Like other African descent people in foreign regions, the Afro-Puerto Ricans contributed significantly to making Puerto Rico be what it is today. Without much further ado, let us discuss the history of the Afro-Puerto Ricans.
Brief Description and History of Afro-Puerto Ricans
Afro-Puerto Ricans are Puerto Ricans who are of partial or predominant African ancestry or descent. The history of Puerto Ricans of African ancestry starts with libertos, free African men, who accompanied the Spanish Conquistadors in the Island’s invasion. The Spaniards enslaved the Tainos, local inhabitants of the Island, many of whom died due to new infectious illnesses and the Spaniards’ oppressive colonization efforts. Spain’s noble authority needed workers and started to depend on slavery to staff their fort-building operations and mining. The Crown authorized the importation of enslaved West Africans. As a result, most black or African peoples who entered Puerto Rico were part of the forced migration of the transatlantic slave trade or Atlantic slave trade and came from several different peoples and cultures of the African region.
When the authorities declared the gold mines in Puerto Rico to be depleted, the Spanish Crown no longer considered the Island a high colonial priority. Its main ports served primarily as a garrison to support naval ships or vessels. The Spaniards encouraged free people of color from French and British possessions to emigrate to Puerto Rico to provide a population base to back the Puerto Rican garrison.
The Spanish decree of the late 18th century (1789) permitted slaves to buy or earn their liberation. However, this did little to aid their situation. The increase or expansion of the sugar cane farms increased demand for workers, and the slave population increased as slave-dealers imported new slaves.
Throughout the years, there were many slave rebellions or slave revolts on the Island. The slaves whom the authorities had promised their liberation joined the 1868 uprising against the Spanish colonial rule called the Grito de Lares. On March 22nd, 1873, the practice of slavery was prohibited in Puerto Rico. Africans’ contributions to the music, language, art, and heritage have been instrumental in the Puerto Rican way of life or culture.
More Details Concerning the 1st Africans in Puerto Rico
When the Spaniards and Ponce de Leon arrived on the Island of Puerto Rico, the Cacique Agueybana greeted them. Cacique Agueybana is the supreme leader of the peaceful Taino ethnic groups on the Island. Agueybana aided in maintaining the peace between the Spaniards and the Taino. In 1509, Juan Garrido was the 1st free black man to set foot on the Island. He was a conquistador who was part of Juan Ponce’s entourage. Garrido was born on the W. African Coast. A year before setting foot on the Island, he joined Juan Ponce to explore the Island and gold prospect.
In 1511, he fought under Ponce to repress the Carib and the Taino, who had joined forces in Puerto Rico in a revolt against the Spaniards. Garrido then joined Hernan Cortes in the Spanish conquest of Mexico.
The tranquility between the Spanish and the Taino was short-lived. The Spanish took advantage of the Taino and enslaved them, forcing them to labor in the gold mines and fortresses’ construction. As mentioned earlier, Many Taino died due to diseases such as smallpox, to which they had no immunity. Other Tainos killed themselves while others left the region after an unsuccessful rebellion in 1511.
Friar Bartolome de las Casas was angry at the Spanish treatment of the Taino. In 1512, he campaigned at the Council of Burgos at the Spanish Court. He fought for the liberation of the locals and could secure their rights. The Spanish colonists, fearing the loss of their workforce, also campaigned or protested before the courts. They complained that they required a workforce to work in the mines, construct forts, and supply labor for the flourishing sugar cane farms. As an alternative, Friar Bartolome proposed the use and importation of African slaves. Later, as explained earlier, the Spanish Crown allowed its subjects to import more than ten slaves each, thereby commencing the slave trade in their territories.
According to Luis Diaz, a historian, the largest contingent of African slaves came from the regions of modern-day Nigeria, Gold Coast, and Dahomey. The majority were Igbos and the Yoruba people, tribes or ethnic groups from Nigeria, and Bantus from the Guineas. The number of slaves on the Island rose from 1500 in 1530 to more than 12350 by the mid-16th century (1555). People stamped the slaves with a hot iron on the forehead, a branding which meant that they brought them to the country legally and prevented their abduction or kidnapping.
African slaves worked in the gold mines to substitute the Taino or labor in the fields in the Island’s sugar and ginger industries. The African slaves could live with their families in a bohio on the master’s land, and the masters could give them a patch of a field where they could plant and grow fruits and vegetables. Black people had no opportunity for advancement and faced discrimination from the Spaniards.
The slave masters educated their slaves and soon learned how to speak the master’s language, educating their children in the new language. They enriched the Puerto Rican Spanish language by adding their words. The slaves had no choice but to adapt to their lives. Most of them converted to Christianity. The Catholic Church baptized them, and they received the last names or surnames of their Spanish owners or masters. Many African slaves were subject to mistreatment and especially women who were subject to sexual harassment due to the power relationships. The majority of the farmers and the Conquistadors who settled on the Island had arrived without women. Many of them intermarried with the Africans or Tainos. Their mixed-race descendants formed the 1st generations of the early Puerto Ricans.
In 1527, the 1st major slave revolt occurred in Puerto Rico, as other slaves fought against the colonists in a short or brief rebellion. The slaves who escaped retreated to the mountains, where they lived as Maroons with the remaining or surviving Tainos.
By 1873, the slaves had carried out several revolts. Some were of political significance, such as the Vega Baja and Ponce conspiracies.
African Influence in Puerto Rican Culture (Language and Music)
Most African slaves imported to Puerto Rico and Cuba spoke Bozal Spanish, a creole language that was Spanish-based, with Portuguese and Congolese influence. Although Bozal Spanish became extinct in the 19th century, the African influence in the Spanish people spoke on the Island is still evident in the several Kongo words that have become a permanent part of Puerto Rican-Spanish.
The Puerto Rican musical instruments such as drums with stretched animal skin, barriles, and Puerto Rican music forms such as Plena and Bomba are from Africa or have African roots. Bomba represents the African influence in Puerto Rico. Bomba is a rhythm, music, and dance that West African slaves brought to the Island.
Plena is a form of folkloric music of African ancestry. The blacks who moved north from the English-speaking islands south of Puerto Rico brought Plena to Ponce. Plena is a rhythm that is African and similar to Soca, Calypso, and Dance hall music from Jamaica and Trinidad.
People played Plena and Bomba during the festival of Santiago since slaves could not worship their gods. Plena and Bomba evolved into several styles based on the kind of dance one intended to use. These included yuba, lero, cunya, Belen, and babu. The slaves celebrated weddings, baptisms, and births with the Bailes de Bomba. Slaveowners allowed dances only on Sundays for fear of a revolt. The women slave dancers would mimic and poke fun at the slave owners.
Until 1953, people outside Puerto Rico did not know of Bomba and Plena. Island artists Rafael Cortijo, Ismael Rivera, and the El Conjunto Monterrey orchestra introduced Plena and Bomba to the rest of the world. With his orchestra, Rafael Cortijo modernized the Puerto Rican folkloric rhythms with the use of bass, piano, saxophones, trumpets, timbales, bongos, and congas. Rafael Cepeda (The Patriarch of Plena and Bomba) was the founding father of the Cepeda family. The family is one of the most famous exponents of Puerto Rican folk music, with generations of artists working to maintain or preserve the African heritage in Puerto Rican music. The family is famous for their performances of the Bomba and Plena folkloric music, and many consider them to be keepers of those customary genres.
Sylvia del Villard was a participant in the Afro-Boricua Ballet. She participated in several Afro-Puerto Rican productions. In 1968, she founded the Afro-Boricua El Coqui Theater, which the Pan-American Association of the New World Festival recognized as the most significant or vital authority of Black Puerto Rican culture.
The Theater group received a contract that allowed them to present their act in other states and several Universities in the US. In 1981, Sylvia del Villard became the 1st and only Director of the Office of the Afro-Puerto Rican Affairs of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. People knew her as an outspoken activist who fought for the equal rights of Afro-Puerto Rican artists.
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