The Moment of Fact Creation: Antonio of the Mina Nation and the 1683 Raid on Veracruz

This paper focuses on the 1684 deposition of a fourteen-year-old African boy before the governor of Santo Domingo. Antonio, who identified himself and siblings as people “of the Mina nation,” was expected to provide information on a devastating pirate attack that took place a year before in the port of Veracruz (in modern-day Mexico). Antonio was allegedly one of a handful of enslaved refugees from the raid who escaped French and English buccaneers to claim asylum in the Spanish Caribbean. During the 1680s, Spanish asylum laws incentivized the flight of enslaved Africans and their descendants away from lands claimed by French colonizers. This was especially true along the contested border between French Saint-Domingue and Spanish Santo Domingo. Drawing on material from the Archivo General de Indias and the Archivo Histórico del Arzobispado de Santo Domingo, this case illustrates the complex scenarios that people of African narrated when presenting their life stories and possible futures to governors and other officials. Antonio’s deposition opens a fascinating window into “the moment of fact creation” (following Michel-Rolph Trouillot) and the mechanisms through which Black refugees crafted alternate, unverifiable archival pasts. In so doing, Antonio’s words and those of other asylum seekers also expose the fragile foundations of the Spanish colonial archive.