Slavery in the Spanish colonies began with local Native Americans. Initially, the Spanish set encomiendas on natives and maintained the mita directing it to silver mining at Potosí. However, as these populations shrank due to imported European diseases, African slaves began to be used instead begining in 1502. The enslavement of Africans in Spanish America did not officially end until 1886.

Africans During the Spanish Conquest

Most of the earliest black immigrants to the Americas were natives of Spain and Portugal, men such as , a navigator who accompanied Christopher Columbus on his first voyage, and the black colonists who helped form the first Spanish settlement on Hispaniola in 1502. The name of appears in the records as that of a black slave present when Vasco Núñez de Balboa sighted the Pacific Ocean in 1513. Other blacks served with Hernán Cortés when he conquered Mexico and with Francisco Pizarro when he marched into Peru.

Estebanico, one of the survivors of the unfortunate Pánfilo de Narváez's expedition to Florida in 1527, was black. With three companions, he spent eight years traveling overland to Mexico City, learning several Native American languages in the process. Later, while exploring what is now New Mexico, he lost his life in a dispute with the Zuñi.

, another black person, led Spaniards in a series of battles against the Araucanian people of Chile between 1540 and 1546. Although Valiente was a slave, he was rewarded with an estate near Santiago and control of several Native American villages.

Spaniard enslavement of Africans

Bartolomé de las Casas (1484 - 1566) recorded the affects of slavery on the Native populations. It was his suggestion to start using African slaves to alleviate the suffering of the Native Americans. However, he later spoke against African slavery once he saw it in action.

In 1501 the Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, granted permission to the colonists of the Caribbean to import African slaves. Between 1502 and 1518, Spain shipped out hundreds of Spanish-born Africans, called Ladinos, to work as laborers, especially in the mines. Opponents of their enslavement cited their weak Christian faith and their penchant for escaping to the mountains or joining the Native Americans in revolt. Proponents declared that the rapid diminution of the Native American population required a consistent supply of reliable work hands. Free Spaniards were reluctant to do manual labor or to remain settled (especially after the discovery of gold on the mainland), and only slave labor could assure the economic viability of the colonies. In 1518 the first shipment of of African-born slaves were sent to the West Indies. The Spainiards, although major purchasers of slaves, did not trade on the African coast until the late 1700s. However, it is estimated that 95 percent of the African slaves transported to the New world from the 15th to the 19th century were sent to Latin America and the Caribbean. In total, the Spanish colonies recieved about 2 million.<ref>Jose Luciano Franco, The Slave Trade in the Caribbean and Latin America, in The African Slave Trade from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century 1978</ref>

Spain abolished slavery in Puerto Rico in 1873 and in Cuba only in 1886. Once slavery was abolished in Cuba, legal slavery gradually came to an end in the Caribbean and the rest of the Spanish possessions.<ref>Knight, Franklin W. The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism, 3rd ed New York, Oxford University Press 1990</ref>

Notes

Prose contains specific citations in source text which may be viewed in edit mode.

See Also

• Atlantic slave trade
• European colonization of the Americas
• Slavery in the British and French Caribbean