*Hispaniola was founded on this date in 1492. It is an island of Black, indigenous Taino people in the Caribbean archipelago known as the Greater Antilles. It is the most populous island in the West Indies and the region’s second-largest after Cuba. The island is divided into two sovereign nations: the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic to the east and French / Haitian Creole-speaking Haiti to the […]
learn more*Guadeloupe is celebrated on this date in 1493. This archipelago and overseas island group was part of the Middle Passage. It was a region of colonial France in the Caribbean. It consists of six inhabited islands, Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Marie-Galante, and La Désirade, and the two inhabited Îles des Saintes—as well as many uninhabited islands and outcroppings. […]
learn more*The Treaty of Tordesillas or Tratado de Tordesilhas was signed on this date in 1494. It was signed in at Tordesillas, Spain, and authenticated at Setubal, Portugal, and showed the 15th-century intersection between Africa and European slavery. The treaty divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between the Portuguese Empire and the Crown of Castile, along […]
learn more*The birth of Hernando de Soto is celebrated on this date in 1496. He was a Spanish explorer, slave trader, and conquistador involved in the middle passage. His expeditions in Nicaragua and the Yucatan Peninsula included the conquest of the Inca Empire in Peru. He led the first European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day United […]
learn more*The state of Bahia in Brazil from 1500 is remembered on this date. This is a former Portuguese/African slave region.
learn more*Abolitionism in South America is celebrated on this date in 1500. The Valladolid debate (1550–1551) was the first moral debate in European history to discuss the rights and treatment of indigenous people by European colonizers. Held in the Colegio de San Gregorio, in the Spanish city of Valladolid, it was a moral and theological debate about the […]
learn more*Black history and American abortion are affirmed on this date in 1500. African women endured many crimes against humanity as part of the Middle Passage. White rape from enslavers and forced childbearing to supply labor for the slave base agrarian culture of the 13 colonies, Antebellum South, and more. Beginning in the 17th century, abortion and […]
learn moreOn this date of Cinco de Mayo, we look briefly at the history of Africans in Latin (Central and South) America and the Caribbean.
learn more*Afro Mexicans are celebrated on this date in c 1500. Also known as Black Mexicans, they have a predominant heritage from Sub-Saharan Africa. As a single community, Afro Mexicans include individuals descended from black slaves brought to Mexico during the Middle Passage era in the transatlantic African slave trade, as well as others of […]
learn more*From the beginning of U. S. history, American Native populations and Africans had a historical relationship of both cooperation and confrontation.
learn more*Afro Dominicans are celebrated on this date in 1500. Also referred to as African Dominicans or Black Dominicans, they are Dominicans of predominant Black African ancestry. In the early 1500s, the Spanish Crown began fully participating in the Middle Passage. The Santo Domingo colony, the only European possession yet in America, had already devastated the […]
learn more*On this date, we affirm the institution of Chattel Slavery in the United States of America. This episode was instituted in Puerto Rico and Florida circa 1500 by Spain. Ponce de Leon, Don Hernan Cortez, Christopher Columbus, and others brokered kidnapped Africans from Africa to support the Middle Passage to the United States. A chattel slave is an enslaved person who […]
learn more*The birth of Estevanico is celebrated on this date in c 1503. Estevanico was a Black North African interpreter with Spain’s exploration of the Americas. He was a native of Azamor on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. In Spain before 1527, he was baptized as a Catholic and became the slave of Andrés Dorantes de […]
learn more*On this date in 1518, we recall the Asiento system. This was the African slave-selling license issued by the Portuguese and Spanish crown allowing merchants the monopoly on a trade route or merchandise. Portugal owned the trading post that held Black people, and Spain arranged their routing and distribution through their control of the Caribbean. The first asiento for selling slaves was drawn up […]
learn more*Slavery in New Spain is affirmed on this date in 1521. This episode was an important component of the white European business expansion to the western hemisphere. Spanish slavery began with the Greeks, Phoenicians, and Romans. In the 9th century, the Muslim Moorish rulers and local Jewish merchants traded in Spanish and Eastern European Christian indigenous slaves. […]
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