Black Blood Brothers: Confraternities and Social Mobility for Afro-Mexicans

Abstract

Thanks to a tremendous amount of tedious research, Nicole von Germeten has shed light on a number of complex factors related to the social movement of Afro-Mexicans during the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Using records of confraternities in Mexico City, Valladolid, and Parral along with wills and baptismal data from the same cities, she has traced the colonial identity of Africans and their Afro-Mexican descendants through some three centuries, from slavery to freedom and from black to mulatto.According to von Germeten, from the sixteenth century onward, religious brotherhoods played a central role in the lives of many African slaves and black Mexicans who sought a means by which they could shore up their social and cultural links to the Hispanic world. In the words of the author, “Confraternities played a strong role in this long-term upward mobility by providing an acceptable way for members to take part in public rituals and celebration of local life in New Spain” (p. xi). They not only existed to demonstrate the economic gains of former slaves, but also to serve as hospitals and burial societies.From the outset, royal officials encouraged slaves to join black brotherhoods because they believed that these confraternities would provide a more attractive model than rebellion against Hispanic culture. Their assumption proved correct for most Afro-Mexicans. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, a significant number of black Mexicans achieved increasing degrees of prosperity. For that reason, by the eighteenth century Afro-Mexicans no longer considered slavery central to their self-identification. Joining confraternities gave them one means by which they could demonstrate that they were no longer the poorest members of society. Indeed, confraternities offered an opportunity to manifest their prosperity publicly. As they sought financial independence and prominence, they organized confraternities that offered opportunities for social advancement.Von Germeten also treats in depth the role of women in organizing confraternities. During the seventeenth century, African women provided charity to other slaves in the form of health care and burial. According to von Germeten’s reading of baptism records, many of these women were single mothers who drew in alms for the confraternities. During the seventeenth century, women held leadership roles in many of the confraternities, but by the eighteenth century, men eclipsed women as leaders. As von Germeten states, “The decline in women’s leadership positions in confraternities is an important part of a trend in which men of African descent adopted patriarchal values whenever possible” (p. 70).Students of slavery and race relations in Latin America will want to read this book. As Stephen Angell and Anthony Pinn note in their foreword to the book, “Giving primary attention to African involvement in confraternal organizations, Nicole von Germeten provides significant insights into the complexities of African identity in colonial Mexico” (p. viiii). She has shown that racial patterns differed from region to region in Mexico by using extensive examples from three diverse cities. For instance, in Mexico City and Vallalodid Afro-Mexicans moved from slavery into urban employment and better social positions, whereas Parral offered few opportunities for social advance. In all three cities confraternities played an important role in the assimilation of Afro-Mexicans into the Hispanic culture.The importance of von Germeten’s book stems in large part from her proof that Mexico has an African heritage and that Afro-Mexicans, in turn, adopted Hispanic culture and values. Like Ben Vinson, who used colored militias to demonstrate how institutions provided the means by which social mobility occurred in colonial Mexico, von Germeten successfully uses the confraternities to establish similar patterns of social mobility for the Afro-Mexicans she studied. As a result of this approach, she has established without a doubt that Afro-Mexicans played active roles during the colonial era.