ABSTRACT
During the three centuries of colonial rule, more than 200,000 African slaves were brought into Mexico. Historians and social scientists have paid relatively scant attention to the fate of the black man in either the colonial or modern period of Mexican history. Marriage records of the castas are of special interest since the Spanish rulers of colonial Mexico discouraged Africans from marrying outside their racial group. The marriage record of the parish reveals that in the case of 52.2% of the marriages involving persons of African descent either the husband or the wife did not have any Negroid blood, and only in 47.8% of the 1,622 marriages were both parties of African descent. It is obvious that the efforts of Spanish officials to encourage persons of African descent to marry within their casta group was not a marked success in the parish of Santa Veracruz.
