Book excerpt: "History in North, Central, and South Americas. In the Bourbon New Spain (Mexico), taxes, including those from Mexicans of African descent who were free, were a rich, reliable source of revenue for the Crown. Taxing Blackness examines the experiences of Afromexicans and this tribute to get at the meanings of race, political loyalty, and legal privileges within the Spanish colonial regime. Gharala focuses on both the mechanisms officials used to define the status of free people of African descent as well as the responses of free-colored people to these categories and strategies. Her study spans the eighteenth century and focuses on a single institution to offer readers a closer look at the place of free-colored people in Mexico, which was the most profitable and populous colony of the Spanish Atlantic"--