r/Colonialism

The last census of the 1700s tells us that the percentage of slaves was almost 30%, as slavery increased significantly in Santo Domingo in the late 1700s due to the Family Compacts (between the monarchies of the Kingdom of Spain and the Kingdom of France against the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Archduchy of Austria), which brought more investment, and especially due to the ease of buying Black people on the Dajabón frontier, both legally and illegally (without paying taxes).

Primary Sources:

1740 Census: We only have the summary by Archbishop Álvarez de Abreu in his work "Compediosa Noticia de la isla de Santo Domingo" (Compendium of the Island of Santo Domingo), reproduced by Carlos Larrabazal Blanco in his work "Los negros y la esclavitud en St. Dgo." (Blacks and Slavery in Santo Domingo).

It counts 12,259 inhabitants, of whom the majority were Black, especially free people.

1783 Census: This was a parish census and lacks detail.

Around 1783, the island had 117,300 inhabitants distributed across 18 localities; 14,000 of them were enslaved Black people.

1794 Census: Reproduced by Moreau in his work "Histoire Physique des Antilles Françaises", published in Paris, 1822:

The population of Santo Domingo in 1794 was distributed as follows: Whites 35,000; Free People 38,000; Slaves 30,000

The 1794 census summarized in percentages:

Whites 34% | Slaves 29% | Free People 37%

To clarify the comparative chart, the 5-8% of owners come from the 34% and 37% because, contrary to popular belief, the owners were not only white but also mulattos, mestizos, zambos, castizos, free blacks and Indians as owners but they owned fewer slaves than the whites.

Note: There were still some Indians living in Santo Domingo who had survived the foreign diseases brought by Europeans and Africans, as well as the encomienda system, but they were already highly racially mixed or had been socially reclassified. However, the term “Indian” continued to be used as a legal or social category.

Source(s):

.- La Colonización de la frontera dominicana (1680-1795). By Manuel Vicente Hernández González, 2006.

.- Historia de la República Dominicana (2010). By Frank Moya Pons.

.- La esclavitud del negro en Santo Domingo (1980). By Carlos Esteban Deive.

In the geopolitical struggle of empires, at a certain point in colonial history, the island of Hispaniola was divided between France and Spain, reflecting the political conflicts between them. Maroons from the French colony of Saint-Domingue, seeking freedom, crossed the border and arrived in the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo. Despite repeated requests for their return, Spain refused, increasing tensions and fighting between the two sides.

For some researchers, the process began with the uprising of a maroon leader known as Padrejón, who was also a renowned healer. He was killed, and his 30 followers managed to cross over to the Spanish side. Whether or not this version is true, it is certain that a significant number of maroons arrived from the French colony and were welcomed.

As a preventative measure, the Spanish authorities, led by the governor at the time, Francisco Carvajal y Castillo, granted them land to work and live on in order to monitor and control them. This led to the founding of the Villa de San Lorenzo de los Mina between 1676 and 1677, according to Friar Cipriano de Utrera, on the banks of the Ozama River. Furthermore, they sold their agricultural products—fish, chickens, pork, beef, wax, etc.—transporting them by canoe to the market in the city of Santo Domingo, thus ensuring a significant supply for the city.

At the founding of the village, 73 Maroons were present, of whom the following were recorded: 34 from the Mina ethnic group, 4 Barrucos, 3 Congos, 3 Angolans, 1 Arará, 1 Zape, 2 Cape Verdeans, and the rest were unidentified. The Mina people were the predominant group. In the syncretic cultural process, the other groups enriched the farming techniques, religious beliefs, artistic and cultural expressions, and existential conceptions of life and death. For this reason, the place was also known as “San Lorenzo de los Negros” (Saint Lawrence of the Blacks).

The town's patron saint was Saint Lawrence, who, with his symbolic grill in hand, stood on the main altar of a small, single-nave church. Today, paradoxically, he is on the left side of the main altar, replaced by an image of Jesus—a disrespectful displacement by a priest that historically distorts the original vision of the temple, an irreverent substitution for the believers and residents of Los Mina.

The town's economic prosperity, and especially the increased value of its land due to its productive qualities, aroused the greed of several officials and members of the Catholic Church, who fabricated slanderous accusations about the behavior of the freed Black people, claiming they were vagrants and violent, even savage, posing a danger to the safety of even the inhabitants of Santo Domingo.

As always, arbitrary actions and abuses of power destabilized daily life and led to uncertainty among its inhabitants, many of whom chose to abandon the village, forming Mandinga, Mendoza, and Villa Mella, leaving the small town completely deserted.

Today, Los Mina is a thriving neighborhood in the Province of Santo Domingo Este, where the late Ignacio Martínez H., a passionate and a lover of the sector of "Los Mina viejo", lived. He would celebrate the neighborhood's founding in August, together with the Santo Domingo City Council, and organize, among other things, folkloric performances with traditional groups playing Congo, Cangamulanga, Pri-Prí, salves, and atabales.

Today, the plaza, which should be a park, is in chaos, with official institutions dividing up the space. The former residence of Don Ignacio Martínez H., "Villa Thesalía," which was intended to be the Los Mina Museum, lies abandoned. Only the original little church remains, restored by the Office of Cultural Heritage and jealously guarded by its closest residents.

Some people understood that the neighborhood's name came from the many mines that once existed there, and they began substituting "Los Mina" for "Los Minas," a spelling that has been repeated interchangeably. This is incorrect; the name Mina actually originates from the fact that, as we saw earlier, the Mina ethnic group was prominent, the most numerous when the town was originally founded.

During the slave trade, the Portuguese established trading posts to gather the enslaved people destined for the Americas, as slave traders recruited them from various places and at different times. In 1482, in what is now Ghana, they founded "São Jorge de Elmina," a fortress for collecting enslaved people and seizing the region's gold.

Near the fortress lived a small tribe descended from the Popo people, identified as Mina. Many people confused this name with the fortress itself, "Elmina," and since slaves arriving at the fortress were loaded there, the slave traders indiscriminately referred to them as "Mina Blacks" because of their origin.

The process involved slave traders scouring the area for slaves from various ethnic groups. These slaves were taken to the fortress located near the Mina tribe. Upon arrival in the New World, all those who were not recognized but had been loaded at the fortress were lumped together and then referred to as "Mina Blacks," even though many of them belonged to the Mina ethnic group.

The most significant number of the Maroons who fled the French colony and founded the Villa de San Lorenzo in the Spanish colony, near the city of Santo Domingo, on the banks of the Ozama River, were actually of the Mina ethnicity; therefore, this neighborhood of the municipality of Santo Domingo Este should be identified as “Los Mina” and not “Los Minas”.