{"id":2532,"date":"2025-02-16T08:54:28","date_gmt":"2025-02-16T08:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstblacks.org\/?p=2532"},"modified":"2025-02-16T08:59:03","modified_gmt":"2025-02-16T08:59:03","slug":"long-term-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstblacks.org\/en\/summaries\/long-term-resistance","title":{"rendered":"A century between resistance and adaptation"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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A century between resistance and adaptation<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\"\"The Black Africans who were brought into La Espa\u00f1ola as enslaved laborers in the sixteenth century began to resist slavery as soon as they landed in this early European colony in the Americas, and they engaged in resisting slavery in a number of ways throughout the century.\u00a0Sometimes they simply\u00a0ran away from their new owners and masters, and this was apparently the first strategy they resorted to.\u00a0(See Manuscript No. 007)<\/a>\u00a0The\u00a0European settler population was very small, and the native Ta\u00edno population was in a process of acute decline\u00a0resulting from the military, economic and biological impact of the conquest, and there was plenty of territory and wilderness in La Espa\u00f1ola in which it was possible to\u00a0hide.<\/p>

When subjected to the most rigorous forms of oppression in the sugar cane plantations of La Espa\u00f1ola during the 1500s, many enslaved Blacks organized violent rebellions against their oppressors, killing and wounding European settlers or their offspring who were intent on exploiting their labor by force.\u00a0(See Manuscript No. 019)<\/a>\u00a0Those who rose violently often\u00a0became maroons like Sebasti\u00e1n Lemba\u00a0(see Manuscript No. 062)<\/a>\u00a0and formed maroon communities\u00a0(see Manuscript No. 035)<\/a>\u00a0that attempted to maintain freedom from the Europeans for the longest\u00a0possible time taking advantage of sites deep in the rugged mountains or dense tropical forests of the island-colony.\u00a0(See Manuscript No. 034)<\/a><\/p>

\"\"In some cases, Blacks simply destroyed the economic assets of their masters via arson, reducing them and all the wealth they represented literally to ashes. They also engaged in more\u00a0discreet attempts to eliminate their owners through the poisoning of their food.\u00a0And there are indications that, in their status of workers constantly expected to obey their masters, whenever the job assigned to them allowed them time away from the sight of the overseers, enslaved Blacks exercised the freedom they could by doing\u00a0things other than those prescribed, including\u00a0idling and relaxing.\u00a0(See Manuscript No. 055)<\/a>\u00a0Feigning\u00a0illness\u00a0was another\u00a0strategy used\u00a0by some to avoid imposed work.<\/p>

For the most defiant, violent, and physically destructive behaviors, rebel enslaved Blacks of La Espa\u00f1ola often paid\u00a0with their lives, executed, maimed or crippled by their settlers-masters\u00a0(see Manuscript No. 026)<\/a>,\u00a0according to a well-defined punishment code.\u00a0(See Manuscript 017)<\/a>\u00a0But that was a risk that a number of them were willing to take\u00a0for freedom, even if only momentary.\u00a0There is evidence that the Spanish Crown was aware of the intense eagerness of enslaved Blacks to enjoy freedom.\u00a0(See Manuscript No. 034)<\/a>\u00a0And even when facing a possible death penalty, Blacks tried to defend themselves by taking advantage of the existing judicial system through appeals.\u00a0(See Manuscripts No. 029<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0No. 030)<\/a><\/p>

A great many\u00a0of the Black Africans and their Afro-descendants of sixteenth-century La Espa\u00f1ola, though, achieved\u00a0survival by adapting to the dialectical\u00a0circumstances of slavery in the\u00a0colony. These included\u00a0plenty of space to hide away due to the colony’s\u00a0small population as well as\u00a0the\u00a0infrequent arrival of additional slaves\u00a0to replenish the ranks of the\u00a0labor force.\u00a0The scarcity of incoming ships was part of\u00a0the\u00a0commercial and navigational isolation of La Espa\u00f1ola vis a vis the rest of the expanding Spanish empire in the Americas.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A century between resistance and adaptation The Black Africans who were brought into La Espa\u00f1ola as enslaved laborers in the sixteenth century began to resist slavery as soon as they landed in this early European colony in the Americas, and they engaged in resisting slavery in a number of ways throughout the century.\u00a0Sometimes they simply\u00a0ran […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-summaries"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA century between resistance and adaptation - First Blacks in The Americas<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/firstblacks.org\/en\/summaries\/long-term-resistance\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A century between resistance and adaptation - 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