Yanga Municipality is a municipality located in the southern area of the State of Veracruz, Mexico, about 80 km from the state capital of Xalapa. It was formerly known as San Lorenzo de los Negros (after a colony of cimarrones in the early 17th century) or San Lorenzo de Cerralvo (after a 17th-century Spanish colonial priest). In 1932 it was renamed after Yanga, the cimarron leader who in 1609 resisted an attack by Spanish forces trying to regain control of the area. Captured in the area of present-day Guinea in West Africa before 1570, he was a chief of the Yang-Bara tribe before being sold into slavery.
Gaspar Yanga had been in the highlands since leading escape by a band of slaves in 1570. After fighting off the Spanish forces in 1609, and having a series of bloody skirmishers over nearly a decade, in 1618, he finally obtained an agreement with Spanish officials to grant freedom to the fugitive slaves and independence to their village, a few kilometers from the city of Cordoba, Veracruz. It became known as San Lorenzo de los Negros (named after the cimarrones) or San Lorenzo de Cerralvo (named after Juan Laurencio, a Jesuit friar who had accompanied the 1609 expedition sent by the Viceroy).
The inhabitants of African descent of San Lorenzo proclaimed their loyalty to the Church and the King of Spain, but refused to pay tribute to the Spanish government. They also agreed to capture fugitive slaves and return them to their masters in return for a fee. They were among the many free blacks of Mexico, which had the second-highest slave population of the Americas after Brazil.
No comments:
Post a Comment