JORGE CAMACHO. Miedo negro, poder blanco en la Cuba colonial. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2015. 272 pp.

Jorge Camacho's book, Miedo negro, poder blanco en la Cuba colonial, traces a multifaceted trajectory of racialized fear of black Cubans in colonial Cuba, which originates as panic over the prospect of a Haitian-style slave insurrection, and evolves into other phobias of racial contact, influence, and integration.Thoroughly researched, the book is a lucid approach to canonical as well as overlooked intellectuals and their roles in defining and defending white criollo culture vis-à-vis Social Darwinist, moral, and nationalist criteria.Bookended by an introduction and conclusion, Miedo negro, poder blanco is divided into eight chapters.The first chapter explores how the fear of slave insurrection permeated social discourses and informed abolitionist thought and literature throughout the nineteenth century.The second chapter teases out the complicity between the physical marginalization of los negros curros in Havana and the criminologist underpinnings of costumbrista literary representations of black spiritual, psychological, and social existence intent on provoking repulsion in the white reader.In chapter three, Camacho analyzes the fluctuating representations of black niñeras during slavery.Whereas their unique position as child-rearers was cause for concern for creole elites, who feared they could conceivably be a negative influence on the white children they cared for, their roles as wet-nurses called into question the racialized contours of black/white proximity.A meticulous reading of the affective, moral, and social preoccupations of interracial sexual relationships as portrayed in anti-slavery novels forms the basis for chapter four.Here, Camacho focuses his attention on the ways in which the mulata operates as a sexualized, insidious trope, due to the fact that she was a figure that could cross, or at least complicate, the color and class lines upon which white hegemony constructed and maintained itself.Chapter five revisits José Martí's well-known chronicle on the earthquake in Charleston in 1886 and identifies in the Cuban's descriptions a gesture of racializing African American's response to the tragedy, while normalizing how white Americans reacted.In chapter six, Camacho considers Francisco Calcagno's novel, Los crímenes de Concha (1887), and examines how Cuban letrados utilized "ethnic psychology" to continue ascribing alterity to ñáñigos after emancipation.The seventh chapter underscores that Afro-Cuban dance, music, and mannerisms were considered immoral and corruptive influences on white criollo culture.Finally, chapter eight looks at Martí's

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