Visual Histories of the Spanish Caribben in the Age of the Enlightenment

Luis J. Peguero, a Spanish creole cattle rancher from Hispaniola, authored Historia de la Conquista de la Isla Española (1762) to teach his farmhands the history of the island _ which he believed had not been thoroughly treated in works penned by peninsulares and chroniclers unfamiliar to the land. In the two-volume manuscript, he culled from the histories of Oviedo, Solís, and Herrera, including cutouts and drawings of images found therein.

After the Seven-Year’s war (1763) which transformed England into a global superpower, Spanish colonial subjects re-imagined their position as crown subjects, and creole-authored “Enlightened” historical essays proliferated. Variously royalist or separatist in their views, the works all rectified the historical record in some way. In turn, the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) inspired trans-colonial/national re-imaginings for Spanish afro-creoles, such as José Antonio Aponte’s “book of paintings” (c.1812). Aponte was a black carpenter and militia man from colonial Cuba who created a compendium of images allegedly used to teach a history of black consciousness and incite insurrection.

Analyzing Peguero’s and Aponte’s vernacular manuscripts in juxtaposition highlights how two very different Spanish colonial subjects contested and relayed histories of their communities in the largely illiterate Atlantic Caribbean. The analysis expands discussions about print culture and the circulation and reception of printed images in the Caribbean during Bourbon rule.