Resistance = Yanga !
When African American children learn about slavery in school, one unasked question frequently occurs to them—-why didn’t we fight back? It is a question that is at the heart of much of the shame and confusion Blacks have harbored about slavery for decades. It is a question that often remains unanswered because curricula does not address the grittier elements of the inhumanity inherent in the wicked business of the slave trade. The truth is that Africans fought vigorously against enslavement, from the beginning to the end. Resistance began on the slave ships themselves and continued in gold and silver mines, on sugar and cotton plantations, and tobacco fields and any other place where Blacks were forced into the horrors of chattel slavery.
The stories of resistance, some of them triumphant, remain largely untold. Students may learn about Harriet Tubman, but not Denmark Vesey. They may hear about Frederick Douglass, but not Zumbi in Brazil or Dessaline in Haiti, or Yanga, in Mexico. Rarely are the maroon communities founded by runaway or other wise libereated Africans studied or heralded.
The DuSable Museum of African American History’s latest exhibition, “The African Presence in Mexico: From Yanga to the Present,” introduces one such resister, Gaspar Yanga, often referred to as the First Liberator of the Americas. Further, the two day festival chronicling the opening of the exhibition is named YANGA FEST, in his honor.
Gaspar Yanga—-most often known simply as Yanga or Nyanga—-was a leader of a slave rebellion in Mexico during the early period of Spanish colonial rule. Said to be of the Bran people and member of the royal family of Gabon, (some say it was Angola…nobody knows for sure) Yanga came to be the head of a band of revolting slaves near Veracruz around 1570. By the year 1609, the large number of escaped slaves had reduced much of rural Mexico to desperation, especially in the mountains in the state of Veracruz. This was a very real threat since in the costal areas there were some 30 Black slaves for every white Spaniard.
Taking refuge in the difficult terrain of the highlands, Yanga and his people built a small Maroon colony or Palenque. For more than 30 years it grew, partially surviving by capturing caravans bringing goods to Veracruz and located in one of the back canyons was a small Aztec settlement that later became a refuge for escaped slaves that the Spaniards never discovered until they went looking for Yanga and his band of escaped slaves. In 1609 the Spanish colonial government decided to undertake a campaign itself to regain control of the territory.
The Spanish troops which set out from Puebla in January 1609 numbered around 550, of which perhaps 100 were Spanish regulars and the rest conscripts and adventurers. The Maroons facing them were an irregular force of 100 fighters with some type of firearm and four hundred more with primitive weapons such as stones, machetes, bows and arrows, and the like. These Maroon troops were led by Francisco de la Matosa, an Angolan. Yanga—-who was quite old by this time—-decided to employ his troops’ superior knowledge of the terrain to resist the Spaniards, with the goal of causing them enough pain to draw them to the negotiating table.
Upon the approach of the Spanish troops, Yanga sent terms of peace via a captured Spaniard. Essentially, Yanga asked for a treaty akin to those that had settled hostilities between Indians and Spaniards: an area of self-rule, in return for tribute and promises to support the Spanish if they were attacked. In addition, he suggested that this proposed district would return any slaves which might flee to it. This last concession was necessary to soothe the worries of the many slave owners in the region.
The Spaniards refused the terms, and a battle was fought, yielding heavy losses for both sides. The war lasted for years and finally, unable to win definitively, the Spanish agreed to parley. After eluding the detachment for several months, the Spanish commandant agreed to give Yanga’s followers their freedom in exchange for ending the constant raids in the area and gain their help in tracking down other escaped slaves. Yanga’s terms were agreed to, with the additional provisos that he and his people would surrender in return for a grant of cultivable land and the right of self-government; that only Franciscan priests would tend to the people, and that Yanga’s family would be granted the right of rule. In addition to their own town, the rebels wanted in writing that all slaves in his group who had fled before 1608 should be free. In 1618 the treaty was signed and by 1630 the town of San Lorenzo de los Negros de Cerralvo was established. The town name of “San Lorenzo de los Negros” was officially changed to Yanga, Veracruz in 1956. This town, in the Veracruz province, remains to this day under the name of Yanga and is a large town of over 20,000 people.