Jacinto Ventura de Molina y los caminos de la escritura negra en el Río de la Plata

Negrito a lo que tu amo te manda (Little black boy, [always] obey your master). As a child, Jacinto Ventura de Molina learned this maxim from his mother. Several decades later, he recalled it as the moral compass that guided his extraordinary career. Jacinto grew up as a free person of color in the household of Joseph de Molina, a Spanish officer assigned to the frontiers of the viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in today’s Uruguay. Both of his parents were Africans and served in de Molina’s household, his father as a slave and his mother as a freedwoman. After the simultaneous deaths of his father and his patron in 1782, Jacinto moved to Buenos Aires, where he set up shop as a cobbler. In 1799, Jacinto, already married to a freedwoman, moved to Montevideo, where he established his definitive residence. During the revolution of independence, Molina embraced the royalist cause and supported the Portuguese and Brazilian occupations. Molina died in independent Uruguay at an unknown date after 1837.Like many artisans of African descent in the port cities of the Río de la Plata, Jacinto Molina was an active member of black militias, religious cofradías, and black associations. Molina, however, distinguished himself from his fellow black artisans, and fellow cobblers of any race, for that matter, in being an avid reader and writer who left hundreds of handwritten pages dealing with a variety of topics ranging from literature, current events, history, and religion to his own life. His manuscripts also include a history of Montevideo’s Hospital de la Caridad and petitions to the pope, the kings of Spain and Portugal, the emperor of Brazil, and the Uruguayan authorities. Many of his letters to the local authorities dealt with petitions in the name of poor montevideanos, white and black, and in favor of black associations. Molina signs those petitions using the titles of licenciado y escribano de cámara, notary and attorney, which he claims he obtained during the Portuguese and Brazilian occupation of Montevideo. Though it is not clear whether Molina ever received such diplomas, he seems to have been considered as such by the local courts, which conferred upon him the right to receive the title of letrado, a man of letters.By editing this careful selection of the unpublished writings of Jacinto Molina, William Acree and Alex Borucki have made a praiseworthy contribution to the study of slavery and of people of African descent in the Americas during the independence era. This publication is an unexpected addition to the extremely short list of written testimonies left by people of African descent in Latin America during those years, which, as the editors point out, is much more limited in number and scope than the slave narratives produced in the English-speaking world. If this publication attains the circulation it deserves, scholars interested in the daily life of slaves and freed people in Uruguay, the Río de la Plata, and Latin America will have access to an invaluable source that until now was known to only a handful of historians.An introductory section, including a prologue by George Reid Andrews and essays by each of the two editors, provides a helpful road map to the study of Jacinto Molina’s writings. Borucki, a historian, provides a brief but insightful reconstruction of the historical context in which Molina lived, with special attention to the dimension of slavery as well as the social practices of people of color in Buenos Aires and Montevideo during the late colonial and early independent period. Acree, a literary critic, centers on the process of production of Molina’s writings within the framework of Angel Rama’s ciudad letrada, the lettered city. Acree shows that Molina adopted the formulae and writing conventions that made him a letrado and participated in larger discussions on the nature of the state and the law in the context of rapid political change. Molina seemed aware of the challenges and frustrations entailed by his condition of being a black letrado, but such awareness did not diminish his ambition to be part of the small circle of owners of the written word. Nevertheless, he used his unusual skills in the legal defense of black associations as well as individuals of African descent. Acree’s essay is a good example of the analytical possibilities offered by the writings of Molina. Surely, other scholars will find this extraordinary published source an inspiration for new lines of inquiry and analysis

Art · Cartography · Geography · Humanities · Portuguese · Residence · Sociology · Argentine historical studies · Demography · Philosophy

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