A Catalogue of Black Stereotypes and Images in Seventeenth-Century Villancicos de Negros Performed in Spain

Abstract

Abstract This Appendix provides a framework for considering the prejudiced image that emerges from more than three hundred known villancicos de negros performed in seventeenth-century Spain. This overriding representation was based on a vested (white) interest in establishing a hierarchy of peoples living in the Iberian peninsula; but it was also an idea with which black Africans themselves had to contend in order to negotiate their own blackness. The significance of the Appendix is not so much the use of particular images by single villancico authors but rather the repeated collective reliance on a small number of simplistic, formulaic ideas to represent blackness, which reinforced the hegemonic, anti-black ethos in early modern Iberia. Alongside stereotyped tropes and images, villancicos included some distinctive manifestations of black pride and a sense of black community. The Appendix shows traces of egalitarian messages about race and notable depictions of black Africans’ common-day activities.