African Americans
in the Caribbean and Latin America
Shamil Cruz
Dr. Moses Seenarine
BLPR 101-052 Spring 2000
INTRODUCTION
The Latin American and Caribbean regions were the first areas of the Americas to be
populated
by African immigrants. African immigration to the Americas may have begun before European
exploration of the region. Blacks sailed with Christopher Columbus even on his first
voyage in 1492, and the earliest Spanish and Portuguese explorers were likewise
accompanied by black Africans who had been born and reared in Iberia. In the following
four centuries millions of immigrants from Africa were brought to the New World as slaves.
Today, their descendants form significant ethnic minorities in several Latin American
countries, and they are the dominant element in many of the Caribbean nations. Over the
centuries, black people have added their original contributions to the cultural mix of
their respective societies and thus exerted a profound influence on all facets of
life in Latin America.
EARLY IMMIGRATION AND SLAVERY
Most of the earliest black immigrants to the Americas were natives of Spain and
Portugal—men
such as Pedro Alonso Niño, a navigator who accompanied Columbus on his first voyage, and
the
black colonists who helped Nicolás de Ovando form the first Spanish settlement on
Hispaniola in
1502. The name of Nuflo de Olano appears in the records as that of a black slave present
when
Vasco Núñez de Balboa sighted the Pacific Ocean in 1513. Other blacks served with
Hernán
Cortés when he conquered Mexico and with Francisco Pizarro when he marched into Peru.
Iberian Blacks Estebanico, one of the survivors of
Pánfilo de Narváez’s unfortunate expedition to
Florida in 1527, was a black. With three companions, he spent eight years traveling
overland to
Mexico City, learning several Native American languages in the process. Later, while
exploring
what is now New Mexico, he lost his life in a dispute with the Zuñi.
Juan Valiente, another black, led Spaniards in a series of battles
against the Araucanian people
of Chile between 1540 and 1546. Although Valiente was a slave, he was rewarded with an
estate
near Santiago and control of several Native American villages.
Between 1502 and 1518, Spain shipped out hundreds of Spanish-born
Africans, called Ladinos,
to work as laborers, especially in the mines. Opponents of their enslavement cited their
weak
Christian faith and their penchant for escaping to the mountains or joining the Native
Americans
in revolt. Proponents declared that the rapid diminution of the Native American population
required
a consistent supply of reliable work hands. Free Spaniards were reluctant to do manual
labor or to
remain settled (especially after the discovery of gold on the mainland), and only slave
labor could
assure the economic viability of the colonies.
Beginning of the African Slave Trade
By 1518 the demand for slaves in the Spanish New World was so great that King Charles
I of Spain
sanctioned the direct transport of slaves from Africa to the American colonies. The slave
trade was
controlled by the Crown, which sold the right to import slaves (asiento) to
entrepreneurs.
By the 1530s, the Portuguese were also using African slaves in
Brazil. From then until the abolition
of the slave trade in 1870, at least 10 million Africans were forcibly brought to the
Americas: about
47 percent of them to the Caribbean islands and the Guiana’s; 38 percent to Brazil;
and 6 percent
to mainland Spanish America. About 4.5 percent went to North America, roughly the same
proportion that went to Europe.
The greatest proportion of these slaves worked on plantations
producing sugar, coffee, cotton,
tobacco, and rice in the tropical lowlands of northeastern Brazil and in the Caribbean
islands.
Most of them came from the sub-Saharan states of West and Central Africa, but by the late
18th
century the supply zone extended to southern and East Africa as well.
Impact of Slavery
Slavery in the Americas was generally harsh, but it varied from time to time and place to
place.
The Caribbean and Brazilian sugar plantations required a consistently high supply of labor
for
centuries. In other areas—the frontiers of southern Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, and
Colombia—
slavery was relatively unimportant to the economy.
To tame the wilderness, build cities, establish plantations, and
exploit mineral wealth, the
Europeans needed more laborers than they could recruit from among their own metropolitan
masses. In the early 16th century, the Spanish tried unsuccessfully to subjugate and
enslave the
native populations of the West Indies. Slavery was considered the most desirable system of
labor
organization because it allowed the master almost absolute control over the life and
productivity of
the laborer. The rapid disintegration of local indigenous societies and the subsequent
decimation
of the native peoples by warfare and European diseases severely exacerbated the labor
situation,
increasing the demand for imported workers.
African slaves constituted the highest proportion of laborers on the
islands and around the
Caribbean lowlands where the native population had died. The same was true in the
northeastern
coastlands of Brazil—especially the rich agricultural area called the Reconcavo,
where the semi
nomadic Tupinamba and Tupiniquim peoples resisted effective control by the
Portuguese—and in
some of the Leeward Islands such as Guadeloupe and Dominica, where the Caribs waged a
determined resistance to their expulsion and enslavement. In areas of previously dense
populations, such as parts of central Mexico or the highlands of Peru, a sufficient number
of the
Native American inhabitants survived to satisfy a major part of the labor demands of the
new
colonists. In such cases African slaves supplemented coerced Native American labor.
Volume of Immigration
In Mexico (then called New Spain), the principal economic activity for the colonists
in the early
colonial period was mining. African slaves were imported to counteract the precipitate
decline in
the Native American populations. When the indigenous inhabitants recovered sufficiently to
provide
the required labor, the demand for expensive African slaves diminished. Between 1519 and
1650,
Mexico imported about 120,000 African slaves, or slightly fewer than 1000 per year. From
1650 to
1810, Mexico received an additional 80,000 Africans, a rate of merely 500 slaves per year.
Indeed,
Mexican slave owners bought no more than 50,000 slaves during the entire 18th century,
when the
transatlantic slave trade was at its highest. Chile imported about 6000, about one-third
of whom
arrived before 1615; most were utilized in agriculture around Santiago. Argentina (mainly
Buenos
Aires) and Bolivia (mainly the mining areas around Charcas) brought in about 100,000
Africans.
Import figures to all these areas were low compared with those for Brazil and the West
Indies.
Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean the slave population
declined at the astonishing rate
of 2 to 4 percent a year; thus, by the time slavery was abolished, the overall slave
population in many
places was far less than the total number of slaves imported. The British colony of
Jamaica, for
example, imported more than 600,000 slaves during the 18th century; yet, in 1838, the
slave
population numbered little more than 300,000. The French colony of Saint-Domingue (present
Haiti)
imported more than 800,000 Africans during the 18th century, but had only 480,000 slaves
in 1790,
on the eve of the Haitian Slave Revolt. Between 1810 and 1870, the Spanish colony of Cuba
acquired about 600,000 slaves; in 1880, however, the Cubans had only 200,000 slaves and an
entire Afro-Cuban population of 450,000. Altogether, the 4.7 million Africans imported to
the
Caribbean over the centuries had diminished to about 2 million in 1880.
Blacks in Colonial Society
In Latin America society was, in general, a three-tiered structure of castes, subdivided
into classes.
At the top were the Europeans; in the middle were the free nonwhites; and at the bottom
were slaves
and Native Americans. Each caste had its own set of legal rights and social privileges,
which varied
from place to place. In the sugar-producing areas and other plantation-based economic
units of
Brazil, the Caribbean, and the lowlands of Mexico, Colombia, and Peru, the rights of
slaves as well
as free persons of color tended to be legally circumscribed. The greater the demand for
labor, the
more severe the coercion and discrimination exercised against the African sector of the
population.
In the coffee, cattle, and fishing areas of southern Brazil, Puerto Rico, eastern Cuba,
the interior of
Argentina, and Venezuela, social mobility tended to be greater and internal class and
caste
distinctions more relaxed and less formal. In the towns and cities Africans filled
occupational roles
just as did other free members of society, although they tended to be concentrated in the
more
menial and unskilled tasks.
The majority of the black population in Latin America and the
Caribbean spent their lives in
domestic service or as agricultural laborers. About 20 percent—both slave and
free—were sailors,
artisans, nursemaids, wet nurses, merchants, small shopkeepers, mining or sugar experts,
or
itinerant street vendors. Slavery was never only a form of labor organization or only an
economic
enterprise. It was a socioeconomic complex held together by law and custom. Regardless of
their
conditions, their hopes for freedom were strong, and slaves often revolted.
EMANCIPATION
Throughout the history of slavery in the Americas, some masters voluntarily manumitted
their slaves.
In the Spanish colonies, slaves could purchase their freedom on a time-purchase plan
called
coartación. A similar scheme prevailed in Brazil and the sugar colonies of the
Caribbean. Almost
everywhere, female urban slaves constituted the majority of those who benefited from
voluntary
manumissions and self-purchase. The children of these women were also free. In addition,
some
free white fathers emancipated their children born of slave mothers; the state also
emancipated
slaves from time to time for a variety of reasons.
The Free Blacks
Because slavery played such an important role in the New World economy between 1600 and
1850,
it overshadowed by far the number of Africans who came to the Americas as free persons.
The first
group of free, or semi free, Africans arrived in the early 16th century with the original
European
colonists. The second came during the 19th century, mainly as part of a British-sponsored
attempt to
provide an alternative source to African slave labor. Besides these free
immigrants—of whom about
50,000 settled in the British and French West Indies—each slave society contained,
almost from its
beginning, an ever-expanding component of blacks who had been freed by manumission.
By the beginning of the 19th century this free population had become
a fixture of every slave society
in the Americas. In the New Granada provinces of what today are the independent states of
Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, the free black population in 1789 was 420,000,
whereas African slaves numbered only 20,000. Free blacks also outnumbered slaves in Peru,
Argentina, and Brazil. In Puerto Rico they numbered nearly half the total population in
1812. In
Cuba, by contrast, free blacks made up only 15 percent in 1827; in Saint-Domingue the
ratio was
even lower—5 percent in 1789—and in Jamaica it was a mere 3 percent in 1800.
Thus, in
plantation societies, opportunities for emancipation did not come easily, whereas in
regions where
the economy was more diversified, the free black and mulatto population expanded
considerably.
The Campaign Against the Slave Trade
By the end of the 18th century, the possibility of a general emancipation of all slaves
began to
emerge as a preoccupation of every slave society. By the 16th century Spanish missionaries
such
as Antonio Montesino and Bartolomé de Las Casas had become critical of slavery, and in
the 17th
century English Quakers opposed both slavery and the slave trade. General disapproval
developed
only during the 18th century, however, when the rational attitudes of the Enlightenment
combined
with British Evangelical Protestantism to form the intellectual preconditions for the
abolitionist
movement.
The British abolitionists, aware that their compatriots transported
the greatest number of African
slaves to the New World, concentrated their efforts against the slave trade rather than
slavery itself,
feeling that the termination of the trade would eventually lead to the end of the
institution. The
abolitionist attack was spearheaded by Granville Sharp, a humanitarian who in 1772
persuaded
the British courts to declare that slavery could not exist in England. The ruling
immediately affected
the more than 15,000 slaves brought into the country by their colonial masters, who valued
them at
approximately £700,000 (averaging £47 each, or one and one-half times the average yearly
income of a London laborer of the period). In 1776 the British philosopher and economist
Adam
Smith declared in his classic economic study, The Wealth of Nations, that slavery
was
uneconomical because the plantation system was a wasteful use of land and because slaves
cost
more to maintain than free laborers.
By the 1780s, slavery was being attacked, directly and indirectly,
from several sources.
Evangelicals condemned it on the grounds of Christian charity and the assumption of a
natural law
of common humanity. Economists opposed slavery because it wasted valuable resources.
Political
philosophers saw it as the basis of unjust privilege and unequal distribution of social
and corporate
responsibility. In 1787 Thomas Clarkson, an English cleric, joined Granville Sharp and
Josiah
Wedgwood, the famous English potter, to form a society for the abolition of the slave
trade. The
society recruited William Wilberforce as its parliamentary spokesman and in 1788 succeeded
in
getting Prime Minister William Pitt to set up a select committee of the Privy Council to
investigate
the slave trade. The year before, the society had established Sierra Leone in West Africa
as a
refuge for the "London black poor," and it achieved other successes.
Abolition of the Slave Traffic
A bill designed to restrict the number of slaves carried by each ship, based on the
ship’s tonnage,
was enacted by Parliament on June 17, 1788; and that year the French abolitionists,
inspired by
their English counterparts, founded the Société des Amis des Noirs (Society of the
Friends of
Blacks). Finally in 1807, the British Parliament passed an act prohibiting British
subjects from
engaging in the slave trade after March 1, 1808—16 years after the Danes had
abolished their
trade. In 1811 slave trading was declared a felony punishable by transportation (exile to
a penal
colony) for all British subjects or foreigners caught trading in British possessions.
Britain then
assumed most of the responsibility for abolishing the transatlantic slave trade, partly to
protect its
sugar colonies. In 1815 Portugal accepted £750,000 to restrict the trade to Brazil; and
in 1817
Spain accepted £400,000 to abandon the trade to Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo. In
1818 Holland and France abolished the trade. After 1824, slave trading was declared
tantamount
to piracy, and until 1837 participants faced the penalty of death.
Abolition of Slavery
The campaigns to abolish the trade exposed the abusive nature of slavery and led to the
formation
of the British Anti-Slavery Society in 1823. Long before that, the thrust for full
emancipation of the
enslaved Africans began with the successful revolt of the slaves in the French colony of
Saint-
Domingue in 1791 during the French Revolution. The radical French commissioner, Léger
Félicité
Sonthonax, emancipated all slaves and admitted them to full citizenship (1793), a move
ratified the
following year by the revolutionary government in Paris, which extended emancipation to
all French
colonies. This measure was revoked by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802. Emancipation
nevertheless
remained permanent in Haiti, which won its independence under black leadership two years
later.
Elsewhere slaves worked for the disintegration of the system, but the official acts of
emancipation
lay outside their hands. Only in Haiti did they seize and hold political power.
During the struggle of Spain’s American colonies for
independence from 1810 to 1826, both the
insurgents and the loyalists promised to emancipate all slaves who took part in military
campaigns.
Mexico, the Central American states, and Chile abolished slavery once they were
independent. In
1821 the Venezuelan Congress approved a law reaffirming the abolition of the slave trade,
liberating all slaves who had fought with the victorious armies, and establishing a system
that
immediately manumitted all children of slaves, while gradually freeing their parents. The
last
Venezuelan slaves were freed in 1854. In Argentina the process began in 1813 and ended
with
the ratification of the 1853 constitution by the city of Buenos Aires in 1861.
Brazil
Brazil suffered a long internal struggle over abolition and was the last Latin American
country to
adopt it. In 1864 the Brazilian emperor Pedro II emancipated the slaves that formed part
of his
daughter’s dowry and acceded to the request of French abolitionists that the
government commit
itself to ending slavery. At the end of the disastrous Paraguayan War in 1870, more than
20,000
slaves were emancipated as a reward for their services. In 1871 the Brazilian Congress
approved
the Rio Branco Law of Free Birth, which conditionally freed the children of slaves. Until
they were
eight years old, such children remained in the custody of the mother’s master. At
that time the state
could compensate the master for the emancipation of the child, or the master could elect
to have
the child work without wages for 13 years. This scheme failed to satisfy advocates of
outright
abolition, who won widespread support in the late 1870s. In 1884 dissatisfaction increased
when
it became known that in 12 years the Rio Branco Law had freed only about 20,000
slaves—less
than 20 percent of those voluntarily manumitted. In 1887 army officers refused to order
their troops
to hunt runaway slaves, and in 1888 the Senate passed a law establishing immediate,
unqualified
emancipation.
The West Indies
Caribbean colonies required action by their European metropolises. In the
British, French, Danish,
and Dutch Antilles, economic problems in the early 19th century combined with the
humanitarian
and political pressures from Europe to weaken the planters’ resistance to
emancipation. West
Indian sugar exports stabilized in volume and declined in price, driving production costs
up.
Meanwhile, the slaves became increasingly difficult to control. Emancipation became part
of a
general reform movement in Britain in the 1830s, and Parliament abolished slavery in 1833,
instituting an apprenticeship program for ex-slaves, an arrangement that lasted until
1838. France
and Denmark followed Britain’s example in 1848, and the Netherlands did so in 1863.
In every
case, emancipation resulted from the combined pressure of political reformers,
humanitarian
idealists, and believers in more efficient methods of production—a coalition that
overwhelmed
opposition from the colonial slave owners. Slaves also contributed to the disintegration
of the
system by actively revolting and by passively increasing production and administrative
costs.
Largely under pressure from Cuban slave owners, Spain refused Puerto
Rico’s request that slavery
be abolished on that island in 1812. In 1870 the Spanish Moret law freed the newborn
offspring of
slaves, all those more than 60 years old, and those who fought for Spain in the Ten
Years’ War in
Cuba. Slavery in Puerto Rico was abolished in 1873, and in 1880 a system of gradual,
indemnified
emancipation was established in Cuba. The gradual system was abandoned in 1886, when the
last 30,000 Cuban slaves were granted immediate emancipation.
BLACK SOCIETY AFTER EMANCIPATION
The black inhabitants of Latin America and the Caribbean were able to enjoy the rights of
full
freedom depending on their relative numbers, their economic or occupational roles, and the
degree of their access to political power. In parts of Latin America where the black
population was relatively small, cultural and genetic integration with
the white or Native American majority over time blurred considerably the obvious ethnic
distinctions.
In Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and
Uruguay, the black sector
constituted less than 1 percent of the population. In Central America, coastal Colombia,
Venezuela,
Brazil, and the Caribbean, the black concentration ranged from 2 percent (Honduras) to 99
percent
(Haiti). People of mixed African, European, and Native American ancestry, however, had
ceased
to be counted as "black."
Prejudice Against Blacks
The rise of pseudoscientific racism and the popularity of social-engineering ideas
among Latin
American white elites militated against the social acceptance of the black population. The
positivist
followers of the French philosopher Auguste Comte thought Africans were far from ready for
the
stage of technical modernity, and neglected them. Adherents of social Darwinism considered
the
African dimension of the pluralistic society a sign of fundamental weakness because they
assumed
the natural superiority of the white race. The preoccupation of Marxists with class
conditions dulled
their awareness of the problems of race and color. Thus, the Latin American elites of the
19th
century refused to accept cultural pluralism because they feared sharing power with the
domestic
black populations. Several Latin American nations adopted laws prohibiting black
immigration
during the 19th century. In most areas, the economic situation has not yet diversified or
expanded
sufficiently to allow blacks to move out of menial occupations. Most of them, therefore,
remain in
the lowest economic and social strata.
Assimilation of Latin Population
The prevalence of intermarriage precludes the historical development of a two-tiered
society, and
a racially mixed "colored" (as distinct from black) group frequently shared the
legal and economic
opportunities of the white elites. Race mixture in Latin America, however, is too complex
for easy
categorization. Centuries of contact among African, European, indigenous American, and
Asian
people have produced a socioethnic complexity in which status and racial designation
depend on
many factors.
When slavery collapsed, governments compensated not the ex-slaves,
but the ex-slave owners.
The black masses possessed neither the requisite economic base nor the skills to compete
with
the wave of new immigrants who poured into the southeastern part of South America. Between
1870 and 1963, the country of Brazil absorbed nearly 5 million European immigrants, a
large
number of whom had official or private sponsors who paid for their transportation and
resettlement
costs. Eighty percent of these immigrants settled in São Paulo and the southern states of
the
country, virtually inundating the resident black populations. Later economic expansion did
not
substantially improve the poor economic conditions of the blacks. Color and race
contributed to
the continued expulsion of Afro-Brazilians from occupations above the marginal and menial
tasks
assigned to servants, odd jobbers, porters, and other nonorganized groups.
In Argentina the impact of European immigration on the
country’s black people was even more
dramatic. Between 1869 and 1914, the Argentine population increased from 1.8 million to
7.9
million. During this period the total population in the city of Buenos Aires increased
eight-fold, but
its black population remained stable. In 1970 the Afro-Argentines numbered only about 4000
in a
city population of 8 million. Most of the black men died in continuous wars, and a large
number of
Afro-Argentine women married European immigrants, thereby losing their ethnic identity.
Peasant and Maroon communities in the West Indies the
situation was different. White immigrants
to the islands were not numerous enough to swamp the Afro-Caribbean populations. In some
countries, independent African American communities were established in remote areas by
runaway slaves known as Maroons. Maroon settlements were continually challenged by
planters
needing slaves. The Maroons resisted in Palmares, Brazil (1605?-1695), and in Esmeraldas,
Ecuador (1570-1738). In Jamaica they signed (1796) a formal treaty with the British
government
after a series of conflicts and retained their independence until 1962. The Maroons were
the first
black peasants in the West Indies.
The trend to peasant production expanded greatly during the period
after slavery. Ex-slaves
bought up abandoned or bankrupt estates throughout the Caribbean. In Barbados and Antigua
this was difficult, but in Cuba and Puerto Rico, land was available outside the sugar
zones. Free
peasant villages thus became a feature of Caribbean life. Blacks also entered commerce,
the
professions, and government. Throughout the 19th century and the first half of the 20th
century,
Haiti remained the only independent black nation in the Americas. By 1962, when Jamaica,
Trinidad and Tobago, and other nations had become independent, there remained much to
improve in the economic realm.
CULTURE
A strong African influence pervades music, dance, the arts, literature, speech forms,
and religious
practices in Latin America and the Caribbean. Africans, whether as slaves or free
immigrants,
brought a variety of African cultural influences to the New World. They came from too many
places
in Africa and were too scattered throughout the Americas to reestablish all the conditions
of their
homelands, but wherever possible, they did their best to reconcile reality with their
beliefs. Like all
other immigrant groups, they abandoned some aspects of their culture, modified others, and
created new forms. This adaptation to local American conditions is called creolization.
The number
of Africans, their proportion in local society, and the length of time they spent in any
one place were
crucial in the development of an African American culture.
Regional Differences
In countries such as Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, African immigrants were a
minority having to
deal with a vital and dynamic form of European society and culture. The African
communities
survived, and in some instances proliferated, but they did so against the stiff and
relentless
competition of the majority, or "high," culture. Aspects of the African ethnic
subculture were
eventually adopted by the mainstream. Nonetheless, in such societies, the African
character of the
African American culture is less pronounced than in societies where Africans formed the
majority
of the inhabitants.
In the essentially plantation societies of the Caribbean islands,
people of African ancestry retained
considerable control over their daily lives, despite the efforts of the politically
dominant minority
group to restrain and coerce them. The lack of cultural homogeneity as well as the paucity
of the
plantation elites provided an almost unique opportunity for the African masses to fashion
their
own society and influence the "high" culture.
Caribbean people speak variants of the standard European languages,
which uniformly reflect
West African speech patterns regardless of whether the spoken language is English,
Spanish,
French, or Dutch. The French spoken in Haiti constitutes a language of its own. In
Curaçao, Aruba,
and Bonaire, Papiamento, a blend of Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese, is one of the official
languages. Nor are these Creole languages confined to the poorer, unschooled classes.
Creole
has now been accorded greater respect in the literature and political life of the islands.
Cultural Modifications
Official acceptance modifies some forms of culture. The carnival is an example. Until the
19th
century, the annual celebration of carnival was confined to the black population; the
upper classes
deplored carnival and tried to destroy it as a public festival. By the early 20th century,
however, it
had attracted all classes and races, and currently it has official government support in
the Bahamas,
Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, and Brazil. Although carnival has become respectable, and its
festivities are open to all races and classes, the chief participants of these carnivals
are still black.
The same remains true for other folk festivals such as the Jonkonnu in Jamaica.
In some cases, however, the transition from low to high culture
obscured the African origin, as in
Argentina where the tango was developed from dual African ancestry. One source is
undoubtedly
the Spanish fandango, but the fandango is really Moorish. The other source is a black
dance called
the candombe, the feature attraction of Afro-Argentine festivals during and after
the period of
slavery. Latin American music has always been deeply influenced by the vibrant rhythms and
melodies that blacks brought with them from their African homeland. This is particularly
true of
Brazil; in fact, the first real music school in that country was founded by a black
priest. Brazilian
music is thoroughly imbued with African themes, and illustrious composers such as Heitor
Villa-
Lobos have long found inspiration in the black musical heritage. Many Caribbean musical
styles
have become widely known, including the mambo from Cuba, salsa from Puerto Rico, reggae
from Jamaica, and calypso from Trinidad.
Religious Practices
When it came to religion, African immigrants to Latin America and the Caribbean not only
retained
some of their original beliefs but also borrowed and modified religious rituals from the
various
European Christian churches they encountered there. Religious affiliation, however, is no
longer
restricted by race or color. A number of Christian groups such as the Seventh-day
Adventists,
Pentecostals, and Churches of God are predominantly black. On the other hand, religious
sects of
African origin—such as the vodun in Haiti (see Voodoo); Shango in
Trinidad and Tobago,
Venezuela, and Brazil; Santería in Cuba and Puerto Rico; Kumina, Myal, Revivalist, and
Ras
Tafari in Jamaica; and Umbanda, Macounda, and others in Brazil—are no longer only
black.
Black Literature
African Americans have left a deep impression on the lore and literature of the New World.
In
some parts of Latin America, such as Brazil, popular tales and legends are to a great
extent of
African origin. Themes dealing with slavery have always been popular with black writers.
Some,
such as the Brazilian poet Luis Gama, were also active in the abolitionist movement.
Antônio de
Castro Alves was identified as the "poet of the slaves" for his treatment of
slavery in his writings.
João da Cruz e Sousa, the son of emancipated slaves, is considered one of Brazil’s
greatest
poets.
As nationalism has intensified during the 20th century, even more
attention has been paid to
African origins. The Haitian poet Jacques Roumain stressed the value of his native
(African)
culture, while expressing the pride and bitterness of his black ancestry. Nicolás
Guillén, one of
Cuba’s most eminent poets, wrote some of his best works as "black" poetry
based on the rhythms
of Afro-Cuban music. The novels, poetry, dance, and mime of Latin America and the
Caribbean
area have all incorporated African speech patterns, styles, or concepts and have tried to
express
the spirit of the black cultural heritage. In the Nobel Prize-winning poetry of Derek
Walcott and the
autobiographical short stories of Jamaica Kincaid, an effort is made to reconcile the
differences
between the writers’ native West Indian and adoptive white milieus.
POLITICS
The Maroon settlements in the days of slavery were attempts to form black states; they
were, in
effect, states within states. Haiti, where slaves led by Jean Jacques Dessalines captured
the
governing apparatus in 1804, was only the second independent country in the western
hemisphere
(the first being the United States) and the first one ruled by blacks. As such, it became
a symbol of
black independence and a catalyst for black nationalism. Blacks in many other countries
participated in politics within the prevailing political structures, but in some nations
such activities
were restricted. In Cuba, for example, a law forbade the organization of political parties
based on
race or color after 1911, and the military efforts of the Afro-Cuban leaders Pedro Ivonet
and
Evaristo Estenoz to reverse that decision ended in disaster in 1912. Government troops
killed
3000 Afro-Cubans in Oriente Province, putting an end to black political resistance in
Cuba. In
Brazil, the Frente Negra Brazileira (Brazilian Black Front), founded in São Paulo in
1931, served
as the national political voice of Afro-Brazilians, but faded along with other political
parties during
the Vargas dictatorship of the 1930s and ‘40s. In the British, French, and Dutch
Caribbean, blacks
have participated in politics for more than a century, and today hold local political
power.
Governments controlled by people of African ancestry have been in power in the Netherlands
Antilles, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Saint Lucia, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the
Grenadines,
Dominica, Antigua, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Jamaica. The Marxist government of Cuba has
declared Cubans an Afro-Latin American people and has formed close ties with Angola,
Ethiopia,
and other African states.
Other Caribbean countries have also established contacts with the
free nations of Africa, both
directly and through United Nations agencies and other international organizations.
Caribbean-
African cooperation, however, has more frequently been based on shared ideology than it
has on
race or color.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Braithwaite, Edward. 1971. The Development of Creole Society in
Jamaica. Boston: New Beacon Books.
Beckles, Hilary M. 1989. Natural Rebels: A Social History of
Enslaved Black Women in Barbados. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Curtis, Philip D. The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census.
Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Knight, Franklin W. 1970. Slave Society in Cuba During the
Nineteenth Century. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
McGlynn, & Seymore. 1992. The Meaning of Freedom: Economics,
Politics and Culture After Slavery. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Sheridan, R.B. 1974. Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of
the British West Indies, 1623-1775. Bridgetown, Barbados: Caribbean University Press.
Williams, Eric. 1970. From Columbus to Castro: The History of the
Caribbean, 1492-1969. NY: Vintage Books.
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