Caption, “A Spanish planter in Porto Rico, luxuriating in his hammock.” John A. Waller, A Voyage in the West Indies (London, 1820), facing p. 33, as shown on http://www.slaveryimages.org, sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the University of Virginia Library.

1st paragraph steal:

“On the morning of 28 December 1768, Antonio and Mara, a slave couple belonging to Flix Pagn, were married in the Catholic church of San Germn, Puerto Rico. The event was recorded in the parish marriage register, along with a notation stating no se velaron por ser tiempo prohibido; that is the couple had not received the velacin, or solemn nuptial blessing, because it was a forbidden season. Although marriage may be contracted at any time of the year, Church officials frowned upon it during the seasons of Advent and Lent since the velacin could not be conferred at this time. Because these seasons were to be marked by abstinence and penance, couples were discouraged from celebrating and consummating their marriage if they had not received the nuptial blessing.1 Once the penitential season was over, couples wishing to receive the blessing often returned to the church for it to be conferred, which Antonio and Mara did. Seventeen days later they appeared before the parish priest Joaqun Nazario de Figueroa y Matos, and received the velacin.2 Marriage among slaves was not uncommon in eighteenth-century Puerto Rico and neither was it unusual for them to be joined in matrimony during the forbidden seasons, especially Advent….”

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