Caught between Rivals: The Spanish-African Maroon Competition for Captive Indian Labor in the Region of Esmeraldas during the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries
In 1586, the royal audiencia of Quito received a letter from a fugitive African slave written with the aid of an itinerant Spanish missionary.2 The judges were dismayed by what they read. The African, Alonso de Illescas, head of one of the maroon communities that had been flourishing on the coast of Esmeraldas since 1553, petitioned the court with a proposition and a veiled threat. The proposal implored the judges to honor an earlier promise giving Illescas political authority over Esmeraldas, the coastal province comprising the maroons’ homeland, and to desist in their plans to establish Spanish settlers in the region. In exchange, the maroons would gather and surrender hundreds of bellicose “Campaz” natives and deliver them “to the service of God and his majesty.”3 If the court rejected their terms, they would renege on their offer to “do everything possible so as to procure and pacify all of the natives of this province.”4 In addition, they would not assist the settlers nor aid them in capturing the Campazes. Importantly, for the administrators to honor their previous promise would amount The Americas 63:1 July 2006, 113-136 Copyright by the Academy of American Franciscan History