Sovereign Joy: Afro-Mexican Kings and Queens, 1539-1640

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025 | Kislak Center at the University of Miami | First Floor

• Doors Open and Reception begins | 6:00 p.m.
• Program | 6:30 p.m.

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Miguel Valerio, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Maryland

Daniel Arbino, Ph.D.
Jay I. Kislak Chair and Curator, University of Miami

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Join us in the Kislak Center at the University of Miami for the inaugural presentation of the Kislak Talks series. The event will feature an engaging conversation with Dr. Miguel Valerio and Dr. Daniel Arbino about Valerio’s recent publication, “Sovereign Joy: Afro-Mexican Kings and Queens, 1539-1640.”
“Sovereign Joy” explores the performance of festive Black kings and queens among Afro-Mexicans between 1539 and 1640. This fascinating study illustrates how the first African and Afro-Creole people in colonial Mexico transformed their ancestral culture into a shared Afro-Mexican identity. It particularly focuses on how participation in public festivals expressed their culture and subjectivities, while also redefining their colonial condition and social standing. By analyzing this previously understudied aspect of Afro-Mexican Catholic confraternities in both literary texts and visual culture, Dr. Valerio reveals the deeply ambivalent and contradictory meanings behind public processions and festivities, which often re-inscribed structures of race and hierarchy. Were these festivities markers of Catholic subjecthood, and what types of corporate structures did they create to project standing and respectability?
“Sovereign Joy” examines many of these possibilities and, in the process, highlights the central role of Africans and their descendants in colonial culture. Through performance, Afro-Mexicans affirmed their existence: the sovereignty of joy and the joy of sovereignty.
The presentation will conclude with a question and answer session with the audience.
This event is presented in partnership with the .

Host or Publisher University of Miami Libraries