Entre la esclavitud y la resistencia: el negro esclavo en el caribe, 1590-1620.

Abstract

Slavery and the role of the Negro in the development of the Caribbean has been frequently approached in the region’s historiography. In the present essay, utilizing the correspondence of Spanish governors, we take a look at the relationship between the economic development of the colonies and the availability of Black slave manpower in the turning decades between the 16th and 17th centuries. We rescue documentation related to forms of resistance, marooning, and palenques. In the opposite end of resistance, we cover the participation of Negroes in Catholic religious brotherhoods. In summary, this essay discovers in the Negro element of colonial societies a multidimensional group that, effectively, carried the load of the economic exploitation of the region. At the same time, they resisted, fought, found freedom—though temporarily—and inserted itself in the societies that were being born throughout the region.