Africans and the Colonization of Mesoamerica - Essay Example

of Africans and the Colonization of Mesoamerica It was the Italian thinker and philosopher of history, Benedetto Croce, who once said that “each true history is a contemporaneous one” (1989, p.14).1 The implication of this assertion is not just the reality that any historical “account” or “record” of a given historical event is undeniably influenced and biased according to the individual making it. It also carries with it the implication that any view we have of the past is inextricably linked to the circumstances in which we live and think in the present, that is that the present holds far more significance for the past than does the past for the present. Admittedly, the past does influence the present. But when it comes to the work of the historian, who must choose his facts so as to write his histories, the present, that is his choices, his passions, his worries, and his strengths and weaknesses, will have far-reaching consequences for any view he may assert and have of the past. These are the structural realities which must be avowed when attempting to assess and interpret the meaning of the role and experience of African slaves in the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica, or as it is known today, Mexico. As Americans, our tendency is to look to our southern neighbors as speakers of Spanish who have themselves experienced similar historical experiences to our own. We began as colonies of the English crown just as Mexicans once lived under the rule of the king of Spain. They, like us, broke off from the mother country and became an independent nation. They speak the tongue of the European country with which they once had a political allegiance. To that we can add our widespread perception of Mexicans as having a mixture of Spanish and Mesoamerican blood. These perceptions largely reflect our current beliefs and prejudices: i.e. we are an “Anglo-Saxon” country and the Mexicans are a “Latin” country. These simplistic terms, aside from perpetuating misconceptions, stem from our present needs and wants. In reality, the history of Mexico from time of the arrival of the first Europeans at the end of the fifteenth century to the present is one which is far richer than any one historical account could demonstrate. Even more germane to the purposes here, that historical experience is one to which peoples and individuals from Africa made a most significant contribution. So much so that it can be said that not only were Africans central to the Spanish crown’s conquest and colonization of Mexico but also that it would surely prove impossible to imagine a history of Mexico of the last four centuries without their presence, marked as it was by the very probable truth that these same Africans played a bigger role in the creation of modern Mexico than the Spaniards themselves. A common popular misconception held regarding the African experience in Mexico and the Spanish New World in general is that the Spanish-African collusion began with the arrival of the first slaves from Africa to the New World at the beginning of the sixteenth century. “The first shipment of African slaves [to the Caribbean] arrived in 1502” (Conniff 2002, p. 73). Shortly thereafter the first Africans arrived in mainland Mexico. In reality, however, Spain had, for a century or so, already developed intimate economic and social ties with Africans which bordered on interdependency. Africans, free and enslaved, had formed sizeable populations in southern Iberia for centuries preceding the Spanish colonization of the “New World,” and the medieval Spanish pattern of incorporating the converted other (although never fully) shaped early modern Spanish society as it was transplanted to the Americas. While retaining much of their “national” culture, African subjects and slaves living in Spain were able to claim several different corporate identities…Isabel and Ferdinand appointed a royal servant, Juan De Valladolid, “of noble lineage among Blacks,” to regulate Seville’s large black population and serve as its “Chief and Judge.” The monarchs thus formalized an administrative model of ruling African “others” through their own leaders. After several centuries, Afro-Iberian identities and institutions were so well established that they were transplanted to Spanish America without question. (Landers 2006, pp. 112-113) It is this historically extensive relationship which immediately challenges the idea that Africans first and only arrived in the Americas as slaves. The truth is that the Spanish-African cultural, social, and economic interaction significantly predated Cortes’ conquest of the Aztec empire. To be clear, the relationship between the two was not one of equality and mutual respect. The Africans living in Spain had long lived as second-class citizens in a state of servitude to Spanish society. Interestingly, the model used to subdue the Africans in Spain was re-applied by the Spaniards to the Indians of Mesoamerica and, ironically, was implemented using Africans as both slaves and as soldiers. That latter role, that is as soldiers used to fight and conquer the Aztecs, is yet another story typically absent from popular conceptions of the conquest of Mexico. Free and acculturated Africans, or ladinos, from Spain joined in the first “wars of pacification” against indigenous populations in the Antilles and circum-Caribbean, and some of these war-tested veterans also participated in the conquests of the great Aztec and Incan Empires, gaining yet another corporate identity as part of the military establishment. The free West African Juan Garrido, for example, who was a Spanish-speaking Catholic, fought alongside Spaniards in Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Florida before he helped defeat the Aztecs at Tenochtitlan. His services won him land, a minor government post in New Spain, and a place in the Spanish documentary record. (Landers 2006, p. 113) The role and very existence of Africans was virtually nowhere to be found in the letters and writings of Hernando Cortes as he described and depicted his conquest of the Aztecs. In a letter to the King of Spain he wrote With that purpose I set out from the town of Cempoal, which I renamed Sevilla, on the sixteenth of August with fifteen horseman and three hundred foot soldiers, as well equipped for war as the conditions permitted me to make them. I left the town of Vera Cruz two horsemen and 150 men, to construct a fortress which is now almost completed; …to ensure further the safety of all who remained in Vera Cruz,…(Cortes 1971, pp. 50-51) Ironically, not only did the garrison in Vera Cruz surely include African soldiers but that city went on to become a majority African city. The port of Vera Cruz (“true cross” in Spanish) became an entrance point for goods and slave shipments to Spanish Mexico and as such epitomized the importance of the African contribution to the Spanish empire. By 1570 the port city of Veracruz was home to six hundred slaves and only two hundred Spaniards, while the population of the mining center of Taxco was even more racially skewed, with seven hundred slaves and only a hundred Spaniards. Africans also outnumbered Europeans almost four to one in the bishopric of Mexico and surpassed European populations in the colony at large from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. (Landers 2006, p. 118) Men like Garrido received little mention in the writings of Cortes or of other Spanish conquistadors. If we recall Croce’s axiom, this is not surprising. For Cortes, the conquest was a Spanish endeavor and most certainly not an African one and that is how he portrayed his history of it. Beyond the initial conquest and moving to the overall colonization of Mexico by Spain throughout the sixteenth century, the role played by Africans was as much an economical one as it was a political one. Africans served as soldiers both with Cortes and generally for the Spanish crown. Though if it is a question of sheer numbers, the African experience in sixteenth century Mexico was most greatly characterized by the institution of slavery and the importance of labor for the development of what would become the economic basis of the Spanish Empire in the New World. The model of using slave labor was one which the Spaniards first developed in their plantations on the Canary Islands. The first impetus to use slavery in the New World came not from Mexico, but rather from the Spanish possession of Hispaniola, the first place where the slave-system and, as a consequence, the master-slave relationship between Spaniards and “others” (people of color) was established. Between 1504 and 1518 fewer than two thousand African slaves were legally shipped to the island of Hispaniola, most as personal servants and the others destined to labor in the gold mines and construction. By the 1520’s, however, the demand for African slaves mounted to a crescendo, in part because of the diminution of the indigenous population and in part because of the growth of the cane sugar industry, which Spain successfully transplanted from the Canary Islands…The thousands of African slaves forced to labor in the ingenious of Hispaniola were the first of the millions who would make the Middle Passage. It was on Hispaniola that many of the patterns were formed that governed relations between African slaves and their new masters, patterns that spread to other Spanish colonies across the Americas…(Guitar 2006, pp. 41-42) When we think of the word “conquest” the image conjured is often one of battles and bodies. The word “colonization,” however, is one which provokes a more extensive imagery. It necessarily involves commerce, cultural diffusion, and change. Despite our own association of African slavery with the American South and of the Spanish colonization of Mexico as being one involving Spaniards and Mesoamericans, it is fact incumbent on us to link this latter event to Africans as much as we link it to Mesoamericans. Given their pre-existing relationship with Spaniards and as well taking into account the ravaging and destructive effects European diseases and conquest had on indigenous populations, it comes as little surprise that Africans were brought to Mexico as slaves. Africans were the slaves of choice because they were adaptable, readily available, and had proven to be good workers on the ingenious established by the Portuguese and Spaniards on the Atlantic islands of the West African coast…Africans were also valuable…because they were accustomed to a tropical climate, because they did not know the land or have established kinship networks there like the Indians did, and because they were already immune to most of the diseases to which Indians fell prey. (Guitar 2006, p. 46) This is say that African slaves brought to Mexico were ideal because they had already been conditioned to accept Spanish rule and because they could replace the dwindling and untrustworthy natives. It is well nigh difficult to definitively declare the true intent of the Spanish conquest and colonization of Mexico as being either financial or religious; that is, did the Spaniards act out of the desire to Christianize their newly-won subjects or were their motives purely economical and thus avaricious in nature? The truth is surely a mixture of the two. And yet the records do show that the financial motive was often predominant, for many slaves were imported and much gold and silver as well as many agricultural products were exported. If their motives were purely evangelical, there would have been little need to import African slaves. The reverse is of course true. “By 1553 New Spain’s second viceroy, Luis de Velasco, estimated the colony’s black population at more than twenty thousand…” (Landers 2006, p. 118). The evangelical motive, though surely preponderant in many individual Spanish conquistadors, priests, aristocrats, and colonizers, was most likely used by the Spanish crown not for the teleological purpose of converting the natives but rather for the practical purpose of accruing and maintaining power. In one of his accounts of Cortes’ conquest, Bernal del Castillo wrote of a “gift” that Cortes gave to Montezuma. Cortes then ordered his servants to bring an armchair, richly carved and inlaid and some margaritas, stones with many intricate designs in them, and a string of twisted glass beads packed in cotton scented with muck and a crimson cap with a golden medal engraved with a figure of St. George on horseback, lance in hand, slaying the dragon, and he told Tendile that he should send the chair to his prince Montezuma, so that he could be seated in it when he, Cortes, came to see and speak with him…(Castillo 2008, p. 54) St. George is a central figure in Catholic mythology due to his role as a martyr who died for his Christian faith. The symbolic meaning and intent of Cortes’ decision to send Montezuma the chair and have him “seated in it” should be clear: like St. George, Montezuma would perish for his beliefs, and to demonstrate this Cortes wanted him to be seated, that is in a servile position. It is a metaphor for the conquest of Mexico and the founding of the Spanish Empire, an empire which was in part built with imported African labor. A glance at contemporary Spanish accounts, for example during Cortes’ expedition and conquest, yields a great amount of evidence pointing to financial motives. Cortes’ letters to the Spanish king are littered with references to the gold, riches, and agricultural wealth and potential of the Aztec kingdom. Certain persons, who seemed to be chieftains, came here to speak with me, one of whom was said to be Mutezuma’s brother. He brought me some three thousand pesos de oro from Mutezuma, and begged me on his behalf to turn back…(1971, p. 79) …the messengers who went with the Spaniards dared not enter the land without first making their presence known to the lord thereof and asking his permission, saying that they came with Spaniards to see the gold mines he had in his land,…(1971, p. 93) This city of Churultecal is situated in a plain…The people of this city wear somewhat more clothes than those of Tascalteca, for the respected citizens among them wear burnoses over their garments, but they are different from those worn in Africa because they have armholes…This state is very rich in crops, for it possesses much land, most of it irrigated. (1971, pp. 74-75) That last passage of Cortes’ holds particular relevance to the argument made above: that Spaniards largely transplanted their model of interaction with Africans, to say nothing of the Africans themselves, and applied it to their new relationship with the natives of Mesoamerica. The fact that the people in the above-mentioned city had garments “different from those worn in Africa” was hardly coincidental. The other major cultural experience the Spaniards had had whereby they subdued and interacted with another people was with Africans. Cortes’ comparison of the Mesoamericans with the Africans stemmed not just from a supposed similarity of physical attire, but also from a shared historical experience with the Spanish characterized as it was by domination and inferiority. By having two different “others” to rule in the New World, the Spanish were better able to maintain their system of exploitation. Africans replaced the fallen Indian where necessary, but never with the hope of gaining a truly equal footing with the Spaniards themselves. It is therefore important to remind ourselves how much the present influences our view of the past. The popular view of the Spanish conquest and colonization of Mexico very often does not include or makes little mention of Africans, despite their numerically significant role in the affair. As Croce said, “each true history is a contemporaneous one.” If that is the case, it is necessary then to enhance and broaden our contemporary understanding of the past. This means giving Africans their due mention and credit in the historical account of the Spanish conquest and colonization of Mesoamerica. The fact that in many cases Africans outnumbered Spaniards in many cities and towns of New Spain demonstrates the former’s historical significance. To the extent that numbers matter, Africans held the day. The truth is that a history of the conquest of Mexico devoid of any real mention of the African role is one which is as inaccurate as it is “short.” In reference to Spanish bewilderment at encountering men in the Americas, the famed historian of Spanish Mexico, William Prescott, wrote that, , “[Man] is fitted by nature for every climate, the burning suns of the tropics and the icy atmosphere of the North” (Prescott 1957, p. 690). As the Spanish-African-Mesoamerican experience has shown, all men are indeed fit for all climes. Works Cited Castillo, Diaz Del. The History of the Conquest of New Spain. Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 2008. Conniff, Michael L. and Thomas J. Davis. Africans in the Americas: A History of the Black Diaspora. New York: Blackburn Press, 2002. Cortes, Hernan. Letters From Mexico. New York: Orion Press, 1971. Croce, Benedetto. Teoria e Storia della Storiografia. Milan: Adelphi Edizioni, 1989. Guitar, Lynne. “Boiling It Down.” Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives: Blacks in Colonial Latin America. Ed. Jane Landers. New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 2006. pp. 39-82. Landers, Jane G. “Cimarron and Citizen: African Ethnicity, Corporate Identity, and the Evolution of Free Black towns in the Spanish Circum-Caribbean.” Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives: Blacks in Colonial Latin America. Ed. Jane Landers. New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 2006. pp. 111-145. Prescott, William H. History of the Conquest of Mexico and History of the Conquest of Peru. New York: The Modern Library, 1957. Read More