History - Puerto Rico - page 455

AFRICAN ROOTS
As throughout the Caribbean, slavery was the engine of the Puerto Rican economy through
the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and has left an indelible mark on Puerto Rican culture.
The two types of slaves that were brought to the island - ladinos, born and acculturated in
Spain, and bozales and Yoruba people , brought from Africa - first mined meager gold and
silver deposits. Once these deposits were depleted, slaves propped up the sugarcane industry
and agriculture on the coastal areas of the island. While the rest of the island's population
experienced normal growth, the slave population skyrocketed throughout the late 18th cen-
tury. A census figure in 1765 shows 5400 slaves in Puerto Rico; by 1830 it had increased
to more than 31,000, mainly due to the introduction of new slaves directly from Africa and
other parts of the Caribbean. However, despite these increases, by 1795 the majority (more
than 60%) of black and mulatto people living in Puerto Rico were free. This trend, unusual
for the Caribbean, is often attributed to an asylum policy which granted freedom to fugitive
slaves from throughout the region.
Mi Puerto Rico, directed by Sharon Simon, contains revelatory stories by poets, abolitionists, revolutionaries and politicians in a
fabulous documentary touching on the island's African, Taíno and European ancestry.
By the late 1830s, after years of racial violence in the Caribbean and abolitionist move-
ments, it became clear that slavery was increasingly less justifiable. Sugar barons combined
their slave holdings with low-wage workers called jornaleros and continued to accrue im-
mense wealth. In both cases, the exploitation by European whites of African- and island-
born blacks and people of mixed race led to the perpetuation of racial myths that laid a
foundation for social inequities and racism.
Many slave uprisings occurred and began to intertwine with a political movement for
emancipation led by Julio Vizcarrondo, a Puerto Rican abolitionist living in Spain, as well
as island-based political leaders such as Segundo Ruiz Belvis, Roman Baldorioty de Castro
and Ramón Emeterio Betances. After years of struggle the Spanish National Assembly ab-
olished slavery on March 22, 1873.
Today the cultural echoes from African slaves are still present in Puerto Rican culture,
described by the late cultural and social writer Jose Luis González as el primer piso, or 'the
first floor' of Puerto Rican culture. In its music, art and religious icons, African traditions
are powerfully felt. And despite the racial stereotypes and inequalities that continue to ex-
ist on the island and within the Puerto Rican diaspora, Puerto Rico has embraced its Afro-
Indigenous-Caribbean roots.