Juan Latino, from slave to grammar professor in 16th century Spain

The exhibition of Juan de Pareja, an Afro-Hispanic painter from Málaga, inaugurated on April 3 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, has revealed to the common Spaniards not only his important pictorial work but also his status as a student, assistant and black slave of Velazquez. What has brought me to this Memorandum is the almost contemporary story of Couple of another slave genius, black and Spanish, in this case poet and grammarian: Juan Latino.

It is striking that in Renaissance Europe, significantly in 16th century Spain, the fate of the western Indian awakens so much conscience, legal and theological disquisitions and, on the other hand, the slavery of the black is natural and the recognition of the human nature of the former does not raise doubts about the ‘animality’ of the latter…

Humanists, Renaissance, yes, but always within an order, loaded with human misery, as the ‘anecdote’ reveals, the anecdotes say, starring the poet-musician Gregorio Silvestre Rodríguez de Mesa (Lisbon, 1520-Granada, 1569) in the Granada poetic gathering of the Golden Square; a haughty man who, faced with the complaints of a black interlocutor for ignoring him in the conversation, blurted out: “Excuse me, Mr. Teacher, I understood that I was the shadow of one of these gentlemen.”

The victim of Silvestre’s cynicism is an attractive figure of the early Spanish Renaissance: Juan Latino (Baena?, 1518-Granada, 1596?), perhaps the first black-skinned Spanish poet since the blacks who arrived from Africa—sometimes versification they would invent in order to seduce females and powerful ones – to civilize the depopulated lands of the north, they would lose the unnecessary melanin and their Rh, they would be diluted in the milk of some and others. Officially, he was the son of black slaves –’Ethiopians’ all black Africans were called, although they were surely Guineans, or Guineans– of the second Duke of Sessa, Luis Fernández de Córdoba, son of the great captainbut the heart press of the time, that is, the gossips of a lifetime, were malicious that it was the fruit of the assaulted belly of a black slave of and by the said duke.

In that case, Juan Latino, still called Juan de Sessa, would be step brother of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, who, in any case, was his friend and protector throughout his life. The heartfelt elegy that Juan Latino dedicated to him on his death in the battle of Alcazarquivir, in 1578, is a recognition of the one who had overcome prejudices and had treated him like a brother and, like his father, had not only freed him from slavery Rather, it had given him the opportunity to be an enlightened man whose company, teaching, and advice sought out wise men and people from all over the peninsula.

The story of Juan Latino is one of those that disproves the cliché of “it was the time”: perhaps for this reason he -us and them- is hidden away in secondary education… Or, worse, because of his intelligence, because of cloudier heads or, at least, as much as that of Silvestre, they could not assume that a black slave would say to Juan Méndez de Salvatierra, archbishop of Granada from 1577 to 1588 and also from a poor birth: “Letters are so powerful that, since we lack these, not even you will come out from the field behind a plow nor I from a stable grooming horses”.

The son of slaves, or of a master and a slave, he was slightly older than what would be the third Duke of Sessa and the living plaything of the eldest son; That is why I attended, as a listening ‘object’, Gonzalo’s teachings, but with as much benefit as he did. So that the master, father or, simply, ‘human person’ Luis Fernández de Córdoba, decided to free him when, after sending him to the University of Granada as his son’s servant, he followed the classes of the grammarian Pedro de Mota through the eye of the classroom lock, to which he was denied access, but which his tenacity and intelligence would open wide for him. Well versed in classical languages ​​and music, in 1546 he received the degree of Bachelor and, manumitted, the Chair of Grammar and Latin Language of the College of Cardinals of the Cathedral of Granada, commissioned by Archbishop Pedro Guerrero. He was the first European black man to access such a position, as he had already been to give his poems to the printer.

In parallel, a love story develops. The lawyer Carleval, administrator of the Duke of Sessa, asks him to instruct her daughter, “famous throughout the city for her extraordinary beauty”, promised to -more than of – Fernando de Córdoba y Válor (1520-1569), a Moorish nobleman who would become the future Abén Humeya, Ibn Umayya, proclaimed king by the Moors of Granada, whom he led when they rebelled against the intolerant authoritarianism of King Carlos I.

It seems that the young and beautiful Ana, as soon as she considered the talent of her teacher, did not want to know about other teachings or paternal vicarious promises of marriage. Sweet legend says that he knew the scope of Juan’s teachings to such an extent that he ordered his mistresses to sew the pouches on his skirts, so that the foothills of the mountain that his science was not capable of climbing would not be able to climb either. teacher’s white palm black hand.

Juan and Ana get married, in 1547 or 1548, “perhaps prompted by some fait accompli” – that is, ‘from a penalty’ ahead the analogy–, gossips of today say about the events of the heart of yesterday… It is supposed that the strong support of the Duke of Sessa discouraged the mocked fiancé, since he sponsored such a suggestive love story, extinguished all bonds of slavery and his wife, María de Mendoza, was godmother to their first daughter, Juana, baptized on June 30, 1549. Without a doubt, then, in another case, it seems unthinkable what they call “picturesque union in the Spain of the time”, even being true that “the union of a Guinean slave with a beautiful lady from high society is not very frequent in other ancient or modern societies, which constitutes a note of glory in terms of the openness of Spanish society at that time, which carried out in America a miscegenation that was not carried out by other cultures in other colonizations, for example the Anglo-Saxon”. Okay: long live Spain, then.

But if the aromatic smoke from so many blows from the censer is not to cover the medals on the patriotic chest, neither is it to cover up the racist misery of those who rage because “the black” has fallen in love with one of the beauties of the city, have a chair ecclesiastical, is demanded by the richest families as an instructor of their offspring, come intellectuals from all over Spain and abroad to socialize with him and, as if that were not enough, try to give him the chair of Grammar from his teacher Pedro de Mota. How far will we go? Even the king, Felipe II, to whom Archbishop Guerrero resorts with a memorial of the merits of Juan Latino so that human misery does not take away his professorship, which is finally granted to him in 1556, while he is still a bachelor and lacking three months to achieve the degree that opened the doors of the university founded by Carlos I and those of all the university cloisters of Christendom. And also those of the gathering of Alonso de Granada y Venegas, with Luis Barahona de Soto, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Hernando de Acuña: where the ingenious display of racist malice by the Portuguese Silvestre that we have recounted took place.

And finally: Ana and Juan had two more children –others say fourteen…–, they lived happily, ate partridges and so on: some were tastier than others, without a doubt.