the effort that drives it. By way of a conclusion to this chapter, then, let me consider the resonantly unstable, allegorical aspects of La hija del judío. Appearing in El Fénix between November 1848 and December 1849, some of the most violent years of the Caste War, La hija del judío was first reprinted as a stand-alone novel in 1874.91 Set in seventeenth-century Mérida, the plot is typically extravagant.92 At its center is María, the sixteen-year-old daughter of don Alfonso de la Cerda and his wife doña Gertrudis, and the man she falls in love Casta Capitalism · 187

with, don Luis de Zubiaur. María turns out to have been adopted because her biological parents, don Felipe Álvarez de Monsreal and doña María Altagracia de Gorozica, were falsely persecuted in Mérida as Jews under the Inquisition. Forced to join a convent by a local religious zealot called el Deán, or don Gaspar Gómez y Güémez, ostensibly to keep Jews from reproducing their race but actually to claim her inheritance for the Church, the young María is ultimately rescued thanks to the extensive efforts of don Luis. Studying in Mexico City, don Luis learns that corrupt Spanish rulers of Yucatán, principally el Conde de Peñalva, disinherited and subjugated both his family and María’s family, both of whom had fought against el Conde and Spanish corruption in Yucatán. With the help of a host of other Jesuits, nuns, and Yucatecan loyalists, María and don Luis ultimately marry, recover their inheritances, and find themselves wellplaced members of Mérida’s Creole elite. La hija del judío is apparently a tale of Creole modernity’s triumph over Spanish colonial corruption. The novel’s clear villains are the capricious, corrupt, and rapacious Spaniards who seek to accumulate wealth and power for themselves and the Spanish Crown and Church, whereas those loyal to Yucatán work in concert to restore the personal honor and property rights of wronged Creoles. By exposing the false imputation of Jewishness to María’s family, and rectifying her loss of economic power and social standing, La hija del judío opposes Inquisitional excesses without acknowledging the presence of Jews in the Americas, and thus without challenging the legacy of limpieza de sangre upon which Iberian Christianity was founded. Luis’s research in Mexico City and dogged pursuit of justice in Mérida effectively eradicate any stain of Jewish particularism in colonial Yucatán. Given that the so-called Jewish Question was raging in Europe at the time—and received coverage from time to time in the period’s periodicals—this concern with the disruptions Jewish particularism might cause for national citizenship was no antiquarian matter for nineteenthcentury readers. If we read this aspect of the folletín in particular as an allegory of Creole liberalism’s powerful ability to overcome particularistic threats to its coherence, then we can discern a promise to nineteenth-century readers: Maya particularism too can be overcome. Literally set alongside El Fénix’s abundant reportage on la guerra de bárbaros, La hija del judío performs a discursive alchemy in which a nineteenth-century racial distinction between whites and Indians is forged out of early modern Iberian distinctions between Jews and Christians and colonial Yucatecan distinctions between Spaniards and Creoles. Combining early modern Castile’s limpieza de sangre with colonial Yucatán’s sistema de castas, this assemblage promises a future destiny: Creole kinship and economic power will be consolidated in Yucatán if both the legacies of Span188 · Chapter 3

ish colonial rule and the persistence of racial particularism are identified and assimilated by Creole liberalism. However, the novel’s narrative extravagance—its seemingly endless characters, subplots, flashbacks, and settings—also keeps alive the very particularisms it is set on assimilating, threatening to unsettle the promise it offers. Although María’s Jewishness proves to have been fabricated, the very title of the novel—which appears at the start of every installment in El Fénix—maintains its trace: there is no Jewish daughter, and yet the title stubbornly keeps telling us there is, issue after issue. This textual equivocation keeps alive a threat that the narrative is ostensibly quelling, as if the serial run of La hija del judío bears witness to the ongoing Maya rebellion that the Yucatecan state continually claimed to be suppressing. Luis de Zubiaur’s family seems to function as a stable ground for loyal Creole Yucatecanismo, and Luis himself is a paragon of liberal Creole futurity. Yet as many nineteenth-century readers would recognize, the name Zubiaur is Basque. Known widely for having been important participants in the Conquest, Basques also represent a fault line in nineteenth-century conceptions of Spanish identity. The Basque region retained a relatively strong regional autonomy throughout the early modern period thanks to their fuero rights and their agreements with Castile. During the nineteenth century, this autonomy was threatened as liberals pushed more centralist and unionist platforms, sparking conflicts that fed the so-called Carlist Wars, the first of which raged most violently in the Basque region from 1832 to 1839 and the second of which centered in Cataluña from 1846 to 1849, overlapping with the beginning of the Caste War itself. Centrally a struggle over competing claims to the Spanish throne, the Carlist Wars saw many Basques ally with the more conservative Carlists in order to defend regional autonomy and their special relationship with Castile. Carlism thus came to represent a defense of particularism within Spain, and in the mid-nineteenth century the Basque region was a central site for the struggle over the future of such particularism. Rather than functioning as a symbolic blueprint for the victory of los blancos over los bárbaros, then, La hija del judío’s most seemingly stable character furthers the novel’s serial account of the persistent threat of particularism, a threat that would seem to enhance the urgency of Yucatecan liberalism’s militaristic path to its imagined future. La hija del judío concluded in the December 25, 1849, edition of El Fénix with the last installment of the novel’s epilogue, as always running along the bottom of the periodical’s pages. On the edition’s last page, we find the regular “Guerra de Bárbaros” section, which reported optimistically on the progress of the war, noting contacts between Yucatecan officials and English represenCasta Capitalism · 189

tatives from Belize (a major arms supplier to the Maya rebels), as well as the execution of a solder named “Jacinto Vicario, a member of the third battalion of the National Guard, for the crime of desertion in the face of the enemy.”93 Highlighting the necessity of such violent acts during wartime, the report concludes: “This is extremely hard, but essential” (Durísimo es esto; pero indispensable). Meanwhile, the final pages of the folletín’s epilogue introduce us to don Juan, or el Marquéz de Torres-Vedras, the only son of don Felipe Álvarez de Monsreal and doña María Altagracia de Gorozica, and thus our heroine María’s brother. Thanks to his father’s connections to the Portuguese empire—he owned considerable property in Brazil—the young don Juan decides to leave Mexico for the Portuguese colony of Goa. As the final paragraph of La hija del judío explains: “From that point on, history does not mention the Marqués de Torres-Vedras again, until twenty years later when he was Viceroy of Goa, in the Portuguese possessions in India.”94 El Fénix’s juxtapositional seriality thus returns us to the genealogy with which I began this chapter. There, we saw how the concept-metaphor casta first arrived in both India and the Americas in the sixteenth century as part of the semantic cargo of Spanish and Portuguese colonizers. In La hija del judío, don Juan becomes one of those colonizers. By directly linking Mexico and India, he figures the expansive and quotidian, geographic and temporal globalities of the Creoles’ written war against the Maya in nineteenth-century Yucatán, globalities that racialized Yucatecan liberal capitalism in vigorous and, as we will see in the next chapter, ever volatile ways.

190 · Chapter 3

Chapter 4

“Por Eso Peleamos” Recasting Libertad

Karl Hermann Berendt’s “Report of Explorations in Central America” (1867) recounts his 1866 “visit to the belt extending from the Caribbean sea through Belize, Peten, and Chiapas to the Pacific ocean.” Amid the details of his selfconfident travelogue, which I discussed in the prelude to part II, he also includes the briefest mention of a striking detail. Writing of the Indian communities of the Petén, he takes special note of the Lacandons, who had long been represented by Europeans as uniquely isolated and resistant to colonization. “Having adopted a little orphan boy of this tribe,” Berendt writes, “and speaking their language, I soon won their friendship. They have, in my excursions on the water and in the woods, been of the greatest utility to me, as also to the corregidor [or governor of the Petén], who, with their assistance, has found a new route through the unknown wilderness to Verapaz and Guatemala, which was long in vain searched for, and which reduces the distance to less than one-half of that usually traveled.”1 Berendt does not elaborate upon the circumstances of this adoption, nor does he include any further information about this “little orphan boy.” However, his friend and colleague Daniel Garrison Brinton, the American ethnologist and archaeologist, offers a bit more detail in his “Memoir of Dr. Carl Herman Berendt.” Brinton recalls a meeting he had with Berendt during the latter’s visit to New York from 1871 to 1872: “At that time he had with him a young Maya Indian, José Sabino Uc, whom he had adopted, and hoped to inspire with the love of study; but I have heard that the experiment turned out a failure, as is usually the case.”2 Another glimmer of the “little orphan boy” comes at the very end of an 1872 letter to Berendt from abbé Charles Étienne Brasseur

Figure 4.1. Sketch of José Sabino Uc and Juliana Vasquez by Karl Hermann Berendt, “Apuntes y Estudios sobre la Lengua Zogue” (1869). Courtesy of the BerendtBrinton Linguistic Collection, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

de Bourbourg, a French specialist on Mesoamerica, who asks simply: “How is little Sabino?”3 Brinton’s and Brasseur de Bourbourg’s comments help us make sense of a line drawing Berendt included in his “Apuntes y Estudios sobre la Lengua Zoque” (“Notes and Studies on the Zoque Language”), which he wrote while in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, from 1869 to 1870. As shown in figure 4.1, Berendt sketched a boy sitting at a table looking at a girl who stands beside him holding a pen over a piece of paper, and affixed this caption: “Juliana Vasquez lernt von Sabino, 1869,” or “Juliana Vasquez learns from Sabino, 1869.”4 It is not clear who Juliana Vasquez was, although Berendt made another sketch of her in 192 · Chapter 4

“Apuntes y Estudios,” this time standing alone with her name and “Tuxtla, Feb 2 1870” written at the bottom of the page, as well as a caption written along the side of the page: “Ya estás acomodada, muchacha?” or “Are you comfortably settled, girl?” (figure 4.2). Although very little else is known of José Sabino Uc, in 1871 he wrote a brief account of his early life, in Yucatec Maya, on a sheet of paper which bears a note in Berendt’s handwriting on the back: “Sabino’s autobiography as told by him in the Mayan language, 1866.”5 While Uc does not mention Berendt in this “autobiography,” in just under three hundred words he does explain that he was born in 1856 and that, after the death of his mother, his father brought him to the town of Sacluk, in Guatemala’s Petén region, and gave him to the local batab (leader) to raise. Since Berendt visited Sacluk in April 1866, it seems it was around this time that he adopted the nine- or ten-year-old boy, with whom he traveled throughout the Atlantic world for at least another five years. What might the Caste War, and the Maya rebel struggle for libertad, look like through the lens of the figure of this “little orphan boy,” José Sabino Uc? In the prelude to part II, I wrote of how Berendt’s account of black and Indian workers in the Petén prompts us to revise Cedric Robinson’s use of the figure of “Chilam” in Black Marxism to represent black labor as that which supposedly replaces Indian labor in the Americas.6 As we saw, the “Report of Explorations in Central America” not only reveals the articulation of what Robinson calls racial capitalism with what I have called casta capitalism; it also shows that black and Indian workers together withdrew their labor from Atlantic chattel slavery and Yucatecan sugar plantations and forged alternative, collective economies cutting logwood and cultivating milpa throughout the Petén. These brief references to Sabino Uc, however, point to a further revision of Robinson’s figure of Chilam. While Uc was not “a native of the Yucatan” offering a critique of the Conquest, as Robinson describes Chilam, as a Lacandon from the Petén he was intimately linked to the history Chilam figured for Robinson. As Terry Rugeley explains, building on the work of Jan de Vos, not only was the entire region extending from southern Yucatán farther south to the Petén, west to Chiapas, and east to Belize populated in part by Yucatec Maya displaced by the Caste War, but also “the indigenous peasantry” of the Petén, including the Lacandon, had long “lived in a material culture virtually identical to that of their northern [Yucatec Maya] neighbors.”7 Even Berendt understands this context: “the villages in the neighborhood of this farm [in San Pedro Buenavista, Belize] are of late origin, peopled by Indians from Yucatan, almost every one of them formerly engaged in the war of races which for the last twenty years has desolated that Recasting Libertad · 193

Figure 4.2. Sketch of Juliana Vasquez, from Karl Hermann Berendt, Notes and Studies on the Zoque Language (1869). Courtesy of the Berendt-Brinton Linguistic Collection, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

unhappy country.”8 By displacing Robinson’s figure of Chilam with Sabino Uc, we can begin to confront the question of how Maya people encountered the Caste War conjuncture. As Berendt tries to explain, the region’s Lacandon were both deeply implicated in, and antagonists of, a process of colonization that extended across centuries and wide geographic expanses: Of all the Indians of this part of Central America none are of so great interest as the Lacandones. Once a numerous and powerful nation, which, united with the Manchés and Acalanes (both now extinct), gave so much trouble to the conquerors, and, in fact, have never been fully subjugated . . . Some old authors distinguish the eastern from the western Lacandones, and it seems that they were, in fact, as well as those of the west, of different tribes, living on the borders of the Mexican state of Chiapas, speaking a different language, called Putum or Chol, which belongs to the family of languages connected with the Maya . . . [W]estern Lacandones . . . live far from the settlements of whites and do not trade with them, nor do they entertain any relations with the eastern Lacandones, who fear and avoid them. The eastern Lacandones are a harmless tribe, who live in small palm huts, consisting of little more than a roof, and grouped into little hamlets of a few families, often changing their locality. They cultivate the field, plant fruit-trees, sugar-cane, and Sisal hemp; hunt with bows and stone-headed arrows, and navigate, by means of their small canoes, the lagoons and rivers from which they obtain plenty of fish and turtles. Although occasionally baptized by Catholic missionaries and fond of saying their prayers, they still adhere to their old heathen worship, and indulge in polygamy . . . They visit the villages of the whites and settled Indians to sell their produce.9 This passage is thoroughly ambiguous in its understanding of the Lacandon and their relationship to the Spanish tactics of indigenous conversion and concentrated resettlement, or reducción, revealing the complexity of the conjuncture Berendt struggles to represent. The Lacandon are at once fearful and feared, reduced and resistant. They seem to be divided into eastern and western “tribes,” as the “old authors” say, though it is unclear whether “as well as those of the west” refers to yet a third group. These divided tribes also speak “different” languages, “Putum or Chol,” but it is unclear who speaks which language and whether Berendt thinks that Putum and Chol are different from each other or that these are different names for the same language. And if their language “belongs to the family of languages connected with the Maya,” how “different” Recasting Libertad · 195

is it really? The Lacandon live “on the borders” and thus defy still-emerging national boundaries among Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, as well as regional boundaries between Yucatán, the Petén, and Chiapas. They remain apart from each other and “the settlements of whites,” yet they trade with each other and with “the whites.” They are “fond” of their conversion to Catholicism, and yet “they still adhere to their old heathen worship.” They are “harmless” and engaged in subsistence economies of “the field,” or milpa, as well as small-scale hunting and fishing, yet they grow crops like sugar and sisal, or henequen, for which there were thriving global markets articulated with increasingly industrialized chattel slavery and wage labor systems. It was these Lacandon who helped Berendt and the governor of the Petén forge roads and reduce travel time for exploration, trade, and the expansion of effective colonial governance. And it was these Lacandon who apparently granted Berendt special credibility because of his adopted child and his language skills, and who consequently became that much more useful to him as he negotiated a “racial geography” that was being reshaped by both casta capitalism and Maya rebellion.10 Sabino Uc’s “autobiography” was written in Yucatec Maya, so he can be said to have shared that language with the chilames we encountered in the prelude to part II, with Robinson’s figure of Chilam, with the nominal author of The Book of Chilam Balam from Chumayel, and with the Chilam Balam about whom Justo Sierra O’Reilly asked in his October 1841 El Museo Yucateco article “Profetas Yucatecas” or “Yucatecan Prophets”: “Who is Chilam Balam? What a phenomenal being he is, able to strike terror into the hearts of young and old alike.”11 While Yucatec Maya was not the language of the Lacandon, the two languages were closely related, and as I have mentioned those called Lacandon in the Petén were intimately associated with Yucatec Maya cultures, especially after the flood of Caste War refugees into the Petén began in 1847. Since Yucatec Maya was a language Berendt knew well, given his research, and since Brinton suggests that Berendt “hoped to inspire” his adopted son “with the love of study,” we might surmise that Berendt taught Uc how to write in Yucatec Maya. In a sense, Berendt’s likely linguistic tutelage of Uc participated in the threecentury-long process of using reducción as a colonial tactic of rule. William F. Hanks has traced this Spanish colonial tactic. “Reducción” did not mean “made smaller” so much as it meant, as Covarrubias defined it in the seventeenth century, “convinced and put in better order.”12 It thus involved analyzing, disassembling, and reassembling, as well as reordering, pruning down, supplementing, and reorienting.13 Its principal aims were to convert Indians to Christianity and to relocate them into centralized or ordered towns (pueblos reducidos) where they could be more easily governed and mobilized as labor.14 For Hanks, this 196 · Chapter 4

process was also directed at language itself, as early colonizers learned, recorded, and systematized the lexicon and grammar of languages like Yucatec Maya with dictionaries, handbooks, and translated Bibles: “The indigenous languages were the objects, not only the instruments, of reducción. The missionaries sought to reducir the Indian languages, including Yucatec Maya, by describing them in terms of rules and patterns . . . analysis and translation were actual forms of reducción in the strong sense of systematically re-forming their object.”15 Yet that tactic had long proven volatile. Just as Maya creatively turned their pueblos reducidos into sites of indigenous power and crafted flexible and syncretic religious and cultural practices out of Christianity, so too did they adapt their “reduced” languages to their colonized conditions. Set in this context, Uc also seems to have made use of Berendt. With his adopted tongue he adapted a literary form, the autobiography, to explain his own life, albeit under unknown conditions: did Berendt tell him which details to include or exclude, how to craft an account of one’s life, and even why such an utterance might be important? We cannot answer these questions with any certainty. But we can see in Uc’s autobiographical use of Yucatec Maya an even older root of the word reducción than Hanks invokes: from the classical Latin reducere, to recall, to bring back to memory, to lead back, to revive, to restore, and to represent. For alongside the empirical practices of reducción, even as they applied to language, a representational struggle was being waged over the past and future of a region caught up in what Berendt calls “the war of races.” Maya such as Uc wrote their way into that struggle, shaping it even as the Creoles I discussed in the last chapter waged their own guerra escrita. Uc’s recalled life is a textual trace of this effort, a trace we can neither relegate to a nostalgic past like Robinson’s putative friend Chilam, nor debunk as a myth like Sierra O’Reilly’s terrifying Chilam Balam. Let us consider, then, what Uc recalled in his “autobiography,” which I quote in full here: Here in the big town of Merida today on the 10th day in the month of February in the year 1871 I, José Sabino Uc being my name, he of the house of Couoh Uc, I am going to write the story of my life. There at the mouth of the big water (lake) of Akul, there I was born in the land of Peten Itza its name. He of the house Menche Uc was my father. She of the house Kin Couoh was my mother, descendants of forest people which inhabited the lands, Lacantun was their name. There died my mother on the very day that I was born, on the 30th day in the month of December in the year 1856. My mother being dead there wasn’t another woman in the house of my father, just three small children, my older brothers. Then Recasting Libertad · 197

came to the Peten the priest Brother Pedro with other Capuchins. There were baptized my father with my older brothers. José Uc was the name of my father; Juan and Lorenzo and Juan José the names of my older brothers. There wasn’t nearby a woman to give me breast milk. My father wrapped me, he put me in a big basket. Then he got into a boat, then they boated to the big river Kancuen, Pasion is its name. Then they went up also the little river, Subim is its name. Two days we traveled. Sour corn gruel was my drink. Then we traveled in the forest, then we arrived in the town of Sacluk. Then my father went to the house of the batab: “Lord, here is my motherless small child. Alive I bring him to you, I give him to you. I am going to give my child into your hand to be amongst you.” So were the words of my father, so he spoke to the batab.16 Uc tells us that he was a subject of the colonized Atlantic world before he ever encountered Berendt, particularly as he was baptized with his father and brothers by a Capuchin Franciscan priest in their village “in the land of Peten Itza.” After that encounter—as he was adopted by Berendt in Sacluk, studied with Juliana Vasquez at a table somewhere in Yucatán or Chiapas or the Petén, wrote his “autobiography” “in the big town of Mérida,” and visited New York—he was not only shaped by the Atlantic world, he also shaped that world. Uc lived the quotidian globalities I have been tracing throughout The Brink of Freedom, traveling across lands recast by the Caste War, over routes Lacandon people taught to a liberal German exile and a Guatemalan governor, onward to capitals of Yucatecan Creole and U.S. power. His autobiography can thus be read as a speculative if highly mediated reflection upon those globalities, just as I have suggested we read other archives from the Atlantic world. As an effect of reducción in all its empirical senses, and therefore an artifact of ongoing casta capitalism, this autobiography also improvises with the terms of reducción, bringing back to our memory—in the active sense of reducere—a sense of the way Indians recast the languages and literary forms imputed to them. Perhaps most strikingly, we learn from this text that the meeting between Uc’s father and the batab of Sacluk, framed by the Caste War, was the threshold of Uc’s adoption by Berendt and his subsequent encounters with the global forces of centrist liberalism and racial capitalism in places like Mérida and New York. That Sacluk, which means “white clay” in Maya, would later be renamed La Libertad, as it is still known today, amplifies the question we face: what did freedom come to mean for Indians facing casta capitalist development? In this chapter I address this question by turning to an archive of the Caste 198 · Chapter 4

War that, like Sabino Uc’s autobiography, improvises with the terms of reducción. Letters written by Maya rebel leaders and combatants in the war to their Creole antagonists also adopt and adapt languages and genres implicated in Spanish colonization: Yucatec Maya, Spanish, and the epistolary or petitionary form. This indigenous salvo in the Caste War emerged in the context of the previous chapter’s casta periodismo, in a manner Jean Franco has signaled: “popular culture did succeed in breaching the walls of what Ángel Rama has termed ‘the lettered city’; through this breach, indigenous languages and cultures entered into productive contact with lettered culture.”17 As they make demands and depict the conflict, Maya rebels recast Creole liberalism and casta capitalism. Read speculatively, these letters exceed their empirical terms, offering an archived instance of what Florencia E. Mallon has called “insurgent liberalism” and “racialization from below.”18 The Caste War rebels’ letters thus address a range of questions about the meaning of freedom in a liberal, capitalist state. What forms of state recognition— taxation, principally—facilitate surplus-value extraction from racialized subjects, and how might those forms be recast so as to interrupt that extraction? How might Maya participate in Creole-driven economic development without becoming subsumed by it: while maintaining the milpa, for instance? What modes of racialized being might be crafted in order to counter the liberal Creole vision of casta capitalism? As we will see, such questions themselves open upon futures to which Yucatecan pasts have yet to come. We also face the limits of what we can know from and of this largely subaltern effort. For just as the figures of Uc’s deceased mother and any other “woman to give me breast milk” in his autobiography mark the lives of Maya women whose roles in the Caste War rarely surface in the archives, so too does the figure of Juliana Vasquez hover beyond our comprehension. A friend of Sabino Uc’s, perhaps, standing casually by his side at a desk, feet crossed, in one sketch; in another sketch, a young woman in traditional traje wearing jewelry and no shoes, posed and addressed informally, even patronizingly, by Berendt: “¿Ya estás acomodada, muchacha?” “Are you comfortably settled, girl?” Acomodada can mean “comfort” or “wealth,” but as the Diccionario de la lengua española of the Real Academia Española explains, acomodar can also mean avenirse or conformarse, “to concur,” “to arrive at a place of concord.” As we know from Jacques Derrida, the French form of à venir further carries the sense of an unexpected future yet to come, an unpredictable, unschedulable, unforeseeable arrival.19 What will “comfort” or “wealth” have meant to Vasquez? What futures will have come to her and her tablemate Sabino Uc? Her pen poised to write, her head turned toward Uc’s attentive gaze, how might they have responded, Recasting Libertad · 199

together, to such questions? The epistolary archive of the Caste War will help us speculate upon some answers.

Postal Potential Epistolary anxieties saturate one of the events that precipitated the Caste War itself: the July 26, 1847, execution of the batab of Chichimilá, Manuel Antonio Ay, for supposedly plotting an attack against local Creoles. As legend has it, Ay was arrested after he visited the house of Antonio Rajón, Chichimilá’s Creole justice of the peace, for a drink. As he took off his hat, a letter sent to him by Cecilio Chi, the batab of Tepich and early rebel leader, fell on the floor. Rajón later found and read that letter, which he understood to be a description of a planned Maya attack on the village of Tihosuco, and reported it to Creole officials in Valladolid. The interpretation of that letter was a crucial factor leading to Ay’s arrest, trial, and execution, as well as to subsequent arrest warrants for Chi and his coconspirator Jacinto Pat. Since the original letter did not survive, and the two extant copies of it differ significantly in their content, it is impossible to verify this story, which itself seems torn from the pages of an epistolary novel. That such a crucial event as Ay’s execution turned in part on a legendary letter, however, does highlight to us the powerful political potential of the post in nineteenth-century Yucatán.20 Indeed, Yucatecan government officials were often preoccupied with the region’s postal system during the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s, repeatedly highlighting its import and its fragility. Consequently, they reveal to us the post’s equivocal power. For instance, on December 6, 1862, the administrator of the mail in Mérida sent this official declaration to the peninsula’s jefes políticos expressing grave concerns: The abuses of the official distribution of correspondence, which affect the income derived from the mail and taxes by the wretched unpaid carriers, must be urgently nipped in the bud, and all offenders must be duly punished. Messages, circulars, cordilleras, petitions, and other inventions of a legal nature are being mailed by the most senior and the most insignificant employees, who send their official mail and even their personal correspondence without paying the appropriate fees or the charges for the delivery service provided by the wretched people who serve the indigenous republics in public administration or who are on their rolls. From this day forward, Citizen Political Leader, please instruct the 200 · Chapter 4

town councils, municipal boards, police captains, and substitute mayors of the towns and villages within your jurisdiction not to mail nor allow others to mail any form of closed or open correspondence within their respective regions, other than through the appropriate post office with due payment of the correct amount to the carrier. Should these terms be ignored, it is your strict responsibility to intercept correspondence of any kind whatsoever that is carried through your region, and send it, via its carrier, to this Government for the matter to be duly resolved.21 From the phrase the delivery service provided by the wretched people who serve the indigenous republics in public administration, it seems as if the impact of the irregular and unregulated payment for mail services was felt particularly strongly in Maya communities. The use of the Spanish colonial term indigenous republics (las repúblicas de indígenas) is somewhat surprising, since as I have mentioned the repúblicas—which were colonial structures of governance under which Maya had a high degree of autonomy—had been replaced after independence with ayuntamientos, in which Maya had to share power with Creoles. Yet the reference to the républicas in the 1862 declaration marks the relative success Maya in Yucatán had at wresting some autonomy from the liberal Yucatecan state. Regardless, the concern with the impact of these “abuses” on Maya communities resonates with a note added by the scribe who copied and circulated this declaration: “I draw your attention to this, Citizen Administrator, so that you may intervene and put an end to the abuses referred to, appealing to the zeal of the administrations within your jurisdiction to keep only the messages that, as ordered by the General Postal Administration on August 2, 1850, were singled out by that office on April 27, 1856, because of the Indian War, and send them every Tuesday to Izamal, Valladolid, Espita, Tizimin, Motul, Ticul, Tekax, Peto, and Sotuta with their respective returns.”22 By explicitly setting the declaration in the context of “the Indian War” (la guerra de índios), the scribe implies that the costs born by Maya communities for “abuses” in the circulation of the mail might be adding to the grievances over which they were waging war. In this he claims to speak for the Maya, recasting their terms in those of the “post office” (oficina de correos). Namely, the declaration arrogates to “this Government” the power to patrol the circulation of the post and to control the distribution of payments as a means to satisfying “payment of the correct amount” (la justa paga). It thus proposes a postal reducción as yet another front in the Caste War. Such concerns fill the archives of the Caste War conjuncture. Mid-level bureaucrats wrote repeatedly to their superiors and colleagues about interruptions in the flow of mail and irregularities in payments for services. In turn, officials Recasting Libertad · 201

published frequent declarations like the one above in an attempt to “reduce” these problems by bringing the mail system more fully under the control of the Yucatecan state. Let me mention just three examples spread over eleven years. In 1862 two Maya men, Apolonio Chuc and Francisco Ku, were interrogated about “some lost correspondence” (un estravío de correspondencia), although the nature of their alleged misconduct is not clear from the reports of the interrogations.23 In 1861, local official Jose María Iturralde wrote to the governor of complaints from “the Indian carriers who delivered the mail” (los indios conductores de correspondencia) about problems with the circulation of mail between Espita and Tizimin.24 In 1851, local official Manuel Cervera y Molina wrote to the secretary general with concerns about delays in the delivery of the mail from Hecelchakan.25 During some of the heaviest fighting of the war, Creoles seeking to mediate and pacify the conflict foregrounded their concerns about the very safety of those who carried their letters to the rebels. In 1849, for instance, the priest Jorge Burgos wrote to Juan Ascencio Cab, the commander of a large rebel force near the hacienda San José in the region of Peto: “Answer my letter. The messenger must be allowed to return; he must not be harmed because I have sent him in peace.”26 And in 1843, the secretary general in Mérida was notified about interruptions in the delivery of correspondence from the central government to the villages of Chochola and Maxcanú.27 Maya rebels too expressed concerns about their own political use of the post. For instance, writing on November 15, 1849, to the Maya leader of the village of Tixcacalcupul about the efforts of Governor Barbachano to secure peace, Juan Pío Poot and José María Canul, two rebel commanders from the village of Tekom, reflect upon the safety of the letter carriers much as we just saw in Burgos’s letter: “Nobody is willing to do it, precisely because you harm them. I have sent the Commanders the letter I received from His Excellency the Governor, as well as (the note) from the Commissioners in which they asked me not to harm the bearer of the letter. We have also been instructed not to harm any of you while you are engaged in the delivery of correspondence.”28 On April 1, 1850, rebel commanders Dionisio Mex and Baltazar Gómez wrote to fellow commander Calixto Yam of their own struggles to coordinate tactics through the mail: “I must also inform your lordship that we had not received the considerable number of letters that you sent us, but they have all just arrived; we do not know where they were being withheld.”29 They consequently conclude their letter with a note of warning to anyone who might intercept this letter: “I will punish, with fifty strokes of the cane, any mayor who withholds this letter; for some of the letters I have sent your lordship have taken eight days to arrive, whereas they should (arrive) in no more than 24 hours.”30 202 · Chapter 4

These mid-nineteenth-century epistolary concerns need to be understood in the context of a longer history of forced labor as well as a wider range of political economic interactions—reducciones, in effect—between Spanish colonial authorities and colonized Indian communities, interactions that “incorporated the Indians into the world economy,” as Robert W. Patch has argued.31 As Sylvia Sellers-García explains, “The early colonial mail system in Spanish America patched an essentially Spanish system onto an Indian labor force. It is certain that, especially in the early colonial period, Spanish officials relied on indigenous roads, indigenous knowledge of routes, and indigenous guides . . . Indians were pressed into service [as correos, or letter carriers] as early as 1681 and likely earlier. They continued to form the backbone of the mail system, especially in the highlands and southern Mexico, well into the early nineteenth century.”32 Letter-carrying was a common form of servicio personal or mandatory Maya labor dating to the colonial period, along with agricultural work, military service, road and building construction, and the transportation of goods.33 Such servicios personales functioned alongside repartimiento systems (which mandated and regulated exchanges of goods between Spaniards and Indians) and taxation (which I will consider in more detail below) to extract surplus-value from Indians. The postal system in particular played an important role in the liberal vision of modern, Yucatecan governance. As Sellers-García makes clear, with vast improvements in postal systems of the Spanish empire during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, especially in Mexico and Central America, space and time themselves were reshaped: “These changes had the effect of creating a temporal and spatial contraction—of shortening distances,” for “Distance was then, as it is now, less a question of measurement and more a question of perspective . . . Space was predominantly organized along routes and . . . distances were understood as time-space intervals connecting hierarchically organized places.”34 The post thus became an increasingly important means by which government officials in Mérida circulated declarations, laws, and directives to provincial authorities—Creole, mestizo, and Maya alike—while also permitting those provincial authorities to apprise their superiors of local conditions. When Maya took to this very postal system during the Caste War, publishing their grievances and circulating their demands, they at once acknowledged the power of the post and improvised with its potential, pushing back against postal reducción. Throughout the wider Atlantic world, as we saw in part I, the epistolary form had for centuries functioned as a dynamic genre by which individuals and social movements negotiated with power. When associated with the practice of European subjects petitioning monarchs for the redress of grievances, letters Recasting Libertad · 203

to governing authorities typically appealed to the ruler’s sovereign, prerogative power.35 During the Caste War, however, letters were vehicles for tactical and strategic negotiation that formally positioned the two sides as equal antagonists. This formal equality was overdetermined by the fact that Maya rebel leaders, often writing in Yucatec Maya, made extensive use of the discourse of Yucatecan liberalism. By appropriating, translating, and improvising with that discourse—as Maya had done, of course, with a range of Spanish and Creole discursive practices for centuries—the rebel combatants worked to restructure the very material practices of what they persistently call libertad, liberty or freedom. By casting their letters toward Yucatán’s Creole leaders, Maya rebels sought to recast their own futures. In this way, they engaged the written war I discussed in the previous chapter over the futuros destinos or “future destinies”— to borrow from El Universal’s article—of las castas del Yucatán. Postal systems have long been understood as scenes of such provocative political thought. As Geoffrey Bennington has observed, Montesquieu offered some of the first reflections on modern postal politics in these three aphorisms from the early eighteenth century: “It is the invention of the post which has produced politics”; “Politics, as it is today, comes from the invention of the postal service”; and “The invention of the postal service has created politics; we don’t politick with the Mughal.”36 Montesquieu’s reflections are striking for Bennington because they reverse the more utilitarian sense in which postal systems are understood as tools for politics; rather, they ask us to consider how something about the post makes politics possible. The first aphorism comes from a text entitled “Of Politics,” the only extant section of a 1725 Treatise on Duty, in which Montesquieu laments the overly complex and secretive nature of politics in his era due to the reliance on postal communications. “A simple and natural conduct can just as easily lead to the aims of government as a more devious one,” he explains elsewhere in “Of Politics,” equating the post with deviousness and suggesting that, ideally, governmental intentions should travel the shortest and most direct routes.37 Elaborate postal politics, by contrast, introduce too much potential for miscommunication, misdirection, and what Montesquieu calls “bravado,” “noise,” and “showy ways.”38 They are thus unnatural, artificial—literally, too full of artifice—and excessively diffuse. The second aphorism, from Montesquieu’s My Thoughts, seems to repeat the sense of the first, and both can be set in a larger historical context by another passage from My Thoughts: The world at that time [of ancient Greece and Rome] was not like our world today: the voyages; the conquests; the commerce; the establish204 · Chapter 4

ment of large states; the inventions of the postal service, the compass, and printing; a certain general law and order have facilitated communications and established among us an art called Politics. Everyone sees at a glance everything that is causing disturbance in the world, and however little ambition one people may manifest, it immediately frightens all other peoples.39 The conditions of possibility for Montesquieu’s idea of a postal politics here include colonization, capitalism, international law, and technological advances in navigation and printing. That is, with the rise of the modern world-system the globe becomes more widely and comprehensibly visible. In particular, the world is networked by entirely new modes of communication that make “people” aware of conflicts, frightening “all” and leading to a new “art called Politics” meant to respond in some way to those conflicts. However, the third aphorism, also from My Thoughts, complicates the seeming opposition between frighteningly modern postal and prior, more natural nonpostal politics. “We don’t politick with the Mughal” because they are despotic, as Montesquieu makes clear in The Spirit of the Laws: “Just as republics unite to provide for their security, despotic states separate and hold themselves, so to speak, apart,” he writes, before using the Mughals as an example of such a despotic state.40 Their politics are practically nonpostal, even nonpolitical. That is, the despot delivers his orders directly, without the possibility of miscommunication or misdirection, and consequently keeps his polity apart from any postal network. Here, the apparently ideal “simple and natural conduct . . . lead[ing] to the aims of government,” which Montesquieu earlier extolled, is oddly echoed in the orientalized Mughal despot with whom the West cannot possibly “politick.” Montesquieu thus confusingly undercuts his earlier idealization of nonpostal politics. It would seem that the condition of possibility of politics as such, and consequently of any republican politics, is a certain postal network; and yet, paradoxically, that network always runs the risk of running out of control, making Montesquieu long for a less communicative time that nonetheless uncomfortably approximates the imagined despotism of the Mughal. As we saw above in the preoccupations of Yucatecan officials, for Montesquieu the postal potential of the political lies precisely in its equivocation. The mail creates networks that are both necessary and risky; it forges states while also failing to keep them “so to speak, apart.” It thus not only functions as a useful means of state power; it can also undo what Montesquieu calls the “simple and natural conduct . . . lead[ing] to the aims of government,” particularly the Recasting Libertad · 205

state’s claim to represent the general will, or the will of the people as a whole. The post “invents” or “creates” politics, then, in that it continually revises the general will, enacting the open-endedness of its articulation. Furthermore, the site of that enactment remains mobile and multivocal, eschewing closure in favor of ongoing iteration.41 To read the postal potential of the Maya’s written war, then, we need to consider not simply whether they accomplished certain political aims, but rather how they unsettled the governmental aims they were fighting against. A striking illustration of this effort, which I will consider in more detail later in this chapter, is the way in which rebels sometimes signed letters with the names of a few well-known leaders, regardless of who wrote them. For instance, we know the name of Cecilio Chi was signed to a number of letters written to Yucatecan authorities after he had been killed, and throughout the 1850s rebels across the peninsula signed the name Juan de la Cruz on letters to state officials, invoking the nominal leader of the messianic Cruzob rebel factions in the southeast. Mentioned by contemporary historians of the Caste War as little more than an incidental or quirky feature of rebel epistolary practice, this promiscuous nominalism is, I would argue, more significant. It could be interpreted as an effort to maintain the impression of stable, consolidated leadership: a univocality akin to Montesquieu’s nonpolitical despotic autonomy. Yet as a postal practice that thrives on equivocation, it would also seem to create an elaborate politics in Montesquieu’s terms, one in which multiple voices animate one repeated salutation, leaving the proper name open to reiteration. Inhabiting this equivocal space, the promiscuous nominalism of the Maya rebels’ letters shows how what Montesquieu calls “a more devious” conduct, one full of artifice (“bravado,” “noise,” and “showy ways”), sets itself against “a simple and natural conduct . . . lead[ing] to the aims of government,” or the state’s claim to represent the general will. The most powerful potential of postal politics, then, is perhaps its ability to keep the state from accomplishing its aims simply and naturally, from securing its networks of communication, enforcing the propriety of its citizenry, and controlling the general will. As epistolary performances that repeatedly interrupt the kind of reducción proposed by the December 2, 1862, declaration from the administrator of the mail in Mérida, these Caste War letters remain improper even to their own named salutations. It is in this equivocal and interruptive impropriety that we may find something the rebels call libertad. Letters from Maya rebels consequently challenge the current critical consensus among U.S. scholars that the Caste War was less of a rebellion and more of a petty and ultimately fruitless factional dispute among Creole and Maya elites 206 · Chapter 4

that led to the needless suffering of hundreds of thousands of innocent common Maya, Creoles, and mestizos throughout the peninsula.42 For instance, as rigorous and insightful a scholar of the period and region as Karen D. Caplan has written that the rebels “failed” in their efforts and that the Caste War, as a violent assault upon rather than a participation in the state, marked the “end” of indigenous citizenship in Yucatán.43 Caplan rightly states that, though the rebels rolled back the peninsula’s exploitative sugar industry, they inadvertently laid the conditions for the rise of the exploitative henequen industry. She also reasonably surmises that by opting for violence—and estimates suggest that 200,000 to 300,000 Yucatecans died or became refugees during the war—the rebels may have given the state an additional excuse to curtail, ever more strictly, indigenous access to citizenship. However, calling the rebellion a failure based on these facts presupposes that success can only be measured in aggregate material terms, and that the rebels simply opposed, rather than adapted and recast, the terms of Creole liberal development.44 By contrast, I want to suggest that Maya efforts to reclaim both libertad and casta not only spoke materially to the immediate present of nineteenthcentury Yucatán but also leveraged the political potential of the post to speculate upon a future that still echoes from the archives, a future toward which we can look by attending to those archives’ speculative dimensions. Which is to say, the claims Maya rebels made during the Caste War were not just materially presentist or idealistically hopeful, and thus they cannot merely be judged to have been unsuccessfully realized and practically hopeless. As Ranajit Guha famously argued about subaltern movements in South Asia in his “The Prose of Counterinsurgency,” and as Sinclair Thomson has recently reiterated in a Latin American context (drawing on René Zavaleta Mercado), insurgencies offer uniquely insightful opportunities to learn about the subaltern dimensions of “social relations in a key conjuncture.”45 If we can further learn to read the prose of such Maya epistolary rebellion as theoretical prose—as I have been arguing throughout The Brink of Freedom that we do with archives of the nineteenthcentury Atlantic world—then we can see how, in Judith Butler’s words, such prose “provoke[s] a set of questions that show how profound our sense of notknowing is and must be as we lay claim to the norms of political principle.”46

“That No Tax Will Be Paid, by White, Black or Indian” One of the most consistent refrains to be found in letters from Maya rebels during the Caste War—so consistent that it could be said to constitute what Michel Foucault calls a “statement” (énoncé) in the discursive formations of Recasting Libertad · 207

nineteenth-century Yucatán—is the complaint about another mode of reducción: the excessive, uneven, and otherwise unfair taxes imposed by Creole authorities upon the Maya.47 We might read such complaints as proof of the petty and sectarian interests driving the conflict.48 Alternately, we could interpret them as evidence that a feudal system of tribute thrived in Yucatán well into the nineteenth century, and consequently understand Maya opposition to that system as either yet another episode in a generalized, centuries-long relationship of exploitation between colonizers and colonized in Mexico, or as a nativist desire among the Maya to be left alone to engage in precolonial relations of production.49 By contrast, we might take these complaints as expressions of a Maya quest for simple inclusion in the liberal Creole state as formally equal subjects “free” to labor for wages without racialized burdens—a quest for what the early Marx would have called “political emancipation.”50 As Michael Kwass has shown, however, opposition to taxes has often been at the root of challenges to emerging capitalist relations of production, including the French Revolution. In Privilege and the Politics of Taxation in EighteenthCentury France, he argues that disputes over taxation unfold in “the cultural field between state and society,” offering “a powerful lens through which we can observe the development of political discourse and public opinion without losing sight of the long-term transformations in state and society that helped to shape them.”51 In eighteenth-century France, he claims, “the issue of taxation constitutes a kind of passageway that leads from the contentious politics of the Old Regime to the dramatic constitutional revolution of 1789 to the edge of the social revolution that radicalized the new political order that was taking shape.”52 In part, this was because the state dramatically expanded its taxation of the privileged, provoking elites to challenge state authority. However, this expansion also “invit[ed] the nonprivileged to imagine the possibility of fiscal equality and thus ma[de] the privileges that remained all the more unbearable; it also amplified the voice of the third estate.”53 Kwass’s work leads us to consider the ways taxation is a fascinatingly paradoxical exercise in state power and state recognition. To be taxed is to be subject to the state’s fiscal authority, and yet to be hailed as a taxable subject is also, ideally, to be granted formal and abstract equality with all other taxable subjects. When different subjects pay different taxes, that formal and abstract equality is shown to be crosshatched with socially and historically constructed particularisms, making state recognition uneven.54 As I mentioned above, alongside forced Maya labor and the mandated exchange of goods between Spaniards and Maya, colonial Spanish authorities used taxation as a means of surplus-value extraction from the beginning of the 208 · Chapter 4

Conquest. The Church, the Crown, and encomenderos (or colonizers who were awarded native laborers) all charged Indians for a range of services and activities, and the charges were typically tied to casta categories, with those lowest on the sistema de castas paying the most. These taxes went by a wide variety of names: tasaciónes (official assessments), limosnas (alms), obvenciones (religious head taxes), obvenciones menores (charges for sacraments like baptism, marriage, confirmation, and unction), alcabalas and almojarifazgos (duties on purchases and sales), bulas and comunidades (local taxes), holpatanes (for the colonial Indian Court or Tribunal de Indios/Naturales), doctrinas (tuition for obligatory catechism classes), the pósito (public grain fund) and abasto de carne (provisioning of meat) systems, and tributo (tribute in goods). Alongside these taxes, of course, ran histories of collaboration with, as well as adaptation and resistance to, their administration, including revolts in Yucatán led by Jacinto Canek (also known as Jacinto Uc de los Santos) in 1761 and, as we will see in more detail below, by Don Santiago Imán in 1839, both of which loomed large in the popular Maya imagination by 1847. By the nineteenth century, then, taxation was more than just a material practice. It represented a palimpsest of centuries of colonialism, Maya collaboration, and anticolonial struggle.55 By attending to the epistolary language Maya rebel leaders used to complain about taxes during the Caste War, we can—as Kwass writes of eighteenthcentury France—“capture the vitality of disputes over taxation,” a vitality that in turn can help us to trace the paradoxical play of state power and recognition as well as the ways rebels take advantage of that play with their postal politics.56 In the Maya rebels’ letters, what Kwass calls “the cultural field between state and society,” in which disputes over taxation unfold, appears as a struggle to wrest control over racialized representations of the general will from the Creole state, church, and landowners by interrupting their politics of reducción and challenging the terms and practices of casta capitalism. By attending to the improvisational discourse of the letters themselves, we can see how Maya postal politics often insists upon opening the general will to ongoing revision and reclaimed futures. For instance, on November 23, 1847, Cecilio Chi, one of the uprising’s early leaders, wrote to an apparent ally—though exactly to whom the document does not say—of his readiness to rise up in arms: “So, this is the hour in which God has willed that the indian is left without means of paying taxes to the whites, only for weddings will they pay 10 reales and for baptism performed by Priests three reales[,] this much is certain[,] he who does not agree I await him here with my troops because the hour has arrived.”57 On February 18, 1848, the other principal early leader of the uprising, Jacinto Pat, wrote from Cenil to John Recasting Libertad · 209

Kingdom and Edward Rhys, two of his contacts in Belize, of the relationship between the taxes Maya pay and the freedom they seek: “It is because the whites began it, because what we want is liberty and not oppression, because before we were subjugated with the many contributions and taxes [pagos] that they imposed upon us.”58 From the earliest months of the Maya rebels’ written war, then, Chi and Pat framed the conflict as one at least in part over unjust pagos and contribuciones imposed and enforced by los blancos “upon us,” el indio. Indeed, Pat suggests that those unjust taxes themselves constituted a race war: “It is because the whites began it.” He thus positions the uprising as an effort to realize liberty and restore peace by ending inherently belligerent “contributions and taxes.” Importantly, though, Chi does not call for the end of all taxes as such: “only for weddings will they pay 10 reales and for baptism performed by Priests three reales, this much is certain.” As we see throughout the conflict, the rebels rarely pursue separation from the Creoles in the form of economic independence or full political sovereignty. That is, they do not proffer a postal politics in the despotic form Montesquieu describes as “hold[ing] themselves, so to speak, apart.” Rather, they hold out the possibility of a relationship with los blancos, one that involves continuing to pay taxes, albeit in more just proportions. These rebels thus apparently considered some mode of taxation to be consistent with the libertad for which they were fighting. Taken together, these two letters express a willingness, even a desire, to remain subject to, and recognized by, state power; but they shift the focus onto the way taxes, and thus that very subjection and recognition, have articulated with race. One finds Pat’s claim that racialized taxation is in fact deadly throughout the Caste War’s epistolary archive. For instance, take the last lines of a letter written by a group of rebel leaders on December 16, 1851, to José Canuto Vela, a priest and commissioner assigned by Governor Barbachano to negotiate with the rebels: You, then, don’t believe that we have a father who speaks among us, who commands and is our Father who says, that here among us none of his creatures should pay a contribution, because since you started this war against us indians, we undertook for ourselves to cast off the contribution in general; we wished for you [torn: much happiness?] and you came to kill us . . . We indians and we whites: Salvador Hantun, Lauriano Peres, Manuel Jesus Can, Marcelino Puga.59 These rebels—whose religious tone bears the traces of the syncretic and messianic “talking cross” movement or Cruzob that from the early 1850s increasingly predominated among the eastern factions of the rebellion—place contributions 210 · Chapter 4

at the spiritual heart of the injustice driving the Caste War. Although “you started this war against us indians . . . , none of [our Father’s] creatures” ought to “pay a contribution,” they write, expanding the definition of war to include tax inequity and claiming the very universal recognition that the liberal state abstractly promises but uneven taxation denies. This claim alters that recognition, imputing the binary terms of the conflict to Creole policies and reworking those terms into a collective struggle with the salutation “we indians and we whites.” In this seemingly simple complaint about a seemingly rudimentary injustice, then, we begin to see how the Caste War rebels at once appropriate and improvise with liberal discursive practices, exposing liberalism’s racial form while demanding the realization of its promise of state recognition. On July 11, 1848, in a letter I mentioned in the prelude to part II, Pat elaborates the rebels’ critique of the racialization of taxation in a letter written to Modesto Méndez, the Creole corregidor, or chief magistrate, of the Petén region.60 Pat is seeking to gain Méndez’s help in the uprising against Yucatán’s Creole authorities: With great respect I wish to inform you that here in Yucatán we suffer many cruelties and harms [muchos males y daños] from the Spanish, who kill the poor Indians as they kill animals, but not all the Spanish; they who did so were well known, whether great or small, for this reason the eastern Indians and all their companions in Yucatán rose up, but they did not harm all the Spanish, only to those who were cruel [malo] to the Indians. Furthermore, for some time they have paid contributions but received poor treatment. Now Sir all that has ended and it has been publicized that the medio contribution no longer be paid, neither for the Spanish nor for the Indians, they will only pay three reales for baptism, ten reales for marriages, the Indian as much as the Spaniard. This is the liberty that the poor Indians of Yucatán were seeking, it is not an uprising, as the Spanish say and write it, they themselves rose up, killing the poor Indians over the contribution. And not only the contribution, but also for the alcabalas [local sales taxes], municipal taxes on corn, beans, chiles, salt, all foodstuffs, and the slaughter of cattle and pigs: the poor Indian paid all this even though it was not his time [aunque no fuera su tiempo].61 Here, Pat goes to great lengths to avoid casting the conflict as one between whites and Indians—“but not all the Spanish,” “they did no harm to all the Spanish”—at least in part because he is writing to a Creole authority in a neighboring state. As he did in his February 18 letter, he gives great weight to unjust Recasting Libertad · 211

taxation as a cause of the war, or even as a kind of warfare itself, by effectively equating killing “the poor Indians as they kill animals” with “the medio contribution.” Pat thus suggests that the state’s economic interaction with its people is an exercise in life and death, and when that interaction becomes “cruel”—either through killing or unjust taxation—it effectively rebels against those it wrongs. An acknowledgment of how deeply the Creole state reaches into Maya life, this letter is also an appropriation of and an improvisation with the terms of that reach. It turns the Creoles’ incessantly repeated imputations of barbarism and rebellion, which we encountered in chapter 3, back upon the Creoles themselves: “we suffer many cruelties and harms from the Spanish,” “those who were cruel to the Indians,” “it is not an uprising as the Spanish say and write, they themselves rose up.” The “poor Indians” appear here not just as passive victims, but rather as actively on the side of human life, in the sense of sustaining themselves with “corn, beans, chiles, salt, all foodstuffs, and the slaughter of cattle and pigs,” as well as reproducing themselves materially and spiritually through marriage and baptism. The letter thus pulls one of the threads of the etymology of casta I discussed in chapter 3: the term’s association with futurity in the sense of a “brood” as well as a “throw.” It effectively claims futurity from the state, placing its liberal, casta capitalist policies and practices on the side of death. In another letter, written in Tepich on April 23, 1849, rebels Venancio Pec, José Atanacio Espada, and Cecilio Chi apparently embrace the roles of warmaking, rebellion, and even separation from Yucatán. As in Pat’s July 11, 1848, letter, however, they also make a claim to futurity. Chi had likely been killed by the time the letter was written, so his authorship might have been performed by the other two signatories in an example of the promiscuous nominalism I mentioned above. Addressing John Fancourt, the British author of a history of Yucatán, the letter reads: The war presented by the Spaniards against the Indians originated in a breach of faith committed by the citizen Don Santiago Imán. In the year thirty-nine, he declared war against the Superior Government of Mexico, alleging as a reason for doing so that it was with a view of liberating the Indians from the payment of contributions. After this war was won by the Indians, the same citizen continued to levy contributions as usual, thus proving himself not to be a man of honor, having forfeited his word with the natives. But the hour has arrived when Christ and his divine mother have given courage to make war against the whites, as we had no money to pay such extractions as the Government thought proper to decree. 212 · Chapter 4

Don Domingo Barret sent troops under Don Santiago Méndez with orders to put every Indian, big and little, to death; to execute such an order, every white in this peninsula would be destroyed, as it has pleased God and good fortune that a much greater portion of them than of the Indians [have died] . . . We are no cowards but have deemed it best to divide it [Yucatán] in consideration of our children, as we wish to do away with the payment of all contributions and will not pay more than the whites. For this reason, we request the Superior Government of Belize to send a commissioner in his name, duly authorized to divide Yucatán, pledging our word of honor to abide by his decision. We also beg of him to send a letter to the Captain General of the Capital of Mérida, recommending to him to enter into such a treaty with us as the best means of settling our differences. We are Indians, but if he is not disposed to agree to this proposition, we are prepared to proceed through fire and blood to liberate ourselves from the payment of any contributions as long as we live.62 This letter refers to a revolt led by Santiago Imán against central Mexican authority in 1839–40. By enlisting Maya in the cause of Yucatecan separatism, Imán’s revolt established an independent state of Yucatán and—importantly for the later Caste War—“restored the importance of the municipality and its ayuntamiento” as local power bases, as Terry Rugeley has argued.63 By attributing Imán’s own rebellion to a critique of unjust taxation, the letter shows how seriously Creoles themselves have taken taxes, and how adept Indians have been at living and dying for those Creoles and their state. Even the seemingly separatist call to “divide” Yucatán and the desire “to do away with the payment of all contributions,” however, are qualified by the claim that “we will not pay more than the whites”—which is to say that they will still pay, but only on equal terms. At once claiming the legacy of Yucatecan state development by inserting “the Indians” into history alongside Imán, and challenging that very state’s racialized economy (“to make war against the whites”), the letter insists that the Maya will play a central role in Yucatán’s socioeconomic future. By invoking “our children” at the end of the passage, as we just saw in Pat’s letter, the authors rework the futurity embedded in the genealogy of casta. It is here, perhaps, that we can find one of the “passageways” to which Kwass refers: for the Caste War’s rebel leaders, asserting control over the administration of taxes offers access to the state’s economic power over the peninsula’s future, a future they intend to cast rather than be cast by. We can glimpse more of the futures into which rebels sought to cast YuRecasting Libertad · 213

catán in a series of letters signed by Juan de la Cruz, the nominal leader of the syncretic, heterodox, and messianic religious movement known as Cruzob that took hold among Caste War rebels in the southeast of the peninsula during the 1850s. But “Juan de la Cruz,” as I mentioned earlier, was also a name used by many different rebels and signed to many different letters and proclamations over many years, enacting a postal politics of promiscuous nominalism that remains open to the reiterative recasting of terms and aims. Consider, for instance, a letter written on August 28, 1851, to Miguel Barbachano, the governor of Yucatán. Sent from one of the epicenters of Maya revolt during the Caste War, the village of Tihosuco, the letter’s very signature enacts a postal politics by using the figure of Juan de la Cruz to link four villages from different parts of the peninsula: “I, Juan de la Cruz, live in the village of xBalamná. I, Juan de la Cruz, live in the village of xCenil; having left Chichén.”64 The letter opens with a series of complaints about abuses committed by the governor’s troops: “As you must know, your troops have done many things to me.”65 It then points out how unresponsive the governor has been: “I have sent you eight letters, none of which you have answered; I therefore ask that when you receive this one, do me the favor of answering it so that all the indian generals might read it and hear it; so that they may know that you are following all my orders.”66 In the request for a response, we witness not only a claim of authority but also the demand for recognition, a demand that becomes increasingly militant over the course of the letter: “Don Miguel, you will follow all the orders I send you, because if I see that you do not follow them, I will subject the city of Mérida to great punishment.”67 Under this threat, the letter concludes: I created the whites, the indigenous peoples, the blacks, the mulattos; if they are human beings, their lives and their souls are under the protection of my right hand. I order you to free all my indigenous children that your troops have captured, because they are suffering great hardship at their hands. I do not make them suffer, although I created them, I saved them, I spilled my blood so that my children might see the world. I tell all my children that they are under my protection.68 This passage is particularly striking in the way it recasts castas (“the whites, the indigenous peoples, the blacks, the mulattos”) as linked parts of a general humanity (humanos) viewed globally (“so that my children might see the world”). Clearly, the perspective from which this recasting happens is a divine one; the author claims to speak in the name of a singular creator, protector, sufferer, and savior (“I tell all my children that they are under my protection”). Yet that singularity is dif214 · Chapter 4

fused across the wide and diverse “world” of criaturas (“creatures” or “children”) to whom it addresses itself, as well as the many villages Juan de la Cruz claims to be from and the many letters signed by that name over many years. The letter thus provokes more questions than it answers. What world could accommodate such a humanity? What polity could represent this particularized general will? Juan de la Cruz’s recast world, paradoxically particular and universal, iterates beyond what might be determined or codified in the binary terms that liberal Creoles used to invest the conflict with meaning—blancos and bárbaros—such that the letter speaks to a relatively unknown yet richly variegated future. Many of the letters signed “Juan de la Cruz” from the 1850s reiterate this articulation of casta particularities with a global humanity and set that articulation in an uncodified future. On October 15, 1850, a letter written from Balamná begins by invoking the binary terms we saw Sierra O’Reilly use in chapter 3: “My Lord also says that it is not just an (unimportant) fight between whites and indians, but rather that the time has come for a general uprising of the indians against the whites.”69 By the end of the letter, however, the uprising has been pluralized in the midst of a call to resist killing indiscriminately: “On the other hand, my dear Christians, do not coldly kill your fellow men when they are kneeling down with their hand on their chest calling the name of my Lord . . . whether they are whites, blacks, indians, or mulattos, whoever they are, they are all (God’s) children.”70 Another letter from Balamná written on the same date similarly shuttles between an account of a “rebellion against the whites and my indian children” (rebelión contra los blancos y mis criaturas indígenas) and a call for restraint because “whether they are white, whether they are black, whether they are indian, whatever they are, as long as they are children” ( ya sea blanco, ya sea negro, ya sea indio, cualquiera que sea, mientras sea criatura).71 On August 20, 1851, again writing from Balamná, Juan de la Cruz describes a war between “my indian generals” and “my white generals” that will only end when all castes are freed: “make them free all my indian children . . . whether they are whites, indians, mulattos, or blacks (all of them), as long as they are children and live under my protection.”72 Four days later, another letter to Barbachano charts the same path from an account of “the war that exists between the whites and the indians” to a free future for a more pluralized world: “As you must know, I have under my protection the lives and souls of the indians; mulattos, blacks, and whites; as long as they are children, their lives are in my hands, because I created them, I freed them, I spilled my holy blood on the earth for all of them.”73 Four more days later, on August 28, 1851, Juan de la Cruz writes to Barbachano from Tihosuco of the need to suspend the “slaughter” between “my indian children” and “my white children” because “I created the whites, the indians, the Recasting Libertad · 215

blacks, and the mulattos” ( yo creé a los blancos, a los indígenas, a los negros, a los mulatos).74 Each of these letters performs a discursive transformation of the stark terms in which we saw the Creoles cast the war into a plural universality to come. Consequently, their citation and reiteration of the Caste War’s racial form at once disrupt the terms of casta capitalism and repeatedly improvise another future for those terms. A letter from Juan de la Cruz dated February 1, 1850, whose addressee is not clearly indicated, further elaborates the future into which the rebellion casts the peninsula. It starts seemingly in mid-thought: “And I’ll tell you something else, my beloved Christians of the village, my human children, Gentlemen. I tell children and adults my commandments because one day you will come to know them, Christians of the village.”75 Expanding the field of the letter’s unnamed addressees as well as its constituency, Juan de la Cruz writes: “That is all I will tell you, Christians of the village, and I tell all the generals and all the men of the world to listen to the children and the adults to hear what I have told them.”76 It is within this particularized universality that the letter then takes up the future of racialized labor on the peninsula: You should know, children, that one day the generals will pay you for your work, because you will not work for anyone for free, as my family does now because they are poor, men and women alike. Since every man has a woman, it is not right that they should work for anyone for free; I tell all my children in the world that the hour and the year has come to put an end to the work that my family does for no pay.77 Invoking “one day” in which all “children” will be paid “for your work,” including men and women, the letter both challenges Yucatán’s systems of forced labor and imagines a future in which labor is fairly compensated. Indeed, it declares that future as having already begun: “the hour and the year has come to put an end to.” Yet the letter refuses to calculate what workers will be paid beyond calling for an end to “free” (gratis) work. The passage thus engages in a battle over the very meaning of freedom by invoking an as yet undetermined future anterior of liberation. Where “free” work ends, there will have begun what the letter from August 28, 1851, to Miguel Barbachano calls the freedom of all indigenous people: “I order you to free all my indian children” (Le ordeno que libere a todas mis criaturas indígenas).78 With these letters from Juan de la Cruz, even the term indígena—in its constant reiteration alongside terms like “indian” [indio], “child” or “creature” [criatura], “children and adults” [pequeños y grandes], “whites” [blancos], “blacks” [negros], “mulatos,” “fellow men” [semejantes], and “humans” [humanos]—expands beyond any autochthonous referent. Indígena 216 · Chapter 4

seems capacious enough here to include figures we encountered in the last chapter: the “negros” Berendt invoked so disdainfully, the whites in whose name Sierra O’Reilly wrote so confidently, and the global humanity within which liberal Creoles sought to place their vision of a civilized Yucatán. Not only do these letters defy the terms of casta capitalism I discussed in chapter 3. They also defy the vanishing Indian narrative, which as we saw in the preface to part II appeared even in Cedric Robinson’s incisive account of racial capitalism. By foregrounding the ongoing role of Afro-Yucatecos alongside Maya, and by imagining a future that all castas would make rather than be made by, they speculate upon the very Afro/Indigenous intimacy Robinson’s Black Marxism haltingly desired when it invoked “Chilam Balam, a native of the Yucatan, recalling the days of the pre-Conquest.” Whereas for Robinson “the world for which Chilam displayed such poetic nostalgia ended quickly,” for Maya rebels during the Caste War epistolary poiesis generates a future in which casta capitalism would be undone and imaginatively remade.79 All the epistolary dynamics we have thus far seen come together in a striking letter written on April 7, 1850, by seven Maya leaders—José María Barrera, Francisco Cob, José Isaac Pat, Calixto Yam, Pantaleón Uh, Juan Justo Yam, and Apolinar Sel—from a rancho called Haas in the south of the peninsula to Creole priest and commissioner José Canuto Vela. “In your letter . . . you ask me to write or to go and speak with Your Excellency,” they write in the singular; “I am writing to say that I cannot go, and so am sending Your Excellency this letter, that you might know what I have to say to you.” Referencing a pact that they made with Canuto Vela, they declare “if you have forgotten, I would remind Your Excellency about it, if it is indeed just that you have forgotten it”:80 You well know what agreement was made with us, for this we are fighting. That no tax will be paid, by white, black or indian [el blanco, el negro o al indígena]; 10 pesos for baptism for the white, for the black and for the indian; 10 pesos for weddings for the white, for the black and for the indian. As far as debts, that the old ones will not be paid by the white, nor the black, nor the indian; and that it will not be necessary to buy land, the white, the black or the indian can plant their milpa wherever he wants, and no one will prohibit it.81 In the process of reiterating the terms of a pact that the Creoles have failed to honor, this letter recasts casta itself: the end of contribuciones, equal fees for baptisms and weddings, the cancellation of old debts, and free access to land for cultivation for all, where all means “el blanco, el negro y el indígena.” These “debts” might not only be monetary, but also retribution for the vioRecasting Libertad · 217

lence of the war itself. The letter performs that which is yet to happen by representing demands as terms already won in war, terms offered by Maya rebels and recognized by a Creole state whose own power to recognize is claimed by those very rebels. By speaking for “el blanco, el negro, o el indígena” in the past, present, and future tenses, as well as the indicative and subjunctive moods, the letter casts the hierarchical legacy of Yucatecan particularism—el sistema de castas—into a future where and when difference will articulate with a certain universality without either dissolving into formal and abstract equality or ossifying into a new hierarchy. That is, it draws upon casta distinctions among “el blanco, el negro o el indigena,” but neither to propose their assimilation into an abstract Yucatecan citizenship nor to fix their particularities. Rather, these distinctions point toward a living on; as they conclude the letter, “Though our elders have died, we continue to live” (Aunque hayan muerto nuestros mayores, nosotros continuamos vivir). The figure of the milpa is central here. Taken in its narrowest sense, a milpa is a field in which indigenous peasants alternate the planting of beans, corn, chiles, and squash to provide sustenance and to keep the soil enriched. More broadly, however, milpa names a way of collectively organizing economic, political, kinship, and gender relations on quotidian and seasonal scales that had precolonial origins and saw many post-Conquest revisions. As Robert Patch describes the ecology of the peninsula, In the north the limestone lies so close to the surface that plows are useless, and the thin topsoil is quickly exhausted. In the southern half of the peninsula, in the area of the tropical rain forest, the soil is not of good quality at best, is extensively leached, and will lose its fertility and become hard and unworkable should the cover of plant life be removed permanently. In these circumstances, land can be cultivated for only a limited time and then must be allowed to revert to forest for regeneration. In the south, the fallow period lasts from four to seven years, in the north from eight to 20. Usually the land is worked for only two successive years, the first-year plot being called milpa roza (on freshly burned land), and the second, milpa caña. At any given time most land suitable for cultivation is in fallow . . . the labor of clearing and then weeding the land is best done by a group, but work in the milpa is considered to be the exclusive preserve of the male members of the family; female activities are carried out close to the place of residence.82 As Nancy Farriss adds, from precolonial times milpa also had a significant religious component, expressed by milpa ceremonies in which offerings from the 218 · Chapter 4

field are made to the gods at ancient ruin sites as well as in family households and in the fields themselves.83 These ceremonies persisted even after many other elements of Maya religion were suppressed by colonial authorities, and were certainly an active element of Maya life during the Caste War period. They thus undo Sierra O’Reilly’s claim, discussed in chapter 3, that Maya ruins represent the ruination los bárbaros inflicted, and continue to inflict, on Yucatán. From the perspective of the milpa ceremonies, Yucatán’s ruins are ongoing sites of improvised life in the face of colonialism. Alicia Re Cruz has even shown how important the figure of the milpa has been during the twentieth-century rise of transnational and neoliberal economic development; Maya who today work at tourist sites like Cancún regularly joke of their workplaces as modern milpas.84 By the nineteenth century, milpa production thoroughly antagonized the kind of global capitalist development Yucatecan Creoles were seeking to establish with the industrial production of sugar, its associated liquor production, and henequen. Yet this antagonism was not just material; it was also representational. As Patch continues, “Nineteenth-century liberals in Yucatan lamented this sad state of affairs because of its apparent inefficiency. Three centuries of Spanish domination of the Maya, they complained, had done nothing to improve the barbaric agricultural techniques in use since time immemorial. This negative assessment in fact served as the justification for policies facilitating the acquisition of Maya landholdings by Hispanic landowners.”85 For Creoles, the milpa was effectively a name for supposedly stubborn and backward indigenous resistance to modernization. Throughout the period, then, Creoles effectively waged war against the milpa in an effort to expropriate indigenous land, to draw Maya away from milpa production, and to push them into peonage or wage-labor on a mass scale. In fact, the milpa was neither inefficient nor barbaric in the sense of being an atavistic means of production for the mere subsistence of local communities. Like the provision grounds the enslaved kept throughout the Caribbean, milpa both sustained the communities who tended them and produced a surplus for exchange in local markets all over Yucatán, markets in which “the whites, the indians, the blacks, and the mulattos” of the peninsula participated. As Creoles increasingly appropriated land for the global export economy, they came to rely evermore on milpa production to sustain themselves and their workers. The milpa thus articulated with the Yucatecan plantation system which in turn articulated with the global market; the space and time Maya devoted to the milpa was a condition of possibility for Yucatán’s expanding role in the world capitalist system even as it also set limits on that expansion. Tactically, the Creoles represented the milpa as inefficient or barbaric—as evidence of the Recasting Libertad · 219

problem of caste—when they sought to appropriate more land for their export production, although in fact they could not have done without milpa production. Maya, in turn, represented the milpa as a scene of freedom and a site of struggle to counter not only land appropriation, but also the Creole figuration of indigenous inefficiency and barbarism. In particular, Maya improvised with this Creole representational struggle when they cast the milpa as a site of autonomous decision-making and multiracial individual economic activity, as in the letter from rancho Haas: “that it will not be necessary to buy land, the white, the black or the indian can plant their milpa wherever he wants, and no one will prohibit it.” We are accustomed to thinking of black and indigenous globality in the form of mobile cosmopolitans in transit, thanks to the work of Paul Gilroy, Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, and Jace Weaver.86 With the figure of the milpa during the Caste War, however, we encounter another mode of racialized globality: one of subalterns who are linked to globality by being figured as delinked from it, and who in turn improvise with that delinked linkage.87 During the Caste War, the milpa thus became part of a material and representational struggle over freedom’s future. This is vividly illustrated in a letter written on December 27, 1849, from the outskirts of the village of Uayma by Eusebio Aké to the regional commander Paulino Pech, whom Aké calls “Father” as a sign of respect. In the process of reporting to Pech about local conflicts between Maya and Creoles as well as among Maya themselves, Aké writes: Father, I know that Don José María Barrera is not my chief, he commands the security patrols on the main road to Chuhcab. I have already sent a letter to the worthy gentleman Don Francisco. Father, he did not give me [illegible] because the milpas along the side of the road to Chuhcab have been harvested by the enemies, but only those that are two leagues from the road. They have not harvested the ones that are farther away; so, the enemy has not harvested the milpas that are three leagues from the road to Chuhcab, where there are many of them, which is why I am informing Your Excellency about this. Father [illegible] in the name of God, our Lord, please give us your [illegible] to be charged with going to find the reservists to replenish this village’s detachment, Father, because the troops were once at full strength but then they scattered outside the village. Father, if the troops are not at full strength, the enemies will harvest all the milpas in [illegible] the main road is not protected. Father, they have killed so many people in these settlements!88 Aké is concerned not only with who is cultivating which milpa, but also with milpas that go uncultivated due to the conflict. The milpas are effectively made 220 · Chapter 4

or unmade not simply by planting but by a much wider range of social and political actions, such as the raising of troops, the protection of roads, the dispersal of populations, and even the killing of residents of the area’s ranchos. Aké’s expansive understanding of milpa highlights how the rancho Haas correspondents’ demand that “the white, the black or the indian can plant their milpa wherever he wants, and no one will prohibit it” is not a simple, backward, traditional, precapitalist, or provincial claim. Rather, it points to a conflictual crossroads and a scene of futurity set within a world capitalist system. The rancho Haas correspondents’ articulation of this milpa-to-come with the demand for more equitable taxation can be found repeatedly in the epistolary archive of the Caste War. For instance, on November 15, 1849, two rebel leaders from the village of Tixcacalcupul, Juan Pío Poot and José María Canul, warn government officials to stop harming their community: “I also ask the gentlemen not to pillage the milpas because we know that they are taking the corn to Valladolid to be sold. If they had harvested only what they needed for their own consumption, it would not all be gone.”89 This letter challenges the extraction of surplus from milpa harvests for a wider market. Not simply a defense of a primitive mode of production for sustenance, then, the milpa is here defended as and through a critique of surplus-value extraction. Poot and Canul thus represent their defense of the milpas as an intimate part of the struggle for their very lives, and as they make clear the post is essential to that struggle: “Nobody is willing to do it, precisely because you harm them. I have sent the Commanders the letter I received from His Excellency the Governor, as well as (the note) from the Commissioners in which they asked me not to harm the bearer of the letter. We have also been instructed not to harm any of you while you are engaged in the delivery of correspondence.”90 In an echo of the structure Montesquieu was at once drawn to and wary of, the potential of the post is a precondition for the survival of the milpa. In the letters from rancho Haas and Tixcacalcupul, then, a thriving milpa is precisely a condition of possibility not only for ongoing Mayan participation in the Yucatecan state as citizens but also for life itself. Rather than stage a choice between Maya assimilation to Creole norms or Maya separation from those norms, these letters demand the universal freedom and equality that come with recognition by the state alongside, or appositionally with, ongoing milpa production in the face of, or oppositionally to, the Creole pursuit of casta capitalist development for the world market. They thus cast casta into a future that is yet to be fully formulated, a future in which those who have been excluded from or subject to Creole norms of universal citizenship and economic development will continue to claim and rework those norms. In the midst of the onRecasting Libertad · 221

going elaboration of liberal casta capitalism in the nineteenth-century Yucatán, we thus find among Maya rebels the possibility of a restaged sistema in which a racialized existence antagonizes state power and modern developmentalism in order to engage and repurpose them. Such a political performance could be said to continue in Yucatán, infinitely, until that moment comes—and such a coming may not take the form of a “moment” at all—when the freedom in question will have been renewed.

“Ya Estás Acomodada, Muchacha?” The Smithsonian Institution’s National Anthropological Archives contain a photographic portrait of Karl Hermann Berendt with someone described below the photograph as “his little Indian boy,” someone who is likely José Sabino Uc (figure 4.3). In this portrait, Berendt is seated and dressed in the casual attire of an explorer, or perhaps his idea of a nineteenth-century Yucatecan milpero (milpa farmer), holding a rifle and wearing a hat, while Uc is standing between Berendt’s parted legs, dressed in similar attire and holding a similar hat. Both are wearing straps of some sort running, in parallel, across their chests, and both look off to their right, with parallel gazes. The portrait asserts their intimate connection, with Berendt’s left arm disappearing behind Uc’s back, perhaps in a casual embrace. The same archive contains two other portraits of this boy alone, one dressed as he is with Berendt, this time sitting on a wooden box with a rifle under his legs and a machete—the milpero’s essential tool—on his lap, and another standing in a European-style drawing room alongside a fringed chair, dressed in a suit (figures 4.4 and 4.5). These three images exemplify the work of reducción we have encountered throughout this chapter. Their adoption and adaption of Uc entail an analyzing, a dissembling, and a reassembling, as well as a reordering, a pruning down, a supplementing, and a reorienting of Uc’s very being. Not only is Uc cast as a would-be European-in-a-suit, but also—clutching a machete and reiterating Berendt’s own sartorial performance—he is recast as a Maya in European eyes. The two contrasting images of Uc alone are formally citational; they make the claim that a “little Indian boy” can be reiterated repeatedly in multiple contexts, and thus they invest him with Atlantic worldliness through imputed form and performative practice. Citation and iteration are not, however, entirely controllable reproductions of the intended or the same. Like José Sabino Uc’s “autobiography” and the letters from Maya rebels during the Caste War, these images can also be read as theoretical reflections upon Maya efforts to improvise with reducción itself. In 222 · Chapter 4

Figure 4.3. Karl Hermann Berendt with José Sabino Uc. Courtesy of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Figure 4.4. José Sabino Uc. Courtesy of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Figure 4.5. José Sabino Uc. Courtesy of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

particular, they need not be taken as a narrative progression, from Maya milpero to modernized subject. Rather, as one flips back and forth between the pages on which they are affixed, one oscillates between Uc’s multiple potentials. Who Uc “was” or “is” becomes less clear. How he lives in and through these photographic performances becomes the urgent and strictly unanswerable question. As Uc’s “autobiography” begins: “Here in the big town of Merida today on the 10th day in the month of February in the year 1871 I, José Sabino Uc being my name, he of the house of Couoh Uc, I am going to write the story of my life.” Uc shifts through the postal politics of the period in which he lived: both “I” and “he,” Spanish and Maya named, of Mérida and of the house of Couoh Uc. Poised on the verge of articulating his own life—“I am going to write”—the text paradoxically performs a reducere of the future, bringing back to memory that which has yet to become. So too do the portraits urge us to consider in what senses Uc will have accommodated himself to the frames in which he is set, once he stands up from the box and steps away from the chair. “Ya estás acomodada, muchacha?” (Are you comfortably settled, girl?) As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Berendt poses this question to Juliana Vasquez in one sketch, while in another sketch he suggests that she may have spent some time at a desk writing with José Sabino Uc. The epistolary archive of Maya revolt during the Caste War urges us to speculate about how she and Uc might have responded to Berendt’s provocation. We cannot verify those speculations. But Uc’s “autobiography,” the promiscuously signed letters of Juan de la Cruz, the letter from rancho Haas, and all the other Maya rebel letters that fill archives throughout the Yucatán Peninsula . . . these texts write to us still today. If we can learn to overread the speculative dimensions of this open archive, it may well offer us some answers to Berendt’s question. “Ya estás acomodada, muchacha?” Pues . . . not until casta is unsettled and recast.

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Archives for the Future

We must distance ourselves from the idea of the archive as a reflection—the view that we can only extract facts from it—as well as the idea of the archive as conclusive proof, which presumes that we can pin down once and for all the meaning of the documents. So how can we invent a language that will grasp what we are looking for here, among these infinite traces of challenges, reversals, and successes? Well, even if the words we use do not permit the acts they describe to be played again, they can at least evoke alternative outcomes, margins of freedom for possible futures . . . [H]istorical writing should retain the hint of the unfinished, giving reign to freedoms even after they were scorned, refusing to seal off or conclude anything, and always avoiding received wisdom. It should be possible to find new ways of bending our words to the rhythm of the surprises experienced when in dialogue with the archives, forcing them to partner with intellectual hesitation so that we can see both crimes and desires for emancipation as they appeared in the moment, holding on to the possibility that each would be wedded later on to other dreams and other visions. There is surely a way, through nothing more than the choice of words, to produce tremors, to break through the obvious, and to outflank the ordinary smooth course of scientific knowledge. There is surely a way to go beyond the drab restitution of an event or a historical subject, and mark the places where meaning was undone, producing gaps where certainty had once reigned. —Arlette Farge, The Allure of the Archives If the Humanities and Social Sciences supplement each other, interrupt each other productively, then the production of knowledge will not be such a “been there, done that” game. A merely social scientific “frame resonance”—structure—will give way again and again to the attempt to strike a “musical resonance”—texture—and “failure” will be recoded as persistent critique in view of a success always “to come” . . . Our stake is with a future whose potential for change is in its undecidability, although, of course, there can be “no future without repetition.”—Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Our Asias—2001: How to Be a Continentalist”

Arlette Farge’s call for “a language that will grasp what we are looking for” in our archives—namely “margins of freedom for possible futures”—is apt and urgent, even as her claim that archives neither merely reflect the past nor offer conclusive proof should surprise no one but the most positivist of social scientists.1 Farge’s formulation helps shift the scene of meaning-making from documents themselves to the hermeneutic we bring to bear on them—that is, to the encounter between the reader and the document. That encounter, in turn, opens onto “the hint of the unfinished,” a perpetual “later on” of “other dreams and other visions” rather than “the drab restitution of an event or a historical subject.” In “the places where meaning was undone,” she suggests, the uncertainties of the past might speak to our futures. For Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Farge’s challenge to “the ordinary smooth course of scientific knowledge”—the “‘been there, done that’” game of knowledge production—happens not so much within historical practice as at the interdisciplinary juncture of “the Humanities and Social Sciences.”2 However, this juncture is neither masterfully synthetic (combining the best of all disciplines) nor merely multiple (picking and choosing among disciplines that themselves remain intact). Rather, the humanities and social sciences “supplement each other” in that they both add to and replace each other; or as Jacques Derrida famously wrote of the relationship of writing to speech in Rousseau: “The supplement adds itself, it is a surplus, a plenitude enriching another plenitude . . . But the supplement supplements. It adds only to replace. It intervenes or insinuates itself in-the-place-of.”3 Supplementarity here is not complementarity. Rather, as a paradoxical function of both adding to and replacing, supplementarity is necessary for the coherence of the two terms or concepts in question even as it troubles that coherence. The supplement marks both the possibility and impossibility of those terms, which is why Spivak writes that “the Humanities and Social Sciences” “interrupt each other productively”: attention to the supplement critically interrupts the apparent self-sufficiency of any given concept or practice. For Spivak, the humanities in particular supplement the social sciences as “musical resonance” supplements “frame resonance.” “Musical resonance” references the depth or texture of sound as it is produced by the often unpredictable and multiply sourced vibrations of objects at various frequencies. By contrast, “frame resonance”—a concept derived from the sociological tradition of Erving Goffman and elaborated by David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford—refers to a congruence of “frames,” or narrative accounts of actions and events, that allows a social movement to cohere and transform how people understand and act in relation to a political issue.4 In the ongoing interruption of the social sciences by the humanities, then, Spivak locates the 228 · Coda

possibility that narratives of who-did-what-where-when-and-why can “give way again and again” to the “textures” of what we read, or to what she elsewhere calls “the singular and the unverifiable” (a phrase echoed by Ian Baucom in my introduction), or what I have called the speculative dimensions of the archive.5 In this sense, then, the search for successful “frame resonance” structures gives way to encounters with the radical particularities of “musical resonance”; each paradoxically adds to and replaces the other, failing to synthesize or resolve even as they elaborate each other. The undecidabilities we encounter at the supplementary juncture between the social sciences and the humanities turn us toward a future that is open to unpredictable change rather than enclosed within the repetition of the known. That is, even as we chart the repetition of structural knowns in what we study, our futures depend upon cultivating an attention to what and how structures fail to know. In The Brink of Freedom, I sought to stage just such an interplay between charting structural knowns and attending to failures to know. I contended that nineteenth-century black settlers in Liberia and Maya rebels in Yucatán left epistolary archives that not only tell us who-did-what-where-when-and-why but also reflect speculatively on the meaning of freedom. Those reflections are often equivocal in that they make meaning in multiple directions at once. Such equivocation unsettles structures of formal equality like national citizenship, and as such can appear undecided, uncertain, ambiguous—in other words, as a failure to think and act. Yet as I hope to have shown, equivocation in these archives also offers unexpected success: the imaginative interruption and repurposing of racial capitalism and centrist liberalism, in the name of other freedoms to come. This unexpected success is easily missed because we are accustomed to reading such documents social-scientifically, as evidence for local, context-specific frame resonances that, in the case of Liberia and Yucatán, famously failed to cohere into what we saw Fred Moten and Stefano Harney call “policies” in my introduction—principally policies of emergent states and transnational capital such as national citizenship and racial capitalism. Read for their texture, however, these epistolary archives reveal something like musical resonances—specifically what I have called speculative, quotidian globalities—that undo certainties, pose politically philosophical questions, and point toward futures that await our own efforts. In a sense, then, I have looked to these archives to trace the emergence of futures that never were but might still become. These archives bring us to the brink of what kind of freedom, then? From Liberia, we encounter black settlers who eschewed the African colonizationist frame resonance, in which the movement from the United States to Liberia Archives for the Future · 229

was meant to be a progression from slavery to freedom as well as a return to an African homeland where African Americans would live among Africans so that whites could live among whites in the United States. Such progression and return can be said to fail in their letters, which is to say that their letters actively perform that failure. In this failure’s wake, however, the letters from Liberia depict freedom as an ongoing, imaginative return to slavery, in and through communication with friends, family, and even former masters left behind. This return is not simply a nostalgic repetition of what was, but rather is performed in the archives as a critical reflection upon how ex-slaves lived servitude’s afterlife. That living is multifarious, textured by the singular and the unverifiable. Recalling the language of the letters I considered in part I, it involves “woundering all over town . . . getting drunking and laying about and doing nothing”; “living and enjoying the rightes of man . . . in a land of darkness”; learning how the “natives . . . call us all white man”; “stealing”; “crying over the street” and “studing” death; building “A Church . . . & a School house”; dying “in the triumps of faith”; reading letters that “made us all to rejoice and tears to flow”; being “Ready to Leave on the Return Ship” and “to come to the U. States before long”; “Dreaming A bout” a former mistress; working to “buil a ship to sail Cross the atlantic osion”; sending “a communication from a transmarine stranger”; “murmuring and grumbling” about Liberia’s failings while panting “for fredom in this Life & the Life to Com”; “kissing the ‘big toe’ and this very ‘big negro’ business”; being “unwelcomly circunstanced” and “very much dissatisfied”; feeling “a lone in this Lonsum Cuntry” and deciding to “gets together, and sits down, and cherishes the recollection of home, and the remembrance of old acquaintances”; to “contend with the natives”; to “write and . . . write without answers”; to “hope for better, if worse Come”; to “venture to contend for their equal & Constitutional rights”; to take “so long before we Could find Africa out, how to live in it, and what to do to live, that it all most cost us death seeking life”; to “feal So free that they walk about from morning till evening with out doing one Stroke of work” and “becom to Suffer”; to “tell Lydia,” “read this in the presence of all your servants,” and “go among dogs” even as “all the rest is well”; even to “plant a root it take twelve.”6 While black settler elites like Edward Wilmont Blyden set about “laying the foundation of intellectual empire” in Liberia, subaltern black settlers like McKay wrote this fragment about life in Liberia: “suffering gain and it remain.”7 In McKay’s equivocal formulation we find the failure of settlements to settle, which is to say that we learn to read the ongoing unfolding of ungiven lives as the concrescence of freedom. In Yucatán, we encounter Maya rebels who waged a written war against a Creole frame resonance that sought to cast a liberal democratic state by means 230 · Coda

of what Justo Sierra O’Reilly called the “legitimate union of whites and indians,” the expropriation of indigenous land for large-scale production worked by indigenous labor, and the eradication of bárbaros understood to have no claim to the past or the future.8 That frame resonance can be said to have failed not only because Maya took up arms, but also because they turned to the post to recast libertad with a different texture, “because what we want is liberty and not oppression.”9 As we saw especially in chaper 4, this liberty was signed by “We indians and we whites: Salvador Hantun, Lauriano Peres, Manuel Jesus Can, Marcelino Puga”; by “Venancio Pec, José Atanacio Espada”; by “José María Barrera, Francisco Cob, José Isaac Pat, Calixto Yam, Pantaleón Uh, Juan Justo Yam, and Apolinar Sel” from rancho Haas; by Cecilio Chi and Jacinto Pat and Juan de la Cruz, or those who performed their claims under those names.10 Even as they fought, killed, and died, these rebels also wrote of a freedom that would articulate “white, black, and indian” otherwise, with an end to “the medio contribution . . . for the Indians as much as the Spaniards”; with “10 pesos for baptism for the white, for the black and for the indian; 10 pesos for weddings for the white, for the black and for the indian”; such that “the old [debts] will not be paid by the white, nor the black, nor the indian” and “it will not be necessary to buy land, the white, the black or the indian can plant their milpa wherever he wants, and no one will prohibit it,” “because the milpas along the side of the road to Chuhcab have been harvested by the enemies,” and “If they had harvested only what they needed for their own consumption, it would not all be gone.”11 “Though our elders have died, we continue to live,” these rebels wrote, and it is perhaps in their writings themselves that they continue to live to this day alongside José Sabino Uc, “he of the house of Couoh Uc,” who declared “in the big town of Merida today on the 10th day in the month of February in the year 1871” that “I am going to write the story of my life”—a story he wrote in a language he claimed even as it was taught to him by a liberal German exile devoted to the reducción of Yucatán as well as the plunder of its ruins.12 In answer to Berendt’s question for Juliana Vasquez—“Ya estás acomodada, muchacha?” (Are you comfortably settled, girl?)—this Caste War writes, even into the present: no, nothing will be settled comfortably until casta capitalism is recast.13 The archives of nineteenth-century Liberia and Yucatán do not just offer us concrete data from which we can reconstruct sequences of events or the intentions of willful subjects. Rather, their speculative intricacies traverse settled distinctions and presuppositions, teaching us about the ongoing, volatile concrescence of living free as ungiven life. Read appositionally, these two archives reveal textured and transverse failures that succeed in unsettling regional and racial distinctions, evading national citizenship and emergent states, recasting Archives for the Future · 231

Figure Coda.1. Ruins of the hacienda of Jacinto Pat, Telá or Lal-Ka, Quintana Roo, Mexico.

blackness and indigeneity in the Atlantic world, and encountering globality in quotidian subalternity.

“La Zona Maya No Es un Museo Etnográfico” I conducted the research for The Brink of Freedom in roughly the way this book is constructed: first devoting most of my time to Liberia, and then turning principally to Yucatán. Consequently, these distinct archives have worked through each other and on me in ways that have shaped The Brink of Freedom’s very argument. In particular, the letters from Liberia taught me how to read for what I have come to call the speculative Atlantic. When I began my research, I was frankly frustrated by the lack of lengthy philosophical statements about freedom in those letters; “when will they stop writing about needing seeds and 232 · Coda

blankets,” and “their spelling, grammar, and syntax are so difficult to read,” I at times said to myself. Eventually, however, I learned to see and hear both in those quotidian details as well as in difficult, stray paragraphs, sentences, and even phrases like those I just recalled above a robust theoretical enterprise: a critical reflection upon freedom as a kind of dynamic, living force, a critical reflection that was the dynamic living force of freedom. These letters led me to reread and revise perhaps the most influential, “proper” nineteenth-century philosophy of freedom, Hegel’s phenomenology. In turn, from the equivocal thinking and impure politics of black settler colonialism I learned how to supplement the social scientific search for concrete historical data by reading for the singular and unverifiable textures of an archive. In a certain sense, the Liberian archive gave me a theoretical perspective with which to approach the Caste War of Yucatán. I found myself reading both Creole discourse on the war and the Maya letters with a different eye than I had first brought to the Liberian letters, having learned to see in putative failures too easily obscured successes, to interpret information as speculative reflection—to overread the archives, as I put it at the end of my introduction. This argumentative path of course was not direct; it circled back many times, such that the Caste War archives at times offered their own critical perspective from which to reread the Liberian archives (and I certainly ended up in my fair share of culde-sacs and sidetracks along the way). Put another way, I have in the end found myself reading Yucatán through a lens crafted in my encounter with archives from West Africa, even as that lens was continually ground and polished in my encounters with the Caste War archive. This is perhaps too rare: that a certain Africa offers theoretical tools for the interpretation of the Americas, indeed for a certain Atlantic world itself, even as that interpretation in turn redounds upon Africa as an integral part of the Atlantic world. I would like to conclude, then, by turning to three encounters I had with Yucatán toward the end of my work on The Brink of Freedom, bringing to bear on those encounters some of what the epistolary archives of early Liberia and the Caste War conjuncture taught me about Atlantic world struggles for freedom. Consider first, singularly and unverifiably, an archaeological site I visited in 2012 with Richard M. Leventhal, a University of Pennsylvania archaeologist who had recently shifted his research from ancient Maya ruins to traces of the nineteenth-century Caste War. Leventhal’s team had come across a site long known to local residents, but mostly unmentioned by contemporary historians and no longer on maps of the area: the nineteenth-century town of Telá—also called Lal-Ka by many locals—which was abandoned completely by all its residents as a result of the Caste War. On this site were the ruins of the hacienda Archives for the Future · 233

of Jacinto Pat, the cacique or batab of the area and one of the early leaders of the rebellion, some of whose letters I discussed in part II. Leventhal showed me a unique feature of this hacienda, which dates to at least the 1840s: a number of buildings constructed in the elliptical style typical of Maya architecture alongside buildings in the Spanish colonial style, including so-called Moorish arches (figure coda.1).14 These arches are themselves palimpsests, referencing the Mudéjar style of Islamic architecture dating to twelfth-century Iberia and repurposed throughout the so-called Reconquista of the region and subsequent Christian rule. As we saw in chapter 3, this is the period María Elena Martínez describes as so crucial to the history of race in the Americas, when discursive practices of limpieza de sangre, which sought to distinguish Christians from Jews and Muslims, were forged. As Portuguese and Spanish colonizers took these discursive practices with them from Iberia to South Asia and the Americas during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they were repurposed to give meaning to encounters between colonizers and colonized populations, and then brought back to Europe only to be repurposed again, shaping the formation of modern concepts of casta, caste, and race around the globe.15 In the Moorish arches of Caste War rebel and Maya hacendado Jacinto Pat, then, we encounter not only a trace of this history, elaborated across long periods of time and vast expanses of space. We also glimpse something like Pat’s version of Justo Sierra O’Reilly’s Caste War novel La hija del judío (The Jew’s daughter), which as I discussed in chapter 3 itself travels across time and space, drawing on a global history of casta to construct an allegory of Yucatecan liberalism’s vision of a future in which all racial and ethnic particularisms are assimilated into a universal Creole state. In Pat’s hacienda architecture, however, particularity persists in the palimpsest, literally housing his own local economic and political power. Pat and his fellow Caste War rebels would turn that power against Creole universality in an uprising whose subaltern energies lived and expanded well beyond Pat’s own life and 1852 death. The ruins of Pat’s hacienda are, in a sense, part of the Caste War archive I have discussed: a quotidian site of racial globality that also reminds us how what Thomas Holt calls “the work race does” can be recast against the forces of casta capitalism and liberal universalism. Also consider, singularly and unverifiably, an echo of Telá’s ruins: the mural that has adorned the wall of a municipal building in the town of Felipe Carrillo Puerto since the 1990s (figure coda.2). Called Chan Santa Cruz in the nineteenth century, this town was a hotbed of militant Maya resistance, functioning as the effective capital of the eastern Cruzob rebel factions until a government offensive reconquered it in 1901. The slogan at the top of the mural—“La zona 234 · Coda

Figure Coda.2. Municipal building mural, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Quintana Roo, Mexico.

Maya no es un museo etnográfico” (The Maya zone is not an ethnographic museum)—lays claim to a term that is often used by archaeologists to describe the region marked by ancient Mayan ruins extending from Yucatán south through Chiapas and southeast through Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras, and northern El Salvador. “La zona Maya” has also become a common phrase of the region’s tourism industry, alongside the more recent phrase “the Mayan Riviera.” The mural’s slogan negates the museumification of this zona, in which tourists can visit curated, contained, even fabricated spectacles of Maya-ness detached from current conflicts still animated by Maya history: official archaeological sites, hotels with rooms in the elliptical style, cenote swimming holes.16 However, the slogan does not negate la zona Maya as such; if it is not an ethnographic museum, what is it? The images of European and Maya books, loose pages, Maya sculptural figures, and an isolated ruin on a flat green plain reach back into Yucatán’s histories of ruinenlust and reducción, and can be read as a kind of critical response to the museo we saw Justo Sierra O’Reilly construct in Archives for the Future · 235

chapter 3 with his literary magazine El Museo Yucateco. In this sense, “La zona Maya no es un museo etnográfico” interrupts Sierra O’Reilly’s liberal lexicon for assimilating the remnants of Yucatán’s past into a universal future. Yet the mural does so not in the name of a more authentic past. Rather, in an echo of the rancho Haas letter from chapter 4, the rest of the slogan—“es un pueblo en marcha” or “it is a people in action”—casts la zona Maya into a different future, one as intimately related to the milpa depicted in the lower left of the mural as it is to the robust challenge to neoliberalism written on the loose pages depicted in the lower right. Those pages seem torn from the image of the book in the lower foreground, a book that could figure Sierra O’Reilly’s nineteenth-century liberal devotion to Lucretius’s “golden words”; they read: “In recent years indigenous people have been confronted with the most threatening of forces: neoliberalism. This force barely conceals its desire to eliminate us, by means of policies that undermine our socioeconomic livelihood, our territoriality, our organization, our internal unity and our lifestyles. For neoliberalism, the people in action are an obstacle. This war will not be lost here in this land, because this land will be reborn.”17 With its reclaimed pages and repurposed words, the mural articulates the prenational past of la zona Maya with its transnational present and writes of the contemporary struggles of Maya who labor in taxi cabs, beach resorts, and shops full of chácharas, recasting the Caste War’s guerra escrita for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Finally, consider singularly and unverifiably another expression of this recast Caste War. Although the war is said by most historians to have ended in 1901, when Mexican troops took control over Chan Santa Cruz, many people in villages throughout Yucatán say that it continues even to this day. I caught a glimpse of this suggestion in July 2012, on the 165th anniversary of the start of the war, when I attended a festival in its honor in the central Yucatec pueblo of Tihosuco. A town with precolonial origins, Tihosuco was conquered by the Spanish in 1544 and quickly became the site of a powerful Franciscan convent and church. It has long been a point of connection between the cities of Valladolid to the north, Campeche to the west, and Mérida to the northwest, as well as the Petén region to the south and numerous outlets to the Caribbean Sea to the east. It appeared repeatedly in chapters 3 and 4 as the site where conflicts were staged and letters were composed. Tihosuco also sits just a few kilometers from Telá and the ruins of Jacinto Pat’s hacienda, and like many pueblos in the region was mostly abandoned in the wake of the war, only to be repopulated in the 1930s. The five-day annual festival included local break dancers and raperos rapping in Maya; a contest among graffiti artists for the best graffiti commemorating the 236 · Coda

war; lectures by regional academics; meetings between elder descendants of the rebels and elementary schoolteachers working on Maya language and history curricula; two different baile folklórico troupes from nearby cities; competitions in volleyball, bicycle racing, baseball, and oration (for the best speech on the legacy of the war); and uproarious teatro popular, including a forty-five-minute performance in Maya that spoofed all aspects of local culture, especially rural peasants and those local migrant laborers who come back from the United States with backpacks and iPhones. All this was staged in the midst of the town’s central park and its foosball tables, cd and dvd shops selling musical classics as well as the latest hits along with pirated Hollywood and Mexican movies, and stands offering churros, hot dogs, nachos, papas fritas, fried plantains, and elote dipped in mayonnaise, chile, cheese, and lime. Hundreds of the town’s approximately five thousand Maya residents, old and young alike, attended each day of the festival, as did the archaeologist Leventhal, whose grants to study the war helped to fund the events; the town’s director of the Caste War museum, which also doubles as a vibrant community center; a few U.S. academics researching various aspects of the peninsula’s history and culture; and, briefly, Yucatecan state cultural officials, whom locals view with significant suspicion and a dash of disdain. That view was confirmed during the festival when the state’s cultural director got lost on the way to Tihosuco and had to call for directions, even though only one major road connects the city she came from—Felipe Carrillo Puerto, the former Chan Santa Cruz—to the pueblo. The Tihosuco festival reveals just how the Caste War persists not only as a historical memory, but also as a kind of lexicon whose terms critically animate the contemporary lives of Maya who continue to tend milpa, work as local and transnational migrant laborers, produce and consume locally global culture, and negotiate with often-lost state structures whose failures are apposed by Yucatán’s quotidian globalities. In most of Mexico, the Caste War is hardly known, eclipsed by more triumphalist histories of the Mexican Revolution and the ideologies of indigenismo and mestizaje, which imagine (and sometimes enforce) a racially mixed, unified nation. When it is remembered, the war is often judged to have been a tragic orgy of violence or an unfortunate outgrowth of Spanish and Creole oppression. As the Tihosuco festival shows, however, in Yucatán the Caste War persists not simply as a past to be commemorated—not as what Farge calls “the drab restitution of an event.” Rather, the festival reveals an open archive, a reiterative reanimation of the past, a celebration of a speculative future that may not have arrived but still lingers. In an improvised bicycle race, rap in Maya, and hours of popular theatrical performances, we can see and hear the texture of an archive exposed to the future, an archive on the brink of freedom. Archives for the Future · 237

Acknowledgments

Here is where the fiction of individual authorship ought to be undone. If The Brink of Freedom conveys even a fraction of the thrilling conversations I have had with the people and at the forums mentioned below, then it will have honored the incalculable joys of collaborative intellectual and political engagement. First, I am so grateful for Ken Wissoker’s interest, guidance, and patience as my editor. He helped shape this project in ways he may not even be aware of, and always with a calm and confident poise. Thanks to Duke University Press’s board and my two insightful reviewers, Herman Bennett and Brent Hayes Edwards, as well as the press’s editorial and production staff, especially Susan Albury, Christine Riggio, and Chris Robinson. Cathy Hannabach’s indexing and Livia Tenzer’s proofreading were excellent. Laura Soderberg did flawless work on my footnotes and bibliography. Tony Beckwith and María Josefina SaldañaPortillo provided crucial translation assistance and advice. Thanks go to the many people who offered helpful feedback on earlier versions of this work: Sarah Banet-Weiser, Paula Dragosh, and the board and reviewers for American Quarterly; Laurent Dubreuil, Diane Brown, and the board and reviewers for diacritics; Ivy Wilson, Dana Luciano, and the reviewers for nyu Press’s Unsettled States; Laura Helton, Justin Leroy, Max Mishler, Samantha Seeley, Shauna Sweeney, Thulani Davis, Martha Hodes, and the Social Text collective. I also thank audiences at the following venues: the ace and Latin American Studies Programs at the University of Southern California, especially María Elena Martínez (¡presente!); the Atlantic History Workshop and the Rethinking Racial Capitalism Symposium at New York University, especially Nicole Eustace and Hayley Rose Negrin; Amy Huber, Gayle Salamon, Teemu Ruskola, and David L. Eng during our impromptu dinner and manuscript gettogethers; the English Department and American Studies Group at Columbia

University, especially Saidiya Hartman; the Center for the Humanities at Wesleyan University, especially Matthew Garrett and Ethan Kleinberg; the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, especially Lauren M. E. Goodlad and Michael Rothberg; King’s College London, especially Jo McDonogh; the American University of Beirut, especially Alex Lubin; Cornell University, especially Camille Robcis; Oklahoma State University, especially Nicole Rizzuto; the New Approaches to Imperialism and Capitalism in U.S. History symposium at Harvard University, especially Walter Johnson and Emily Conroy-Krutz; the Center for the Humanities and the EighteenthCentury Working Group at the cuny Graduate Center; the Re-theorizing and Nineteenth-Century workshops at the University of Pennsylvania; the Futures of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth College; the Unauthorized States conference at Notre Dame; the English Department at the University of Illinois, Chicago, especially Madhu Dubey; the American Studies Colloquium at the University of Washington; the Department of Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona, especially Miranda Joseph and Laura Briggs; the Latin American Studies Association, the American Historical Association, C:19, and many times over the American Studies Association. I want to single out the Tepoztlán Institute for Transnational History of the Americas, where I learned to be like a Latin Americanist, which is to say to read capaciously, think rigorously, keep the political central and open, and play plenty. Among the Tepozlocos I don’t mention elsewhere, I expressly want to thank Marisa Belausteguigoitia Rius, Gerry Cadava, Ben Cowan, Laura Gutiérrez, Lisbeth Haas, Bethany Moreton, Nicole Guidotti-Hernández, Yolanda Martínez San Miguel, Alex Puerto, Pamela Voekel, Adam Warren, and Elliott Young. For help tracking down manuscript sources, I thank Sean Benjamin at Tulane’s Howard-Tilton Memorial Library; Germain Bienvenu at the Louisiana State University Libraries’ Special Collections; Sarah-Elizabeth Gundlach at the Louisiana State Museum; Orion A. Teal at Duke University’s Special Collections Library; Bruce Kirby at the Library of Congress Manuscript Division; Matthew A. Harris, Research and Reference Coordinator, Special Collections, University of Kentucky; Matthew Turi, Manuscripts Research Librarian, Special Collections, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Margaret Hrabe, Reference Coordinator, Special Collections, University of Virginia; John Weeks at Penn’s Museum Library; and John Pollack and Nick Okrent at Penn’s Van Pelt Library. The graduate students with whom I have been lucky enough to work at the University of Pennsylvania have enriched my research beyond measure. I am especially grateful for thoughtful conversations over many years with Cedric Toll240 · Acknowledgments

iver, Greta LaFleur, Christen Mucher, Chris Taylor, Ashley Cohen, Rachel Banner, Emma Stapely, Sarah Nicolazzo, Marina Bilbija, Laura Soderberg, Tiffany Cain, Najnin Islam, Jazmin Delgado, Evelyn Soto, and Eve Eure. I also thank students in my 2008 Afro-diaspora seminar and 2009 Afro-diaspora directed reading for thinking through some of this book’s archival material with me. A number of my colleagues at Penn have been essential interlocutors, repeatedly pushing the limits of how I think. I am so grateful to these critical thinkers on all things race-and-empire: David L. Eng, Ania Loomba, Suvir Kaul, Chi-ming Yang, Tsitsi Jaji, Deborah Thomas, Tamara Walker, Ezekiel Dixon-Román, and Toorjo Ghose. Appreciation for smarts, support, and comradery goes to Amy Kaplan, Nancy Bentley, Max Cavitch, Charles Bernstein, Jed Esty, Jim English, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Paul K. Saint-Amour, Melissa Sanchez, Dan Richter, Román de la Campa, and Richard M. Leventhal. Thanks go also to my great Yucatec Maya teacher Grant Armstrong, as well as Gloria Nayeli Tun Tuz, Didier Argello Chan Quijano, and Geronimo Ricardo Can Tec. And of course to my fantastic fellow students Anna Leigh Humphries, Alicia Reyes-Barriéntez, Georgia Hartman, Cathy Ospina, and Veronica Miranda. Then there are friends who remake kinship such that a book like this can happen while being part of a life. I am ever grateful for thinking and living alongside Zahid R. Chaudhary, Jeremy Glick, Christopher Illick, Rosanna Kazanjian, Karen Miller, Rob Miotke, Ito Romo, Catherine Sameh, Erin Small, Neon Weiss, and Catherine Zimmer. Toward the end of this project I lost a dear such friend whose teachings impacted it more than she probably knew: María Elena Martínez, whom I feel bereft to have lost, but whose life—and death—I feel lucky to have shared. Nietzsche may have forgotten his umbrella, but “thank the gods” I had mine. I could not have set out to find a more generous, inspiring, kind, and rigorous alongside-thinker-pal than Dillon Vrana, to whom no thank you could be adequate, but for whom I am every day grateful, not the least for reading and commenting on each page of this manuscript. I hardly know how to acknowledge the generosity of David Sartorius, whose line-by-line comments and seemingly endless flow of citational wisdom have vastly improved this book. He is among the most diligent and thoughtful readers I have ever known, in addition to being a darling friend. Fred Moten’s work, wisdom, and edge-thought are to me like communism was to Marx; they mark an ever-open horizon to which I ongoingly aspire. David L. Eng has inspired in countless ways, but especially by collaborating with me on the Mellon Sawyer Seminar “Race, across Time and Space,” which shaped this book even at a late date. David Johnson frequently harbored me across the pond, and expanded my thought with each Acknowledgments · 241

and every visit; he is the very definition of a comrade. Ashley Cohen insisted on being a colleague while and after being a student, and her close reading of my manuscript pushed me to make it materially better. From advisor to friend and continual inspiration, Judith Butler still makes me think more precisely every day. Herman Bennett always found the time to encourage my thought and direct my writing; and when I was stuck I often just read his work for inspiration. Emma Bianchi has been a fellow thinker and all around troublemaker with me for longer than seems possible. I couldn’t imagine thinking or being without her, and I don’t intend to. Many know how brilliant Gayle Salamon is, and I have been lucky enough to learn over and over from her how to think incisively. But Gayle is also the kindest of souls and the most open of listeners, and I could hardly have made it through the years of this research and writing without her as an incomparable friend. Finally, Josie Saldaña has not only put up with and supported me through the all-too-consuming, day-to-day process of researching and writing this book, though that would have been enough of a contribution for anyone to bear (and I have no idea how she did). She has also helped me work through its every argument with her ever challenging and frankly materialist mode of thought. Fíjate no más, she makes even the blues appear periwinkle, and still surprises me around every corner.

242 · Acknowledgments

Notes

Introduction. Atlantic Speculations, Quotidian Globalities 1 Lapsansky-Werner and Bacon, Back to Africa; Schweninger, Black Property Owners in the South; Shick, Roll of Emigrants that have been sent to the colony of Liberia; Temperly, “African-American Aspirations and the Settlement of Liberia.” 2 G. R. Ellis McDonogh to John McDonogh, March 26, 1847, acspo. 3 G. R. Ellis McDonogh to John McDonogh, March 26, 1847, arcj 28.7 ( July 1847), 223. This published version varies in ways mostly minor when compared to the manuscript source quoted in my epigraph. 4 As he wrote to his former master just one day before the letter I quote in my epigraph, on March 25, 1847: “By this vessel I would have come to New Orleans on a visit but I could not bring my business to a close sufficient to leave and I wish You Dear Father to write me wheither there will be any difficulty and how the law is touching persons returning to visit.” G. R. Ellis McDonogh to John McDonogh, March 25, 1847, jmp. Ellis had shared a similar sentiment the previous year: “The same emigrant told me that you said you wished two of the young men from here would come to New Orleans. I should be extremely happy to come on myself.” G. R. Ellis to John McDonogh, October 9, 1846, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 143. 5 Washington W. McDonogh to John McDonogh, October 7, 1846, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 142. 6 agey. Fondo: Poder Ejecutivo de 1843–1862; Seccion: Gobierno del Estado de Yucatan; Serie: Justicia; Lugar Tihosuco; Fecha 11/12/1847; Caja 144; Vol. 94; Exp. 70. The Spanish reads: “Usted muy estimado Señor Don Francisco Camal . . . Nosotros, pobres indios, hemos sido mentidos por los Españoles, repetidas ocaciones, por eso os advierto Señor, no creais sus engaños: nosotros los indios levantados, no buscamos otra cosa tan buena como la libertad; esta es la que buscamos, en nombre de Dios verdadero y de nuestros compañeros los indios principales; porque no hay contribucion para el indio, asi como los Españoles no tienen contribucion, ni pagan obvenciones, lo ünico que debemos pagar a los Cléricos, nosotros los indios, y tambíen los Españoles, son diez para el casamiento, y tres para el bau-

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tissmo, y si hay medio mas, no lo pagamos; y así dicen los Españoles que es malo lo que hacemos mentira.” I discuss my use of the term flashpoint in Kazanjian, The Colonizing Trick, 27–34; drawing on Walter Benjamin’s figure aufblitzen in his call to seize hold of memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger, my use of the term refers to the process by which someone or something emerges or bursts into action or being, not out of nothing but transformed from one form to another, as well as the powerful effects of such an emergence or transformation (Benjamin, “On the Concept of History,” 390–91; Gesammelte Schriften, 695). While I interpret nineteenth-century Liberia and Yucatán as such flashpoints, I also hope to generate transversals that link them as sites of visionary thought about freedom’s future, a task that was not central to The Colonizing Trick—which, as Fred Moten astutely warned me once, runs the risk of settling on an obsessive recording of mastery. The literature on Atlantic studies is vast. For work I do not cite elsewhere, see Bodle, “Atlantic History”; Canny and Morgan, Oxford Handbook; Egerton, The Atlantic World; Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World; Games, “Atlantic History”; Games and Rothman, Major Problems; Gould, “Entangled Atlantic Histories”; Mancke and Shammas, Creation of the British Atlantic World; O’Reilly, “Genealogies of Atlantic History”; Steele, “Bernard Bailyn’s American Atlantic”; Wilson, New Imperial History. A representative example from history by a scholar who has set the terms for much of this kind of work is Bailyn, Atlantic History. For representative examples from literary studies, see Doyle, Freedom’s Empire, and Dillon, New World Drama. These tendencies structure most of Gould’s references in “Atlantic History and the Literary Turn,” as well as the rest of the contributions to the special section of the journal from which Gould’s essay comes, “The ‘Trade Gap’ in Atlantic Studies: A Forum on Literary and Historical Scholarship,” William and Mary Quarterly. The inclusion of Haiti around the time of its revolution has increasingly stood in as a means of breaking from these tendencies, which has itself had the unfortunate consequence of eclipsing much less recognizably “heroic” histories from the rest of the Atlantic world. I address this question of less heroic histories below. See, for example, Elliott, “Afterword”; Meinig, The Shaping of America. See Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery; Boelhower, “The Rise of the New Atlantic Studies Matrix”; Brown, The Reaper’s Garden; Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex; Elliott, “Afterword,” 235; Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery; Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness; Morgan and Greene, “Introduction: The Present State of Atlantic History”; Thornton, Africa and Africans; Tinsley, “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic: Queer Imaginings of the Middle Passage.” Morgan and Greene, “Introduction,” 6; Mapp, “Atlantic History from Imperial, Continental, and Pacific Perspectives.” Continentalist frames structure the important work of, for example, Blackhawk, Violence over the Land, and Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire. For an alternative, see Weaver, The Red Atlantic. 244 · Notes to Introduction

13 Crucial exceptions include these works that have greatly influenced my own: Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico; Bennett, Colonial Blackness; Bennett, “Writing into a Void”; Bryant, O’Toole, and Vinson III, Africans to Spanish America; Burns, Into the Archive; Forbes, Africans and Native Americans; O’Toole, Bound Lives; O’Toole, “From the Rivers of Guinea to the Valleys of Peru”; Restall, The Black Middle; Sartorius, Ever Faithful. 14 See, for example, Clegg, The Price of Liberty; Tyler-McGraw, An African Republic; Peniche Rivero, La historia secreta. 15 In addition to the works cited elsewhere in this introduction, I have taken inspiration from the following works that push, from within, the limits of current Afro-diasporic and white settler colonial paradigms: Byrd, The Transit of Empire; Ghosh, Sea of Poppies; Jackson, Creole Indigeneity; Johnson, Imagining the Cape Colony; Lowe, “The Intimacies of Four Continents”; Martínez, “The Language, Genealogy, and Classification of ‘Race’ in Colonial Mexico.” For recent settler colonialism scholarship, whose models do not speak well to the flashpoints I examine here, see for instance: Coombes, Rethinking Settler Colonialism; Kauanui, Hawaiian Blood; Morgensen, Spaces between Us; Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis, Unsettling Settler Societies; Veracini, “Isopolitics, Deep Colonizing, Settler Colonialism;” Veracini, Settler Colonialism; Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” 16 See Braudel, The Perspective of the World; Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis; Wallerstein, The Modern World System III; Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century; Robinson, Black Marxism. 17 Subrahmanyam, “Connected Histories,” 762. See also Subrahmanyam, “A Tale of Three Empires”; Subrahmanyam, “Holding the World in Balance”; Subrahmanyam, Mughals and Franks; Subrahmanyam, From Tagus to the Ganges; Anthony Pagden and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Roots and Branches”; Etter and Grillot, “History Speaks Many Languages: An Interview with Sanjay Subrahmanyam.” 18 I thank Najnin Islam for teaching me about the links between Indian Ocean practices of indenture and Atlantic Ocean modes of slavery, links I cannot pursue adequately here but that she herself is currently researching. See Allen, “The Constant Demand of the French”; Anderson, Subaltern Lives; Bentley, “Sea and Ocean Basins as Frameworks of Historical Analysis”; Bose, A Hundred Horizons; Christopher, Pybus, and Rediker, eds., Many Middle Passages; Hofmeyr, “The Black Atlantic Meets the Indian Ocean”; Hofmeyr, “The Complicating Sea”; Hofmeyr, Kaarsholm, and Frederiksen, “Introduction: Print Cultures, Nationalisms and Publics in the Indian Ocean”; Land, “Tital Waves”; Sheriff and Ho, eds., The Indian Ocean; Vahed and Desai, “Indian Indenture.” 19 In addition to texts I discuss at length throughout this book and mention in the notes above, a number of studies have challenged these limits and thus inspired my work. See for instance, Bernard Bailyn and Patricia L. Denault, Soundings in Atlantic History (essays by Linda M. Heywood and John K. Thornton, Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Beatriz Dávilo); Bauer, The Cultural Geography of Colonial American Literature; Brown, The Reaper’s Garden; Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Notes to Introduction · 245

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Write the History of the New World; Coronado, A World Not to Come; Earle, The Return of the Native; Gruesz, Ambassadors of Culture; Guardino, The Time of Liberty; Guidotti-Hernández, Unspeakable Violence; Linebaugh and Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra; Pierre, The Predicament of Blackness; Rediker, Villains of All Nations and The Slave Ship; Saldaña-Portillo, Indian Given; Scott and Hébrard, Freedom Papers; Weaver, The Red Atlantic. As the oed notes, this line from Book VII, Stanza 56 of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene illustrates the unruly sense of “transverse”: “Nothing doth firme and permanent appeare, / But all things tost and turned by transuerse.” oed online. “Introduccion,” La Revista Yucateca, 1; Quintal Martín, Correspondencia de la Guerra de Castas, 103 (the Spanish reads: “derramé mi sangre para que mis criaturas pudieran ver el mundo”); H. W. Ellis to Rev. William McLain, November 20, 1849, arcj 26.4 (April 1850): 118. In The Transit of Empire, Byrd has offered the figure of “transit” as a lens through which to understand U.S. indigenous histories and cultures: “What it means to be in transit, then, is to be in motion, to exist liminally in the ungrievable spaces of suspicion and unintelligibility. To be in transit is to be made to move” (xv). While her geographic framework is much different from mine, and the movements to which she refers differ from the ones I track here, her effort to transform a history into a critical lens has affinities with the transversals of which I write. I thank Ashley Cohen for pushing me to think these transversals as part of a global, connected history. Ania Loomba’s “Race and the Possibilities of Comparative Critique” has been formative for me, as have countless conversations with Ania. The essay was first published in New Literary History 40 (2009): 501–22, and later reprinted in Felski and Friedman, eds., Comparison. Felski and Friedman, “Introduction,” Comparison, 1. Blyden, “Inaugural Address at the Inauguration of Liberia College.” For critiques of traditional comparative methods, see Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play”; Cheah, “Grounds of Comparison”; Mignolo, All the Difference in the World; Mignolo, “On Comparison: Who Is Comparing What and Why?”; R. Radhakrishnan, “Why Compare?”; Yengovian, “Introduction: On the Issue of Comparison.” For a critique of comparativism that opts for transnationalism, see Seigel, “Beyond Compare.” Hanks, Converting Words, 7. For a kindred account of the northern Andes, see Rappaport and Cummins, Beyond the Lettered City. Susan Stanford Friedman briefly mentions what she calls modes of juxtapositional comparison in her “Why Not Compare?” in Felski and Friedman, eds., Comparison, 40–42. Wheatley, The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley, 18. I also refer to this appositional force in The Colonizing Trick, 138. Tyler-McGraw, An African Republic, 182. Clegg, The Price of Liberty, 270, 274. Rugeley, Rebellion Now and Forever, 8. 246 · Notes to Introduction

32 On nonelite literacies, see, for example, Hager, Word by Word; Rappaport and Cummins, Beyond the Lettered City. 33 See, for instance, in the U.S. context Warner, The Letters of the Republic; and in the Latin American context Rama, The Lettered City. 34 For one of the most influential such accounts of the nineteenth century, see Gay, The Naked Heart. 35 For a discussion of this aspect of epistolary form, see Gilroy and Verhoven, Epistolary Histories. 36 Antoinette Burton helpfully reviews the stakes of the shift from official and elite archives to archives of the everyday in her “Introduction: Archive Fever, Archive Stories,” in Archive Stories. For an account of the instrumentalization of the everyday for nationalist history, see in the same volume Fritzsche, “The Archive and the Case of the German Nation.” See also Stoler, Along the Archival Grain. 37 De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, xi–xii. 38 De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, xii. 39 De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, xiii. 40 Scott, “Everyday Forms of Resistance,” 34. See also Scott, Weapons of the Weak. 41 Scott, “Everyday Forms of Resistance,” 34. 42 Mallon, Peasant and Nation, 10. See also Joseph and Nugent, eds., Everyday Forms of State Formation. 43 Hager, Word by Word, 24. 44 Hager, Word by Word, 21–22. 45 Weaver, The Red Atlantic, 29–30; Rediker and Linebaugh, The Many-Headed Hydra; Gilroy, The Black Atlantic. 46 De Certeau was quite clear about his critique of individualism (see The Practice of Everyday Life, xi), and Scott zeroes in on collective if unsystematic and thus not typically “political” action (see “Everyday Forms of Resistance,” 33). 47 Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, 16. I thank Christopher J. Taylor for conversations about the linked-as-delinked subaltern. See Taylor, “Empire of Neglect.” 48 Holt, “Marking,” 3. 49 Holt, “Marking,” 7. 50 Holt, “Marking,” 8. 51 Holt, “Marking,” 10. 52 Holt, “Marking,” 11. 53 Moten and Harney, “Policy and Planning,” 183. See also Moten and Harney, The Undercommons. 54 Moten and Harney, “Policy and Planning,” 183–84. 55 Rugeley, Rebellion Now and Forever, 66–67. 56 For an account of how left revolutions in the Americas can end up replicating the very policies they sought to overturn, see Saldaña-Portillo, The Revolutionary Imagination. 57 Butler, “Restaging the Universal,” 40–41. 58 “John McDonogh’s People. No. 1,” arcj 23.9 (1847): 264, American Periodicals Series Online, accessed May 9, 2011. I have not as yet located a manuscript source Notes to Introduction · 247

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for this letter, which is also transcribed and published, with some errors, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 136–37. Quintal Martín, Correspondencia de la Guerra de Castas, 78. The Spanish reads “Sabía claramente cuál era el convenio hecho con nosotros, por eso peleamos. Que no sea pagada ninguna contribución, ya sea por el blanco, el negro o al indígena.” See Hall, “Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance,” “Reflections on ‘Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance’ (S. Hall),” and “On Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall.” Étienne Balibar echoes Hall’s account of the articulation of racism, nationalism, and capitalism in Balibar and Wallerstein Race, Nation, Class, 37–67 and 86–106. On articulation as a theoretical figure in early America, see Kazanjian, The Colonizing Trick, 7–17. Also on articulation, see Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora, 11–15, and “The Uses of Diaspora,” 59–66. Robinson, Black Marxism, 9, 26. See Holt, “Marking,” The Problem of Race, and “Explaining Racism in American History.” Wallerstein, The Modern World System IV, 18–19, 277. Wallerstein, The Modern World System IV, 276–77. My project here has affinities with Jodi Melamud’s critique of “official anti-racism” in her Represent and Destroy. However, the articulation of racial capitalism and centrist liberalism I cull shows that the formation to which Melamud attends so carefully is neither as “new” as she suggests nor as limited to the geographic boundaries of the United States. For two other accounts of liberalism that have been influential, see Balibar, Equiliberty, and Losurado, Liberalism. Ceasar to Westfall, June 2, 1834, 10595, uvl. For Ceasar’s letters, see also etc. Washington W. McDonogh to John McDonogh, October 19, 1842, jmp. Also transcribed and published, with some errors, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 122–23. De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, xii. I also make this case in Kazanjian, “Freedom’s Surprise” and “Scenes of Speculation.” Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic, 106. Baucom uses the phrase speculative discourse on page 22. Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic, 142. Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic, 4, 168. Marx, Capital, Volume 1, 165. I have changed “fantastic form” to “phantasmagoric form” to more precisely follow the German and to illustrate my point about this passage. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 12–13. I have modified the translation of the last word in this passage, aufgehoben, following Nancy, Hegel, 63. I discuss this translation in chapter 2. The Greek root of the English word theory, teoria, signifies a looking at, viewing, contemplation, or speculation. See “theory n.1,” oed and Perseus Digital Library (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/search). 248 · Notes to Introduction

77 Fred Moten, “Knowledge of Freedom,” 303. 78 On illocutionary and perlocutionary performatives, see Austin, How to Do Things with Words. 79 Moten, “Knowledge of Freedom,” 275. 80 “prescription, n.1,” oed. 81 My thoughts here are informed by the wealth of recent work on the archive, even when it does not share my concern for speculative thinking: Arondekar, “Without a Trace”; Burton, ed., Archive Stories; Burton, Dwelling in the Archive; CañizaresEsguerra, How to Write the History of the New World; Cvetkovich, An Archive of Feelings; Derrida, Archive Fever; Echevarría, Myth and Archive; Farge, The Allure of the Archives; Hamilton et al., eds., Refiguring the Archive, particularly Achille Mbembe, “The Power of the Archive and Its Limits,” 19–27; Steedman, Dust. I will return explicitly to some of these texts in my coda. 82 For a venerable reflection on a similar concern, see LaCapra, “Rethinking Intellectual History and Reading Texts.” 83 Relevant accounts for and against something like overreading can be found in Eco, Interpretation and Overinterpretation, particularly Jonathan Culler’s critique of Eco included in that volume, “In Defense of Overinterpretation,” 109–24; Davis, Critical Excess; Freeman, Time Binds; Mulhall and O’Rourke, “In a Queer Time and Space.” 84 Derrida, Positions, 71. This practice of overreading can, and should, be distinguished from recent calls for “surface reading,” which themselves return (often too implicitly) to Foucault’s more capacious attention to discourse. See, for example, Best and Marcus, “Surface Reading.”

Part I. Liberia Prelude 1 “Flag and Seal of the Republic of Liberia,” arcj 24.1 (1848): 12. Also quoted in Huberich, The Political and Legislative History of Liberia, 1:836–37, and Johnston, Liberia, 218. According to Huberich as well as Indiana University’s Liberian Collections Project, the original records of the convention’s proceedings have been lost, and the only surviving nineteenth-century accounts come from newspaper coverage and from the private journal of J. W. Lugenbeel, colonial physician for the American Colonization Society and the U.S. Agent for Recaptured Africans, who attended the convention. Huberich adds that while Lugenbeel’s journal has itself been lost, Lugenbeel reproduced excerpts from it in letters he sent to the American Colonization Society; Huberich reproduces these letters in Political and Legislative History, 1:821–27, 848. 2 From the Act of 1841, quoted in Huberich, Political and Legislative History of Liberia, 2:1030, 1051. J. Gus Liebenow makes a similar point about the motto in Liberia, 30. 3 Liebenow claims that the ship is “probably the Elizabeth,” owned by the acs, which brought the first black settler-colonists to West Africa in March 1820. See Liebenow, Liberia, 30. Notes to Part I Prelude · 249

4 Wendel, Encyclopedia of American Farm Implements, 232–51. 5 On the Christian iconography of the dove, see Potts, “The Deacon and the Dove,” 110–11; Schlatter, “Interpreting the Mosaic,” 287–89; Pasulka, “The Eagle and the Dove,” 306–24. 6 For a recent discussion of colonialism and naturalism in Africa, see Johnson, Imagining the Cape Colony. 7 On Jefferson’s advocacy of colonization, see Kazanjian, The Colonizing Trick, 89–138. On the late eighteenth-century foundations of colonization, see Jordan, White over Black, 542–69. Sierra Leone was first a Portuguese, then a Dutch, French, and finally English slave post before becoming a formal British colony in 1787. African Americans who had allied with the British during the American Revolutionary War were also settled first in Nova Scotia and then in Sierra Leone. On the history of Sierra Leone and the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, the classic text is Fyfe, History of Sierra Leone; see also Walker, The Black Loyalists, and Stapely, “Insurgent Remains,” especially chapter 4. On this conjuncture, see also the important work of Cohen, “The Global Indies.” For an account of the brutality of contemporary philanthropic capitalist ventures, see Roy, Capitalism. 8 On Liberia and the American Colonization Society, see Bancroft, “The Colonization of American Negroes”; Beyan, American Colonization Society; Dunn and Holsoe, Historical Dictionary; Foner, History of Black Americans: From Africa, 584–93; Foner, History of Black Americans: From the Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom, 255–56, 290–303; Foster, “The Colonization of Free Negroes”; Fox, The American Colonization Society; Hall, On Afric’s Shore; Kinshasa, Emigration vs. Assimilation; McCartney, Black Power Ideologies, chapters 2 and 3; Miller, The Search for a Black Nationality, 54–90; Moses, ed., Golden Age; Moses, Classical Black Nationalism; Sherwood, “Early Negro Deportation Projects”; Sherwood, “The Formation of the American Colonization Society”; Shick, Behold the Promised Land; Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement; Tyler-McGraw, An African Republic. 9 For these treaties, see acsp; for a transcription of some of these treaties, see Holsoe, “A Study of Relations between Settlers and Indigenous Peoples in Western Liberia,” 331–62. See also Akpan, “Black Imperialism,” 217–36; Breitborde, “City, Countryside, and Kru Ethnicity,” 186–201; Dorjahn and Isaac, eds., Essays on the Economic Anthropology; McDaniel, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot; McEvoy, “Understanding Ethnic Realities among the Grebo and Kru Peoples,” 62–80; Schmokel, “Settlers and Tribes,” 153–81. 10 Clegg, The Price of Liberty, 266. 11 On the studium-punctum distinction, see Barthes, Camera Lucida. 12 Johnston, Liberia, 1:218; Liebenow, Liberia, 32. 13 Johnston, Liberia, 1:218, 221; van der Kraaij, The Open Door Policy of Liberia, 10. Van der Kraaij’s account is reproduced at http://www.liberiapastandpresent.org /Seal.htm, accessed May 1, 2015. 14 Derrida, “Signature, Event, Context,” 20. 15 The colony was run by the private American Colonization Society. The United 250 · Notes to Part I Prelude

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States, while it exercised quasicolonial power in Liberia, never claimed sovereignty over it and did not formally recognize its independence until 1862. Indeed, this lack of U.S. sovereignty was a source of tension between Liberia and Britain, which did claim sovereignty over its own colony of Sierra Leone, to the north of Liberia. Britain understood Liberia to be an extralegal entity and thus claimed sovereignty over it until Liberian independence in 1847. For an argument that Liberia was sovereign from the moment its settlers arrived, see Huberich, Political and Legislative History, 1:23–40, 232. Liberian Constitution of 1847. Washington W. McDonogh to John McDonogh, October 19, 1842, jmp. Also transcribed and published, with some errors, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 122–23. Eight years earlier, another settler named Samson Ceasar expressed a similar sentiment, writing on June 2, 1834, of some of his fellow settlers: “While they have them their [in Virginia] the cow hide is hardly ever off of their backs and when they come here they feal So free that they walk about from morning till evening with out doing one Stroke of work by those means they becom to Sufer.” For Ceasar’s letters, which I discuss in detail in chapter 2, see etc. Washington W. McDonogh to John McDonogh, March 7, 1848, jmp. Also transcribed and published, with some errors, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 148–49. “Letters from Liberia,” arcj 22.8 (1846): 260. Also transcribed and published, with some errors, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 21–22. “Letters from Liberia,” arcj 22.8 (1846): 260. Also transcribed and published, with some errors, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 21–22. “Letters from Liberia,” arcj, 22.8 (1846): 260. Also transcribed and published, with some errors, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 21–22. Henrietta Fuller to John McDonogh, October 24, 1849, jmp. This letter is also transcribed and published, with some errors, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 153–54. Clegg, Price of Liberty. Clegg, Price of Liberty, 6. Clegg, Price of Liberty, 247. Clegg, Price of Liberty, 269. Hager, Word by Word, 21. Mahmood, The Politics of Piety, 8. Mahmood, The Politics of Piety, 14–15. Hartman, Lose Your Mother, 17–18. Hartman, Lose Your Mother, 45. I discuss the implications of this speculative, epistolary archive for Hegel and studies of Hegel in a black Atlantic context—particularly Susan Buck-Morss’s influential Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History—in chapter 2 as well as in my essay “Hegel, Liberia.” The literature on the epistolary form tends to focus on Europe and the creation of private and public spheres. For foundational considerations, see Bourdieu, Sociology in Question, and Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. See also Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination; Freccero, Notes to Part I Prelude · 251

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“Autobiography and Narrative”; Stone, The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England; Taylor, Sources of the Self. For colonial contexts, see Breckenridge, “Orality, Literacy, and the Archive in the Making of Kas Maine”; Chakrabarty, “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History”; Barber, ed., Africa’s Hidden Histories. John Aiken to John McDonogh, August 7, 1846, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 140. Randall Kilby to John R. Kilby, June 26, 1856, jrk. Also transcribed and published, with some errors, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 268–69. For reflections on these dynamics in African epistolary contexts, see Barber, ed., Africa’s Hidden Histories, particularly Barber’s introduction and several selections: Keith Breckenridge, “Reasons for Writing: African Working-Class Letter-Writing in Early-Twentieth-Century South Africa,” Catherine Burns, “The Letters of Louisa Mvemve,” Vukile Khumalo, “Ekukhanyeni Letter-Writers: A Historical Inquiry into Epistolary Network(s) and Political Imagination in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa,” and Lynn M. Thomas, “Schoolgirl Pregnancies, Letter-Writing, and ‘Modern’ Persons in Late Colonial East Africa.” The American Colonization Society, 1. On the notion of a “hidden transcript,” see Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance. See, for example, Wiley, Slaves No More, 68, 125, 129, 165. Hager, Word by Word, 21.

Chapter 1. Recursive Returns and Unsettled Nativities 1 Blyden, “Inaugural Address at the Inauguration of Liberia College.” This passage was brought to my attention by Fred Moten, who learned of it from Shea Bigsby—so I want to thank both of them here. 2 See Kazanjian, The Colonizing Trick. See also Walker, David Walker’s Appeal, 67. 3 H. B. Stewart to Rev. William McLain, October 20, 1849, acsp, Box I: b3, pt. 2. 4 Wiley, Slaves No More, 287. 5 H. B. Stewart to Ralph R. Gurley, August 8, 1857, acsp, Box I: b7, pt. 2. 6 H. B. Stewart to Rev. William McLain, December 19, 1856, acsp, Box I: b7, pt. 1. 7 H. B. Stewart to Ralph R. Gurley, December 19, 1856, acsp, Box I: b7, pt. 1. 8 H. B. Stewart to Rev. William McLain, May 10, 1857, acsp, Box I: b7, pt. 2. 9 H. B. Stewart to Ralph R. Gurley, February 27, 1857, acsp, Box I: b7, pt. 1; H. B. Stewart to “My Dear Sir,” January 20, 1858, acsp, Box I: b8, pt. 1. 10 H. B. Stewart to William Coppinger, August 17, 1868, acsp, Box I: b14, pt. 2. 11 Wiley, Slaves No More, 287. 12 Wiley, Slaves No More, 337. 13 See entry “Priest, James M.” at http://www.uky.edu/Libraries/NKAA/subject .php?sub_id=61. 14 See endnotes 7 and 8 in the prelude to part I. 15 Wheatley, Collected Works, 184. 16 See Kazanjian, The Colonizing Trick, 93, 124–26. 17 Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, 221. 252 · Notes to Part I Prelude

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Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, 233. Wheatley, Collected Works, 181–82. Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, 221. Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, 202. On this Miskito history, see Cohen, “Lady Nugent and the Miskito Monarchy,” and Cohen, ed., Lady Nugent’s East India Journal. Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, 299. Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, 302. See Breitborde, “City, Countryside, and Kru Ethnicity”; Dorjahn and Isaac, eds., Essays on the Economic Anthropology; Holsoe, “A Study of Relations between Settlers and Indigenous Peoples in Western Liberia”; McEvoy, “Understanding Ethnic Realities among the Grebo and Kru Peoples”; Schmokel, “Settlers and Tribes.” A crucial account of “return” that stands apart from this tradition in significant ways is Hartman, Lose Your Mother; I touch on her text briefly elsewhere in this book. For touchstones on the discourse of return, see Cromwell and Kilson, Apropos of Africa; Drake, “Negro Americans and the Africa Interest”; Drake, “Diaspora Studies and Pan-Africanism”; Du Bois, “Pan-Africa and the New Racial Philosophy”; Du Bois, The World and Africa; Gilroy, The Black Atlantic; Hall, “Negotiating Caribbean Identities”; Hall, “Culture Is Always a Translation”; Hall, “A Conversation with Stuart Hall”; Shepperson, “Notes on Negro American Influences on the Emergence of African Nationalism”; Shepperson, “The Afro-American Contribution to African Studies”; Woodson, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861; Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro; Woodson, The African Background Outlined. See also Essien-Udom, “Black Identity in the International Context”; Essien-Udom, “The Relationship of Afro-Americans to African Nationalism”; Isaacs, “The American Negro and Africa: Some Notes”; Moore, “Africa Conscious Harlem”; Stuckey, “Black Americans and African Consciousness.” Edwards, “The Uses of Diaspora”; Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora. Edwards, “The Uses of Diaspora,” 47. To pursue this convergence in Sierra Leone, see Carretta and Reese, The Life and Letters of Philip Quaque. Samson Ceasar to David S. Haselden, February 7, 1834, etc. Samson Ceasar to David S. Haselden, April 1, 1834, etc. Wesley J. Horland to James Moore, January 18, 1846, arcj 23.9 (September 1847): 280. Horland to Moore, January 19, 1846, arcj 23.9 (September 1847): 281. Peyton Skipwith to John H. Cocke, March 6, 1835, cofp, Accession No. 640, Box 81. Diana Skipwith to Sally Cocke, August 24, 1837, cofp, Accession No. 9513, Box 9. Diana Skipwith to Sally Cocke, May 7, 1838, cofp, Cocke and Brent Family Correspondence, Accession No. 9513-c, Box 1. Peter Ross to Ralph R. Gurley, July 11, 1858, acsp, Box I: b8 pt. 1. Isaac Ross had died in 1837 and left a will that gave his slaves the choice of being sold to another slave master in the United States or being freed and deported to Liberia. Although Notes to Chapter 1 · 253

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the will also stipulated that some proceeds from the sale of the estate should aid any of the enslaved who chose Liberia, Ross’s heirs challenged the provision. In turn, the acs sued the heirs to enforce Ross’s colonizationist wishes. Although the acs won the suit, money never made it to the 176 who left for Liberia. See Wiley, Slaves No More, 155–57. Peter Ross to Ralph R. Gurley, July 19, 1858, acsp, Box I: b8 pt. 2. As the oed notes, this dative infinitive use of the verb to come is akin to the French à venir. Jacques Derrida has elaborated this verb extensively; see, for instance, Derrida, “Force of Law,” as well as one of Derrida’s last written works, “Enlightenment Past and to Come.” Ellis to McLain, November 20, 1849, arcj 26.4 (April 1850): 118. H. W. Ellis to Rev. William McLain, November 20, 1849, arcj 26.4 (April 1850): 118–19. Ellis to McLain, April 15, 1850, arcj 27.1 ( January 1851): 4. Ellis to McLain, April 15, 1850, arcj 27.1 ( January 1851): 4. Ellis to McLain, November 20, 1849, arcj 26.4 (April 1850): 118. Linebaugh and Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra. Appiah, Cosmopolitanism. Ellis to McLain, November 20, 1849, arcj 26.4 (April 1850): 118–19. Wilson to McLain, August 5, 1858, acsp, Box I: b8, pt. 2. A. M. Cowan, arcj 34.7 ( July 1858): 199. Wilson to McLain, August 5, 1858, acsp, Box I: b8, pt. 2. Wiley, Slaves No More, 33–35. For a contemporary novel that echoes this collection of letters, see Phillips, Crossing the River. Erasmus Nicholas to Lucy Nicholas, March 5, 1843, cofp, Accession No. 9513-f, Box 8. Matilda Skipwith to Sally Cocke, October 23, 1844, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 62; Peyton Skipwith to Lucy Nicholas Skipwith, June 27, 1846, cofp, Accession No. 640, Box 117. Matilda Skipwith Lomax to Sally Cocke and Lucy Nicholas Skipwith, July 4, 1848, cofp, Accession No. 640, Box 125. Peyton Skipwith to Lucy Nicholas Skipwith, June 27, 1846, cofp, Accession No. 640, Box 117. Peyton Skipwith to John H. Cocke, June 25, 1846, cofp, Accession No. 640, Box 117. Richard Canon to John H. Cocke, September 29, 1844, cofp, Accession No. 640, Box 112. Leander Sterdivant to John H. Cocke, August 13, 1857, cofp, Accession No. 640, Box 153. Matilda Skipwith Lomax to John H. Cocke, May 19, 1852, cofp, Accession No. 640, Box 140. Matilda Skipwith Lomax to John H. Cocke, September 26, 1853, cofp, Accession No. 640, Box 144. 254 · Notes to Chapter 1

62 James C. Minor to John Minor, February 11, 1833, arcj 9.4 ( June 1833), 126. 63 James C. Minor to Mary B. Blackford, February 12, 1846, arcj 22.8 (August 1846): 261. 64 Wiley, Slaves No More, 26. 65 James C. Minor to Mary B. Blackford, n.d. 1852, bfp. 66 William C. Burke to Ralph R. Gurley, September 29, 1863, arcj 40.1 ( January 1864): 5. 67 Burke to Gurley, August 22, 1857, acsp, Box I: b7, pt.2. 68 Burke to Gurley, January 29, 1858, acsp, Box I: b8, pt.1. 69 Wiley, Slaves No More, 265. 70 Wiley, Slaves No More, 266. 71 See letters by A. M. Cowan to Brutus J. Clay, January 10, 1851, and C. T. Field to Brutus J. Clay, March 22, 1856, clfp. Also mentioned by Wiley, Slaves No More, 335–36. 72 A. B. Hooper to Samuel Tillinghast, September 27, 1853, wtc. 73 Hartman, Lose Your Mother, 99. 74 Hartman, Lose Your Mother, 96. 75 For a popular account of some of these dynamics, see Campbell, Middle Passages. 76 Wiley, Slaves No More, 218. 77 Wiley, Slaves No More, 218. 78 For an account of race in this sense, see Balibar’s contributions to Balibar and Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class, and Stuart Hall, “Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance.” 79 Peyton Skipwith to John H. Cocke, April 22, 1840, cofp, Accession No. 640, Box 98. 80 Skipwith to Cocke, November 11, 1839, cofp, Accession No. 640, Box 96. 81 Sion Harris to Rev. William McLain, January 5, 1848, acsp, Box I: b3, pt. 1; Sion Harris to William McLain, May 20, 1849, acsp, Box I: b3, pt. 2. On Sion Harris, see Fain, Sanctified Trial, xxxiii; Shick, Emigrants to Liberia, 43; Wiley, Slaves No More, 331. 82 Harris to McLain, May 20, 1849, acsp, Box I: b3, pt. 2. 83 Harris to McLain, May 20, 1849, acsp, Box I: b3, pt. 2. 84 Sion Harris to Samuel Wilkeson, April 16, 1840, acsp, Box I: b2. 85 Harris to Wilkeson, April 16, 1840, acsp, Box I: b2. For the censored, published version of this letter, see arcj 16.13 ( July 1, 1840): 195–97. Wiley also mentions this censorship on 332. 86 Harris to Wilkeson, April 16, 1840, acsp, Box I: b2. 87 Harris to Wilkeson, April 16, 1840, acsp, Box I: b2. 88 Harris to McLain, November 29, 1849, acsp, Box I: b3, pt. 2. 89 James C. Minor to Mary B. Blackford, n.d. 1852, bfp. 90 Diana Skipwith to Louisa Cocke, May 20, 1839, cofp, Accession No. 640, Box 95. 91 Wiley, Slaves No More, 139. 92 “Liberian Letters from a Former Georgia Slave,” ed. Davis, 253–56. Of the manuNotes to Chapter 1 · 255

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script originals, Davis writes: “These letters are in private possession. Slight changes in punctuation have been made where they were demanded for clarity” (fn. 4, 253). William C. Burke to Ralph R. Gurley, January 29, 1858, acsp, Box I: b8, pt. 1. William C. Burke to Mary C. Lee, February 20, 1859, arcj 35.7 ( July 1859): 214; William C. Burke to acs, February 20, 1859, arcj 35.6 ( June 1859): 165. Wiley, Slaves No More, 121–22. Diana Skipwith to Sally Cocke, March 6, 1843, cofp, Accession No. 9513-f, Box 8. Rev. Alfred F. Russell to Robert Wickliffe, Box 8, wpfp. A transcription of Russell’s letter is available at http://legacy.bluegrass.kctcs.edu/LCC/HIS/scraps /liberia2.html. Wickliffe, who was also a lawyer, might well have been trying to determine the fate of Russell and his family, or even to angle for some kind of supporting testimony from them, given that Wickliffe was being sued by his wife’s heirs over her inheritance. See http://legacy.bluegrass.kctcs.edu/LCC/HIS/scraps/liberia2.html. Clegg, The Price of Liberty, 30. Clegg, The Price of Liberty, 37–38. Butler, “Restaging the Universal,” 41. Rev. Alfred F. Russell to Robert Wickliffe, Box 8, wpfp. A transcription of Russell’s letter is available at http://www.uky.edu/~dolph/HIS316/sources /liberia2.html, accessed November 16, 2015.

Chapter 2: The Speculative Freedom of Early Liberia 1 McKay(?) to Rev. William McLain, July 19, 1858, acsp, Box I: b8. 2 The next four paragraphs include revised material first published in Kazanjian, “‘When They Come Here They Feal So Free,’ ” 333–36. 3 I want to thank Adam Lewis for complicating the question of who Ceasar’s master was, since my publication of an earlier version of this essay (Kazanjian, “Hegel, Liberia”). Lewis observes that in Ceasar’s letter of March 18, 1834, Ceasar asks Westfall to give Adam Carper a “paper” “to read the news of Africa and let his friends read the same and all so his neighbours.” Lewis also observes that while the 1840 census lists Adam Carper as a white farmer who owns no slaves, the Richmond Enquirer from November 8, 1833, notes that the ship Jupiter on which Ceasar sailed for Liberia had a passenger manumitted “by Mr. Abraham Carper, of Lewis county,” and that Abraham was Adam’s father. In turn, William Bernard Cutright’s History of Upshur County, West Virginia indicates that Abraham Carper freed a slave named “Sampson” who “became a missionary to his own race in Liberia, Africa” (Lewis, personal communication). However, Westfall is repeatedly referred to as Ceasar’s master in contemporary sources without documentation: Burin, Review; “Liberian Letters”; “Letters to David S. Haselden.” See also Lewis’s forthcoming “Naturalizing Empire.”

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4 Ceasar to Westfall, June 2, 1834, 10595, uvl. For Ceasar’s letters, see etc. 5 For an excellent account of this distinction between black settlers with agricultural skills and those with merchant or trade skills, which draws extensively on the Liberian letters, see Clegg, The Price of Liberty, 77–94, 198–200. 6 For an account of improvisation that informs my work here, and which I discuss in my introduction, see Moten, “Knowledge of Freedom,” 275. 7 The place Ceasar calls Buchannon in Lewis County, Virginia, would eventually become part of West Virginia when the latter split from Virginia in 1862 and joined the Union as a state in 1863, and its counties would be changed numerous times over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The town, now spelled Buckhannon, is today in Upshur County, West Virginia. 8 The word Ecclesiastes comes from a Greek attempt to translate the Hebrew word for the author of this book, “Qoheleth,” which means someone who gathers people in an assembly for instruction. It is often translated in the Christian tradition as “the preacher.” 9 The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 805. 10 For instance, see Eccl. 9:2, 4–7: “Everything before them is vanity, since one fate comes to all, to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As is the good man, so is the sinner; and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath . . . But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward; but the memory of them is lost. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and they have no more for ever any share in all that is done under the sun. Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has already approved what you do.” The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 811–12. 11 For only a few recent examples of a voluminous body of scholarship, see Bartholomew, Reading Ecclesiastes; Barton, Reading the Old Testament; Christianson, A Time to Tell; Fox, A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up and jps Bible Commentary; Murphy and Huwiler, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs; Ingram, Ambiguity in Ecclesiastes; Mills, Reading Ecclesiastes; Salyer, Vain Rhetoric; Schoors, Qohelet in the Context of Wisdom. 12 The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 805. 13 Estimates suggest that between 20 and 40 percent of settler-colonists in Liberia died soon after their arrival, usually from malaria. See McDaniel, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. 14 A word may be scratched out in the manuscript at this crucial point, but it is a very small mark and is difficult to decipher; therefore, I have reproduced and read the passage without this mark. 15 Sundstrom, The Exchange Economy of Pre-Colonial Tropical Africa, 157. 16 Henry Fry Westfall and John H. Westfall seem to have had a common great-greatgrandfather, Johannes Westfall. See the following genealogical reports: “Our

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Westfall Family Tree” and “Westfall Genealogy.” See also Westfall, The Diary of Henry F. Westfall, 1861. On McDonogh, see Kendall, “John McDonogh: Slaveowner, Part 1”; Kendall, “John McDonogh: Slaveowner, Part 2”; Malone, ed., Dictionary of American Biography; Allan, Life and Works of John McDonogh; and Wiley, Slaves No More, 116. “John McDonogh’s People. No. 1,” arcj 23.9 (1847): 264, American Periodicals Series Online, May 9, 2011; all subsequent references are to this citation. I have not as yet located a manuscript source for Smith’s 1844 letter, which is also transcribed and published, with some errors, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 136–37. “Departure of the Mariposa,” arcj 18.9 ( July 1842): 234. This article includes information about the departure of McDonogh’s former slaves; a reprint of a letter to the editor of the New Orleans Commercial Bulletin (dated June 20, 1842) from “one of your subscribers” asking McDonogh to explain “his motives” for emancipating and deporting his slaves “and whether he is opposed to slavery”; and a reprint of McDonogh’s response from the New Orleans Commercial Bulletin (dated June 24, 1842). “Departure of the Mariposa,” arcj 18.9 (1842): 234. The plan is also discussed in Wiley, Slaves No More, 116. “Departure of the Mariposa,” arcj 18.9 (1842): 234–35; “Departure of the Mariposa,” arcj 18.10 (1842): 258, 263; “Departure for Africa,” arcj 18.10 (1842): 263–64. See also Wiley, Slaves No More, 116. John McDonogh, “A Letter of John McDonogh, on African Colonization: Addressed to the Editors of the New Orleans Bulletin,” arcj 19.2 (1843): 48–60. Hereafter cited in the text. Liberians, as well as their black American advocates, do begin invoking this discourse of African return with some regularity later in the nineteenth century. Nancy Ann Smith to John McDonogh, July 3, 1848, jmp. Thanks to Sean Benjamin, public services librarian, for help in locating this manuscript; all subsequent references are to this citation. Also transcribed and published, with some errors, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 150. It should be noted that in his Slaves No More, Wiley remains systematically silent on the indications of sexual coercion by slave masters in his commentary on the settlers’ letters. Andrews, “To Tell a Free Story,” xi. Clegg, Price of Liberty, 247. Hartman, Lose Your Mother, 18. Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History. Subsequent page numbers will be given parenthetically in the body of this chapter. Buck-Morss generously responded to an earlier version of my account of her text, and our exchange has been published in Kazanjian, “Hegel, Liberia.” These terms can be found on the following pages in Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History: 7, 12, 34, 40, 50, 52, 55, 56, 59, 67, 103. See oed online and Peresus Digital Library.

258 · Notes to Chapter 2

32 The thematic of concrescence is most famously elaborated by Alfred North Whitehead, who himself draws on Hegel, in Process and Reality. On the HegelWhitehead connection, see Lucas, ed., Hegel and Whitehead, particularly essays by Errol E. Harris and George L. Kline. Thanks to Judith Butler for bringing my attention to this thematic. 33 These terms can be found on the following pages in Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History: 89, 101, 111, 112, 114, 129, 149, 150. 34 For example, see Hegel, Philosophy of History, 128–29. Many critics have challenged Hegel’s racism. See, to give just a few examples, Tibebu, Hegel and the Third World; Dudley, ed., Hegel and History, especially articles by Andrew Buchwalter and Súrya Parekh; Camara, “The Falsity of Hegel’s Theses on Africa”; Gates, Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the “Racial” Self; Gilman, “The Figure of the Black”; Wright, Becoming Black. Such challenges themselves follow up on earlier anticolonial and antiracist efforts to revise Hegel by, for example, Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks and W. E. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk. For a powerful account of the relationship between Hegel and Du Bois, see Zamir, Dark Voices. 35 Fischer, Modernity Disavowed, 233. By reading this paradox as politically productive—and by activating the analogy between race and gender—Fischer echoes Joan Scott’s argument in Only Paradoxes to Offer. 36 In “Hegel, Liberia,” I extend this argument to a reading of the catastrophic, magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, 2010, its epicenter in Léogâne, sixteen miles west of Port-au-Prince. 37 David Scott, Conscripts of Modernity. 38 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 111–19. 39 Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History, 50, 114. 40 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 116–17. 41 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 118–19. 42 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 121. 43 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 122. 44 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 121, 122. 45 Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History, 50. 46 Most recently, Jameson in The Hegel Variations. 47 The distinction between the speculative or theoretical and the practical has a long history in Western philosophy, a history to which I will not be able to do justice here. For one particularly succinct account of this distinction from the Middle Ages, see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia IIae q. 94 art. 4: “Whether the natural law is the same in all men?” 1352. Most immediately, however, Hegel’s account of speculative knowledge is a direct response to Kant’s own distinction between speculative and practical reason. In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant shows how what he called speculative reason can raise, but not adequately address, the problem of freedom. In Critique of Practical Reason, in turn, Kant shows how practical reason, in the wake of speculative reason, can address that problem by establishing a secure foundation for moral choices. See, for instance, “Preface to

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the Second Edition,” in Critique of Pure Reason, especially 20–29; and the chapter, “On the Primacy of Pure Practical Reason in Its Linkage with Speculative Reason,” in Critique of Practical Reason, 152–55. It does seem to me that Hegel’s notion of the speculative departs so markedly from the traditional distinction between the speculative and the practical that it is effectively a displacement of the distinction itself. What is more, as I hope to suggest, the notion of the speculative, when read from the perspective of the epistolary archive of black settlers in Liberia, can no longer be contained within the traditional distinction. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 12–13. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 29. Rose, Hegel Contra Sociology, 48. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 37; trans. modified. Nancy, Hegel, 63; Wright, Becoming Black, 8–10. See also Nancy, The Speculative Remark. Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic, 131–32. I have italicized concrete in this passage; all other emphasis in the original. Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic, 132. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 39. See also Hegel, Science of Logic, 40. Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 12. As Derrida, following Malabou, has emphasized, “This giving and receiving, this giving to oneself to receive, which is the very process of plasticity, the very movement of being as becoming-plastic, this would be the speculative and reflexive power of the Hegelian concept.” Derrida, “Preface: A Time for Farewells: Heidegger (read by) Hegel (read by) Malabou,” in Malabou The Future of Hegel, xvi. Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 8–9. Butler, Subjects of Desire, 18. Butler, Subjects of Desire, 18. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy ran continuously from 1867 to 1888, and returned only to come to a close with two final issues in September of 1892 and December of 1893. In addition to the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, see Snider’s The State (1902) and Abraham Lincoln: An Interpretation in Biography (ca. 1908), Harris’s Introduction to the Study of Philosophy (1889) and Hegel’s Logic (1890), Josiah Royce’s The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (1892), and John Gabriel Woerner’s historical romance The Rebel’s Daughter: A Story of Love, Politics and War (1899). On the St. Louis Hegelians, see Erlin, “Absolute Speculation”; Bainard Cowan and Joseph G. Kronick, eds., Theorizing American Literature, 2–10; Goetzmann, ed., American Hegelians; Pochmann, New England Transcendentalism and St. Louis Hegelianism. Loyd D. Easton has also discussed a somewhat less organized but earlier group of “Ohio Hegelians” in Hegel’s First American Followers. Zamir, Dark Voices, 119–33. Brokmeyer, A Mechanic’s Diary, 74. Published posthumously in 1910, A Mechanic’s Diary was likely written in the 1860s. For excerpts, see Goetzmann, American Hegelians, 35–70. 260 · Notes to Chapter 2

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Brokmeyer, A Mechanic’s Diary, 121–23. Brokmeyer, A Mechanic’s Diary, 122. Jameson, Hegel Variations, 20, 50. Jameson, Hegel Variations, 130–31. Jameson, Hegel Variations, 130. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 147. The first part of Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History—entitled “Hegel and Haiti”—largely reproduces Buck-Morss’s influential essay “Hegel and Haiti.” Wheatley, Collected Works, 18. “Mercy,” Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 1 [1773]. De Man, Allegories of Reading, 301. Moten, “Knowledge of Freedom,” 275. Moten, “Knowledge of Freedom,” 275; Clegg, Price of Liberty, 247; Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History, 75.

Part II: Yucatán Prelude 1 The Spanish reads: “periodico cientifico y literario.” 2 The passage in Latin reads “floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libant, omnia nos itidem depascimur aurea dicta,” and is addressed to Epicurus. Lucretius, The Nature of Things. 3 The Spanish reads: “animar á nuestros compatriotas á la aficion, al estudio de las materias literarias,” “Ni una palabra de política: tal es la oferta que ya hemos hecho á nuestros conciudadanos.” 4 “Situación de la América,” La Revista Yucateca, 84–88. 5 The scholarship on the history of the Caste War is vast. See Antochiw, “Los impresos en lengua Maya”; Antochiw and Díaz de Ponce, Documentos historicos peninsulares; Ay, De la “Guerra de Castas”; Baños Ramírez, Liberalismo, actores y política en Yucatán; Baqueiro, Ensayo histórico sobre las revoluciones de Yucatán; Berzunza Pinto, Guerra social en Yucatán; Bracamonte y Sosa, Amos y servientes; Brannon and Joseph, Land, Labor, and Capital in Modern Yucatán; Bricker, Indian Christ; Campos García, Castas, feligresía y ciudadanía en Yucatán and Guerra de Castas en Yucatán; Caplan, Indigenous Citizens; Carreaga Viliesid, Hierofanía combatiente; Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests; Cline, “Regionalism and Society in Yucatan”; Documentos para la historia de Yucatán, III; Dumond, The Machete and the Cross; Farriss, Maya Society under Colonial Rule; Feldman, Lost Shores, Forgotten Peoples; Fernández Repetto and Negroe Sierra, Una población perdida en la memoria; Garcia Bernal, Población y encomienda en Yucatán bajo los Austrias; González Navarro, Raza y tierra; Higuera Bonfil, Quintana Roo entre tiempos; Jones, Anthropology and History in Yucatán; Joseph, “The United States, Feuding Elites, and Rural Revolt in Yucatán,” Revolution from Without, Rediscovering the Past at Mexico’s Periphery, and “From Caste War to Class War”; Kirk, Haciendas en Yucatán; Macías Richard, Nueva frontera mexicana; Mallon, Peasant and Nation; Negroe Sierra, Guerra de Castas; Patch, “Culture, Community, and ‘Rebellion’” Notes to Part II Prelude · 261

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and Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan; Pool Jimenez, Historia oral de la Guerra de Castas; Quezada, Los pies de la república; Ramayo Lanz, Los maya pacíficos de Campeche; Reed, The Caste War of Yucatán; Reina, Las rebeliones campesinas; Restall, Maya Conquistador and The Maya World; Roa Bárcena, Recuerdos de la invasión norteamericana; Robins, Native Insurgencies and the Genocidal Impulse; Rugeley, Rebellion Now and Forever, Maya Wars, Of Wonders and Wise Men, Yucatán’s Maya Peasantry, and “The Maya Elites”; Sierra O’Reilly and Suárez y Navarro, La Guerra de Castas; Solís Robleda, Entre la tierra y el cielo; Suarez y Navarro, Informe sobre las causas y carácter de los frecuentes cambios políticos; Sullivan, Unfinished Conversations; Villa Rojas, The Maya of East-Central Quintana Roo; Wells, Yucatán’s Gilded Age; Wells and Joseph, Summer of Discontent, Seasons of Upheaval; Williams, “The Secessionist Diplomacy of Yucatán.” Thanks to Chris Taylor for talking sugar with me. See Mintz, Sweetness and Power; Paquette, Sugar Is Made with Blood; Pérez, Slaves, Sugar, and Colonial Society; Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society and Tropical Babylons; Tomich, Through the Prism of Slavery. On the term racial geography, see Saldaña-Portillo, Indian Given. Joseph, “The United States, Feuding Elites, and Rural Revolt in Yucatán” and Revolution from Without; Peniche Rivero, La historia secreta de la hacienda henequenera de Yucatán. See Kazanjian, The Colonizing Trick, 176–94. Rugeley, Maya Wars, 55–56; Rugeley’s translation. Rugeley claims that this letter is from the Archivo General de Centroamérica (Guatemala City), Legajo b28543, Expediente 279, July 11, 1848. My review of that Legajo, however, failed to turn up the letter or any Expediente numbered 279. The letter may have been lost since Rugeley examined and translated it, or it could be miscited. Rugeley also notes that the letter was originally written in Maya, although that original is not available (“The Caste War in Guatemala”). I thank Rugeley for providing me with his own transcription of the original letter in Spanish. I have retranslated the letter myself, working from his transcription. The Spanish reads: “Te doy a saber con mucho respeto como aquí en este Yucatán sufrimos muchos males y daños de los Españoles, matan a los pobres Yndios como matan animales, pero no todos los Españoles, sino que fueron muy señalados los que mataban sea grande o pequeño, por cuya causa se levantaron los Yndios orientales y todos sus compañeros en Yucatán pero no hacían daño a todos los Españoles, sino a aquellos que eran malos con los Yndios: ademans, hacía tiempo que pagaban contribuciones sin que recibieran malos tratamientos. Ahora Señor ya se acabó todo y se ha mandado publicar que no se pague ni medio de contribución ni por los Españoles ni por los Yndios, sólo van a pagar bautismo tres reales, casamiento diez reales tanto el Yndio como el Español. Esta es la libertad que buscaban los pobres Yndios de Yucatán.” Rugeley, Maya Wars, 51. Méndez was raised and educated in Yucatán, as Rugeley notes in “The Caste War in Guatemala,” 72. Mallon, “A Postcolonial Palimpsest,” 322. 262 · Notes to Part II Prelude

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Mallon, “A Postcolonial Palimpsest,” 325, 330, 321. Gotkowitz, “Introduction,” 12. Butler, “Restaging the Universal,” 40–41. Kathryn Burns, “Unfixing Race,” in Gotkowitz, ed., Histories of Race and Racism, 58–71. Butler, “Restaging the Universal,” 40–41. Robinson, Black Marxism, 121. Robinson, Black Marxism, 122. Robinson, Black Marxism, 125; Robinson’s italics and ellipsis. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection. Robinson, Black Marxism, 125. Edmund Husserl offered one of the most influential accounts of parts and wholes in Investigation III, “On the Theory of Wholes and Parts,” of Logical Investigations, vol. 2, 3–45. Husserl distinguishes between two kinds of “complexity”: one in which the parts of a whole are “independent” (and called “pieces”) and one in which the parts are “non-independent” (and called “moments”) (5). Independent pieces of a complex whole can be presented by themselves, self-sufficiently, apart from the whole, while nonindependent moments are “interpenetrating” and cannot be so presented (4, 6, 10). An example of the former, according to Husserl, is the head of a horse, which can be imagined as separate from the horse (even if such an image is fanciful) (6); an example of the later is “the colour of this paper”: “a colour in general and purely as such can exist only as a ‘moment’ in a coloured thing” (12). Husserl privileges the latter realm of unities composed of nonindependent parts or moments, declaring that their oneness is governed by a “lawfulness” of “foundation,” whereby “foundation” names the essence that nonindependent moments of a whole share, making them indivisible. Crucially, then, as Ioannis Chatzantonis has argued, for Husserl “fragmentation must not be confused with complexity and oneness must be disassociated from simplicity” (“Deleuze and Mereology,” 110). In other words, to Husserl it is possible and desirable to posit the idea of a whole that is complex and yet one, singular, and indivisible. Social theories that presume the essential identity of unities like race, class, gender, nation, capitalism, democracy, socialism, or communism effectively operate within something like a Husserlian metaphysics of wholes and parts, even if implicitly. By contrast, lines of social thought that privilege multiplicity and plurivocality abound, from the ancient atomists through Spinoza’s heterodox account of democracy, to the contemporary rhizomatics of Gilles Deleuze, Antonio Negri’s notion of the multitude, George Shepperson’s attention to black diasporas (revived in the work of Brent Edwards), Hortense J. Spillers’s “American grammar book,” Sylvia Wynter’s challenges to “cultural blanchitude,” Chela Sandoval’s “methodology of the oppressed,” Fred Moten’s speculations on ensemble and improvisation, and Judith Butler’s theory of a political performativity that restages the universal, to name just a few touchstones. All of these theories and texts, as different as they are from one another, question or reject outright the possibility of a Husserlian Notes to Part II Prelude · 263

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whole governed by an essential oneness, and instead seek political possibility in the plurivocal or irreducibly multiple. I place Black Marxism in this latter group because even as it seems to seek “the whole of it,” the “it” Black Marxism seeks remains ever partial and multiple. This resistance to totality is precisely what allows Black Marxism—and its notions of racial capitalism, the black radical tradition, and black Marxism itself—to remain open to parts for which Black Marxism does not fully account, or of which Black Marxism does not give an account. That is, in contrast with Husserl’s essentially indivisible “color of this paper,” Robinson’s racial capitalism names a structurally and historically complex whole that remains ever open to parts that articulate in ever-changing ways. See de Spinoza, A Theologico-Political Treatise; Deleuze, Spinoza; Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus; Negri, Savage Anomaly; Negri and Hardt, Empire and Multitude; Shepperson, “Notes on Negro American Influences on the Emergence of African Nationalism” and “The Afro-American Contribution to African Studies”; Edwards, “The Uses of Diaspora”; Spillers, Black, White, and in Color, esp. 203–29; Wynter, “Sambos and Minstrels” and “Columbus, the Ocean Blue, and Fables That Stir the Mind,” 148–49; Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed; Moten, “Knowledge of Freedom”; Butler, “Restaging the Universal,” 11–41. Robinson, Black Marxism, 126. Robinson, Black Marxism, 126. Robinson, Black Marxism, 127. See Dippie, The Vanishing American; Olund, “From Savage Space to Governable Space.” See Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico and Colonial Blackness; Bryant, O’Toole, and Vinson III, Africans to Spanish America. As do most scholars, I distinguish here between the books of Chilam Balam and the three or four surviving Maya codices, some of which may predate, or include material that predates, the Conquest: the Dresden Codex, the Madrid Codex, the Paris Codex, and the disputed Grolier Codex or Fragment. On the history of Yucatec Maya, see Hanks, Converting Words. Vásquez and Rendón, El Libro de los Libros de Chilam Balam; Bricker, Indian Christ; Bricker and Miram, An Encounter of Two Worlds; Craine and Reindorp, The Codex Pérez and the Book of Chilam Balam of Maní; de la Garza, “Prólogo” and “Introducción”; Hires, “Chilam Balam of Chan Kan”; Paxton, “Books of Chilam Balam”; Roys, The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. For a web version of Roys’s text, including the full text of El Libro de Chilam Balam de Chumayel in English, see http://www.mayaweb.nl/mayaweb/chilam.pdf. For the Crosby passage, see The Columbian Exchange, 36. Maler was an Austrian citizen who was born in Rome to German parents, went to Mexico as a soldier in Emperor Maximilian’s conquering army, and eventually settled in Mexico and became a Mexican citizen. On Maler, see Gutiérrez Ruvalcaba, Teoberto Maler. On El Libro de Chilam Balam de Chumayel, see Vásquez and Rendón, El Libro de 264 · Notes to Part II Prelude

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los Libros de Chilam Balam; Bricker, Indian Christ; de la Garza, “Prólogo”; Paxton, “Books of Chilam Balam”; Roys, “Introduction,” in The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, 11–16. On Berendt, see Baird, “Report of the Assistant Secretary,” 74–88; Brinton, “Memoir of Dr. Carl Herman Berendt,” 205–10; de la Garza, “Prólogo”; Ralph L. Roys, “Introduction,” in The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel; Weeks, “The Daniel Garrison Brinton Collection,” 165–81; “Notes on a Letter from Brasseur de Bourbourg”; Weeks, “Karl Hermann Berendt,” 619–93; Weeks, The Library of Daniel Garrison Brinton, 10. For records and accounts of the antiquities Berendt appropriated for the Peabody, see The First Annual Report of the Peabody Museum, 18, 21; The Second Annual Report of the Peabody Museum, 23; The Fourth Annual Report of the Peabody Museum, 7–8; The Sixth Annual Report of the Peabody Museum, 6; The Seventh Annual Report of the Peabody Museum, 20. Berendt, “Report of Explorations in Central America,” 421–22. On the term racial geography, see María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, Indian Given. Berendt, “Report,” 422. On the Petén in this period and context, see Rugeley, Of Wonders, 203–31. On Afro-Yucatecos and their roles in the wider region, see Campos García, Castas, feligresía y ciudadanía en Yucatán; Fernández Repetto and Negroe Sierra, Una poblacion perdida en la memoria; Restall, The Black Middle; Victoria Ojeda and Canto Alcocer, San Fernando Aké. Berendt, “Report,” 422. Berendt, “Report,” 423. Berendt, “Report,” 424. Berendt, “Report,” 421. Such histories make the white settler-colonial paradigm much less clarifying in the wider Americas than it has claimed to be in the U.S., Canadian, Australian, and South African contexts. See, for instance, Coombes, Rethinking Settler Colonialism; Kauanui, Hawaiian Blood; Morgensen, Spaces between Us; Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis, Unsettling Settler Societies; Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview and “Isopolitics, Deep Colonizing, Settler Colonialism”; Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, vol. 1, 69. The Spanish reads: “Ese profeta, a quien se llamaba Chilam-Balam y que obtuvo en la corte de los Xiues de Maní un respeto extraordinario, había ataviado sus profecías singulares de un pomposo y terrible aparato de palabras vanas y sentimientos superiores al alcance de la muchedumbre.” Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, vol. 1, 429. The Spanish reads: “No hay vieja, ama de llaves, sacristán o maestro de capilla que en los pueblos, y aun en las ciudades del Estado, no hablen de ciertas profecías funestas, de ciertas palabras misteriosas que anuncian sangre, catástrofes, terremotos e inundaciones. Chilam Balam en nuestra infancia fue un hombre terrible, un hombre que nos helaba la sangre en las venas. ¿Quién es Chilam Balam?; ¿qué ser tan prodigioso es éste, que a los niños y aun a los ancianos ha infundido tal terror?” Notes to Part II Prelude · 265

49 Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, vol. 1, 429. The Spanish reads: “Pues todavía hemos oído en los lugares del interior cosas más gordas y pavorosas, y estos errores populares han sido sostenidos y perpetuados por algunos visionarios, que sin tomarse la molestia de averiguar lo cierto del caso, se han dejado arrastrar por el torrente de una tradición extravagante y ridícula. Porque, en efecto, si el Chilam Balam es tal cual lo suponen, preciso es que fuese de los tiempos posteriores a la conquista, pues que se alude a ciertas cosas que sólo han podido verificarse en épocas recientes.” 50 Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, vol. 1, 430. The Spanish reads: “si no por loco, a lo menos por lo que los médicos llaman monomaníaco”; “El buen hombre se creía descendiente de la real casa gótica de España, y no le petaban las usurpaciones de D. Sancho el Bravo, ni la muerte de D. Pedro el Cruel por el de Trastamara, ni el advenimiento del Archiduque de Austria, ni el de Felipe V; ¡oh! eso ponía de muy mal humor.” 51 Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, vol. 1, 430. The Spanish reads: “era un hombre de bien, pacífico, caritativo, y aunque lanzaba muy fuertes filípicas contra los indígenas del país, a quienes hacía descender, de grado o por fuerza, de los hebreos . . . pasaba también por hombre ilustrado, y por gran conocedor del idioma, usos y costumbres de los naturales.” 52 Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, vol. 1, 431. The Spanish reads: “un enorme rollo de papeles húmedos y casi ilegibles . . . en lengua maya.” 53 Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, vol. 1, 432. The Spanish reads: “no sólo que no fue copia sino que sería el borrador o machote del primer escrito de su especie.” 54 Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, vol. 1, 433. The Spanish reads: “Pero lo que nos hizo mucha gracia y acabó de convencernos de lo apócrifo del escrito, fue una especie de treno o lamentación final de la profecía, en que pinta con los más odiosos coloridos a los individuos de su raza, y los maldice en nombre de Dios vivo si llegan a concebir la funesta idea de hacerse independientes, esto es, si volviesen a la idolatría de sus mayores, se fueran a los bosques abandonando sus poblaciones, y si se marchasen a vivir a las orillas del lago de Petenitzá.” 55 Berendt, “Report,” 422. 56 Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, vol. 1, 435. The Spanish reads: “nos dijo que el manuscrito del padre Zúñiga . . . no era otra cosa que un tejido de patrañas adrede inventadas, para impedir la emigración de los indígenas, que atraídos por la abundancia y feracidad de las tierras del Petén y los Lacandones, dejaban las poblaciones y rancherías de Yucatán con esperanza de mejorar de condición en un país que no estaba aún sojuzgado por españoles . . . que así el manuscrito en cuestión, como unos malísimos versos populares en lengua maya, que se recitaban en los pueblos y rancherías de los indios, y aun en las villas y ciudades, así eran del Chilam Balam como del califa de Bagdad; pues todo había sido inventado con miras interesadas.” 57 Holden, The New Penguin Opera Guide.

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58 Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, vol. 1, 436, 440. The Spanish reads: “podemos asegurar que cuanto se refiere en el día acerca de Chilam Balam, es una conseja mal fraguada y peor explicada . . . Duerman pues tranquilos los niños y las viejas, que no perturbarán su reposo las palabras ominosas de Chilam Balam* y demás profetas yucatecos”; [Sierra O’Reilly’s footnote]: “*Recordamos haber leído, aunque no precisamente en dónde, la especie de que Chilam Balam es un nombre oriental, usado como nosotros lo hemos hecho en estos tiempos; y que lo introdujeron los primeros pobladores blancos de Yucatán, con segunda intención, como suele decirse. Respetemos que cada cual pueda creer lo qe [sic] le dé la gana.” 59 The Spanish reads: “un nombre oriental.” 60 In this they offer an instance of what Mallon calls “insurgent liberalism” and “racialization from below.” Mallon, “A Postcolonial Palimpsest,” 325, 330.

Chapter 3: Casta Capitalism 1 The Spanish title reads: “Consideraciones sobre el origen, causas y tendencias de la sublevación de los indígenas, sus probables resultados y su posible remedio.” 2 The Spanish title reads: “Los Indios de Yucatán: Consideraciones históricas sobre la influencia del elemento indígena en la organización social del país.” 3 Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, vol. 1, 24–25. Throughout I will quote from this more widely available edition, although I have also referred to the serialized edition in El Fénix. In Spanish the entire epigraph reads: “Si es preciso que se continúe en la muy difícil y complicada labor de asimilarse las razas heterogéneas que pueblan esta tierra, creemos que el estudio que hoy presentamos no ha de ser enteramente inútil. La historia nos enseña que nunca fue fácil y rápida en los pueblos esa obra social de identificación, y por tanto nada tiene de extraña la lentitud con que ha debido verificarse entre nosotros. Además de los muchos obstáculos naturales y artificiales que se han encontrado y entontrarán aún en este desarrollo, hay un hecho etnográfico que tal vez no se ha considerado bien, y que es acaso uno de los que retardarán más tiempo la completa confusión de las razas indígenas y europea. Ese hecho es la diversidad del color de la piel. Siendo tan característica esta diferencia, y tan general la injusta preocupación que rechaza la unión legítima de blancos e indios, fácil es concebir cuán lenta ha de haber sido, y lo será aun todavía, esa identificación tan necesaria para destruir el principal elemento de una guerra social. Y sin embargo, sólo la asimilación de que venimos hablando es la que ha de resolver muchos de esos problemas.” 4 The Spanish reads: “la injusta preocupación que rechaza la unión legítima de blancos e indios.” 5 The Spanish reads: “la muy difícil y complicada labor de asimilarse las razas heterogéneas que pueblan esta tierra.” 6 Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, vol. 1, 14, 17. 7 Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, vol. 1, 13. The Spanish reads: “Echar a un lado esta cuestión y no detenerse en ella, es suscribir nuestra sentencia de muerte;

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es votar nuestra agonizante sociedad a su total ruina; es consentir en que Yucatán desaparezca de entre los pueblos civilizados.” The classic account of this logic is Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, though as I will argue below, nineteenth-century Yucatán does not conform to his conception of such communities. For an account of this logic’s transnational, antiracist potential, see Bilbija, “Worlds of Color”; I thank Marina for lively discussions of the periodical form. Mallon, “A Postcolonial Palimpsest,” 329. “Guerra de Castas” (December 9, 1848): 1. On casta paintings, see Katzew, Casta Painting. On caste in the colonial period, see Lewis, Hall of Mirrors. See Bricker, Indian Christ, 92; Caplan, Indigenous Citizens, 104; Rugeley, Rebellion Now and Forever. Rugeley, Rebellion Now and Forever, 63. Pitt-Rivers, “On the Word ‘Caste,’ ” 235–36. Pitt-Rivers, “On the Word ‘Caste,’ ” 236. “Caste,” oed online; de Covarrubias Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española. Corominas, “Casta,” 722–24. Corominas, “Casta,” 723. Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 1. Corominas, “Casta”; Jackson, “Race/Caste,” 150–73; Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 142–70, esp. 161–62; Pitt-Rivers, “On the Word ‘Caste,’ ” 231–56. Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 162. Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 1. Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 142–70. Raleigh, Discovery of Guiana. For instance: “He told me that himself and his people, with all those down the river towards the sea, as far as Emeria, the province of Carapana, were of Guiana, but that they called themselves Orenoqueponi, and that all the nations between the river and those mountains in sight, called Wacarima, were of the same cast and appellation.” Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has long used the term concept-metaphor as a way of countering the traditional philosophical distinction between concepts, or units of knowledge generated by abstraction from experience, and metaphors, or figurative and nonliteral uses of language. Concept-metaphor highlights the ways in which even concepts function as, and are informed by, figurative or nonliteral modes of signification, as well as the ways in which metaphors entail conceptual logics. See, for instance, her account of “value” in Marx as a concept-metaphor in “Scattered Speculations”; her account of “woman” as a concept-metaphor in “Feminism and Deconstruction, Again”; and her account of the “Asiatic Mode of Production” as a concept-metaphor in A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Spivak’s notion of the concept-metaphor draws on Jacques Derrida’s own challenges to the concept/ metaphor distinction, most notably in his “White Mythologies.” Gotkowitz, “Introduction,” 6; Holt, “Marking,” 1–20. Burns, “Unfixing Race.” 268 · Notes to Chapter 3

28 Burns, “Unfixing Race,” 62; Thomson, “Was There Race in Colonial Latin America?” 88; Mallon, “A Postcolonial Palimpsest,” 325. 29 Caplan, Indigenous Citizens; Rugeley, Rebellion Now and Forever. 30 Canto Lopez, “Historia de la imprenta y del periodismo,” 5–107; Campbell, Periodismo escrito; Covo, “La prensa en la historiografía mexicana,” 689–710; Mantilla, Origen de la imprenta; del Carmen Reyna, La prensa censurada; Romero, ed., Espejismos de papel; Rojas, El indio en la prensa nacional del siglo XIX; Ruiz Castañeda et al., El periodismo en Adéxico; Ruiz Castañeda, La prensa; Suárez de la Torre, ed., Empresa y cultura; Vigil Batista, “Historia del periodismo.” 31 Mirow, “Visions of Cádiz,” 60. 32 Adelman, Sovereignty and Revolution; Chust Calero and Frasquet, La Patria; Eastman, Preaching Spanish Nationalism; Estrada, Monarquía y nación; Frasquet, “Cádiz en América”; Guerra, Modernidad e Independencias; Herzog, Defining Nations; Portillo Valdés, Crisis Atlántica; Rodríguez, The Independence of Spanish America; Sartorius, “Of Exceptions and Afterlives.” Raul Coronado argues for a distinct Texas-Latino literary tradition emerging not just from freedom of the press but also from the diverse ideals of the 1812 Constitution. See his A World Not to Come. 33 For a list of publishing houses, see Cortés Campos, Entre héroes y bárbaros, 111. 34 Cortés Campos, Entre héroes y bárbaros, 83–87. In offering this periodization, Cortés Campos draws on, and refines, the classic earlier work of Carlos R. Menéndez and José Esquivel Pren. See Menéndez, La evolución de la prensa, and Esquivel Pren, Historia de la literatura. 35 Cortés Campos, Entre héroes y bárbaros, 114–15. 36 Carlos Forment argues, to the contrary, that imported newsprint in Mexico City made periodicals expensive, limiting circulation. See his Democracy in Latin America. For the somewhat different context of Yucatán, see Cortés Campos, Entre héroes y bárbaros; Vigil Batista, “Historia del periodismo en Yucatán, 1822–1855”; Wright, “Novels, Newspapers, and Nation.” 37 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 33–36, 65. 38 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 50. 39 Rama, The Lettered City; Burns, Into the Archive. See also Franco, Plotting Women and The Decline of the Lettered City. 40 Cortés Campos, Entre héroes y bárbaros, 80. The Spanish reads: “una ideología problancos y antiindígenas, caracterizada por la idealización del blanco y el vituperio del indígena.” 41 For the wider context of nineteenth-century periodismo and race, see Hernández Casillas and Vázquez Flores, Racismo y poder. 42 Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint. See also Wright, “Novels, Newspapers, and Nation”; Wright, “Subscribing Identities.” 43 “Guerra de Castas.” The articles in question ran on December 8, page 1; December 9, page 1; December 11, pages 1–2; December 14, pages 1–2; and December 15, pages 1–2. These articles are referenced in Campos García, ed., Guerra de Castas, xx. 44 The Spanish reads: “resultó ademas un nuevo elemento de órden, absolutamente Notes to Chapter 3 · 269

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indispensable en los pueblos que se hallan en situacion idéntica á la nuestra. Este elemento fué la profunda sumision y respeto de los indígenas hácia la raza española; sumision y respeto que rayaban en veneracion. El indígena veia en el hombre de nuestra raza, un ente de inteligencia superior, que calificaba esclusivamente con el nombre gente de razon; un director indispensable en su ignorancia, y el protector natural de su bienestar y felicidad . . . El respeto á la antoridad [sic] fundado por tales medios, produjo no solo la completa sumision de los indígenas, sino hasta un verdadero y positivo amor hácia el gobierno, que era el mejor garante de su estabilidad y de la paz general . . . los deberes y cargas . . . eran muy positivos, y tanto mas sensibles para los indígenas, cuanto que el tributo annual, única carga que sobre ellos gravitaba en tiempo del antiguo régimen, estaba reducido á la insignificante suma de diez y ocho reales, y con esto solo estaban completamente libres de cualquiera otro servicio ó carga mititar [sic] ó civil.” On the colonial creation of the distinction between Spaniard and Indian, see Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination; Farriss, “Indians in Colonial Yucatán” and Maya Society; Lewis, Hall of Mirrors. Levaggi, “Repúblicas de indios,” 419–28; Lockhart, Nahuas and Spaniards, and The Nahuas after the Conquest; Martínez, Genealogical Fictions, 91–122. The Spanish reads: “Sonó empero la hora en que debia empezar la lucha de la independencia; y los caudillos que se pusieron al frente del movimiento, aunque de orígen europeo, deseando conseguir el apoyo de la numerosa raza indígena, en vez de procurar unirla en el esfuerzo comun y en sus futuros destinos con los descendientes de los españoles, con una imprevision imperdonable empezaron á infundirle el ódio y el deseo de venganza contra la raza conquistadora, presentándosela, en incesantes y ridículas declamaciones, como á su opresora y mortal enemiga. Las propiedades que poseian los individuos de aquella raza, las representaban como otras tantas usurpaciones hechas á los indígenas, invocaban sin cesar la memoria de Moctezuma y demas héroes de su casta; execraban el nombre de Hernan Cortes y el de todos los conquistadores, y el de cuanto era originario de la metrópoli; deploraban la tiránica opresion que, segun ellos, habian hecho pesar los blancos sobre los indígenas durante trescientos años . . . el desafecto contra los blancos, que cundió entre una gran parte de los indígenas; y los que no participaron de él, perdieron á lo menos el antiguo respeto con que á los blancos miraban, y que era el mejor garante de la paz.” The Spanish reads: “Adoptóse, pues, el dogma de igualdad, prescrito por aquella constitucion; y en consecuencia, los indígenas fueron declarados iguales á los españoles y á sus descendientes, así en los derechos como en los deberes y cargas del ciudadano . . . Nada quedaba de las brillantes promesas que se les habian hecho; al contrario, los infelices indígenas palpaban con demasiada evidencia, que habian perdido todos los bienes positivos de que antes gozaban, y que los campeones del nuevo sistema solo les ofrecian, á trueque de tan dolorosa pérdida, no mas que una palabra, sonora y seductora, sí, pero hueca y sin sentido, y sobre todo sin resultados positivos.” Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” 233. 270 · Notes to Chapter 3

50 Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” 221. 51 The Spanish reads: “Esta verdad innegable la estamos palpando en nuestro pais, no solo con la raza indígena, sino con las clases todas que componen nuestra sociedad.” 52 The Spanish reads: “el desenfreno de la tribuna y de la prensa . . . han convertido la libertad de hablar y de escribir en una arma envenenada, que destruye, no solo el prestigio, sino la existencia misma de toda autoridad.—El indígena veia antiguamente en la autoridad un poder protector, á cuya sombra se hallaba al abrigo de las arterías y de la fuerza del malvado: despues apenas ha visto en ella mas que un poder opresor . . . el indígena ha hecho naturalmente estos raciocinios:— 1o. La soberanía reside en el mayor número: nosotros somos el mayor número; luego la soberanía reside en nosotros . . .” (December 9, 1848: 2); “En efecto, como hemos manifestado ya, esos insensatos declamadores todo lo han puesto en juego para conseguir su objeto. Han transtornado la historia: han borrado de ella aquellos rasgos brillantes que probaban mas claro que la luz del sol, los inmensos beneficios de que aun los mismos indígenas eran deudores á la conquista: han inventado mil ficciones y embustes de horrores imaginarios perpetrados por nuestra raza y exaltados hasta el frenesí, han puesto el puñal en manos del salvage, y le han dicho: ¡hiere!” (December 11, 1848: 1). 53 Caplan, Indigenous Citizens, 44–45. 54 “Prospecto,” n.p. 55 “Introduccion,” 1. The Spanish reads: “El periodismo, que goza en la civilizacion actual del alto lugar que ha sabido adquirirse, es justamente considerado como el vehículo de todos los conocimientos humanos, como el rápido conductor de cuanto se sabe, de cuanto se inventa: es para la política, las artes y las ciencias lo que los telégrafos para las grandes distancias, lo que el vapor para atravezar las olas del océano. Camina por todas partes y su marcha, siempre á la vanguardia de los progresos intelectuales, debe estudiarse para escribir la historia en todos sus ramos. Tales verdades, que nadie se atreve á negar, bastan para recomendar este género de producciones.” 56 “Sobre Nuestras Cosas,” 9. The Spanish reads: “El mal viene de atras: desde la constitucion española del año 12, empezaron á circular ideas que mas tarde ó mas temprano, debian producir los funestos males de la anarquía. Con aquel código se abrió en las colonias la puerta á la libertad de impretan, se permitió la circulacion del Contrato Social, la del Diccionario filosófico, y estas y otras mil obras que la sábia crítica y la juiciosa imparcialidad han echado ya por tierra, sembraron sus máximas en espíritus que no estaban en disposicion de conocer sus errores.” 57 “Sobre Nuestras Cosas,” 13. The Spanish reads: “A propósito de justicia, ¿será conforme á sus principios lo que se hace hoy con esos mismos indios? se les prende, enhorabuena: que se les examine, y si son criminales se les castigue, muy arreglado: pero que se metan en sus casas, es quiten lo que es suyo y atropellen con sus mujeres é hijas ¿cómo se llamará esto? nó tiene algo de la barbaridad que les echamos á ellos en cara?” 58 “Sobre Nuestras Cosas,” 32. The Spanish reads: “Cinco guerrillas de á cien homNotes to Chapter 3 · 271

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bres, al mando de D. Manuel Oliver, se han dirigido en persecucion de los que ese hallan armados, juntos y trashumantes entre Valladolid y Tihosuco. Estos habian incendiado gran parte de un rancho, de cuyo nombre no nos acordamos, pero que es de la propiedad del Sr. Rivero, emigrado de Valladolid en esta capital. En el mismo rancho fuéron asesinados unos sirvientes qu encontraron en él.” “Sobre Nuestras Cosas,” 32. The Spanish reads: “En sesion del mismo dia procedió el congreso á la elecion de consejeros . . . ,” “Por impedimento legal del Sr. Lic. D. Valerio Rosado, ha tomado asiento en dicha cámera el Sr. D. Manuel Carvajal, suplente.” The Spanish reads: “El rasgo mas curioso de esta aventura . . .” “En la ciudad habian circulado muchos pasquines en que se denunciaba á Ki-Ing como traidor vendido á los bárbaros.” The Spanish reads: “Lanzando gritos de rábia y arrojando piedras.” “Sobre Nuestras Cosas,” 48. The Spanish reads: “el coronado.—Este es el nombre que ha tomado Jacinto Pat, uno de los principales autores de la conjuracion de la raza indígena contra las demas. Convencido ya este atroz revolucionario, con presunciones de rey, de que la loca empresa en que se metió no puede progresar, ha fijado sus reales en el desierto de Bacalar con toda su corte. Para tal rey y tales personajes, tales lugares. De allí es probable que no saldrá, y es cierto tambien que se le perseguirá en su extenso palacio. cecilio chi.—Este todavia conserva una fuerza como de doscientos hombres, con la que hace toda la resistencia que puede: sin embargo, por la especie de defensas que sostiene, se conoce que es, entre los de su clase, un indio de disposicion y de valor. Pronto, á pesar de esto, acabará sus proezas si las tropas del gobierno aciertan á alcanzarlo en un lugar por donde no le quede salida para burlar con la fuga, como lo ha estado haciendo, la vigilancia con que se le persigue.” “Sobre Nuestras Cosas,” 171. The Spanish reads: “nosotros que tenemos á la vista las escenas de Tepich, Tixcacalcupul y Tihosuco, que sabemos que estas hordas de salvajes se robustecen y que los pueblos de Saban, Tiholop é Ichmul están ya en poder de los que han declarado esa bárbara guerra de extermino á nuestra raza ¿permanecerémos indiferentes unos, no callarán los que atizan la tea de la discordia, ni escucharán todos los lamentos de la patria?. . . Porque vemos cada dia mas sombrío el futuro, porque amamos á Yucatan, porque no tenemos mas inspiraciones que las de una disinteresado patriotismo, por eso se nos cae la pluma de la mano.” “Sobre Nuestras Cosas,” 190. Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, 13. The Spanish reads: “Uno de los motivos más graves que nos indujeron a la publicación del Fénix, fue la necesidad imperiosa e imprescindible que existe de entrar de plano en el examen de las causas que han provocado la actual rebelión de la raza indígena, para buscar el remedio a este inmenso mal, cuyas consecuencias no pueden todavía calcularse.” The Spanish reads: “examen de las causas que han provocado la actual rebelión de la raza indígena.” Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, 23. The Spanish reads: “Los hechos antiguos 272 · Notes to Chapter 3

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no han sido cuidadosamente recogidos por nuestros mayores, o casi no existen los medios de verificarlos. Para los recientes, hemos tenido muchos medios de inquirir la verdad.” Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán. The Spanish reads: “Además—y este ha sido el principal motivo, las graves cuestiones que suscitó la constitución española, el desarrollo de las ideas modernas y la propagación de ciertas doctrinas filosóficas y sociales, han entrado indudablemente por mucho en la actitud que fueron tomando los indios en estos últimos tiempos.” Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, 23. The Spanish reads: “fue para la raza indígena de Yucatán un verdadero curso de derecho político, que no quedó enteramente olvidado por cierto con los sucesos posteriores.” Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán. The Spanish reads: “No hay en la lengua epítetos bastante enérgeticos para reprobar, cual merece, la conducta de aquellos hombres ilusos o hipócritas que, aparentando un liberalismo sin mancilla y un noble filantropía, buscaron apoyo a sus proyectos en la ruda masa de los indígenas, cuyos medios de acción y tendencia final jamás se detuvieron a examinar, por incapacidad o ligereza. Cuántos de aquellos desgraciados han sido ya víctimas de la ferocidad brutal de los bárbaros.” Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, 14. The Spanish reads: “tenemos, por lo mismo, el de resistir con todas nuestras fuerzas y hacer pagar a nuestros enemigos diente por diente, ojo por ojo y cabeza por cabeza.” Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge. On the role of archaeology in the construction of national histories, see Mucher, “Antiquity, Prehistory, Culture.” For a provocative account of ruination in a colonial and postcolonial context, see Stoler, Imperial Debris. Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, 13. The Spanish reads: “Echar a un lado esta cuestión y no detenerse en ella, es suscribir nuestra sentencia de muerte; es votar nuestra agonizante sociedad a su total ruina; es consentir en que Yucatán desaparezca de entre los pueblos civilizados.” Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, 17–18. The Spanish reads: “En presencia del indio sublevado, que sacudiendo el hacha mortífera con una mano en la otra llevaba, la tea incendiaria, el hombre blanco sintió aterrorizarse y confundirse . . . el frenesí delirante con que los bárbaros reducían a escombros las aldeas, villas y ciudades, destruyendo los templos y monumentos de nuestra civilización; la sangre, el humo las pavesas, el estruendo que traía en su rápido curso aquel desbordado torrente, poderosos motivos eran por cierto para difundir la angustia la desolación entre los descendientes de la antigua raza conquistadora . . . y aunque lo que había sido obra de más de tres siglos de penosa labor estaba convertido en ruina inmensa, destruida la industria, muerta la riqueza, mermada la población.” Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, 32–33. The Spanish reads: “Los monumentos y las tradiciones de este pueblo nos muestran cuán adelantado estuvo en poder y civilización. Las vastas y colosales ruinas que se encuentran diseminadas en toda la extensión de la península, son una prueba irrefragable de sus progresos en la vida Notes to Chapter 3 · 273

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social, en el cultivo de las bellas artes, en la agricultura y en las obras mecánicas. Su idioma, aunque no podía llamarse rico y armonioso por su falta de palabras para expresar ideas abstractas, sembrado estabe, sin embargo, de enérgicas elocuciones y altivas y pomposas frases. Su teogonía era más figurativa y simbólica que la de los griegos y romanos. Su legislación, aunque contaminada de rudos errores y groseras supersticiones, ofrecía un aregularidad sorprendente. Sus cálculos astronómicos y cronológicos, superiores eran a los de los antiguos egipcios. Su carácter, duro, independiente, altivo y belicoso. Su historia, fecunda en sucesos notables, en guerras sangrientas y hechos gloriosos.” Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, 82. The Spanish reads: “hay en Yucatán un hecho gravísimo, del cual no podemos prescindir, y que debemos presentarlo como fundamento u origen de otros no menos graves. Hablamos de la existencia de numerosas y gigantescas ruinas de vastas ciudades antiguas.” Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, 89. The Spanish reads: “Haya sido obra de una raza ya extinguida, o de las primeras generaciones de la que encontraron nuestros padres al tiempo de ocupar este país, lo cierto es que la memoria de los primitivos constructores estaba perdida, y que las ruinas, ruinas eran aun para los indios de la conquista.” Diderot, Diderot on Art, II, 196. On reducción as a pervasive technique of colonization, see Hanks, Converting Words, 2–58. See also Weber, Bárbaros. El Fénix: Periódico Político y Mercantil 12 (Campeche: Joaquín Castro Peraza and Pedro Méndez y Echazarreta, December 25, 1848), 3, caihy, Hemeroteca Histórica, Número de Ficha 63373. The Spanish reads: “Es de pública notoriedad el quebranto que en este pais han sufrido muchísimos de los poseedores de fincas rústicas y urbanas, hostigados por sus acreedores para el pago de los capitales y réditos que reconocen. Conocemos que el derecho de propiedad es muy sagrado; pero tambien sabemos, que siendo imposible refaccionar las fincas, esa pretension de los acreedores va á concluir la obra que los bárbaros han comenzado con un éxito, que por años tendrémos que lamentar. Durante la guerra americana, el gobierno nacional dió un decreto sobre esta grave materia, que por los principios de equidad en que se funda, bien merece tomarse en consideracion, y tenerse presente que la ruina causada por aquella guerra, no puede equipararse á la que ha sufrido Yucatan en esta época desoladora, que estamos recorriendo. Insertamos á continuacion ese decreto, y recomendamos sériamente la materia á quien corresponda, para ver si se remedia en parte el mal que lamentamos.” Wright, “Novels, Newspapers, and Nation,” and “Subscribing Identities.” For a more extended account of the Atlantic world history of what in the United States since the 1860s has commonly been called the “dime novel,” see Kazanjian, “The Dime Novel,” 273–89. Silva Gruez, Ambassadors of Culture. Denning, Mechanic Accents. Barrera’s folletín participated in one of the most popular subgenres of this early fiction: the “mysteries of the city,” which offered tales of the crime and justice, 274 · Notes to Chapter 3

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poverty and luxury, scandal and debauchery that readers liked to imagine filled the period’s ever-growing urban centers. Most famous among these texts was Eugène Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris, which began as a serial published by the conservative Paris paper Le Journal des Débats from 1842 to 1843. A popular sensation—and a huge moneymaker for the paper despite the antagonism between its politics and Sue’s socialism—the installments were gathered and published in book form by 1843, and in less than ten years sold over sixty thousand copies. Les Mystères de Paris was immediately translated into multiple languages and republished throughout the Atlantic world. Celebrated by many socialists of the day for its exposé of the ravages of capitalism, and rigorously critiqued by Karl Marx in The Holy Family (1844) for the limits of that very exposé, Les Mystères de Paris revealed a vast market for the consumption of socially conscious, gritty urban fiction at a time when urban masses throughout Europe and the Americas were organizing and agitating for radical social transformation. As Les Mystères de Paris struck a chord with readers, clones like Barrera’s soon appeared throughout the Atlantic world: Osgood Bradbury’s Mysteries of Lowell (1844); F. Thiele’s Die Geheimnisse von Berlin (The mysteries of Berlin) (1845); and The Mysteries and Miseries of New York (1848), by Edward Zane Carroll Judson writing under the pseudonym Ned Buntline. In 1844, Paul Henri Corentin Féval took his place alongside Sue in France as a successful feuilleton author with his own Les Mystères de Londres, which would be pirated in part by the British author George W. M. Reynolds in his The Mysteries of London (1844). The year before this popular success, Féval published another feuilleton entitled Les Chevaliers du Firmament, at the end of which was added a much shorter novella that three years later was translated and republished in Madrid in 1847 as El mendigo negro. The editors of La Revista Yucateca did their own translation of this shorter novella and published it in Mérida, also in 1847. Cortés Campos, Entre Héroes y Bárbaros, 86. The Spanish reads: “una estrategia de regalo por parte de los editores que, concientes de que el lector se cansaba y aturdía de las mismas noticias todos los días, tomaban actitudes como las de añadir textos literarios para proporcionar algún medio de relajación al lector yucateco.” Wright, “Subscribing Identities,” 250–51. De Man, “The Rhetoric of Temporality,” 207. Ermilo Abreu Gomez, “Sierra O’Reilly y la Novela,” in Sierra O’Reilly, Un año en el hospital de San Lázaro; Manuel Sol, “Introducción,” in Sierra O’Reilly, La hija del judío, 15–63. For other summaries of the novel’s plot, see Wright, “Subscribing Identities,” 243–47, and Sol, “Introducción,” 35–43. The Spanish reads: “Jacinto Vicario, perteneciente al tercer batallon de la guardia nacional, por el crímen de desercion en presencia del enemigo.” Sierra O’Reilly, La hija del judío, Tomo II, 934; El Fénix 84 (December 25, 1849), 1–4. The Spanish reads: “Desde entonces la historia no vuelve a hacer mención del señor Marqués de Torres-Vedras, sino cuando veinte años después era Virrey de Goa, en las posesiones portuguesas de la India.” Notes to Chapter 3 · 275

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Berendt, “Report,” 425–26. Brinton, “Memoir of Dr. C. H. Berendt,” 207. Weeks, “Notes on a Letter from Brasseur de Bourbourg,” 3. For the drawing, see Berendt, “Apuntes y Estudios sobre la lengua Zoque,” bec, No. 111. See also http://www.famsi.org/research/mltdp/item111/, accessed November 15, 2015. It is not clear why Berendt cites 1866 as the date of Uc’s account, when the account itself says it was written in 1871. Robinson, Black Marxism. Rugeley, Of Wonders and Wise Men, 208; see also de Vos, La paz de Dios y del Rey, 212–31. Berendt, “Report,” 422. Berendt, “Report,” 425. On “racial geography,” see Saldaña-Portillo, Indian Given. The Spanish reads: “¿Quién es Chilam Balam?; ¿qué ser tan prodigioso es éste, que a los niños y aun a los ancianos ha infundido tal terror?” Covarrubias y Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o espagñola, 854, cited in Hanks, Converting Words, 2. Hanks, Converting Words, 3. Farriss, Maya Society under Colonial Rule; Quezada, Relación documental. Hanks, Converting Words, 4. The text is in the Brinton papers at the University of Pennsylvania Museum Library. It is also transcribed, translated, and discussed by Bolles, “An Autobiographical Note.” I have slightly modified Bolles’s translation on the basis of my own transcription of the note. Franco, The Decline of the Lettered City. Mallon, “A Postcolonial Palimpsest,” 325, 330. See, for instance, Derrida, “Force of Law,” 3–66, as well as one of Derrida’s last written works, “Enlightenment Past and to Come.” De la “Guerra de Castas”; Bricker, Indian Christ, 95–97. agey, Fondo: pe 1843–62; Seccion: Gobierno del Estado de Yucatan; Serie: Correspondencia Oficial; Lugar: Mérida; Fecha: 1862; Caja 100; Vol. 50; Exp. 43. The Spanish reads: Los abusos introducidos en la circulacion oficial de la correspondencia con perjuicio de la renta de correos y gravamen de los infelices gratuitos conductores, es de necesidad urgente cortarlos de raiz, sujetando á los infractores á las penas que por la responsabilidad en que incurren se hagan acreedores. Con el caracter de postas, circulares, cordilleras, exhortos y otras invenciones de carácter legal, casi en lo general, desde el mas alto hasta el mas insignificante empleado dan curso á su correspondencia oficial y aun particular sin pagar los portes respectivos ni satisfacer las pagas de conduccion, pesando este servicio sobre los infelices que sirven las repúblicas de indígenas en las casas públicas ó sobre los que corresponden á sus matrículas. 276 · Notes to Chapter 4

De hoy en adelante, C. Jefe Político, sírvase U. dictar sus órdines para que los ayuntamientos, juntas municipales, comisaros y alcaldes auxiliares de las poblaciones de su partido, ni den curso ni permitan que ninguna clase de correspondencia cerrada ó abierta circule en los términos de sus respectivas comprenciones sino consta el despacho de la oficina de correos correspondiente y se satisface la justa paga al conductor. Faltando estas condiciones, bajo su mas estrecha responsabilidad deben interceptar la correspondencia que pase por sus comprensiones cualquiera que sea el carácter que la cubra; y con el conductor de ella remitirlo todo á este Gobierno para resolver lo conveniente. 22 The Spanish reads: “Insértolo á U., C. Administrador para que por su parte concurra á cortar los abusos que se refieren exitando el celo de las administraciones de su dependencia, conservando únicamente las postas que por virtud de la órden de la admin. gen. de correos de 2. de agosto del 1850 reglamentó esa oficina en 27 de abril de 1856 en consideracion á la guerra de índios despachándolas cada mártes para Izamal, Valladolid, Espita, Tizimin, Motul, Ticul, Tekax, Peto y Sotuta con sus respectivos retornos.” 23 See agey Fondo: pe 1843–62; Seccion: Jefatura Politica de Mérida; Serie: Justicia; Lugar: Mérida, 1862; Caja 149; Vol. 99; Exp. 57; and agey Fondo pe 1843–62; Seccion: Jefatura Politica de Izamal; Serie: Correspondencia Official; Lugar: Izamal; Fecha: 1862; Caja 100; Vol. 50; Exp. 16. 24 agey Fondo: pe 1843–62; Seccion: Jefatura Politica de Tizimin; Serie: Correspondencia Oficial; Lugar: Tizimin; Fecha: 1861; Caja 97; Vol. 47; Exp. 11. 25 agey Fondo: pe 1843–62; Seccion: Ayuntamiento de Bolonchenticul; Serie: Ayuntamientos; Lugar: Bolonchenticul; Fecha: 1851; Caja 56; Vol. 6; Exp. 18. 26 Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 67. The Spanish reads: “Conteste mi carta. Que regrese el mensajero; que no se le haga daño porque yo lo he mandado pacíficamente.” 27 agey Fondo: Justicia 1821–75; Seccion: Juzgado de Primera Instancia de lo Criminal; Serie: Justicia; Lugar: Merida; Fecha: 1843; Caja 144; Vol. 94; Exp. 5. 28 Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 52. The Spanish reads: “Ninguna persona se entrega, precisamente porque ustedes le hacen daño. Ya envié a los comandantes la carta que recibí del excelentísimo señor Gobernador, al igual que (la nota) de los señores comisionados en la que me piden que no se le haga daño al portador de la carta. También se nos ha dado la orden de que no le hagamos daño a ninguno de ustedes mientras esté en comisión de traer correspondencia.” 29 Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 74. The Spanish reads: “Igualmente le hago saber a su señoría que todas las respetables cartas que nos había enviado no las habíamos recibido, y ahora nos acaban de llegar todas; no sabemos donde las retuvieron.” 30 Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 75. The Spanish reads: “A cualquier alcalde que retenga esta carta lo castigaré con cincuenta palos; pues algunas de las ca[r]tas que le he enviado a su señoría, han tardado ocho días en llegar, y deben (hacerlo) en 24 horas máximo.” 31 Patch, Maya and Spaniard, 30–31; see also 81–93. Notes to Chapter 4 · 277

32 Sellers-García, Distance and Documents, 80, 104. 33 Patch, Maya and Spaniard, 29. 34 Sellers-García, Distance and Documents, 127, 1, 19. See also de Backal, Bonilla, and Servicio Postal Mexicano, Historia del correo en México. 35 See, for example, van Voss, ed., Petitions in Social History. On the ancient history of petitions, see Kelly, Petitions, Litigation, and Social Control. On petitions in early America, see Bradley, Popular Politics. On petitions in the early American and Sierra Leonian contexts, see Stapely, “Insurgent Remains.” 36 Bennington, “Postal politics,” 125. The sentences come, respectively, from Montesquieu, “De la politique,” 172–75; My Thoughts, 663 (pensée 2207); and My Thoughts, 2 (pensée 8). The second and third sentences can also be found as fragments 1761 and 1760 in Montesquieu’s Oeuvres complètes; Bennington quotes from this source, and offers his own translations. 37 Montesquieu, “De la politique,” 173; Bennington, “Postal Politics,” 126. 38 Montesquieu, “De la politique,” 174; Bennington, “Postal Politics,” 127. 39 Montesquieu, My Thoughts, 438 (pensée 1532). 40 See Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, part 2, chapter 4. 41 The principal touchstone for the general will is Rousseau, On the Social Contract; see in particular book 2, chapter 3. 42 Rugeley, Rebellion Now and Forever. 43 Caplan, Indigenous Citizens, 144, 186, 213, 215. 44 See in this context Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority; Thomson, We Alone Will Rule; Leddy Phelan, The People and the King. 45 Guha, “The Prose of Counter-Insurgency,” 45–88; Thomson, “Was There Race in Colonial Latin America?” 77; Zavaleta Mercado, “Las masas en noviembre.” 46 Butler, “Restaging the Universal,” 41. 47 For Foucault, a “statement” is a set of implied rules for what can and cannot be said, and how saying and not saying can happen, in a given discursive formation. As a set of rules, a “statement” is not a particular word, phrase, or utterance, but it is nonetheless what Foucault calls an “event,” or an instance that appears on the surface of discourse. See Archaeology of Knowledge. Bricker also notes the importance of complaints about taxation in Indian Christ, 93. 48 See Rugeley, Rebellion Now and Forever. For a summary of other accounts of the Caste War that tend toward such a position, see Bricker, Indian Christ, 92–95. 49 Farriss, Maya Society, 39–47, 114; and Bricker, Indian Christ, 92–95. 50 Marx, “On the Jewish Question”; Caplan, Indigenous Citizens. 51 Kwass, Privilege and the Politics of Taxation, 16–17. Thanks to Pamela Voekel for pointing me toward Kwass’s work. 52 Kwass, Privilege and the Politics of Taxation, 19. 53 Kwass, Privilege and the Politics of Taxation, 321. 54 For a more Latin American context, see Serrano Ortega, Un impuesto liberal; Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority; and Tenenbaum, The Politics of Penury. 55 Farriss, Maya Society, 39–46; Patch, Maya and Spaniard, 26–32, 74–81. 56 Kwass, Privilege and the Politics of Taxation, 15. 278 · Notes to Chapter 4

57 agey. Fondo: pe 1843–62; Sección: Secretaria de Guerra y Marina; Serie: Justicia; Lugar: Ekpes, Peto, Tihosuco, Yobain, Maxcanu; Fecha: 11.23.1847–12.23.1847; Caja 144; Vol. 94; Exp. 69. The Spanish reads: “pues esta es la hora en que Dios ha querido que el indo quede sin medio de contribuciones los blancos, solo para el casamiento se pagarán diez reales y para el bautismo que hacen los Señores sacerdotes tres reales esto es lo que quedará de cierto el que no quiciesa [quisiera?] aqui estoy á esperarlo con mi tropa porque ha llegada la hora.” 58 Rugeley, Maya Wars, 52. As Rugeley notes, this letter is from the Archives of Belize (Belmopan), Record 28, February 18, 1848, 220. The translation is Rugeley’s, and I have not as yet been able to consult the manuscript. 59 caihy. Fondo Reservado: XLIV-1850–1859–034. The Spanish, which is in poor condition and required some extrapolation, reads: “Vosotros, pues, no creeis que tenemos un padre que habla entre nosotros, quien manda y és nuestro Señor que dice, que aqui entre nosotros ninguna de sus criaturas deberá pagar contribucion, supuesto que desde que prin[torn]iasteis [principiasteis?] la guerra con nosotros los indos, nos propusi[torn][mos] quita[torn][rnos]la contribucion en general; nosotros os deceamos [torn][mucha?] fel[torn][icidad?] y venis a matarnos. Por lo tanto se han para[torn][pasado?] violenta[torn] ancestros[nuestros?] tan[tres?] respetables pap[torn] sublevadose con nuestra[torn]: alli se contestaban y [entire line torn] nos aqui la verdad 16 de Noviembre de 1851. Nosotros los indios y tambien nosotros los blancos: Salvador Hantun, Lauriano Peres, Manuel Jesus Can, Marcelino Puga.” The document seems to have been translated from Maya, since it concludes with the notation “Es literal esta version. Tihosuco, Diciembre 26 del 1851,” although no Maya original is included with the Spanish. 60 On Méndez, see Rugeley, Of Wonders and Wise Men, 208–12. 61 My translation. Another English translation of this letter can be found in Rugeley, Maya Wars, 55–56 (see page 133). For more on this document, see part II prelude, note 10. 62 Rugeley, Maya Wars, 53–54. Rugeley notes that this letter is from the Archives of Belize (Belmopan), Record 28, April 23, 1849, 223. The translation is Rugeley’s, and I have not as yet been able to consult the manuscript. 63 Rugeley, “Rural Popular Violence,” 480. 64 The Spanish reads: “Yo, Juan de la Cruz, vivo en el pueblo de xBalamná. Yo, Juan de la Cruz, vivo en el pueblo de xCenil; después de haber salido de Chichén.” 65 Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 101. The Spanish reads: “Sabrá que son muchas las cosas que me han hecho sus tropas.” 66 Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 102. The Spanish reads: “Ya le mandé ocho cartas y ninguna me ha contestado, por lo que le pido que cuando reciba ésta, hágame el favor de contestármela para que la lean y escuchen todos los generales indígenas; para que sepan que está usted cumpliendo todas mis órdenes.” 67 Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 102. The Spanish reads: “Don Miguel, cumplirá todas las órdenes que le mando, porque si veo que no las cumple, le daré a la ciudad de Mérida un castigo grande.” 68 Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 103. The Spanish reads: “Yo creé a los blancos, Notes to Chapter 4 · 279

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78 79 80

81

a los indígenas, a los negros, a los mulatos; mientras sean seres humanos, sus vidas y sus almas están bajo la protección de mi mano derecha. Le ordeno que libere a todas mis criaturas indígenas que apresaron sus tropas, porque están pasando muchas penurias en sus manos. Yo no las hago sufrir, a pesar de que las creé, las salvé, derramé mi sangre para que mis criaturas pudieran ver el mundo. A todas mis criaturas les digo que están bajo mi protección.” Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 86. The Spanish reads: “Mi Señor también dice que no es solamente un plieto (sin importancia) entre blancos e indígenas, sino que ha llegado el momento de una sublevación general de los indígenas en contra de los blancos.” Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 87. The Spanish reads: “Por otra parte, mis queridos cristianos, no vayan a matar fríamente a sus semejantes que estén hincados y con las manos puestas en el pecho invocando el nombre de mi Señor . . . ya sean blancos, negros, indígenas o mulatos, cualquiera que sea, siempre es criatura (de Dios).” Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 90. Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 96. The Spanish reads: “haga usted que liberen a todas mis criaturas indígenas . . . ya sean blancas, indígenas, mulatas o negras, (todas), mientras sean criaturas y vivan bajo mi protección.” Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 98. The Spanish reads: “Sabrá que tengo bajo mi protección las vidas y las almas de los indígenas; mulatos, negros y blancos; mientras sean criaturas, en mis manos están sus vidas, pues yo los creé, los liberé, derramé sobre la tierra mi santa sangre por todos ellos.” Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 102–3. The Spanish reads: “Y otra cosa les digo a ustedes, mis amados cristianos del pueblo, mis criaturas humanas, señores. Les digo a pequeños y grandes mis preceptos, porque algún día los sabrán ustedes, cristianos del pueblo.” Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 68. The Spanish reads: “Es todo cuanto les digo, cristianos del pueblo, y les digo a todos los generales y a todos los hombres del mundo que escuchen de los niños y de los grandes todo lo que les he dicho.” Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 69. The Spanish reads: “Sepan, criaturas, que algún día trabajarán remunerados por los generales, pues para nadie trabajarán gratis, como ahora que están pobres todos mis familiares, tanto hombres como mujeres. Ya que todo hombre tiene mujer, no está bien que se trabaje para nadie de manera gratuita, a todas mis criaturas del mundo les digo que ya llegó la hora y el año de acabar con los trabajos que hacen mis familiares sin que se les pague.” Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 103. Robinson, Black Marxism, 126. The Spanish reads: “En su carta . . . me pide que escriba o que vaya a hablar con su excelencia . . . Le contesto que no puedo ir, por lo que le envío a su excelencia esta carta para que sepa lo que le digo”; “si lo ha olvidado, se lo recuerdo a su excelencia, si es que sólo lo ha olvidado.” Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 78. The Spanish reads: “Sabía claramente cuál

280 · Notes to Chapter 4

82 83 84 85 86 87

88

89

90

era el convenio hecho con nosotros, por eso peleamos. Que no sea pagada ninguna contribución, ya sea por el blanco, el negro o al indígena; diez pesos al bautizo para el blanco, para el negro y para el indígena; diez pesos el casamiento para el blanco, para el negro y para el indígena. En cuanto a las deudas, las antiguas ya no serán pagadas ni por el blanco, ni por el negro, ni por el indígena; y no se tendrá que comprar el monte, donde quiera el blanco, el negro o el indígena puede hacer su milpa, nadie se lo va a prohibir.” Patch, Maya and Spaniard, 15, 182. Farriss, Maya Society, 317. Re Cruz, “The Two Milpas of Chan Kom.” Patch, Maya and Spaniard, 15. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic; Linebaugh and Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra; Jace Weaver, The Red Atlantic. I thank Christopher J. Taylor for conversations about Caribbean provision grounds, local and global articulations, and the difference between cosmopolitanism and the linked-as-delinked subaltern. See Taylor, “Empire of Neglect.” On provision grounds and peasant subsistence economies, see Brown, The Reaper’s Garden and “Eating the Dead”; Holt, The Problem of Freedom; McDonald, The Economy and Material Culture of Slaves; Mintz, “Peasant Markets,” “Peasant Market Places,” and Caribbean Transformations; Mintz and Hall, “The Origins of the Jamaican Internal Marketing System”; and Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant. Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 59–60. The Spanish reads: “Padre, yo sé que no es mi jefe don José María Barrera, él es quien comanda la vigilancia en el camino principal de Chuhcab. Ya le he mandado una carta al respetable señor don Francisco. Padre, no me dió [illegible] porque las milpas que están a la vera del camino de Chuhcab ya fueron cosechadas por los enemigos, pero solamente las que se encuentran a dos leguas de distancia a partir del camino. Las que se encuentran más lejos no las han cosechado; por lo tanto, el enemigo no ha cosechado las milpas que están a tres leguas de distancia del camino de Chuhcab, donde abundan, por lo que se le doy a saber a su excelencia. Padre [illegible] en nombre de Dios, Nuestro Señor, haga el favor de darnos su [illegible] haya encargados de ir a buscar a los reservistas para completar la tropa de este pueblo, padre, pues se sabía que la tropa estaba anteriormente completa, pero se dispersó a las afueras del pueblo. Padre, si no se completa la tropa, los enemigos cosecharán todas las milpas en [illegible] el camino principal no está protegido. Padre, ¡a cuánta gente han matado en estos ranchos!” The Spanish reads: “Por otra parte, pido a sus señorías que no arrasen con las milpas, pues ya supimos que llevan el maíz a Valladolid para venderlo. Si hubiesen cosechado únicamente para su propio consumo, no se hubiese acabado.” Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 52. The Spanish reads: “Ninguna persona se entrega, precisamente porque ustedes le hacen daño. Ya envié a los comandantes la carta que recibí del excelentísimo señor Gobernador, al igual que (la nota) de los

Notes to Chapter 4 · 281

señores comisionados en la que me piden que no se le haga daño al portador de la carta. También se no ha dado la orden de que no le hagamos daño a ninguno de ustedes mientras esté en comisión de traer correspondencia.”

Coda: Archives for the Future 1 2 3 4 5

6

7 8 9 10 11

Farge, The Allure of the Archives, 122–23. Spivak, “Our Asias,” 236, 344. Derrida, Of Grammatology, 144–45. Goffman, Frame Analysis; Snow and Benford, “Ideology, Frame Resonance,” 197–217. Spivak, “Our Asias,” 228. I discuss the limits of the search for narratives of who did what, where, when, and why in Kazanjian, “Scenes of Speculation” and “Freedom’s Surprise.” These fragments are from: Washington W. McDonogh to John McDonogh, October 19, 1842, jmp; Washington W. McDonogh to John McDonogh, March 7, 1848, jmp; Abraham Blackford to Mary Berkeley Minor Blackford, “Letters from Liberia,” arcj 22.8 (1846): 260; John Aiken to John McDonogh, August 7, 1846, in Wiley, Slaves No More, 140; H. B. Stewart to William Coppinger, August 17, 1868, acsp, Box I b: 14, pt. 2; Wesley J. Horland to James Moore, January 19, 1846, arcj 23.9 (September 1847): 281; Diana Skipwith to Sally Cocke, May 7, 1838, cofp, Accession No. 9513-c, Box 1; Peter Ross to Ralph R. Gurley, July 19, 1858, acsp, Box I: b8 pt. 2; H. W. Ellis to Rev. William McLain, November 20, 1849, arcj 26.4 (April 1850): 118; James W. Wilson to Rev. William McLain, August 5, 1858, acsp, Box I: b8, pt. 2; Matilda Skipwith Lomax to John H. Cocke, September 26, 1853, cofp, Accession No. 640, Box 144; James C. Minor to Mary B. Blackford, February 12, 1846, arcj 22.8 (August 1846): 261; Wiley, Slaves No More, 265, 218; Peyton Skipwith to John H. Cocke, November 11, 1839, cofp, Accession No. 640, Box 96; Sion Harris to Samuel Wilkeson, April 16, 1840, acsp, Box I: b2; James C. Minor to Mary B. Blackford, n.d., 1852, bfp; Diana Skipwith to Sally Cocke, March 6, 1843, cofp, Accession No. 9513-f, Box 8; Reverend Alfred F. Russell to Robert Wickliffe, Box 8, wpfp; Samson Ceasar to Henry Westfall, June 2, 1834, 10595, uvl; Nancy Ann Smith to John McDonogh, “John McDonogh’s People. No. 1,” African Repository and Colonial Journal 23.9 (1847): 264, apso, accessed May 9, 2011; McKay(?) to Rev. William McLain, July 19, 1858, acsp, Box I: b8. Blyden, “Inaugural Address”; McKay(?) to Rev. William McLain, July 19, 1858, acsp, Box I: b8. Sierra O’Reilly, Los Indios de Yucatán, vol. 1, 24–25. The Spanish reads “la unión legítima de blancos e indios.” Rugeley, Maya Wars, 52. caihy, Fondo Reservado; XLIV-1850–1859–034; Rugeley, Maya Wars, 53–54; Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 78. Rugeley, Maya Wars, 55–56; Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 78, 59–60, 52. 282 · Notes to Coda

12 Quintal Martín, Correspondencia, 78; Uc’s autobiography is in the Brinton papers at the University of Pennsylvania Museum Library, and is also transcribed, translated, and discussed by David Bolles at http://www.famsi.org/reports/96072 /autobiography/index.html#notes, accessed November 15, 2015. 13 Berendt, “Apuntes y Estudios sobre la lengua Zoque,” bec. See also http://www .famsi.org/research/mltdp/item111/, accessed November 15, 2015. 14 Thanks to Tiffany Cain for helping me obtain this photograph. 15 Martínez, Genealogical Fictions. 16 For a remarkable meditation on the history of faking ancient Maya culture, see Jesse Lerner’s film Ruins (1998). For a review of this film, see Kahn, untitled article. See also Castañeda, In the Museum of Maya Culture; Jeff Himpele and Castañeda’s film Incidents of Travel in Chichén Itzá (1997); Castañeda, “Approaching Ruins—A Photo-Ethnographic Essay on the Busy Intersections of Chichén Itzá,” Visual Anthropology Review 16.2 (2000–2001): 43–70; and Lerner and Juhasz, F Is for Phony. 17 The Spanish reads: “En los ultimos años los pueblos indigenas nos enfrentamos a una fuerza mas amenazante que nunca: el neoliberalismo. Este apenas disimula su deseo de eliminarnos, por medio de politicas que socavan nuestro sustento socioeconomico, territorialidad, organizacion, unida interna y modos de vida. Para los planes neoliberales, los pueblos en marcha son un estorbo. No se perdera esta guerra, aqui en esta tierra, porque esta tierra volvera a nacer.”

Notes to Coda · 283

Bibliography

Note on Sources and Translations When manuscript sources were unavailable for the Liberia material, I have relied on letters published in nineteenth-century periodicals. It should be noted, however, that procolonization periodicals such as the African Repository and Colonial Journal routinely excised critical comments about Liberia from the letters they published, so their transcriptions are not entirely reliable. In the few cases where nineteenth-century periodical sources were also unavailable, I have used letters transcribed and published in Wiley, Slaves No More. Wiley’s transcriptions are also unreliable, in that he at times silently “corrects” grammar, syntax, and punctuation, and so manuscript sources should be consulted whenever possible, as I have done. When I have used Wiley’s text, I have deleted the bracketed interpolations he adds to the letters in an apparent attempt to clarify meaning, because I have found them either unnecessary, inaccurate, or obfuscating. While I take responsibility for all translations, I thank María Josefina SaldañaPortillo and Tony Beckwith for translation assistance and advice.

Abbreviations acsp

American Colonization Society Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC

acspo

American Colonization Society Papers. Digital database.

agey

Archivo General del Estado de Yucatán, Mérida, Yucatán, México

apso

American Periodical Series Online. Digital database.

arcj

African Repository and Colonial Journal, Washington, DC

bec

Berendt Collection, University of Pennsylvania Museum Library, Philadelphia

bfp

Blackford Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

brc

Brinton Collection, University of Pennsylvania Museum Library, Philadelphia

caihy

Centro de Apoyo a la Investigación Histórica de Yucatán, Mérida, Yucatán, México

clfp

Clay Family Papers, University of Kentucky Special Collections, Lexington

cofp

Cocke Family Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville

etc

University of Virginia Library, Electronic Text Center, Charlottesville

jmp

John McDonogh Papers, Louisiana Research Collection, Tulane University Library, New Orleans

jrk

John R. Kilby Collection, David M. Rubinstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, NC

uvl

University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville

vprb

University of Pennsylvania Van Pelt Library, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Philadelphia

wpfp

Wickliffe-Preston Family Papers, University of Kentucky Special Collections, Lexington

wtc

William Tillinghast Collection, David M. Rubinstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, NC

Archival Manuscripts Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA. University of North Carolina, Wilson Library, Southern Historical Collection, Blackford Family Papers (bfp) Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. University of Virginia Library (uvl) University of Virginia Library, Special Collections, Cocke Family Papers (cofp) Durham, North Carolina, USA. Duke University, David M. Rubinstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, John R. Kilby Collection (jrk) Duke University, David M. Rubinstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, William Tillinghast Collection (wtc) Lexington, Kentucky, USA. University of Kentucky Special Collections, Clay Family Papers (clfp) University of Kentucky Special Collections, Wickliffe-Preston Family Papers (wpfp) Mérida, Yucatán, México. Archivo General del Estado de Yucatán (agey) Centro de Apoyo a la Investigación Histórica de Yucatán (caihy)

286 · Bibliography

New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Tulane University Library, Louisiana Research Collection, John McDonogh Papers (jmp) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. University of Pennsylvania Museum Library, Berendt Collection (bec) University of Pennsylvania Museum Library, Brinton Collection (brc) University of Pennsylvania Van Pelt Library, Rare Book and Manuscript Library (vprb) Washington, DC, USA. Library of Congress, American Colonization Society Papers (acsp)

Digital Databases American Colonization Society Papers (acspo). Accessed via http://www.fold3.com. American Periodical Series Online (apso). ProQuest. Accessed via University of Pennsylvania Libraries. Centro de Apoyo a la Investigación Histórica de Yucatán (caihy). Accessed via http://www.bibliotecavirtualdeyucatan.com.mx/busq_rap.php. University of Virginia Library, Electronic Text Center (etc). Accessed via http://etext .lib.virginia.edu/subjects/liberia/samson.html.

Periodicals African Repository and Colonial Journal, Washington, DC (arcj) El Fénix: Periódico Político y Mercantil, Campeche El Museo Yucateco, Campeche La Revista Yucateca: Periódico Político y Noticioso, Mérida El Universal, Periódico Independiente, Mexico City

Books and Articles Abreu Gomez, Ermilo. “Sierra O’Reilly y la Novela.” In Un año en el hospital de San Lázaro, by Justo Sierra O’Reilly. Merida: UADY, 1997. Adelman, Jeremy. Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. Akpan, M. B. “Black Imperialism: Americo-Liberian Rule over the African Peoples of Liberia, 1841–1964.” Canadian Journal of African Studies 7, no. 2 (1973): 217–36. Allan, William. Life and Works of John McDonogh. Baltimore: Press of Isaac Friedenwald, 1886. Allen, Richard. “The Constant Demand of the French: The Mascarene Slave Trade and the Worlds of the Indian Ocean and Atlantic Ocean during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” Journal of African History 49, no. 1 (2008): 43–72. The American Colonization Society: A Register of Its Records in the Library of Congress. Manuscript Division, Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1979.

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index

Page numbers followed by f indicate illustrations. abolitionist movement, 2, 38, 53, 83, 107, 126 absolute (Hegelian), 114, 123, 125, 127–28 abstraction, 12, 34, 42, 87, 111, 129, 182, 208, 211, 218; in Hegel, 114–32; in Marx, 170; speculation and, 27–30; in Spivak, 268n25 Acalanes, 195 Africa: African American colonization of, 1–132, 229–30, 256n3; African diaspora, 31, 38, 50, 53–54, 58–59, 61–65, 73, 75–76, 113, 120, 125, 129, 245n15, 263n25; as ancestral homeland, 8, 44, 50, 53–59, 64–75, 93, 109–11, 230, 258n23; British colonization of, 7, 27, 37, 39, 58, 60–63, 147, 160, 174, 250n7, 250n15; Dutch colonization of, 250n7; French colonization of, 250n7; Northwest Africa, 135; Portuguese colonization of, 250n7; relation to Native Americans, 61–62; relation to Yucatán, 5–27, 30, 33, 133, 140–43, 148–49, 153–54, 162, 229, 231–33, 244n7; West Africa, 2–3, 5–8, 11, 15, 19, 24, 35, 37–38, 43, 48, 50, 53–54, 57–58, 60, 62–65, 76–80, 84–85, 96, 110, 233, 249n3. See also Afro-Indians; Afro-Latinos; AfroYucatecos; Pan-Africanism; return-to-Africa discourse; individual countries Africa interest period, 64–65 African Americans, 7–8, 16, 35, 38, 45–46, 59, 66, 70, 75–77, 96, 130, 230, 250n7. See also black settlers; settlers

The African Repository and Colonial Journal (newspaper), 3, 49, 70, 79, 107 Afro-diasporic studies, 6 Afro-Indians, 62 Afro-Latinos, 6 Afro-Yucatecos, 4, 15, 24, 136–37, 157–58, 217 agency, 38, 45, 47–48, 50, 130–31 Aiken, John, 48 Aké, Eusebio, 220 Alabama, 68–71; Hopewell, 71; New Hope, 71 Alida, 74–75 Amazon, 75 Amazon River, 127 American Civil War, 10, 74, 126 American Colonization Society (acs), 2. See also The African Repository and Colonial Journal American Revolution, 10 American Studies, 41 Americo-Liberians, 11, 36 analogy, 5, 9, 24, 61–62, 118, 152, 160–61, 185, 259n35 Anderson, Benedict, 165, 174, 268n8 anthropology, 9, 136, 144–45. See also ethnography; Smithsonian Institution anticolonialism, 209, 259n34 anti-Semitism, 174, 188–89 Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 69 apposition, 9–10, 27, 58, 112, 129–31, 221, 231 “Apuntes y Estudios sobre la Lengua Zoque” (Berendt), 192f, 192–99, 194f Aquinas, Thomas, 259n47

archaeology, 140, 145–46, 153, 181, 184, 191, 233–37 Archduke of Austria, 150 archives, 7, 49, 71, 139, 150, 154, 160, 198–99, 201, 207, 222, 227–28, 230–32, 234–37, 247n36, 249n81; epistolary archives, 5, 8, 10, 12–22, 25–34, 41, 45–51, 54, 57–59, 64–66, 76–77, 84, 89, 93, 97, 105, 112–13, 131, 200, 210, 221, 226, 229, 233, 251n32, 259n47 Arrighi, Giovanni, 6 Asia, 227; South Asia, 16, 22, 139, 158, 160–61, 163, 207, 234; Southeast Asia, 176. See also individual countries Atlantic Ocean, 3, 14, 20, 61, 64, 67–68, 70–72, 75, 114, 118, 133, 140, 230; Atlantic world, 10–11, 26, 58, 135–37, 146, 148, 186, 198, 203, 207, 222, 233, 244n9, 274n87; black Atlantic, 9, 17, 65, 112–13, 251n32; diasporic Atlantic, 76; racial capitalism and, 4–7, 24, 45, 63; red Atlantic, 17; revolutionary Atlantic, 69; speculation and, 27, 232; speculative Atlantic, 232; transatlantic kinships, 49, 55–56; transatlantic slavery, 2, 5–6, 16–17, 24, 47, 142, 149, 193, 245n18 Australia, 265n46 Austria, 150, 183, 264n35 Ay, Manuel Antonio, 4, 200 ayuntamientos, 172, 185, 201, 213 Baghdad, 152, 158 baile folklórico, 237 Balam, Chilam, 26, 140–54, 193, 195–97, 217, 264n31 baldíos, 136 Balibar, Étienne, 248n60 Baptists, 131–32 Barbachano, Miguel, 202, 210, 214–16 barbarism, 59, 113, 149, 156, 166, 171, 174–85, 212, 219, 220. See also “indios bárbaros” Barney, Mr., 1 Barrera, José María, 217, 220, 231 Barrera, Pantaleón: Los ministerios de Chan Santa Cruz, 187, 274n87 Barret, Don Domingo, 213 Basque (language), 189 Basque region, 189 Bassa, 2, 68

batabs, 3–4, 136, 138, 177, 193, 198, 200, 234. See also caciques Baucom, Ian, 27–29, 229 Be, Luciano, 2, 4, 7 Beadle, Irwin, 186 Belize, 136–38, 145–47, 149, 190–91, 193, 196, 210, 213, 235 Benedict, Samuel, 2 Benford, Robert D., 228 Benjamin, Sean, 258n24 Benjamin, Walter, 244n7 Bennington, Geoffrey, 204 Berendt, Karl Hermann, 151, 153–54, 181–82, 217, 222, 223f, 226, 231; “Apuntes y estudios sobre la lengua Zoque,” 192f, 192–99, 194f; “Report of Explorations in Central America,” 145–49, 191 Bible, 16, 197, 257n8; Basic Bible, 99; Darby English Bible, 99; Ecclesiastes 1:1–4, 99; Ecclesiastes 1:8, 99; Ecclesiastes 9:2, 257n10; Ecclesiastes 9:4–7, 257n10; Genesis 8:6–13, 37; King James Bible, 99; Luke 21–22, 37; Mark 1:6–13, 37; New International Version, 99–100. See also David, King; Solomon; Sons of Ham Bigsby, Shea, 252n1 black Atlantic, 9, 17, 65, 112–13, 251n32 Blackford, Abraham, 43–44, 48, 95, 109, 111 Blackford, Mary Berkeley Minor, 43, 80 Black Marxism (Robinson), 22–23, 26, 140–43, 145, 153–54, 193, 217, 263n25 blackness, 10, 26, 38, 117–18, 232 black radical tradition, 22, 31–32, 140–42, 263n25 black settlers, 1–4, 28–29, 31–32, 34–40, 41–49, 51–52, 249n3; relation to Yucatán, 5–27, 30, 33, 133, 140–43, 148–49, 153–54, 162, 229, 231–33, 244n7; returnto-Africa discourse and, 53–76; speculative freedom and, 91–132; unsettled life of, 41, 50, 54, 57–59, 85–89; views on native Liberians, 15, 24, 76–84. See also African Americans blancos, 3–4, 138, 151, 158, 166, 189, 210, 215–18. See also dzulo’ob; Españoles; Yucatecos Blanqui, Louis Auguste, 20 Blyden, Edward Wilmont, 8, 21, 53–58, 65, 75, 77, 84, 89, 93–94, 230

316 · Index

Boatswains, 68 Boieldieu, François-Adrien: Le calife de Bagdad, 152 Bolívar, Simón, 20 Bolles, David, 276n16 The Book of Chilam Balam from Chumayel, 144–45, 148, 196 Borneo, 178 Bradbury, Osgood: Mysteries of Lowell, 274n87 Brasseur de Bourbourg, Charles Étienne, 191–92 Braudel, Fernand, 6 Brazil, 6, 146, 190 Brinton, Daniel Garrison, 145, 276n16; “Memoir of Dr. Carl Herman Berendt,” 191–92 British East India Company, 37 British Navy Board, 62 Brokmeyer, Henry Conrad, 125; A Mechanic’s Diary, 126–27, 260n63 Brown, James, 56–57 Buchanan, Governor, 78, 98 Buck-Morss, Susan, 112–21, 123, 125, 129, 131, 251n32, 258n29 Buntline, Ned. See Judson, Edward Zane Carroll Burgos, Jorge, 202 Burke, William C., 74, 81 Burns, Kathryn, 163, 166 Burton, Antoinette, 247n36 Butler, Judith, 21–22, 124–25, 139, 207, 242, 259n32, 263n25 Byrd, Jodi, 246n21 caasta, 163 Cab, Juan Ascencio, 202 caciques, 4, 136, 177, 234. See also batabs Camal, Francisco, 2, 4 Can, Manuel Jesus, 210, 231 Canada, 73, 265n46 Canek, Jacinto, 209 Canon, Richard, 71–72 Canul, José María, 202, 221 Canuto Vela, José, 22, 186–87, 210, 217 capitalism, 14, 19, 37, 58, 60–62, 146, 208, 219, 221, 274n87; capitalist world-system, 6–7, 23–25, 27, 64, 205; casta capitalism, 24, 139, 148, 154–91, 193, 196, 198–99, 209, 212, 216–17, 221–22, 231, 234; racial capitalism,

4–7, 10, 16–17, 22–29, 38, 45, 63, 137–43, 148–49, 154, 158, 165, 190, 193, 198, 217, 229, 248n60, 248n65, 263n25. See also casta; class; cycle of accumulation; Fordism; hacienda system; liberalism; neoliberalism; Panic of 1847; taxes; world-economy; world-systems analysis Caplan, Karen D., 172, 207 Capuchins, 198 Caribbean, 5–6, 113–14, 141, 146, 148, 191, 219, 281n87. See also individual countries Caribbean Sea, 236 Carlist Wars, 189 Carpenter, George, 1, 3, 13 Carper, Abraham, 256n3 Carper, Adam, 256n3 Carvajal, Rafael: María, la hija del sublevado, 186 Carvajal, Sr. D. Manuel, 176 casta, 22, 138, 204, 207, 213–15, 218, 226; casta capitalism, 24, 139, 148, 154–91, 193, 196, 198–99, 209, 212, 216–17, 221–22, 231, 234; casta periodismo, 164–90; definition, 158–63; race and, 26, 139–40, 146, 148–49, 156–64, 167–71, 174, 209–11, 216–17, 220–22, 234. See also Caste War (la Guerra de Castas); class Caste War (la Guerra de Castas), 3–5, 8–20, 24, 136, 138, 140, 143–50, 153–65, 167, 170–71, 176–79, 181–89, 193–222, 226, 233–37 Catalán (language), 161 Catholicism, 5, 147, 164, 168, 182, 195–96. See also Bible; Capuchins; Franciscans; missionaries Ceasar, Samson, 21, 25–26, 50–51, 66, 95–105, 103f, 107, 109, 112, 119–20, 125, 127–29, 132, 140, 251n17, 256n3, 257n7 Cecilio Chi (Severo del Castillo), 187 Central America, 37. See also individual countries Cervera y Molina, Manuel, 202 Chan, Lorenzo, 2 Chatzantonis, Ioannis, 263n25 Chi, Cecilio, 2, 4, 7, 136, 176–77, 187, 200, 206, 209, 212, 231 China, 135; Canton, 176 Chol (language), 195

Index · 317

Christianity, 8–11, 74, 81, 99, 113, 130–31, 147, 151–53, 157, 176, 184, 196–97, 215–16, 257n8; capitalism and, 37, 58–62; limpieza de sangre and, 162–63, 188, 234. See also Baptists; Bible; Catholicism; Cruzob; Holy Spirit; Inquisition; Jesus; John; Methodists; missionaries; Noah; Presbyterians; Puritans; Sons of Ham Chuc, Apolonio, 202 citizenship, 21, 41, 45–47, 50, 69, 83–84, 131, 135, 172, 229, 231, 264n35; freedom and, 30, 56, 58–59, 76, 87, 96, 111, 170; imperial citizenship, 54; liberal citizenship, 10–11, 21–22, 25; race and, 54, 139–40, 164–65, 168–69, 207, 218, 221; religion and, 178, 188 civil rights, 45–46, 87, 95, 101, 111, 131 class, 9, 17, 59, 83, 152, 188, 199, 274n87; in Liberia, 11, 54, 86, 110; race and, 12, 136, 157, 159, 170, 177, 180. See also capitalism; casta Clay, Henry, 85 Clay, Lucy, 74–75 Clay, Mary Ann, 74–75 Clay, Sidney B., 74–75 Clegg, Claude A., III: Price of Liberty, 11, 45–46, 48, 95–96, 101, 111, 131, 257n5 Cob, Francisco, 217, 231 Cocke, John Hartwell, 71–72, 77–78 Cocke, Louisa Maxwell Holmes, 71, 80 Cocke, Philip St. George, 71 Cocke, Sally, 67, 71–72, 82 coffee industry, 145–46 Cohen, Ashley, 246n21 colonialism, 143; British colonialism, 7, 27, 37, 39, 58, 60–63, 147, 160, 174, 250n7, 250n15; colonial governmentality, 138; Dutch colonialism, 250n7; French colonialism, 7, 118, 152, 250n7; neocolonialism, 137; Portuguese colonialism, 160, 165, 174, 190, 234, 250n7; settler colonialism, 1–132, 140, 233, 245n15, 253n37, 257n13, 265n46; Spanish colonialism, 2–7, 9–10, 14, 19, 133–237; U.S. colonialism, 7, 250n15. See also American Colonization Society; anticolonialism; conquistadores; encomenderos; genocide; imperialism; manifest destiny; postcolonialism; settler colonial studies; settlers; white colonizers colonizing trick (concept), 54, 57, 244n7

The Colonizing Trick (Kazanjian), 59, 137, 244n7 colporteur, 186 The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Crosby), 144–45 Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, 37–38 comparativism, 8–9, 24 concept-metaphor, 154, 158, 163, 167, 190, 268n25 Concord Summer School, 126 Confederacy, 74, 81 conquistadores, 5, 168–69, 171, 180–81, 183 conservatism, 24–25, 145–46, 158, 165, 167–69, 172, 174, 180, 189, 274n87 Coppinger, William, 56 Corominas, Joan: Diccionario crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana, 161–62 Coronado, Raul, 269n32 Correo de los Estados-Unidos (newspaper), 174 Cortés, Hernán, 165, 169, 171–72, 179 Cortés Campos, Rocío Leticia, 165–66, 187 cosmopolitanism, 17, 136, 152, 156, 173–74, 220, 281n87 Couoh, Kin, 197 Cowan, A. M., 70–71 Crawford, George, 87–88 Creoles, 22, 26; Creole capitalism, 148–49, 156, 219, 221; Creole casta system, 158–63; Creole liberalism, 19, 135, 138–40, 147, 152–59, 154, 156–58, 164–72, 177–78, 180, 185, 188–90, 198–99, 203–4, 207–8, 211–12, 215, 217, 219, 230–31, 234; Creole periodismo, 164–90; racialization of, 137; rebellion against, 3–6, 8, 15, 18–20, 133–237 Critique of Practical Reason (Kant), 259n47 Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), 259n47 Crosby, Alfred W., 151; The Columbian Exchange, 144–45 Cruz, Juan de la, 206, 214–16, 226, 231 Cruzob, 147, 153, 206, 210, 214, 234 Cuba, 135, 137, 146 Cutright, William Bernard, 256n3 cycle of accumulation, 6–7 Danford, Andrew, 105, 109 Danish (language), 162

318 · Index

Danzig, 145 David, King, 99 Davis, Colin, 256n92 De Certeau, Michel, 14–16, 27, 247n46 deconstruction, 31 Dei, 2, 38 Delany, Martin, 65 Deleuze, Gilles, 263n25 De Man, Paul, 131, 187 democracy, 10, 46, 68, 87, 113, 230, 263n25 Derrida, Jacques, 33, 199, 228, 254n39, 260n56, 268n25 Dessalines, Jean Jacques, 20 Dewey, John, 126 d’Hondt, Jacques, 114 dialectic, 23, 29, 49, 98, 101, 112–18, 124, 128 diaspora: African diaspora, 31, 38, 50, 53–54, 58–59, 61–65, 73, 75–76, 113, 120, 125, 129, 245n15, 263n25; Afro-diasporic studies, 6 Diccionario crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana (Corominas), 161–62 Diderot, Denis, 184 Die Geheimnisse von Berlin (Thiele), 274n87 dime novels, 186, 274n84 Discovery of Guiana (Raleigh), 163, 268n24 Drake, St. Clair, 64 Du Bois, W. E. B., 64, 126, 259n34 Dutch-Germans, 104 dzulo’ob, 3, 151. See also blancos; Españoles; Yucatecos Ecárrea de Bollra, Adolfo. See Carvajal, Rafael education, 83, 93–94, 100, 126, 147, 171, 262n12; schools, 44, 71, 80, 106, 110–11, 161, 230, 237. See also kindergarten movement Edwards, Brent Hayes, 65, 263n25 El Boletín Comercial (newspaper), 173 El Coronado. See Pat, Jacinto El Fénix: Periódico Político y Mercantil (journal), 149, 155, 157, 178–79, 184–90, 267n3 Elizabeth (ship), 249n3 Ellen, 1, 3, 13 Ellis, H. W., 68–71, 76, 89, 107 Ellis McDonogh, G. R., 1–3, 7, 13, 26, 243n4 El Museo Yucateco (periodical), 133–35, 134f, 138–39, 149–50, 152, 196, 236 El Registro Yucateco (newspaper), 173, 186 El Salvador, 235

El Universal (newspaper), 167–72, 174, 180, 204 empiricism, 10, 13, 17, 30, 42, 48, 51, 87, 105, 107, 113–15, 118–20, 123, 128–29, 160, 197–99 encomenderos, 168, 209 The Encyclopaedia Logic (Hegel), 123–24 England, 59, 61, 135, 138, 176, 178, 189, 250n7; London, 62. See also Great Britain English (language), 12, 27, 99, 112, 114–15, 130, 133, 145, 160–63, 248n76 Enlightenment, 31–32, 37, 131, 151 epistemology, 28, 126, 150, 181 epistolary form, 3, 7, 12, 56, 74–75, 102, 104, 110–11, 120, 129, 139, 199, 203, 206–7, 209, 217, 251n33; epistolary archives, 5, 8, 10, 12–22, 25–34, 41, 45–51, 54, 57–59, 64–66, 76–77, 84, 89, 93, 97, 105, 112–13, 131, 200, 210, 221, 226, 229, 233, 251n32, 259n47 Equiano, Olaudah, 50, 58; The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, 60–65, 93 Erastus, 186 Espada, José Atanacio, 212, 231 Españoles, 3. See also blancos; dzulo’ob; Yucatecos ethnography, 145, 153, 155–57, 160–61, 180, 182, 235 ethnology, 191 etymology, 161–62, 167, 212 Europe, 5, 15, 84, 135, 145, 152–56, 168, 174, 183–84, 186, 188, 191, 203, 222, 235, 251n33, 274n87; European capitalism, 23, 28; European colonialism, 138, 163, 234 European 1848s, 5, 10, 12, 14, 24 The Faerie Queene (Spenser), 246n20 Fairfax, Ferdinando, 37 Fancourt, John, 212 Fanny, 1, 3, 13 Farge, Arlette, 227–28, 237 Farriss, Nancy, 218–19 Féval, Paul Henri Corentin: Les Chevaliers du Firmament, 274n87; Les Mystères de Londres, 274n87 Fischer, Sibylle, 117–18, 259n35 flashpoints, 5, 10, 12, 15–17, 33, 158, 163, 244n7 folletines, 13–14, 154, 157, 165, 174, 184, 186–90, 274n87

Index · 319

Fordism: post-Fordism, 19 formalism, 30, 120–21 Forment, Carlos, 269n36 Foucault, Michel, 20, 180, 207, 249n84, 278n47 France, 135, 158, 164, 174, 176, 178, 192, 208–9; French colonialism, 7, 118, 152, 250n7; Paris, 135, 152, 274n87. See also French Revolution Franciscans, 198, 236 Franco, Jean, 199 Frankfurt National Assembly (Vorparlament), 145 freedom, 2, 13–14, 18, 20, 27, 31, 141, 142, 170, 227–33, 237, 244n7, 253n37, 259n47, 269n43; definition, 7–8, 10; Hegel and, 29–30, 112–29; improvisation and, 31–32, 34; Liberian colonization and, 3, 5, 11, 15–17, 19, 21, 22, 25–26, 37–38, 41–60, 65–76, 84–89, 93–111, 130–32; Maya rebellion and, 4–5, 12, 17, 19, 21, 138, 140, 156, 158, 160–61, 164–67, 174, 198–99, 204, 208, 210, 214–17, 220–22. See also libertad Freemasons, 114 French (language), 186, 199, 254n39 French Revolution, 10, 208–9 Friedman, Susan Stanford, 246n27 Fuller, Henrietta, 44, 48, 105, 111 Fulton, Mr., 1 futurity, 14, 17, 22–23, 41, 44, 54, 95, 137, 154, 156–57, 164, 167, 170, 177, 179–81, 184, 189, 197, 209, 226, 231, 234, 236; freedom and, 5, 26, 56, 59, 67, 89, 116–18, 139, 142, 160, 237, 244n7; future destinies, 158, 162, 168–69, 171, 178, 188, 204, 212–21; future politics, 32, 105, 131; indeterminacy of, 124, 199, 206, 227–29; slavery and, 48, 50, 76 gender, 9, 148, 199, 218, 259n35, 263n25 genocide, 6, 23, 142 George, 131–32 George, Prince, 61–62 Georgia, 2, 55, 69; Liberty County, 56; Savannah, 55 German (language), 112, 118, 183, 186, 248n73 Germany, 83, 102, 104, 145–47, 153, 198, 231, 264n35; Dutch-Germans, 104; Jena, 112, 120 Ghana, 47, 59; Annamaboe, 59 Gilbert, 76, 87–88

Gilroy, Paul, 17, 64, 220 Goffman, Erving, 228 Gola, 2, 38, 68 Gómez, Baltazar, 202 Gordon, Julius, 49 Gotkowitz, Laura, 139, 163 Gould, Eliga H., 244n9 Great Britain, 27, 59, 136–37, 212, 274n87; British colonialism, 7, 27, 37, 39, 58, 60–63, 147, 160, 174, 176, 250n7, 250n15. See also England Grebo, 38 Guatemala, 235; Cobán, 145; Petén, 137–38, 145–48, 151–52, 191, 193, 196–98, 211, 236; Sacluk, 193 Guha, Ranajit, 207 Guiana: Carapana, 268n24; Emeria, 268n24 Gurley, Ralph R., 55–56, 67, 74, 81 Guyana, 137, 146 hacienda system, 136–37 Hager, Christopher: Word by Word, 16–17, 46–47, 49 Haiti, 37, 73, 129, 251n32; 2010 earthquake, 259n36; Léogâne, 259n36; Port-au-Prince, 259n36. See also Haitian Constitution; Haitian Revolution Haitian Constitution, 117 Haitian Revolution, 5, 10, 112–21, 244n9 Hall, Stuart, 23, 64, 248n60 Hampton, Elijah, 49 Hance, Alexander, 76–77, 82 Hanks, William F., 9, 196–97 Hantun, Salvador, 210, 231 Harney, Stefano, 19–21, 229 Harris, Sion, 78–81 Harris, William Torrey, 126 Hartman, Saidiya, 47, 50, 53, 76, 111, 131, 141, 253n26 Haselden, David S., 66, 98, 100 Hegel, G. W. F., 29–30, 51, 95, 126–27, 233, 259n34, 259n47, 260n56; Buck-Morss’s reading of, 112–21, 123, 125, 129, 251n32; Butler’s reading of, 124–25; The Encyclopaedia Logic, 123–24; Phenomenology of Spirit, 30, 108, 119–22, 124, 128; Philosophy of History, 113, 117; Science of Logic, 124. See also St. Louis Hegelians

320 · Index

hegemony, 14, 17, 20, 24–27, 140, 166 henequen industry, 137, 146, 196, 207, 219 Henry II, King, 150 Hiol, Juan José, 144 Hispanics, 20, 159–60, 162, 219 Holt, Thomas, 18, 23, 29, 77, 163, 234 The Holy Family, 274n87 Holy Spirit, 37 Honduras, 235 Hooper, A. B., 75, 107 Hooper, Thomas C., 75 Hopkins, Samuel, 37, 60, 64 Horland, Wesley, 66 Huberich, Charles Henry, 249n1 Huma, 55 humanities, 227–29 Humboldt, Alexander von, 127 Husserl, Edmund, 263n25 Iberia, 6, 16, 157, 234. See also individual countries Illinois, 137 Imán, Don Santiago, 209, 212–13 immigration, 2, 25, 41, 45–46, 49, 57, 81–82, 83–84, 95–97, 101, 125 imperialism, 8, 41, 56, 76, 80–81, 94, 145, 153, 158, 160–61, 163; anti-imperialism, 50, 57–60, 64, 68, 93; British empire, 7, 60, 63, 176; French empire, 7; imperial citizenship, 54; intellectual empire, 8, 53–58, 77, 84, 93; Portuguese empire, 165, 190; Spanish empire, 164–66, 203; U.S. empire, 7. See also colonialism; manifest destiny improvisation, 19–21, 31–34, 44, 59, 76, 87, 97–98, 101, 105, 109, 112, 131–32, 139–40, 148, 152, 198–99, 203–4, 209, 211–12, 216, 219–20, 222, 237, 263n25 indenture, 245n18 India, 37, 38; Goa, 190 Indiana University: Liberian Collections Project, 249n1 Indian Court (Tribunal de Indios/Naturales), 209 Indian Ocean, 7, 245n18 Indians, 2, 6–7, 22, 61–62, 146–47, 149, 151–52, 164, 177, 191, 198, 202, 210–12, 219, 221–22, 231; colonialism and, 9, 14–15, 133, 138, 143, 153, 167–72, 178–83, 195–97, 203,

213–17; racialization of, 4, 26, 148, 155–56, 158–62, 166, 176, 188, 193, 209, 211, 220. See also indigenismo; indigenous people; indios; “indios bárbaros”; Native Americans; native peoples; vanishing Indian trope; individual communities and nations Indian War. See Caste War (la Guerra de Castas) indigenismo, 237 indigenous people, 17, 246n21; colonization and, 14, 151–52, 167–69, 183, 195, 197, 203, 219–20, 231; indigenous citizenship, 139, 207; indigenous Liberians, 11, 38, 41, 43, 79; indigenous republics, 168, 172, 184–85, 200–201; racialization of, 2, 4, 15, 22, 26, 136, 138–40, 143, 148, 153, 155–56, 158–62, 166, 170–72, 176, 184, 188, 193, 199, 207–22; relation to blackness, 6–7, 10, 62, 217–18, 232; uprisings by, 15, 149, 155, 157, 184–85. See also Indians; indigenismo; indios; “indios bárbaros”; Native Americans; native peoples; red Atlantic; vanishing Indian trope; individual communities and nations indios, 9, 138, 183, 184, 202, 210; indigenous republics, 168, 172, 184–85, 200–201; repúblicas de indios, 168, 172, 184, 185, 201. See also Indians; indigenismo; indigenous people; native peoples; vanishing Indian trope; individual communities and nations “indios bárbaros,” 4, 135–36, 138, 147, 149, 156, 158, 166, 171–85, 188–89, 215, 219, 231 Inquisition, 164, 188 The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, 60–65, 93 International Harvester Company, 137 Ireland, 83, 174 Islam, 152–53, 162–63, 234 Islam, Najnin, 245n18 Islandic (language), 162 Israel, 1 Italian (language), 186 Italy, 135 Iturralde, Jose María, 202 Jamaica, 61, 135 James, William, 126 Jameson, Fredric, 128

Index · 321

Jefferson, Thomas, 37, 73; Notes on the State of Virginia, 143 Jenny, 1, 3, 13 Jesus Christ, 37 John the Baptist, 37 Johnston, Harry Hamilton, 39, 44, 51. See also Liberia: national seal Jones, Peter, 71 Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 126, 260n60 Judaism, 1, 99, 157, 162–63, 170, 178, 186, 188–89, 234. See also anti-Semitism Judson, Edward Zane Carroll (Ned Buntline): The Mysteries and Miseries of New York, 274n87 Jupiter, 95, 256n3 Kampucheans, 176 Kancuen River, 198 Kant, Immanuel, 121, 123; Critique of Practical Reason, 259n47; Critique of Pure Reason, 259n47 Kentucky, 66, 68; Bourbon County, 74; Lexington, 83, 85 Kentucky Colonization Society, 70, 85 Ki-Ing, 176 Kilby, Randall, 49, 69, 104, 107 Kilson, Martin, 64 kindergarten movement, 126 Kingdom, John, 138, 209–10 Kissi, 2 Kroo (language), 81 Kru, 2, 38 Ku, Francisco, 202 Kwass, Michael, 208–9, 213 Lacandons, 191, 193, 195–96, 198 La hija del judío (Sierra O’Reilly), 157, 186–90, 234 La Revista Yucateca, 135–36, 147, 172–78, 274n87 Lascars, 38 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 148 Latin America, 5–6, 10, 16, 135, 156–57, 160–61, 207; independence from Spain, 10. See also individual countries Latin American studies, 6 Latrobe, J. H. B., 76 la zona Maya, 232–36

Le calife de Bagdad, 152 Lee, Mary C., 81 Lee, Robert E., 74 Lefebvre, Henri, 19 Le Journal de Débats, 274n87 Les Chevaliers du Firmament (Féval), 274n87 Les Mystères de Londres (Féval), 274n87 Les Mystères de Paris (Sue), 274n87 lettered city, 199 Leventhal, Richard M., 233–34, 237 Lewis, Adam, 256n3 liberalism, 4, 46, 96, 145–46, 161, 173, 179, 184, 201; capitalism and, 14, 16–17, 19, 24, 138, 154, 156, 158, 165–66, 174, 178, 190, 211, 222, 234; centrist liberalism, 22, 25–26, 137, 158, 185, 198, 229, 248n65; Creole liberalism, 19, 135, 138–40, 147, 152–59, 164–72, 177–78, 180, 185, 188–90, 198–99, 203–4, 207–8, 211–12, 215, 217, 219, 230–31, 234; insurgent liberalism, 139–40, 199, 267n60; liberal citizenship, 10–11. See also neoliberalism Liberia (country), 135, 139, 141, 230, 253n37, 256n3, 257n13, 258n23; Bassa Cove, 66; Cape Palmas, 76; Clay-Ashland, 83, 85; constitutional convention, 2, 18, 35–36, 39, 41, 131; currency, 39f, 40f; Grand Cape Mount, 91; Greenville, 55–56; independence of, 2–3, 5, 18, 21, 37, 50, 53–54, 65, 83, 131, 250n5; Liberian civil war, 11; Little Bassa, 78; Monrovia, 2–3, 12, 25–26, 42–43, 49, 53, 55, 57, 66, 71, 73–74, 80, 88, 95, 97–98, 104–5, 107; Montserrado County, 84; national seal, 35–39, 36f, 39f, 41, 44, 51, 129–31; relation to Yucatán, 5–27, 30, 33, 133, 140–43, 148–49, 153–54, 162, 229, 231–33, 244n7; Robertsport, 91–93; settler colonialism in, 1–132, 259n47; Settra Kroo, 1, 3, 81; stamps, 40f; St. Paul’s River, 44. See also Americo-Liberians Liberia (ship), 79 Liberia College, 8, 53–55 Liberian Civil War, 11 Liberian Senate, 84 Liberian Supreme Court, 57 Liberia Packet (ship), 72, 75 libertad, 4, 19, 133, 138–39, 154, 166, 175, 193, 198, 204, 206–7, 210, 231. See also freedom Library of Congress, 49, 93

322 · Index

Liebenow, J. Gus, 249n3 limpieza de sangre, 162, 188, 234 Linebaugh, Peter, 17, 69, 220 literary studies, 5–6, 27 Loomba, Ania, 246n22 Los Indios de Yucatán (Sierra O’Reilly), 155–58, 166, 178–84 Los ministerios de Chan Santa Cruz (Barrera), 187, 274n87 Louisiana, 105; New Orleans, 41, 74, 107, 186, 243n4 L’Ouverture, Toussaint, 20 Lucretius, 150, 236; On the Nature of Things, 135, 261n2 Lugenbeel, J. W., 249n1 Lukács, Georg, 28 Lydia, 102–4, 103f Mahmood, Saba, 47, 50 Malabou, Catherine, 124, 260n56 Maler, Teobert, 145, 264n35 Mallon, Florencia E., 16–17, 139, 163, 199, 267n60 Manchés, 195 Manes, 2 Manichean binaries, 136, 157, 161, 166 manifest destiny, 126–27 María, la hija del sublevado (Carvajal), 186 Mariposa, 107 maroon communities, 146 Marshall, George, 73 Marshall, James, 73–74 Martínez, María Elena, 162, 234 Marx, Karl, 28–29; The Holy Family, 274n87; “On the Jewish Question,” 170 Marxism, 172, 208, 268n25; Black Marxism, 22–23, 26, 140–44, 153–54, 193, 217, 263n25 Maryland: Baltimore, 96 Maryland Colonization Society, 73, 79 Matilda, 131–32 Maya (language), 3, 9, 12–13, 144–45, 151–52, 154, 163, 193, 195–99, 204, 237, 262n10, 279n59 Maya (people): racialization of, 12, 16, 22, 24, 147–49, 156–57, 158; rebellion against Creoles, 3–10, 12, 14–15, 17–22, 133–237. See also la zona Maya Maya codices, 264n31

McDonogh, John, 1, 22 McKay, 91, 92f, 97, 131, 230 McLain, Rev. William, 55–56, 68–70, 80, 91, 92f, 94 A Mechanic’s Diary (Brokmeyer), 126–27, 260n63 Melamud, Jodi, 248n65 “Memoir of Dr. Carl Herman Berendt” (Brinton), 191–92 Méndez, Don Santiago, 213 Méndez, Modesto, 133, 138–39, 211, 262n12 Menéndez, Carlos R., 269n34 Mercado, Renee Zavaleta, 207 Mesoamerica, 192 mestizaje, 156, 237 mestizos, 6, 137, 145, 156–58, 164–65, 181, 203, 207. See also mestizaje Methodists, 43, 68 methodology, 5–7, 9, 27, 32, 113, 126, 179; methodology of the oppressed, 263n25. See also ethnography Mex, Dionisio, 202 Mexico, 6, 16, 19, 135–37, 142–43, 146–49, 156, 163–64, 170, 173–74, 176, 181, 185–86, 190, 203, 208, 212–13, 236–37, 264n35; Cancún, 219; Chiapas, 145, 191–93, 195–96, 198, 235; Felipe Carillo Puerto, 235f; independence, 138, 180; Mexico City, 167, 180, 188, 269n36; Telá (Lal-Ka), 4, 232f, 233–34, 236; Tuxtla Gutierrez, 192–93; Veracruz, 176. See also U.S.-Mexico War middle passage, 8, 53, 129, 130 milpa, 148, 220–21, 231 Minerva, 112, 118 Minor, James Cephas, 73–74, 80 Minor, Mary, 73 Miskito Indians, 61–62 missionaries, 3, 37, 59–60, 65, 68, 77, 88, 98, 144, 195, 197, 256n3 Mississippi, 67 Mitchell (Clarke), Henry M., 55 Moctezuma, 169, 171 modernity, 21, 140, 188 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis, 210, 221; My Thoughts, 204–5; The Spirit of the Laws, 205–6; Treatise on Duty, 204 Moore, James, 66 Moreno, D. Pablo, 152

Index · 323

Moten, Fred, 19–20, 21, 31–32, 131, 229, 244n7, 252n1, 263n25 Mughals, 204–5 multitude, 19–20, 22, 149, 263n25 The Mysteries and Miseries of New York, 274n87 Mysteries of Lowell (Bradbury), 274n87 My Thoughts, 204–5

On the Nature of Things (Lucretius), 135, 261n2 ontology, 28, 125, 141 Orenoqueponi, 268n24 Orientalism, 152, 205 Orinco River, 127 Ortiz, Fernando, 167 overreading, 33–34, 226, 233, 249n84

Nancy, Jean-Luc, 122, 248n75 Napoleon Bonaparte, 20 nationalism, 6–7, 23, 38, 85; black nationalism, 118; Liberian nationalism, 15; Yucatán nationalism, 165, 173 Native Americans, 62 native peoples, 17, 23–24, 68; native Africans, 3–6, 8, 11, 15, 35–36, 50, 54, 57–62, 70, 74, 76–88, 96, 127, 230; native Yucatecos, 142–44, 151, 153, 193, 209, 212, 217. See also Indians; indigenismo; indigenous people; indios; “indios bárbaros”; vanishing Indian trope; individual communities and nations Negri, Antonio, 263n25 neoliberalism, 219, 236 Netherlands, 104; Dutch colonialism, 250n7 New Orleans Commercial Bulletin, 258n19 newspapers, 3, 13–14, 49, 135, 139, 163, 165, 174, 186, 249n1, 269n36. See also individual papers New York, 1, 145, 174, 186, 191, 198 Nicholas, Erasmus, 71–72 Nicholas, James, 71 Nicholas, Julia, 71 Noah, 37 Noel, Pa, 1, 3, 13 nonspeculative thinking, 120–22. See also speculation North America, 5, 37, 135. See also individual countries Notes on the State of Virginia, 143 Nova Scotia, 250n7

paleonomy, 33 Pan-Africanism, 64 Panic of 1847, 137 Pasion River, 198 Pat, Jacinto, 2, 4, 7, 133, 138–39, 178, 186, 200, 209–13, 231, 232f, 234, 236; El Coronado title, 176–77 Pat, José Isaac, 217, 231 Patch, Robert W., 203, 218–19 Patterson, Orlando, 141 Peabody Museum, 145 Pec, Venancio, 212, 231 Pech, Paulino, 220 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 126 Peninsular War, 164 Pennsylvania: Philadelphia, 71 Peres, Lauriano, 210, 231 periodicals, 13, 133–36, 138, 147, 149–52, 154–90, 204, 267n3, 268n8, 269n36, 274n87. See also folletines; newspapers; individual publications periodismo, 154, 156–57, 159, 164–90, 199. See also folletines Peter, King, 150 Pezzeys, 68 phantasmagoria, 28–29, 248n73 phenomenology, 31, 233. See also Husserl, Edmund Phenomenology of Spirit (Hegel), 30, 108, 119–22, 124, 128 philanthropy, 2, 37–38, 54, 59, 83, 179 Phillip V, King, 150 Philosophy of History (Hegel), 113, 117 Pitt-Rivers, Julian, 160–63 Pius IX, Pope, 176 poiesis, 14–15, 27, 140, 143, 217 Poland, 83 Polynesia, 160–61 Poot, Crescencio, 2, 4, 7 Poot, Juan Pío, 202, 221

oceanic studies, 7 O’Connell, Daniel, 174 Old Norse (language), 162 Oliver, Don Manuel, 175–76 “On being brought from africa to america,” 9–10, 129–31 “On the Jewish Question,” 170

324 · Index

Portugal, 161, 163, 174; Portuguese colonialism, 160, 165, 174, 190, 234, 250n7 Portuguese (language), 161 postcolonialism, 16, 138–39 practices of everyday life, 14, 18, 26–27 Pren, José Esquivel, 269n34 Presbyterian Mission at Settra Kroo, 1 Presbyterians, 1, 54, 68 Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Liberia (Clegg), 11, 45–46, 48, 95–96, 101, 111, 131, 257n5 Priest, James M., 56–57 Profetas Yucatecos, 149–50, 152, 196 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, 20 Prussia, 125 Public Advertiser (London newspaper), 62–63 Puga, Marcelino, 210, 231 Puritans, 95 Putum (language), 195 Quamine, John, 59 Quaque, Philip, 60–61, 65 quotidian globalities, 16–18, 21, 25–26, 32, 82, 139, 164, 198, 229, 237 race, 9, 18, 59–62, 77, 82, 109, 117–18, 151, 178, 181, 183, 189, 231, 237, 256n3; casta and, 26, 139–40, 146, 148–49, 156–64, 167–71, 174, 209–11, 216–17, 220–22, 234; citizenship and, 54, 139–40, 164–65, 168–69, 207, 218, 221; class and, 12, 136, 157, 159, 170, 177, 180, 208, 234; gender and, 259n35; racial capitalism, 4–7, 10, 16–17, 22–29, 38, 45, 63, 137–43, 148–49, 154, 158, 165, 190, 193, 198, 217, 229, 248n60, 248n65, 263n25; racialization from above, 139, 163; racialization from below, 139, 163, 199, 267n60; racialization of indigenous peoples, 2, 4, 15, 22, 26, 136, 138–40, 143, 148, 153, 155–56, 158–62, 166, 170–72, 176, 184, 188, 193, 199, 207–22; racial slavery, 23, 44, 130. See also blackness; casta; indigenismo; limpieza de sangre; mestizaje; raza; whiteness; individual racialized groups racial geography, 137, 145, 147, 196 racism, 3, 7, 23–24, 63, 85, 113, 130, 139, 248n60, 248n65, 259n34. See also anti-Semitism; limpieza de sangre

Rajón, Antonio, 200 Raleigh, Walter: Discovery of Guiana, 163, 268n24 Rama, Ángel, 166–67, 199 raza, 139, 158, 162, 168–71, 177, 178, 180, 183. See also casta; limpieza de sangre; mestizaje; race Real Academia Española, 199 Reconquista, 234 Re Cruz, Alicia, 219 red Atlantic, 17 Rediker, Marcus, 17, 69, 220 Red Sea, 1 reducción, 184, 195–98, 201, 203, 206, 208–9, 222, 231, 235 reification, 28–29 religion, 6, 10, 83, 129–30, 144, 170, 230; colonialism and, 2–3, 16, 22, 37, 44, 55, 60–61, 63, 71, 77, 79–82, 98–102, 106–11, 133, 136, 151, 165, 168, 171, 177, 182, 188, 198, 202, 209–13, 215, 217, 219, 231, 236; as resistance, 147, 149, 197, 210, 214. See also Baptists; Bible; Capuchins; Catholicism; Christianity; Cruzob; David, King; Franciscans; Holy Spirit; Inquisition; Jesus Christ; John the Baptist; Judaism; Methodists; missionaries; Noah; Presbyterians; Profetas Yucatecos; Puritans; Solomon; Sons of Ham Renaissance, 183 repartimiento systems, 203 “Report of Explorations in Central America,” 145–49, 191 resistance, 84, 86, 89, 124, 131, 219, 247n46, 263n25; to colonization, 11, 71, 77–78, 191, 195; definition, 17, 19, 21–22; everyday resistance, 16, 18; to racial capitalism, 139–40, 147–48, 158, 166, 172, 176–77, 180, 184, 209, 234; slave revolts, 137 return-to-Africa discourse, 55–58, 64–66, 72–77, 93 Reynolds, George W. M.: The Mysteries of London, 274n87 Rhys, Edward, 138, 210 Richmond Enquirer, 256n3 Rivero, Sr., 175 Roberts, Joseph Jenkins, 93 Robinson, Cedric, 6, 24–25, 29, 32, 77, 137, 148, 151, 195–97, 217; Black Marxism, 22–23, 26, 140–45, 153–54, 193, 217, 263n25

Index · 325

Rose, Gillian, 28, 121 Ross, Isaac, 67, 253n37 Ross, Peter, 67–68 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 174, 228, 278n41 Rugeley, Terry, 11–12, 20, 159–60, 162–63, 193, 213, 262n10, 279n58, 279n62 ruinenlust, 183–84, 235 ruins, 173, 181–84, 219, 231–36, 232f, 233–34 Russell, Alfred F., 83–88, 140, 256n98 Russell, Mary Owen Todd, 83 Saldaña-Portillo, María Josefina, 247n56, 262n7, 265n38, 265n39, 276n10 Sancho IV, King, 150 Sandoval, Chela, 263n25 Scandinavia, 158, 161–62 Science of Logic (Hegel), 124 Scott, David, 118–19 Scott, James C., 16–17, 247n46 Scott, Joan, 259n35 Sel, Apolinar, 217, 231 Sellers-García, Sylvia, 203 Senegambia, 61, 65 servicios personales, 179, 203 settler colonialism, 1–132, 140, 233, 245n15, 253n37, 257n13, 265n46. See also settlers settler colonial studies, 6 settlers, 1–4, 28–29, 31–32, 34–40, 41–49, 51–52, 249n3; relation to Yucatán, 5–27, 30, 33, 133, 140–43, 148–49, 153–54, 162, 229, 231–33, 244n7; return-to-Africa discourse and, 53–76; speculative freedom and, 91–132; unsettled life of, 41, 50, 54, 57–59, 85–89; views on native Liberians, 15, 24, 76–84 Severo del Castillo, General: Cecilio Chi, 187 sexual violence, 110, 258n25 Shepperson, George, 64–65, 263n25 Sibley, Josiah, 81 Sierra Leone, 58, 60–65, 93, 250n7, 250n15 Sierra Leone Company, 37, 60 Sierra O’Reilly, Justo, 135, 138, 149–54, 173, 177, 185, 196–97, 215, 217, 219, 231, 235–36; La hija del judío, 157, 186–90, 234; Los Indios de Yucatán, 155–58, 166, 178–84; Un año en el hospital de San Lazaro, 186 Sinthia, 87–88

Skipwith, Diana, 67, 80, 82 Skipwith, Felicia, 71 Skipwith, Lucy Nicholas, 72 Skipwith, Lydia, 71 Skipwith, Martha, 71 Skipwith, Matilda, 71–73, 89 Skipwith, Napoleon, 71 Skipwith, Nash, 71 Skipwith, Peyton, 66–67, 71–72, 77–81 slavery, 3, 7, 8, 10–11, 15, 18, 23, 30, 37, 63, 137, 141–42, 183, 196, 219, 250n7, 256n3; afterlife of slavery, 47–48, 50–51, 55, 131; futurity and, 48, 50, 76; Hegel and, 112–29; racial slavery, 23, 44, 130; relation to Liberian colonization, 19, 21–22, 25, 35, 38, 41–45, 48–50, 53–60, 64, 66–76, 78–79, 82–83, 85–89, 94–99, 104–11, 130–32, 230, 253n37, 258n19; sexual violence and, 110, 258n25; slave revolts, 137; slave ships, 27–28; transatlantic slavery, 2, 5–6, 16–17, 24, 47, 142, 149, 193, 245n18. See also abolitionist movement; Middle Passage Smith, Nancy Ann, 21–22, 48, 50, 69, 95, 105, 110, 112, 131–32, 140 Smith, Solomon P., 104 Smithsonian Institution, 145; National Anthropological Archives, 222 Snider, Denton, 126 Snow, David A., 228 social contract, 174 social death, 141 socialism, 24–25, 263n25, 274n87 Solomon, 98–99 Sons of Ham, 55–56 South Africa, 265n46 South America, 37. See also Amazon River; Caribbean; Orinco River; individual countries South Carolina: Charleston, 96 sovereignty, 6, 41, 54, 164, 170–71, 176, 204, 210, 250n15 Spain: Cádiz, 164, 168; Castile, 158, 162, 188–89; Cataluña, 189; Latin American independence from, 10, 19, 138, 163, 177, 180; Madrid, 274n87; Spanish colonialism, 2–7, 9–10, 14, 19, 133–237. See also conquistadores; Creoles; Spanish Constitution of 1812

326 · Index

Spanish (language), 3–4, 7, 9, 12–13, 136, 139, 145, 154, 160–63, 165, 186, 199, 201, 204 Spanish Constitution of 1812, 138, 164, 174, 179, 269n32 speculation, 13–14, 17–18, 48, 50–51, 56–60, 74–75, 83, 87–89, 154, 158, 198–200, 207, 217, 226, 233, 249n81, 263n25; freedom and, 7–8, 10, 26–34, 41–43, 94–99, 102, 104–5, 111–14, 138–40, 166, 229, 231, 237; Hegel and, 118–29, 251n32, 259n47, 260n56. See also Journal of Speculative Philosophy; nonspeculative thinking speculative Atlantic, 232 Spenser, Edmund: The Faerie Queene, 246n20 Spillers, Hortense J., 263n25 The Spirit of the Laws, 205–6 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 227–28, 268n25 Stephens, John Lloyd, 181–83 Sterdivant, Diana, 71–72 Sterdivant, Leander, 72 Sterdivant, Robert Leander, 71 Sterdivant, Rose, 71–72 Sterdivant, William, 71 Stewart, H. B., 54–57, 94 St. George Bay Company, 37 St. Louis Hegelians, 125–29 St. Louis Philosophical Society, 126 St. Thomas, 53 subalterns, 17–18, 22, 139, 150, 153, 166, 207, 220, 230, 232, 234, 247n47, 281n87 subaltern studies, 16 Subim River, 198 Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, 7 Sue, Eugène: Les Mystères de Paris, 274n87 sugar industry, 3, 19, 136–38, 146, 148, 164, 193, 195–96, 207, 219, 262n6 supplementarity, 31, 33, 51, 114, 196, 222, 227–29, 233 Swedish (language), 162 talking cross movement, 210. See also Cruzob Tavarès, Pierre-Franklin, 114 taxes, 4, 13, 17, 152, 200, 203; racialization of, 2, 15, 22, 136, 138, 140, 199, 207–22, 211 Taylor, Christopher J., 247n47, 262n6, 281n87 teatro popular, 237 Tennessee, 68

The Mysteries of London, 274n87 Thiele, F.: Die Geheimnisse von Berlin, 274n87 Thomson, Sinclair, 163, 207 Thornton, Jim, 1, 3, 13 Thornton, John, 37, 59–61 Tillinghast, Samuel, 75 tourism, 12, 219, 235 transversals, 5–34, 140, 142, 231, 244n7, 246n20, 246n21 Treatise on Duty, 204–5 Trebarra, Napoleon. See Barrera, Pantaleón Trinidad, 146 Tucker, George, 37 Turrisa, José. See Sierra O’Reilly, Justo Tyler-McGraw, Marie, 11 Tzib, Manuel, 2, 4, 7 Uc, Couoh, 197, 226, 231 Uc, José (father), 198 Uc, José Sabino, 191–93, 192f, 195–99, 222, 223f, 224f, 225f, 226, 231 Uc, Menche, 197 Uc de los Santos, Jacinto. See Canek, Jacinto Uh, Pantaleón, 217, 231 Un año en el hospital de San Lazaro (Sierra O’Reilly), 186 undercommons, 20, 22 United States, 11, 20, 25, 89, 111, 137, 145, 176, 183, 198, 248n65; education policy, 126; indigeneity in, 246n21; Liberian colonization and, 2–3, 5, 15, 19, 35–38, 41–42, 44, 50, 54–58, 65–68, 66, 70–76, 79, 82, 84, 88, 91, 94–106, 110, 229–30, 253n37; race in, 160–61; serial fiction in, 186; U.S. colonialism, 7, 143, 250n15; U.S. scholars, 6, 125, 129, 159, 206, 237. See also American Civil War; American Revolution; U.S.-Mexico War; individual states University of Breslau, 145 University of Pennsylvania, 233; Museum Library, 145, 276n16, 282n12 U.S. Congress, 137; U.S. House of Representatives, 85 U.S.-Mexico War, 137, 174, 176, 185–86 Vai, 2 Valerio Rosado, Sr. Lic. D., 176

Index · 327

vanishing Indian trope, 142–43, 217 Vasquez, Juliana, 192f, 194f, 198–99, 226, 231 Veys, 68 Virginia, 11, 68, 97, 101, 143, 251n17; Buchannon, 66, 98–102, 104, 257n7; Fredericksburg, 43, 73–74; Jamestown, 71; Lewis County, 98, 104, 256n3, 257n7; Norfolk, 43, 75, 93, 95, 107; Richmond, 43 Von Friedrichsthal, Emanuel, 183 Vos, Jan de, 193

Wilson, James W., 70–71 Wilson, Lydia, 104 Woodson, Carter, 64 Word by Word: Emancipation and the Act of Writing (Hager), 16–17, 46–47, 49 world-economy, 6 world-systems analysis, 6–7, 25 Wright, Amy E., 187 Wright, Michelle M., 122 Wynter, Sylvia, 263n25

Wacarima, 268n24 Walden (Thoreau), 126 Walker, David, 54 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 6, 22, 24–26, 137, 158, 248n60 Watson, James, 70–71 Watson, William, 70–71 Watts McDonogh, Washington, 3, 7, 26, 42–44, 48, 81, 95, 105, 109, 111, 132 Weaver, Jace, 17, 220 Wells, D., 1 Westfall, Henry F., 50, 95, 97, 100, 102–5, 103f, 120, 125, 256n3, 258n16 Westfall, Johannes, 258n16 Westfall, John H., 104, 258n16 West Indies, 63, 137, 163 West Virginia, 95, 257n7 Wheatley, Phillis, 50, 58–61, 63–65, 93; “On being brought from africa to america,” 9–10, 129–31 white colonizers: of Liberia, 2, 5, 36, 37–38, 57–58, 60, 63–64, 70, 78, 94–95, 109–10; in Sierra Leone, 61–62, 65 Whitehead, Alfred North, 259n32 whiteness, 2, 24, 45, 50, 73, 82, 87, 107, 112, 115, 117, 137, 141–43, 188, 230–31, 245n15, 256n3, 265n46; in Caste War, 4, 6, 12, 15, 22, 26, 138, 146–47, 151, 153, 155–56, 160–61, 166, 169–71, 178, 180–81, 184, 195–96, 209–21. See also blancos; dzulo’ob; Españoles; limpieza de sangre; Yucatecos Wickliffe, Mary, 83, 256n98 Wickliffe, Robert, 83, 85, 88, 256n98 Wilkes, Mary, 1 Wilkeson, Samuel, 79 Williams, Mr., 72

Xiues, 149 Yam, Calixto, 202, 217, 231 Yam, Juan Justo, 217, 231 Yamma, Bristol, 59 Yaquis, 137 Yiddish (language), 186 Young, Thomas, 131–32 Yucatán Peninsula, 268n8; Balamná, 214–15; Campeche, 20, 133, 149, 155, 165, 178, 236; Cenil, 209, 214; Chan Santa Cruz, 147, 234, 236–37; Chichén, 214; Chichimilá, 4, 200; Chochola, 202; Chumayel, 144–45, 148, 196; Espita, 201–2; Haas, 22, 26, 217, 220–21, 226, 231, 236; Hecelchakan, 202; Ichmul, 178; Izamal, 201; Lacandon, 152, 193; Maxcanú, 202; Maya rebellion, 3–10, 12, 14–15, 17–22, 30, 133–237; Mérida, 20, 135, 144, 150, 152, 157, 165, 172, 186–88, 197–98, 200, 202–3, 206, 213–14, 226, 231, 236, 275n87; Motul, 201; Pencuyut, 157; Peto, 178, 201–2; relation to Liberia, 5–27, 30, 33, 133, 140–43, 148–49, 153–54, 162, 229, 231–33, 244n7; Saban, 178; San José, 202; San Pedro Buenavista, 145–46, 149, 193; Sotuta, 201; Tekax, 144, 157, 178, 201; Tekom, 202; Téla, 4, 232f, 233–34, 236; Tepich, 4, 20, 136, 177–78, 212; Ticul, 201; Ticum, 157; Tiholop, 178; Tihosuco, 4, 175, 177–78, 186, 200, 214–15, 236–37; Tixcacalcupul, 178, 202, 221; Tixcuitun, 157; Tizimín, 144, 157, 178, 201–2; Uayma, 220; Uxmal, 183; Valladolid, 175, 177–78, 200–201, 221, 236; Verapaz, 191; Yaxcabá, 178. See also individual countries Yucatec Maya (language), 3, 9, 12–13, 139,

328 · Index

144–45, 151–52, 154, 163, 193, 195–99, 204, 237, 262n10, 279n59 Yucatecos, 3–4, 142–44, 151, 153, 156, 171, 182, 193, 209, 212, 217; Afro-Yucatecos, 4, 15, 24, 136–37, 157–58, 217; Profetas Yucatecos, 149–50, 152, 196. See also blancos; dzulo’ob; Españoles; Profetas Yucatecos

Zamir, Shamoon, 126 Zong, 27–28 Zulu, Shaka, 20 Zúñiga, 150–52

Index · 329