This article examines Tiburcio Campe's newspaper El Español, a brief yet concerted effort by exiled Spanish liberals in New Orleans that drew on the Cádiz constitutional experiment to demand the return of imperial rule in Mexico in the late 1820s. Exiled from Mexico as a consequence of the expulsion laws against Spaniards (españoles), Campe used his newspaper to criticize republican exclusionary policies and to militate against a possible expansion of abolitionism, ethnic conflict, and anti-white proposals in the Caribbean, promoting imperial constitutionalism as the only guarantor of the coexistence of Spaniards and Americanos and racial hierarchies in the Americas. Discussions regarding political and racial equality in Mexico and the United States, and the community's experience of exile in New Orleans, shaped these ideas, revealing how the banishment of Campe and other Spanish liberals renewed their advocacy of empire. Moreover, their exile in the United States facilitated their participation in the transatlantic public sphere and the circulation of their work, illustrating how the United States became a platform for envisioning and propagating imperial endeavors. Thus a study of El Español and Tiburcio Campe's actions allows us to comprehend the intricacies between exile and pro-monarchical discourses, as well as the nature of political and racial equality in the post-independence Americas.

On September 28, 1673, Catalina de los Reyes declared before the Royal Tribunal Court that she refused to surrender her property in Oaxaca's provincial capital of Antequera. Her land dispute with the bishop of Oaxaca shows how African-descended women navigated the court system in colonial Mexico and negotiated their social status in this Spanish colonial society. This article examines race and gender in colonial Mexico. It focuses on the ways in which local authorities attempted to confiscate one of the most valuable properties in Antequera from an African-descended woman named Catalina, as well as the strategies she used to challenge the social hierarchy in the city. By analyzing judicial records along with parish and census data, I argue that colonial women such as Catalina contested elite expectations of gender and race to redefine or secure their social status in colonial Oaxaca. My findings show that although colonial authorities marginalized African-descended women such as Catalina, these colonial women understood the judicial system in colonial Mexico, confronted authorities, and fought to retain their properties and their place in the social order. This article thus advances our understanding of the wide range of roles, experiences, and subjectivities of African-descended women in Spanish America.