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Yanga, an early victory against slavery and racism |
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The rebellion led by Yanga was not the first uprising in New Spain by enslaved Africans, nor the last one. However, it is one of the most important due to the success of the resistance
29 May 2021/ Secretariat of Culture of Mexico
The history of Africans and Afro-descendants in New Spain and throughout the Americas is a history of oppression, but it is also, and above all, a history of resistance.
The influx of Africans to the lands that we know today as America occurred with the arrival of the conquerors and, consequently, the slave trade system that was consolidated at the time, making it possible that, between the 16th and 19th centuries, about 12.5 million people were forcibly taken from their places of origin in Africa to be sent as slaves to different parts of the Atlantic world, a fact considered as the largest forced movement in history.[1]
Slavery was largely a determining factor in the social conditions that Africans and Afro-descendants faced in New Spain. This past of oppression maintains in the Afro-Mexican populations of the present effects that are reflected in the discrimination and the undervaluation of their lives; these are residues of the old racist and slave regime that survive in the 21st century.
However, the experiences and history of Africans and Afro-descendants in the Americas are not entirely determined by slavery and subordination to that regime, but also in opposition to them –since in the Americas there were free Africans and the relationship with the slave regime was not one of full subjugation– because, as researcher Adriana Naveda indicates, “both the Africans taken from their continent through the lucrative business of slave trade and subjected to an exploitative and discriminatory economic and social system, and their descendants, born in America within the institution of slavery, they presented various forms of resistance aimed at protesting and breaking out of their condition of submission. The resistance was evident in places of the New World where the European colonization implanted slavery, and varied in intensity and frequency according to the geographical and social conditions of each region.” [2]
Despite this history of resistance and the drive for freedom, the voices, experiences and stories of black people are often made invisible, and this is intensified when it comes to the story of black people who were enslaved and who fought to put an end to that injustice. Such is the case of Yanga or Ñyanga, the protagonist of an episode in our history that has become a huge omission in the great stories of our country. To talk about Yanga, an African man who was enslaved and became an icon of the uprising and liberation, we must talk about the social context of the time in which he lived.
Africans were taken to New Spain due to the need for sufficient labor in sugar mills, sugar cane plantations, mines, ranches, and to carry out livestock farming and agricultural work. The arduous conditions in which they were forced to work and the yoke they suffered caused some dissatisfied slaves to organize themselves for escaping to remote places with difficult access, such as mountains, ravines, swamps or forests, to form communities known as “palenques”, “rancherías” or “quilombos”, terms that vary according to the region of Latin America in which these communities were established. At the time, these rebels were known as “cimarrones”, a word used in allusion to the animals of the same name that were commonly found in the mountains. [3]
To survive, they hid in their hiding places and robbed in the roads and properties of the Spaniards, and in the neighboring Indian villages, from where they stole livestock and kidnapped women. However, as expected, the colonial authorities reacted in order to end the assaults, quell the rebellions and stop the escape of slaves to areas where it was difficult to catch them and later reintegrate them with their exploiters. The uprising of these organized groups represented an alert for the colonial power, so that the actions to face the resistance included surveillance, punishment, the founding of cities and even the negotiation with rebel slave groups. [4]
According to Adriana Naveda[5], slavery was of utmost importance at the time, since “it represented more than half of the total value of the estates”; hence the deep interest of the owners in recovering the runaway slaves. Likewise, those who owned slaves not only refused to grant them freedom due to the economic loss that this represented, but also saw in the cimarrones a dangerous example that other slaves could follow. That is why the Yanga rebellion is an emblematic case of this type of uprising.
Yanga was an African man who was brought in 1579 as a slave to New Spain, specifically to the area of sugar cane plantations and cattle ranches in the Orizaba Valley, Veracruz[6]. According to Francisco Xavier Alegre (1729-1788) and his Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en Nueva España (one of the main historical sources of this event), Yanga was an elderly man and originally from the Bran nation[7], where –had he not been a prisoner– he would have become king[8].
Yanga escaped and settled in palenques located on the slopes of the Sierra de Zongolica, in the Sierra Madre Oriental, in the company of other Africans who were also seeking freedom and who had probably arrived in the area due to the growth in sugar production that occurred in Veracruz at the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century[9]. Soon, Yanga became their leader and was in charge of the group’s civil and political administration for more than 30 years; while the military command was handed over to Francisco de la Matosa, a young man from Angola who took the name of his exploiter and who had also escaped from slavery.
According to Francisco Xavier Alegre, “the unhappy had become strong in places that were inaccessible by nature and, on the other hand, very abundant in provisions, from where they came to assault the roads and places, causing damage that was already generally felt in New Spain, and with an even more pernicious example for all the slaves and criminals who found in them a sure protection against the demands of their masters.”[10]
By 1609, the Spanish authorities, eager to stop the economic losses generated by the assaults on the royal road to the port of Veracruz, and willing to mitigate the uprising of slaves, undertook an armed expedition on behalf of Viceroy Luis de Velasco and under the command of Captain Pedro González de Herrera.
Spaniards and Africans clashed, but the resistance and perseverance of the army of Yanga and de la Matosa made the Viceroy agree to negotiate the freedom of the rebels. Thus, the Spanish offered a truce that implied some capitulations for Yanga and his people. These conditions had to do with the desire to end the escapes of slaves and the rebellions that had put the colonial power in crisis and that constituted large economic losses; so that from that moment on, Yanga and his people undertook to catch and return any escaped slave who sought refuge with them, although apparently this condition was not fully met. [11]
Likewise, the agreements they reached included the freedom and independence of the rebel groups and their descendants, as well as the founding of a town in which they could settle and that was free from the influence of the Spanish.
This way the town of San Lorenzo arose, whose existence was legalized around 1640, and which was also known as Negros Libres, Pueblo de Negros, San Lorenzo Cerralvo and San Lorenzo de los Negros. Currently, this territory is called Yanga, a municipality located in the central area of the State of Veracruz.
It should be noted that the rebellion led by Yanga was not the first uprising in New Spain by enslaved Africans, nor the last one. However, it is one of the most important due to the success of the resistance, since the rebellion resulted in the founding of San Lorenzo de los Negros, a free town that is considered one of the antecedents of the struggles for freedom and the processes of independence in New Spain.
By David Olvera López
[1] Cfr. Lovejoy, Paul E. Esclavitud y comercio esclavista en el África Occidental: Investigaciones en curso, en Debates Históricos Contemporáneos: Africanos y afrodescendientes en México y Centroamérica, pp. 35-55, México, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2011.
[2] Naveda, Adriana. De San Lorenzo de los negros a los morenos de Amapa: cimarrones veracruzanos, 1609-1735, en Rina Cáceres, Rutas de la esclavitud en África y América Latina, San José, Universidad de Costa Rica, 2001, p. 158.
[3] Cfr. Reynoso, Araceli. Revueltas y rebeliones de los esclavos africanos en la Nueva España. Varsovia, Polonia. Revista del CESLA, n. 7, 2005, p. 125.
[4] Cfr. Ibíd., p. 130.
[5] Cfr. Naveda, Adriana. De San Lorenzo de los negros a los morenos de Amapa: cimarrones veracruzanos, 1609-1735, en Rina Cáceres, Rutas de la esclavitud en África y América Latina, San José, Universidad de Costa Rica, 2001, p. 160.
[6] Cfr. Reynoso, Araceli. Revueltas y rebeliones de los esclavos africanos en la Nueva España. Varsovia, Polonia. Revista del CESLA, n. 7, 2005, p. 132.
[7] The Bran region, also called Brong (possibly referring to Abron, a subgroup of the Akan culture that settled in northwestern Ashanti, current Ghana). It is probable that Yanga was part of the Yang-bara tribe, a tribe in the Upper Nile of the Dincas nation. Cfr. Castañón González, Guadalupe. Punición y rebeldía de los negros en la Nueva España en los siglos XVI y XVII. Veracruz, México, Instituto Veracruzano de Cultura, 2002, pp. 121.
[8] Cfr. Alegre Francisco Xavier. Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en Nueva España. México. Impreso por J. M. Lara. 1842. T. II. pp. 10-16
[9] Cfr. Naveda, Adriana. De San Lorenzo de los negros a los morenos de Amapa: cimarrones veracruzanos, 1609-1735, en Rina Cáceres, Rutas de la esclavitud en África y América Latina, San José, Universidad de Costa Rica, 2001, pp. 157-159.
[10] Cfr., op. cit.
[11] Although the conditions established the return of fugitives, there is evidence that said agreement was not fully complied with, since in 1640, Yanga's son was accused of protecting the cimarrones. Cfr. Naveda, Adriana. De San Lorenzo de los negros a los morenos de Amapa: cimarrones veracruzanos, 1609-1735, en Rina Cáceres, Rutas de la esclavitud en África y América Latina, San José, Universidad de Costa Rica, 2001, p. 172.
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Related Link(s): The Slave Route, Cultural Policies, Intangible Heritage, Intercultural Dialogue |
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