Black Ladinos (
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
: ''negros ladinos'') were
Hispanicized
Hispanicization ( es, hispanización) refers to the process by which a place or person becomes influenced by Hispanic culture or a process of cultural and/or linguistic change in which something non-Hispanic becomes Hispanic. Hispanicization is il ...
black
Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have o ...
Ladinos, exiled to
Spanish America
Spanish America refers to the Spanish territories in the Americas during the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The term "Spanish America" was specifically used during the territories' Spanish Empire, imperial era between 15th century, 15th ...
after having spent time
[esclavo ladino](_blank)
in the '' Diccionario de la Real Academia Española'': "Slave who spent over a year in slavery". in
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
.
They were referred to as ''negros ladinos'' ("cultivated" or "latinized Blacks"), as opposed to ''
negros bozales'' ("uneducated Blacks"), i.e. those captured in Africa. The Ladinos' skills granted them a higher price than those of ''bozales''.
[Génesis y desarrollo de la esclavitud en Colombia: siglos XVI y XVII](_blank)
page 132, María Cristina Navarrete, Universidad del Valle, 2005
Black Ladinos born in the Americas were ''negros
criollos
In Hispanic America, criollo () is a term used originally to describe people of Spanish descent born in the colonies. In different Latin American countries the word has come to have different meanings, sometimes referring to the local-born majo ...
'' ("
Creole Blacks", cf.
Creoles of color
The Creoles of color are a historic ethnic group of Creole people that developed in the former French and Spanish colonies of Louisiana (especially in the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, and Northwestern Florida i.e. Pensacola, Flor ...
).
History
Prior to the
arrival of Columbus to the Americas, there were Black people who either lived as free men, were brought through the
Arab slave trade
History of slavery in the Muslim world refers to various periods in which a slave trade has been carried out under the auspices of Arab peoples or Arab countries. Examples include:
* Trans-Saharan slave trade
* Indian Ocean slave trade
* Barbary sl ...
, or the
Castilian or
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
colonization of Africa.
After some time in Spanish society, those Africans became Christianized and learned Spanish.
There were 50,000 Black Ladinos in Spain in the 15th century.
Nicomedes Santa Cruz. Obras Completas II. Investigación (1958-1991)
', page 306, Nicomedes Santa Cruz
Nicomedes Santa Cruz Gamarra (June 4, 1925 – February 5, 1992) was a Peruvian singer, songwriter and musicologist. He was primarily a '' decimista'' (or ''decimero''), a singer of ''décimas''. He researched most forms of Afro-Peruvian music a ...
, LibrosEnRed, 2004 Although Black ladinos came from many parts of the African continent, most had their origins in the
Upper Guinea Upper Guinea is a geographical term used in several contexts:
# Upper Guinea (french: Haute-Guinée) is one of the four geographic regions of the Republic of Guinea, being east of Futa Jalon, north of Forest Guinea, and bordering Mali. The populat ...
region, including modern day Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, and Guinea.
After the initial stages of the
Spanish colonization of the Americas
Spain began colonizing the Americas under the Crown of Castile and was spearheaded by the Spanish . The Americas were invaded and incorporated into the Spanish Empire, with the exception of Brazil, British America, and some small regions ...
showed that
Amerindian
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples.
Many Indigenous peoples of the Am ...
s were not suitable for the labour that the conquerors required (mainly due to the Eurasian illnesses unknown in the Americas),
Nicolás de Ovando
Frey Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres (1460 – 29 May 1511 or 1518) was a Spanish soldier from a noble family and a Knight of the Order of Alcántara, a military order of Spain. He was Governor of the Indies (Hispaniola) from 1502 until 1509, sen ...
decided to bring slaves from Spain.
[Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean, Volume 2: Social Dynamics and Cultural Transformations: Eastern South America and the Caribbean](_blank)
Norman E. Whitten, Jr., Arlene Torres Arlene may refer to:
* Arleen, a feminine name, also spelled Arlene
* "Arlene" (song), the 1985 debut single by American country music artist Marty Stuart
* Arlene, a Beanie Baby cat produced by Ty, Inc.
* Hurricane Arlene, the name of several tro ...
, page 45.
Between 1502 and 1518, Castile exiled hundreds of
black slaves
The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...
, primarily to work as miners. Opponents of their enslavement
cited their Christian faith and their repeated attempts of
escape to the mountains or to join the
Native Americans in revolt. Proponents declared that the rapid diminution of the Native American population required a consistent supply of reliable low-cost workers. 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 assured the economic viability of the colonies.
Examples
*
Estevanico
Estevanico ("Little Stephen"; modern spelling Estebanico; –1539), also known as Esteban de Dorantes or Mustafa Azemmouri (مصطفى الزموري), was the first African to explore North America.
Estevanico first appears as a slave in Portu ...
(c. 1500–1539), a Berber captured by the Portuguese and sold to a Spanish
Conquistador
Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (, ; meaning 'conquerors') were the explorer-soldiers of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires of the 15th and 16th centuries. During the Age of Discovery, conquistadors sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, O ...
.
* The slaves in the schooner ''
La Amistad
''La Amistad'' (; Spanish for ''Friendship'') was a 19th-century two- masted schooner, owned by a Spaniard colonizing Cuba. It became renowned in July 1839 for a slave revolt by Mende captives, who had been captured and sold to European slave ...
'' were
Mendes
Mendes ( grc-gre, Μένδης, ''gen''.: ), the Greek name of the ancient Egyptian city of Djedet, also known in ancient Egypt as Per-Banebdjedet ("The Domain of the Ram Lord of Djedet") and Anpet, is known today as Tell El-Ruba ( ar, تل ال ...
captured in Africa but were described as Ladinos
[The Amistad Case](_blank)
by their Cuban buyers to avoid the ban on international slave trade.
See also
*
Afro-Spaniard
Afro-Spaniards are Spanish citizens of Sub-Saharan African descent. The term may include Spaniards of Afro-Caribbean and African American descent, but often excludes Black Spaniards of Latin American origin. It almost always excludes Spaniards o ...
: Current inhabitants of Spain of African descent.
*
Emancipados
Emancipado () was a term used for an African-descended social-political demographic within the population of Spanish Guinea (modern day Equatorial Guinea) that existed in the early to mid 1900s. This segment of the native population had become ass ...
: Black
Spanish Guinea
Spanish Guinea (Spanish: ''Guinea Española'') was a set of insular and continental territories controlled by Spain from 1778 in the Gulf of Guinea and on the Bight of Bonny, in Central Africa. It gained independence in 1968 as Equatorial G ...
ns who enjoyed a special status by their Roman Catholic and Spanish education.
*
Seasoning (colonialism)
Seasoning, or The Seasoning, was the period of adjustment that slave traders and slaveholders subjected African slaves to following their arrival in the Americas. While modern scholarship has occasionally applied this term to the brief period of ...
References
External links
La procedencia de los esclavos negros en Sevilla "The provenience of black slaves in
Seville
Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula ...
".
*
Léxico Hispanoamericano del siglo 16 page 515,
Peter Boyd-Bowman, Tamesis, 1971. Examples of the usage of ''ladino'' in 16th-century Spanish.
*{{in lang, es}
Hermandad Los Negritos a Roman Catholic brotherhood in Seville, claiming to date from the 14th century, originally for Black Christians.
Spanish language
Spanish colonization of the Americas
Former peoples of the African diaspora
Spanish slaves
Latin American caste system