On the brink of sovereignty: Maroon Chief Alonso de Illescas and vernacular agency in the colonial Atlantic

Abstract

ABSTRACT Marronage is often treated in academic discussions as a compelling example of resistance, a type of agency that has a definitive insurgent impulse. This approach makes the study of maroons vulnerable to ideological taint because it can downplay the full complexity with which slave rebels and free people of color achieved social mobility and engaged with colonial power structures. By exploring late sixteenth century negotiations between a maroon leader named Alonso de Illescas and Spanish viceregal authorities in Esmeraldas province, Ecuador, I demonstrate how maroon agency in early colonial Latin America can disrupt theories about resistance or accommodation. I explore various types of mediation at work in negotiating power in the colonial Atlantic, uncover some of the risks associated with reading maroon agency through North Atlantic universals (namely the notion of sovereignty), and offer the term “subsovereign agency” to bridge the chasm between theory and colonial politics of marronage.