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HUM2420: African Humanities

Open Education Resources created by Sarah Cervone PhD

HUM2420: African Humanities

Africa in Latin America

African people and cultures have a strong influence in the social, cultural and religious fabric throughout many parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. this is particularly the case in areas where a large number of enslaved African people were brought by Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors to work in plantations. This lesson will provide a very brief introduction of African cultural survivals in the United States.

Lesson Objectives
  • describe the history of African culture and people in Latin America and the Caribbean
  • recognize the influences and contributions of African culture and people in Latin American culture
  • evaluate an African cultural survival in contemporary Latin America
Africa and Latin America: legacy of enslavement

The vast majority of enslaved African people were taken to Latin America and the Caribbean by Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors, and a vast majority of enslaved Africans were taken to Brazil. During that time, enslaved Africans represented the majority of the population in many areas throughout Latin America, and especially in Brazil.

As Catholic monarchies, both Spain and Portugal received permission from Pope Alexander VI to engage in the perpetual enslavement of African people within their respective colonies, and colonization included Catholic missions by Jesuits and clergy. Although the Catholic church viewed colonization and enslavement as an opportunity to convert a large population of people to Christianity, the clergy sent to the colonies were often horrified by the methods used by the colonizers and this generated tensions between the Church and the colonial administrations. The second Archbishop of Mexico (1551–72), the Dominican Alonso de Montúfar, wrote to the king in 1560 protesting the importation of Africans, and questioning the “justness” of enslavement. Tomás de Mercado, a theologian and economist who had lived in Mexico, produced the 1571 Summa de Tratos y Contratos (“Manual of Deals and Contracts”) a scathing critique about the morality of the enslavement of Africans. Nonetheless, the enslavement of African people took place in the Americas for nearly four centuries.

More than seventy percent of enslaved Africans in Latin America worked on sugar cane plantations. Like North America, the vast majority of enslaved people were men used to conduct physical agricultural labor and to work as carpenters, blacksmiths, mule drivers, etc. In some cases, men were recruited to work in plantation militias.

Unlike the case in North America, Spanish and Portuguese colonizers were able to successfully enslave indigenous people because Mayan and Aztec civilizations had a system of enslavement in place. The Spanish encomienda system of forced or tenured labor legalized and regulated a system of forced Indian labor. However, many leaders such as Rodrigo de Albornoz who was sent to Latin America as an official, advocated advocated against the enslavement of indigenous people and argued in favor of African labor. This pressure to end of slavery and forced labor among the indigenous Indians worked to increase the demand for African slaves in Latin America. In some cases, African and indigenous groups worked together in mines or on plantations, and in other cases, Africans took refuge in indigenous communities after escaping slavery. Close contact led to the blending of two cultures, and many people today are of mixed African and indigenous descent.

African Cultural Communities in Latin America and the Caribbean

The African presence in Latin America had an effect on the culture across Latin America. Latin American and Caribbean countries with significant African, Mulatto, or Zambo populations today include Brazil (54 million), Haiti (8.7 million), Dominican Republic (8.5 million), Cuba (7 million), Colombia (5 million), Venezuela (4 million) and Ecuador (1.1 million). As of 2015, Mexico and Chile are the only two Latin American countries yet to formally recognize their Afro–Latin American population in their constitutions.

Garífuna (in Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize) 

The Garifuna people, also known as Garinagu and ‘Black Caribs,’ are of mixed African and indigenous Kalinago-Taino (Carib-Arawak) origin from the Caribbean island of St Vincent who were exiled to the Honduran coast in the eighteenth century and subsequently moved to Belize. They are the descendants of the African survivors of human cargo ships that were wrecked off the island of St Vincent around 1675. These West Africans, along with the steady stream of Maroons escaping slavery on other Caribbean islands, found refuge and started families with the indigenous Kalinago (Carib) population. An Afro-indigenous culture developed that existed independently of the region’s colonial forced labor plantation system. The Garifuna together with the indigenous Kalinago created a formidable fighting force that resisted European colonizing efforts in the region for over a century, forcing both the British and French to recognize St Vincent as one of several ‘Neutral Islands’ (See Dominica and Saint Vincent.) Conflict between the British and the Black or Fighting Caribs, led by defiant Paramount Chief Joseph Chatoyer (Satuye) continued until 1796, when improved British armaments forced them to accept permanent exile as prisoners of war. In April 1797, over 5,000 ‘Black Caribs’ (Garifuna) were transported on British ships and abandoned on the deserted Honduran Bay Island of Roatan. Many later moved to the mainland of Honduras and became allied with Spain and later fought with Spain against British pirates and military attacks. They also took the Royalist side in the Central American Independence wars against Spain and as a result became a highly marginalized population in post-independence Honduras. The Garifuna in Belize now have six communities which have taken a leadership role in maintaining global Garifuna culture, and leaders influenced the government to declare November 19th as Settlement Day in Belize to mark the arrival of Garifuna in the country. This celebration includes reenactments of the landing of the first Garifuna boats in Belize. These are performed in various urban areas and include performances by cultural drummers and dancers and the sale of traditional foods. The Yurumein video trailer below, presents a documentary about the struggle to maintain Garifuna culture today.

cafuzo (in Brazil) and

cafuzo 

zambo in the Andes and Central America. 

Zambo is a racial term historically used in Spanish to refer to people of mixed Indigenous and African ancestry. Occasionally in the 21st century, the term is used in the Americas to refer to persons who are of mixed Black and Indigenous American ancestry. (It is important to note that the analogous English term, sambo, is considered a slur.) Historically, the racial cross between enslaved Africans and Amerindians was referred to as a zambayga, then zambo, then sambo.

Marabou is a term of Haitian origin denoting a Haitian of multiracial ethnicity.

Afro-Mexican

The mix of these African cultures with the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and indigenous cultures of Latin America has produced many unique forms of 

language (e.g., Palenquero, Garífuna, and Creole), religions (e.g., Candomblé, Santería, and Vodou), music (e.g., kompa, salsa, Bachata, Punta, Palo de Mayo, plena, samba, merengue, cumbia) martial arts (capoeira) and dance (rumba, merengue).

African Cultural Survivals in Latin America

References and Resources