Maroons and their Communities in the Americas

Richard Price Professor Emeritus of American Studies, Anthropology, and History ( College of William & Mary)

1. Today, Maroons – self-liberated slaves and their descendants – still form semi-independent communities in several parts of the Americas, for example, in Suriname, French Guiana, Jamaica, Belize, Colombia, and Brazil. As the most isolated of Afro-Americans, they have since the 1920s been an important focus of scientific research, contributing to theoretical debates about slave resistance, the heritage of Africa in the Americas, the process of creolization, and the nature of historical knowledge among nonliterate peoples [1].

2. Communities formed by Maroons dotted the fringes of plantation America, from Brazil to Florida, from Peru to Texas. The English word “Maroon”, like the French marron derives from Spanish cimarrón, itself based on an Arawakan [Taino] Indian root2. Cimarrón originally referred to domestic cattle that had taken to the hills in Hispaniola, and soon after it was applied to American Indian slaves who had escaped from the Spaniards. By the end of the 1530s, the word was being used primarily to refer to Afro-American runaways and had strong connotations of “fierceness”, of being “wild” and “unbroken” [3].

https://www.politika.io/en/notice/maroons-and-their-communities-in-the-americas

3. Today, Maroons – self-liberated slaves and their descendants – still form semi-independent communities in several parts of the Americas, for example, in Suriname, French Guiana, Jamaica, Belize, Colombia, and Brazil. As the most isolated of Afro-Americans, they have since the 1920s been an important focus of scientific research, contributing to theoretical debates about slave resistance, the heritage of Africa in the Americas, the process of creolization, and the nature of historical knowledge among nonliterate peoples [1].

4. Communities formed by Maroons dotted the fringes of plantation America, from Brazil to Florida, from Peru to Texas. The English word “Maroon”, like the French marron derives from Spanish cimarrón, itself based on an Arawakan [Taino] Indian root2. Cimarrón originally referred to domestic cattle that had taken to the hills in Hispaniola, and soon after it was applied to American Indian slaves who had escaped from the Spaniards. By the end of the 1530s, the word was being used primarily to refer to Afro-American runaways and had strong connotations of “fierceness”, of being “wild” and “unbroken” [3].

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https://www.politika.io/en/notice/maroons-and-their-communities-in-the-americas




LA TIERRA PROMETIDA, CARLOS VIVES, CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, COLOMBIA