Copyright by Kent Russell Lohse 2005 The Dissertation Committee for Kent Russell Lohse certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: AFRICANS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS IN COLONIAL COSTA RICA, 1600-1750 Committee: ___________________________________ Susan Deans-Smith, Supervisor ___________________________________ Sandra Lauderdale Graham, Co-Supervisor ___________________________________ Aline Helg ___________________________________ James Sidbury ___________________________________ Toyin Falola ___________________________________ Edmund T. Gordon AFRICANS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS IN COLONIAL COSTA RICA, 1600-1750 by Kent Russell Lohse, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2005 To Shaunda, Lantz, Baby Lohse, and All descendants of Africans brought to Costa Rica ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In my years in Austin I have been fortunate to work with some of the best scholars in Latin American history. In my first semester at UT, I was lucky enough to find what many grad students never do. Sandra Lauderdale Graham has been better than the best advisor I could have hoped for. By always pushing me to ask hard questions and seldom allowing me to take the easy way out, she has helped me more than anyone else to think and write about the past. I am honored to be her student. With his merciless red pen and caustic wit, Richard Graham has sent me back to the drawing board many times. I am sure that this dissertation would be much better if I had followed more of their advice. It was also my privilege to take a seminar with Susan Deans-Smith during that first semester. I have valued her subtle analyses and suggestions ever since, and they have profited me enormously when I have been astute enough to recognize them. Aline Helg provided often trenchant and always valuable criticism as well as her unfailing encouragement. Jim Sidbury has always taken an interest in my work and been eager to help, although he agrees with my conclusions much less frequently. Toyin Falola has shown me the same generosity as he does his own students, offering me the kind of advice and opportunities few graduate students have. I mean to compliment both by saying that my fellow graduate students at UT have improved my work at least as much as my professors. Since our baptism of fire together in Sandra’s Gender and Social History seminar, Matt “Brisket” Childs has taken the time to read and criticize most of what I have written. Matt’s energy and generosity as a fellow student and now as a professor are as legendary as his barbecues. We’ve ended v many of them arguing long into the night. No matter how loudly I shout down his ideas, he never gives up and always waits patiently for me to come around to reason. On a lot of things, he’s still waiting. Robert Smale is a fine fellow intellectual worker and comrade and I am proud to be his friend. Conversations with the amazing Greg Cushman, who knows more about subjects totally unrelated to his own research interests than a lot of specialists, have always helped me sharpen my thinking. He and Mirna Cabrera took me out to see some corners of Costa Rica I never would have without them. Frances Lourdes Ramos listened to me puzzle over the fates of the survivors of the Christianus Quintus and Fredericus Quartus for years. I thank her for that, and for all her support. In Costa Rica, Dr. Rina Cáceres has supported my research from the beginning. Without her help, I might never have been able to research this dissertation. As any visitor to the Archivo Nacional or the Curia knows, Mauricio Meléndez Obando is as generous with his time and expertise as he is knowledgeable about the archives, which he knows as well as anyone alive. I hope he knows how much I have benefited from our dozens of hours of sometimes heated discussions of colonial Afro-Costa Ricans in San José, Guatemala, Mexico City, and Austin. Since we met at one of Falola’s conferences, Paul E. Lovejoy has taken a lively interest in my work and graciously shared his sharp insights. David Eltis, Ugo Nwokeji, Philip Morgan, Robin Law, and William B. Taylor took the time to read and comment on portions of this work. I have also benefited immensely from too-brief discussions with João Reis, Lowell Gudmundson, Mariza vi Carvalho de Soares, Paul Lokken, Robert W. Slenes, Robinson Herrera, and many other scholars of slavery. I could not have begun graduate studies in Austin at all without the support of Joel Barker and Susan Whitney Barker. Larry Sharp has counseled me at every stage of my academic career. And Linda Whitney has supported me in anything I have ever tried to do. I am grateful to all of them for their essential help. vii AFRICANS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS IN COLONIAL COSTA RICA, 1600-1750 Publication No. _____ Kent Russell Lohse, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2005 Supervisor: Susan Deans-Smith Co-Supervisor: Sandra Lauderdale Graham The societies from which they came, patterns of the Atlantic slave trade, and local conditions in the societies in which they arrived all decisively influenced the varied experiences of enslaved Africans in the Americas. Unlike plantation societies with large slave populations, Costa Rica was a small, isolated, and economically disadvantaged colony on the edges of the Spanish Empire, with only intermittent access to the Atlantic slave trade. Enslaved Africans in Costa Rica came from hundreds of diverse African societies and arrived in small numbers, forming a small minority in the colony’s population. Their opportunities to associate with women and men of similar background in Costa Rica were sharply limited; at the same time, they lived and worked in intimate contact with members of other racial and ethnic groups. The impact of African ethnic origins consequently diminished in importance as slaves rapidly began to adapt to local institutions and adopt new identities. African-born men and women known by such names as angolas, congos, minas, and ararás soon came to associate and identify with an ever-expanding circle of enslaved and free people of different origins as shipmates, viii countrymen, blacks, slaves of the same masters, fellow servants, family and friends. Gender also made a crucial difference in the experiences of slaves in Costa Rica. Due to the nature of their work, slave men often enjoyed exceptional physical and sometimes social mobility within the confines imposed by slavery, while women usually lived out their lives in their masters’ homes. As enslaved men pursued and exploited relationships with free people, seeking the sponsorship of free patrons and sometimes marrying free women to form free families, slave women’s opportunities to forge such relationships remained limited and their children were overwhelmingly born in slavery. Patterns of ethnicity, gender roles, and labor conditions thus all contributed to the assimilation of African slaves and their descendants to a creole culture broadly shared by all members of Costa Rican society, rather than encouraging the formation of a distinct African, black, or slave identity. ix Table of Contents Acknowledgments ……………………………………………………………………….. v Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………viii List of Maps …………………………………………………………………………….. xi List of Figures …………………………………….…………………………………….. xi List of Tables ……………………………………..…………………………………….. xi Abbreviations ………………………...……………………...………………………… xiii Introduction ……………………………………………………………………..……….. 1 Chapter 1. A “Guinea Voyage”: The Christianus Quintus and the Fredericus Quartus on the West African Coast ……………………………………………………... 19 Chapter 2. Stolen from Their Countries: The Origins of Africans in Costa Rica …...… 52 Chapter 3. Middle Passages: The Slave Trade to Costa Rica ………………………... 147 Chapter 4. Becoming Slaves in Costa Rica ………………………………………….. 202 Chapter 5. Work and the Shaping of Slave Life ………………………………….….. 299 Chapter 6. Slave Resistance ………………………………………………………….. 392 Chapter 7. More than Slaves: Family and Freedom …………………………………. 466 Conclusions …………………………………………………………………………… 548 Epilogue …………………………………………………………………………...….. 555 Glossary ……………………..……………………………………………………..…. 576 Appendix 1. Fugitive Slaves of Costa Rican Masters, 1612-1746 ….……………….. 584 Appendix 2. Slave Marriages, 1670-1750 ………………………...…………………. 591 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………….. 598 Vita …………………………………………………………………………….……… 638 x List of Maps Map 1. Costa Rica ……………………………………………...…………………….... xv Map 2. Detail of Map of West Africa by H. Moll, ca. 1730 …………………………... 24 Map 3. Major Regions of West and West Central Africa ……………………………... 52 Map 4. The Jolof Empire at Its Height, ca. 1450 …………………………………….... 90 Map 5. The Mali Empire at Its Height, ca. 1350 …………………………………...…. 94 Map 6. Major Ports and Ethno-Linguistic Groups of the Bight of Biafra Region, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries ………………………..………………. 107 Map 7. West Central Africa, ca. 1650 ……………………………………………….. 114 Map 8. Detail of a 1656 map by Nicolas Sanson showing Costa Rica and Santa Catalina (Providence Island) ………………………………………………………...…. 149 Map 9 Detail of a 1717 map by Nicolas de Fer showing Costa Rica and the Isthmus of Panama ………………………………………………………………………... 155 Map 10. Detail of a 1697 map by William Dampier, showing the Mosquito Shore (“Moskitos”), Jamaica, Costa Rica, and the Isthmus of Panama ……………. 207 List of Figures Fig. 1. Recorded Cacao Exports in Zurrones, 1692-1697