Remembering the Slave Rebellion of Coro

Historical Memory and Politics in Venezuela

Bibliographic Data

ID2741052
AuthorsKrisna Ruette-Orihuela (0000-0002-2562-9249, Villanova University, corresponding author), Cristina Soriano (0000-0002-6879-4236, Villanova University)
Year2016
Volume63
Issue2
Pages327-350
Publication date2016-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnohistory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0014-1801 • E-ISSN: 1527-5477
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00141801-3455331
OpenAlexW2329439657
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited24

This article analyzes the construction and circulation of historical memories of the Coro slave rebellion in Venezuela between 1795 and 2014. We show how historical interpreters have inscribed divergent representations of this rebellion in documents, landscapes, historiographies, monuments, and music. In a political climate defined by ethnoracial and political tensions, colonial elites saw in the rebellion the republican ideology and racial violence of the Haitian Revolution. Fearing the persistence of social divisions and political resentment, nineteenth-century republican leaders all but effaced the rebellion from the nation's historical memory. This episode was finally recovered by historians at the beginning of the twentieth century, and since the 1950s teachers, guerrilla members, and social activists have linked the rebellion to political discourses of ethnoracial struggle, cultural syncretism, bodily suffering, and social exclusion. Recently, communal organizations in the region have begun to connect it to contemporary anti-imperialist and socialist projects. We argue that historical memories have mobilized political identities at different times and imagined regional genealogies of struggle against imperialism and political oppression

Archaeology · Colonialism · Ideology · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Cuban History and Society · Gender Studies · History · History and Politics in Latin America · Law · Politics and Society in Latin America

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