This chapter documents the rise and fall of Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva, a notorious slave trader who Reséndez considers to be more “colorful and baffling than many fictional characters” (76). After gaining experience as a trading agent of African slaves on the Cape Verde Islands, Carvajal set-out for Mexico in the hopes of building a new slaving venture and network in the Americas. He settled in the province of Pánuco, a marshy area on the Gulf of Mexico to the south of Texas, which had a long history of pre-Contact and colonial slave trading. By the time Carvajal arrived, Pánuco merchants sold Indigenous slaves to the silver mines in central and northern Mexico.

Carvajal’s arrival in Pánuco corresponded to a war with the Indigenous nomads of northern Mexico, known as the Chichimec Wars. His chosen town, Tampico, lay at the edge of the war zone. Carvajal was one of the captains brought in to help fight back and capture the Chichimecs, which is a generic term used to describe the nomadic Indigenous communities in northern Mexico. Based on orders, “Captain Carvajal was to punish the rebellious Indians by executing the ringleaders and ‘doing justice in the manner of war’” (90).