Sunday, January 11, 2026: 9:40 AM
Monroe Room (Palmer House Hilton)
Beatriz Carolina Peña, University of Notre Dame
My presentation will tell the stories of Venezuelan-born Joseph Antonio Fiallo and Cuban-born Alejandro Joseph de la Torre as part of the collective known as “Spanish Negroes,” a name given in the British colonies of North America to Spanish-speaking Caribbean men captured by English privateers and sold into slavery in the eighteenth century. Through archival and historical newspaper research, I will piece together the protagonists' stories and several other micro-histories to examine the historical phenomenon of the enslavement of Spanish men of indigenous and African descent in New York City and its surrounding regions. I argue that the wars and commercial rivalries between England and Spain, the intense privateering activity in the Greater Caribbean, and the exposure of non-white sailors in the West Indies created a new wave of involuntary diaspora. African-born, Afro-descendants, and Amerindians from various parts of the Spanish American empire ended up enslaved in places under British jurisdiction, in most cases never returning to the places they called home.
This research lies at the intersection of ethnicity and slavery in colonial North America, focusing on imperial warfare and privateering, the capture and enslavement of Spanish American sailors, their classification as “prize negroes,” and their quest for freedom through legal means. One of my focuses is how the extraordinary efforts of some to regain their status as free men in colonial New York are linked to the arrival of Englishman William Kempe as Attorney General for the Province of New York in 1752. Some of the questions I seek to answer are: 1) how the emergence of pro-manumission positions in favor of “Spanish Negroes” was possible in such a highly prejudiced colonial context, and 2) what counter-arguments were available to counter the legalized label of “prize negroes” imposed by Judge Lewis Morris of the Court of Vice-Admiralty?
