Before the Eyes of the World: Mexico and the 1968 Olympic Games (review)
accepts at face value what was recorded as slaves’ statements. The abbreviated archival references—no doubt mandated by the publisher in the interests of economy—make it impossible to determine the kinds of filters through which slaves’ words reach us. Elegant phrases in what appear to be slave soldiers’ petitions for promised freedom, such as the book’s title quotation, may indeed have reflected slaves’ views, but their phrasing owes at least something to the scribes and other professionals who prepared documents for presentation to the courts. This, in turn, raises the question of the alliances that slave soldiers constructed with free people in order to secure freedom, and more broadly, the wars’ impact on attitudes toward slavery. It would be interesting to know more about the views of rank-and-file soldiers, the lower-ranking officers who dealt with slave soldiers on a daily basis, and the free poor who interacted with soldiers (free and slave alike) while they were stationed nearby. Slaves’ often exemplary service clearly failed to convince most masters to give up slavery, but did it contribute to popular antislavery sentiment? Future research on these questions will be much easier thanks to Blanchard’s important work.