Myth of the Christian Poet
Myth of the Christian Poet
The Death, Resurrection, and Redemption of Plácido
This chapter explores how Plácido’s poems on race differed from that of Manzano, his enslaved counterpart.Plácido, whose mulatto racial identity was never in doubt, saw little need to create such an image for public consumption.Rather, his satirical poems mocked the mulatto desire to become white through the denial of African ancestry.This chapter examines Plácido’s Catholic poetry alongside his racial satire to demonstrate that the contradiction inherent in his literary work.The analysis of Plácido’s religious poetry in tandem with his satire exposes the apparent contradictions that arose from the articulation of a racial politics in defiance of whiteness on the one hand and the adulation of Catholicism on the other.Poems such as “Death of the Redeemer,” “The Birth of Christ,” “For the Death of Christ,” “The Resurrection,” and two relatively unknown poems, “My Imprisonment” and “To Lince, from Prison” are historical evidence of how Plácido negotiated good social standing with local ecclesiastical elites.
Keywords: Plácido, Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés, Race, Mulatto, whitening
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