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When the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade is discussed or taught in schools here in the continental U.S. (though that subject is currently under attack by the racist Trump administration), rarely is the U.S. colony of Puerto Rico part of the discussion. While enslaved people were freed here in the states via the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, and subsequent actions in Texas celebrated as Juneteenth on June 19, 1865, Puerto Rico was still a fiefdom of Spain.
It did not become a U.S. colonial possession until the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1898. The Spaniards were in no rush to free enslaved people working their plantations on the island. The Encyclopedia of Puerto Rico details that history:
On March 22, 1873, the Spanish Cortes approved the law that eliminated slavery in Puerto Rico. The decree freed a total of 29,000 slaves of both sexes, which represented 5% of the general population in Puerto Rico. Under the law, slaveowners would be indemnified for the loss of their “property.”
The freedom of enslaved men, women, boys and girls was conditional, as they were obligated to comply with contracts for three years after the abolition of slavery. The same decree also established that they would not have political rights for five years. However, the news was celebrated by most of the population and the expectation that blacks would attack the whites on a large scale (as had occurred in other parts of the Caribbean, such as Haiti) did not materialize.
In Puerto Rican historiography, there are two theories about the cause of the abolition of slavery. The first attributes it to the work of the liberal factions within the Puerto Rican landowning class itself, along with anti-slavery factions in Spain. Historians such as Arturo Morales Carrión and Luis M. Díaz Soler subscribe to this theory. The second, proposed by historian Benjamín Nistal-Moret (in his book “Fugitive and Escaped Slaves Puerto Rico, 1770-1870”), proposes that it was the slaves themselves who worked for their freedom by eroding “the system from within” through complaints and demands, escapes and “limited escapes” (an individual fleeing for a short amount of time, after which the slave would return to the plantation). The historian explains that the measures of resistance gradually wore down the system of slavery. Both theories are correct because the efforts of slaves and anti-slavery factions worked in parallel and one would not have succeeded without the other.
The Coqui Report has a short but comprehensive video on Puerto Rican enslavement history. The reports explains how the Spanish enslaved the Taino in Puerto Rico, but when their population was decimated by disease, they then turned to African slaves to staff their gold-mining and fort-building operations. The video goes on to specify that “by 1555, over 15,000 Africans were brought to Puerto Rico and that number would increase a couple centuries later during the sugar plantation surge where more than 40,000 would be imported by the mid to early 1800s.”
The Grio’s Natasha Alford addresses the legacy of enslavement in Puerto Rico and the “Afro-LatinX Revolution” in this half-hour documentary produced in conjunction with The Pulitzer Center.
Monica Morales-Garcia tells Alford’s story in this feature for LatinoUSA.
Afro-Puerto Rican Fordham University Law Professor Tanya Katerí Hernández shared her response to Alford’s book, “American Negra,” on her experiences growing up and race:
After reading Natasha S. Alford’s 2024 book American Negra: A Memoir, I realized … so much of Latinx literature—the characterization of Latina ethnicity as raceless.
The irony is that Latina authors often receive praise for illuminating the racial experiences of Latinas in the United States. Overlooked in that celebration is the complication that living in a Latina body is not a raceless experience nor a singular racial experience. Racialized as White, Black, Asian, Indigenous, and mixtures thereof, these categorizations matter to how one experiences Latinidad. [...]
Moreover, Alford eloquently describes how fellow Latinas can truly love us while not comprehending what Blackness means to Afro-Latinas. In a passage about her own mother, Alford notes:
Mami could not entirely help me interrogate my morena status, in society, my negritude, as she did not fully understand her own. She hadn’t learned much about slavery in Puerto Rico or the Black Puerto Rican leaders, like Marcos Xiorro, who had revolted and fought for freedom on the island.
Hernández expands the discussion beyond Puerto Ricans in this short video about white supremacist Latinos, a subject I addressed here:
Paola Nagovitch featured Hernández for El País:
In the 1940s, in New York, a Puerto Rican woman named Lucrecia considered giving away her daughter, Nina, for one reason: the little girl was too dark-skinned and her hair was too curly. Lucrecia’s family pressured her to give Nina up for adoption to an African American family. Or to any family, it didn’t really matter, but it had to be as soon as possible, so that the girl’s complexion did not tarnish the “white” lineage that the family had taken such care to protect, despite being descendants of Black and Indigenous enslaved peoples in Puerto Rico. Fortunately, Lucrecia chose to ignore her family’s demands. Years later, Nina would give birth to her own dark-haired, curly-haired daughter, Tanya Katerí Hernández. But unlike the childhood Nina endured in a home plagued by racism, Tanya grew up proud to be Afro-Puerto Rican thanks to her mother, who instilled in her a love of Blackness.
Hernández (New York, 60 years old) is today an expert in law, racial discrimination and critical race theory. Also a professor at Fordham University School of Law in Manhattan, she has devoted her entire career to researching Latino Anti-Blackness: its origins, its manifestations in different areas such as labor and education, its consequences... But above all, Hernández has focused her efforts on conveying what she has experienced first-hand and what she has later proven through her research: that racism exists within the Latino community. For some, like the writer of this article, another Afro-Puerto Rican woman, this statement may seem obvious. Because those who exist in a Black body do not need to be reminded of what their skin color implies.
But for many Latinos, whose skin is lighter, their hair straighter, their noses and lips smaller, racism is a subject that has always been taboo. Anti-Blackness is considered, according to Hernández, to be someone else’s problem — specifically, a United States problem — because the myth persists that the Latino community is a mestizo community and, therefore, that mixed race makes it impossible for a Latino to be racist. In order to debunk this myth and many others, Hernández publishes on August 6 the Spanish translation of her book Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality, originally published in English in 2022 by Beacon Press.
For a deeper dive, Politics and Prose bookstore hosted an absorbing panel discussion around the issues raised in her book in 2022:
I can personally attest to the issues Hernández raises in her work, as I am married to a Black Puerto Rican who is a descendant of enslaved people on the island. His white Puerto Rican grandfather was ashamed of having a Black Puerto Rican wife, and kept her sequestered in their apartment in East Harlem.
As a medical anthropological researcher when studying HIV/AIDs and injection drug use in New York City, I did ethnographic research in which heroin addicts would share without being prompted that they “were the darkest child in the family” and shot dope to wipe away the shame of having to eat in the kitchen when company came.
The Minority Rights Group notes that there are still many issues around racism for Afro-Puerto Ricans:
Persistent inequalities reinforce the low social status of Afro-Puerto Ricans. Sociological studies from the 1950s onwards have suggested that Afro-Puerto Ricans are disproportionately present in deprived urban neighbourhoods, low-paid informal-sector employment and youth detention centres.
They are also affected by enduring anti-black racist attitudes deeply embedded within Puerto Rican society which although never acknowledged are nevertheless routinely practised. In Puerto Rico as in other parts of Latin America it is still common for people to be referred to by their colour hence the prevalence of terms like Negro (a) or Negrito (a) although some argue that these are really terms of endearment devoid of animosity or conscious malicious intent.
However racial profiling and stereotyping identifies Dominicans as being overwhelmingly black and ‘mulatto’ illegal foreigners, and therefore a threat, consequently the Puerto Rican authorities often arrest Afro-Puerto Ricans who have no identification, assuming them to be illegal Dominican migrants.
Afro-Puerto Ricans continue to point out that their ancestors were instrumental in the development of the island’s political, economic and cultural structure. [...]
Puerto Ricans celebrate March 22 as ‘Abolition Day’ which is a national holiday and Puerto Rican school children are also taught at an early age about the three main ‘races’ (European, African, indigenous) which constitute the Puerto Rican population profile but the reality is that the African component is still viewed as being the most socially undesirable of the three and accorded the lowest status.
There are emancipation celebrations being held Saturday on the island. Let us also celebrate open discussions around the issues of ongoing racism.
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