Resumen de Blackness in Late Colonial Parish Records: A Demographical Study of Honduras
Housed within the walls of the main church of Manto-a small colonial town in the department of Olancho, Honduras-a late seventeenth-century oil painting titled "The Christ of the Souls in Purgatory" was largely unknown and ignored due to its remote location and centuries of accumulated grime and wear (See Fig. 1).1 However, once art conservators restored this painting, they uncovered original forms and hues and, perhaps more importantly, unveiled imagery that attests to the racial makeup of the colonial populations that has been masked since the nineteenth century through a series of complex processes (See Fig. 2). [...]I present some results of a statistical analysis of the ethnic-racial composition of the populations in Catacamas, which reflect an undeniable afromestizaje. First of all, the data shows that Honduras played a role in the slave trade from the very beginning of the colonization of the Americas. [...]demographical information showed that many enslaved Africans obtained their freedom and mixed with the other racial groups.
