The black people in early colonial Spanish America played a very vitol role in the founding and discoveries of many of the locations in South America we know today. In the early 1500’s the Spanish had a plan to expand their colony from Europe to America, and which they did but the Spanish did not succeed solely on their own. The Spanish expansion brought blacks to the Americas in large numbers whether they were categorized to be slaves, settlers, servers, and soldiers. The people that came on the Spanish conquest saw it as an opportunity to better their a life and somewhat gain a new start. In the article “Black conquistadors: Armed Africans in Early Spanish America”, Matthew Restall proceeds to go into detail on how the blacks were an important role to the society of Americas whether they came voluntarily or by force. Many of the the blacks became a part of the conquests by becoming auxiliaries to the Spanish and Portuguese explorers. Restall’s purpose of the article was to highlight the Africans who were a pivitol part of the Spanish conquest campaigns in the Americas, identify the patterns of the different phases of Spanish expansion and how these patterns should be considered as “long-term colonial context”.
Restall categorized the Africans into three main roles during the times of the Spanish conquest in colonial America; Mass slaves, unarmed auxillary, and armed auxillary. The majority of the black in the Americas today are contributed due to the first category of mass slaves. The slaved were Africans who were taken from their homeland in most likely West Africa and was sold to Spaniards to produce labor on large plantations of produce and raw materials. These slaves were shipped en masse to the colonies and forced to work In large labor gangs and various plantations” (Restall 173). Starting in the early 1500s blacks were imported at a steady increasing number. He discussed how the blacks that were started to become imported started the trans-Atlantic slave trade of blacks that lasted up until the nineteenth century, Restall states how that is not the immediate topic of the issue but provides a broader context to the phenomenon of black conquistadors in Spanish America. The next category of blacks in the colonial Spanish America would be the unarmed auxillary, they were men and women born back in West Africa and typically servants or slaves. The reason unarmed auxillaries are different from mass slaves according to Restall, was because the black auxillaries typically functioned as individuals, alone or in small groups (Restall 175). The last category of blacks, which would be the main focus of the article is armed auxillaries of African descent. The armed auxillaries were typically African men who were looking for a way to gain freedom easily if they were enslaved and others were born free men from Iberia or mixed racial ancestry. The blacks helped conquer the Americas side by side to the Portuguese and Spaniards, Spanish expeditions ranged from Florida and the entire Southwest of North America. Restall explains how some of these black conquistadors were awarded land grants and special recognition. He lists the names of ten black conquistadors, which of seven were born in Africa and the other three were free blacks or mulattos from Spain, they took part in campaigns stretching from Mexico to Chile.
Restall organizes the strategies and patterns of the blacks along the three phases of the Spanish conquest. The first phase started in 1490-1510 and it started with one of the most famous conquistadors, Juan Garrido. Juan Garrido was by side of Ponce de Leon during his expedition to Mexico with Hernan Cortes as well. He was born in 1480 on the coast of West Africa, In 1503 he crossed the Atlantic ocean and joined Ponce de Leon in 1508 in the conquests of Puerto Rico and Cuba (Restall 177). Conquistadors such as Garrido helped acknowledge the institutional racism in the early colonial period because even after bringing so much to the table for Spaniards such as Garrido did in discovering Peurto Rico after the war and fight was over there little room for social mobility with jobs and occupations for Black men in the 15th and 16th centuries. As Restall states, it is quite difficult to determine exactly how many black conquistadors were throughout each phase but it would not be wrong to assume the black population increased exponentially during the second phase. The final and major phase was the expansion of Spaniards from Southern area of Central America into South America. Pedro de Alvarado set sail to Peru in 1534 and thousands of blacks aided in the expanision of the Spanish territory, despite being silence by historians on their role in that conquest. (Restall 183). Out of all the black people to aid in the Spanish conquest only five of them were grnated encomiendas, which was the right to enslave and colonize a land and force labor of the natives of that land, this goes to show how underappreciated the black conquistadors among the Spaniard conquests.
The last portion of Restalls article is when he pulls brings up the portions of “ black counter-conquistadors” and how they did not conform to the roles of society between Spaniards and blacks. Not all of the Africans were complient or satisfied with the situation between the blacks and Spaniards. Often times the blacks would organize societies that contained acts of piracy or just a society who sought to be on their own, these would consist of maroon societies, enscaped slaves or maybe just a black who was not content with their low level status and sought better for themselves (Restall 201-204). Restall helps aid how black resistance during Spaniard colonial times was very much present and how the racial domination of blacks are introuvable in our history lessons and textbooks today.
In conclusion, Restall had a very strong argument about how Africans were a ubiquitous part of Spanish conquests and how the black conquest roles were underappreciated and the active roles of “Black-counter conquistadors”. Some weaker areas on the article was when Restall started to become bias and incorporate more of his opinions into statements more than facts. Restall pulled his evidence from various sources such as “Negro Slaves in Early Colonial Mexico” an article in the textbook called “The Americas” (Restall 187). He used multiple tables and sources from textbooks to analyze the timeline of when events occurred and coordinate which conquistador helped aid in that victory. Restall overall claims that the black conquistadors did just as much and maybe more than the original Spaniards so they deserve the recognition, he sheds light on the fact of how they are underappreciated after their work in fighting and colonizing by how they come back to horrible occupations and are conformed with the label “criers”. The perception that Africans were content with voluntary and involuntary roles was dismissed in this article by Restall and proved that Spaniards did not value black armed auxillaries as nothing more than “black conquistadors”.