THE ENSLAVEMENT OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE AND AFRICANS IN CUBA: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH

ROBERTO VALCÁRCEL ROJAS
MUSEO DEL HOMBRE DOMINICANO, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

Room 1208A Turlington Hall, Thursday, April 11, 2024, 3:00 pm

In recent years, archaeological research has brought us closer to a form of slavery that is almost unknown or considered unimportant: that of the indigenous people, called Indians by the colonizers. This was common until the mid-16th century and precedes and coexists with that imposed on Africans. It involves the local indigenous population, and individuals brought to the Caribbean and Cuba from other parts of the Antilles or the continent. Along with the “encomienda,” another form of forced labor, it is a central aspect in explaining the destruction of indigenous societies. Historical information about the enslavement of indigenous people is very scarce and is often intentionally distorted. Its study is complex because, unlike the enslavement of Africans, the ethnic-racial element or the relationship with a particular economic environment, such as the plantation, is not a resource for archaeological identification here.

This presentation focuses on archaeological studies of both types of slavery. Also, it addresses evidence of other forms of forced labor or neo-slavery in Cuba, such as that suffered by Chinese Coolies and Yucatec speakers (Mayan indigenous). It gives us a temporally extensive vision of this practice. It demonstrates how it is articulated from the domination of different ethnic conglomerates within the framework of modernity controlled by the Western vision of the world and by European and Creole groups linked to colonial power.

Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology and the Hyatt and Cici Brown Endowment for Florida Archaeology, University of Florida