I am a historian of slavery and the African Diaspora in colonial Latin America, including mainland Spanish America, Cuba, and Brazil.  At Amherst I have taught courses on many other aspects of Latin American history as well.  I have published articles on topics including the abolition of slavery in Colombia, African ethnicity in the Diaspora, and manumission in colonial Nicaragua.  My first book, Africans into Creoles: Slavery, Ethnicity, and Identity in Colonial Costa Rica (2014), is a social history of enslaved Africans and their descendants in Costa Rica from 1600 to 1750.  I am currently at work on a book about a sadistic master and his enslaved victims in sixteenth-century Honduras.

Education:

Ph.D. History, University of Texas at Austin.  
M.A.  Latin American Studies, Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin.  
B.A.  Metropolitan State College of Denver.  Major: History; Minor: African American Studies.

Publications:

Book

2014     Africans into Creoles: Slavery, Ethnicity, and Identity in Colonial Costa Rica.  Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

2021     "Diego García's Long and Winding Road to Freedom: A Microcosm of Slavery in Costa Rica, 1705-1744."  Slavery & Abolition, April 2021 (see below)

2018     "Deathbed and Other Whispered Promises: Masters, Slaves, and Contested Manumission in Colonial Nicaragua.”  Colonial Latin American Review 27, no. 4 (2018): 452-468.

2013     "La Negrita, Queen of the Ticos: The Black Roots of Costa Rica’s Patron Saint.”  The Americas 69, no. 3 (January 2013): 323-355.

2010     "Mexico and Central America.”  In Oxford Handbook of Slavery in the Americas, edited by Robert Paquette and Mark Smith, pp. 46-67.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 
2010     "Cacao and Slavery in Matina, Costa Rica, 1650-1750.”  In Blacks and Blackness in Central America: Between Race and Place, edited by Lowell Gudmundson and Justin Wolfe, pp. 57-91.  Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

2005     “Africans in a Colony of Creoles: The Yoruba in Colonial Costa Rica.”  In The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World, edited by Toyin Falola and Matt D. Childs, pp. 130-156.  Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
 
2002     "Slave Trade Nomenclature and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Evidence from Early Eighteenth-Century Costa Rica.”  Slavery & Abolition 23, no. 3 (December 2002): 73-92.

2001     "Reconciling Freedom with the Rights of Property: Slave Emancipation in Colombia, 1821-1852, with Special Reference to La Plata.”  Journal of Negro History 86, no. 3 (summer 2001): 203-227.

I teach the following courses:

Black History of Spanish America, 1503-1886 (fall 2021)

Research Seminar in the Atlantic Slave Trade (spring 2022)

Introduction to Black Studies (spring 2022)

Slavery and Racism in the History of Brazil (fall 2022)

Introduction to Latin America: Conquest, Colonization, and Rebellion

Marxism and Revolution in Twentieth-Century Latin America

History of Central America

The Inquisition in Iberia and Latin America

Latin America and the United States

Struggles for Democracy in Modern Latin America, 1820 to the Present

The Cuban Revolution, 1959-2009