Re-Imagining Colonial Latin American History through Trans-Pacific Spaces

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

A welcome wave of Pacific-oriented Latin American scholarship has done much to balance and contextualize the field’s traditional Atlantic focus. This enhanced visibility of Asian peoples and material in colonial documents bestows the Manila Galleons with an importance from ferrying bodies to marking the first truly global economic exchanges. This panel uses the frame of trans-Pacific history and scholarship to re-approach colonial Latin America and challenge preconceived assumptions of a solely triadic web of relations linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The historical memory of mestizaje has forgotten Asia. To address this absence, the panel seeks to present papers focused on cultural and intellectual influences, centered around issues of colonial identity, race-making, and cultural and culinary transmission. Far more than the sum of their cargoes, the Manila Galleons fundamentally reshaped New Spanish coloniality from how its subjects saw themselves to its material consumption. Trans-Pacific scholarship has only recently begun to explore the long-lasting implications of these historical phenomena, so this panel will also function as a futurespective for the field.

Sub Track

• Latin America and the Pacific Rim

Session Organizer

• Diego J Luis, Brown University

Chair

• Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Brown University

Discussant

• Tatiana Seijas, Rutgers University

Individual Presentations

• "Tan diferente, dañosa y contraria": Race-Making in the Philippines and Repercussions in the Americas - Diego J Luis, Brown University

• The Criollo and the Western Religious Itinerary to Asia - Nino Vallen, Freie Universität Berlin

• Biscuit, Pork, and Ceviche: Trans-Pacific Supply and Culinary Exchanges on the Manila Galleon (1565-1815) - Rubén Carrillo