Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • Garafalo Africans Lima San Lazaro Neighborhood

    Uploaded by

    drseramirez
    13 views12 pages

    Original Title

    garafalo africans lima san lazaro neighborhood

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Report this Document

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    13 views12 pages

    Garafalo Africans Lima San Lazaro Neighborhood

    Uploaded by

    drseramirez

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 12
    16 Black Space Production in Andean Societies How Africans and Their Descendants Shaped Lima’s San Lazaro Neighborhood Leo J. Garofalo Africans and Afro-descendants played key roles in Iberian conquests, colo- nization, and Christianization in the Americas, Africa, and the Pacific; but European accounts and modern national narratives render this significant contribution virtually invisible. Revealing the production of black spaces in the colonial Andes challenges official national discourses that invisbilize Afro-descendants and whiten history, often with a mestizaje that blends Europeans with indigeneity while keeping blackness at bay. Instead of spaces for black nucleation or isolation, these ongoing and complex processes pro- duced opportunities for Africans and African descendants to interact and negotiate with other socio-cultural and political actors in the racial and spatial order. Documenting Africans’ actions both in early modern Iberia and the colonial Andes challenges historical amnesia and the logic of elim- ination, provides examples of the conquest and colonization history missing in textbooks and museums, and offers strategies for self-recognition, restor- ing Afro-Latin Americans as historical agents. The Lima neighborhood of San Lazaro in Peru opens a window into both the struggle over markerplace ower and debates about the city’s proper resident, situated as it was close to the center of colonial power. Africans and Their Descendants in the Andes People of the African diaspora arrived in the central and southern Andes in the 1500s and 1600s as diverse peoples distinguished by ethnicities, places of origin, religion, social status and occupation, and legal status. That diversity endured in many eases or took on new meanings in the Andean context. Yet, colonial legislation and che practices of royal, municipal, and Church autho- tities treated Africans as a more homogeneous group than they actually were, Even indigenous clites participated in creating a partcula: set of images — almost archetypes — of Africans in the Andes. Without a doubs, certain necessities compelled many of these same Africans to play an active part in the homogenization of Afro-Andeans into groups such as ‘bozales’ (i.e. born in Africa) and ‘criollos,’ ‘negros’ and ‘mulatos,” or some of the more locally ddominane and recognized African ethnic groupings or slave trade categories. Black Space Production in Andean Societies 211 ‘This creation of Afro-Andean identities in places like Lima and Cuzco unfolded alongside the local social histories and events that defined Afro- ‘Andean places in markets, neighborhoods, religious life, and local labor sys~ tems, Not only did interactions with colonial authorities and elites play roe in ‘Afro-Andeans finding these places for themselves in colonial life, but indigenous commoners, mestizos and other castas, and various kinds of colonists and Spanish plebeians also engaged daily with Afticans in the Andes to shape their roles in society and places in the urban environment. Recent research explores the cteation of both identcies and places for Afro-Andeans in the coatext of neighborhoods, taverns, markets, and ritual practices in the Lima and Cuzco areas in the early and mid-colonial periods (See McKinley 2016; Jouve Martin 2005). Archival cases show Affo-Andeans actively involved in shaping some of Lima's neighborhoods, local markets, commercial establishments, religious institutions, and popular ritual traditions (other studies thar draw on these cases are Arrelucea Barrantes 2018, Van Duesen 2004, and Garofalo 2006). Peru’s sixteenth-century capital Lima came to house the viceroy, the highest law courts, convents, merchant houses, artisans’ guilds printing presses, schools, and a univers. Lima and its nearby port, Callao, also arose as the Pacific oast’s main population and market center, a place where many groups came together, crossed paths, or settled. Factious colonizers from various regions of Iberia, thousands of west and central African people laboring as servants and enslaved workers, enslaved and formerly enslaved Asians and Amerindians, and ‘numerous indigenous migrants engulfed ~ and soon outnumbered ~ the indigen- ‘ous fshing and farming communities native to Lima’s custer of irigated valleys, although indigenous people's economic functions always remained important to Lima's development. Beginning in the 1530s, royal grants permitted the importation of enslaved African people to Lima, Periodic labor shortages and a concentration o! wealth and salaried crown and Church administrators encouraged steady importation; therefore, bythe 1600s, blacks made up the majority of the valleys’ producers and consumers, In 1554, the total enslaved African population of Lima numbered approximately 1,539. By 1593, blacks and mulatos numbered 6,690 in a city of 12.790, others lived on che valleys’ farms and plantations, perhaps seaching. 20,000 (Bowser 1974:338-39, 341. In 1636, the Archbishop of Lima listed in the city 13,620 blacks, 11,088 Spanish, 1,426 Indians, 861 mulatos, 377 mestizos, and twenty-two enslaved Asians. By 1700, the city’s total population climbed ro 37,234, sill maintaining a black majority. The group of African heritage encom. passed people of different origins and a mix of freed and enslaved, skiled and unskilled workers. Notaries recorded twenty-one ethnic names (Bowser 1974346). Despite the high number of Afto-Peruvians, neither the forced labor system known as the ‘mita’ nor slavery ever fully guaranteed enough workers. ‘Therefore, indigenous people arriving in the capital outside the mita usually found abundant, slightly beter paid manual work. Indian forasteros con- stituted the third source of Lima's non-Spanish labor. Black workers, local 212 Leo J. Garofalo indigenous residents, and forasteros all appeared in the mercados de plaza, fields, and fishing crews provisioning the city. Therefore, Afro-Peruvian ‘majorities and indigenous migrants together altered the ethno-racial makeup and cultural composition of Lima. The San Lizaro neighborhood epitomizes this process of producing Andean space. ‘The Struggle over the San Lézaro Neighborhood The creation of the multi-ethnic San Lizaro parish illustrates the key role Africans played in fashioning and occupying a place in Andean urban colonial sociery. The 1590 eviction of San Lizaro’s original indigenous traders and vendors of chicha (an alcoholic drink usually made from fermenting corn) also pitted different groups of colonial rulers against each other. More importantly, the San Lizaro case demonstrated how Native Andeans and Afro-Peruvians began to forge their own ways of interacting with one another and trading, although not without occasional clashes. Like the colonial elites, the multi ethnic commoners were not a united group. People of African heritage and people of mixed heritage had long compli- cated the neat division of the colonial population into two cepublics. Peru's

    You might also like