paul lokken _ useful enemies_ seventeenth-century piracy and the rise of pardo militias in spanish...

8/10/2019 Paul Lokken _ Useful Enemies_ Seventeenth-Century Piracy and the Rise of Pardo Militias in Spanish Central Amer…

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/paul-lokken-useful-enemies-seventeenth-century-piracy-and-the-rise-of-pardo 1/22

Useful Enemies: Seventeenth-Century Piracy and the Riseof Pardo Militias in Spanish Central America

Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 5:2 | © 2004 Paul Lokken

Useful Enemies: Seventeenth-Century Piracy and the

Rise of Pardo Militias in Spanish Central America

Paul Lokken

The seventeenth century was a pivotal moment in the

history of enslaved African migrants and their

descendants in those areas of colonial Spanish America

characterized by the presence of dense indigenous

populations. The initial decades of the century saw slave

imports from Africa into imperial Spain's key

Mesoamerican and central Andean realms reach their

all-time peak. They then fell off precipitously after 1640

owing to a gradual reversal in the disastrous,

century-long decline of local native populations, the

steady expansion of an alternative labor pool made up of

free people of plural origins, and the empire's

geopolitical and economic setbacks.1 These same

developments produced circumstances under which

many descendants of earlier African migrants foundthemselves able, to an unusual extent, to reshape their

social identity to their own benefit. Most important in the

creation of these circumstances was the fact that imperial

officials, alarmed by repeated assaults on Spain's various

American possessions by freebooters linked to rival

European powers and reluctant to supplement the ranks

of local Spanish defenders by arming indigenous

majorities, turned increasingly for military support in

places like New Spain, Peru, and the Central American

Audiencia of Guatemala to a small but growing free

minority of African origins.2

1.

When the seventeenth century opened, the defense of

Spanish America, outside of a few key ports, was based,

at least officially, either on forces made up of

encomenderos--Spanish holders of grants of labor and

tribute from indigenous communities whose duties

2.

Paul Lokken | Useful Enemies: Seventeenth-Century Piracy and... http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.library.emory.edu/journals/journal

of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



included the maintenance of a horse and set of arms--or,

increasingly, on local militias drawn from the Spanish

population as a whole.3 Although people of African

origins, both free and enslaved, had played an auxiliary

role in such forces ever since the Spanish invasions,

persons defined as black, mulatto, or in any other way by

African origins were formally excluded from militiamembership. In fact, as late as 1663 they were

technically forbidden to carry weapons at all.4 Already

by that date, however, regular militia units of gente

parda5 had begun to form a major bulwark of coastal

defense in much of Spanish America, and some were

seizing upon the opportunities made available as a result

of their military usefulness to secure relief from an

alternative tribute known as the laborío, owed to the

Crown by free people of African origins since the 1570s.

Black and mulatto participants in the 1624 defense of Lima against Dutch enemies won at least a temporary

exemption from the tribute as early as 1631, and similar

relief was soon being demanded, and eventually granted,

in both New Spain and the Audiencia of Guatemala.

These tribute exemptions were among the most

important of the "political rewards" that Kris Lane has

called the "principal fringe benefit" accruing to

"low-born individuals" in Spain's American realms

during the course of the empire's long war against

piracy.6

The process by which colonial subjects of African

origins came to participate formally in organized militias

in the Audiencia of Guatemala during the seventeenth

century has received little attention.7 Indeed, the

experience in general of Africans and their descendants

in colonial Central America has languished in the more

obscure corners of both scholarly and popular historical

consciousness until quite recently.8 While this article

does not directly address this more general experience at

any length, the aspect of that experience on which itfocuses--the rise of pardo militias--was crucial in

shaping the subsequent history of people of African

descent in the isthmus. Examining the origins and

development of the strange alliance that made Spain's

enemies accomplices to the renegotiation of social

boundaries by colonial Central Americans of African

3.


of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



origins is indispensable to the scholarly reassessment

currently underway of Central America's place in the

history of the African diaspora.9

Origins of a Strange Alliance

Sometime around 1650, Captain Cristóbal deLorenzana, a resident of Santiago de Guatemala, capital

of Spanish Central America and now the Guatemalan

town of Antigua, wrote a letter to the Spanish Crown

warning that an expanding population of "blacks and

mulattos" posed an imminent threat to Spain's rule in the

Indies. Lorenzana claimed that people of African origins

outnumbered Spaniards in the colonies by more than ten

to one, and, even more troubling, thrived in American

climes in which, lamentably, the imperial homeland's

overseas progeny experienced quite the opposite

phenomenon: degeneration. Proceeding in this vein of pre-Enlightenment "racial" speculation, he suggested

that mulattos, as the children, respectively, of Spanish

men of "hot and moist" and black women of "cold and

dry" constitutions, emerged from the womb strong

enough to "take on a bull." "Good infantrymen and

better cavalrymen," these titans of mixed origins were

"made for the bush and countryside."10

4.

According to Lorenzana, the nature of the problem

that people of African origins posed in Spain's American

realms was stark. "It would be more difficult to quell any

disturbance begun by the blacks and mulattos," he

warned, "than it was to conquer those kingdoms" in the

first place. He claimed to know from experience, for

example, that within two years of arrival in the Indies

"no Spaniard is capable of marching two leagues with an

harquebus on his shoulders." As a consequence,

militarily ineffectual Spanish colonists earned nothing

but contempt from "valiant" fighters of African

origins.11 It was too late, he added, to address the

problem by banning further imports of slaves, as thenumber of Africans and their descendants already

residing in the Americas was more than sufficient to

represent a grave danger. What, then, was to be done?

Given, Lorenzana said, that "in the kingdoms of the

Indies all Spaniards enjoy the privileges of nobility," free

blacks and mulattos there should be made equivalent in

5.


of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



legal status to the pecheros, or commoners, of Castile.

Furthermore, and crucially, they should be admitted into

fully integrated militia units "without their color

bringing scorn upon them."12

This proposal is perhaps remarkable not so much for

its apparent audacity in the face of a colonial legalsystem that generally sought to distinguish rigorously

between Spaniards and presumably inferior peoples of

non-European origins, but rather because the distance

between the measures it called for and what was already

beginning to emerge as ordinary colonial practice in

places like Central America was not all that great.

Whatever Spaniards' notions in theory concerning the

inferiority of Africans and their descendants, the military

potential of the latter had long been both feared and

exploited. Slaves of African origins, for example, were

frequently armed by well-off masters for reasons of bothstatus and personal protection, in spite of frequent

prohibitions targeting the practice by authorities

concerned about the possibility of slave rebellions. This

ambivalence in Spanish attitudes about and behavior

toward people of African descent had existed ever since

Africans, slaves or not, had served as valued auxiliaries

in the subjugation and subsequent repression of the vast

indigenous populations of New Spain, Guatemala, and

Peru.13

6.

It is not known precisely when fighters of African

origins were first employed as defenders of the Central

American coastline against foreign attacks, which began

as early as the 1540s. There is little reason to suppose,

however, that the participation of fourteen "mulattos and

blacks, freedmen as well as slaves" in driving off the

French marauders who burned the key Honduran port of

Puerto de Caballos in 1595 was unprecedented. The

identities of those defenders was recorded merely

because they received a monetary reward for their

efforts, ironic in light of the Crown's regularproscriptions against placing weapons in the hands of

such individuals.14

7.

Such contradictions only grew more acute as

awareness of the weaknesses in Spanish defenses

intensified, owing in part to the apparent confirmation of

8.


of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



peninsular prejudice concerning the military reliability

of American-born Spaniards. When Dutch corsairs sailed

into Amatique Bay in 1607 and attacked a recently

constructed and supposedly more defensible port at

Santo Tomás de Castilla, the encomenderos sent to its

aid complained bitterly about the expenses they were

forced to incur, an indication no doubt of their growingunwillingness to shoulder the military burdens

traditionally assigned to them. Whatever the new port's

natural advantages over the more exposed Honduran

outlets at Puerto de Caballos and Trujillo, it would

clearly be no more effective if not properly garrisoned.

Challenged by the persistent inadequacy of Caribbean

defenses, royal officials in Santiago moved to authorize

the arming of black and mulatto residents in coastal

areas in 1612. Not surprisingly, a protest was launched

almost immediately by Santiago's cabildo, or city

council, a body beholden in substantial measure to thevery same encomenderos who wished to avoid bearing

the costs of defense themselves.15

The cabildo's apparent hypocrisy is easier to

understand when the specific circumstances under which

its members received this clearly unpalatable news are

considered. First of all, during the initial years of the

seventeenth century royal investigators had attributed a

wave of illicit cattle slaughter along the Pacific coast of

present-day Guatemala mostly to the black and mulatto

vaqueros, both free and enslaved, who dominated the

local ranching population. The Crown, in response, went

so far as to issue a decree in 1605 that explicitly barred

persons of African origins from riding horses at all. As

was usual in such cases, the decree had little real

impact.16

9.

A second set of disturbing circumstances arose in

1609, when the residents of the capital were witness to

ongoing feuding in the streets between armed and

apparently fearless gangs of slaves from two rivalhouseholds, who were said to respect no Spaniards other

than their powerful masters.17 At the same time, there

was rising concern over the activities of a community of

escaped slaves that had established itself around 1603 in

a remote Pacific coast area of Zapotitlán, in the modern

Guatemalan department of Retalhuleu, which was only

10.


of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



finally destroyed in the fall of 1611 after the failure of at

least two earlier expeditions. Similar settlements still

existed in the vicinity of the Golfo Dulce (now Lake

Izabal), a key trading outlet to the Caribbean.18

Finally,

news of a major, aborted slave conspiracy in Mexico

City reached Guatemala in the spring of 1612,

confirming the worst fears of the local Spanishpopulation.19

In light of these troublesome developments the steady

expansion in the numbers of people of African origins in

Guatemala began to raise such alarm in Santiago that the

cabildo decided to request an immediate halt to further

importation of slaves, just three years after it had asked

for an allotment of two thousand.20

Clearly, the local

Spanish population was suddenly terrified of people

whose labor its members had previously coveted. Thefact that some individuals of African origins, slaves as

well as freedmen, had proven themselves loyal against

not only northern European interlopers but also maroons

of African descent, whose potential for allying with

foreign invaders was considered to be particularly

worrisome, was no doubt viewed as irrelevant to their

calculations.

11.

The fears that came to a head in 1612, though, could

not override the imperatives of imperial defense for long.

Indeed, in that very year militia units of color were beingformalized in Mexico City even as thirty-five slaves

accused of conspiracy were being hanged.21 No similar

development appears to have taken place in Central

America until the 1640s, but people of African origins

there continued occasionally to participate on an ad hoc

basis in military actions. After enemy ships were sighted

in the Gulf of Fonseca in 1615, for example, Captain

Lucas García Serrano of the Salvadoran city of San

Miguel claimed to have led a force of some thirty

Spaniards, three hundred Indian bowmen, and one

hundred and fifty "blacks, mulattos, and mestizos" to

defend the Pacific port of Amapala.22 In April 1618,

meanwhile, five sword-bearing slaves served among

fifty-six men who were hastily dispatched from Santiago

and the eastern Guatemalan districts of Chiquimula and

Acasaguastlán to the Golfo Dulce in response to a report

12.


of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



that several alien vessels were cruising in its waters.23

Hostile activity by Spain's European rivals along the

coasts of Central America seems to have dropped off

sharply during the 1620s. The maroon bands that

continued to operate from uplands near the Golfo Dulce

emerged instead as the most important defense concernfor Audiencia officials between roughly 1617 and 1632.

At least three expeditions were sent out during that

fifteen-year period to eliminate the danger posed by

escaped slaves and secure the trade route to the Gulf.

None achieved lasting success.24

The persistent maroon

threat does not seem to have prompted any consideration

of militia expansion, however; in fact, it may have

ensured that any notion of formally arming

non-Spaniards remained anathema to officials like don

Alvaro de Quiñones y Osorio, Marquis of Lorenzana and

President of the Audiencia from 1634 to 1642. When the

marquis expressed his concern about the shortage of

weaponry available to the Spanish residents of the

Audiencia in a 1638 letter to the Crown, for example, he

focused attention not on any foreign threat but rather on

the internal danger posed in the first place by the

indigenous majority and in the second by the "great

number of skilled blacks and mulattos [who were]

discontented with their status."25

13.

Circumstances soon changed, however. Signs that anew and perhaps more serious bout of conflict with

foreign invaders lay ahead for the Audiencia were

appearing already in 1631, when English colonists

attempted a settlement on the island of Providence off

the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua, and established relations

shortly thereafter with indigenous groups on the

mainland who had long resisted Spanish control.26

Then,

in 1633, several ships belonging to the Dutch West India

Company briefly assaulted and occupied Trujillo.27

At

the same time, Spain was entering a prolonged period of crisis and war in Europe itself. Its renewed efforts to

subdue the rebellious and powerful Dutch provinces,

long determined to win formal recognition for an

independence they had enjoyed in all but name since the

late sixteenth century, eventually contributed to military

disaster, with one consequence being the loss of control

14.


of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



over Portugal in 1640 after sixty years of Madrid's rule

there.28

It was in this context that foreign attacks on the

Caribbean coast of Spanish Central America picked up

again with a vengeance. In May 1640, the Marquis of

Lorenzana himself was forced to set off from Santiagowith some 400 men in the direction of the Golfo Dulce,

after enemy attackers seized goods awaiting transit there

and left several people dead, including a friar. It is not

clear if the President, whose entourage apparently made

it no farther in any case than a village a few miles

northeast of the capital, was forced to raise troops in this

instance from among the non-Spaniards he had earlier

reported to be so threatening. His successor, however,

soon had few other choices.29

The Emergence of Formal Pardo Militias in CentralAmerica

15.

On assuming the presidency of the Audiencia of

Guatemala early in 1642, don Diego de Avendaño

almost immediately ordered that lists be drawn up of "all

the Spanish people, blacks, mulattos, and mestizos"

living in the various districts that lay between the capital

and the Honduran port of Trujillo. This order came in

direct response to a series of devastating attacks that had

occurred in the region of the Caribbean coast lying

between Trujillo and the Golfo Dulce during the

previous few months.30 Further depredations along the

same area of the coast the following year prompted the

new President to request a survey for purposes of militia

enlistment of "all the Spaniards, mestizos, blacks and

free mulattos" in the entire Audiencia. Meanwhile,

troops were to be dispatched as soon as possible to the

troubled region from the Honduran districts of

Comayagua and Tegucigalpa; from Acasaguastlán,

Chiquimula, and Verapaz, the Guatemalan districts that

lay closest to the Golfo Dulce; and from the moredensely populated territory of San Salvador and San

Miguel, south along the Pacific coast.31

16.

An assortment of English, French, and Dutch

privateers were involved in the attacks suffered on

Avendaño's watch. The most notorious of the

17.


of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



Audiencia's seaborne enemies during this period,

however, was "Dieguillo el Mulato," ex-slave of a

Spaniard who had escaped from Havana in 1629, allied

with the Dutch, and established himself as a leading

scourge of Spanish shipping in the Caribbean. He briefly

seized the vessel carrying Thomas Gage, the infamous

English traveler and ex-Dominican friar, back to Europein 1637. By the early 1640s, in league now with the

French privateer "Juan Garab!" (or Jean Gareabuc), he

was cruising into the Golfo Dulce seemingly at will in

search of plunder.32 It was English marauders, though,

who provided the most spectacular example of wanton

destruction of a Central American port at this time. In

July of 1643 more than a thousand of them arrived at

Trujillo in sixteen ships and thoroughly pillaged the

long-suffering community.33 In the face of these

assaults, need quickly overwhelmed fear, and Audienciaofficials undertook to arm non-Spaniards in large

numbers.

A clear reference to a militia unit of color formally

constituted as such appears in a 1644 document

produced in Santiago. When enemy ships were

(mistakenly) sighted off the Pacific coast of Zapotitlán

on January 3 of that year, Avendaño dispatched two

militia units from the capital to the coast, "one of

mulattos and the other of cavalrymen and in total around

five hundred men."34 Few other similarly specificreferences to the existence of such companies during the

1640s have come to light, but it is reasonable to assume

on the basis of the calls for enlistment that they were not

only created, but remained active, as the enemy attacks

that made them vital persisted throughout the decade.

Dieguillo and his European counterparts continued to

launch periodic assaults on Trujillo, Santo Tomás de

Castilla, and trading posts in the Golfo Dulce from bases

established on the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras,

despite the removal by Spanish forces of a short-lived

English colony from the island of Roatán in 1642 and

several subsequent efforts to relocate the indigenous

inhabitants of that island and Guanaja to the mainland,

lest they provide assistance to the Audiencia's

enemies.35

Spain's enemies were not deterred, and if

anything, they expanded the geographical range of their

18.


of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



activities along the coast.36

By the time Cristóbal de Lorenzana wrote the

proposal to the Crown (cited above), the foreign threat

was already beginning to make black and mulatto

militiamen crucial to the defense of Central America. At

least two companies of color were organized in andaround Cartago in Costa Rica during the early 1650s,

and by 1658 the Audiencia was proposing to incorporate

free blacks and mulattos into a cavalry company in

response to recent sightings of enemy ships along the

Pacific coast of Guatemala.37

Fifteen years later, there

were no fewer than sixteen pardo companies explicitly

defined as such in the Audiencia, with some one

thousand seven hundred and fifteen members

representing approximately twenty percent of total

militia strength in the isthmus. Six of those companies

were located in the territory of modern Guatemala, four

in Nicaragua, two each in Honduras and El Salvador,

and one each in Costa Rica and the present-day Mexican

state of Chiapas.38

19.

Many of the other companies listed in the militia

survey of 1673 were identified explicitly as Spanish, and

one as indigenous, but roughly one-third of all the units,

cavalry companies in the main, were not defined by the

origins of members at all. This raises the possibility that

segregation was not practiced very rigidly in units whosemembers needed to possess difficult-to-acquire skills,

thus opening the ranks of some Spanish companies to,

for example, ranch-hands of African origins. Other

evidence makes clear, however, that distinctions were

drawn wherever possible between militiamen identified

by African origins, who, it should be remembered, owed

the laborío tribute, and both Spaniards and mestizos,

who did not. For example, while the 1673 list noted the

presence of just one infantry company of three hundred

and thirteen men of undefined origins in the Guatemalan

Pacific coast district of Guazacapán, the administrator of that district informed the Crown a decade later that the

territory held three militia companies, "one of Spaniards

and mestizos" with some one hundred and fifty

members, "and the other two of mulattos and gente

parda" with two hundred and fifty more.39 The

continuing relevance of Spanish efforts to sustain

20.


0 of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



classification on the basis of African descent as a key

tool for facilitating legal and social discrimination is

underscored by the fact that at least one man brought up

on charges of failing to pay the tribute in Santiago

"proved" he was mestizo rather than mulatto by

appealing to his sixteen-year record of service in a

Spanish militia unit.40

Already, though, the seemingly relentless foreign

assaults that had in large measure prompted the

formalization of pardo militia units in the Audiencia in

the first place was now providing the members of those

units with ammunition to challenge the tribute burden

that clearly marked them as inferior to their fellow

militiamen. The sacking of Granada by a combined force

of Englishmen and Zambos-Miskitos in 1665 and again

in 1670, for example, enabled the pardo militia units of

Nicaragua to secure tribute relief. News of thatexemption moved Costa Rican units to demand similar

concessions in 1672, and companies all over the isthmus

pressed for relief over the next couple of decades.41

Nicaraguan units evidently continued to lead the way in

obtaining or renewing exemptions from tribute,

fortuitously assisted yet again by foreign "allies" who

conveniently returned to loot not only Granada, but also

Realejo, León, and several mining communities in

Nueva Segovia during a new wave of assaults between

1685 and 1689.42 The "favoritism" shown theNicaraguan militiamen never went unchallenged,

however, as companies elsewhere were quick to exploit

it for purposes of securing their own exemptions. In a

1697 petition, members of Chiquimula's pardo cavalry

unit complained that their counterparts in Granada had

been granted tribute relief for "less work" than they

themselves had performed in defending the Golfo Dulce

from foreign attack. Even worse, the Granadans were

allotted horses, which the cavalrymen from Chiquimula

provided at their own expense.

43

21.

One might ask why Audiencia officials did not move

to undercut the growing power of pardo militiamen by

drawing more extensively on an alternative source of

manpower, the indigenous majority, for military

assistance against foreign attacks. After all, Spaniards

had employed indigenous allies whenever possible

22.


1 of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



during their invasion of the Americas, and military

expeditions such as the one led by Lucas García Serrano

to defend the Salvadoran coast in 1615 frequently

included auxiliary contingents of "Indian bowmen." As

noted above, there was even a company identified as

indigenous, from Chiapas, listed in the 1673 militia

survey. The designation of its members as "indiosprincipales," or community leaders, provides us with one

indication of its unusual status, however, and another is

the fact that there were no other similar units. The

Spanish simply could not arm the indigenous peoples of

Central America in large numbers because the survival

of colonial society depended primarily upon their

rigorous subjugation. It was precisely because not only

foreigners but also the native inhabitants of the isthmus

were a constant threat to the colonial order that a

heretofore "dangerous" minority of African origins could

be brought into militias in support of Spanish rule, andtheir members acquire a modicum of social leverage as a

result of their usefulness to the authorities. Cristóbal de

Lorenzana's praise for mulattos, then, must be seen in

the light of his contempt for the indigenous people on

whose labor the colonial order was built in much of

Central America, people whom he characterized, as

might be expected under the circumstances, as docile,

slow-witted, and "incapable of reason."44 Contempt, of

course, generally goes hand in hand with fear, and both

are evident in Audiencia President Diego de Avendaño'sflat rejection in 1644 of any notion that the 14,000

tributaries living around Santiago might be armed in

response to the foreign threat off the coast, "despite the

fact that they are very domestic."45

Thus, while the unfolding of that foreign threat over

the course of the seventeenth century seems largely to

have determined the timing of both the formalization of

pardo militia units in Central America and the efforts of

militiamen in those units to throw off their tribute

burden, it was the nature and history of colonial societyin the isthmus that caused Spaniards to turn to previously

suspect people of African origins for military assistance

in the first place. Aside from the obvious role that

non-Indian militiamen could play in ensuring control

over the indigenous inhabitants of the major population

centers, there were in fact still numerous pockets of

23.


2 of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



"unpacified" indigenous peoples in the late seventeenth

century, and bodies were needed to staff the numerous

expeditions sent out against them. In raising companies

of pardo militiamen in Cartago and Esparza during the

1650s and 1660s, for example, the governors of Costa

Rica gave as one justification the imperative of

"reducing" the hostile native inhabitants of Talamanca.46

Employment could be found for militia units created in

response to foreign attacks, in other words, even when

all was quiet along the coast.

None of this should suggest that Spaniards welcomed

the incorporation of free people of African origins into a

social realm from which they had previously been

formally excluded. While it had long been clear, for

example, that the black and mulatto vaqueros of Central

America were highly skilled horsemen, as long as

Spaniards had no good reason to do so they were notabout to alter the convention that officially reserved the

use of horses to themselves, especially for military

purposes. The acceptance of pardo cavalry units by the

colonial regime thus reveals the extent to which the

defense crises of the seventeenth century shook the

boundaries of the colonial order in Central America,

threatening key aspects of the established social

hierarchy. Even though that social hierarchy was

probably shored up in the long run by the developments

examined here, many Spaniards at the time clearly found

them disturbing. That concern is well illustrated in an

order sent out by Audiencia President Fernando

Francisco de Escovedo in response to news of an enemy

incursion into the Golfo Dulce in 1676. In the order,

Escovedo told the administrator of the district of

Acasaguastlán to send fifty men to the gulf as quickly as

possible, adding "if they are pardos and Spaniards send

them with officers of their own colors, the pardo officer

to obey the Spaniards even if [they are] much lesser in

number."47

The Audiencia President evidently imagined

that there might be some confusion over who shouldcommand in the absence of such a directive, or, worse,

the likelihood of insubordinate behavior on the part of

the "inferior" officer without firm instructions to the

contrary. Indeed, his belief that such an order was

necessary at all indicates clearly the extent to which

Spanish Central America's experience with piracy in the

24.


3 of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



seventeenth century opened up opportunities for social

mobility via militia service to the free descendants of

enslaved African migrants.

Endnotes

1 On estimates that some 268,200 Africans arrived in

Spanish America between 1595 and 1640, see Enriqueta

Vila Vilar, Hispanoamérica y el comercio de esclavos:

los asientos portugueses (Seville: Escuela de Estudios

Hispano-Americanos, 1977), 197-211; David Eltis,

!The Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Slave

Trade: A Reassessment', William and Mary Quarterly,

3d. series, 58:1 (2001), 24, 45. On the drastic decline of

imports thereafter, see Archivo General de Centro

América (hereafter AGCA), A1.23, leg[ajo].1517,ex[pediente].10072, fol[io]s.108-108v (1646); AGCA,

A1.23, leg.2197, ex.15751, fol.97 (1664); AGCA,

A1.23, leg.2199, ex.15755, fol.50 (1670); Christopher H.

Lutz, Santiago de Guatemala, 1541-1773: City, Caste,

and the Colonial Experience (Norman, Okla.: University

of Oklahoma Press, 1994)! 86; Eltis, "Volume and

Structure", 45. On the decline and recovery of

indigenous populations and the contentious date of 1650

or thereabouts as the low point, see Noble David Cook,

Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest,

1492-1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1998); W. George Lovell and Christopher H. Lutz,

Demografía e imperio: guía para la historia de la

población de la América Central Española, 1500-1821,

trans. Guisela Asensio Lueg (Guatemala: Editorial

Universitaria, 2000), 10-11; William R. Fowler, Jr.,

"Escuintla y Guazacapán," in Dominación española,

desde la Conquista hasta 1700, ed. Ernesto Chinchilla

Aguilar, vol. 2 in Historia General de Guatemala, ed.

Jorge Luján Muñoz (Guatemala: Asociación de Amigos

del País, 1994), 2:592, 594; Adrian J. Pearce, "The

Peruvian Population Census of 1725-1740," Latin

American Research Review 36:3 (2001):69-104, esp.

100. On Spain's imperial troubles in the seventeenth

century, see J.H. Elliott, Spain and its World, 1500-1700:

Selected Essays (New Haven: Yale University Press,

1989), 114-136.


4 of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



2 For a recent work on the Spanish American experience

of piracy, see Kris E. Lane, Pillaging the Empire: Piracy

in the Americas, 1500-1750 (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E.

Sharpe, 1998). The Audiencia of Guatemala, technically

part of the viceroyalty of New Spain but largely

independent from Mexico City in administrative matters,

stretched from the modern Mexican state of Chiapasthrough present-day Costa Rica.

3 Ben Vinson III, Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The

Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico (Stanford:

Stanford University Press, 2001), 11-12, Stephen Webre,

"Las compañías de milicia y la defensa del istmo

centroamericano en el siglo XVII: el alistamiento

general de 1673," Mesoamérica 14 (1987): 512-513.

4 Libro 7, Título 5, Leyes 14-18, in Recopilación de

leyes de los Reynos de las Indias, 4 vols. (Madrid:Ediciones Cultura Hispánica, 1973), 2:287-287v;

AGCA, A1.23, leg.1519, ex.10074, fols.108-108v

(1663).

5 The term literally meant "brown-skinned people."

Pardo generally appears in colonial Central American

documents as a synonym for the more explicitly

pejorative mulato. Both were applied to individuals of

African and indigenous as well as those of African and

Spanish origins (or all three combined). Zambo was

rarely used.

6 Lane, Pillaging the Empire, 22. On the origins of the

laborío, see Libro 7, Título 5, Leyes 1, 3, in

Recopilación, 2:285-285v; Lutz, Santiago, 253-254. For

examples of laborío collection in Mexico and what is

now El Salvador during the seventeenth century, see

AGCA, A3.16, leg.1600, ex.26377 (1644); Vinson,

Bearing Arms, 140. On early tribute exemptions, see

Vinson, Bearing Arms, 29, 143-146; Frederick P.

Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524-1650

(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), 306; RonaldEscobedo Mansilla, "El tributo de los zambaigos, negros

y mulatos libres en el virreinato peruano," in Revista de

Indias 41:163-164 (1981):50-52; Rina Cáceres, Negros,

mulatos, esclavos y libertos en la Costa Rica del siglo

XVII , Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia

Pub. No. 518 (México, D.F.: Instituto Panamericano de


5 of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



Geografía e Historia, 2000), 101-102; Paul Lokken,

"Undoing Racial Hierarchy: Mulatos and Militia Service

in Colonial Guatemala," SECOLAS Annals 31 (1999):

30-32.

7 Crucial exceptions include Webre, "Las milicias," esp.

513, 518; Cáceres, Negros, esp. 98-105; and Germán J.

Romero Vargas, "La población de origen africano en

Nicaragua," in Presencia africana en Centroamérica, ed.

Luz María Martínez Montiel (México: Consejo Nacional

para la Cultura y las Artes, 1993), 151-198, esp.

165-169. A useful article that focuses on the period of

militia reorganization in the mid-eighteenth century is

Salvador Montoya, "Milicias negras y mulatas en el

reino de Guatemala (siglo XVIII)," Caravelle 49 (1987):

93-104.

8 Among the most significant works to have addressedthis inattention to date are Lutz, Santiago; Cáceres,

Negros; and Romero Vargas, "La población."

9 See, for example, the website for the international

conference "Between Race and Place: Blacks and

Blackness in Central America and the Mainland

Caribbean," Tulane University, November 12-13, 2004,

at http://www.tulane.edu/~jwolfe/rp/index.html.

10 "Copia del memorial de abisso que el capitán

Cristóbal de Lorenzana, vezino de la ciudad de Santiagode Guatemala, dio a Su Majestad para reparo de las

turbaciones que los rreynos de las yndias pueden tener

en lo benidero, ocasionadas por los negros y mulatos que

ay en ellas. (s.a.1650?)," Biblioteca Nacional de España:

mss/3047, fol.137-142, transcribed in Héctor M. Leyva,

Documentos Coloniales de Honduras (Tegucigalpa:

Centro de Publicaciones Obispado de Choluteca, Centro

de Estudios Históricos y Sociales para el Desarrollo de

Honduras, 1991), 115. Lorenzana's view of "mixed"

origins was directly contrary to the one that emerged

later with the rise of post-Enlightenment scientificracism in the nineteenth century, but no less determinist

in its assumptions. For a provocative take on the

significance of Iberian thinking about human difference,

see James H. Sweet, "The Iberian Roots of American

Racist Thought," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d.

series, 54:1 (1997): 143-166.


6 of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



11 According to Lorenzana, a popular saying among

people of African origins was "Español para María y

negro para fuerça." See "Copia del memorial de abisso,"

in Leyva, Documentos, 118.

12 "Copia del memorial de abisso," in Leyva,

Documentos, 115-116, 123.

13 For orders banning the arming of slaves in 1612 and

1628, see Colección de documentos para la historia de

la formación social de Hispanoamérica, 1493-1810, 3

vols., ed. Richard Konetzke (Madrid: Consejo Superior

de Investigaciones Científicas, 1953, 2(1):182-183, 317.

See also Vinson, Bearing Arms, 15-16; James Lockhart,

Spanish Peru, 1532-1560: A Social History, 2d. ed.

(Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994),

194-195; Robinson A. Herrera, Natives, Europeans, and

Africans in Sixteenth-Century Santiago de Guatemala(Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 2003), 112,

121; Peter M. Voelz, Slave and Soldier: The Military

Impact of Blacks in the Colonial Americas, Studies in

African American History and Culture (New York:

Garland, 1993), 11-14.

14 Colección de documentos inéditos de ultramar, 2d.

series, vol. 17 (Madrid: Tipografía de la "Rev. de

Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos", 1925), 235-238. On

early French and English assaults, including Francis

Drake's, see Pedro Pérez Valenzuela, Historias dePiratas, 2d. ed. (Guatemala: EDUCA, 1977), 18-22; J.

Joaquín Pardo, Efemérides para escribir la historia de la

muy noble y muy leal ciudad de Santiago de los

Caballeros del reino de Guatemala (Guatemala:

Sociedad de Geografía e Historia, 1944), 29-30; Troy S.

Floyd, The Anglo-Spanish Struggle for Mosquitia

(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1967),

14; Peter Gerhard, Pirates of the Pacific, 1575-1742

(originally published as Pirates on the West Coast of

New Spain, 1575-1742) (Lincoln, Neb.: University of

Nebraska Press, 1990), 57-96; Kenneth R. Andrews, The

Spanish Caribbean: Trade and Plunder 1530-1630 (New

Haven.: Yale University Press, 1978), 165-166; Horacio

Cabezas Carcache, "La piratería en la Capitanía General

de Guatemala", in Historia General de Guatemala,

2:471-472. For excellent maps on the history of piracy in

Central America, with a succinct accompanying


7 of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



narrative, see Carolyn Hall and Héctor Pérez Brignoli,

Historical Atlas of Central America, John V. Cotter,

cartographer (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma

Press, 2003), 134-135.

15 Cabezas, "La piratería," 474; Pardo, Efemérides, 41;

Antonio de Remesal, Historia general de las Indias

Occidentales y particular de la gobernación de Chiapa y

Guatemala, vol. 2, ed. Carmelo Sáenz de Santa María,

Biblioteca de Autores Españoles 189 (Madrid: Ediciones

Atlas, 1966), 462-463; José Milla, Historia de la

América Central, 2 vols., 5th. ed., Colección "Juan

Chapín," Obras completas de Salomé Jil (José Milla)

11-12 (Guatemala: Tipografía Nacional, 1976), 2:

300-302; Murdo J. MacLeod, Spanish Central America:

A Socioeconomic History, 1520-1720 (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1973), 156-158; Pedro

Pérez Valenzuela, Santo Tomás de Castilla: Apuntes para la historia de las colonizaciones en la costa

atlántica (Guatemala: n.p., 1956), 13-21.

16 AGCA, A1.23, leg.4588, ex.39541 (1599); A1.43,

leg.4820, ex.41525 (1601); A1.15, leg.4092, ex.32461

(1605); A1.23, leg.1514, fols.77-77v (1605); A1.15,

leg.4092, ex.32462 (1607); don Manuel de Ungría Girón

to the Spanish Crown, 20 March 1605, Archivo General

de Indias (hereafter AGI), Audiencia de Guatemala, 12,

R(oll).2, N(umber).12 (reference to digitalized format).

17 AGCA, A1.15, leg.4093, ex.32467 (1609).

18 Autos del servicio que hizo el capitán Juan Ruiz de

Avilés a su costa y minción de la conquista y

pacificación de los negros alzados que estaban en la

barra y montañas de Tulate, 1611-1626, AGI, Audiencia

de Guatemala, 67; Audiencia President Diego de

Avendaño to the Crown, 7 July 1642, AGI, Guatemala

16, R.3, N.19, Im(age).6.

19 David M. Davidson, "Negro Slave Control andResistance in Colonial Mexico, 1519-1650," Hispanic

American Historical Review 46:3 (1966): 250-251; Colin

A. Palmer, Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico,

1570-1650 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1976), 135-140.


8 of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



20 Don Carlos Vázquez de Coronado to the Crown, 19

May 1609, AGI, Guatemala, 42, N.12; Pardo,

Efemérides, 41. The petition to halt imports, ignored,

was repeated without visible effect in 1617 and 1620, as

at least 10 ships brought human cargo from West Central

Africa in particular to Central American ports between

1613 and 1628 alone. See AGCA, A3.5, leg.67, ex.1291(1613); A1.20, leg.4553, ex.38611 (1614); A1.56,

leg.5356, ex.45251 (1622); Pardo, Efemérides, 43, 45;

Lutz, Santiago, 85.

21Vinson, Bearing Arms, 17; Palmer, Slaves of the White

God , 140.

22 Petition of Capitán Lucas García Serrano, 18 May

1615, in Libro de los Pareceres de la Real Audiencia de

Guatemala, 1571-1655, ed. Carlos Alfonso

Alvarez-Lobos Villatoro and Ricardo Toledo Palomo(Guatemala: Academia de Geografía e Historia de

Guatemala, 1996) 99-100.

23 Testimonio de los autos hechos por el Licenciado

[Juan] Maldonado de Paz [oidor] sobre la defensa del

Golfo, 1618, in AGI, Guatemala, 14, R.3, N.47, Ims.

27-51, esp. Im. 32.

24 Audiencia President Conde de la Gomera to the

Crown, 20 July 1618, AGI Guatemala 14, R.1, N.17;

Crown to Audiencia President Diego de Acuña, 8December 1632, AGCA, A1.23, leg.1516, ex.10071,

fol.57; Liquidación hecha de la cantidad que se gastó en

la reducción de los negros cimarrones del Golfo Dulce,

AGCA, A1.12, leg.4060, ex.31537 (1646); Libro de los

Pareceres, 236-237; Francisco de Paula García Peláez,

Memorias para la historia del antiguo reino de

Guatemala, ed. Francis Gall, 3 vols., 3d. ed., Biblioteca

!Goathemala' 21-23 (Guatemala: Sociedad de

Geografía e Historia de Guatemala, 1968-1973), 2:28.

25 Quiñones y Osorio to the Crown, 26 May 1638, AGI,Guatemala 15, R.17, N.99.

26 Floyd, Anglo-Spanish Struggle, 17-23; Germán

Romero Vargas, Las sociedades del Atlántico de

Nicaragua en los siglos XVII y XVIII (Managua: Fondo

de Promoción Cultural, Banco Nicarag!ense, 1995),


9 of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



19-25.

27 Cornelis Ch. Goslinga, The Dutch in the Caribbean

and on the Wild Coast, 1580-1680 (Gainesville, Fla.:

University of Florida Press, 1971), 225-226.

28 J.H. Elliott, The Count-Duke of Olivares: The

Statesman in an Age of Decline (New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1986), 457-599.

29 Francisco Ximénez, Historia de la Provincia de San

Vicente de Chiapa y Guatemala de la Orden de

Predicadores, 5 vols., 3d. ed. (Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas:

Consejo Estatal para la Cultura y las Artes de Chiapas,

1999), 2 (Libro 4), 186; Cabezas, "La piratería," 474.

30 Avendaño to the Crown, 11 April 1642, in Avendaño

to the Crown, 6 August 1644, AGI, Guatemala, 16, R.5,

N.37\1, Ims. 40-41; Avendaño to the Crown,7 July 1642,

AGI, Guatemala, 16, R.3, N.19, Ims.1-4.

31 Avendaño to the Crown, 1 October 1643, AGI,

Guatemala, 16, R.4, N.27, Ims.1-2.

32 Avendaño to the Crown, 7 July 1642, AGI,

Guatemala 16, R.3, N.19, Ims.1-4; Ximénez, Historia, 3

(Libro 5), 70; "Copia del memorial de abisso," in Leyva,

Documentos, 119; Pérez Valenzuela, Historias de

Piratas, 58-62; Lane, Pillaging the Empire, 71; Thomas

Gage, Travels in the New World , ed. J. Eric Thompson

(Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958),

315-317. Dieguillo evidently sought to reconcile with

Spain in 1638, but to no avail. See Jane Landers, Black

Society in Spanish Florida (Urbana, Il.: University of

Illinois Press, 1999), 20-21.

33 Avendaño to the Crown, 1 October 1643, AGI,

Guatemala, 16, R.4, N.27, Ims.4-6; Petition of Antonio

Justiniano Chavarri, 17 June 1651, AGI, Guatemala, 17,

R.4, N.48; Francisco Vázquez, Crónica de la Provinciadel Santísimo Nombre de Jes! s de Guatemala de la

Orden de Nuestro Seráfico Padre San Francisco en el

Reino de la Nueva España, 4 vols., 2d. ed., Biblioteca

"Goathemala" 14-17 (Guatemala: Sociedad de Geografía

e Historia, 1937), 4:275-279; Floyd, Anglo-Spanish

Struggle, 23-24.


0 of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



34 Avendaño to the Crown, 10 March 1644, in

Avendaño to the Crown, 6 August 1644, AGI,

Guatemala, 16, R.5, N.37\1, Ims. 23-27.

35 Avendaño to the Crown, 7 July 1642, AGI,

Guatemala, 16, R.3, N.19, Im.3; Avendaño to the Crown,

1 October 1643, AGI, Guatemala, 16, R.4, N.27,

Ims.2-3; Avendaño to the Crown, 25 March 1644, in


Guatemala, 16, R.5, N.37\1, Ims. 28-33; Avendaño to the

Crown, 17 March 1648, AGI, Guatemala, 17, R.1, N.4;

Report of Pedro Vázquez de Velasco, Fiscal of the

Audiencia, 17 March 1648, AGI, Guatemala, 17, R.1,

N.5; "Carta a S.M. del Gobernador de Honduras sobre

haber desalojado las islas de Guanaxa, Maça y Roatán

por temor a los enemigos corsarios, 1 de Septiembre

1642," in Leyva, Documentos, 113-114; Floyd, Anglo-

Spanish Struggle, 18, 24.

36 Avendaño to the Crown, 17 March 1648, AGI,

Guatemala, 17, R.1, N.4\1, Ims. 4r-4v; Avendaño to the

Crown, 24 February 1649, AGI, Guatemala 17, R.2,

N.13.

37 Audiencia of Guatemala to the Crown, 27 October

1658, AGI, Guatemala, 20, R.2, N.9\2, Im.34; Cáceres,

Negros, 100.

38 Webre, "Las compañías de milicia," 516-518,525-529.

39 Razón de las ciudades, villas y lugares, vecindarios y

tributarios de que se componen las Provincias del

Distrito de este Audiencia , 1682, AGI, Contaduría 815,

fol.32v.

40 AGCA, A2.5-1, leg.295, ex.6534 (1700). See also

Vinson, Bearing Arms, 93-94.

41 Floyd, Anglo-Spanish Struggle, 30-33; Cáceres, Negros, 101-102; Lokken, "Undoing Racial Hierarchy,"

30-32; José Antonio Fernández M., "La población

afroamericana libre en la Centroamérica colonial," in

Rutas de la esclavitud en ! frica y América Latina,

comp. Rina Cáceres (San José: Editorial de la

Universidad de Costa Rica, 2001), 332; Aharon


1 of 22 3/24/14, 4:33



Arguedas, "Las milicias de El Salvador colonial," in

Mestizaje, poder y sociedad: ensayos de la historia

colonial de las provincias de San Salvador y Sonsonate,

ed. Ana Margarita Gómez and Sajid Alfredo Herrera

(San Salvador: FLACSO, 2003), 135.

42 Floyd, Anglo-Spanish Struggle, 37; William Dampier,

A New Voyage Round the World: The Journal of an

English Buccaneer, foreword by Giles Milton (London:

Hummingbird Press, 1998), 114-118.

43 AGCA, A2.5-1, leg.295, ex.6538 (1717), fols.14v-15.

44 "Copia del memorial de abisso," in Leyva,

Documentos, 116.

45 Avendaño to the Crown, 10 March 1644, in


Guatemala, 16, R.5, N.37\1, Ims. 23-27.

46 Cáceres, Negros, 100-104.

47 Escovedo to the Crown, 24 October 1676, in

Escovedo to the Crown, 16 November 1676, AGI,

Guatemala, 25, R.1, N.19\3, Ims. 4-5.

Copyright © 2004 Paul Lokken and The Johns Hopkins University

Press , all rights reserved.


paul lokken _ useful enemies_ seventeenth-century piracy and the rise of pardo militias in spanish...

Documents