Quando la apartó el alcalde dixo dexeme Vmd Sr compe con esta perra yndia que mi marido le quitó el anaco negrera!

Fuente citado: ANHQ Fondo Especial, caja 1, vol. 3, #142 (4-x-1643), f. 8iv.

Lane, Kris. "Africans and Natives in the Mines of Spanish America." Restall, Matthew, editor, Beyond Black and Red: African-Native Relations in Colonial Latin America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2005.

By now the Professor Matthew Restall Revolutionary Gang has smashed through their PC enemies' defenses, acquired even more allies from all across the American university political-philosophical spectrum and are even now joyously running amok in their PC enemies' rear!

Don't believe it? Then get a load of the steamy passage cited above, as though it came right out of some high octane Venezuelan novela from years back, like, say, Esa muchacha con los ojos café .

As Lane opens her article, which is chapter 6 of the book, we read:

"In 1643 word reached Quito, modern capital of Ecuador, of a knife fight between two women in the main church of Santa María del Puerto, a small gold-mining camp now called Barbacoas, Colombia. Apparently Juana de la Cruz, a gold mine owner's wife, had attacked an indigenous or mestiza woman named Bárbara Pérez, slashing her across the face with a knife and calling her a variety of names, all beginning with puta ("whore").

"The scuffle, which took place in full view of many witnesses, including a horrified priest and several slaves, was apparently over charges of bona fide prostitution. Doña Juana exclaimed to an alcalde, or town official, who tried to break up the fight: Allow me, Your Mercy, Señor, to settle up with this Indian bitch who let my husband take her skirt off, the little slave trader!

"Various witnesses claimed that they had heard doña Juana's denunciations of Bárbara Pérez at other times."

Boy! And howdy! Paragraph after paragraph. All very fascinating and utterly believable.

Nor is that all, as we read even in Professor Matthew's own Introduction to this same book, which he heads Black Slaves, Red Paint.

"In 1796 a militia unit of 115 free black soldiers arrived in their new home in Yucatan. All had been recruited by and fought for the losing Spanish army in the war over Haiti and Santo Domingo. They had initially been sent to Cuba, but the governor there was unconvinced of their loyalties and ordered them to nearby Yucatan. There the colonial authorites were equally suspicious of the veterans, who were not only black, but most spoke no Spanish. They were therefore settled near the northeast coast of the peninsula, far from the Spanish centers of Mérida and Campeche but close to the colony's vulnerable Caribbean shores where they could be called upon to aid in the defense of the colony.

"Their settlement was named San Fernando de los Negros and was situated in the very center of the ruined ancient Maya city of Ake, dubbed San Fernando Ake after the Spanish Conquest. The original soldier-settlers of 1796 brought their military ranks with them, but over the decades this order fragmented as upstarts and new arrivals claimed military ranks too. The original settlers had been born in New York, Jamaica, and Santo Domingo, as well as African locations such as Congo, Guinea and Senegal [emphasis added]."

In Chapter One, Black Soldiers, Native Soldiers, the joint authors Ben Vinson II and Matthew Restall likewise start out with a bang:

"In 1650, a strong-willed man with vast military experience in the wars of Europe was appointed to the post of governor of Costa Rica. Don Juan Fenández de Salinas y de la Cerda faced a challenging situation. For decades, this sparsely populated colonial holding, which was one of the last regions of Central America to be settled by the Spanish, was plagued with menacing internal disturbances by rebellious indigenous groups. Operating out of the eastern regions along the province's Atlantic coastline were two native groups of particular concern, the Talamanca and the Votos. The new governor's solution was a simple and effective one, original to Costa Rica but tried and true elsewhere in the Spanish colonies. The rebellious natives would be subdued not by the Spaniards, but by soldiers of African descent."

Yes indeedy! Good writing, plus accurate historical reconstruction. Or at least as accurate as is possible under the circumstances.

Believe it. The so-called Professor Matthew Restall Revolutionary Gang's way of doing academic business really rocks! Big time!

Check it out...