Black Catholic Worlds: Religious Geographies of Eighteenth-Century Afro-Colombia (Afro-Latin America)

By: Bethan Fisk

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Synopsis: Centring the lived experiences of enslaved and free people of colour, Black Catholic Worlds illustrates how geographies and mobilities – between continents, oceans, and region – were at the heart of the formation and circulation of religious cultures by people of African descent in the face of racialisation and slavery. This book examines black Catholicism in different sites – towns, mines, haciendas, rochelas, and maroon communities – across New Granada, and frames African-descended religions in the region as “interstitial religions.” People of African descent engaged in religious practice and knowledge production in the interstices, in liminal places and spaces that were physical sites but also figurative openings, in a society shaped by slavery. Bringing together fleeting moments from colonial archives, Fisk traces black religious knowledge production and sacramental practice just as gold, mined by enslaved people, again began to flow from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic world.