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From Africa to the Andes: Conquest and American Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Edgar Montiel
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Extract

After life itself, freedom is man's most precious and esteemed possession; and consequently it is the most worthy causes; and when there is doubt about someone's freedom, one owes it to oneself to answer in favor and to judge in favor of freedom. This precept is equally true for Blacks as for Indians.

Bartolomé de Las Casas, Tratados, 1552

Our America has not fully realized the extent of the African continent's influence on the cultural and ethnic genesis of Latin America. This aspect of its history remains foreign to it and almost consciously denied: a denial that is the legacy of a racial complex created by the European mentality during the course of the Conquest. One of the characteristics of American humanism, however, lies within the valorization of the multi-ethnic origins of Latin American culture; this is why one cannot ignore the breadth of the African contribution to the American identity and the circumstances that determined this contribution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 41 , Issue 164 , December 1993 , pp. 27 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

Notes

1. This essay is part of a study of Blacks in South America, which will soon be published by the National Council of Culture and Arts in Mexico.

2. Histoire générale de l'Afrique, vol. IV, “L'Afrique du XIIe au XVIe siècle.” Editor of this volume, D.T. Niama, UNESCO, 1984.

3. The relationship between Europe and America, for reasons of historical densi ty, cannot help but be fraught with ambiguity. The otherness of America is at the origin of the birth of European humanism in the sixteenth century, for it was also the first victim of the crime of lèse-humanité, denounced by father Las Casas in his Breve Relación de la Destrucción de las Indias published in 1544. For the “traps of oth erness” and the “strategies for recovery (encubrimento)” set into play by Europe, see our study, “America-Europe: In the Mirror of Otherness,” Diogenes 159, 1992.

4. Africa en América Latina, Coordinated by Manuel Moreno Fraginale, Mexico, UNESCO, Siglo XXI, 1977. This collective work gathers together the contributions of European, African and North and South American researchers.

5. The Jesuit Alonso de Sandoval, slave chaplain in Columbia, wrote a Tractatus de instauranda aethiopum salute, a tract on slavery, published in Seville in 1627 and reprinted by Enriqueta Vila Vilar in 1987, Madrid: Alianza Editorial. See also “Lazos culturales entre América Latina, el Caribe y Africa” by Luz Maria Martinez Montiel, in Africa en América, Mexico: Unam-Ceestem, 1982.

6. Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz, “Las migraciones anteriores al siglo XIX,” Europa, Asia y Africa en América Latina y el Caribe, Coordinated by Birgitta Leander, Mexico, UNESCO, Siglo XXI, 1989.

7. James Lockhart, El mundo hispanoperuano 1532-1560, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1982, pp. 218-253.

8. On this subject one may consult the remarkable works of Louis Sala-Molins, Le Code Noir, Le Martyre de Canaan, Paris: P.U.F., 1987, and l'Afrique aux Amériques. Le Code Noir espagnol, Paris: P.U.F., 1992.

9. Guillermo Céspedes del Castillo, “La sociedad colonial americana en los siglos XVI y XVII,” in Historia social y económica de España y América, edited by Jaime Vicens Vives, vol. III, Barcelona: Teide 1957, p. 402.

10. Emilio Harth-Terré, El artesano negro en la arquitectura virreinal limeña, Lima: Editorial Universitaria 1971, p. 6; Presencia del negro en el virreinato del Perú, Lima: Editorial Universitaria, 1971, p. 48.

11. Alejendro Reyes Flores, “Esclavitud en Lima 1800-1840,” in Primer seminario sobre poblaciones immigrantes, Lima: Concytee 1988, p. 44.

12. Frézier, “Lima 1713,” in Viajeros, Lima: édition anthologique, 1959, p. 13. (Excerpt from the Relation de voyage de la Mer du Sud aux côtes du Chily et du Pérou, fait pendant les années 1712, 1713 & 1714, dedié à Monsieur le Duc d'Orléans, Régent du Royaume, par M. Frézier, ingénieur ordinaire du Roy.)

13. Lorenzo Huertas, “Esclavitud y economia regional: Huamanga 1577-1855,” in Primer seminario sobre poblaciones immigrantes, Lima: Concytee, 1988, p. 19.

14. Alberto Flores Galindo, “El militarismo y la dominación británica,” in Nueva historia general del Perú, Lima: Mosca Azul 1982, p. 107.

15. Ibid, p. 45.

16. Pablo Macera, Les plantaciones azucareras en el Perú, 1821-1875, Lima: Boblioteca Andina, 1975, p. 25.

17. Luis Millones Santagadea, Minorías étnicas en el Perú, Lima, 1973.

18. On the historical formation of the socio-cultural patrimony, see the detailed study, “La part de l'Afrique et ses répercussions,” by Kiflé Selassie Beseat, UNESCO, Cape Verdean Colloquium, May 1992.

19. Latin American philosophers can no loger speak of “identity” as an abstract cultural category, separate from the real ethnologic, demographic and historical processes of the region. The same is true for the idea of “humanism.”

20. Edgar Montiel, Inca Garcilaso. Identidad de la Historia. Coordinated by Cuadernos Américanos, Mexico: UNAM, 1990.

21. Idem, “Geopolítica de las consciencias. Cultura latinoamericana y relaciones internacionales,” in Revista de la Acedemia Diplomática del Perú, Lima, 1990, pp. 152-166.

22. José Campos Dávila, “Formacíon de la identidad negra. Aproximación psi cológica,” a series of three articles published on October 21, 28 and November 4, 1990 in Variedades, a cultural supplement to the daily newspaper La Crónica.

23. See as well the book by Germán Peralta Rivera, Los mecanismos del comercio negro, Lima: Kunter Editores, 1990.

24. Fernando Romero, Diccionario afro-peruano, Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1990.

25. A two-volume work including, among others, works by Lorenzo Huertas, Victoria Espinoza, Alejandro Reyes and Simeón Orellana.