Beyond Babel In the seventeenth-century, black linguistic interpreters and spiritual intermediariesplayedkeyrolesintheproductionofwritingsaboutblack menandwomen.FocusingonPeruandthesoutherncontinentalCarib- bean, Beyond Babel uncovers long-ignored or lost archival materials describingtheexperiencesofAfricansandtheirdescendantsinthetrans- atlantic slave trade and the colonial societies where they arrived. Brewer-García’s analysis of these materials shows that black intermedi- aries bridged divisions among the populations implicated in the slave trade, exerting influence over colonial Spanish American writings and emergingracialhierarchiesintheAtlanticworld.Thetranslatedportray- als of blackness composed in collaboration with these intermediaries stood in stark contrast to the pejorative stereotypes common in literary andlegaltextsoftheperiod.Thisbookreconstructsthecontextofthose translations and traces the contours of the notions of blackness they created,whichwerecharacterizedbyphysicalbeautyandspiritualvirtue. Larissa Brewer-García isAssistant Professorof Latin American Litera- tureattheUniversityofChicago. Afro-Latin America Serieseditors GeorgeReidAndrews,UniversityofPittsburgh AlejandrodelaFuente,HarvardUniversity Thisseriesreflectsthecomingofageofthenew,multidisciplinaryfieldofAfro-Latin AmericanStudies,whichcentersonthehistories,cultures,andexperiencesofpeopleof AfricandescentinLatinAmerica.Theseriesaimstoshowcasescholarshipproducedby different disciplines, including history, political science, sociology, ethnomusicology, anthropology, religious studies, art, law, and cultural studies. It covers the full tem- poralspanoftheAfricanDiasporainLatinAmerica,fromtheearlycolonialperiodto thepresentandincludescontinentalLatinAmerica,theCaribbean,andotherkeyareas intheregionwhereAfricansandtheirdescendantshavemadeasignificantimpact. A full list of titles published in the series can be found at: www.cambridge.org/afro- latin-america Beyond Babel Translations of Blackness in Colonial Peru and New Granada LARISSA BREWER-GARCÍA UniversityofChicago UniversityPrintingHouse,Cambridge28,UnitedKingdom OneLibertyPlaza,20thFloor,NewYork,10006,USA 477WilliamstownRoad,PortMelbourne,3207,Australia 314–321,3rdFloor,Plot3,SplendorForum,JasolaDistrictCentre, NewDelhi–110025,India 79AnsonRoad,#06–04/06,Singapore079906 CambridgeUniversityPressispartoftheUniversityofCambridge. ItfurtherstheUniversity’smissionbydisseminatingknowledgeinthepursuitof education,learning,andresearchatthehighestinternationallevelsofexcellence. www.cambridge.org Informationonthistitle:www.cambridge.org/9781108493000 :10.1017/9781108632416 ©LarissaBrewer-García2020 Thispublicationisincopyright.Subjecttostatutoryexception andtotheprovisionsofrelevantcollectivelicensingagreements, noreproductionofanypartmaytakeplacewithoutthewritten permissionofCambridgeUniversityPress. Firstpublished2020 PrintedintheUnitedKingdombyTJInternationalLtd.PadstowCornwall AcataloguerecordforthispublicationisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary. 978-1-108-49300-0Hardback CambridgeUniversityPresshasnoresponsibilityforthepersistenceoraccuracyof URLsforexternalorthird-partyinternetwebsitesreferredtointhispublication anddoesnotguaranteethatanycontentonsuchwebsitesis,orwillremain, accurateorappropriate. Para La Boquilla, Cartagena de Indias y Sam Contents List of Figures pageix Acknowledgments xi Note on Transcriptions and Translations xv Introduction: Linguistic and Spiritual Mediations inthe Earlier Black Atlantic 1 1 Black Types between Renaissance Humanism and Iberian CounterReformation Theology 34 2 The Transatlantic Slave Trade and Spanish American Missionary Translation Policy 74 3 The Mediations of Black Interpreters in Colonial Cartagena de Indias 116 4 Conversionand theMakingof Blacknessin Colonial Cartagena de Indias 164 5 Salvation andtheMakingof Blacknessin Colonial Lima: Úrsula de Jesús 207 Coda: Negros literarios 247 Appendixes 251 Bibliography 269 Index 299 vii