The cases of the self-proclaimed kings in the Indies seem a historiographical rarity, however, we are preparing a list that seems to grow every time we approach the documentation. The discourse of royalty among some leaders of African origin emerges from the daily life of religious associations such as brotherhoods, to make its most brutal appearance in the context of insubordination movements such as the flight and the founding of independent villages named according to the region of Latin America, palenques, quilombos, mocambos, mambises or cumbes. In fact it is considered, “the basic unit of resistance of the slave”. [1]
These spaces contributed to preserve among Afro-descendants, cultural and social practices rooted in Africa, including slavery itself. At the El Limón palenque in the Montes de María in New Granada, the statements of certain witnesses refer, for example, to a form of servitude very similar to slavery. Sebastián Anchico, a 22-year-old muzzle, declared that “all the black men and women that were in Polín [a palenque] were taken tied up so that they could serve [the people of the El Limón palenque]. And the said Sebastián Anchico served his master Juan Angola, a Creole, and took a pile, and brought water and firewood, and went to work ”. [2]
The first of these self-proclaimed kings emerged among the population of African origin in each of the places in Latin America where their presence nurtured the slave trade networks.
The original sources that bring us closer to this phenomenon are not very easy to work with, because if it is about chronicles, we find descriptions vitiated by fear and rejection of what was considered “barbarian” and legitimately enslavable. If they are judicial files, there is also the intermediation of the notary public and the fear of the apprehended maroon who testifies. However, from there we can start by extracting information to process it. The chronicler Fray Pedro de Aguado provided extensive descriptions of the Bayano uprising in Panama. In one of those sections of his History News, he describes the situation that we are trying to identify:
“[…] This mob of blacks, against all laws and divine and human rights, intends not only to become lords of this land , where they were neither born nor raised nor did any of their elders possess it, but to constitute and make each other king and lord to govern them and keep them in justice in the way they pretend and want to flee…….
In this post, we present some of the characters of African origin that we have recognized as self-proclaimed kings and not only regarded as captains of rebellion or captains of palenque. Among them are two women and three brotherhood kings who seemed to transcend as something more than mayordomos:
1) Miguel. Born in Puerto Rico, he rose in the Captaincy of Venezuela, 1551-1552 in the mines of Barquisimeto -an author says the Buria mine in the current state of Yaracuy-, a slave of Pedro de los Barrios. He had a wife, Guiomar, a queen, and a son named Prince. He built a town from which he and his people attacked Hispanic settlements. Blacks and Jirajara Indians lived together in the town founded by King Miguel. There he appointed a religious leader. He died in a confrontation with the Spanish.
2) Bayano. Tierra Firme, Panama, its leadership is located between the years 1552-56 or 1556-58. He was of good disposition and strength, ladino or Spanishized in the language. Recognized by those who frequented him as a very brave man. He was a slave of the president of the Audiencia of Panama. He was treacherously defeated by the conqueror Pedro de Ursúa. It had a sacred aura and protected the maroons from the repression of the Spanish. Justice, not tyrant. The Bayano River was named in his honor.
3) Domingo Bioho or Benkos Bioho. Legend character in Cartagena, Nueva Granada. He called himself “king of the Matuna” or “king of the arquebus.” He is also known as King Benkos. Its figure is updated historically, that is, there are Benkos Bioho at various times in the history of the region. He was betrayed and hanged in 1619. He organized the famous San Basilio Palenque around 1600, a surviving population today. The town was dismantled in 1686 when it had a population of 3,000 inhabitants. His sister was known as Princess Orika and his mother as Queen Wiwa.
4) King in Huaira, Peru, mid-16th century (name not available).
5) Luis Mozambique, 1579-1582. Portobelo, Tierra Firme. In his delivery the title of “gift” was used. He was an ally of privateer John Oxemham. Ethiopian. Married to doña María Bran. He founded the town of Santiago del Príncipe, near Nombre de Dios.
6) Anton Mandinga. Successor of Luis Mozambique.
7) Gaspar Yanga or Ñyanga. New Spain, 1608. He was known as ‘king of the Rió Blanco mountains’. He founded the town of San Lorenzo, it is said that he was king in Africa. From the Bran nation, he formed around 1570 palenques on the slopes of the Zongolica mountain range in the eastern Sierra Madre. He escaped along with other slaves from the surroundings of Veracruz.
Martín, originally from Guinea, elected and crowned king in a house in Mexico City. Slave to the richest man in town. 1608.
9) Pablo and Pedro, two Angolan blacks, seek to be crowned in the context of the brotherhood festivities in Mexico City but there are strong disturbances and calls for an uprising. 1611-1612.
10) A ‘witch’ or queen with great spiritual powers commands an uprising of blacks on Margaret Island in 1603.
11) Zambo Kingdom of the Mosquitia ca.1633 / 1687 until the 19th century (several successions of kings in the current stretch of coast between Belize and Nicaragua).
12) Threat of election of a black king in Mexico City for 1666.
13) Ganga Zumba. Brazil, ca.1670. King of the famous quilombo of Palmares that is said to have housed 15,000 runaway slaves.
14) Zumbi de Palmares. (1655-1695). It is probable that he was born in the quilombo of Palmares. It is said that he was the descendant of African warriors from Angola. He was educated by a religious but at the age of 15 he escaped and returned to the quilombo of Palmares.
15) Leonor. Queen of the Palenque of El Limón, near Cartagena, in the Montes de María, ca. 1634.
16) Grandy Nanny. Known as ‘Queen Nanny’ in Jamaica. Her movement occurred in the first half of the 18th century and she and her followers founded Moore Town. His figure was magical and matriarchal and his ancestors were from today’s Ghana. It must have been a priestess.
17) Pedro Duarte. 1787. He was clandestinely crowned in Buenos Aires, a Congolese nation, apparently crowned king in a candombé of 1787 and forced to resign as ‘king of the Congo’; He was the steward of the confraternity of San Baltazar. Crowned by Pablo Agüero, the coronation would have been the day of the Transit, they took him under a parasol and with a kind of crown, he was obeyed and venerated by other blacks of the Conga nation. In particular, he was respected and obeyed as king of his nation and not as steward in the function of San Baltasar in the church of La Piedad.
Long ago it was thought that runaway blacks survived solely through pillage, but current research shows that the palenques were not simply shelters where slaves escaped, but that a subsistence agricultural economy developed in them. Similarly, the rebels sought to organize both politically and militarily, culturally and religiously. In this context, the difference between a captain and a king of palenque may suggest the displacement from a simple situation of defensive warfare and guerrilla warfare, to a structured organization based on the constitution of a monarchical form. But this is just a hypothesis for now. In Wikipedia there is a distinction linked to the African or American origin of the rebels: in the palenques of African maroons there were kings and in those of Creole blacks, no. I don’t think this is a correct assertion at all. The one who proclaimed himself as the first black king, the black Miguel, was a Creole black born in Puerto Rico, likewise, Zumbi de Palmares. For the El Limón Palenque, near Cartagena, we have original sources that show the ethnic composition of the Palenque. There were black Africans, black Creoles, and Indians. According to the chronicler Fray Pedro de Aguado, King Miguel had 180 Indians under his entourage.
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