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History of the Civil
Rights Struggle
Early Immigration and Slavery
Most of the earliest black immigrants to the Americas were natives of Spain
and Portugal—men such as Pedro Alonso Niño (1468–1505), a navigator who
accompanied Columbus on his first voyage, and the black colonists who helped
Nicolás de Ovando (1460?–1518) form the first Spanish settlement on
Hispaniola in 1502.
The name of Nuflo de Olano (b. 1490?) appears in the records as that of a
black slave present when Vasco Núñez de Balboa sighted the Pacific Ocean in
1513. Other blacks served with Hernán Cortés when he conquered Mexico and
with Francisco Pizarro when he marched into Peru.
Iberian Blacks
Estebanico (c. 1500–38), one of the survivors of Pánfilo de Narváez’s
unfortunate expedition to Florida in 1527, was a black. With three
companions, he spent eight years traveling overland to Mexico City, learning
several Indian languages in the process. Later, while exploring what is now
New Mexico, he lost his life in a dispute with the Zuñi Indians. Juan
Valiente (d. 1553), another black, led Spaniards in a series of battles
against the Araucanian Indians of Chile between 1540 and 1546. Although
Valiente was a slave, he was rewarded with an estate near Santiago and
control of several Indian villages. Between 1502 and 1518, Spain shipped out
hundreds of Spanish-born Africans, called Ladinos, to work as laborers,
especially in the mines. Opponents of their enslavement cited their weak
Christian faith and their penchant for escaping to the mountains or joining
the Indians in revolt. Proponents declared that the rapid diminution of the
Indian population required a consistent supply of reliable workhands.
Free Spaniards were reluctant to do manual labor or to remain settled
(especially after the discovery of gold on the mainland), and only slave
labor could assure the economic viability of the colonies.
Beginning of the African Slave Trade
By 1518, the demand for slaves in the Spanish New World was so great that
King Charles I of Spain (who, as Holy Roman Emperor, was known as Charles
V), sanctioned the direct transport of slaves from Africa to the American
colonies. The slave trade was controlled by the Crown, which sold the right
to import slaves (asiento) to entrepreneurs.
By the 1530s, the Portuguese were also using African slaves in Brazil. From
then until the abolition of the slave trade in 1870, at least 10 million
Africans were forcibly brought to the Americas: about 47 percent of them to
the Caribbean islands and the Guianas; 38 percent to Brazil; and 6 percent
to mainland Spanish America. About 4.5 percent went to North America,
roughly the same proportion that went to Europe.
The greatest proportion of these slaves worked on plantations producing
sugar, coffee, cotton, tobacco, and rice in the tropical lowlands of
northeastern Brazil and in the Caribbean islands. Most of them came from the
sub-Saharan states of West and Central Africa, but by the late 18th century
the supply zone extended to southern and East Africa as well.
Impact of Slavery
Slavery in the Americas was generally harsh, but it varied from time to time
and place to place. The Caribbean and Brazilian sugar plantations required a
consistently high supply of labor for centuries. In other areas—the
frontiers of southern Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, and Colombia—slavery was
relatively unimportant to the economy.
To tame the wilderness, build cities, establish plantations, and exploit
mineral wealth, the Europeans needed more laborers than they could recruit
from among their own metropolitan masses. In the early 16th century, the
Spanish tried unsuccessfully to subjugate and enslave the native populations
of the West Indies. Slavery was considered the most desirable system of
labor organization because it allowed the master almost absolute control
over the life and productivity of the laborer. The rapid disintegration of
local indigenous societies and the subsequent decimation of the native
Indians by warfare and European diseases severely exacerbated the labor
situation, increasing the demand for imported workers.
African slaves constituted the highest proportion of laborers on the islands
and circum-Caribbean lowlands where the native population had died. The same
was true in the northeastern coastlands of Brazil—especially the rich
agricultural area called the Reconcavo, where the seminomadic Tupinamba and
Tupiniquim Indians resisted effective control by the Portuguese—and in some
of the Leeward Islands such as Guadeloupe and Dominica, where the Caribs
waged a determined resistance to their expulsion and enslavement. In areas
of previously dense populations, such as parts of central Mexico or the
highlands of Peru, a sufficient number of the Indian inhabitants survived to
satisfy a major part of the labor demands of the new colonists. In such
cases African slaves supplemented coerced Indian labor.
An article from Funk & Wagnalls® New Encyclopedia. © 2005 World Almanac
Education Group, A WRC Media Company
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