La Florida: Five Hundred Years of Hispanic Presence aims to facilitate an interdisciplinary understanding of the complex Trans-Atlantic connections between Spain, Africa and the Americas that influenced Florida’s past; the demands that Florida faces in its present as a crossroad of cultures and peoples; and the ensuing challenges that will continue to shape its future as one of the most diverse states in the nation. Prefaced by an anchor piece and structured in two parts framing Florida as a Spanish territory and as a state of the Union, the thirteen essays of the volume engage in significant ... More

La Florida: Five Hundred Years of Hispanic Presence aims to facilitate an interdisciplinary understanding of the complex Trans-Atlantic connections between Spain, Africa and the Americas that influenced Florida’s past; the demands that Florida faces in its present as a crossroad of cultures and peoples; and the ensuing challenges that will continue to shape its future as one of the most diverse states in the nation. Prefaced by an anchor piece and structured in two parts framing Florida as a Spanish territory and as a state of the Union, the thirteen essays of the volume engage in significant episodes in Florida’s history that evince its global imprint since Ponce de León’s landfall, to the current influence of Hispanic politics in the peninsula and onto the national scene. Each piece in the book is fully independent from the others. But by virtue of the chronological order in which they are all presented, their interdisciplinary topics, perspectives and contexts produce a web of connections that give temporal consistency, balance and continuity to the volume. The book plan offers the reader both a panoramic view and unique focal interdisciplinary perspectives on the ways Florida’s Spanish legacies took root and how they keep running deep.