Dr Beatriz Marin-Aguilera PhD, FHEA

Research Overview

Current projects:

THE SILENCED SLAVERY

Between 2.5 and 4.5 million of Indigenous peoples were enslaved in the colonial Americas. This project focuses in particular on the earliest and one of the core regions of human trafficking since AD 1492, the Caribbean, looking at the intersection of Spanish, British, and French empires in the region. The project juxtaposes archival research with archaeological fieldwork, the study of museum collections, and oral testimonies of descendant communities. It brings to the forefront the agency of Kalinago communities in disrupting imperial policies between the 15th and 18th centuries by fleshing out the material remains of captivity, slavery, war, and resistance, reinscribing the silences, and challenging the colonial archive. Fieldwork is co-led with my colleague Dr Reg Murphy and mostly focuses on Antigua, the bridge between the Taíno culture coming from the Greater Antilles and the Cayo/Kalinago and Suazan cultures originated in the southern Lesser Antilles. Our project responds to local and regional demands for 'Indigenising' local history, and thus involves local researchers, schools and communities.


RETURN TO THE ISLAND OF SOULS: FORCED DISPLACEMENT, COLONIAL VIOLENCE, AND ARCHAEOLOGY FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE IN CHILE

This community-based project focuses on the long-term effects of the forced displacement decreed by the Spaniards of ca. 600 people (116 families) from La Mocha Island to the Jesuit mission of San José de la Mocha, near Concepción, in Chile, in 1685. By the mid-18th century, the mission became a marginal neighbourhood of the overgrown city of Concepción, attracting mestizos, enslaved African and Afro-descendants, people of mixed Indigenous and African ancestry ('Zambos'), and poor criollos, who joined the Indigenous communities. Our team is particularly interested in mapping the materiality of coexistence, the violence of architecture and settlement design, and the impacts of captivity and slavery on health, diet, and long-term trauma. After a long history of colonialism and settler-colonialism, our aim is addressing the past and the continuity of structural violence affecting Mapuche communities in Chile (in this case, the Lafkenche), and supporting the community in healing and re-burying their deceased.


EXHIBITION ON INDIGENOUS SLAVERY IN THE AMERICAS - ISM

This new multi-stakeholder exhibition is part of the Waterfront Transformation Project of National Museums Liverpool, in which the International Slavery Museum (ISM) will create new exhibition spaces and narratives involving local and descendant communities. We are currently focusing on three case studies, the Taínos and Kalinagos (Caribbean), the Muisca (Colombia), and the Putumayo Genocide (Amazon – Ecuador/Perú/Colombia).