“Crude Demographic and Cultural Profiles of Central Veracruz' Slave Community in a Broader Interpretative Context”

Abstract

Mainly based on census, notarial, and parish records, this studv has two parts. Part one outlines a crude demographic profile of the slave population of African ancestry in the colonial provinces/districts of Córdoba, Jalapa, and Orizaba, Veracruz, from about 1580 to 1790. It focuses on such characteristics as population size, place of origin (ethnicity), racial and gender identification, age distribution, familial status, type of living setting (commercial, agricultural, estate/urban household, single family residence), and the like.Part two is more speculative in nature. It explores some implied and probable socio-economic consequences of the area's shifting slave population profile within the context of issues like: African cultural transfer and persistence v. creolization: the intersection of social constructs (race and ethnicitv) and social stratification; Atlantic v. Veracruz developmental dynamics, and slave familial and comrnunity formation. It also treats related economic developments such as slaves’ changing rural and urban labor functions, their varying opportunity for vertical economic mobility, and in so far as the data permits, it compares the evolving economic roles and responsibilities of men and women within slave households.