Ismael Pardo

Ismael Pardo is a historian of colonial Mexico. Primarily, he investigates the histories of the diverse peoples and non-humans who inhabited the region we currently know as the Huasteca. His dissertation explores the roles that Indigenous Americans, Afro- descendants, and Hispanics, as well as cattle and land, played in the early colonial history of the region, specifically its transformation from a mythical land of “food and flowers” into a Spanish slaving ground and eventually a cattle-land. During the fellowship, Pardo will write two chapters. The first explores a trade of enslaved indigenous peoples from the Huasteca, shifting from local to transatlantic markets. The second examines the arrival of African and Afro-descended enslaved peoples. Both chapters analyze the impact that the environment had on these historical processes.