Guillaume Candela (University of Cardiff) "Recovering Hidden Histories: Reconstructing Trajectories and Experiences of Racialised and Enslaved Individuals in Colonial Paraguay"
| Dates: | 7 October 2026 |
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| Times: | 17:00 - 19:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | Faculty of Humanities |
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| Speaker: | Guillaume Candela |
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This talk is part of the seminar series of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
Wed 7 October 2026, 5pm (UK time). This event will be in person and online. You can follow it online here: https://tinyurl.com/yzm5d7k2
Abstract: Slavery and forced labour were the principal motor of Spanish colonisation, and frontiers like colonial Paraguay were no exception. This paper reconstructs the lives of racialised individuals enslaved in colonial settings such as sugar, cotton, and mate plantations and domestic servitude. In colonial Paraguay, Indigenous women with lighter skin were valued at higher prices; African and Afro-Paraguayans were deported from Africa to Paraguay and enslaved throughout the territory. My recent work on cuñadazgo revises the term Cuñado, brother-in-law, long read as kinship, in fact named an enslaver or master. These cases unsettle the ultranationalist account of Paraguayan identity as born of an Indigenous mother and a Spanish father. Cross-sourcing the National and Religious Paraguayan archives helped me to uncover the experiences of children of African–Indigenous unions. My presentation will also argue that African people are at the origin of mestizaje in Paraguay. The talk closes with my recent experience of what happens when these histories return to descendant communities in Paraguay.
Guillaume Candela is a historian who is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University.
Speaker
Guillaume Candela
Organisation: University of Cardiff
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A202
Samuel Alexander Building
Manchester
