Translating the Frontier: Imperial Logistics, Maroon Wars, and Counterinsurgent Settlement along the Roads of Colonial Mexico

In 1618, colonial Mexican officials established a city called Córdoba along the new leg of the camino real (royal highway) in order to secure the flow of silver from attacks by what they called “negros Zimarrones” (Maroon blacks). Strikingly, these officials described the city as both a “frontera” (frontier) and a “presidio” (garrisoned frontier fort). This paper reads the new city as a translation of a set of technologies from colonial Mexico’s northern frontier into the core of the colony by way of the road. It explores how the military and pacification strategies developed to fight the semi-nomadic Indigenous groups in the north were given new life decades later in the colonial state’s war on African maroons. In part, these strategies involved attempts to recruit nearby Indigenous populations into settlement life and counterinsurgency while undermining possible solidarities with maroon communities.