Commentary No. 050
Date: 1544, July 14. Santo Domingo.
Theme: Maroon and rebel Black slaves in La Española were a concern for residents of the city of Santo Domingo in the mid-1540s
Source: Archivo General de Indias, Justicia 62. CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Dominican Colonial Documents
While giving a deposition in 1544 to the judicial authorities of La Española who were conducting an audit-inquiry of the actions of the colonial alcaldes or constables, a witness named Francisco Morales, royal notary of the City Council of Santo Domingo, gave his opinion about the need to have such officials -those with policing responsibilities- spend more time watching for criminal behavior across the island. The witness suggested that an eye be kept on the inland areas rather than mainly on the city of Santo Domingo, where the bulk of the colonial judicial and government institutions were ultimately located and concentrated.
In his comments about the ideal deployment of the local police forces of the time, and to further make his point, the Morales mentioned farms and river beds “near the rebel Blacks” as well as “crimes that had occurred in places in the countryside resulting from fire set by the Blacks,” and “the crimes and uprisings by Blacks and other robberies that are committed out there.”
These depositions constitute clear additional evidence that --as it has been pointed out by scholars of the history of Black people in colonial La Española-- at least in the eyes of some residents of the city of Santo Domingo by the mid 1540s, Black maroons, that is the enslaved Blacks that had run away from their forced work assignments in the plantations, farms, cattle ranches and other places of work in the colony, were responding to the social order of colonial slavery by openly challenging it, using robbery and arson as weapons against those who tried to subject them to the status of objects of work.