{"id":287352,"date":"2017-12-13T13:35:10","date_gmt":"2017-12-13T18:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=287352"},"modified":"2017-12-21T12:42:48","modified_gmt":"2017-12-21T17:42:48","slug":"pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/","title":{"rendered":"The mysterious aftermath of an infamous pirate raid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just before dawn on May 18, 1683, pirates stormed the port city of Veracruz<\/a> in the Viceroyalty of New Spain on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, easily overwhelming its Spanish military defense. For two weeks, the buccaneers, led by the Dutch Laurens de Graaf and several hundred French and English associates, wreaked havoc. They raped and looted, pillaged and exhorted steep ransoms for the release of valuable hostages.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the ultimate crime is what they did in the end,\u201d says Pablo Sierra Silva<\/a>, an assistant professor of history at the University of Rochester. \u201cThey kidnapped the entire population of African descent, because slavery is expanding in the English and French colonies at this time and there\u2019s now a market for such captives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just before their departure on May 31, the pirates captured between 1,000 to 1,500 Veracruzanos and loaded them onto their fleet of 13 ships. Then they set sail for the pirate sanctuary of St. Domingue, modern-day Haiti. There, they sold their human cargo\u2014some slaves, some formerly free residents of Veracruz singled out by the pirates for their darker skin\u2014to slave masters in St. Domingue, and nascent Charleston, South Carolina. While history remembers the violent raid on Veracruz, little is known about its victims.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat singular extraction and then dispersal of these people has never been studied,\u201d says Sierra Silva.<\/p>\n

\"Pablo
Assistant professor of history Pablo Sierra Silva teaches his \u201cSamba, Vargas, and Brazilian Identity\u201d class in Spring 2014. (University photo \/ Brandon Vick)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The historian joined the Rochester faculty in 2013, straight out of the doctoral program at the University of California, Los Angeles. His first book, Urban Slavery in Colonial Mexico: Puebla de los \u00c1ngeles, 1531\u20131706<\/em><\/a>, is due out from Cambridge University Press in March 2018.<\/p>\n

But he\u2019s already embarked on research for his second book, which will trace the paths of those forgotten Afro-Veracruzanos. Sierra Silva got a big boost this month when the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)<\/a> awarded him a $50,400 fellowship to support the project, titled Mexican Atlantic: Contraband, Captivity and the 1683 Raid on Veracruz<\/em>. \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Sierra Silva will reassess Veracruz\u2019s history by focusing on a moment in which free and enslaved men and women of African descent were made captives (in some cases, re-captives).\u00a0The grant will enable him to spend the next 12 months travelling to colonial archives and repositories in the US, Spain, and Mexico. He\u2019ll work at the Archive of the Indies in Seville, the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island, the University of South Carolina, the South Carolina Historical Society, and the College of Charleston.<\/p>\n

Sierra Silva is also winning praise from his Rochester colleagues. \u201cHe\u2019s is a talented researcher and a valuable contributor to the overall strength of the School of Arts and Sciences,\u201d says Gloria Culver, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. Matthew Lenoe<\/a>, an associate professor of history and chair of the department, says he is \u201ctremendously excited\u201d about Sierra Silva\u2019s NEH award.<\/p>\n

\u201cPablo richly deserves it,\u201d Lenoe says. \u201cHis work on the history of African slavery in Mexico and its ramifications throughout the Atlantic World breaks paths into an important and understudied area.\u00a0Innovative and timely, it is also based on research in rarely used 17th-century archives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe have fragments, little strands of evidence that suggest that, of course, people don\u2019t forget.\u201d\n<\/div>\n

The project makes for a compelling historical mystery. With painstaking planning, the pirates originally took their high-value hostages, including Don Luis de C\u00f3rdoba, the governor of Veracruz, and members of the Catholic clergy to the nearby tiny Isla de Sacrificios (Island of Sacrifices). Once the ransoms were paid, the pirates returned the hostages to Veracruz. But up to a fourth of the port city\u2019s then small population of about 6,000 people remained captive. The captives\u2014people of African descent, many of whom had intermarried and intermixed with the Spanish and indigenous population, some already Veracruzanos in the second or third generation, were deemed mulatos, pardos, negros and morenos. Regardless, the pirates loaded them up and sold them into slavery.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were gone overnight,\u201d says Sierra Silva. \u201cIt\u2019s a shocking human-orchestrated catastrophe\u201d that decimated the city by about 25 percent.<\/p>\n

So far he has discovered archival references to five local women who were able to escape captivity in the Caribbean. Over the course of several years, they managed somehow to make their way back to Veracruz, arriving\u2014in an ironic twist\u2014as passengers on a Dutch slave ship.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s these scraps of memory that the historian is now seeking, as he lays out his case that the colonial histories of Mexico and the United States are intimately connected through the infamous 1683 pirate raid.<\/p>\n

\u201cTraditionally in Mexican history we tend to be fairly insular,\u201d Sierra Silva says. \u201cIt\u2019s almost as if it weren\u2019t entangled somewhere with the history of South Carolina, the history of St. Domingue. What I started to realize when researching this pirate attack is that, in fact, these colonial experiences are completely intertwined.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the months following the raid, no fewer than 200 Afro-Veracruzanos were sold in Charleston, which was still half a century away from the mass arrivals of the plantation-driven slave trade. At the time of the pirate attack, the English settlement in South Carolina was still in its infancy. The victims of the raid would have accounted for well over a fifth of young Charleston\u2019s population of African descent.<\/p>\n

By tracing the paths of those who disappeared, Sierra Silva\u2019s project seeks to recover the experiences of enslaved people in numerous settlements throughout the Spanish, English, French, and Dutch Atlantic during the 17th century.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, they leave relatives further inland. They leave cousins, business associates, godchildren. Part of this project is to look at how they remember the lost,\u201d Sierra Silva explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have fragments, little strands of evidence that suggest that, of course, people don\u2019t forget.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just before dawn on May 18, 1683, pirates stormed the port city of Veracruz, capturing around 1,500 people and selling them to the slave markets of Haiti and South Carolina. Pablo Sierra Silva, assistant professor of history, is on a mission to trace what happened to them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":942,"featured_media":287402,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[456],"tags":[20452,29502,24842,34152,18572,9186,16072],"class_list":["post-287352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-culture","tag-book-authors","tag-featured-post-side","tag-mexico","tag-pablo-miguel-sierra-silva","tag-research-finding","tag-research-funding","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe mysterious aftermath of an infamous pirate raid<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Pablo Sierra Silva, assistant professor of history, is on a mission to trace what happened to the 1,500 people sold into slavery after a raid on Veracruz.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The mysterious aftermath of an infamous pirate raid\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Pablo Sierra Silva, assistant professor of history, is on a mission to trace what happened to the 1,500 people sold into slavery after a raid on Veracruz.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"News Center\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-12-13T18:35:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-12-21T17:42:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/fea-veracruz-1628.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sandra Knispel\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sandra Knispel\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/\",\"name\":\"The mysterious aftermath of an infamous pirate raid\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/fea-veracruz-1628.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-12-13T18:35:10+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-12-21T17:42:48+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/#\/schema\/person\/48a5dd20d1ade85ff52a0babb9a550a5\"},\"description\":\"Pablo Sierra Silva, assistant professor of history, is on a mission to trace what happened to the 1,500 people sold into slavery after a raid on Veracruz.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/fea-veracruz-1628.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/fea-veracruz-1628.jpg\",\"width\":1000,\"height\":600,\"caption\":\"The port of Veracruz in 1615. (University of Texas Libraries photo)\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The mysterious aftermath of an infamous pirate raid\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/\",\"name\":\"News Center\",\"description\":\"University of Rochester\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/#\/schema\/person\/48a5dd20d1ade85ff52a0babb9a550a5\",\"name\":\"Sandra Knispel\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/author\/sknispel\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The mysterious aftermath of an infamous pirate raid","description":"Pablo Sierra Silva, assistant professor of history, is on a mission to trace what happened to the 1,500 people sold into slavery after a raid on Veracruz.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The mysterious aftermath of an infamous pirate raid","og_description":"Pablo Sierra Silva, assistant professor of history, is on a mission to trace what happened to the 1,500 people sold into slavery after a raid on Veracruz.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/","og_site_name":"News Center","article_published_time":"2017-12-13T18:35:10+00:00","article_modified_time":"2017-12-21T17:42:48+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1000,"height":600,"url":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/fea-veracruz-1628.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Sandra Knispel","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Sandra Knispel","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/","url":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/","name":"The mysterious aftermath of an infamous pirate raid","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/fea-veracruz-1628.jpg","datePublished":"2017-12-13T18:35:10+00:00","dateModified":"2017-12-21T17:42:48+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/#\/schema\/person\/48a5dd20d1ade85ff52a0babb9a550a5"},"description":"Pablo Sierra Silva, assistant professor of history, is on a mission to trace what happened to the 1,500 people sold into slavery after a raid on Veracruz.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/fea-veracruz-1628.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/fea-veracruz-1628.jpg","width":1000,"height":600,"caption":"The port of Veracruz in 1615. (University of Texas Libraries photo)"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pablo-sierra-silva-mysterious-aftermath-infamous-pirate-raid-287352\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The mysterious aftermath of an infamous pirate raid"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/","name":"News Center","description":"University of Rochester","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/#\/schema\/person\/48a5dd20d1ade85ff52a0babb9a550a5","name":"Sandra Knispel","url":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/author\/sknispel\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/942"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287352"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287452,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287352\/revisions\/287452"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}