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15 The Slave Trade B y the year 1415, the Portuguese started exploring the African coast with the aim of finding a route to the East, pursuing spices, perfume, fabric, and gold from Sudan, the Far East, and Africa in general. Europe was highly appreciative of these goods. As Françoise Latour Da Veiga Pinto says: “The slave trade has gone hand in hand with thegreatPortuguesediscoveriesofthefifteenthcentury....Theeconomic motivations of the first sailors who came to Africa were of two kinds: to reach the sources of gold production of Sudan . . . and to discover a sea route to spices.”19 ThePortuguesebegantheslavetradebusinessonAugust8,1414,when “forthefirsttimetherewasapublicsaleofslavesinLagosandinthepresence of the Infante Don Enrique . . . . the best slaves were offered to the Church.”20 For his part, Fernando Ortiz states that, to facilitate this trade, in 1483 the Portuguese built a factory in San Jorge de Mina, selling blacks mainly from Benin, Gorée, Arguim, and Badagrí.21 Th e Afr ican Pr esence in S anto Doming o 16 For four centuries, Africa would supply slaves to the Americas for the establishment of plantation economies, and to Europe, as a benefit of the wealth produced overseas. The slave trade represented one of the bases of accumulation of capital, while African peoples were plunged into psychosocial depression by their ill fortune. The basis of the trade was the exchange of goods between European (Mongos) and African slave traders. The first offered weapons, rum, and cloth, and the second, slaves. Three kingdoms stood out in this business: the Susus in the former French Guinea, the Vais of Sierra Leone, and the Ashantisin Ghana and Dahomey. Although there were about two hundred slaves already in Hispaniola by 1501,22 the real trade was formally started in 1517, with the landing in the West Indies of hundreds of black slaves from Spain and the western coasts of Africa.23 This influx of new labor would be the result of pressure from priests (Jerónimos)24 and some neighbors of the colony, interested in developing large-scale sugar production.25 Thetradeisbelievedtohaveaffectedsome20millionblacks,5million of whom died due to the adverse conditions during the voyage.26 Other authors give lower figures. Itisimportanttonote,however,thatatthetimenotonlyblackAfricans wereslaves,butwhiteprisonersandmoros27 werealsosubjectedtothesame conditions, sold for varying periods—including for life—along with their families, and destined for domestic labor. The treatment of these slaves did not differ substantially from that offered to blacks, and in some cases could be even worse. It is true that the first blacks who arrived in America were slaves, but this situation changed rapidly towards the second decade of the sixteenth century. As Frank Moya Pons stated: “Already in 1522 the businesswasbooming;shipswerecomingfromSevilletoSantoDomingo The Slave Trade 17 andreturnedtothemainlandwithmorethantwothousandarrobasofsugar. Prices continued to rise, and with it the number of blacks consistently brought in to work in the mills. From now on, Indians and gold would be a lesser economic concern, while black destiny would be linked to the sugar industryuntiltheendofthateconomy.”28 Theviewheldbycolonialsinthe WestIndieswasthat“itismoreprofitabletobuythemthantoraisethem”; this type of thinking led to an increased demand on the American coasts. Fernando Ortiz mentions some of the goods received by the slavers in exchange for what was called “a pieceoftheIndies.”29 For example, blacks should not have amputations, should be of good size and well built; in exchange the seller would receive large yellow amber, silver coins, red coral, knives, scarves, alcohol, iron bars, and guns. This business was mainly observed off the coast of West Africa, because Europeans and especially the Portuguese could not penetrate inland without the risk of being killed by warrior groups, or by the effects of malaria, dengue, or yellow fever. Of those who did, very few returned to their ships, permanently moored off the beaches of Senegambia, Sierra Leone, and the Caleta of Benin—known as “white man’s grave.” This data made American anthropologist Melville Herskovits affirm that most of the slaves brought to America came from coastal tribes, of not more than 200 kilometers inland.30 The depletion of human resources made captors venture as far as the Upper Niger,31 which would serve as a springboard in the traffic—like the cities of Kano and Gao, which fulfilled the role of host cities for the sale of slaves to Europeans. It appears, thus, that a great number of blacks were from villages in which the Twi, Yoruba, and Ewe languages were spoken. Those villages belonged to what is Ghana, Benin, and Nigeria today. In the case of those captured by the Portuguese...

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