Gaspar Yanga statue in present day, Veracruz, Mexico
Gaspar Yanga Rebellion, 1570
Just a few people know about the history of Africans in Mexico, yet Africans who were taken there provided strong examples of rebellions against the practice.
One name is well known. Gaspar Yanga was an enslaved African taken to Mexico in the late 1500s. Yanga began a revolt on a sugarcane plantation near Veracruz in 1570. After fleeing into the forest with a small group of former slaves, they spent four decades establishing a colony, or palanque, which they called San Lorenzo de los Negros. The group survived mostly through farming and occasional raids on Spanish supply convoys.
Unfortunately, in 1609, colonial authorities destroyed San Lorenzo de los Negros but they were unable to capture Yanga’s followers. They settled for a peace treaty with the former slaves and even negotiated with Yanga, granting him the right to build his own free colony as long as it paid taxes to the Spanish crown.
This municipality – the first official settlement of freed Africans in the Americas -was finally established in 1630 and still exists today under the name “Yanga.” Yanga is celebrated throughout Mexico and the rest of the world as the “first liberator of the Americas”.
