The African Presence in Santo Domingo

Slavery in Santo Domingo

29 Slavery in Santo Domingo A lthough the first blacks came to the island around 1496, a pattern of slavery was nonexistent at the time. However, we believe thatmomentbeganwhatwouldeventually,severaldecadeslater, become the classic form of exploitation implemented in the Americas by Europeans: the “sugar-cane plantation”economy. This colonial plantation model had three types: cotton, coffee/cocoa, and sugar cane. Of these three, sugar cane was the one introduced in the Caribbean. Prior to sugar-cane plantations, Native Americans were used for the exploitation of gold. According to Tolentino Dipp: “After 1494, the exploitationofseveraldifferentmarketsinSantoDomingowasconsidered arealfailure.Theaspirationsofcapitalistenterprisessignificantlychanged; their dreams of gold and spices were dashed, and instead the easily available slave trade, although not a very large business as yet, inspired the babble of capitalist greed.”44 IntheDominicanRepublic,andintherestofLatinAmerica,thesugar Th e Afr ican Pr esence in S anto Doming o 30 industry is inevitably linked to slavery. This explains why, when the gold economywasdeclining—amongotherreasonsbecauseofthediscoveryof Mexico and Peru, which provided large gold flows, and the drastic decline oftheoverutilizedindigenouspopulation—colonialgroupslinkedtosugarcane interests felt the need to reorient the economy towards this market, for which they needed manpower. ApioneerinthisbusinesswasHernandodeGorjón,whoaccumulated aconsiderablefortuneduringhiseighteenyearsasencomendero.Thisiswhat Moya Pons has to say about it: “Like other wealthy men of Hispaniola, he had realized that gold would no longer be the major source of income as it hadbeeninthepast.Sohedecidedtoembarkontheadventureofinvesting all his accumulated money . . . in the construction of mills to manufacture sugar and sell it to Europe.”45 In Spain there were differences regarding sugar as a positive replacementforgold ;thereforetheplantingofsugarcane,cassia(similartocinnamon ),andcottonwasnotinitiallyappealingtotheresidentsofLaVegaand elsewhere in the Dominican Republic. Spain needed gold, not agricultural products.Theagriculturalcontradictionsfoundwithinavarietyofplansfor theeconomycaused,amongotherthings,the“RebellionofRoldán”—ledby FranciscoRoldán,headingthoseadvocatingforthedistributionofIndians andforthedevelopmentofgoldexploitation.Analyzingthehistoricalconsequencesofthisfact ,JuanBoschstates:“Roldándemandedandobtained landandIndianstoworkit,forhimandhisfollowers.Heisconsideredthe first encomendero in America, since his uprising led to the creation of the system at least four years before it was lawfully established.”46 According to the Dominican priest Bartolomé de Las Casas, Pedro de Atienza, a resident of Concepcion de la Vega, was the first to plant sugar caneontheislandinsignificantproportions.However,thechroniclerGonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, commonly known as Oviedo, argues Slavery in Santo Domingo 31 thattheoriginatorofthecropwasGonzalodeVelosa,alongtheNiguaRiver near the city of Santo Domingo, whowas accompanied by experts coming from the Canary Islands, where the product had become popular. Sugar production, however, barely satisfied the local market. This process culminated in the so-called “sugar economy,” hosted not only by Las Casas, but by the colonial government of losJerónimos. The year 1517 marks the shift and, above all, the attitude change of the colony.“InthememorandumsofLasCasastothegrandchancellorin1517, in order to prevent the total destruction of Indians and to alleviate their condition . . . , Las Casas proposes that they be sent to [work] the crops along with some blacks. . . . [Also] the Spanish living in the islands be permitted the introduction of a number of blacks from Castilla.”47 The initiatives taken by Las Casas, along with his statements in favor ofreplacingtheindigenouswithblacklabor,aswellashisviewsonblacks, have generated an important debate about the humanity of this priest. For somehistorians,however,thisideaofLasCasas’smaybeconsideredrather liberal when contrasted with the prevailing sociopolitical metropolitan context. OnAugust18,1518,thefirstlicensetoimportblackswasgrantedtothe Baron de Montenay, Lorenzo Gramenot (known as Gouvenot/Gorrebot). Bythismeanshewasallowedtobringin4,000Christiansorblackladinos,48 consideredmoredocileandmanageable.Gramenottransferredthelicense to Genoese merchants. Slaves arrived a couple of years later. The sugar industry reached its real apogee in 1522, when exports to Spainreachedaround558,000pounds.Bythattime,therewereaboutforty sugar mills (some under construction) and several trapiches(generated by animal power), built with loans from the Spanish Crown. The impetus of thistypeofeconomygeneratedagreatdemandforlaborand,subsequently, anincreaseintheplantation-relatedpopulation.TolentinoDippestimates Th e Afr ican Pr esence in S anto Doming o 32 thatbytheendofthefirstquarterofthesixteenthcentury,theblackpopulation of Santo Domingo surpassed the white.49 Las Casas speaks of a population of 30,000 blacks to 60,000 whites, buttheexactdateofthesefiguresisunknown.Otherauthorsaredecidedly more modest in their assessment and talk of a total population of 8,000 to 9,000 people, mostly blacks.50 Such a small population at the peak of the sugar industry reflects a limited economic development. An increased production rate would have shown a population growth more in accordance with the economy. Furthermore, and especially around 1555, the colony experienced a paradoxical phenomenon: despite the slow collapse of the sugar industry, the establishments and licenses continued, in fact, throughout the whole century. In a state of a semi-paralyzed economy, where their presence was superfluous, where were blacks going? Logically, we can guess that they were being smuggled to other islands of the Caribbean. Larrazábal Blanco outlines two reasons to support this inference: “Spain...