Abstract
This article explores the local histories and ecological knowledge embedded within a Spanish print of enslaved, Afro-descendant boatmen charting a wooden vessel up the Chagres River across the Isthmus of Panamá. Produced for a 1748 travelogue by the Spanish scientists Antonio de Ulloa and Jorge Juan, the image reflects a preoccupation with tropical ecologies, where enslaved persons are incidental. Drawing from recent scholarship by Marixa Lasso, Tiffany Lethabo King, Katherine McKittrick, and Kevin Dawson, I argue that the image makes visible how enslaved and free Afro-descendants developed a distinct cosmopolitan culture connected to intimate ecological knowledge of the river. By focusing critical attention away from the print’s Spanish manufacture to the racial ecologies of the Chagres, I aim to restore art historical visibility to eighteenth-century Panamá and Central America, a region routinely excised from studies of colonial Latin American art.
Highlights
U.S actors), significance of the port an untenable location, the Spanish crown closed the ferias permanently in the Chagres River as a cultural space in the late colonial period—and the centrality of Mercantilist histories exacerbate absence of art of historical blackness therein—has emerged as an this important avenue inquiry.investigation, suggesting that the closing of the Portobelo ferias ushered over a century of “decline”
For Panamá, In this essay, I contend that this 1748 print functions beyond its Spanish manufacture until the construction of the world’s first transcontinental railway across the isthmus in to reveal colonial Panamá, and the Chagres River in particular, as a historical space that
After repeated attacks and sieges at Portobelo made the port an untenable location, the Spanish crown closed the ferias permanently in 1739. Mercantilist histories exacerbate this absence of art historical investigation, suggesting that the closing of the Portobelo ferias ushered over a century of “decline” for Panamá, until the construction of the world’s first transcontinental railway across the isthmus in
Summary
Often enslaved and Afro-descendant, bogueros played a crucial role in the flow of silver, gold, and other precious goods and materials from the Pacific and Caribbean coasts of Latin America to the rest of the world As they rowed along the river, they dispersed other enslaved people throughout Latin America (O’Toole 2020). Images were central to the book’s didactic function, expanding scientific accounts into engaging narratives by visualizing colonial cities, cultural customs, and landscapes of eighteenth-century Latin America. Upon their return to Spain, Ulloa and Juan supervised the careful creation of some fortyeight illustrations by Spanish artists including Juan Bernabé Palomino, Vicente de la Fuente, Juan Moreno, Carlos Casanova, Juan Pablo Minguet, Juan Fernández de la Peña, and Juan.
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