Los PRIMEROS NEGROS eN LAS AMERICAS

Roughly a decade later, in 1595 we find another governor, Lope de Vega Portocarrero, informing the Crown that during the prior three years there had been no arrival of slave ships into the island because they preferred going to Cartagena de Indias and Tierra Firme, attracted by the better quality of the currency there and the higher value they would obtain when selling the slaves in that market. As the local authorities of La Española had requested for decades, he asked the Crown for a subsidized provisioning of 1,000 enslaved Blacks for the colony’s denizens, with a four-year pay-back term, so they could use those slaves in the mines and sugar estates. [4] Apparently in response to the requests from La Española’s authorities, on April 1^st, 1597 Spain’s Prince Phillip (later king Phillip III) issued an order for 1,000 Blacks and 100 settlers to be sent to La Española, but all the available evidence indicates that the order was never put into effect and the new century would begin with no changes in this matter. [5] According to Deive, this moved the Audiencia of La Española to disregard the vigilence and prosecution against the smuggling of enslaved Blacks to which many colonists had been resorting as an alternate source of enslaved labor force. [6] Still in November of 1601 Archbishop Dávila y Padilla was reiterating the request for 1,000 Black slaves, so that “the land with its riches will call people who will defend it and inhabit,” arguing that the lack of Blacks (“falta de negros”) meant settlers-residents could not take advantage of the land’s mineral wealth. [7]