4. Sterling Brown, The Negro in American Fiction, 1937, Arno Press, 1969, p. 13. Some scholars understood the story to be about slavery yet argued that it upheld, or was trapped in, racial assumptions. See Sidney Kaplan, “Herman Melville and the American National Sin: The Meaning of ‘Benito Cereno,’” Journal of Negro History 57 (1957): 12–27. Andrew Delbanco, “Melville in the ’80s,” American Literary History 4 (Winter 1992): 709–25, describes post-Vietnam criticism of Melville. See also Marvin Fisher, Going Under: Melville’s Short Fiction and the American 1850s, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977. For Sterling Brown’s influence, see Anthony Appiah, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds. Africana: Arts and Letters: An A–Z Reference of Writers, Musicians and Artists of the African American Experience, Philadelphia: Running Press, 2004, p. 114; “Sterling A. Brown, 87, Poet and Educator, is Dead,” New York Times, January 17, 1989.
5. D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, 1923, New York: Penguin, 1990, p. 153. For a description of the fleshy, squint-eyed “whiteness” on display in Delano’s portrait, see Max Putzel, “The Source and the Symbols of Melville’s ‘Benito Cereno,’” American Literature 34 (May 1962): 196.
6. Lewis Mumford, Herman Melville: A Study of His Life and Vision, New York: Harcourt, 1962 [1929]; p. 162; Percy Holmes Boynton, More Contemporary Americans, 1926, Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1967, p. 42.
7. Moby-Dick, pp. 993–1001.
8. According to Merton M. Sealts, Melville’s Reading, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, p. 160, Melville consulted the following volume, now found in Harvard’s Houghton Library: Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, with an Introductory Discourse concerning Taste, and Several Other Additions, Philadelphia, printed for D. Johnson, Portland, by J. Watts, 1806. Quotations are found on pp. 219, 221, 223, 227–28.
9. THE SKIN TRADE
1. Andrews, Afro-Argentines, p. 29; Archivo General de la Nación, Acuerdos del Extinguido Cabildo de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires: Kraft, 1925, p. 212.
2. For the Susan and Louisiana, see AGN (Buenos Aires) Sala IX “Comercio y padrones de esclavos, 1777–1808.”
3. For examples of branding marks, see Olga Portuondo Zúñiga, Entre esclvos y libres de Cuba colonial, Santiago, Cuba: Editorial Oriente, 2003, pp. 35–43. For the decree, see Salmoral, Regulación, part 1, p. 147. For ongoing use of the brand, see Johnson, Workshop of Revolution, p. 38.
4. AGN (Lima), notary record, Emeterio Andrés Valenciano, no. 72b, f. 689; AGN (Lima), notary record, Francisco Munarris, no. 449, f. 29. See also the discussion in Kris E. Lane, Quito 1599: City and Colony in Transition, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002, p. 65; Alejandro de la Fuente, Havana and the Atlantic in the Sixteenth Century, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008, p. 149.
5. AGN (Buenos Aires), notary record, registro 6, 1803 (Inocencio Agrelo), ff. 244–46; Documentos del archivo de Belgrano, vol. 2, Buenos Aires: Coni Hermanos, 1913, p. 334.
6. Dirección General de Estadística, Registro estadístico de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, vol. 11, Buenos Aires: Dirección General de Estadística, 1867, p. 6; Studer, La trata, p. 202. Federico Gualberto Garrell, La Gduana: Su origin, su evolución, Buenos Aires: Editorial I. A. R. A., 1967, p. 121.
7. John Horace Parry, The Spanish Seaborne Empire, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, p. 308, writes that the “first large-scale saladeros, salting beef for export, were established at Buenos Aires about 1776.”
8. Household Words: A Weekly Journal, January 25, 1851.
9. See Francisco de Solano, Esclavitud y derechos humanos: La lucha por la libertad del negro en el siglo XIX, ed. Agustín Guimerá Ravina, Madrid: CSIC, 1990, p. 629; José Pedro Barrán and Benjamín Nahum, Historia rural del Uruguay moderno: 1851–1885, 2 vols., Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, 1967; Alex Borucki, Karla Chagas, and Natalia Stalla, Esclavitud y trabajo: Un estudio sobre los afrodescendientes en la frontera uruguaya (1835–1855), Montevideo: Pulmón Ediciones, 2004, pp. 18–22; Andrews, Afro-Argentines, p. 31; Alfredo Montoya, Historia de los saladeros argentinos, Buenos Aires: Editorial Raigal, 1956, p. 22. For a firsthand description of how slavery spurred the growth of meat salting in Río de la Plata, see the lengthy testimony of the slave trader José Ramón Milá de la Roca, who claimed to have “perfected” the salting process; AGI (Seville), Buenos Aires, 483 (“Testimonio de Ramón Milá de la Roca,” May 29, 1807).
10. Jonathan Brown, A Brief History of Argentina, New York: Facts on File, 2003, p. 111.
11. Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, La Argentina en el año 1855, Buenos Aires: Americana, 1936, p. 131.
12. Lin Widmann, Twigs of a Tree: A Family Tale, Bloomington: AuthorHouse, 2012, p. 79.
13. AGI, Buenos Aires, 588, Expedientes de Consulados y Comercio, 1804–06 (“Carta del virrey del Río de la Plata a su Majestad”); AGI, Gobierno, Indiferente 2826, ff. 776–89; Lucía Sala de Tourón, Nelson de la Torre, and Julio C. Rodríguez, Estructura económico-social de la colonia, Montevideo: Ediciones Pueblos Unidos, 1967, p. 30. See the “slavery collection” of the New-York Historical Society for Rhode Island slavers doing such business: letter from Thomas White to Messrs. Gardner and Dean, March 17, 1806, series II: Gardner and Dean; letter from Samuel Chase to Messrs. Vernon and Gardner, August 4, 1798, series I: Samuel and William Vernon; unsigned, undated account record of trade, Slavery Collection, [1798?], series I: Samuel and William Vernon; Messrs. Vernon Gardner & Co. owners of ship Ascensión in account current with Samuel Chace, November 17, 1798, series I: Samuel and William Vernon; and Account of Sales of the Ascensión’s Cargo of Slaves…, March 24, 1798, series I: Samuel and William Vernon.
14. For Milá de la Roca’s failure as a slaver, see AGI (Seville), Buenos Aires, 483, “Testimonio José Ramón Milá de la Roca”; Arturo Ariel Bentancur, El Puerto Colonial de Montevideo: Guerras y apertura comercial, Montevideo: Universidad de la Republica, 1997, pp. 255–60. For Romero’s success, see AGI (Seville), Buenos Aires, 592, “Expedientos sobre permiso para la introducción de negros, 1798–1805”; AGN (Buenos Aires), División Colonia, Sección Gobierno, Tribunales, legajo 94, expediente 17, IX-36-7-3 (“Autos sobre la participación de Tomás Antonio Romero en el contrabando”); La revista de Buenos Aires 18 (1869): 177; AGI (Seville), Gobierno, Indiferente 2826, ff. 369–423; AGN (Buenos Aires), Navíos, Topografía, 10-4-7 (“Valor de los frutos extraídas de cuenta de don Tomás Antonio Romero como producto de esclavatura”); Borucki, “Slave Trade,” p. 99; Jeremy Adelman, Republic of Capital: Buenos Aires and the Legal Transformation of the Atlantic World, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999, pp. 44, 74; Eduardo R. Saguier, Genealogía de la Tragedia Argentina (1600–1900), vol. 1, “La cultura como espacio de lucha,” available at http://www.er-saguier.org/obras/gta/indice.php accessed July 26, 2011; Germán O. E. Tjarks, El Consulado de Buenos Aires y sus proyecciones en la historia del Río de la Plata, vol. 2, Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 1962, p. 569; Susan Migden Socolow, The Bureaucrats of Buenos Aires, 1769–1810: Amor al Real Servicio, Durham: Duke University Press, 1987, pp. 236–41; Sigfrido Augusto Radaelli, Memorias de los Virreyes del Río de la Plata, Buenos Aires: Editorial Bajel, 1945, p. 393; Studer, La trata, p. 288; AGI (Seville), Buenos Aires, 592, 1798 (“Testimonio de expediente promovido por Don Tomás Antonio Romero”); Berenice Jacobs, “The Mary Ann, an Illicit Adventure,” Hispanic American Historical Review 37 (May 1957): 200–12; John Brown Carter Library, Brown and Ives Papers, Sub-Series L: Schooner Eliza, and Sub-Series FF: Ship Mary Ann. For shortage of currency, see David Rock, Argentina, 1516–1987, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985, p. 71.
15. For Aranda’s debt and his involvement with the Mendoza merchant guild, see Saguier, Genealogía de la Tragedia Argentina, especially vol. 2, “Derrumbe del orden imperial-absolutista y crisis del estado colonial (Río de la Plata-siglo XVIII),” and appendix B-XI. For Aranda�
��s previous slave purchases, see the document dated April 18, 1801, in AGN (Buenos Aires) Sala IX “Comercio y padrones de esclavos, 1777–1808.”
10. FALLING MAN
1. Jean de Milleret, Entrevistas con Jorge Luis Borges, Caracas: Monte Avila Editores, 1971, p. 27. For the Llavallol family, see Obras completas de Sarmiento, vol. 42, Buenos Aires: Luz del Día, p. 15; Stelio Cro, Jorge Luis Borges: Poeta, saggista e narratore, Milan: Mursia, 1971, p. 246; Jorge Luis Borges and Fernando Mateo, El otro Borges: Entrevistas (1960–1986), Buenos Aires: Equis Editores, 1997, p. 98; Roberto Alifano, Diálogos esenciales con Jorge Luís Borges, vol. 3, Buenos Aires: Alloni/Proa, 2007, p. 63.
2. For information on the Aranda brothers, see the following documents: In the AA (Mendoza): Libro de bautismo (matriz), no. 6, f. 272; Libro defunciones (matriz), no. 3A, f. 215; Libro matrimonios (matriz), no. 4, ff. 133–133v; Censo Parroquial (April 1, 1802). In the AGP (Mendoza), the notary records of Francisco de Videla, no. 89, ff. 81–86v (“Testamento de Manuel Fernández de Aranda”); José de Porto y Mariño, February 14, 1800; and Santiago Garnay, 41v. In the same archive, see also Libro Mayor, Real Caja de Mendoza, folders 37, 39, 40. For the political importance of Aranda’s stepfather, José Clemente Benegas, see Revista del Instituto de Historia del Derecho 9 (1958): 101–4; Damián Hudson, Recuerdos históricos sobre la provincia de Cuyo: 1824–1851, vol. 2, Buenos Aires: Alsina, 1898; and Jorge Comadrán Ruiz, Los Subdelegados de Real Hacienda y Guerra de Mendoza (1784–1810), Mendoza: Universidad, 1959. Benegas was in charge of tax collection in Mendoza when Aranda would have transported the Tryal’s slaves through the town. See AGP (Mendoza), folder 86, document 64. For the “aristocratic” standing of Aranda’s future father-in-law, Isidro Sáinz de la Maza, see Leoncio Gianello, Historia del Congreso de Tucumán, Buenos Aires: Academia Nacional de la Historia, 1966.
3. Julian Mellet, Viajes pro el interior de la América Meridional, 1808–1820, Santiago: Editorial del Pacifico, 1959.
4. AGP (Mendoza), folder 74, document 29 (“listas militares”); AGN (Buenos Aires), Licencias y Pasaportes, libro 6, f. 198 (“Pide permiso para regresar a Mendoza”); AGN (Buenos Aires), Criminales, legajo 50, expediente 5 (“El alcalde ordinario de la ciudad de Mendoza, Juan de la Cruz Vargas, sobre haberse ausentado ésta y otras personas hacia Chile, sin el correspondiente permiso de ese juzgado”); AGN (Buenos Aires), Despachos Militares y Cédulas de Premio, libro 2, f. 85 (“Nicolás Aranda es nombrado alférez del Regimiento de voluntarios de caballería de Mendoza”).
5. For María Carmen’s birth, see AA (Mendoza), Libro de bautismos (matriz), no. 8, f. 23; For her marriage to Aranda, see AA (Mendoza), Libro de matrimonios (matriz), no. 4, ff. 113–13v.
6. For the Puebla vineyard, see Pablo Lacoste, La mujer y el vino: Emociones, vida privada, emancipación económica (entre el reino de Chile y el virreinato del Río de La Plata, 1561–1810), Mendoza: Caviar Bleu, 2008, and “Viticultura y movilidad social: Provincia de Cuyo, Reino de Chile, siglo XVIII,” Colonial Latin American Historical Review 13 (2004): 230.
7. AA (Mendoza), Libro de bautismos, no. 11, f. 174.
8. José Mariluz Urquijo, “El horizonte femenino porteño de mediados del setecientos,” Investigaciones y ensayos 36 (July–December 1987): 83; AA (Mendoza), Libro de matrimonios (matriz), no. 11, f. 9v; AGP (Mendoza), Censo parroquial 1777, folder 28, document 2.
9. Pablo Lacoste, “El arriero y el transporte terrestre en el Cono Sur (Mendoza, 1780–1800),” Revista de Indias 68 (2008): 35–68.
10. Luis César Caballero, Los negros esclavos en Mendoza, algunas genealogías, Mendoza: Cuadernos de Genealogía, 2010, p. 233.
11. Gesualdo, “Los negros”; Mansilla, Mis memorias, p. 133.
11. THE CROSSING
1. Mellet, Viajes; Concolorcorvo, El lazarillo de ciegos caminantes desde Buenos Aires hasta Lima, 1773, Buenos Aires: Compañía Sud-Americana de Billetes de Banco, 1908; D. J. Robinson, “Trade and Trading Links in Western Argentina during the Viceroyality,” Geographical Journal 135 (March 1970): 24–41; Alonso de Ovalle, Histórica relación del Reino de Chile y de la misiones y ministerios que ejercita en él la Compañía de Jesús, Santiago: Instituto de Literatura Chilena, 1969.
2. Robert Proctor, Narrative of a Journey across the Cordillera of the Andes, London: Constable and Co., 1825, p. 7; Max Wolffsohn, “Across the Cordillera, from Chili to Buenos Ayres,” Gentleman’s Magazine 268 (1890): 589; Charles Samuel Stewart, Brazil and La Plata: The Personal Record of a Cruise, New York: Putnam, 1856, p. 325. For earlier slave caravans, see Gesualdo, “Los negros,” p. 28.
3. Victoria Ocampo, 338171 T. E. Lawrence of Arabia, Buenos Aires: Editoriales Sur, 1942, p. 12; David Garnett, ed., The Letters of T. E. Lawrence, Garden City: Doubleday, Doran, 1939, p. 56.
4. Proctor, Narrative of a Journey, p. 17.
5. “Sheep Husbandry in South America,” Cultivator and Country Gentleman, May 3, 1866.
6. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, with an Introductory Discourse concerning Taste, and Several Other Additions, Philadelphia: J. Watts, 1806, p. 81, 140; Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 147–48.
12. DIAMONDS ON THE SOLES OF THEIR FEET
1. Reginaldo de Lizárraga, Descripción breve de toda la tierra del Perú, Tucumán, Río de la Plata y Chile, Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1968, p. 375.
2. Ricardo Rodríguez Molas, Los sometidos de la conquista: Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Buenos Aires: Bibliotecas Universitarias, 1985, pp. 200, 254.
3. AGP (Mendoza), notary record, Juan de Herrera, no. 5, March 24, 1601, ff. 96–98v; Caballero, Los negros esclavos en Mendoza, Mendoza, 2010, p. 20.
4. Rolando Mellafe, La introducción de la esclavitud negra en Chile: Trafico y rutas, Santiago: Universidad de Chile, 1959, pp. 250–51; Vial Correa, El Africano en el Reino de Chile, pp. 85–86. For later attempts to tax this overland slave route, see ANC (Santiago), Contaduría Mayor, 2nd ser., vol. 645 (“Alcabala entrada por cordillera esclavos 1777),” and vol. 812 (“Almojarifazgo, 1778”). See also ANC (Santiago), Contaduría Mayor, 1st ser., vols. 1881–991 and 1992–99, for goods, including slaves, coming over the Andes to be shipped out of Valparaiso to Lima during the years 1803 and 1804.
5. ANC (Santiago), Contaduría Mayor, 1998; Pedro Santos Martínez, Las comunicaciones entre el Virreinato del Río de la Plata y Chile por Uspallata (1776–1810), Santiago: Universidad Católica, 1963.
6. Edward Arthur Fitzgerald et al., The Highest Andes: A Record of the First Ascent of Aconcagua and Tupungato in Argentina, and the Exploration of the Surrounding Valleys, London: Methuen, 1899, pp. 173–74; Peter Schmidtmeyer, Travels into Chile, over the Andes, in the Years 1820 and 1821, London: Longman, 1824, p. 315.
7. “José Espinoza y Felipe Bauza Vieje de Santiago a Mendoza,” in La Expedición Malaspina en la frontera del imperio español, ed. Rafael Sagrado Baeza and José Ignacio González Leiva, Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 2004, pp. 875–83; Jerónimo de Vivar, Crónica y relación copiosa y verdadera de los reinos de Chile, Santiago: Colloquium Verlag, 1979, p. 187.
8. Quotations come from the edition Melville consulted, Darwin’s Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle round the World, under the Command of Capt. Fitz Roy, R.N., 2 vols., New York: Harper and Brothers, 1846, vol. 2, pp. 76–77.
9. Concolorcorvo, El lazarillo de ciegos caminantes, p. 150; Francisco Le Dantec, Cronicas del viejo Valparaíso, Valparaíso: Ediciones Universitarias, 1984, pp. 68–72; Vial Correa, El Africano en el Reino de Chile, p. 90.
INTERLUDE: HEAVEN’S SENSE
1. Moby-Dick, pp. 1233–37.
2. Sandra A. Zagarell. “Reenvisioning America: Melville’s ‘Benito Cereno’” in Burkholder, ed., Critical Essays, p. 58.
3. In 1847, Herman Melville purchased a copy of Charles Darwin’s Journal of Researches. See Sealts, Melville’s Reading, p. 171. T
he passage quoted here is in vol. 2, p. 86. For “Lot’s wife,” see More Letters of Charles Darwin: A Record of His Work in a Series of Hitherto Unpublished Letters, vol. 1, New York: Appleton, 1903, p. 23 (April 18, 1835).
13. KILLING SEALS
1. Richard Ellis, The Empty Ocean: Plundering the World’s Marine Life, Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2003, p. 155.
2. Robert McNab, Murihiku and the Southern Islands: A History of the West Coast Sounds, Foveaux Strait, Stewart Island, the Snares, Bounty, Antipodes, Auckland, Campbell and Macquarie Islands, from 1770 to 1829, Invercargill: W. Smith, 1907, p. 221.
3. James Kirker, Adventures to China: Americans in the Southern Oceans, 1792–1812, New York: Oxford University Press, 1970, p. 78.
4. John Byron et al., An Account of the Voyages Undertaken by the Order of His Present Majesty for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere, London: W. Strahan, 1785, p. 44.
5. Kirker, Adventures to China, p. 73.
6. Edward Cooke, A Voyage to the South Sea and around the World in the Years 1708 to 1711, 1712, New York: Da Capo Press, 1969; Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage round the World: First to the South-Seas, London: A. Bell and B. Lintot, 1712.
7. Augustus Earle, A Narrative of a Nine Months’ Residence in New Zealand in 1827: Together with a Journal of a Residence in Tristan D’Acunha, an Island Situated between South America and the Cape of Good Hope, London: Longman, 1832, p. 344.
8. Samuel Johnson et al., The World Displayed; or, A Curious Collection of Voyages and Travels, Selected from the Writers of All Nations, vol. 8, London: J. Newbery, 1760, p. 39; William Dowling, A Popular Natural History of Quadrupeds and Birds, London: James Burns, 1849, pp. 103–4.
9. Robert K. Headland, The Island of South Georgia, Victoria: Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 52.
10. Delano, Narrative, p. 306.
11. George Little, Life on the Ocean; or, Twenty Years at Sea, Boston: Waite, Peirce, 1844, pp. 106–7.
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