Examines speech varieties used by Afro-Hispanics from the 15th century to the 19th century in Iberia and Europe’s New World colonies to evaluate influences that shaped the development of Spanish on four continents. From a comparative historical perspective, this study traces the first attestations of Africans learning Spanish and the study of literary documents. He separates legitimate forms of Afro-Hispanic expression from those that result from racist stereotyping to assess how contact with the African diaspora has had a permanent impact on contemporary Spanish.