The introduction of Negroes into Guatemala commenced with the year of the
conquest of that country by the Spaniards in 1524, when there came several
Negro slaves with the _conquistadores_ from Mexico. It seems that they soon
increased in numbers, for among the decrees of the _conquistador_, Pedro de
Alvarado, there is one which prohibits the selling of gunpowder to Indians
and Negroes. The number of African slaves brought to Guatemala had,
however, always remained relatively a very limited one, for as the
Spaniards had plenty of cheap hands by means of a system of indentured
labor forced upon the numerous Indian population, the importation of slaves
evidently did not pay them well. It seems safe to say, that their total
number never amounted to ten thousand.
The most copious, though still very sparse notices of them I have run
across, are those given by Thomas Gage, an English Catholic educated in
Spain, who, in the twenties and thirties of the seventeenth century, lived
as a priest in the then city of Guatemala, nowadays called Antigua, and in
some Indian villages not far from there.[1] One of the places where Thomas
Gage observed a somewhat considerable population of Negroes was the
so-called Costa del Sur, or Southern Coast, the hot land between the Andes
and the Pacific, to the south of the capital. They were worked there on the
indigo plantations and large cattle _haciendas_. The Negroes impressed
Thomas Gage as the only courageous people in Guatemala while the Spanish
Mestizos and Indians seemed to him to be very cowardly.
This writer said that if Guatemala was powerful with respect to its
people, for she was not in arms nor resources, then she was so merely by
virtue of a class of desperate Negroes, who were slaves living on the
indigo plantations. Though they had no arms but a machete, which was their
small lance used for chasing the wild cattle (nowadays, that name is given
to a long and broad, sword-like knife), they were so desperate that they
often caused fear to the very city of Guatemala and had made their masters
tremble. "There are among them," said he, "those who have no fear to brave
a wild bull, furious though he be, and to attach themselves to the
crocodiles in the rivers, until they have killed them and brought them to
the bank."[2]
In reading these lines, one cannot help from remembering the classical
description Alexander Von Humboldt gives of the Negro boatmen of the river
Dagua, in the actual republic of Colombia. The inimitable skill and
unsurpassable bravery Humboldt saw them display in the midst of the
ferocious currents and loud-pouring rapids of that river caused him to
exclaim: "Every movement of the paddle is a wonder, and every Negro a god!"
A nice monument to the fame of indomitable bravery the Negroes manifested
in past times in Guatemala exists still in a saying often heard by
travelers: "_Esos son negros_!" or "Those are Negroes," an exclamation
which means: "Those are desperate men, who do not care for anything." One
could also hear the saying: "_Esto es obra de negros_," or "that is a work
of Negroes," the meaning being that it was work for bold men with iron
nerves.
Another expression brings out the fact that the Negroes were considered, or
forced to be, very hard workers. "_Trabaja como un negro_" or "he works
like a Negro," signified doing "the most arduous labor." That the lot of
the slaves was often a bitter one, though, because of the less greedy
Spanish character, without doubt generally a less hard one than in North
America, is shown by the fact that Guatemala had her "_Cimarrones_" just as
Jamaica, and Guiana, had their Maroons.
The Spanish word "_cimarron_" signifies indiscriminately a runaway head of
cattle or horses, that had become wild, or a runaway slave. The fugitive
Negroes of Guatemala had their chief stronghold in the inaccessible
mountain woods of the Sierra de las Minas, which lies near the Atlantic
coast between the Golfo Dulce and the valley of the river Motagua. The
Golfo Dulce, which is now abandoned because of lack of sufficient depth for
the big vessels of to-day, was at that time the port of entry for the whole
of Guatemala. From it a bridle-path ran over the Sierra de las Minas to the
valley of the Motagua and further on to the capital. In speaking of this
path over the mountain, Gage remarks: "What the Spaniards fear most until
they get out of these mountains, are two or three hundred Negroes,
Cimarrones, who for the bad treatment they received have fled from
Guatemala and from other places, running away from their masters in order
to resort to these woods; there they live with their wives and children and
increase in numbers every year, so that the entire force of Guatemala City
and its environments is not capable to subdue them."
They very often came out of the woods to attack those who drove teams of
mules, and took from them wine, salt, clothes and arms to the quantity they
needed. They never did any harm to the mule drivers nor to their slaves. On
the contrary, the slaves amused themselves with the Cimarrones, because
they were of the same color and in the same condition of servitude, and not
seldom availed themselves of the opportunity to follow their example, and
united with them to obtain liberty, though obliged to live in the woods and
mountains.
Their arms were arrows and bows, which they carried only for the purpose of
defending themselves against attacks of the Spaniards; for they did not
harm those who passed by peacefully and who let them have a part of the
provisions they carried. They often declared that their principal reason
for resorting to these mountains was to be ready to join the English or
Dutch, if these some day appeared in the Gulf, for they well knew that
these, unlike the Spaniards, would let them live in peace.
Among the most remarkable facts learned by Thomas Gage in Guatemala is the
story of a Negro freedman who had accumulated great wealth. This Negro
lived in Agua Caliente, an Indian village, on the road to Guatemala City,
or Antigua, where the natives had obtained considerable quantities of gold
from some spot in the mountains only known to them. The Spaniards, not
content with an annual tribute paid them by the Indians, endeavored in vain
to force the natives to show them the mine, and because they refused killed
them, thus gaining no knowledge of the mine for which they were still
searching in vain in the times of Thomas Gage. "In that place of Agua
Caliente," continues Gage, "there is a Negro who lives and receives very
well the travelers who call upon him. His wealth consists in cattle, sheep,
and goats, and he furnishes the city of Guatemala and the environments with
the best cheese to be found in the country. But it is believed that his
wealth does not come so much from the produce of his farm and his cattle
and cheese, but from that hidden treasure which is believed known to him.
He, therefore, has been summoned to the Royal Audience in Guatemala, but he
has always denied to have any knowledge of it."
He had been suspected because he had formerly been a slave and had secured
his liberty by means of a considerable sum. After that, he had bought his
farm and much of the surrounding land and had considerably increased his
original holdings. To his inquisitors he replied that, "when young and
still a slave he had a kind master who suffered him to do what he pleased,
and that by economy he had accumulated where-with to buy his liberty and
afterwards a little house to live in; and God had given His blessing to
that and let him have the means for increasing his funds."
Another one of Gage's accounts discloses the abuses common among the
slave-holders under Spanish rule, and the silliness of the belief that the
masters for their own benefit would treat their human property well. This
account refers to one Juan Palomeque, a rich landowner and promoter of
mule-transports, who lived in Gage's parish of Mexico, near the actual
capital of Guatemala. He was believed to be worth six hundred thousand
ducats, about 1,400,000 dollars. He owned about a hundred Negroes, men,
women, and children, but was so stingy that, to avoid the expense of decent
house-keeping, he never lived in the city, though he had several houses
there. Instead, he lived in a straw-hut and feasted on hard, black bread
and on _tasajo_, or thin strips of salt beef dried in the sun.
He was so cruel to his Negroes, that, when one of them behaved badly, he
would whip him almost to death. He had among others a slave named Macaco,
"on behalf of whom," said Gage, "I often pleaded, but in vain. At times he
hung him by the hands and beat him until he had his back entirely covered
with blood, and in that state, the skin being entirely torn to pieces, in
order to heal up the slave's sores the master poured hot fat over them.
Moreover, he had marked him with a hot iron face, hands, arms, back, belly,
and legs, so that this poor slave got tired to live and intended several
times to suicide himself; but I prevented him from doing so every time by
remonstrances I made him."
Juan Palomeque was so sensual and voluptuous that he constantly abused the
wives of his slaves as he liked, and even when he saw in the city some girl
or woman of that class whom he wanted, and she was not attracted to him, he
would call upon her master or mistress and buy her, "giving much more than
she had cost; afterwards he boasted that he would break down her pride in
one year of slavery." "In my times," said Gage, "he killed two Indians on
the road to the Gulf, but by means of his money he got so easily out of
that affair as if he had killed but a dog." As Gage does not tell anything
of a prosecution for the crimes against the Negro, no actual law seems to
have been violated.[3]
The descendants of the ancient slaves have so completely become mixed up
with Spanish-Indian blood that, making exception of the valley of the
Motagua River, they have practically disappeared as a race. In 1796, their
number was considerably increased by the so-called Caribs, whom the English
deported from the Island of St. Vincent and set ashore in Guatemala. They
live now on the Atlantic coast, also on that of Honduras and Nicaragua, and
are estimated to total about 20,000. They are Zambos, but the African blood
seems to prevail.[4]