The Valiant Black Man in Flanders / El valiente negro en Flandes

Book excerpt: A play about defiance of systemic racism. Juan de Mérida, an Afro-Spanish soldier aspires to social advancement in the Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War (1566-1648). His main enemies are not Dutch rebels but his white countrymen, whom he defeats at every attempt to humiliate him. In this play one encounters military culture, upward mobility, mistaken identities, defying destiny, royal pageantry, swordfights, cross-dressing, revenge, homosexual anxiety, and inter-racial marriage. Andrés de Claramonte’s El valiente negro en Flandes (c.1625) is an Afrodiasporic play that enjoyed great success and multiple stagings in Spain and in Latin America. Its 1938 negrista performance in Havana, Cuba, and Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, attest to the power of this play to illuminate contemporary racial dynamics. This is the first annotated, critical edition and English translation of El valiente negro en Flandes with a comprehensive introduction, three critical essays, the critical apparatus comparing the eleven extant versions of the play, and an appendix with alternative scenes and related historical documents. A tool for scholars of early modern European literature and a pedagogical aid to discuss the early discourses on Blackness in Spain and its trans-Atlantic empire.