A History of Afro-Hispanic Language: Five Centuries, Five Continents

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

The African slave trade, beginning in the fifteenth century, brought African languages into contact with Spanish and Portuguese, resulting in the Africans’ gradual acquisition of these languages. In this book, John Lipski describes the major forms of Afro-Hispanic language found in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America over the last 500 years. As well as discussing pronunciation, morphology, and syntax, he separates legitimate forms of Afro-Hispanic expression from those that result from racist stereotyping, to assess how contact with the African diaspora has had a permanent impact on contemporary Spanish. A principal issue is the possibility that Spanish, in contact with speakers of African languages, may have creolized and restructured – in the Caribbean and perhaps elsewhere – permanently affecting regional and social varieties of Spanish today. The book is accompanied by the largest known anthology of primary Afro-Hispanic texts from the Iberian Peninsula, Latin America, and former Afro-Hispanic contacts in Africa and Asia. j o h n l i p s k i is Professor of Spanish and Linguistics and Head of the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at Pennsylvania State University. His research interests include Spanish phonology, Spanish and Portuguese dialectology and language variation, the linguistic aspects of bilingualism, and the African contribution to Spanish and Portuguese. He is the author of more than 200 articles on all aspects of linguistics, and his previous books include Linguistic Aspects of Spanish-English Language Switching (1983) and The Spanish of Equatorial Guinea (1985).

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language Five Centuries, Five Continents John M. Lipski The Pennsylvania State University

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521115582 © John Lipski 2005 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2005 This digitally printed version 2009 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Lipski, John M. A history of Afro-Hispanic language: five centuries/five continents / John M. Lipski. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–521–82265–3 (hardback) 1. Spanish language – Foreign elements – African. 2. African languages – Influence on Spanish. I. Title. PC4582.A5L56 2004 462´.496 – dc22 2004045681 ISBN 978-0-521-82265-7 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-11558-2 paperback

For Beverly, Ursula, and Michael, and to the memory of my parents, who made it all possible.

Contents

Acknowledgments Note on the Appendix Introduction

page ix x 1

1 Africans in the Iberian peninsula, the slave trade, and overview of Afro-Iberian linguistic contacts

14

2 Early Afro-Portuguese texts

51

3 Early Afro-Hispanic texts

71

4 Africans in colonial Spanish America

95

5 Afro-Hispanic texts from Latin America: sixteenth to twentieth centuries

129

6 Survey of major African language families

197

7 Phonetics-phonology of Afro-Hispanic language

204

8 Grammatical features of Afro-Hispanic language

245

9 The Spanish-Creole debate

277

References Index

305 352

vii

Acknowledgments

My interest in Afro-Hispanic language was kindled many years ago by reading the superb book El elemento afronegroide en el espa˜nol de Puerto Rico by the late Manuel Alvarez Nazario, and I offer this book in his memory. This work has benefited from numerous encounters with students, colleagues, research collaborators, and members of the African diaspora throughout the world. I am particularly grateful for the stimulating exchanges with my dear friends and colleagues Germ´an de Granda, William Megenney, Luis Ortiz L´opez, Matthias Perl, and Armin Schwegler. John Holm’s masterful handling of creole language studies has been an inspiration, and John McWhorter has provoked me into rethinking issues I had thought already resolved. My wife Beverly and my children Ursula and Michael have graciously and lovingly tolerated my obsessive passion for matters Afro-Hispanic. My deepest thanks to all.

ix

Note on the Appendix

The Appendix to this book is an online resource which is available at www.cambridge.org/9780521115582.

x

Introduction

Introduction From the second half of the fifteenth century through the end of the nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of sub-Saharan Africans traveled first to Spain, then to Spanish America. Most were slaves, taken as part of the Atlantic slave trade, which displaced millions of Africans to Europe’s New World colonies. In the major cities of Spain, particularly in Andalusia, large slave and later free black populations arose, and in some cities remained as distinct ethnic minorities until the late eighteenth century. In Portugal, black communities and neighborhoods continued to exist until the turn of the twentieth century.1 In Spanish America, Africans were found in every colony, from the highland mines of Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, and Honduras, to the Argentine pampas, the docks of El Callao, the port attached to Lima, Peru, and the streets of Mexico City. Although demographic merger has blurred the traces of these earliest African arrivals, whose forced immigration reached a peak in the mid-seventeenth century, Spanish America underwent a frenzied importation of African laborers at the turn of the nineteenth century, as part of the sugar plantation boom occasioned by the destruction of the world’s richest sugar producer, French SaintDomingue (soon to become Haiti), and the scramble of the Spanish colonies to enter the lucrative sugar market. In contemporary Latin America, the population of African origin is most noticeable where the last wave of slave arrivals touched shore – in the Caribbean islands, and along the Caribbean and upper Pacific coasts of South America. Although living in the most humbling conditions, often physically outside the pale of mainstream Spanish society, black Africans made a lasting impression on the language and culture of the entire Spanish-speaking world. Their use of Spanish was depicted – never flatteringly and often with much exaggeration – from the early sixteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. Black soldiers were instrumental in the American colonies’ wars of independence; black horsemen became some of Argentina’s most renowned gauchos and payadores (song improvisers). Black 1

Lipski (1994c), Tinhor˜ao (1988).

1

2

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

dances and songs were the origin for the Argentine tango, today a highly stylized European dance form. Throughout southern Spain and Latin America, free blacks for decades dominated small-scale commerce, representing the majority of street vendors and municipal maintenance employees. Descendants of Africans formed the original nuclei around which arose the Mexican cities of Acapulco, Mazatl´an, and Veracruz, and were also found in the most remote frontier outposts – from New Mexico and Arizona to Patagonia. Blacks in Spanish America fought against marauding pirates, and some chose to cast their lot with the pirates, to combat their former oppressors.2 From the R´ıo de la Plata to Cuba, carnival traditions, religious ceremonies, and vocabulary items attest to the African presence in Spanish America. And yet, despite the central importance of Africans in the development of the Spanish language and its spread throughout the Americas, the African contribution to Spanish is rarely considered on a par with more “traditional” language contact situations. At most, we find lists of lexical items – often uncritical attributions – which in some tropical countries are conceded to be Africanisms. Latin American countries containing visible Afro-American populations tend to adopt the position that any African influence in Spanish is to be found only among the Afro-Hispanic population, in popular songs and ceremonies. Nations which currently lack an ethnically identifiable population of African origin, or where such groups live in remote or little-known areas, find the notion of African contributions to Spanish preposterous. Taken as a whole, the African linguistic dimension has received little serious attention in Latin America, and almost none in Spain. Recently in Latin America, there has been an upsurge in interest in Afro-Hispanic historical and cultural events, an interest not unrelated to the fact that larger numbers of Latin Americans of African origin are receiving higher education and themselves engaging in serious scholarship. To date, the focus has been predominantly regional, and a number of excellent studies and monographs have traced the African populations throughout Latin America. In Spain as well, a series of monographs has begun to outline the full extent of the African presence in areas of Spain for which data had previously been unavailable. The present study, which adopts a comparative historical perspective, has a relatively modest goal, in comparison with the enormity of the task at hand. In the following chapters, we will trace the first attestations of Africans learning Spanish, as the early stages of the Portuguese slave trade brought large numbers of blacks into southern Spain by the end of the fifteenth century. A study of literary documents, reinforced by comparative reconstruction based on existing Afro-Iberian language forms and known facts about African languages and the historical development of Spanish, will yield a tentative model of the sort of language that might have been used by African- and European-born blacks in 2

Lipski (1982).

Introduction

3

sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Spain. Following this, the focus of attention will follow the routes of Spanish colonization of the Americas, and the development of African populations in the New World colonies. Finally, we will offer an assessment as to whether Afro-Hispanic language ever creolized (became – as a completely restructured offspring of Spanish – the native language of a significant speech community), and what permanent imprint – other than purely lexical – the totality of Afro-Hispanic linguistic manifestations may have left upon the Spanish language in various parts of the world. The contributions of language contact to the history of Spanish Like other languages that have developed under duress and later spread across the globe, Spanish is the product of language contact. The Roman legions who carried Latin – itself already flavored by Oscan, Umbrian, Ligurian, and Greek – to Hispania (as the Iberian Peninsula was known) set the language upon a course which would rapidly bring it into contact with numerous peoples and cultures. Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and native Basques and Iberians began to leave their imprint on Latin before it began its gradual metamorphosis into Ibero-Romance, thence Spanish and its neighbors. Only a few centuries after the Roman domination of the Iberian Peninsula, Vandals, Suevi, and Visigoths swept down from the north; the latter group in particular had a lasting impact on the culture of what would eventually become Spain, as well as contributing several words to the emerging Spanish language. Following on the heels of the Visigoths were the moros – Arabic-speaking invaders from north Africa who continuously occupied parts of Spain and Portugal for nearly 800 years. The contact of early Ibero-Romance and Arabic gave rise to a distinctly flavored Romance language known as Mozarabic, which apparently differed from Castilian in many significant ways – in phonology, morphology, lexicon, and possibly syntax. During the reconquest of Moslem Spain by the Christian Castilians, the Castilian dialect came into contact with Mozarabic and both dialects co-existed in some communities and perhaps even among the same speakers, since Mozarabic language and culture was more prestigious and represented a more highly advanced civilization than that carried by the hard-fighting but poorly educated Castilians.3 In the years following the neutralization and expulsion of the Arabs, at the end of the fifteenth century, the Spanish language in Spain absorbed more French and Italian lexical items (French words in particular had begun to enter the Spanish language in previous centuries). The contribution of the Spanish Jews, a glimpse of whose language is preserved in contemporary Sephardic Spanish (known as ladino or judezmo), is also a major lacuna. Given the key roles played 3

Penny (2000).

4

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

by Jews both in Moslem-held Spain and during the early Castilian period, it is inevitable that a tangible impact on the Spanish language would ensue. Spanish Jews often spoke Arabic and used Hebrew words and expressions, and especially after being segregated into urban ghettoes, may well have developed ethnolinguistically distinct varieties of Spanish. At this point in the development of Peninsular Spanish, the study of external language contact usually stops, except perhaps to mention the sporadic lexical contributions of Roma/Gypsy cal´o, and the recent influx of Anglicisms. In Latin America, Spanish came into close contact with Native American languages – contact ranging from symbiotic to cannibalistic – and considerable research has been devoted to tracing the indigenous contributions to Latin American Spanish. Although many Latin Americans reject the notion that indigenous contributions go beyond simple lexical borrowings for New World items, serious research has revealed profound and far-reaching substratum patterns in the Spanish language throughout Latin America.4 Contemporary observers frequently comment on the incursions of English, even far from the borders of the United States, while in many countries, the linguistic effects of immigrant languages upon Spanish has been noted: Italian in Argentina and Uruguay, Chinese in Cuba and Peru, English in northern Chile, German and Japanese in Paraguay, etc. And yet the picture is still not complete. Even in their totality, the above-mentioned language contacts are not sufficient to explain both the diversity and the unity of the Spanish language as spoken across four continents. One of the most interesting chapters in the history of Spanish dialect differentiation is the African contribution, the byproduct of hundreds of thousands of African slaves imported first into Spain and Portugal and then to the New World, who spoke a variety of African languages and sometimes also European languages. The African contribution to the Hispanic American lexicon is undisputed, since in addition to the hundreds of Africanisms found in the local level in dialects of Spanish throughout the Caribbean and South America, such words as marimba, mucama, guineo, congo, n˜ ame, cachimbo/a, merengue, mandinga, mondongo and possibly ch´evere are more widely used.5 More controversial are the possible African contributions to Spanish American syntax and phonetics, with the latter possibility either overlooked or overemphasized by the principal Africanist theories of Latin American dialectology. The reconstruction of early Afro-Hispanic language There exists a tantalizing corpus of literary, folkloric, and anecdotal testimony on the earlier speech patterns of Africans, in Spain and Latin America. Filling 4 5

For example Cerr´on-Palomino (2003), Granda (1979, 1988), Lipski (1994d), among many others. Megenney (1983).

Introduction

5

in the pieces of the puzzle is not only important for ethnolinguistic and language contact studies, but is vital to the tracing of the historical development of Spanish in its broadest sense. Only by fully reconstructing the speech varieties used by Afro-Hispanics during the formative periods of Latin American Spanish will it be possible to isolate and evaluate the other influences that shaped the development of Spanish on four continents. In contemporary Latin America, despite a considerable Afro-American population in many regions, and notwithstanding racial stereotypes in literature and popular culture, there is nowhere to be found an ethnically unique “Black Spanish,” comparable to vernacular Black English in the United States.6 In more recent times, the linguistic characteristics attributed to black Spanish speakers have been simply those of the lower socioeconomic classes, without any objective racial connotations. The situation was different in the past, and there exists ample evidence that distinctly Afro-Hispanic speech forms did exist. The greatest obstacle in the assessment of earlier Afro-Hispanic language is the high level of prejudice, exaggeration, and stereotyping which has always surrounded the description of non-white speakers of Spanish, and which attributes to all of them a wide range of defects and distortions that frequently are no more than an unrealistic repudiation of this group. One group that did use a “special” language were the bozales, slaves born in Africa, who spoke European languages only with difficulty. The word bozal originally meant “savage” or “untamed horse,” and ultimately came to refer to the halting Spanish or Portuguese spoken by Africans. This term rapidly dropped from usage in Spain once the population of African-born slaves dwindled, but it continued in the Spanish Caribbean – particularly Cuba – well into the twentieth century. Bozal language first arose along the West African coast and in the Iberian Peninsula late in the fifteenth century; the earliest attestations come from Portugal. Bozal Spanish makes its written appearance in Spain early in the sixteenth century, and continues through the middle of the eighteenth century, being especially prominent in Golden Age plays and poetry. Latin American bozal Spanish was first described by writers like Sor Juan In´es de la Cruz, at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Other surviving seventeenth-century documents demonstrate the existence of bozal Spanish in the highland mining areas of Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, and Guatemala. Few documents representing Afro-Hispanic speech remain from eighteenthcentury Latin America; Cuba and Mexico are among the regions so represented. At the turn of the nineteenth century, the last big surge of slave trading, spurred by the sugar plantation boom and by increased urbanization of many coastal regions, resulted in an outpouring of Afro-Hispanic literary representations. The geographical distribution of extant texts mirrors the profile of the 6

Lipski (1985b).

6

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

African slave trade in Latin America. The nineteenth-century texts come principally from three regions: Cuba (with a few additional texts from Puerto Rico), coastal Peru, and the Buenos Aires/Montevideo region. The turn of the twentieth century brought a scattering of texts from coastal Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, together with a large corpus of Cuban materials. Contemporary AfroHispanic writers who have alluded to possible speech differences within the Afro-American communities come mostly from Cuba (e.g. Nicol´as Guill´en), Peru (e.g. Nicomedes Santa Cruz), Colombia (e.g. Manuel Zapata Olivella) and Ecuador (e.g. Adalberto Ortiz, Nelson Estupi˜na´ n Bass). These last generations (with the exception of the anthropological writings of Lydia Cabrera in Cuba) have not dealt with bozal Spanish, but rather with possible ethnolinguistic characteristics of Afro-Americans born and raised in Latin America.7 Some important hypotheses regarding bozal Spanish Although most bozal Spanish specimens reflect only non-native usage by speakers of African languages,8 data from some Caribbean texts have given rise to two controversial proposals, which are of great importance to general Spanish dialectology. The first is that Afro-Hispanic language in the Caribbean and possibly elsewhere coalesced into a stable creole language (i.e. had consistent structural characteristics differing from those of previous varieties of Spanish and was eventually acquired natively). A corollary is the claim that this creole language had its origins in an even earlier Afro-Portuguese pidgin or creole, formed in West Africa and surviving in the contemporary creoles of Cape Verde, S˜ao Tom´e and Annob´on, and in Latin America in Papiamento (spoken in the Netherlands Antilles) and Palenquero (spoken in the Afro-Colombian village of Palenque de San Basilio). The second proposal is that this earlier Afro-Hispanic pidgin or perhaps creole language extended beyond the pale of slave barracks and plantations, and permanently affected the evolution of all Caribbean Spanish, not only contributing vocabulary items, but also touching syntax and phonology.9 The 7 9

8 Lipski (1986a, 1986f, 1998a, 1998c, 2000a). Lipski (1999d). Among the researchers supporting the notion that Afro-Hispanic bozal language was a creole and/or the universal pidgin Portuguese origin of Spanish-based creoles are Castellanos (1985), Granda (1968, 1970, 1971, 1976), Megenney (1984a, 1985a, 1985b, 1986, 1990a, 1993), Naro (1978), Otheguy (1973), Perl (1982, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1989a, 1989b, 1989c, 1989d), Schwegler (1989, 1991b, 1993, 1996a, 1996b, 1999), Taylor 1971, Thompson (1961), Wagner (1949), Whinnom (1956, 1965), Yacou (1977), and Ziegler (1981). The opposite perspective, that bozal language was merely the imperfectly acquired Spanish spoken by the first generation of African-born slaves, is taken by Laurence (1974), Lipski (1986a, 1986f, 1993, 1998a, 1998c, 1999a, 2000a), L´opez Morales (1980), Mart´ınez Gordo (1982), Reinecke (1937), and Vald´es Bernal (1978, 1987), among others.

Introduction

7

present work will draw together the available evidence on the nature of AfroHispanic language over a period of more than four centuries, in an attempt to address the questions posed by the prior creole hypothesis. The reasons for the current scarcity of Spanish-derived creole languages are the subject of debate; McWhorter (1995, 2000) has recently suggested that Spanish-based creoles did not form in Latin America because, according to his analysis, most if not all Afro-Atlantic creoles formed in slaving stations on the West African coast, most of which were controlled by the Portuguese (whence the large number of Afro-Lusitanian creoles). Laurence (1974) and others have pointed to the high demographic ratio of white native Spanish speakers to black slaves in Spanish American colonies, in contrast to French and English colonies in which creole languages developed. In recent work I have proposed that Spanish may indeed have briefly creolized during the nineteenth century in some of the more labor-intensive Cuban sugar plantations, but that the subsequent abolition of slavery and the rapid collapse of the hermetic slave barracks environment precluded extension of such embryonic creoles past the first generation of Cuban-born slaves.10 Despite the generally negative conclusions about the creolization of Spanish, there is a small but important corpus of written materials, together with fleeting contemporary holdovers in isolated Afro-Hispanic communities, which contain creole-like features that are unlikely to have appeared spontaneously. Moreover, many of the features in these texts are similar or identical to combinations found in acknowledged Afro-Iberian creoles. The elusive nature of creole elements surrounded by unconvincing examples of second-language Spanish makes for a most interesting journey, and will form the basis for the final sections of this book. Obstacles to historical reconstruction Several factors contribute to the high level of uncertainty concerning the possible African contributions to Latin American Spanish. Near the top of the list is inadequate demographic information, including the number and distribution of Africans in colonial Latin America, the languages they spoke, their interaction with native Spanish speakers, and the extent to which the speech of Africans was able to influence those around them. Population shifts of Africans from one region of Latin America to another, particularly immediately following the colonial wars of independence, is another fuzzy area, as is the true dimension of the clandestine slave and quasi-forced labor trade that flourished in the Caribbean region in the mid-nineteenth century, largely drawing from New World slave 10

Lipski (1998c, 2000a).

8

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

depots such as Cura¸cao and the Lesser Antilles, and including Afro-Americans who already spoke European languages or creoles derived from them. There is even indirect evidence that during the same time period, the Pacific slave raiders who carried Polynesians and Easter Islanders to coastal Peru and Chile and even as far as Guatemala and Mexico may have brought speakers of Pacific languages into contact with Afro-Hispanic speakers, further complicating the picture.11 The reconstruction of early Afro-Hispanic language, from the sixteenth century through the beginning of the twentieth century, is severely hampered by two additional factors. The first is the relative scarcity of non-literary and nonhumorous attestations, particularly prior to the late nineteenth century. Nearly all indications of Afro-Hispanic speech are embedded in humorous or satirical literature. These include the racist sainetes and entremeses (skits) of Golden Age (sixteenth to seventeenth centuries) Spain, the negrillo songs sung in “black” dialect in churches in Latin America and Spain, the Cuban teatro bufo (theatrical farces) and the negros catedr´aticos (literally “black professors,” referring to pretentious language usage). Additional examples are found in the cancioneros (song collections) and pregones (street vendors’ calls) of the nineteenth-century R´ıo de la Plata, and the hundreds of anonymous pamphlets and song sheets that spread stereotypical linguistic formulas across several continents and several centuries. Few indeed are the non-fictional representations of bozal Africans’ use of Spanish, and fewer still are the accounts which did not depart from the premise of the negrito who spoke “bad” Spanish. Before the nineteenth century, purportedly objective observations of Afro-Hispanic speech can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and the total amount of text amounts to a paragraph at best. Matters are little better in the nineteenth century, except for a few travelers’ accounts and a handful of dictionary entries. Work done in the twentieth century by writers such as the Cubans Lydia Cabrera and Fernando Ortiz based on interviews with elderly Afro-Cubans allows for a more accurate reconstruction of Afro-Cuban speech from the middle of the nineteenth century onward. The second obstacle is that Afro-Hispanic speech was never considered systematically “different” enough from natively spoken Spanish for any particular attention to be paid to this variety. Reconstruction of such creole languages as Srnan Tongo, Negerhollands, Guyanese Creole, Jamaican Creole, Haitian Creole, Papiamento, etc., is aided by the fact that (white) writers knew that the “negro dialects” were different enough from standard English, French, Dutch, etc. that materials had to be specially prepared, and fragments of speech from speakers of these emergent creoles had to be properly “translated” for European consumption. 11

Lipski (1996b, 2000c).

Introduction

9

An Afro-Hispanic overview When one society dominates and enslaves another, the languages of the enslaved group are automatically placed at a disadvantage, and can only seep into the language of the dominant society to the extent that both demographic weight (a high ratio of slaves to master class) and direct social contact make such transfer possible. Simple demographic ratios are not enough to ensure language transfer. During the early colonial period, Native Americans outnumbered Spaniards by as much as 100,000 to 1, but as long as the Spanish lived in walled cities or fortified coastal enclaves, they might as well have been living on a space station. Mexico City for example was originally walled off from the millions of surrounding indigenous residents, and Spaniards had contact with only a tiny handful of bilingual Indian or mestizo (mixed-race) intermediaries. The Spaniards did not learn the indigenous language, and most of the indigenous population learned no Spanish. The bilingual and bicultural individuals who served as bridges between the two societies allowed for a little crossfertilization, but it was only when the walls came down and a large mestizo class came into its own – and moved in among the Spaniards – that serious linguistic influence of indigenous languages on Spanish could become possible. In most instances this meant simply transfer of individual words such as chocolate, tomate, zacate, tecolote, poncho, jaguar, c´ondor, but when a bilingual population – retaining structural features of the indigenous language while speaking Spanish – became numerically and socially predominant, even monolingual Spanish usage was affected. This occurred, for example, in Paraguay and much of the Andean region, where grammatical patterns derived from the indigenous languages are used by Spanish speakers with no Native American heritage. A key factor facilitating the transfer of structural patterns from the indigenous languages to Spanish was the fact that, in a given area, a single native language predominated. Indigenous residents continued to communicate with one another in their own language, and their approximations to Spanish all shared a common basis, reflecting the patterns of that native language. For a variety of reasons, the relationship between African languages and Spanish in the Caribbean was substantially different than in the cases just mentioned. First, Africans in Latin America usually did not enjoy the possibility of a shared common language. More by circumstance than by deliberate design, slaving ships typically picked up loads of slaves from several West African ports before traversing the Atlantic, and a shipment of slaves could contain speakers of a dozen mutually unintelligible languages. Moreover, at least six major African language families were involved in the Afro-Hispanic mix (Atlantic, Mande, Kru, Kwa, Congo-Benue and Bantu), each of which has totally different structures, and which share almost no common denominators at all. A typical heterogeneous group of Africans acquiring Spanish could not use

10

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

loan-translations from their native languages that would be widely understood by Africans of different backgrounds. Until the nineteenth century, Africans in the Spanish Caribbean usually worked on small farms, in placer gold deposits (panning for gold in river beds), or as domestic servants and laborers in cities and towns. In the largest cities, Africans were sometimes allowed to form socio-religious societies based on membership in a specific African ethnic group, which may have facilitated retention of some African languages beyond the first generation, but in general when Africans found themselves together in Latin America, they had to resort to Spanish. This situation predominated throughout the entire Caribbean area, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, coastal Venezuela and Colombia, and Panama, until the very end of the eighteenth century. Following the early use of Africans in placer gold mining, pearl diving, and agriculture, the importation of Africans dropped drastically in all of these areas, except for the Colombian port of Cartagena de Indias, through which nearly all slaves destined for the northwestern part of South America passed. Thus although in some regions the population of African origin was considerable, most Afro-Hispanics had been born in the colonies in close contact with native speakers of Spanish. Only in a few of the largest cities, such as Havana and Cartagena, did even a minimal amount of ghettoization take place, which may have fostered the retention of certain ethnically marked words or pronunciation, similar to inner city neighborhoods in the United States, or the townships of apartheid-era South Africa. In the remaining places, the ratio of African-born bozales – workers who learned Spanish as a second language – was always small in comparison to the native Spanish-speaking population – black and white. Matters changed rapidly following the Haitian revolution, which began in 1791. The French half of the island of Hispaniola, known as Saint-Domingue, was by far the world’s largest sugar producer at the end of the eighteenth century, and the ratio of black slaves to white masters was as high as 100:1 on some plantations. Following the revolution and the establishment of the free nation of Haiti by the 1820s, sugar production dropped almost to zero, and other Latin American countries which had previously been reluctant to compete against the French near-monopoly rushed to fill the gap. This required the immediate importation of hundreds of thousands of additional laborers, the majority of whom came directly from Africa, with a considerable number also drawn from other established Caribbean colonies. The two largest participants in the new sugar boom were Brazil and Cuba. Nearly 90 percent of the total number of African slaves – a figure of between one and two million individuals – brought to Cuba arrived between 1790 and 1840. Figures are proportionally similar although smaller in absolute numbers for Puerto Rico and Venezuela.

Introduction

11

Unlike in earlier times, the last wave of Africans arriving in the Spanish Caribbean was often divided into larger groups speaking a single language. This is because only a few large slave traders remained in business, and had established themselves in ethnically homogeneous African ports. In Cuba, Yoruba speakers from southwestern Nigeria (known as lucum´ıes) represented the largest group, and provided the linguistic and cultural basis for the Afro-Cuban religion santer´ıa. Igbo- and Efik-speaking carabal´ıes (from southeastern Nigeria) also arrived in large numbers, and their language contributed to the secret Afro-Cuban society known as Abaku´a. Groups of Kikongo speakers (known as congos, from modern Zaire and northern Angola) and Fongbe speakers (known as arar´as, from modern Benin and Togo) were also found in Cuba, and to this day musical, cultural, religious, and linguistic traditions from these African ethnic groups remain in Cuba, Haiti, Trinidad, and other Caribbean areas. This created the conditions for wider use of African languages in the Caribbean colonies, and Africans who spoke less common languages learned major African languages such as Yoruba and Kikongo in the Caribbean, much as major regional languages are used as lingua francas throughout Africa. Pidginization of nineteenth century Caribbean bozal Spanish Equally important in the search for African roots in Caribbean Spanish is the fact that the newly arrived African workers were highly concentrated in sprawling sugar plantations known as ingenios, housed in barracks or barracones, and deprived of the broad-based contact with native speakers of Spanish that earlier generations of Africans had encountered. A description of one such estate written in 1849 by the English traveler Richard Madden (1849:156), graphically describes the living conditions: The appearance of the negroes on this estate was wretched in the extreme; they looked jaded to death, listless, stupefied, haggard, and emaciated: how different from the looks of the pampered, petted, well-fed, idle, domestic slaves of the Dons of the Havana! The clothing of the Olanda negroes was old and ragged . . . they lived here in huts, near the Ingenio, but very miserable places, unfit for the habitation of wild beasts that it might be thought desirable to keep in health or comfort.

Newly arrived bozales rarely communicated with white plantation owners or even working-class whites, but rather with a small group of free black or mulatto foremen, slavedrivers, and overseers, known as mayorales, contramayorales, mayordomos, and capataces. These free blacks spoke Spanish natively, although given their own relative isolation from wider segments of the Spanish-speaking population, they may have used an ethnically marked variety. These large slave plantations deprived most of the African-born workers from acquiring full

12

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

native competence in Spanish, although, even with the use of some African languages, the slaves inevitably had to use Spanish with the overseers, as well as with some of the other Africans. The combination of a need to speak Spanish and the absence of sufficient native speakers resulted in the formation of a pidgin or reduced form of Spanish. For more than half a century in the Spanish Caribbean, social and demographic conditions existed which necessitated the use of a Spanish-based pidgin by African-born bozales. Their attempts at speaking Spanish are well documented. What is less clear is whether bozal pidgin Spanish ever became a native language in the Caribbean, and whether subsequent reentry into mainstream regional varieties of Spanish produced a permanent African imprint. In the most isolated slave barracks of large plantations, Spanish pidgin undoubtedly became the native languages of children born in these difficult conditions, and given the social isolation of black plantation laborers, a creolized Spanish may have existed for at least a generation in a few of the largest ingenios (sugar plantations). However, following the abolition of slavery in the Spanish Caribbean around the middle of the nineteenth century, even African-born bozales were placed in contact with large numbers of native Spanish speakers. If a Spanish-based creole language ever existed in the nineteenth-century Caribbean, it was a fleeting occurrence in a few of the largest plantations, and quickly rejoined the mainstream of Spanish following the integration of the Afro-Hispanic population. There is less likelihood that Spanish became a creole language in the Caribbean prior to the nineteenth century, except in highly unusual cases. From the earliest colonial times, slaves often escaped and formed isolated maroon villages, where Spanish-based pidgins and creoles undoubtedly flourished briefly before being extinguished or re-absorbed by the dominant population. A few of these “special” forms of Afro-Hispanic language made their way into historical accounts, and in addition to fragmentary hints scattered throughout remote AfroAmerican communities in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama, Colombia, and Venezuela, at least one full creole language has survived to the present day, in the Colombian village of San Basilio de Palenque, near Cartagena. Overview of the book The following chapters contain historical data on the presence of Africans in the Iberian Peninsula and Spanish America, from the middle of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. Considerable attention is paid to the analysis of literary texts, travelers’ accounts, and folkloric documents, these being the sole surviving evidence of Afro-Hispanic contact languages from earlier centuries. Although no single text can be taken at face value, the existence of many recurring common denominators suggests that even the most stereotyped texts contain a kernel of truth. It will be the task of the remainder

Introduction

13

of this study to weigh the evidence, qualify the validity and usefulness of written documents from previous centuries, and offer reasoned opinions as to whether Afro-Hispanic language ever creolized. The linguistic legacy of Afro-Hispanic contacts can only be fully appreciated by casting the nets wide, encompassing Spain, Portugal, West Africa, and Latin America, across nearly 400 years. The following studies represent only the first steps on this challenging journey.

1

Africans in the Iberian peninsula, the slave trade, and overview of Afro-Iberian linguistic contacts

The Mediterranean, Spain and Africa: the first moments Slavery existed in sub-Saharan Africa long before the arrival of Europeans, and black Africans were exported from the continent as slaves as early as the Roman Empire. At first, the slave trade was carried out by Moslem dealers following the spread of Islam to Africa in the eighth century, and primarily focused on northeastern Africa. It is estimated that anywhere between 3.5 million and 10 million Africans were shipped northward and eastward from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries. The final destiny and the tasks performed by these slaves are only imperfectly known, but black Africans were present all across the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea from the ninth century. Although the total number of slaves taken from Africa during this seven-century period is large even by conservative estimates, the annual average was only a few thousand, and this early slave trade appears to have had none of the destabilizing influences on African societies that the later Euro-Atlantic traffic had.1 Slavery was a part of Europe throughout recorded history; the Greek and Roman empires made extensive use of slaves, and following the Moorish conquest of several Mediterranean islands as well as Spain beginning in 711, agricultural slavery spread to the Iberian Peninsula. Slavery was also common throughout medieval Europe, beginning with the Crusades, which put central and western European nations in contact with a variety of peoples deemed appropriate for enslavement. Genoese and Venetian traders led the way, and slaves were taken from the Balkans, Palestine, Syria, Cyprus, Turkey, and especially southern Russia. The word slave itself refers to the common use of Slavic peoples – particularly Russians – as slaves. Along the northern shore of the Mediterranean, Italian and Sicilian kingdoms brought slaves from the Middle East and North Africa, as well as black Africans from points further south. In particular, the presence of black Africans in Italy and Sicily probably began as early as the thirteenth century on an occasional basis, became somewhat more common in the fourteenth century,2 and assumed significant proportions in the 1

Klein (1986).

14

2

Origa (1955), Balbi (1966), Verlinden (1977:206), Gaudioso (1992).

Africans in the Iberian peninsula

15

fifteenth century. Italian and Sicilian kingdoms were importing black slaves during the early decades of the fifteenth century,3 even before Portugal had begun the widespread importation of West African slaves. The kingdom of Naples also brought in large numbers of black Africans, as well as many North Africans. Sardinia took in many black slaves in the fifteenth century and thereafter, primarily for use in agriculture. Venice was another large importer of black slaves, mostly of North African provenance. African slaves were also found in Bari, Florence, Umbria, Piedmont, Lombardy, and other Italian regions. Throughout the seventeenth century, slavery (mostly of North Africans) was also common in Liguria. Catalan traders were involved in much of this trans-Mediterranean slave trade, and black slaves also made their way to Catalonia and southern France.4 At first, the two slave populations came from unrelated sources; the Italian and Sicilian slaves were largely purchased through contacts in the southeastern Mediterranean, through the use of North African and Middle Eastern intermediaries. By the middle of the fifteenth century, black slaves shipped through Portugal began arriving in central Italy. A slave transshipment depot was set up in Pisa, and merchants from Florence, Rome, and other Italian cities could purchase slaves of West African origin. Genoa also contained an important slave market, where, beginning around the middle of the fifteenth century, black African slaves – many of whom were obtained from Portuguese dealers – began to appear. Other northern Italian cities possessed black slave populations, including Milan, Turin, Bologna, and Genoa.5 The same slave trade extended to Valencia and the Balearic Islands, especially Majorca, where beginning around 1457 Portuguese West African traders replaced North African intermediaries as the prime suppliers of black slaves. In 1489, the arrival of a group of Wolofs is registered for Valencia, and the term bozals, used to refer to African-born slaves, makes its first appearance in Catalan. It is estimated that nearly 2,500 Wolofs alone were taken to Valencia in the last decades of the fifteenth century. Central and northern Italy thus became a crossroads for slaves from West Africa and from northeastern Africa. Given the active participation of Genoese, Venetian, and Sicilian merchants in the Mediterranean slave trade, black slaves were also sold from Italy to buyers in southern and southeastern Spain, although the total number of such sales was small compared to the Portuguese supply of slaves to Spain. To cement the Iberian-Italian slave connection even further, indigenous (Guanche) slaves from the Canary Islands were sold to Italian buyers, at roughly the same time that black Africans began to arrive in the Canary Islands.6 3 4 5

Verlinden (1977:208–09), Livi (1928:137). Lazaro (1862), Cibrario (1868), Zanelli (1885), San Filippo (1894), Massa (1908), Livi (1928), Verlinden (1977), Peverada (1981), Lucchini (1990), Bono (1993), Sepa Bonaba (1993:ch. 1). 6 Verlinden (1977). Gioffr`e (1971), Verlinden (1977).

16

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

There are other Italo-Iberian connections in play as well. From the fifteenth century through the end of the seventeenth century – i.e. the time in which Portuguese slave trading in West Africa reached its apogee, there were significant cultural and commercial ties between Italian city-states such as Florence and Venice and the Iberian Peninsula. Italian expatriates were concentrated in Lisbon and Seville, and Italian merchants and scholars contributed to the political and intellectual life in these regions. These cultural and trade contacts provide additional mechanisms by means of which the language and ways of African slaves in Italy and Sicily could exert a tangible influence on the developing Afro-Iberian language of Portugal and southern Spain.7 African slaves in Italy and Sicily were first predominantly female, used as concubines and in domestic service. Before long, the preference shifted to male slaves, used in agriculture and in domestic servitude. The living conditions and demographic proportions were similar to those found in southern Spanish cities in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, from which it is not unlikely that African-born slaves in Italy progressed through the same linguistic continuum – from rudimentary pidgin in the first generation to ethnically neutral European language in subsequent generations – as occurred throughout Spain and Portugal. To date, only one literary document has come to light, a sonnet by the Florentine poet Alessandro Braccesi (1455–1503), written towards the end of the fifteenth century. The poem is (Ferrara 1950): – Marta, vien su: mona Lena ti vuole. – Bienga, bagoccia! Che buoglia potrona? Ni cci o` begliuta o mangliata buocona. – Deh, vien su presto; non tante parole. – Cottio bugata: sie pa de benzuole; chientu margasse dui lina puzuona pur tella tiesse marita figliona. No puoza begnir chia buolla paiole. – Sta cheta col malanno! – Tuo pertone dui trista fiaccia; tu lingua cuciata! – Aspetta un poco: tu vuo del bastone. – Cassa star: io non buoglio inquestata. Preto, biagascia, tu cuorna patrone! – Vien su, che fritta ti sie la curata! Becca quella mazata, ebbram gaglioffa, troia, bulivacca! – Centu marghianni! Che cuollo te fiacca!

Most of the discrepancies with respect to Florentine dialect of the time involve phonetic deformations (Ferrara 1950:324): potrono for patrona, ni for nuon, 7

Albuquerque (1991), Arienzo (1991), Cardini (1991), Ferro (1991).

Africans in the Iberian peninsula

17

begliuta for beiuta, mangliata for mangiata, sie for sei, fiaccia for faccia, biagascia for bagascia, and dui for cui. Although some of the distortions were clearly intended for comic effect and probably were not actually used by slaves of any linguistic background, other modifications are consistent with known Afro-Romance contacts. For example, in some of the local varieties of the Afro-Panamian negro congo speech, an epenthetic semivocalic /i/ (and sometimes /r/) is added to many syllables (Lipski 1989, 1997); the forms fiaccia < faccia and biagascia < bagascia are consistent with this trend.8 Sub-Saharan Africans in Spain: the first contacts It is often assumed that the presence of black Africans in Spain began with the Portuguese-initiated Atlantic slave trade, in the second half of the fifteenth century. Matters are more complex, however, since sub-Saharan Africans, both slave and free, were present in Spain long before the Portuguese explorations of West Africa. Little direct documentation of their life, culture and language is available, but the general facts are known.9 Arab and other Muslim traders had been involved in slave trading with subSaharan Africa since the Middle Ages, and it was the contact with this trade, 8

There is another strange anonymous fifteenth century Italian sonnet, the “Sonetto di Schiavonia paisa,” in which a deformed Italian is used, possibly by slaves of African origin (Ferrara 1950: 327): – O compania, ben si la trovata; donda sta’ tu? – Da Schiavonia paisa. – Non conuscia tu me? – Che possa accisa! – Buona fe’, tu sta’ a Siena copostata. – Sci, buona fe’, e quando io me sa malata, per`o partuta sio e andata a Pisa; mo mese viena che non po’ fa spisa. – Buona fe’, tanto poco vadaniata? O compania, andamosi a taverno, e no ti cura: io voglio paga vina e faite io buona compania. Voglioti presa ancora una florina, ch’io venduto uno tassa e un laterno che furatosi io a patruna mia. Oim`e, santa Maria! – Compania, male stai? Non posso caca. – E buona fe’, io cacata tutta braca.

9

According to Ferrara (1950:321), Marta was a name frequently given to African slaves in Italy during the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. He speculates (p. 323) that the slave woman may be a Tartar, although admitting the possibility that she is African. Given the time period in which the poem was written, it is more likely that a black African slave was living in Florence than a woman of Tartar origin. In any event, the deformed Florentine dialect found in the poem does not contain identifying characteristics of any particular substratum. F. Ortiz (1986:ch. VII); Seminario (1975) for an overview.

18

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

first during the Moorish occupation of Spain and Portugal and then as a result of Portuguese contacts along the coast of present-day Mauritania, which would ultimately provide a pattern for European initiatives in the African slave trade. Most of this early slave trade was carried out through contact with powerful African city-states, including the kingdoms of Mali (centered around Timbuktu), Takrur (along the Senegal River), Ghana (at the southern edge of the Sahara), Oyo (in nothern Nigeria), Benin (closer to the Niger Delta), Kanem (near Lake Chad), and the Songhai (at the northern bend of the Niger River). Arab traders from North Africa utilized camel caravans, which went from oasis to oasis, establishing a flourishing bilateral trade with sub-Saharan regions. Commodities exchanged included gold, textiles, dates, kola nuts, pepper, hides, and, to a lesser extent, slaves. In East Africa, trade took place along the Nile River, and through the Horn of Africa. The precise number of slaves exported to the eastern Mediterranean (and later to Italy, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula) via trans-Saharan routes is not known, but Austen (1979:30–32), after reviewing available data, places a low estimate of 1,000+ and an upper figure of more than 6,000 slaves per year, for the period 700–1700. Thus the most conservative estimate indicates displacement of over one million slaves – mostly from sub-Saharan regions, across the Sahara in medieval and renaissance times. In practice, these trade routes reached all the way from the Mediterranean coast of North Africa to the Bight of Benin, via a series of interlocking groups and societies. When European explorers and entrepreneurs arrived along the West African coast in the fifteenth century, they were able to immediately tap into efficient trade systems, which had already been supplying the same products, albeit via different routes, and did not need to set up any infrastructure in order to enter into immediate commerce. Indeed, Europeans were only able to establish the most rudimentary installations on the African coast, usually simple barracks to hold slaves and trade goods awaiting transport (although sometimes nearby villages were used for this purpose). Thus for example the Portuguese fortress at Elmina was designed to protect Akan gold shipments, but local African leaders viewed this territorial incursion with considerable ambivalence, and the Portuguese (and later the Dutch, who captured the fort) were never able to expand their presence in this region. European traders had to depend on the goodwill of their African hosts, and went to great lengths to ensure favorable treatment. Black Africans were apparently first brought to Spain by the Moorish occupation forces, who acquired them from Ethiopia, and also from the trans-Sahara trade caravans that would later provide slaves and tropical products to Christian Portugal and Spain. Moslem residents of Arab-dominated C´ordoba protested that the royal bodyguards were mostly blacks who spoke no Arabic.10 The 10

Hitti (1963:514, fn. 6).

Africans in the Iberian peninsula

19

various Arab leaders of Moslem Spain possessed quantities of black slaves, who were frequently offered as gifts to other dignitaries. Christian Spaniards first came to possess black slaves following the reconquest of Seville in 1248, when they acquired slaves formerly owned by the Moslems. Many of the descendants of these slaves were present in Spain, some still in forced servitude, during the reign of the Catholic monarchs Fernando and Isabela. By the thirteenth century, black slaves were also present in Majorca, Arag´on, and Valencia, coming largely from Italy and Sicily. Through dealings with merchants, mostly Moslems and Jews, who traded across the Sahara, residents of Catalonia possessed detailed information about sub-Saharan Africa, including the names of some principal kingdoms. According to indirect sources, blacks were so prevalent in Seville by 1401 that the first cofrad´ıa or mutual aid society was formed in the Barrio de San Roque, called the “Sant´ısimo Cristo de la Fundaci´on” or “de los negritos,” also referred to as the “Cofrad´ıa de Nuestra Se˜nora de los Angeles.”11 In 1472, a group of black slaves petitioned the government of Arag´on to form a cofrad´ıa named “Nuestra Se˜nora de Gracia,” and to purchase a residence in Valencia. Enter the Portuguese: more blacks in Spain Despite the presence of black Africans in medieval Spain and Portugal, and a general awareness of black “Ethiopians” throughout southern Europe, direct contact between the Iberian Peninsula and sub-Saharan Africa was sporadic before the turn of the fifteenth century. With the Portuguese explorations of the West African coast, beginning in the early fifteenth century, black Africans began arriving in the Iberian Peninsula in ever increasing numbers. The first large populations were found in Portugal, especially in Lisbon. The first black Africans arriving in fifteenth-century Portugal were free emissaries, but slaves were soon to follow. Despite the free status of these blacks, prejudice against blacks, based largely on vague travel accounts and semi-mythical stories of “Ethiopia,” pervaded medieval Spain and Portugal. We have no written records of how free Africans might have spoken Portuguese (and later, Spanish), although Portuguese documents written by Congolese scribes in the sixteenth century contain deviations from native usage that give hints of what was obviously a more widespread interlanguage (see chapter 2). That Portuguese did become a significant linguistic presence in West Africa is attested by the numerous early Portuguese borrowings, in Akan, Kikongo, and later in Bantu languages from South Africa to the Horn of Africa.12 Presumably, the most fluent African speakers of Portuguese (such as the Christianized Manicongo or Kongo 11 12

Gonz´alez de Le´on (1852:9–10), Bermejo y Carballo (1882:7–9, 381–99), F. Ortiz (1986:158– 59). Atkins (1953), Martins (1958a, 1958b), Bradshaw (1965), Bal (1968, 1974), Cabral (1975), Kiraithe and Baden (1976), Prata (1983), Horta (1991a, 1991b).

20

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

emperor and his ministers) spoke with the substratal features observable in the modern speech of Angolans and Mozambicans who have attained fluency in Portuguese.13 Africans possessing only a passing acquaintance with Portuguese would speak a rough pidgin. However, it is only with the introduction of slaves, human entities destined to be despised, that the historical record comments on black Africans’ use of European languages. Portugal’s early explorers in Africa regarded the native populations with curiosity and amusement, but massive enslavement was not yet in the picture. When Portugal discovered wealthy and powerful African kindgoms, epitomized by the Kingdom of the Kongo, they established diplomatic relations as with a European or Asian power. African nations along the Gold Coast were also treated with some deference, and Portugal constructed the fortress at Elmina as a means of safeguarding access to these important groups. Construction and maintenance of the castle required the continuing cooperation of African leaders. When Portuguese, and then Spanish explorers reached the western coast of sub-Saharan Africa, slavery was the last thing on their minds. They encountered a number of prosperous and well-established civilizations, which were well situated to provide luxury items such as gold, ivory, and, later, spices. African leaders were glad to provide the needed commodities, in return for guns and gunpowder, and other European trade goods. Since African societies never came to produce such goods themselves, the initial barter with Europe ultimately turned into a dependency, as tribal leaders staked their fortunes on the superiority accruing to the possession and distribution of desirable European goods. When the Europeans entered into trade with West African leaders, they discovered that slavery was already a flourishing industry in many African communities, and had been for centuries. Intra-African slavery was in many ways similar to practices found in imperial Rome and medieval eastern Europe. Slaves were taken en masse as prisoners of war. Some groups sold members into slavery to alleviate population pressures occasioned by crop failures or other natural disasters. Since many African societies were highly clan-oriented, this micro-ethnocentrism often permitted enslavement of non-clan members. Clan leaders derived their power from the number of clan members they could muster. Slavery provided one means of increasing the number of “honorary” clan members, thereby increasing the power of the clan chief. The differences with respect to American plantation slavery were considerable. First, slaves within Africa were more closely integrated into the societies in which they worked. Slaves were usually taken from outside the immediate ethnic group, often in response to population pressures. Some scholars have 13

Estermann (1963), Bernardes (1970), Gon¸calves (1983), Marques (1983), Silva-Brummel (1984), Perl (1989a, b, c, d), Endruschat (1990), Lipski (1994c, 1995b).

Africans in the Iberian peninsula

21

referred to slavery in sub-Saharan Africa as “institutionalization of marginality.”14 Slaves usually worked alongside free community members. Under no circumstances were they confined to labor gangs, whose sole function was to produce a surplus of labor-intensive energy. Within Africa, slaves enjoyed a measure of autonomy, were able to devote part of their time to their own sustenance, and could obtain their freedom much more easily than in American plantation societies. Although ethnic rivalries in Africa can create nearly impenetrable barriers among groups, the racist reaction occasioned by strikingly different physical characteristics between Europeans and black Africans did not enter into consideration. Nor was the ethnic fragmentation as massive in most cases. In European and American slaveholdings, it was usual to find Africans from a wide variety of ethnic and linguistic groups, who had been thrown together by mere chance. Within Africa, slaves were normally acquired either from geographically adjacent regions, or by established trade mechanisms that predictably yielded members of known ethnic groups. Thus communication among slaves, and between slaves and free community members, was usually facilitated. Cultural practices could be similar or identical among slaves and slave owners. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, within Africa slaves were not held as chattels, to be bought, sold, and bequeathed without the slightest personal consideration. In Africa, slaves were not normally separated from their spouses or children, and in general their living conditions were approximately of the same order of magnitude as (at least the less fortunate) free community members. Within Africa, clear regional hegemonies existed, and certain ethnic and cultural groups were in the ascendancy before the European-American slave trade began. In many instances, some of these same structures of subordination were maintained in the slavery setting, particularly as regards linguistic usage, and religious practices. A clear case is the Kingdom of the Kongo, which had enjoyed superiority over neighboring groups for a long time, perhaps centuries, before the arrival of Europeans. Members of neighboring ethnic groups paid tribute, imitated Kongo practices, and in groups containing Africans from several regions, usually looked to Bakongo as natural leaders. Once West Africans found themselves thrown together by the slave trade, especially when Bantu speakers from the Congo Basin area were involved, leadership often naturally gravitated to Bakongos. This accounts for the prevalence of Kikongo lexical items in regions of Latin America where Bantu-speaking slaves from many regions were present, as well as speakers of other unrelated African languages. Indeed, the term congo came to be synonymous with leadership and power, particularly in the ritualistic sense. Ceremonies which ultimately derived from a wide cross-section of African traditions adopted the designation congo. 14

Rawley (1981:12).

22

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

As a result of the growing trade in African slaves, Europeans came to see black Africans as nothing more than a virtually endless supply of cheap and durable labor. The events that turned the tide are not known with certainty, but several plausible scenarios can be suggested. Europeans certainly observed the already flourishing African practice of slavery, traditionally involving prisoners of war. Slaves, which African groups bartered among themselves, were offered to the first European visitors in exchange for trade goods. The Portuguese and Spaniards were all too familiar with slavery, both during the Moorish occupation and its immediate aftermath. Thus there would be no psychological or moral obstacles standing in the way of absorbing a new group of captives. At the same time, European explorers in Africa found, in addition to elaborate kingdoms, other groups of Africans who lacked the means of resisting foreign intrusions, and who lived in conditions that the Europeans could interpret as primitive. Countering the view of the Manicongo and the Gold Coast chieftains as powerful personages, came the notion of the African as savage, fit only for forced labor.15 The racist reaction of Europeans towards black Africans intensified once the latter were taken out of their element. In Europe, and later in the Americas, blacks were seen as “different” and therefore – given natural human xenophobia – inferior. If they attempted to maintain their native dress and cultural patterns, their strangeness only provoked laughter, while if they adopted European styles, their attempts at cultural crossover were met with mockery and derision. Linguistic difficulties compounded the problem. Within Africa, although pidginized versions of European languages might be used for trade, African languages were the order of the day, and Europeans were always at a disadvantage when surrounded by an African population that could completely bypass foreign visitors by using African languages. In Europe and America, where fluency in Spanish, Portuguese, etc. was tantamount to being civilized, and where such expressions as hablar en cristiano meant “to speak a European language,” hence be Christian = in possession of a redeemable soul, Africans who spoke little or nothing of these European languages were branded as bozales “untamed” and gente sin raz´on “people without reason.” Paths of Portuguese exploration and exploitation in Africa In Portugal, King Jo˜ao I began to look to North Africa as a possible zone of expansion, following the defeat of Moorish forces in Spain and Portugal. The vision of sub-Saharan Africa as a land of great wealth – in particular gold – already existed in medieval Europe. Arab trading caravans that crossed the Sahara from the grasslands and rain forests to the south often brought gold ornaments for sale to Europeans in North Africa. Moreover, some African chieftains 15

Ibid. (13).

Africans in the Iberian peninsula

23

had amassed spectacular wealth, and ostentatious display of this wealth occurred on more than one occasion. For example, in 1324, Mansa Musa, the Islamic ruler of the Kingdom of Mali, made a pilgrimage to Mecca. He took with him a retinue of some 60,000 individuals, including 500 men each carrying a gold staff. Some 27,000 pounds of gold dust were taken along to defray expenses. This flaunting of wealth did not go unnoticed by Europeans, and maps with an image of Musa holding a gold nugget appeared in Europe.16 The Portuguese, through the invention of the caravelle and the development of advanced seafaring prowess, were the first European nation to directly probe for the sources of African gold by sea, and the voyages of exploration meant to secure wealth for European merchants had unforeseen consequences for Afro-Iberian relations. In 1415, Portugal successfully captured the enclave of Ceuta. King Jo˜ao’s son, Henry, was present at the capture of Ceuta, and came into contact with stories of fabulous wealth in the near-mythical city of Timbuktu, on the other side of the great desert. The Arabs often referred to the wealthy land south of the Sahara as Bilad Ghana, and told tales of a race of black people, of mighty rivers (thought to be tributaries of the Nile), and of immense quantities of gold. The latter fact could be confirmed by the gold which the Arabs sold to Europeans, after having transported it by camel caravan across the Sahara. Eventually, most of the other fabulous stories told by Arab traders also turned out to be factual, although the extent of individual wealth in the sub-Saharan kingdoms was exaggerated. Prince Henry was understandably enticed by the stories he heard in North Africa. His motives for undertaking the maritime exploration of the West African coast have been disputed by historians, but a combination of religious zeal, mercenary greed, and a powerful sense of impending adventure, impelled Henry to plan and underwrite the sea ventures which were to radically change life on the Iberian Peninsula, in Africa, and in the Americas. The initial exploration of the West African coast was impeded by the superstitious fear of a boiling sea, scorching sun, and reputed dropoff of the ocean, which according to legend lay beyond Cape Bojador, in northwestern Morocco. Although no such supernatural forces in fact existed past Bojador, sea currents were fast and often violent, and both sea and winds moved in a southeasterly direction. This made it impossible for early sailing vessels to return along the coast; they would have to put far out to sea in unknown and dangerous waters in order to return to European ports. The early ships were fragile and always hugged the coast while sailing, and medieval pilots were unaccustomed to the techniques of tacking, so that the nautical barrier represented by Cape Bojador was real enough even without the mythological horror stories. In 1434, the Portuguese pilot Gil Eannes proved these stories to be false, by rounding the cape and returning 16

Bovill (1968:90), Piersen (1996:10).

24

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

home to tell of no misadventures. In the following years, Portuguese sailors would continue to inch their way forward along the Moroccan coast, without making any astounding discoveries. These feats of nautical prowess were made possible by the development of new ships and sails, which allowed ships to sail against the strong westerly winds which blow along the African coast, far into the Sargasso Sea and then northeastward toward Portugal thereby enabling a safe return to the Mediterranean. For several years, the Portuguese maintained this return route as a strict secret, to discourage other Europeans (particularly Spaniards) from dislodging Portuguese explorers from the African coasts.17 In 1441, Captain Antam Gon¸calvez decided to go ashore along the coast of what would later be the Spanish colony of Rio de Oro. Stumbling upon a group of North Africans (probably Berbers) with black captives, Gon¸calvez and his crew, together with another Portuguese adventurer who happened upon the scene (Nuno Trist˜ao), succeeded in capturing several prisoners, including one black African who claimed to be of royal blood.18 The sensation in Lisbon upon the return of these ships can scarcely be imagined, for here was tangible evidence in support of the fabulous tales that had been in circulation since the first Portuguese presence in North Africa. Nuno Trist˜ao eventually returned the African captive to the area of Mauritania, where he was exchanged for ten black hostages, all of whom were taken back to Portugal. In 1443–44, Nuno Trist˜ao came upon Arguim Island, which was to become the first slaving station for the European slave trade in Africa. In a series of raids on the coast and nearby inland areas, this expedition rounded up more than two hundred captives, which demonstrated to skeptical Europeans that large-scale cargoes of slaves could be obtained in West Africa. After the initial raids, Portuguese explorers discovered that it was easier to obtain slaves by barter than by capture. Europeans traded in luxury goods that had previously been obtained by trans-Sahara caravans: horses, silks, metal products, etc. At the same time, Portuguese sailors were pushing ever further along the African coast, making contact directly with black African communities and leaders, rather than with Arab and Berber traders. The first sub-Saharan Africans brought to Portugal in quantity came with the building of the trading station on Arguim Island. Direct contact with the Senegambia region had been made the year before, but permanent mainland settlements were not established until a few years later. The Arguim station was important for the African slave trade from the very beginning, despite lying to the north of black Africa. Slaving caravans brought slaves from the Senegambia to Arguim, whence they were shipped to Portugal. By 1455, more than 1,000 slaves per year were passing through Arguim,19 so that the presence of Wolofand Mandinga-speaking slaves in Portugal did not have to wait for permanent 17

Rego (1965:19).

18

Davidson (1980:53–54).

19

Vogt (1979:5).

Africans in the Iberian peninsula

25

Portuguese settlements in Senegambia. In addition to the Euro-African contacts occasioned by the slave trade, by the late 1450s Portugal was buying considerable quantities of gold from the Gambian region.20 By the early 1460s Portuguese explorers had reached Sierra Leone, and a decade later the Ivory Coast and the Gold Coast (Ghana) were the subject of intense Portuguese interest. Gold-inspired trade with the latter region began immediately, and the Mina area soon became one of the Portuguese crown’s major sources of gold. Shortly thereafter the fortress of Elmina was constructed, consolidating Portuguese control in a zone that was being increasingly contested by Spain. Portuguese explorers first arrived in the Kongo Kingdom in 1483, and speakers of Congo Basin languages were taken to Portugal in the following years.21 The Portuguese learned of the Mani Congo (Muene Kongo in contemporary Kikongo), leader of this kingdom, and by the beginning of the sixteenth century, considerable Kongo nomenclature was in circulation among those concerned with the African trade. The first permanent Portuguese trading presence on the mainland of West Africa was in the Senegambia and Guinea-Bissau, and although the bulk of Portuguese slave trading would ultimately shift to the Bight of Benin, Congo Basin, and Angola, Upper Guinea would continue to supply slaves throughout the colonial period (Rodney 1970). The majority of slaves taken from this region ended up in Cape Verde, the Madeiras, the Canaries, and the Iberian Peninsula, which is why comparatively few slaves from this region appear in lists representing Spanish America. There is some indication that the early slave labor in the mines of Potos´ı drew heavily on Upper Guinea.22 By the turn of the eighteenth century, the French were the principal slave traders along the Upper Guinea coast, and the English also made incursions. By the middle of the century Bissau was exporting large quantities of slaves, principally to Brazil. The next coastal African area to be exploited by the Portuguese, and the one which was to become the single largest source of slaves for the Atlantic trade, was the Angola/Congo region. Luanda rose to become the principal staging area for the slave trade, followed by Beneguela to the south. The island of S˜ao Tom´e was important throughout the slave trade, but it is difficult to determine how many of the slaves who apparently passed through this island (which was a major holding station) had actually spent a significant amount of time there. S˜ao Tom´e, with its rich volcanic soil and abundant rainfall, became an important plantation colony for Portugal, surpassing Madeira in sugar production. For a while, S˜ao Tom´e was Portugal’s main source of sugar, and the planters on that island (which was originally uninhabited) had a ready source of slaves from the neighboring African coast. Much of the slave trade to S˜ao Tom´e was handled by local traders and planters, circumventing official monopolies. Because S˜ao Tom´e is nearly equidistant from the Bight of Benin and the Angolan coast, 20

Barry (1988:73).

21

Hilton (1985:ch. 3).

22

Rodney (1970:99).

26

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

slaves from both regions were taken to the island. The creole language that developed on S˜ao Tom´e and Pr´ıncipe, although showing more Bantu influence, also bears the imprint of Kwa languages spoken in the Benin region.23

Portuguese exploitation of the Congo Basin By the early 1460s Portuguese explorers had reached Sierra Leone, and a decade later the Ivory Coast and the Gold Coast (Ghana) were the subject of intense Portuguese interest. Gold-inspired trade with the latter region began immediately, and the Mina area soon became one of the Portuguese crown’s major sources of gold. In 1482 the fortress of S˜ao Jorge da Mina (known popularly as Elmina) was constructed, consolidating Portuguese control of trade in a zone which was being increasingly contested by Spain. Portuguese explorers arrived at the mouth of the Congo River in 1482, and arrived in the Kongo Kingdom in 1483, and speakers of Congo Basin languages were taken to Portugual in the following years. After several aborted attempts at making contact with the leaders of the coastal Congo populations, Diego C˜ao finally met the Manicongo “lord of the Bakongo people,” who was residing at the inland capital of Mbanza. The Portuguese discovered a ruler seated in splendor on an ivory throne, and determined that he nominally controlled vast numbers of minions in coastal and inland regions of the Congo Basin. Diplomatic relations were immediately established between Portugal and the Kongo kingdom, in the person of the Manicongo Nzinga a Nkuwa, whom the Portuguese referred to as Jo˜ao. A few years later the Congolese leader Nzinga Mbemba was baptized as a Christian and took the name of Dom Affonso. At the turn of the sixteenth century he became the next Manicongo, and for years he carried on an intense correspondence with King Manuel and his successors in Portugal.24 During the period of nominal Portuguese recognition of the Kongo kingdom, the Manicongos sent many noble children and officials to Portugal, for higher education and to study for religious orders. At the same time, the presence of Portuguese priests and missionaries was increased in the Congo. This accounts for the large number of Portuguese borrowings into Kikongo; in Portugal, members of the academic community often had first-hand contacts with free Africans through the limited “student exchange.” Early literary imitations of Portuguese language and habits could therefore have some basis in fact, and the presence of free Africans of noble birth would inspire later Portuguese and Spanish writers who argued against the notion that all Africans were uneducated heathens worthy of contempt. 23 24

Ferraz (1979), G¨unther (1973), Morais-Barbosa (1963, 1975), Valkhoff (1966, 1975). Felgas (1958), Duffy (1961), Balandier (1968), Thornton (1983), Hilton (1985).

Africans in the Iberian peninsula

27

The Portuguese remained in Congo/Angola from the end of the fifteenth century until the second half of the twentieth century, and exported slaves from this region until nearly the middle of the nineteenth century. The Portuguese presence in the former Kongo kingdom did not last as long, particularly at the northern edge of this territory, along the Congo River. In the entire region, the Portuguese fortunes rose and fell as conflicts with and among various African groups resulted in changing alliances. These events had profound consequences for the supply of slaves to foreign markets, and must be taken into account when attempting to determine the ethnicity and languages of Congo/Angola slaves taken to the Americas at different time periods.25 Portuguese expansion into Angola Immediately to the south of the Kongo kingdom was Dondo or Ndongo, whose ruler was known as the Ngola. Originally the Ngola was subordinate to the Manicongo, but Portuguese intervention helped break this dependency. The African leaders in turn allowed the Portuguese to establish a mainland trading settlement, in the territory that would thenceforth be known as Angola. The fort of Luanda was constructed in 1576, and became the main focus of European trade, and later the principal port of the Atlantic slave trade, with South America. To the south, the fort at Benguela was established in 1617. Eventually the Portuguese settlements at Angola, and in particular Luanda, would far overshadow the Portuguese Congo for both commercial wealth and the supply of slaves for the Atlantic trade. Portuguese slaving in the Kongo kingdom, at first perceived as advantageous by the Manicongo, was by the middle of the sixteenth century seen to have a pernicious effect on the population of the kingdom, with the drain being particularly heavy among young males. The Manicongo Affonso I had petitioned the king of Portugal to stop the trade, but by this time the momentum had grown too powerful for any African leader to stop. Spurred on by the slave traders on S˜ao Tom´e, who took slaves from the mainland with or without official Portuguese permission, the slave trade continued to grow. Many of the slaves delivered by the Kongo were obtained by trade or raid from interior groups, also speaking related Bantu languages (e.g. the Teke and Mpumbu). During the initial Portuguese recognition of the Kongo monarchy, the latter kingdom also drew slaves from the tributary Mbundu people, living under the dominion of the Ngola, in the Ndongo kingdom just to the south. Thus for the majority of the sixteenth century, slaves delivered from the Congo region did not as frequently speak Kikongo (the language of the dominant group, and thus the least likely 25

Birmingham (1966).

28

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

to be found among the slaves), as related Bantu languages. Kimbundu was the foremost among these languages. By the end of the seventeenth century, matters were almost entirely reversed. Through a series of conflicts, the Portuguese had succeeded in nearly destroying the Kongo kingdom (although a series of powerless Kongo “kings” would continue to swear loyalty to Portugal until the early decades of the twentieth century). Portugal authorized a first visit to the land of the Ngola in 1520, but this met with little success (the emissary was hostage for nearly six years), and aroused the ire of the Manicongo, who wished to retain his monopoly on all trade with Europe, and to completely dominate the slaving business. However, by 1550, Portuguese traders were taking slaves from Angola, although no direct relationship with the Ngola had yet been established. This contact was finally made in 1560, but relations soon degenerated, and hostilities between Portugal and a succession of Ngolas would mark the next two centuries. Once direct contact with the Ngola had been made, the proportion of Mbundu slaves taken by the Portuguese appears to have dropped, since the Mbundu were variously trade allies or adversaries who could only be captured dead.26 During the Dutch occupation of Luanda (1641–48) matters were further muddled. The Dutch tried to press their advantage with groups who were hostile to the Portuguese. They made alliances with several Mbundu leaders, and therefore received slaves speaking other Bantu languages. When the Portuguese recaptured Luanda, they launched full-scale attacks against the two principal Mbundu factions: a western group (which were ultimately referred to as “Angolas”) and an eastern group lead by the rebel queen Nzinga, who resisted Portuguese intervention. By 1671, the Angolan kingdom of Ndongo had been destroyed by the Portuguese, but the eastern group formed the powerful Kasanje kingdom, which was never fully dominated by the Portuguese. After many skirmishes, peace and sustained trade with Kasanje was only achieved in 1683. Portuguese slave sources moved ever eastward, into the Lunda empire along the Kasai River. Portuguese slavers also took ever larger quantities from Ovimbundu (Umbundu) territory to the south, and the port of Benguela, in Ovimbunduland, at times rivaled Luanda for total volume of slave exportation. Throughout the remainder of the eighteenth century, the Portuguese colony at Angola degenerated into a couple of slaving ports. This was the period of massive slave exportation to Brazil, and to a lesser extent the Spanish R´ıo de la Plata colonies, but no one ethnic group predominated. Mbundu and Umbundu (Ovimbundu) were represented, but exact proportions are not known. The Bantu languages spoken in Angola are closely related, and it is frequently impossible to assign a single language as source for Bantu elements found in Latin America. However, the nature of Portuguese trade and conquest in Angola suggest a somewhat 26

Miller (1976).

Africans in the Iberian peninsula

29

lower proportion of Kikongo- and Kimbundu-speaking slaves than has been proposed by accounts which are based only on the ethnic groups living near the main slaving ports. By the eighteenth century at the very latest, Angola was supplying slaves directly to the Americas, and the Portuguese language ability of these slaves was often very rudimentary. Unlike in S˜ao Tom´e, a creole Portuguese dialect never developed in coastal Angola, principally because the majority of the African population was never displaced from original homelands, and the native languages were never fragmented through forced association with linguistically diverse slave populations. Slaves taken from the interior to be shipped from Angolan ports knew little or no Portuguese prior to arriving in the slaving ports, but acquired some basic skills on the Angolan coast or during the voyage to Brazil. This fact can be deduced not only by the indirect documentation of the sort of Portuguese spoken by Africans in Angola prior to the twentieth century, but also by the limited testimony on early bozal Portuguese in Brazil, at least some of which probably reflected the usage of slaves brought from Angola with some prior knowledge of Portuguese. In early colonial Brazil, literary Afro-Portuguese pidgin appears in a few texts, most from around the final decades of the eighteenth century. By this time, Africanized varieties of Portuguese were already well established in Brazil, in many cases exhibiting significant differences from earlier European Portuguese literary examples. The use of European-derived stereotypes in late eighteenth-century Brazil can most probably be ascribed to literary tradition, and should not be taken uncritically as a representation of how Africans actually spoke Portuguese at this time. The predominant literary model was an Africanized Portuguese pidgin formed in Portugal and West Africa, which eventually made its way into sixteenth century Spain, and the literary representations of writers like Lope de Rueda and Rodrigo de Reinosa. By the eighteenth century, however, a new Afro-Brazilian language begins to emerge, which is not simply a continuation (literary or historically accurate) of Afro-Iberian patterns, but which also points to local developments in Brazil, or along the Angola-Brazil axis. Far-flung congenors of Afro-Portuguese language: Portuguese Asia There is a final dimension to Afro-Lusitanian linguistic and cultural contexts, a complex series of demographic and ethnic contacts which were played out across a vast territory far removed from the Africa-Europe-Americas triangle which is the usual source for Afro-Iberian pidgins and creoles. From the early sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, the Portuguese maintained a string of colonies in Asia, mostly along the coast of India (including Dam˜ao, Diu, Goa, Mangalore, Cochin, Tecelaria, Chevai, Chaul, Negapat˜ao,

30

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

Korlai, Bombay, and other areas), in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Malacca (modern Malaysia), Batavia and Timor (Indonesia), and Macao, as well as having outposts as far up the Asian coast as Japan. In most of these areas, Portuguese-based creole languages developed, some of which lasted until the turn of the twentieth century, and a few of which survive in fragmentary form even today.27 Scholars who have studied Portuguese-based creoles agree that the Asian creoles in general are typologically different enough from Afro-Lusitanian creoles, and similar enough amongst themselves, to warrant a separate subclassification (irrespective of whether a broad-based monogenetic theory can ultimately account for the genesis of all Portuguese-derived creoles). To name but two important differences, all Asian-Portuguese creoles use eu for the first person singular subject pronoun, while all Afro-Iberian creoles use a derivative of (a) mim. At the same time, Asian Portuguese creoles (with the exception of Macao creole) use derivatives of Portuguese tˆem “have” as copula, while Afro-Iberian creoles use derivatives of Portuguese estar and ser (and occasionally sentar and ficar).28 What is less well known is that all the Portuguese Asian enclaves, from northwestern India to Macao, Malaysia, and Indonesia, contained significant numbers of black Africans throughout their history. Moreover, there were complex trade routes among these colonies and Portuguese-controlled areas of southeastern Africa and even with Portugal, thus setting the scene for an extraordinarily complex network of linguistic cross-fertilization which ultimately requires that all Ibero-Romance based creoles be examined as part of an all-encompassing matrix of language contact and transfer. The Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama first arrived in India at the southwestern port of Calicut, in 1498. He encountered a coastal region dominated by hostile Arabs under the leadership of the Samuri. Calicut itself was under Hindu rule, but Moslems held commercial and military power in the region.29 Between 1498 and 1505 the Portuguese realized many commercial voyages to India. In 1505, a Portuguese expedition under the command of Francisco de Almeida (who had been named a Viceroy) arrived in Cochin, and established friendly relations with the local Hindu ruler, who – perhaps in ignorance of the full consequences – was crowned by Almeida as the King of Cochin and became a Portuguese subject. The next major player in Portuguese India was Alfonso de Albuquerque, who conquered Goa for Portugal in 1510, with the help of Hindu allies. Beginning in 1518, Portuguese settlement of Goa began

27

28

Schuchardt (1883a, 1883b, 1883c, 1889b), Dalgado (1900–01, 1902–03, 1906, 1917, 1922), Rego (1943), Vermeer (1972), Hancock (1973, 1975), M. Theban (1973, 1974), L. Theban (1975, 1977), I. Smith (1978, 1979, 1984), M. and L. Theban (1980), Wexler (1983), Baxter (1988), Jackson (1990), Teyssier (1993), Clements (1996). 29 Rego (1965:25). Lipski (1999c, 2002c).

Africans in the Iberian peninsula

31

in earnest, and Goa was rapidly to develop into the centerpiece of Portugal’s Asian empire.30 By the middle of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese had built fortresses at Cochin and Diu, as well as settlements at Goa and Bassein, thus consolidating their presence on the western Indian coast. Beginning in 1531, intensive Portuguese settlement of the northern provinces was enacted. Portuguese contact with Ceylon was begun in 1515, and in 1518 they built a fort at Colombo. Successfully fending off several attacks by local leaders, the Portuguese continued their expansion in Ceylon, including the Jaffna region.31 During the sixteenth century, the Portuguese began to place colonies on the eastern Indian Coromandel Coast, beginning with the town of Mylapur, which the Portuguese called S˜ao Tom´e, believing that the Apostle St. Thomas was buried there. The Portuguese also established a fortress at Nagapattinam, which they called Negapat˜ao, both of which were very close to northern Ceylon, and were integrally linked with the colonization and later defense of Ceylon. In 1511, the Portuguese conquered Melaka (Malacca) on the Malaysian Peninsula, and this began a flourishing trade between the Coromandel Coast and Melaka, which extended still further to include Goa (and ultimately Portugal) on the western end, and Indonesia, Macao, and – for a while – Japan at the eastern end. Melaka became the hub for further Portuguese explorations in Asia, including Macao, Japan, and Indonesia.32 The Portuguese encouraged traders from India, Indonesia, and China to settle in Melaka. For many years, the principal route was Goa-Pulicat (a town just to the north of S˜ao Tom´e)-Melaka, and back, thus beginning the commercial, cultural, and linguistic links that would ultimately lead to important structural similarities among Asian Portuguese creoles. The trade was expanded after the foundation of Macao around 1557, and regular commerce between Macao, Melaka, and Goa was the hub of Portuguese Asian commerce. Throughout much of the sixteenth century, Timor was also drawn into trade with China (including Macao) and the Coromandel coast, supplying sandalwood.33 The heyday of the Portuguese enclaves in India was reached towards the end of the sixteenth century. Less than a century later, by 1666, Portuguese possessions in India were reduced to Goa, Diu, Dam˜ao, Bassein, and Chaul. Bassein was lost in 1739.34 All the Portuguese Asian colonies contained relatively tiny Portuguese enclaves surrounded by large indigenous populations, and the latter’s degree of integration with the Portuguese and willingness to serve the needs of the colonizers varied widely. Since most of the Portuguese colonies were coastal pockets that had to depend upon the good will of the indigenous populations for 30 32 34

31 Boxer (1969:49), Silva (1972:2). D’Ayalla (1888:ch. I, III), Miranda (1863). 33 Boxer (1968). Subrahmanyam (1990:103). Subrahmanyam (1990:ch. 2), Boxer (1985:VI, 7), Pearson (1987:153).

32

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

their very survival, enslavement of the native population was less frequent than “outsourcing” of slaves from other colonies, often from southeastern Africa. Logically, many of the slaves came from the nearest region of Africa, its eastern coast (particularly from around the Portuguese settlements in Mozambique), but it is known with certainty that the Portuguese took slaves from the Gulf of Guinea, the Slave Coast (Benin/Togo and western Nigeria) and as far away as Cape Verde to fill labor needs in its Asian outposts. The slave trade from Mozambique to Portuguese India and Macao began in the sixteenth century and continued throughout most of the colonial period. This became particularly intense in the late seventeenth century. Most of the slaves taken to Goa and other Portuguese Indian colonies came from the relatively nearby Mozambique, but at least some continued to come from Portuguese outposts in West Africa. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Portuguese “India” stretched from the Cape of Good Hope, through Mozambique and part of contemporary Kenya (especially the port of Mombasa), through the easternmost territories of Malacca and Macao. The administrative capital was Goa. This included twelve cities and twenty-three fortresses, of which three were in southeastern Africa (Mo¸cambique, Sofala, and Mombasa). The presence of sub-Saharan Africans in Portuguese settlements in Asia is more than just a historical curiosity, and the linguistic importance of such multilingual contact vernaculars extends beyond the domain of Asian Portuguese creoles and in fact embraces the entire Portuguese-speaking world of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Many of the Africans once held as slaves in the Asian Portuguese enclaves returned to West Africa or Portugal as (freed) members of ships’ crews, and the cross-fertilization brought by these intercontinental voyages is amply apparent in the genealogical relationships among AfroPortuguese and Asian Portuguese creoles, in the presence of bozal Portuguese songs and folktales in Asian Portuguese colonies, and in the literary representations of early Afro-Portuguese speech. Early challenges to leadership of the Atlantic slave trade Although Portuguese explorations of the African coast were the first recorded in modern history, and laid the groundwork for the slave trade and the eventual European colonization of Africa, this initial monopoly was short lived. The fabulous profits obtained by the first Portuguese traders on the upper Guinea coast could simply not be kept secret for long. Sailors and entrepreneurs spread the word far beyond Portugal’s frontiers, aided by the fact that both in Portugal and in Spain, commercial expeditions were largely financed by foreigners, especially Venetians. Thus, as early as 1454 (and perhaps earlier, given the sparse record-keeping), a Spanish fleet set out from Andalusia to undertake their own reconnoitering of “Guinea.” Judging by all accounts, these explorers

Africans in the Iberian peninsula

33

traded successfully along the Senegambia coast, but upon their return, when they were nearly in sight of C´adiz, they were attacked by a Portuguese armada, which destroyed part of the Spanish expedition. The damage had been done, however, since once the word was out, there would be no stopping clandestine Spanish attempts to further penetrate the lucrative African coastal trade. A diplomatic incident ensued, and the kings of both Spain and Portugal threatened war. Spain pressed an improvized claim to the Guinea coast, but this was not taken seriously outside of Spain. A series of papal bulls gave increasing recognition to Portuguese monopoly in sub-Saharan Africa; the Inter Caetera of 1456 essentially conceded to Portugal all territory from Cape Bojador to the Indies, both discovered and yet to be touched. With the coming to power of the Catholic sovereigns Fernando and Isabela in the 1470s, Spanish incursions along the West African coast increased in frequency and audacity. Matters were only settled in 1480, after which time Spain officially ceased to interfere with Portuguese trade in Africa, although unauthorized ships continued to travel between Andalusia and the Guinea coast. Beginning in 1530, the French mounted a significant challenge to Portuguese trade in this region. By 1492, French pirates had captured Portuguese ships returning to Europe with African gold; by 1531, some 300 Portuguese ships had been raided by French privateers. In 1530, the king of France commissioned the first ship to legally travel to the Guinea coast, and despite Portuguese protests and diplomatic pressures, French intervention continued, both trading voyages and pirate attacks. At this juncture, the French were but little interested in slaves, since slavery was not a common practice in northern Europe. Their interests in Africa were for trade goods, spices, ivory, and gold. Their advances were quickly followed by the English, beginning around 1553. Like the French, the English were not much interested in slavery, although many English travelers’ accounts document the Portuguese slave trade, as well as plantation slavery on S˜ao Tom´e and Pr´ıncipe. Enter the Dutch slave traders In 1580, the armies of Felipe II of Spain invaded Portugal, and quickly took over that country. This domination lasted until 1640, when the Portuguese were finally able to shake off the Spanish conquerors. From 1580 until 1640, the Spanish and Portuguese crowns were united, but Spain, the central source of administrative power, acknowledged the Portuguese monopoly on the Atlantic slave trade, and the Portuguese were the principal slave traders and holders of asientos, slave-trading monopolies granted by the Spanish crown. In 1640, Portugal was able to break free of Spanish domination once more (although Spain never officially recognized Portuguese independence until 1672), but its defensive capabilities were stretched very thin, especially in its African

34

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

trading positions. The partial vacuum created on the West African coast was rapidly filled by the Dutch, who had recently become one of the world’s leading commercial and maritime powers. The Amsterdam merchants and bankers had the necessary infrastructure, as well as the motivation, for entering into the African trade, first in natural products and then in slaves. The Dutch West India Company was chartered in 1621, signaling the beginning of an aggressive Dutch intervention in the Atlantic market. Dutch shipping and naval forces were up to the challenge, and so in the first decades of the seventeenth century, the Dutch began direct attacks on Portuguese colonial enclaves. In 1621 the Dutch displaced the Portuguese from the island of Gor´ee, off the coast of Senegal, establishing a small fort. This fort would later become famous under French control, being the point through which thousands of Africans passed on their way to the French Caribbean. The first major assault came in 1630, on Pernambuco, the rich sugarproducing region of northeastern Brazil. Recognizing the need for a continued source of African slave labor, the new Dutch plantation owners clamored for direct Dutch participation in the slave trade. In 1637, a Dutch fleet sailing from Pernambuco attacked and defeated the Portuguese garrison at Elmina, on the Gold Coast. The Dutch destroyed the Portuguese feitoria and in its place built one of the largest slaving stations in the entire history of the Atlantic slave trade. It was from this Dutch-controlled area that thousands of Minas and Arar´as were shipped to Spanish America during the seventeenth century. In 1641, the Dutch captured Luanda and Benguela, assuring control over the Angola slave market, which was considered more valuable by Dutch planters and merchants. The Dutch were ultimately expelled from Angola in 1648, but moved their slaving enterprise offshore to tiny Annob´on island, as well as to occasional coastal enclaves.35 Meanwhile in Brazil the Portuguese residents rebelled against the Dutch in 1645, and finally ousted them from Pernambuco in 1654. Many of the Dutch left for sugar-producing regions of the Caribbean, as well as for the Dutch colonies of Cura¸cao, Surinam, Essequibo, Berbice, Demerara, and St. Eustatius. A number of Sephardic Jews accompanied the Dutch exodus, settling in Cura¸cao and Surinam, and possibly influencing the development of the Ibero-Romance based creoles Papiamento and Saramaccan, respectively.36 Although the Dutch were ultimately thwarted in their attempts to take over Portuguese colonies and trading posts, their entry into the slave trade was to become permanent. At the height of Dutch presence in Africa, they controlled, in one way or another, the slave trade from Cape Verde to Angola, including the important Senegambia, Gold Coast, Benin, and Congo Basin trading posts. Due to sagacious diplomacy with African leaders, commercial and maritime 35

Postma (1970, 1972, 1975), Emmer (1973).

36

Goodman (1987a).

Africans in the Iberian peninsula

35

superiority, and the establishment of strategically located Cura¸cao as a slaving depot for the entire Caribbean, the Dutch were able to continue the slave trade throughout the New World. An illicit slave trade on Cura¸cao thrived in the first half of the seventeenth century.37 In 1662, Spain returned to the asiento system of slave procurement, and a Dutch company successfully won the contract. A reorganized West India Company (WIC) obtained another asiento in 1675, and held it until the beginning of the eighteenth century, when France became the official supplier of slaves to Spanish America. Even after this period, however, the Dutch continued to supply slaves to Spanish American colonies, both legally and clandestinely, using the depot on Cura¸cao. Over the years, the Dutch drew slaves from different areas of Africa. Until the end of the seventeenth century, the majority of slaves (nearly three quarters) were taken from the Slave Coast (Benin/Togo). Another quarter came from the Loango/Angola area, and only about 2 percent of all slaves came from the Gold Coast. In the final decades of intensive Dutch slave trading, after 1720, the Gold Coast rose to about one quarter of the total slave population. The Windward Coast/Ivory Coast stretch, which had previously not been tapped for slaves, rose to represent half of the total Dutch slave exports; Angola represented some 30 percent, and the Slave Coast dropped to around 1 percent.38 Toward the end of the seventeenth century, the Portuguese made a brief reappearance as asiento holders and principal suppliers of slaves to Spanish America. Portuguese entrepreneurs formed the Cacheu Company (based in the modern Guinea Bissau) in 1675. The company failed in a few years, and was resurrected in 1690 as the Cacheu and Cape Verde Company. Officially, this company was to supply slaves to the ports of Cartagena, Cuman´a, Havana, Portobelo, Honduras (i.e. Puerto Caballos, modern Puerto Cort´es) and Veracruz; in practice, slaves were also taken to La Guaira (Venezuela), Riohacha (Colombia), Santo Domingo, and other Caribbean ports, together with large amounts of contraband merchandise.39 With the rise in French power, the Portuguese slave monopoly to Spanish America ended once and for all, although individual Portuguese traders continued to supply slaves until the very end of the Atlantic slaving period. French and English entry into the slave trade War with England was one of the major causes of the diminution of Dutch slave trading. Another rapidly developing sea power, England sought to repeat the Dutch successes in muscling into the Atlantic trade. English and Dutch forces engaged in skirmishes on land and at sea during much of the seventeenth 37 38

Goslinga (1979, 1990), Hartog (1961, 1968). 39 Escalante (1964:42). Rawley (1981:ch. IV).

36

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

century, and England gained footholds in the Gambia (establishing the fort of St. James at the mouth of the Gambia River in 1664), the Gold Coast (establishing a fort at Accra in 1673), and the Niger Delta area. Although the British Royal Africa Company was founded in 1672, it was not the English but rather the French who were the next major European participants in the Atlantic slave trade. During the reign of Louis XIV, France fought the Dutch and won the islands of Tobago and, on the African coast, Gor´ee and Arguin. This prompted the formation of the French Senegal Company, later reorganized as the French Guinea Company, which initially provided slaves for the newly acquired French colony of Saint-Domingue. The French began to expand the trade to the Spanish American colonies, and in 1701 they obtained the asiento for official slave deliveries to Spanish America. This asiento only lasted until 1713; both before and especially after this period, French slave traders primarily supplied nonSpanish colonies in Latin America, especially the sugar-growing islands of the Caribbean, including Martinique, Guadeloupe, St. Kitts. Although some of these Africans would ultimately end up in Spanish Santo Domingo, particularly after the Haitian revolution, the direct French contribution to the slave supply in Spanish America was relatively brief, falling off sharply after the early eighteenth century.40 It was at this point that England became the last European nation to enjoy a clear supremacy in the supply of African labor to Spain’s American colonies. English ships had traded along the African coast since the middle of the sixteenth century, and English privateers had engaged in small-scale slave raiding during the entire period. However, it was not until the early decades of the seventeenth century that England began to establish permanent trading posts on the African coast, first in the Gambia and later (ca. 1651) at the Gold Coast village of Coromantine. The Guinea Company was constituted in 1651, to be followed by the Company of Royal Adventurers (1671), the Royal African Company (1672), and finally the South Sea Company. By this time England successfully controlled several trading posts from the Gambia to the Cape of Good Hope. The typical triangular trade developed: slaves from Africa were taken to the West Indies and exchanged for sugar, which was then taken to England. The principal regions from which the English drew slaves were the Gambia, the Windward Coast (Sierra Leone), the Gold Coast (Ghana), Ardra and Whydah (Benin), Calabar (eastern Nigeria), and Angola. During the seventeenth century, the Gold Coast and Windward Coast together supplied half of the English slaves, with the Benin area supplying most of the rest; comparatively few slaves were taken from Angola or the Bight of Benin. In the eighteenth century, continuing until the first decade of the nineteenth century, 40

Garc´ıa (1990:21–22).

Africans in the Iberian peninsula

37

when official British slave trading came to an end, the demographic distribution was changed.41 The Bight of Biafra (Calabar) area provided by far the greatest number of slaves (more than 30 percent), with the Gold (17 percent) and Windward (13 percent) Coasts supplying nearly the same number. Angola supplied 15 percent, Benin 11 percent, Sierra Leone 7 percent, and the Gambia 5 percent. Near the middle of the eighteenth century, the South Sea Company held the Spanish asiento for a while, ending in 1739, and both before and after this brief interlude British participation in the supply of slaves to Spanish America was considerable. One of the areas receiving large numbers of slaves via the British traffic was Buenos Aires, although this city more often tapped the Portuguese sources passing through neighboring Brazil.

The last century of the slave trade Until about 1773, the slave trade to Spanish America was successively under the control of specific nations and slaving companies: Portuguese, Dutch, French, English, etc. There was a significant difference between the trade of the Dutch and the Portuguese on the one hand, and British, French, Danish, and other slave traders on the other hand. The Portuguese and the Dutch established stable forts and cities on the African coast and largely drew slaves through these ports and their hinterlands. This was nowhere more true than in the Portuguese settlements of Luanda and Benguela, which shipped tens of thousands of slaves speaking closely related Bantu languages and engaging in similar cultural practices. Thus, reconstructing the demographics of slaves supplied by Portuguese and Dutch traders allows for a certain degree of accuracy. The remaining European nations established fewer forts or trading posts on the African coast (the French slaving station at Gor´ee was a noteworthy exception), and in acquiring slaves preferred to send ships up and down the African coast, buying from any and all suppliers. For the last half century of the slave trade, all slave-trading powers competed in Spanish American markets without the monopolistic asiento system. Since this is the period in which many of the ethnically viable Afro-Hispanic groups arrived in the Americas, it is important to underscore the fact that no one nation or slaving company was the principal supplier of African labor to the Spanish colonies, nor did any one specific region of Africa predominate for the final time period. In certain instances (e.g. the Angola-Brazilian connection), the supply of slaves to a specific Latin American region was quite homogeneous, but in most colonies, the ethnic and regional origins of the slaves brought in in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were as diverse as were the suppliers themselves. 41

Rawley (1981:166).

38

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

Although the Portuguese had lost the monopolistic control of the Atlantic slave trade by the middle of the seventeenth century, and never regained their former position, Portuguese traders continued to supply African slaves to the Americas until the early decades of the nineteenth century. They held no asientos after the middle of the seventeenth century, but continued to support slaving companies, such as the Companhia de Cacheu, which during the brief interval 1696–1703 supplied more than 10,000 slaves from the region of modern GuineaBissau. The majority of the Portuguese slave traffic followed the straightforward Angola-Brazil route, but some also found their way into Spanish American colonies. The greatest number arrived in Montevideo and Buenos Aires via Brazil in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, providing in fact the bulk of the considerable Afro-R´ıo de la Plata population which dominated these two cities during this time period. By the second half of the eighteenth century, a time period in which many still-surviving Afro-Hispanic communities arose in the Americas, the coast of Africa was fairly regularly divided up among the major European slaving powers; the skirmishes, counterattacks, and pirate incursions of the past were over, and the African coast began to resemble a shopping mall in which traders from several nations occupied quasi-permanent positions, each supplying the same product. From Cabo Blanco to the Senegal River, as well as on Gor´ee Island, the French held the coastal slave trade. The British were established at the mouth of the Gambia, in the Casamance region of southern Senegal, and in Sierra Leone. Between Sierra Leone and Cabo Palmas, a number of European nations drew small numbers of slaves, but this region was never a major source of slaves. The Dutch maintained control from Cabo Palmas to Cabo Tres Puntas, including most of the Ivory Coast, from their fort at Axim. In the short expanse betwen Cabo Tres Puntas and the mouth of the Volta no fewer than twenty-three Dutch, British, and Danish forts were founded, with the British occupying the most important posts, at Coromantine and Accra. The Slave Coast, including the kingdoms of Arda and Ajuda, was by this time shared among French, British, and Portuguese slavers, with each nation maintaining a fort at Ajuda. The British were firmly in control of the coast between Benin and Cape Formosa. Although the Portuguese still maintained slaving stations on the Congo/Angola coast, British, Dutch and French slavers also frequented this region, thus accounting for the large numbers of Congo/Angola slaves taken to all parts of the Americas in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the nineteenth century, the Atlantic slave trade was complicated by the sudden anti-slaving legislation in several European nations, followed by an active persecution of the slaving activities of other nations. In 1805 Denmark passed the first anti-slaving law, and Britain joined in three years later. This move took many Africans by surprise, and those who had profited by the sustained slave trade pleaded with British authorities to not abandon this lucrative enterprise.

Africans in the Iberian peninsula

39

The British authorities were unmoved, although British entrepreneurs continued a contraband slave traffic far beyond this time. The remaining slaving nations of Europe, especially Spain and Portugal, made treaties with Britain which temporarily forestalled active British assaults on Atlantic slave ships. One such treaty guaranteed to Portugal safe passage of slaving ships south of the equator until 1839; Brazil obtained a similar concession which ran until 1845. Given the voracious demand for slaves in the sugar-producing areas of Latin America, some of the highest annual figures for slave importation came in the years following the abolition of slaving in much of Europe. Overview of slaving regions and ethnic designations in Portuguese and Spanish literature A brief overview of areas from which slaves were taken, and the designations of the regions, is a necessary preliminary to more detailed investigation of Afro-Iberian linguistic contacts. The first area of Portuguese penetration, along the Senegambia coast, was referred to as Upper Guinea, or Guin´e de Cabo Verde, referring to the Cape Verde peninsula of modern Senegal (after which the Cape Verde islands were named). Occasionally ethnic designations such as Wolof/Jolofe/Jelofe, Mandinga, etc., were used to describe the same region. The broad area known as Lower Guinea (and, eventually, just as Guinea) was, in trade jargon, subdivided into the Grain Coast (roughly modern Liberia and Sierra Leone), the Ivory Coast (modern nation of the same name), the Gold Coast (roughly modern Ghana), and the Slave Coast (the Bight of Benin, centering around the modern nations of Togo, Benin, and extreme western Nigeria). The Grain Coast was at first known as the Pepper Coast, or by the Portuguese term Malagueta (a spice related to pepper). British sailors began to refer to the pepper as “Guinea grains,” or “grains of Paradise,” whence the eventual name of Grain Coast. The Ivory Coast was for a time known to French traders as the Coste des Dents, referring to the trade in elephant tusks. The Slave Coast did not get its popular name until much later in the trade; the Portuguese never used this term, although one of the rivers of the Niger Delta was referred to as the Rio dos Escravos. At first, trade was established with major kingdoms of each region, for example, the Wolof in the Senegambia, the Akan along the Gold Coast (whence the building of the trade fortress at El Mina in 1482) and the Kingdom of Benin in the Niger delta (leading to construction of a fort at Oghoton, in 1486).42 Some ethnic designations appear in Portuguese and Spanish literary documents, written in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, and purporting to represent the speech of Africans who attempted to learn European languages. 42

Stride and Ifeka (1971), Law (1991).

40

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

The first known written example of Afro-Portuguese pidgin is found in the Cancioneiro geral of Garcia de Resende (Chapter Two Appendix #1), published in 1516; it is a poem written by the court official Fernam da Silveira, and dated 1455. If this dating is accurate,43 it means that an Afro-Lusitanian pidgin was already in use only a few decades after Portugal had begun exploration of the sub-Saharan African coast. The poem imitates the speech of a tribal king from “Sierra Leone,” and contains the first glimmerings of Portuguese-based creoles, as well as exemplifying the type of broad-spectrum interference that speakers of African languages would bring to Ibero-Romance. Gil Vicente provides the largest single corpus of early Afro-Portuguese language, in plays written in the 1520s and 1530s (Chapter Two Appendix #5–7).44 The N˜ao d’amores contains Afro-Portuguese speech by a Rei Beni, referring to the kingdom of Benin, an area currently straddling the Nigeria/Benin border, and the site of a once powerful African kingdom. After these initial indications of ethnic origins, the Afro-Portuguese corpus contains no other ethnic identifications, which would permit direct verification of African languages in contact with Portuguese. It is not until the curious text, a letter from the “Rei Angola” to the “Rei Minas,” written in 1730, that reference to African ethnic groups reappears.45 By this time, bozal Afro-Portuguese pidgin had all but disappeared in Portugal. In Spain, the first black Africans whose speech has been documented arrived via Portugal, coming from the original foci of Portuguese slave trading. In the first known Afro-Hispanic documents, the coplas of Rodrigo de Reinosa (probably written at the end of the fifteenth century), we find the ethnic/regional designations Gelofe, Mandinga, and Guinea (Chapter Three Appendix #1). Although Gelofe Mandinga appears as a single designation, in reality two ethnic groups and languages are represented: Wolof and Mandinga, the latter part of a much larger group of related languages. These terms are consistent with the first phase of the Portuguese slave trade, since they represent languages of the Senegambia region. The term Guinea is more vague; this word has been used to refer to regions of Africa from the Senegambia to the mouth of the Congo. Around the turn of the sixteenth century, Guinea referred to a region roughly between the Senegambia and Sierra Leone, but subsequently the term was used as a general reference to sub-Saharan Africa.46 In all of these instances, the 43 44 45 46

Teyssier (1959:228–29). Baird (1975), Br´asio (1944), Costa e S´a (1948), Saunders (1982:98–102), Teyssier (1959), Vicente (1834, 1912). Tinhor˜ao (1988:191). The terms guinea/guineo recur in the anonymous play La negra lectora (Chapter Three Appendix #53), in the song “¡Ah, Flansiquiya!” (Chapter Three Appendix #48) by Francisco Garc´ıa Montero Solano (1673), in the song “Negro de Navidad” by the mid-seventeenth-century composer Alonso Torices (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Peru #6), in the song “Eso rigor e repente” by Gaspar Fernandes (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Mexico #6), and in an anonymous villancico dated 1654 (Chapter Three Appendix #54).

Africans in the Iberian peninsula

41

reference is not to a particular geographic or ethnic region, but rather to a vague sense of “black Africa,” the source of musical celebration and dancing which formed an integral part of the villancicos, entremeses, and other short pieces in which bozal language predominated. Following these early ethnic terms, the Afro-Hispanic corpus contains no other verifiable indications of origin until the early seventeenth century. The “Entrem´es de los negros” (ca. 1602) of Sim´on Aguado (Chapter Three Appendix #14) contains the line “Dominga me yamo, Manicongo nacimo.” The same play also contains reference to “Dominga de Tumbucuto,” an area in present-day Mali which supplied some slaves to southern Spain, either via Arguim or transSahara slaving caravans. G´ongora’s sonnet “A lo mismo” [al nacimiento de Cristo nuestro se˜nor] (Chapter Three Appendix #16) contains the line “Som´eme e v´endome a rosa de Gericongo Mar´ıa,” possibly a reference to the Congo region. In the sonnet “A la ‘Jerusalem conquistada’ de Lope de Vega” (Chapter Three Appendix #18) we find the designations morenica gelofa and Rey de Congo, as well as one of the first references to S˜ao Tom´e: “Corpo de san Tom´e con tanta Reya . . .” S˜ao Tom´e, originally an uninhabited island far off the coast of Angola, became one of the major Portuguese slaving stations, supplying Bantu- and Kwa-speaking African slaves to southern Europe and Latin America for several centuries. Although the designation San Tom´e became as geographically nonspecific as the terms Guinea and Congo, there is reason to believe that many of the slaves so designated had indeed passed through S˜ao Tom´e.47 The term Angola is also found in several Afro-Hispanic literary representations of the Golden Age. For example, in El Santo Negro Rosambuco of Lope de Vega (Chapter Three Appendix #27), we find the line “Samo de Santa Tam´e, de Angola samo, maluco?”48 The terms congo/manicongo are also frequent in Golden Age bozal texts. In El Santo Negro Rosambuco we find “decimo logo a la niegra si samo de monicongo,” “en Manicongo tenemo al sol que vemo, por Dioso . . . ,” “all´a en Congo me dijeron que era Dioso el sole craros . . .” In Lope’s Madre de la mejor (Chapter Three Appendix #25) we find “. . . hacia 47

48

Other literary works to use this term include Limpieza no manchada by Lope de Vega (Vega Carpio 1893:t. V), the song “Eso rigor” by Gaspar Fernandes (Stevenson 1975), and the anonymous fragments “Entrem´es de los negros de Santo Tom´e” and “El negro” (Cotarelo y Mor´ı ed. 1911:vol. 1). In the anonymous “La Negra lectora” (Anon. 1723) is found the lines “¿Guisadillo de Angola, neglo clima?” and “¿somo gente de Angola o de Guinea?” The villancico “Apalte la gente” of Esteban Redondo (ca. 1783) (Tejerizo Robles 1989:307) contains the verse “si no eles de colol neglo vienes de Angola tambi´en.” An anonymous song (ca. 1676), “Desde Angola benimo,” also contains reference to Angola (Bravo-Villa-Sante 1978:88–89), while in a villancico dated 1654 we find “venimo tanta de genta de Angola y de Cabo Verde . . .” (Damasceno 1970:88– 89). The song “Eso rigor e repente” by Gaspar Fernandes (Stevenson 1975) contains the verse “Vamo negro de Guinea a lo pesebrito sola no vamo negro de Angola . . .” Finally, an anonymous villancico (ca. 1697) contains the verse “podlemos cantal tonadillas de Angola y de Panam´a . . .” (Ripod´as Ardanaz ed. 1991:215–16).

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A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

la banda del Congo . . . ,” “. . . lo neglo de Manicongo . . .” In G´ongora’s “Sacramento” (Chapter Three Appendix #15) we find “Zambamb´u, morenica de Congo,” and “en Congo aun ser´a bien quista.” In the “Soneto Jerusal´en” (Chapter Three Appendix #18) we find “. . . do Rey de Congo canta don Gorgorio.” The Entrem´es de los negros of Sim´on Aguado presents “Manicongo nacimo, Seviya batizamolo.” In the Comedia de los enga˜nados of Lope de Rueda (Chapter Three Appendix #6) we find “. . . ay´a en mi terra de Manicongo . . .” The anonymous Negra lectora (Chapter Three Appendix #53) provides “Bene va, que en lo Congo bien guisamo la negla lo mondongo.”49 By the seventeenth century, the Kongo monarchs, once received with pomp and circumstance by the Portuguese, had been virtually abandoned by both religious and civil authorities, and the Kongo leaders were reduced to a miserable state. A description of the visit of Kongo monarch to Madrid in 1669 gives ample evidence of this situation:50 En esta Corte (Madrid) avia un Rey de Congo, que estuvo en una posada bien desacomodado . . . y estava toda aquella Magestade assistida de dos Negros bo¸cales, y un Mulato ladino, que era el fausto, y pompa Real suya, quando tenia en su Imperio inumerables vassalos, pero todos desnudos, y pobres como el. Era Rey coronado con numerosa multidud de vassallos, y estuvo con tan poca estimacion que apenas huvo quien le visitasse.

In their totality, the ethnic references found in Golden Age texts from Spain and early colonial Latin America do not provide an accurate demographic profile of the African population, but simply represent well-known place names that were meant to connote all of sub-Saharan Africa. The true demographics of sub-Saharan Africans represented a much wider cross-section of West African ethnic and linguistic groups, as the various European slave traders roamed along the entire African coast. Profile of slave trade and slave traders By the end of the fifteenth century, Portuguese traders and slavers had reconnoitered the entire western coast of Africa, and black slaves were being carried to Lisbon in ever larger numbers. According to some estimates, nearly 50 percent of the population of metropolitan Lisbon was African by the end of the fifteenth century; more realistically, the figure was probably 10 to 20 percent, but much higher in certain neighborhoods. By the end of the fifteenth century, many Africans were being transshipped from southern Portugal to southern 49

50

The song “Con el zon” gives us Monicongo, el Chato (Bravo-Villa-Sante 1978). The “Nadadores de Sevilla” of Gil L´opez de Armesto y Castro (ca. 1674) presents “molenica di Congo” (Ripod´as Ardanaz 1991:189–97). The “Villancico cantado en el real convento de la Encarnaci´on de Madrid en los maitines de navidad” (1689) gives “¿Y vene de Congo?” (Ripod´as Ardanaz 1991:199–201). Manso (1877:251).

Africans in the Iberian peninsula

43

Spain, where significant concentrations were found in Seville, C´adiz, Huelva, C´ordoba, M´alaga, and as far east as Valencia. By the time that Spain began colonizing the New World, the idea of using Africans in forced labor was well established. Ultimately, black slaves and freedmen would be found all over Castile, from Extremadura and Valladolid to Murcia, cutting all the way across Andalusia to include Valencia. Proportionately smaller numbers were also found in places such as Ciudad Real, Burgos, Toledo, Guadalajara, Le´on, Avila, and even Galicia and the Basque country.51 In the early colonial period, Spain attempted to enslave indigenous workers, to labor in mines and on plantations. This practice was rarely successful; ravaged by European-borne diseases and prone to escaping to the hinterlands, Native Americans were exterminated in some regions, and retreated or resisted in others. By the early sixteenth century the Spanish government authorized the first importation of African slaves to the New World colonies. Although Spain attempted direct slave trading in Africa on several occasions, the efforts were never successful, and nearly all Africans carried to Spanish America had passed through the slaving enterprises of other nations. In keeping with the complex and monopolistic Spanish bureaucratic structure, the first African slaves had to be shipped to Seville first, thence transshipped on official Spanish ships. In order to simplify this cumbersome process, the Spanish government then authorized three American ports to receive slaves: Veracruz, Cartagena de Indias, and Portobelo. Havana and several Venezuelan ports were soon added to the list. When the galleon route was established between Manila and Acapulco, slaves from East Africa, purchased from Portuguese traders in southeast Asia, entered Spanish America from the Pacific. Although many contraband slaves disembarked at other locations, these ports handled the bulk of the slave trade until well into the eighteenth century, when de facto liberalization of the slave trade caused other ports to be opened, among them Buenos Aires and later Montevideo. The first mechanism for the importation of African slaves was the licencia or individual slave-trading authorization, whereby an individual colonist or merchant paid a fee to the government in return for an authorization to import a determined number of slaves. This system began during the period 1533– 80,52 and resulted in the total control of legal slave importation by the Casa de Contrataci´on and the Consulado de Sevilla. These licencias were not exclusive, but rather were authorized through a combination of monetary payments and 51

52

Larrea Palac´ın (1952), Carriazo (1954), Chaunu and Chaunu (1955–60), Sancho de Sopranis (1958), Cort´es Alonso (1964, 1966, 1972), Pike (1967), Ndamba Kabongo (1970, 1975), Graullera Sanz (1978), Molina Molina (1978), Franco Silva (1979, 1980), Cort´es L´opez (1986, 1989), Cort´es Cort´es (1987), Fern´andez Mart´ın (1988), Pe˜nafiel Ram´on (1992), G´omez Garc´ıa y Mart´ın Vergara (1993). Del Castillo Matthieu (1981:189).

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A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

political favors. Although the Spanish government profited by this arrangement, the number of slaves that could be imported was far lower than the demand, and the asiento system was instituted. Under this arrangement, the Spanish government contracted with an asentista, usually a trading company but sometimes an individual, to provide a certain quantity of slaves over a stipulated period. The typical asiento ran for thirty years, and many were renewed. The first group of asentistas included Spaniards and Portuguese, as well as Italians and other Europeans. The predominance of Portuguese among the first holders of asientos gave way to French, British, and Dutch slaving companies, as these nations moved into the African slave trade. In the past, many plantation owners had attempted to buy slaves from diverse ethnic groups speaking no common language, in order to minimize the possibility of uprisings and the formation of maroon communities. These efforts were never entirely successful, and some slave owners deliberately chose their slaves from a single group, based on that group’s reputation, e.g. for strength, resistance, tractability, manual dexterity, etc. By the end of the slave period, however, all caution was thrown to the winds, and entire shiploads of slaves from a single ethnic group were disembarked in the Caribbean. Regardless of the circumstances, religious and cultural practices, as well as linguistic differences, often kept African slaves from finding common cause. Ethnic rivalries which had seethed in Africa resurfaced in Latin America, and members of groups known as warriors and trendsetters in Africa became natural leaders in slave communities, often exerting a linguistic and cultural influence far beyond their demographic representation. Thus although hundreds of African languages were carried to Spanish America, only a handful made lasting contributions to developing Afro-Hispanic language. A summary of the principal slaving areas and languages is: S e n e g a m b i a (particularly early): Mandinga/Fula languages (Atlantic group). G r a i n C o a s t (Sierra Leone/Liberia): Vai, Mende, Temne (Kru languages). More of these were brought to the British-held Caribbean, whence to the United States. S l av e C o a s t (Dahomey/Benin): Ewe/Fon (Kwa languages). These were common throughout Latin America, as well as in Haiti and Brazil. C a l a b a r C o a s t / B o n n y (Nigeria): Yoruba (Lucum´ı), Igbo, Efik, Ijo (Carabal´ı) (Kwa languages). These groups were particularly common during the late eighteenth-/early nineteenth-century trade to the Caribbean, and to Brazil. C o n g o Ba s i n / A n g o l a : Kikongo and Kimbundu (Bantu languages). This area returned to prominence several times. It was first a major area in the

Africans in the Iberian peninsula

45

early sixteenth century, then again in the seventeenth century. It supplied a majority of slaves to the R´ıo de la Plata in the late eighteenth century, as well as supplying much of Brazil. M o z a m b i q u e / E a s t A f r i c a . Languages of the eastern Bantu group. These slaves were never as common, but were found in significant numbers in Latin America, particularly during the eighteenth century. African slavery in Spanish America How many Africans were transported to the Americas during the Atlantic slave trade? What were the demographic proportions, representing the different African zones and ethnic groups? How did ethnic origin correlate with eventual destination in the Americas? The search for answers is fraught with many difficulties, all revolving around the sketchy and often deliberately incomplete documentation which was produced during the slave trade itself. Published estimates of the total number of slaves taken to North and South America range between 3.5 million and 25 million. The majority of studies are based on secondary sources, and there has been much perpetuation of originally inaccurate figures. Political and ideological considerations have entered into many calculations, some tending to inflate the figures while others have a diminishing effect. The huge but indeterminate clandestine slave traffic is the single factor which renders an accurate count virtually impossible to obtain. Particularly during the nineteenth century, when slave importations into Cuba and Brazil, and to a lesser extent Puerto Rico and smaller Caribbean islands, reached a frenzied peak, laborers were scooped up from all areas of Africa, by well-established traders as well as occasional opportunists. In addition, slaves and nominally free blacks were transferred from one Caribbean territory to another, frequently in violation of the law. This demographic churning causes the potential for a slave (perhaps even born in the Americas) transferred from one island to another to be indistinguishable from a slave born in Africa. However, recent research, combining archival records, travelers’ accounts, census data, and demographic extrapolations, permit some reasonable guesswork. Some of the most thoroughly researched and carefully documented quantitative estimates of the Atlantic slave trade are found in Curtin (1969:88–89), who proposes a total figure of some 9.6 million Africans taken as slaves during the entire period of the slave trade. Of these, some 175,000 were taken to the Old World. This includes 50,000 taken to Europe (mostly Spain and Portugal), 25,000 to Atlantic islands (Canary Islands, Madeira, Cape Verde), and 100,000 taken to the island of S˜ao Tom´e. Some 651,000 slaves were taken to continental North America, 4 million to Caribbean islands, and 4.7 million to South

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A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

America. Breaking down the figures for Spanish America further, Curtin’s estimates are: Mexico: 200,000 Central America: 24,000 Dominican Republic: 30,000 Cuba: 702,000 Puerto Rico: 77,000 Argentina/Uruguay/Paraguay/ Bolivia: 100,000 Chile: 6,000 Peru: 95,000 Colombia/Panama/Ecuador: 200,000 Venezuela: 121,000 ........................................................ Total: 1,555,000 % of Atlantic trade: 16.3 Brazil: 3,647,000 % of Atlantic trade: 38.1

Rawley (1981:53), using additional data, ups the total figure for slave importations into Spanish America to approximately 1,687,000, roughly one sixth of the total volume. This increase comes from a revised upward estimate for Cuba: 837,000. Eltis et al. (1999) provides the most comprehensive database yet available on the demographics of the Atlantic slave trade, containing data on more than 27,000 slave voyages from 1595 and 1866. Although including many of the same sources as used to arrive at the estimates cited earlier, Eltis et al. makes reference to new data sources as well as extrapolative techniques; as a result this database represents the most accurate estimates currently available or likely to appear based on known documentation. This database emphasizes slaves sent to English and French colonies in the Americas, and a country-bycountry comparison with the figures cited earlier is not always possible. Some representative comparisons are: Cuba: Puerto Rico: R´ıo de la Plata: San [Santo] Domingo: Spanish-America main: Northeast Brazil: Pernambuco: Bahia: Southeast Brazil: All Brazil: Saint-Domingue:

684,000 embarked; 564,000 disembarked 11,800 embarked; 10,000 disembarked 64,400 embarked; 53,700 disembarked 6,900 embarked; 6,000 disembarked 117,000 embarked; 99,000 disembarked 26,300 embarked; 22,600 disembarked 69,000 embarked; 61,800 disembarked 251,000 embarked; 224,000 disembarked 1,171,000 embarked; 1,047,000 disembarked 1,517,300 embarked; 1,355,400 disembarked 791,000 embarked; 687,000 disembarked

These figures represent only the port of first arrival in the Americas, and do not take into consideration the considerable transshipment of slaves, e.g. from Cura¸cao. For example, during the same period, 86,500 slaves embarked for

Africans in the Iberian peninsula

47

the Dutch Caribbean (of which nearly 75,000 disembarked), most of whom presumably went to Spanish American colonies. During the fifteenth century, the African slave trade was limited in quantity. Most slaves were taken from the Senegambia region, with considerably smaller numbers from the Gold Coast, near the fort of Elmina, and from the Congo/Angola region. Beginning in the sixteenth century, with the opening of the Spanish American colonies to African slave labor, the quantitative requirements were much greater, and slaves were taken from points along the entire West African coast, from the Senegal River to Angola; some Portuguese slave trading even rounded the Cape of Good Hope to bring Africans from “Mozambique,” a term used to refer to southeastern Africa in general. However, certain regions always enjoyed priority among Portuguese traders; these were areas where broad trade relationships existed with cooperative local societies, and where African slave dealers were able to supply sufficient quantities of slaves to meet European needs. Some early figures from Peru (1548–60) show that nearly 75 percent of the slaves taken during that period came from the Senegambia area. Of these, some 22 percent were listed as Jelof (Wolof), nearly 9 percent as Berbesi (Serer), 19 percent as Biafara, and 11 percent as Bran. Other West African areas (the extended “Guinea Coast”) supplied 15.5 percent of the slaves, while central and southern Africa supplied 10 percent, of which 6 percent came from the BaKongo zone.53 Aguirre Beltr´an (1972:244–45) provides comparative figures for African slaves in Mexico, circa 1549. Of these, 88 percent came from the Senegambia (17 percent Wolof, 7 percent Serer, 11 percent Malinke, 28 percent Bram, 17 percent Biafada), 6 percent from other West African regions, and fewer than 5 percent from central and southern Africa. By the end of the seventeenth century, the demographic proportions had shifted considerably. All of West Africa supplied only 21 percent of the total, with no particular ethnic group standing out in this category. More than 75 percent of the total came from central Africa, with Angola providing the lion’s share, at more than 67 percent. Southeastern Africa accounted for nearly 4 percent of the total. Curtin (1969:104–05)54 has plotted percentages for regions of Africa from which (authorized) slave ships departed. This provides a rough measure of broad regional ethnic groupings. In the period 1551–1640, for example, approximately 12 percent of the ships left from Cape Verde (which also represents the mainland Senegambia/Guinea-Bissau zone), almost 25 percent from “Guinea” (presumably the remainder of the West African coast, centered around the Gold Coast), and 32 percent from Angola. Based on comparative evidence from several sources, including information on early African slavery in Bolivia and Chile, 53 54

Lockhart (1968:173). Based on data from Chaunu and Chaunu (1955–60:vol. 6, 402–03).

48

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

Curtin confirms that a dramatic shift from the Senegambia to the Congo/Angola region took place early in the seventeenth century, and the change occurred first in the South American colonies. Geographical proximity of South America to Angola was one obvious factor, particularly if the voyage was made to Brazil or (clandestinely, at first) to Buenos Aires. Curtin also suggests that the early flourishing of the S˜ao Tom´e sugar production, which drew intensively on Angola for slave labor, declined in the early seventeenth century due to competition from Brazil. This in turn made more Angolan laborers available for export to the Americas. Profile of African populations in Latin America The first large populations of African slaves in Latin America were used in highland mining operations, principally in Peru and Alto Peru (Bolivia), and in Mexico. Smaller numbers were taken to mining areas in Colombia, Honduras,55 and Guatemala.56 These early black populations were overwhelmingly male, and mortality rates were extraordinarily high in the demanding work of highland mines. Few linguistic or cultural traits remain from the first African slave populations in Latin America, except for some seventeenth-century songs and poems surveyed in the preceding chapter, which as both linguistic documents and literary works properly belong to Golden Age Spain. Following these early hints of Afro-Hispanic language, the record is silent for more than a century and a half, with the next round of Afro-Hispanic texts from Latin America not emerging until the turn of the nineteenth century. By this time, the Latin American dialects of Spanish had developed into essentially their present forms, and Afro-Hispanic language was quantitatively and qualitatively different from its Golden Age predecessors. Verification possibilities are also enhanced for the latter period of Afro-Hispanic textual evidence, since the very end of the period overlaps with objectively acceptable anthropological descriptions, and, in a few cases, with materials transcribed from the last survivors of the bozal generation. Black Africans continued to work in mines and placer gold deposits throughout the colonial period, but the proportions dropped drastically after the sixteenth century. From the seventeenth century onwards, the only significant groups of black slaves engaged in mining activities were found in Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil, in remote jungle areas where placer mining was handled by large labor gangs. Under these conditions, the black population – augmented by a significant number of females – was able to maintain itself demographically, and the descendants of these laborers are still the dominant population in the Colombian Choc´o, in northwestern Ecuador, and in much of Brazil’s 55

Leiva Vivas (1982, 1993).

56

D. Palma (1974).

Africans in the Iberian peninsula

49

interior. The working conditions were difficult but not impossible, and black slaves often worked side by side with white fortune seekers. Individual liberty for slaves was higher than in most other slave holdings, and rather than forming discrete maroon communities, black gold miners often drifted away from the settlements and lived off the land. This was a significantly different arrangement than had prevailed in the early highland silver and gold mining operations, in which slaves were closely confined, and it also differed from later plantation societies. With the exception of Brazil – which had been a major player in the world sugar market since the seventeenth century – the greatest use of African slaves in Spanish America from the middle of the seventeenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century took place in urban labor settings. Black slaves worked as domestic employees, municipal workers, artisans, and day laborers. Many slave owners allowed their slaves to work for wages, requiring only that a fixed income be returned to the owner. This gave to many slaves a relative autonomy during much of the day, and also more fully integrated blacks into all aspects of colonial Latin American society. It was impossible to exist in a colonial Latin American city without coming into constant contact with black slaves – in markets, ports, artisans’ stalls, and in private dwellings. Blacks worked as street vendors, teamsters, stevedores, tradesmen’s helpers (sometimes as apprentices and even journeymen). They had their own churches and socio-religious societies, and organized dances and processions. In many ways, the life of the urban black slave in colonial Latin America was not unlike the situation of the slave in ancient Greece and Rome. Linguistically, blacks were in constant contact with local varieties of Spanish and Portuguese, although American-born blacks may have retained certain ethnolinguistic markers as a consequence of their inevitably marginalized status. Prior to the nineteenth century, the proportion of African slaves working in agriculture was quite small, and large plantations had yet to come into existence. The exceptions were the sugar estates of Brazil, the smaller sugar haciendas of coastal Mexico and Peru, and the cacao plantations of Venezuela. Within Latin America, none of the plantations were large, with the biggest employing no more than a few dozen slaves, and the social microcosm of the gigantic slave plantation had yet to come into being. With the sharp dropoff in world sugar production following the Haitian revolution of the 1790s, Brazil, Cuba, and Puerto Rico rushed to fill the gap. Cuba in particular increased its slave importations and its sugar production so as to rival the output of Brazil and Jamaica, then the world’s largest sugar exporters. Coffee, another of French Saint-Domingue’s key exports, also became an important cash crop in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Brazil. Peruvian estate owners also increased their sugar production, and also planted thousands of acres of cotton, all of which required African slaves and indentured Chinese laborers.

50

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

Afro-Iberian language: from the fifteenth century to the twentieth The cultural encounters between sub-Saharan Africans and speakers of Portuguese and Spanish gave rise to numerous contact vernaculars, ranging from rudimentary jargons and pidgins to stable creoles which continue to be spoken even today. As thousands of Africans and their descendants acquired Portuguese and Spanish in the Iberian Peninsula, Africa, and particularly Latin America, they incorporated characteristics common to all second-language varieties of Ibero-Romance languages. Most of these traits did not survive as descendants of Africans acquired Spanish and Portuguese natively, but in areas of heavy Afro-Latin concentration, partial restructuring may have occurred. Linguistic evidence for earlier centuries of Afro-Iberian language contact is scarce and unreliable, consisting almost entirely of literary parodies and occasional travelers’ observations. The following chapters will survey the available evidence in an attempt to establish a reasonable baseline description of Afro-Iberian speech across time and space.

2

Early Afro-Portuguese texts

The earliest Afro-Portuguese texts The initial Afro-Portuguese linguistic contacts, and the concomitant formation of contact vernaculars, pidgins, and lingua francas, took place in West Africa, as well as aboard trading ships which plied the waters between southern Europe and the sub-Saharan African coast. Little is known about the specifics of the languages used by Africans and Europeans, but native and foreigner varieties of Portuguese were widely used throughout Africa, eventually extending along the entire Portuguese trade route, encompassing the South Asian subcontinent, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Macao, Indonesia, and many Pacific islands. Naro (1978) has documented the use of many forms of Portuguese beginning in the fifteenth century, by ships’ crews, slave traders, African and European merchants, slaves, and so forth. Frequently Portuguese was used as a lingua franca among individuals who did not use this language natively, thus contributing to the incipient pidginization of Portuguese outside of Europe, and the widespread acceptance of pidgin Portuguese forms as part of an emerging maritime vernacular whose traces are found in creole languages and nautical jargon throughout the world. The discussion involving Naro (1978, 1988, 1993), Goodman (1987a, 1987b), and Clements (1992, 1993) provides a good survey of the issues involved, as well as of the controversy surrounding both the input and the output of these multilingual contacts. It is known through historical accounts that some Africans in coastal areas visited by the Portuguese, as well as inland in the Kongo kingdom, began learning the rudiments of Portuguese around the midpoint of the fifteenth century. Unfortunately, the record is silent on the linguistic peculiarities of Portuguese as learned by Africans, although almost certainly this emergent language contained many of the same traits found in contemporary learners’ speech. The first written attestations of Afro-Iberian language comes not from Africa but from Portugal, and not in a historical narrative but rather in a stylized literary imitation. This early text foreshadows what would become a flourishing literary trade first in Portugal and then in Spain, exploiting the attempts of Africans to speak European languages. For more than two centuries, Portuguese and 51

52

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

Spanish authors, both in Europe and in the Americas, would embellish their poems and plays with the fala de preto/habla de negros; the black character speaking broken Spanish or Portuguese became such an established stereotype that by the middle of the sixteenth century it was not even necessary to explicitly identify the language as representing the speech of blacks. In speaking of the earliest imitations of Africans’ approximations to Spanish, Johnson (1969:69) observes that “. . . the linguistic caricature here may be due to the more vital reasons than might initially be assumed. The most obvious factor was, of course, an illiterate exposure to Spanish. This would lead to phonetic and syntactic distortion in any case. What gave the bozal’s distortion its peculiar features are perhaps linguistic and artistic interferences from his origins. The Spanish caricature developed a fine ear for the consequences of that interference and of oral transmission in the bozal’s disfraces negros.” For Johnson, then, there might be some element of linguistic truth in the literary stereotypes. In Spain and Portugal, these literary imitations persisted long after African-born blacks ceased to be a commonplace in the Iberian Peninsula, while in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Latin America songs imitating bozal language were sung in churches, cathedrals, and Christmas and Easter processions. In the midst of this literary underbrush comes a small number of observations written by priests, sailors, and travelers, in which Africans’ use of Spanish and Portuguese is attested. There are also a few documents written by well-trained Africans, in which occasional lapses from correct grammatical usage provide a glimpse at the sort of obstacles faced by Africans in dealing with unfamiliar languages. In the balance, Africans’ use of Portuguese and Spanish from the end of the fifteenth century through the end of the eighteenth century can only be reconstructed by picking through the quagmire of parodies and stereotypes and comparing the results with independently observed Afro-Iberian contact environments. First attestations: the poems of the Cancioneiro geral; the voyages of Vasco da Gama The earliest known Afro-Portuguese text is found in the Cancioneiro geral of Garcia de Resende, published in 1516; it is a poem written by the court official Fernam da Silveira, and dated 1455. If this dating is accurate,1 it means that an Afro-Lusitanian pidgin was already in use only a few decades after Portugal had begun exploration of the sub-Saharan African coast. The poem imitates the speech of a tribal king from “Sierra Leone” (one of the first West African areas touched by the Portuguese, and bearing a Portuguese name), and contains the first glimmerings of Portuguese-based creoles, as well as exemplifying the 1

Teyssier (1959:228–29).

Early Afro-Portuguese texts

53

type of broad-spectrum interference that speakers of African languages would bring to Ibero-Romance (Chapter Two Appendix #1). This text is of interest both for the language contact phenomena it contains and for the striking absence of other processes. There is no indication of phonetic deformation (with the possible exception of the rendering of Lisboa as Lixboa, hinting at an early palatalization of preconsonantal /s/). In later Afro-Iberian texts, phonetic modifications were essential components, and although some exaggeration and stereotyping occurred, these literary manipulations provide collateral evidence of evolving sound changes in Portuguese and Spanish. The use of leyxar for deixar may constitute a scribal error in this early text, although the interchange of /l/ and /d/ is a common trait of many later Afro-Iberian texts, reflecting the frequent complementary distribution of [d] and [l] in Bantu languages. In sixteenth century Portuguese texts, leixar appears from time to time in the absence of known African contributions, making this attestation more believable. Silveira’s rendering of Africanized Portuguese presages many of the grammatical modifications that would become hallmarks of Afro-Iberian pidgins and creoles. For example, this text uses the uninflected infinitive nearly exclusively. Most Spanish- and Portuguese-based creole verbs are based on the IberoRomance infinitive, although the third-person singular is a frequent alternative.2 This text also contains use of a mim as subject pronoun, anticipating a common event in most Afro-Iberian creoles.3 Finally, the Silveira text exemplifies widespread elimination of prepositions and conjunctions, relying on the simple juxtaposition of nouns, adjectives, and uninflected verbs to convey basic meaning. The poem provides limited opportunities for noun-adjective concord, but several lapses are noted. In general, Silveira’s poem provides a realistic sample of what the first groping linguistic contacts between Africans and Portuguese speakers must have been like. The Cancioneiro geral contains other specimens of Afro-Lusitanian pidgin, the most important of which is a text by Henrique da Mota written perhaps half a century after Silveira’s poem. This is a humorous account in which an African pleads with a European, claiming innocence in an incident in which a jar of wine was spilled (Chapter Two Appendix #2). This text shows similarity with the earlier Silveira example, but important innovations are also present. Like Silveira, da Mota’s “African” speaker uses mim as subject pronoun, together with uninflected infinitives. The use of augo´a < aguar “to water” hints at the eventually widespread loss of the final /-r/ in verbal infinitives, characteristic of Ibero-Romance based creoles. The most important feature of this text is the creation of the generic copula ssar, apparently a blend of ser and estar.4 Silveira’s text shows erroneous use of estar instead of ser (estar Serra Lyoa 2

Lipski (2001a, 2002d).

3

Lipski (1991a).

4

Lipski (1999c, 2002c).

54

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

< sou de Serra Leoa ‘[I] am from Sierra Leone’), but later Afro-Iberian texts often employ sar, which in Golden Age Spain at times acquired the first person plural form samo. That this form was not just a fanciful literary creation is shown by its retention in the Afro-Lusitanian creole languages of the Gulf of Guinea, spoken on S˜ao Tom´e, Pr´ıncipe, and Annob´on. Two other very brief fragments containing purported Afro-Portuguese pidgin (Chapter Two Appendix #3–4). Teyssier (1959:230) regards these fragments as “similar” to the da Mota and Silveira texts, but in fact they are considerably less developed, and show almost no signs of consistent pidginization. Aside from the use of unconjugated infinitives, the Monssanto fragment shows only use of my as subject pronoun, and estar as copula followed by a noun (vos estar diabo ‘you are [the] devil’). Also from the fifteenth century comes a brief observation by a chronicler of Vasco da Gama’s trips between east Africa and India in the 1480s. According to the chronicle of Gaspar Correa, during one of Vasco da Gama’s voyages to India he picked up an Arabic-speaking Moslem, who eventually learned Portuguese and served as an interpreter. At one point, a (black) cafre, referring to the interpreter in pidgin Portuguese, stated “Senhor, este homem muito taibo”.5 In addition to the use of the Afro-Arabic word taibo ‘good’ (< Arabic tayyib), which is found in other earlier Afro-Lusitanian texts,6 this brief sentence demonstrates a zero copula, one of the many options found in bozal Portuguese. Gil Vicente: the bulwark of the Afro-Lusitanian literary corpus Gil Vicente provides the largest single corpus of early Afro-Portuguese language, in plays written in the 1520s and 1530s (Chapter Two Appendix #5–7). The crucial examples come in Nao d’amores (1527), Fragoa d’amor (ca. 1524), and O cl´erigo da Beyra (1530). Gil Vicente’s texts are important since they represent the bridge between Portugal and Spain as regards the development of Afro-Iberian language. Vicente was a prolific writer who used both Portuguese and Spanish, and was familiar with language and society in the two kingdoms. All of Vicente’s “Africanized” speech is found in plays written in Portuguese (with one very short but important exception), a language which seeped into the first purportedly “Afro-Hispanic” texts which began to appear in Spain at approximately the same time. Due to this seamless transition between Portuguese and Spanish in the representation of Africans’ speech in the early sixteenth century, a perusal of Vicente’s Afro-Portuguese examples promises to shed light on the origins of Africanized Spanish. Thornton (1992:214) asserts that Vicente’s literary language 5

Correa (1858:60), Micha¨elis de Vasconcellos (1909:134).

6

Santos Dom´ınguez (1986).

Early Afro-Portuguese texts

55

. . . is a creole rather than a pidgin and his characters can express themselves fully, suggesting that at least in Lisbon, it had reached linguistic maturity. Such maturity might never have been reached on the Atlantic coast of Africa, where conditions would not favor it being learned as a native language by anyone. However, it probably did become the language of the islands offshore, and given their extensive commerce with the mainland, including long-term settlement, probably came to be a lingua franca rather than just a contact pidgin.

In fact, Vicente’s literary jargon is not representative of a true creole, in the sense of a grammatically restructured language, formed through extensive contacts and an ever-distant native-speaker model of the lexifier language. Nor does it fit the definition of rough pidgin, unlike the texts in the Cancioneiro geral. Rather, Vicente’s examples show a rather wide range of dispersion, ranging from standard (sixteenth-century) Portuguese forms to drastically reduced or misinterpreted elements. Given the constant influx of Africans into sixteenthcentury Lisbon, as well as the ready availability of native-speaker models (even the most socially marginalized blacks in southern Portugal were never linguistically isolated from native speakers of Portuguese), Vicente’s examples probably represent the furthest point on the road to creolization that Africans’ use of Portuguese ever attained in Europe. It was precisely in the offshore islands, such as S˜ao Tom´e, Annob´on, and the Cape Verde group that Portuguese-based creoles developed, but there is indirect evidence that some reduced and somewhat Africanized Portuguese also took root on the mainland, in the former Portuguese Congo and Angola.7 There are some differences among the texts, but nothing suggests any form of linguistic evolution, either in Vicente’s representation of Africanized Portuguese, or in the linguistic abilities of Africans resident in Portugal. Vicente’s texts provide the earliest examples of a realistic Afro-Lusitanian pidgin, complete with phonetic, grammatical, and lexical traits reflecting both the imperfect acquisition of Portuguese by adult speakers of other languages, and direct interference from African areal characteristics. Vicente’s texts exemplify nearly all the phonetic modifications that would characterize later more stable Afro-Iberian language. Briefly, these include the following: (1) Prevocalic /d/, normally a dental stop or fricative, depending upon the phonetic environment, is reduced to an alveolar flap [r], written r: rinheiro < dinheiro, rir´a < dir´a, turo < tudo(s), firalgo < fidalgo, vira < vida, riabo < diablo, maruro < maduro, vontare < vontade, passaro < passado, etc. This change became canonical in Afro-Iberian texts, continuing through the end of the nineteenth century. This realization of /d/ stems from the fact that the usual Ibero-Romance conversion to a voiced fricative does not occur among African languages. The resulting intervocalic stop, in rapid speech, approximates [r], and 7

Lipski (1995b).

56

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

was so depicted by Portuguese and Spanish writers. The same pronunciation characterizes Afro-Iberian speech at the present, in such regions as Angola, Mozambique, Equatorial Guinea, and Afro-Hispanic isolates in Latin America, such as the Palenque de San Basilio, the Colombian Choc´o, Villa Mella in the Dominican Republic, Afro-Peruvian villages, etc. (2) Vicente’s texts contain many examples of paragogic vowels, used to break up consonant clusters and yield a series of open syllables of the general form CV-: boso < vos, deoso < deus, Furunando < Fernando, sapantaro < espantado, senhoro < senhor, furutai < furtai, faramosa < formosa, Purutug´a < Portugal, etc. The addition of paragogic vowels became an important and longlasting feature of Afro-Iberian language, as will be seen in later discussions.8 (3) There are apparent examples of vowel harmony: boso < vos, deoso < deus, Furunando < Fernando, faramosa < formosa, Purutug´a < Portugal, etc. Vowel harmony is frequent in many Kwa languages, and in some Bantu languages. It can be found in the Portuguese-based creoles of the Gulf of Guinea, and in Papiamento. Vowel harmony, often involving paragogic vowels, is a frequent feature of later Afro-Hispanic texts. (4) The palatal lateral /λ/ is reduced to a fricative [y]: oio < olho(s), muiere < mulher, etc. In Spain, delateralization of /λ/ (ye´ısmo) began in Andalusia probably towards the end of the sixteenth century, and appears in Latin American texts beginning in the seventeenth century. There is no comparable evidence of delateralization of /λ/ in Portugal, where the palatal lateral pronunciation of /λ/ continues in the majority of dialects even today. In Brazil, however, vernacular pronunciation typically realizes /λ/ as [y], and this pronunciation is exclusive in areas of strong African influence. Delateralization of /λ/ in Brazil has been attributed to African influence, at times uncritically, but the early Afro-Portuguese texts suggest that Africans did indeed frequently realize /λ/ as [y]; naturally, an African influence is not the only source for such a pronunciation in other Spanish and Portuguese dialects. Portuguese /λ/ was almost always borrowed into African languages as [y], and reflexes of Portuguese /λ/ in Afro-Lusitanian creoles typically contain no lateral component. (5) Loss of final /r/ in infinitives, which became categorical in the formation of Afro-Iberian creoles, as well as in vernacular Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Hispanic speech, appears occasionally in Gil Vicente: dormi < dormir, com´e < comer, beb´e < beber, mett´e < meter, quer´e < querer, furt´a/furut´a < furtar, fart´a < fartar, traz´e < trazer, fal´a < falar, etc. (6) The Vicente texts provide the first examples of loss of syllable-final /s/, but with morphological conditioning: vamo < vamos, temo < temos. The issue of /s/-reduction is an important concern in Spanish dialectology, where 8

Lipski (2002b).

Early Afro-Portuguese texts

57

the possible African contribution to loss of syllable-final /s/ in Latin America (principally in coastal regions where both African and Andalusian influence was strong) continues to be debated. Afro-Lusitanian creoles do not exhibit widespread loss of syllable-final /s/, although inflectional plural /s/ is not usually present. In vernacular Brazilian Portuguese, particularly in areas of heavy African presence, syllable-final /s/ often disappears. Morphological conditioning is often present, since the first /s/ in noun phrases usually remains to signal plural. On the other hand, the final /s/ in the first person plural verbal desinence /-mos/ almost always disappears in colloquial Brazilian Portuguese (that is, when this form is not replaced by the third person singular, as in n´os e´ “we are,” n´os tem “we have,” etc.). In Afro-Hispanic texts, the earliest of which coincide with Gil Vicente’s writings, final /s/ is lost only in the verbal desinence /-mos/. This suggests that the tendency toward open syllables, embodied in the majority of African languages which came into contact with Ibero-Romance, was further accelerated by grammatically irrelevant consonants, such as the final /s/ in /-mos/. The Vicente fragments also provide several examples of obviously plural noun phrases in which no plural /s/ appears (Teyssier 1959:243). These cases illustrate the general avoidance of inflectional morphology by secondlanguage learners of Ibero-Romance, especially speakers of African languages when plurality, when signalled at all, is more often realized by means of prefixes. Also at issue is the fact that word-final /s/ was most frequently dropped in unstressed syllables, both noun/adjective plurals and in the ending -mos. Final /s/ in stressed syllables more often triggered a paragogic vowel, as in the omnipresent deoso/dioso < Deus/Dios. A number of grammatical modifications appear in the Vicente texts, nearly all of which are consistent with other Afro-Iberian literary examples, and are found in Afro-Iberian creoles. Use of (a) mi as subject pronoun continues the tradition first seen in the examples from the Cancioneiro geral. Mi is also used as a disjunctive object pronoun; the Portuguese clitic pronouns rarely appear in AfroLusitanian texts. The portmanteau copula sa has become solidified in Vicente. Definite articles are rarely used, conjunctions are frequently eliminated, and noun-adjective concord is seldom found. The majority of these morphosyntactic features are typical of foreign-language varieties of Portuguese, but use of sa and subject (a) mi foreshadow the eventual creolization of Portuguese along the West African coast. Other sixteenth-century Afro-Portuguese literary texts Another key Afro-Lusitanian text is the “Auto das regateiras” (ca. 1550) by Antˆonio Ribeiro Chiado (Chapter Two Appendix #8). The lesser-known “Pratica de oito figuras” by the same author (Chapter Two Appendix #9) also

58

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

contains “Africanized” Portuguese. In Chiado’s “Auto da natural invenc¸ca˜ o,” a character imitating early Afro-Portuguese pidgin says:9 Eu sam o que tenho saibo, o v´os, Senhor, sentar raybo . . .

This text makes use of the early Afro-Iberian copula senta(r),10 and contains a variant of the Afro-Arabic element taybo, with the initial consonant realized as a flap. These examples continue the linguistic developments found in Gil Vicente, with almost no deviations. There are also several innovations, the most important of which are the use of sant´a(r) as copula (Prutug´a santar diabo), and the denasalization of /˜n/: seora < senhora, gallia < galinha, nigrio < negrinho, bonitia < bonitinha. Although Afro-Hispanic language frequently introduced intrusive non-etymological nasal consonants, loss of nasal elements also occurred. Portuguese borrowings into African languages typically denasalized Portuguese nasal vowels, and /˜n/ also became [y] with some frequency. Among surviving Afro-Iberian creoles, etymological /˜n/ is often represented by a nasalized glide; this is the case in Papiamento and sometimes Palenquero. The same pronunciation is also found in vernacular Brazilian Portuguese, in conjunction with other phonetic features which may possibly reflect an African contribution. Realization of /˜n/ as a nasalized glide also occurs in Haitian Creole. The “Auto da bella menina” by Sebasti˜ao Pires is approximately contemporaneous with the writings of Gil Vicente, and provides corroborative data on the status of Africanized Portuguese of the early sixteenth century (Chapter Two Appendix #10). This fragment is considerably different from the previously considered texts, containing a greater amount of distorted and barely intelligible material. At the same time, it contains striking similarities with the Vicente and Chiado examples, including use of mi(m) as subject pronoun (alternating with eu), use of the generic copula sa, paragogic vowels, denasalization of /˜n/ and of final nasal vowels, realization of prevocalic /d/ as [r], and use of the third person singular form of ir, bai, as uninflected verb, including in the infinitive (pera bay a bosso merce). This invariant realization of ir has made its way into many Afro-Iberian creoles, including Cape Verdean Creole, Palenquero, and Papiamento. An anonymous text, “Auto de Vicente Anes Joeira,” appears to come from approximately the same time period (Chapter Two Appendix #11). This text, unusual in many respects, contains recurring Afro-Portuguese elements, including the generic copulas sentar and sa, uninflected bai, paragogic vowels, use of bare infinitives as invariant verbs, and delateralization of /λ/. In this text eu is generally used as subject pronoun. 9

Chiado (1917:73).

10

Lipski (1999c, 2002c).

Early Afro-Portuguese texts

59

Afro-Portuguese texts from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries The next group of Afro-Portuguese texts comes from the seventeenth century, spilling over into the early eighteenth century. Most are anonymous songs and poem fragments, evidently part of a much larger corpus that was performed in musical and stage presentations. Beginning with the seventeenth century, the surviving Afro-Portuguese texts are anonymous; none of the major Portuguese writers used the l´ıngua de preto following the plays of Gil Vicente, although the parodies continued in literature aimed at the masses, and actually reached a high point around the turn of the nineteenth century, long after the Africanborn population which had inspired Vicente’s writings had been linguistically assimilated in Portugal. An early seventeenth-century Afro-Portuguese literary imitation is an anonymous song from ca. 1647, “S˜a qui turo” (Chapter Two Appendix #12). This text shows considerable phonological modification, as well as grammatical forms found in earlier texts. These include the invariant copula sa, loss of final /s/ in the verbal desinence /-mos/ and of final /r/ in verbal infinitives, replacement of the groove fricative [ˇz] by [z] (zente < gente, Zuz´e < Jos´e), replacement of prevocalic /r/ by [l], pronunciation of prevocalic /d/ as [r]. The shift /r/ > [l] has occurred in the Afro-Lusitanian creoles of the Gulf of Guinea, and was also widely represented in later Afro-Hispanic texts. In Latin America, the shift /r/ > [l] is frequent in Palenquero. There is also a suggestion of plural marking only on the first word of noun phrases: huns may donzera, huns rey, huns fessa. In general, this text, which comes more than a century after Gil Vicente’s early examples, is consistent with the notion that Africans resident in Portugal would have acquired greater fluency in Portuguese, with remaining problems being relegated to phonology, and to occasional grammatical lapses. The language of this song is a far cry from the broken Portuguese of the sixteenth century examples; there is a greater use of functional elements such as prepositions and articles, verbs are conjugated, and there is some noun-adjective concordance. A number of anonymous poems from the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries have been published by Hatherly (1990) (Chapter Two Appendix #13–18). These poems, although apparently written by different authors over a considerable time period, share many important common features. All are found in Afro-Lusitanian creoles, particularly in the Gulf of Guinea, and most appear in earlier Afro-Portuguese texts.11 The key recurring features include replacement of prevocalic /r/ by [l], signaling of plural /s/ only on the first element of noun phrases, paragogic vowels (particularly in boso < vos and Diozo < Deus), of sa as uninflected copula, magi [maˇzi], apparently derived from mas ‘but’ through 11

Megenney (1990a).

60

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

addition of a paragogic vowel, delateralization of /λ/. Similar paragogic vowels are found in the Gulf of Guinea creoles, and in the contemporary vernacular Portuguese spoken in Angola.12 A tantalizing document which purports to represent the speech of Africans in eighteenth-century Portugal is a letter apparently written in Lisbon by the “Rei Angola” to the “Rei Minas” in 1730 (Chapter Two Appendix #19). The writer and recipient would be leaders of the African cofradias or religious brotherhoods and mutual aid societies that arose whenever Africans lived in Portuguese or Hispanic societies. In cities containing large African populations, these societies were divided along ethnic lines, with the language and culture of particular African groups being partially retained in each group. In this case, the term Angola refers most probably to speakers of Kimbundu, but possibly to Kikongo, while Mina refers to members of the Akan group, from present-day Ghana (the former Gold Coast). The letter in question is an invitation to join in a religious procession, possibly during Holy Week. It is unlikely that this text was written by an African, since it was eventually published in a collection of vignettes to which black authors would have little access. At the same time, the consistent use of recognized Afro-Portuguese pidgin elements suggests that such a language was well enough known to non-African observers in Portugal as to enable a reasonably accurate imitation. If authentic, this text would demonstrate that a distinctly Africanized Portuguese existed in Portugal well into the eighteenth century, and not simply as a long-disappeared stereotype remembered only in literary documents. Even more crucially, it would demonstrate that Africans in Portugal (at least those born in Africa) used a pidgin Portuguese with consistent structural characteristics when communicating with Africans of other ethnic groups, rather than simply approximating the received language of metropolitan Portugal. The letter contains many structural elements which were present in earlier Afro-Lusitanian texts, including the lexical items seoro < senhor, vozo < vos, signaling of plurality in noun phrases only on the first element (at times with hypercorrect /s/, as in dos may Zozefa), rendering of the groove fricative [ˇz] as [z], use of sa as copula, delateralization of /λ/, and finally signaling of future with ha de, a combination which also made its way to several Asian Portuguese creoles. The last phase of Afro-Portuguese texts: calendars and pamphlets Beginning in the late seventeenth century and continuing until nearly the middle of the nineteenth century, pidginized l´ıngua de preto or l´ıngua de 12

(Lipski 1995b).

Early Afro-Portuguese texts

61

guin´e found its most consistent manifestation in hundreds of pamphlets and broadsides, known collectively as literatura de cordel ‘literature on a string.’ Most of these texts contain a formulaic use of stereotyped elements, much as in other ethnic “eye-dialect” literature meant for out-group consumption,13 but their very persistence, side by side with the existence of a considerable black community, attests to at least some real survival of Afro-Portuguese speech forms. The most common manifestations were the equivalent of farmers’ almanacs and astrological forecasts, known as progn´osticos and lunarios. This literary form first began in 1756, as a result of the earthquake that had devastated Lisbon a year earlier. Known at first as Os preto astrologo, these pamphlets offered humorous comments, mostly making fun of the precarious living conditions of blacks, e.g. “Fevereiro 6 (seg.), vento e frio, coitado dos preta que n˜ao tem roupa.”14 Subsequent reincarnations of this literary form included the Sarrabal portuguˆes and Plonostico curiozo. The original pamphlets faded out after 1760, but reappeared in 1803 with the Plonostico curiozo, e lunario pala os anno de 1804, pelo pleto Flancisco Suz´a Halley. These crude broadsides were published until the middle of the nineteenth century, after which the literary use of Afro-Portuguese pidgin disappeared from the Iberian Peninsula (Chapter Two Appendix #20). Possible existence of nativized “black Portuguese” in Portugal This pamphlet literature, together with the antecedent Afro-Portuguese texts, are important from a number of viewpoints. First, although some unrealistic traits are carried over (e.g. the massive replacement of /r/ by /l/), there are also indications that a stable Afro-Portuguese speech mode was stabilizing in Portugal by the end of the seventeenth century. This is suggested by the consistent presence of final /s/ only on the first element of plural nouns phrases, by the almost systematic lack of gender agreement, use of invariant vai for ‘go’ and invariant copular sa. These texts are also important since they raise the probability that some identifiable ethnolinguistic features were retained in the Afro-Portuguese community at least until the early decades of the nineteenth century and perhaps later. Although written imitations of ethnically marked speech varieties may persist in some forms of literature long after the groups 13

14

Strictly speaking, “eye-dialect” refers to spelling alterations meant to suggest ethnic or sociolinguistically marked speech, whether or not an actual change in pronunciation would result. Thus, for example, writing English comin’ for coming and Spanish trabajao for trabajado actually represent alternative pronunciations, while writing English was as wuz or Spanish hasta as asta may visually suggest colloquial or uneducated speech, although if read aloud the “altered” variants are identical to the standard forms. Literary imitations of Africans’ attempts at speaking Spanish and Portuguese employed both techniques. Tinhor˜ao (1988:210).

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in question have ceased to use the marked forms, this is rarely the case for pamphlet literature (and such modern-day equivalents as comic books, tabloids, and trading cards), which is designed to satisfy the immediate pleasures and prejudices of the masses. In Portugal, the thriving market for the l´ıngua de preto until the middle of the nineteenth century effectively brackets the real use of some sort of ethnolinguistically identifiable “black Portuguese traits.” Even allowing for the exaggeration and outright misrepresentation inherent in these racist parodies, it is impossible to escape the conclusion that at least some blacks in Portugal, most notably those born and raised in that country and not influenced by foreign-born bozal speech, natively used forms which were identified with earlier Afro-Portuguese pidgin. Whether these forms were used exclusively, or in parallel with non-African Portuguese (e.g. as an in-group manifestation of ethnic solidarity) is impossible to determine from the available documentation. The preceding evidence suggests that an Afro-Portuguese pidgin was evidently used in continental Portugal at least through the early part of the eighteenth century, although the most publicly visible manifestations had disappeared nearly a century earlier. Moreover, features identifiable as “black Portuguese” continued to be used by the more marginalized members of Portugal’s black community well into the nineteenth century and perhaps even later. Literary representations of this speech tended to exaggerate the comic element, but the linguistic features are consistent with accurately documented Afro-Iberian language contacts. Africans taken to Brazil also spoke a Portuguese pidgin during the first stages of their language acquisition, and many of the features of the pidgin documented for Portugal probably arose in Brazil as well. At the same time, the demographic profile of Africans in Brazil quickly shifted to favor speakers from the Congo Basin, providing a more homogeneous substrate than the apparently heterogeneous mix of African language families represented in Portugal. The extent to which a Bantu-influenced AfroPortuguese pidgin permanently affected vernacular Brazilian Portuguese is still an open question, but several features, such as double and postverbal negation (of the form [n˜ao] sei n˜ao), are arguably derived from such a restructuring process. In the early twentieth century, a number of folksongs and skits were transcribed throughout rural regions of Portugal (Chapter Two Appendix #21). Some of these songs retain vestiges of an earlier Afro-Portuguese pidgin, and were sung on feast days often accompanied by “African” costumes and dances. These fragments have obviously undergone considerable distortion across time and space, and can no longer be considered as reasonable approximations to the former speech of blacks in Portugal. However, most of the basic features of Afro-Portuguese pidgin are found in these fragments.

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Glimpses of Portuguese as used in sixteenth- to seventeenth-century Africa Among the first black Africans arriving in fifteenth-century Portugal were free emissaries, but slaves were soon to follow. There are no known written records of how free Africans might have spoken Portuguese (and later, Spanish). That Portuguese did become a significant linguistic presence in West Africa is attested by the numerous early Portuguese borrowings, in Akan, Kikongo, and later in Bantu languages from South Africa to the Horn of Africa. Presumably, the most fluent African speakers of Portuguese (such as the leaders of the Kongo Kingdom – the Manicongos – and their ministers) spoke with the substratal features observable, for example, in the contemporary speech of Angolans and Mozambicans who have attained fluency in Portuguese.15 Beginning with the first Christianized Manicongo, Congo kings wrote extensive letters in Portuguese to the King of Portugal, to the Pope, and to other European leaders. Most of these texts, however, do not shed light on the Portuguese spoken by Africans, since they were often prepared by Portuguese-born or Portugueseeducated scribes, and are written in the flowery formulaic language typical of European diplomacy in centuries past (Chapter Two Appendix #22). Africans possessing only a passing acquaintance with Portuguese would speak a rough pidgin, similar to that found in rural regions of contemporary Angola. Their language does not appear in documents of the time, but it is unlikely that this rudimentary Portuguese was much different than present-day phenomena under similar circumstances. Despite the highly artificial language of the “diplomatic” correspondence between Congo kings and the Portuguese crown in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, there are occasional glimpses of how Africans may actually have used Portuguese. One of the clerks of King Afonso of Congo, Jo˜ao Teixera, was himself Congolese,16 and texts authored by him contain a considerable number of pidginized elements, interspersed with the formulaic scribal language that forms the bulwark of these texts. Other African scribes also produced deviant elements. Phonological modifications such as metathesis or substitution of consonants and vowels was common. For example, in a letter from the Kongo king to the Portuguese king written in 1514 we find espriuver for escrever (Br´asio 1952:297). A 1539 letter has autos for aptos (Br´asio 1953a:74). From 1548 comes mos praz < nos praz, exemplifying an analogical change that has occurred in other dialects of Spanish and Portuguese (Br´asio 1953a:207).17 15 17

16 Thornton (1992:213–14), Br´ (Lipski 1995b, 2000b, Perl 1989b). asio (1952:323). Among other examples, in a 1515 letter popas appears instead of poucas (Br´asio 1952:336) and celestryall for celestial (Manso 1877:32). A document from 1547 has dinas < dignas

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Incorrectly conjugated or unconjugated (bare infinitive) verbs also occur from time to time. For example, from the same 1514 letter we find chamas for chama (Br´asio 1952:312), m˜adaramos and cheguar˜amos for mandarmos and chegarmos, respectively (Br´asio 1952:314).18 An early and grammatically questionable use of the progressive form of estar + g e r u n d comes in a 1550 letter: “. . . he verdade que elle vio estar fallando por muitas veses dom bastiam e dom pedro . . .” (Manso 1877:102). Deviations from normal Portuguese word order are found in several early documents written on behalf of the Kongo kings. A 1516 letter has “. . . sem ho eu ver . . .” (Manso 1877:34). In a 1516 letter we find “. . . j´a comprey vynte e cymquo pe¸cas do dinheiro que me vossa Senhorya deu . . .” (Manso 1877: 35). A 1548 letter has “. . . como dito he logo ele ouvidor mandou a mim espriv o abaixo nomeado que fyzese este auto . . .” (Manso 1877:85). A 1550 letter offers “. . . que diese a dom pedro que se nam saise da Igreja ate lhe ele nam mandar Seu Recado . . .” (Manso 1877:105), and “. . . rogou o dito dom pedro a ele testemunha que fosse fallar a manipemba que viese a fallar com elle aqui a comguo . . .” (Manso 1877:108). In a 1610 letter we find “. . . aonde me eu criey em companhia dos Religiosos . . .” (Manso 1877:156).

18

(Br´asio 1953a:155). A 1549 document has dynos < dignos and benyna < benigna (Br´asio 1953a:219). A 1550 document has pormjtio < permitiu (Br´asio 1953a:244). In a 1526 letter resdondesa appears instead of redondeza (Manso 1877:50). A 1535 letter has liagoa for l´ıngua (Manso 1877:65). A 1548 letter has avangelhos for evang´elios (Manso 1877:86) and Belltesar for Baltasar (Manso 1877:89). A 1550 letter has Jeshum < Jesu and ganeiro for janeiro (Manso 1877:101). The spelling Anguola for Angola also occurs, e.g. in 1558 (Br´asio 1953a:415). A 1615 document has christ´a for crist˜ao (Manso 1877:160). In 1688 a Congo king wrote cheg´a for chegada (Manso 1877:290). We also find comiguo for conmigo, etc., in 1566 (Br´asio 1953a:545), guosto for gosto in 1530 (Manso 1877:59), catolyqua for cat´olica in 1517 (Manso 1877:44), branquos for brancos in 1548 (Manso 1877:85), lloguo for lˆogo and fidallguo < fidalgo (Manso 1877:103–04), comguo for Congo and soquorrer for socorrer (Manso 1877:108–09) in 1550. Another 1514 letter has cortyse for cortasse (Manso 1877:27). In another letter from the Kongo king to his Portuguese counterpart, written in 1515, we find N´os rec¸ebam for n´os recebemos (Br´asio 1952:335), veo for vieram, dar for deram, cruc¸yficado for crucificaram, recebam for recebe, dar for d˜ao, nac¸eo for nascemos (Br´asio 1952:336), passar for passado, mjnystrar for administram, tomar for tomam (Br´asio 1952:337), acudir for acudais, etc. (Br´asio 1952:338). Another 1515 letter has os gentes viveu, “as . . . ryquezas som estroyc¸am . . . ,” dar for darem, tomar for tomarem, todos naceu, and acudir for acudirdes (Manso 1877:32–33). A third 1515 letter has “. . . e a nosa gente toda estar bem com elle e elle nos ter muito bem servydo . . .” (Manso 1877:33). A 1525 letter has rec¸eba for recebam (Br´asio 1952:455), a letter of 1526 has poderam for poder´a (Br´asio 1952:459), faram for far´a, salluaram for salvar´a, desparem for desampare (Br´asio 1952:462). Another letter of 1526 has conprara for comprar (Br´asio 1952:490). A 1535 letter has emvyando for enviado and fac¸am for fac¸a (Br´asio 1953a:53–54). A 1540 letter has eu more for morra, hordenou for ordenaram and venha for vˆem (Br´asio 1953a:105). A 1543 letter has ser for sendo (Br´asio 1953a:120). A document from 1550 has ser falar for ter falado and castjremos for castigarmos (Br´asio 1953a:243). In a 1575 document escrever appears instead of escrevo (Br´asio 1953a:127). A 1550 text has fize for fizesse (Manso 1877:106).

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Use of disjunctive object pronouns instead of clitics occasionally occurs in the early Afro-Portuguese texts. For example in a 1517 letter we find “. . . o dito senhor foy mandado a mim . . .”19 Loss of final /s/ in one or more elements of plural noun phrases, a feature of Afro-Portuguese language elsewhere, occasionally appears in scribal documents sent by Kongo kings during the sixteenth century. For example, in one 1515 text, we find nese[s] reynos (Br´asio 1952:333). In another, we encounter tanta[s] trybu[la]c¸ es (Br´asio 1952:337) and os pedreyro[s] (338).20 Unusually, /s/ appears only on the second element of a noun phrase in a 1540 document: “. . . lhe foram tomadas por o framceses . . .” (Manso 1877:76). Hypercorrect /s/ appears in a 1532 document: “. . . dom manuell meus Irm˜ao . . .” (Manso 1877:61). The use of sam as first person singular, a feature which was on its way out in early sixteenth-century Portugal (many fifteenth-century examples occur in the Cancioneiro geral), occurs in letters written by Kongo kings. For example, in a 1516 letter (Br´asio 1952:359; Manso 1877:36–37): “. . . que me lan¸ca em rostro que se eu sam cryst˜aom e vasallo delrrey nosso Jrm . . .”21 In the third person plural, both sam and s˜ao are used. For example, from 1549: “. . . hos que bem servem sam dynos de gualardam . . .” (Br´asio 1953a:218). In another document from the same year, we have “. . . s˜ao t o desausalutos . . .” (Br´asio 1953a:226). Occasionally, sam is used where a form of estar would be expected, partially reflecting old Portuguese and Spanish usage, but also presaging the single copula s˜a of the Gulf of Guinea creoles. For example in a 1517 letter we have “. . . por alumiar os cegos que sam em meus Reynos . . .” (Manso 1877:44). In a 1547 letter we find the syntactically confusing phrase “. . . como Rey christoom per direito sam obligado que eu poder a sua santidade e a seus subcesores . . .” (Manso 1877:82). The first person plural samos also occurs; for example in a 1550 document: “. . . n´os nos dias samos muy velho pera tamto sofrermos” (Br´asio 1953a:244). The diphthong -˜ao was sometimes written -˜a, for example Basti˜a[o] (Br´asio 1953a:251, 257), in 1550. 19 20

21

Manso (1877:41). A third 1515 letter has todallas cousas boas santas sam feyta . . . (Manso 1877:31). A letter from the Kongo king in 1535 contains meus yrm˜ao and meus subceso[res] (Br´asio 1953a:39–40). A 1540 letter contains the phrase dos franc¸eis (Manso 1877:73). A 1547 document has lhe[s] dou (Br´asio 1953a:175). A 1549 document has “. . . tem r do[s] que n fyzerm . . .” (Br´asio 1953a:227). In a 1550 document we find seus samtos m˜adamento[s] (Br´asio 1953a:244; Manso 1877:100). The opposite also occurs; in a letter from the Kongo king written in 1526, we find reynos instead of reyno (Br´asio 1952:470). A 1587 document las “ne lhe[s] ua a´ m˜ao . . .” (Br´asio 1953b:344). A letter dated 1517 contains the line “. . . que deles se n seguja nenh prouejto, do que sam mujto desconsolado . . .” (Br´asio 1952:406). The (phonetically similar or identical) som also appears, in a letter from the Kongo king written in 1530 (Br´asio 1952:540): “. . . por que de sua comver¸cassam som muyto comssollado . . .” A 1547 document has “. . . como Rey christ o per direito sam obrigado que eu poder a sua santidade e a seus subcesores . . .” (Br´asio 1953a:175). A letter from a Kongo king in 1575 has “[eu] S˜ao imformado que pera comserua¸c o do Reyno de Comguo . . .” (Br´asio 1953b:125).

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Kikongo (the native language of the Kongo kings and their scribes) and Kimbundu (the native language of the Luanda area of Angola) do not contain the liquid /r/, do not distinguish /r/ and /l/, and exhibit phonological alternation between [l] and [d]. Bantu influence on early Portuguese and Spanish bozal speech involved the change of /r/ > [l], as typified by the Spanish humorist Quevedo. There are many examples of this shift in early Afro-Hispanic and Afro-Portuguese literary imitations, as well as in the Portuguese-based creole languages of S˜ao Tom´e, Pr´ıncipe, and Annob´on, in which the Bantu contribution was significant.22 A reasonable extrapolation of Bantu phonotactics would suggest that the change /r/ > [l] would be a common occurrence among Kikongo and Kimbundu learners of Portuguese. This fact notwithstanding, in contemporary Angolan Portuguese (largely characterized by a Kimbundu substratum, together with related Bantu languages), the shift of /r/ > [l] is very rare, while the opposite change of /l/ > [r] occurs rather frequently. In the early Portuguese texts written by Kongo scribes, the change of /l/ > [r] does occur from time to time, while the opposite change of /l/ > [r] is also quite common; one example is the ambiguous gualardam < guardarem (?) in a 1549 letter (Manso 1877:91). Also, a document from 1547 has pruuica < p´ublica, showing metathesis as well as liquid neutralization (Br´asio 1953a:153). In a letter of 1535 we find decrarar < declarar (Br´asio 1953a:54). A 1540 letter has craro < claro (Br´asio 1953a:101). Another 1540 letter has lear < leal (Br´asio 1953a:103), fraldas < faldas, natarar < natural (Br´asio 1953a:105). A 1548 document has groria for gloria, contrairo for contrario and decrarado for declarado (Manso 1877:85). A 1549 letter has comfrimar < confirmar (Manso 1877:92). Neutralization without metathesis is found in pubryco < p´ublico in 1550 (Br´asio 1953a:244, 248–49). Also found in 1550 is decrarrou < declarou (Br´asio 1953a:24, 257–59). Direct testimony as to Africans’ use of pidginized Portuguese during the seventeenth century comes in a curious document written by Joseph de Naxara, a Spanish Capuchin priest, who lived in Allada (Ardra, later Whydah, along the coast of modern Benin) in 1659–60 (Naxara 1672). Naxara describes an African who spoke Portuguese and understood Spanish, and gave an example of his use of Portuguese (1672:239): N˜ao me chegu`e a` e` la, porque sa Ramera . . . e` meu Pai me votar`a a` o` tronco, se sabe que mi fal`e co ela . . . e` mais, que mi non quero chegar a` ela, porque sa Ramera . . . [I didn’t go to her because she is a harlot . . . my father would beat me if he knew that I talked with her . . . and moreover I don’t want to go to her because she is a harlot]

The use of sa is unique in coming neither from Portugal nor from the Angola/Gulf of Guinea region, but rather from the Portuguese Slave coast, 22

Schuchardt (1888), Vila (1891), Barrena (1957), Valkhoff (1966, 1975), G¨unther (1973), Ferraz (1979, 1984), Bartens (1995:113–27), Post (1995).

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where Kwa languages (e.g. Ewe/Fon) are spoken. There is no indication that Naxara was simply imitating literary examples of the period; indeed, since he spent much of his missionary career in Africa, it is not known how much of the rather frivolous Spanish and Portuguese literature in which “Africanized” language occurred he was familiar with. Naxara also gives an example of Africans’ use of Spanish in Ardra; the brief glimpse is much more broken than the Portuguese example, containing principally unconjugated verbs (1672:239): Espa˜nol est´a tanto mal Christiano, tiene una Margarita en Madrid, otra en Cadiz, otra en las Indias; mi, no tener mas que vna Margarita en Olanda, y auer treinta a˜nos que me cas´e, y no aver conocido otra Margarita . . . [Spaniards are bad Christians; they have one woman in Madrid, another in C´adiz, another in the Indies, I only have one woman in Holland and I am married to her for thirty years and have known no other woman]

Early Afro-Brazilian literary texts In comparison with the vast outpouring of Afro-Hispanic literary language from colonial Spanish America, only a couple of colonial Afro-Brazilian texts have come to light. This is also rather unusual, given the liklihood that vernacular Brazilian Portuguese of many regions was permanently affected by the early bozal African presence, probably via restructuring or “semicreolization” in the sense of Holm (1988:9) rather than passing through a stage of true creolization. Literary representations of “Africanized” Portuguese continued well into the eighteenth century in Portugal, and in Brazil appear to have been used until the final decades of the eighteenth century. By this time, Africanized varieties of Portuguese were already well established in Brazil, in many cases exhibiting significant differences from earlier European Portuguese literary examples. The use of European-derived stereotypes in late eighteenth-century Brazil can most probably be ascribed to literary tradition, and should not be taken uncritically as a representation of how Africans actually spoke Portuguese at this time. One interesting Brazilian document is a fragment of “O preto, e o bugio ambos no mato discorrendo sobre a arte de ter dinheiro sem ir ao Brazil,” published in 1789 (Chapter Two Appendix #23). This example contains most of the key elements identified in earlier Afro-Lusitanian texts, including use of (a) mim as subject pronoun, paragogic vowels, including the pronouns nozo and vozo, shift of prevocalic /r/ > [l], loss of final /r/ in verbal infinitives, signaling of plural /s/ only on the first element of noun phrases (together with some hypercorrect /s/), delateralization of /λ/, and realization of prevocalic /d/ as [r]. Missing in this text is the key use of sa as copula; otherwise, the example could have come from the sixteenth or seventeenth century.

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In colonial Brazil, literary Afro-Portuguese pidgin appears in a few texts until the final decades of the eighteenth century. A few other purported Afro-Brazilian texts have come to light, none of which may be taken at face value (Chapter Two Appendix #24). A very curious text claims to represent a Portuguesebased indigenous interlanguage of the early seventeenth century,23 but in fact the linguistic features are those commonly associated with Afro-Portuguese pidgin; moreover, the text contains references to blacks (Chapter Two Appendix #25). This text contains use of copular sa(r), paragogic vowels, and a number of other phonological and grammatical modifications acknowledged for AfroPortuguese pidgin. Several folkloric fragments collected in the early part of the twentieth century in Brazil also contain vestiges of earlier Afro-Brazilian pidgin (Chapter Two Appendix #26–27). Both poems exhibit loss of nominal and verbal agreement; the second text also makes extensive use of paragogic vowels. Afro-Portuguese texts from Asia Most attributions of African influence in Asian-Portuguese creoles must be done through inference and comparative reconstruction, since primary texts are all but nonexistent. An important exception to this lack of documentation comes from the colony of Dam˜ao in Portuguese India (Chapter Two Appendix #28). In a song formerly used by black slaves on the feast of St. Benedict, beginning in the seventeenth century, we find examples of Afro-Portuguese pidgin similar to those attested for Europe. This text also gives evidence of having been influenced by the Indo-Portuguese creoles, in particular use of the preverbal particle ta. The Dam˜ao text gives an inkling that Afro-Portuguese pidgin followed the trade routes of the Portuguese empire, perhaps leaving traces (long since disappeared) in other regions as well. Schuchardt (1883a:13) gives an example of nineteenth-century songs collected in Diu and attributed to blacks (Chapter Two Appendix #29). Schuchardt gives no analysis of these texts, but the language is notably simpler than the established Portuguese creole of Diu, suggesting a reasonable approximation to an earlier unstable Portuguese pidgin spoken by black slaves taken to the Portuguese fort at Diu. Schuchardt (1883b:11–12) gives examples of Afro-Portuguese songs from the former Portuguese Indian colony at Mangalore (Chapter Two Appendix #30). Again, the texts are presented without analysis, but they suggest that Africanized Portuguese songs and dances were not uncommon in the Portuguese Indian colonies, with the last memories of these song fragments persisting well beyond the actual African slave populations. 23

Silva Neto (1963:35–39), Silva Neto (1940:93–96).

Early Afro-Portuguese texts

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African slaves were also taken in large numbers to the Portuguese colony at Macao, beginning in the sixteenth century.24 In general, Macao creole Portuguese bears the strongest resemblance to Papia Kristang of Malacca.25 It is known that Malay/Malaccan natives formed the largest foreign-born population during the formative period of Macao creole Portuguese, and it appears likely that Malay settlers brought to Macao at least the rudiments of the Portuguesebased creole formed in Malacca. Batalha (1974:21) believes that Macao creole Portuguese was “uma linguagem j´a para aqu´ı trazida em pleno desenvolvimento.” Macao was also home to settlers from Portuguese colonies in south Asia, where Portuguese-based creoles also arose. However, the African cultural and linguistic contribution was also important; Batalha (1974:24) explains: Havendo entre eles muitos ind´ıgenas africanos . . . isso explica em parte certas semelhan¸cas, a` primeira vista surpreendentes, entre o velho crioulo de Macao e os crioulos afro-portugueses, sobre tudo os de Cabo Verde. Explicar´a at´e algumas coincidˆencias com o falar popular do Brasil, uma vez que este pa´ıs . . . recebeu ao tempo da sua coloniza¸ca˜ o grande contingente de m˜ao-de-obra africana.

The author adds the following clarification: Mas em parte . . . porque certos fen´omenos que se repetem em v´arios crioulos n˜ao viajaram, mas resultam de leis psicol´ogicas em todos os povos idˆenticos, como seja a tendˆencia para a simplifica¸ca˜ o. N˜ao e´ , pois, necessariamente de origem africana a redu¸ca˜ o de verbos, em Macao, a uma s´o forma que serve para todas as pessoas grammaticais (do tipo de eu sabe, n´os sabe, eles sabe), ou a forma¸ca˜ o de per´ıfrases para substituir os tempos verbais simples (como t´a vai paro o presente, logo vai ou lˆo vai para o futuro e j´a vai o j´a vai j´a para especificar a ac¸ca˜ o passada). (1974:24–25)

These comments add to the already growing evidence of an African-South Asian connection in the development, evolution, and spread of Portuguesebased creoles. The presence of s˜a in Macao also reflects an African carryover; this copula is not present in any other Asian Portuguese creole, but is found in the Gulf of Guinea creoles, currently as denasalized sa (or xa in Annbonese) but previously also as nasalized sam. The latter spelling is also found in early Macao texts, as well as s˜ao, and sang.26 Azevedo (1984) also notes that Macao was for a long period administered and supplied directly from Goa; he also gives examples of linguistic elements possibly transferred straight from Goa to Macao. Thus some form of Indo-Portuguese creole may have arrived in Macao from Goa, in addition to the indirect influence through Malaccan Papia Kristang. The presence of the copula sa in the Naxara text is revealing in both its geographical location and 24 25 26

Batalha (1974), Teixeira (1976), Amaro (1980). Chaves (1933), Rego (1943), Hancock (1973, 1975), Wexler (1983), Baxter (1988). Schuchardt (1888:196), Fran¸ca (1897:201), Coelho (1967:62), Batalha (1974:26), Ferreira (1978:28), Azevedo (1984:55).

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the time period for which it is attested, and may provide a clue as to the presence and absence of sa in Afro-Iberian creoles. The data surveyed to this point provide a puzzling distribution of the invariant copula sa: it is present in the Gulf of Guinea creoles, but not in Palenquero (with strong Bantu roots), nor in any known variety of Angolan Portuguese. It is also absent from the Portuguesebased creoles of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. At the same time, sa makes its appearance in literary texts early in the sixteenth century, beginning with Gil Vicente. Finally, this element is present in Macao Portuguese creole, having skipped over the intervening Asian Portuguese creoles. Everything points to the Bight of Benin/Slave Coast as the origin of sa in pidgin Portuguese, whence it was taken to Portugal and Spain and reproduced by early writers such as Gil Vicente and Lope de Rueda. The Gulf of Guinea creoles (S˜ao Tomense in particular) contain approximately equal proportions of linguistic material from the Slave Coast and from Bantu languages of Congo/Angola, while the obviously Bantu-influenced Palenquero contains few if any Kwa-derived elements. The copula sa could have been taken to Macao directly from the Bight of Benin by African slaves. This is a more likely source than S˜ao Tom´e, since no other features of the latter creole appear in Macaense. Amaro (1980) has discovered similarities between traditional board games formerly played in Macao and similar games in West Africa.

3

Early Afro-Hispanic texts

The first Afro-Hispanic texts, sixteenth century: Rodrigo de Reinosa In Spain, the literary representation of “Africanized” Spanish began early in the sixteenth century, although it is conceivable that some non-surviving texts might have been produced in the late fifteenth century. The earliest examples show the definite traces of the already established Afro-Portuguese language produced by such writers as Gil Vicente. This fact is unremarkable in light of the slave trade from Portugal to southern Spain, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, although some investigators (e.g. Granda 1969) claim that most Afro-Hispanic literary language, including the earliest texts, stems from direct contact between Spanish and native Africans, without the mediation of pidginized Portuguese. Among the earliest Afro-Hispanic texts are some coplas by Rodrigo de Reinosa (Chapter Three Appendix #1). The poems in question are contained in pamphlets or literatura de cordel, and do not carry a date. Russell (1973) uses indirect evidence to suggest that these coplas may have been written in the last decades of the fifteenth century; in any case, they were written no later than about 1510, which makes them the oldest Afro-Hispanic texts discovered to date. Nothing is known about the life of Rodrigo de Reinosa. Weber de Kurlat (1968) surmises that the “Africanized” coplas were written after the publication of the Cancioneiro geral in 1516. Men´endez y Pelayo surmised that Reinosa was a monta˜ne´ s, from the highlands of modern Santander (Cantabria) province, an idea echoed by Coss´ıo (1950). Little substantive evidence supports this claim, but it is obvious from the coplas that Reinosa had indeed experienced AfroIberian pidgin language, most probably in person. Cabrales Arteaga (1980:25) suggests that Reinosa may have spent time in Seville, since he was obviously familiar with the speech of several marginalized groups that were found in urban Andalusia. If the late fifteenth-century dates proposed for his coplas are accurate, Reinosa could not have been inspired by the Cancioneiro geral, nor by the writings of Gil Vicente, both of which were to appear several decades later. Although Reinosa’s own coplas were apparently only published as literatura de cordel pamphlets, there is some indication that these seminal Afro-Hispanic 71

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texts were the source of direct inspiration, if not imitation, by some of the first Spanish writers to make use of Afro-Hispanic pidgin. The coplas are ostensibly directed to blacks living in the already large black community of Seville. This fact is important since, although the pamphlets were clearly directed at least in part at the literate white public (or at least that subclass which routinely read the humorous pamphlets sold on the street), there is at least some indication that Africans themselves were contemplated among potential readers. That black slaves might be literate at a time when literacy was a skill not enjoyed even by many members of the aristocracy is not entirely impossible, since the majority of blacks in Seville at the turn of the sixteenth century were employed as domestic servants. Africans were often entrusted with raising the children of affluent families, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that at least some of the more favored servants and slaves might have been taught to read, at least simple texts. The existence of cofrad´ıas among the African community would ensure that group members who were literate might read these simple texts to illiterate compatriots. However, the crude and vulgar language of the coplas makes it more likely that a white working-class readership (or listenership) was the intended audience. Referring to the language of the coplas, Coss´ıo (1950:lxxvii) speaks of “. . . la imitaci´on convencional de su lenguaje, y aun m´as de su fon´etica.” This is a surprising affirmation in light of the fact that Reinosa employs virtually no phonetic deformation, other than the use of some Portuguese rather than Spanish forms. Russell (1973) categorically describes Reinosa’s habla de negros as “pidgin Portuguese” and “Afro-Portuguese pidgin.” He observes (1973:237) that ‘there are a good many occasions . . . where normal Spanish words are used in their normal phonetic forms, either because Reinosa did not know the pidgin versions or, more probably, because of the need to achieve a measure of intelligibility for a Spanish-speaking audience.” This is unlikely, since most of the Portuguese words employed by Reinosa are transparently cognate with their Spanish counterparts. If any aspect of the coplas would produce confusion in the Spanish reader, it was the grammatical distortions, which, however, constitute the essence of the habla de negros. Cabrales Arteaga (1980:232–33) analyzes ‘phonetic’ aspects of Reinosa’s bozal language, most of which can be attributed to vernacular Portuguese or sayagu´es of the early sixteenth century. Weber de Kurlat (1962a:385, fn. 17) suggests that Reinosa may have read Silveira’s poem in the Cancioneiro geral, which would place Reinosa’s writings well into the sixteenth century, and would also cast some measure of doubt on the authenticity of the language as used by Africans in Seville. Russell (1973:228–29) disputes this assertion, insisting that the structures used by the two writers are sufficiently different as to preclude a simple copy of Silveira by Reinosa. The base language of the coplas is clearly Spanish, but unmistakable Afro-Lusitanian elements are also found:

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(1) use of terra instead of tierra, ferro instead of fierro/hierro, esterco instead of esti´ercol, preto for prieto, bon/bona for buen/buena, porta for puerta, vejo for viejo, with non-diphthongized vowels (2) use of falar ‘to speak’ (3) use of ollo (Portuguese olho) instead of ojo ‘eye’ (4) use of muyto ‘much’ (5) use of ir embora ‘go away’ There are also consistent traces of Afro-Iberian pidgin, as well as simple deformations inspired by foreigners’ difficulties in acquiring Spanish. Among the more consistently pidgin traits are: (1) Use of (a) m´ı as subject pronoun, alternating with yo. (a) m´ı as subject pronoun occurs only in the earliest Afro-Hispanic texts, disappearing by the middle of the sixteenth century, while this pronoun was used as subject in Afro-Portuguese texts until the eighteenth century. (2) There is considerable confusion of ser and estar, although the hybrid AfroLusitanian verb sa(r) has yet to make an appearance. (3) Most verbs are left in the infinitive; occasional defective attempts at conjugation (e.g. sabo) also occur. The verb juro is the only correctly conjugated form. Reinosa’s texts mix Afro-Portuguese and foreigner-talk Spanish. To the extent that these coplas possess any historical and linguistic authenticity, they indicate that the first African slaves arriving in Seville via Portugal had acquired at least the rudiments of a Portuguese pidgin, but rapidly acquired Spanish lexical overlays. Most phonetic deformations can be attributed to Portuguese. However, there is one example of eta, apparently derived from esta, which Cabrales Arteaga (1980:232) analyzes as loss of preconsonantal /s/. The form Jes´u could be a Portuguese form, or a shortened version of Jesucristo; there are no other examples of loss of final consonants in Reinosa’s coplas. Palatalization of preconsonantal /s/ appears in moxquito and moxca, but these forms were common in sayagu´es of the time period, and cannot be taken as embodying African phonetic interference without further substantiation. The farsas of S´anchez de Badajoz Following Reinosa, another Spanish writer to make abundant use of “Africanized” Spanish was Diego S´anchez de Badajoz, in a series of farsas, including the “Farsa teologal,” “Farsa del moysen,” “Farsa de la hechicera,” and “Farsa de la ventera.” All were apparently composed between 1533 and 1548, which, extrapolating backwards, would place the dates of the language just past the examples of Reinosa (Chapter Three Appendix #2–5). Diego S´anchez was born near the city of Badajoz, probably in Talavera la Real, a few kilometers away, and almost on the Portuguese border. His date of birth is not known, but was

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probably in the last decade or two of the fifteenth century. S´anchez was proud of his title of bachiller, but it is not known for certain what university he attended. The most likely choice is Salamanca, in which case he would have been exposed to the writings of Juan del Encina and Lucas Fern´andez, who were active in Salamanca at that time.1 At almost any university of the time, S´anchez would have encountered the works of Gil Vicente, and significant parallels between the two writers are not difficult to point out. In all of his dramatic writings, Diego S´anchez demonstrated a keen awareness of popular speech. The African characters who appear in S´anchez’s plays derive their pidginized language as much from the rustic vernacular as from the learned Spanish of their masters, and the “African” component of their language must be evaluated against the backdrop of these nonstandard rustic variants. S´anchez de Badajoz’s African characters also employ a certain number of Portuguese linguistic traits, as do some of his rustic characters. This element must be treated cautiously, since already by the the early sixteenth century the use of vernacular Portuguese in Spanish plays was becoming a comic stereotype. The fact that Diego S´anchez lived and worked only a few miles from Portugal is also not irrelevant in his choice of vernacular language.2 Finally, it is almost certain that S´anchez based at least part of his “Africanized” Spanish on the language of African slaves living in the area. Although it is possible that S´anchez derived the inspiration for the use of African characters speaking pidginized language from early writers such as Gil Vicente and Lope de Rueda, the fact remains that the local church audiences who appreciated S´anchez’s plays were presumed to already be familiar with the mannerisms of African slaves. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, southern Extremadura had a small but important African slave population, most of whose members worked as domestic servants in affluent families. In the sixteenth century, the slave population of southern Extremadura was at times as high as 7 percent.3 Some of the slaves had arrived directly from Africa, perhaps after spending time in other regions of Spain, but a significant proportion had come from Portugal, where they may have acquired at least some pidginized Portuguese. For the seventeenth century, Cort´es Cort´es (1987:145) shows that more than 30 percent of the slaves imported into southern Extremadura came from Portugal, some 20 percent arrived from Andalusia, and more than 40 percent came from other parts of Extremadura. Among the latter group, a Portuguese origin is certain for at least some. In the sixteenth century, when Portugal still effectively controlled the African slave trade, the proportion of slaves arriving from Portugal would have been even higher. Despite this fact, S´anchez de Badajoz’s habla de negros is not a simple Afro-Portuguese pidgin; in fact the quantity of Portuguese elements is surprisingly small, and many 1 2

L´opez Prudencio (1915:52). Weber de Kurlat (1968, 1971, 1974).

3

Cort´es Cort´es (1987:96–97).

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can be attributed to the prevailing sayagu´es flavor of S´anchez’s marginalized characters. Nor is the Afro-Hispanic pidgin a simple literary invention, devoid of linguistic reality, as some have affirmed.4 L´opez Prudencio (1915:147–48) refers to this language as “una incomprensible algarab´ıa” and “la acaso arbitraria monserga.” Weber de Kurlat (1968:350) observes that among authors of the early sixteenth century, “Lo que interesa es dar impresi´on de portugu´es: no preocupa la fidelidad o la precisi´on o el hacer gala del conocimiento de una lengua extranjera, sino la presencia, tampoco sistem´atica, de unos pocos rasgos muy caracter´ısticos.” The linguistic characteristics of S´anchez’s “Africanized” Spanish is consistent with foreign learners’ attempts to speak Spanish, and reveals several African areal characteristics that recur in later examples. S´anchez’s farsas contain a language which is indisputably pidginized Spanish, in which Portuguese elements are minimal, and those few possibly Portuguese traces which do occur may well reflect regional rustic dialects of Spain (e.g. Sayagu´es and Extreme˜no), following well-established trends in Spanish theatre. Thus, the diminutive bonino suggests Galician/Asturian, as do the non-diphthongized verbs quere (Portuguese quer), bene (Ptg. vem), etc. The use of bona instead of buena, corpo for cuerpo, morrer for morir, etc. may reflect Galician/Leonese, or may be legitimately Portuguese incursions. In any case, it is clear that S´anchez de Badajoz was not blindly imitating literary models formed in Portugal, and available through the works of Gil Vicente and the Cancioneiro geral. S´anchez de Badajoz evidently was exposed to true pidginized Spanish, formed spontaneously as Africans in Spain attempted to produce comprehensible utterances in this new and hostile language. S´anchez de Badajoz’s examples provide the first attempt to portray the phonetic characteristics of Afro-Hispanic speech. Most of the traits had already surfaced in Afro-Portuguese texts, given the cognate nature of Spanish and Portuguese, and the predictable interference of areal characteristics among the principal African language families. S´anchez de Badajoz’s characters use a modified pronunciation consistently, in combinations which suggest formation in situ, rather than imitation of Afro-Portuguese speech. Among the salient phonetic traits are: (1) Realization of prevocalic /d/ as [r] (2) Realization of fricative [ˇz]/affricates [ˆj] and [ˇc] as [s] (ses´u < Jes´us, museres < mugeres, v´ırsen < virgen, nose < noche) (3) Denasalization of /˜n/ (siora < se˜nora) (4) Interchange of /d/ and /l/ (lesa < deja, lesila < decidlo) (5) These texts provide the first apparent cases of loss of syllable-final /s/ in Afro-Hispanic language, and not involving the verbal desinence /-mos/: etar < estar, pator < pastor, Fransico < Francisco, trequilado < tresquilado, apueta < apuesta, etc. These early examples are important in dating the 4

E.g. Barrantes (1882), D´ıez Borque (1978:95–96).

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reduction of syllable-final /s/ in Andalusian Spanish. The next convincing set of examples of /s/-reduction in Afro-Hispanic language (other than in the verbal desinence -mos, and in the frequent pronunciation of Jes´us as Jes´u, possibly influenced by Portuguese) do not come until nearly a century later. (6) These texts also provide the first Afro-Hispanic examples of loss of preconsonantal /r/: mueto < muerto. As with loss of final /s/, loss of word-final /r/ is a typically Andalusian characteristic, which may be traced in AfroHispanic texts in the frequent loss of final /r/ in verbal infinitives. Andalusian Spanish usually retains word-internal preconsonantal /r/ (and also realizes preconsonantal /l/ as [r]). (7) The pronunciation of madre as magre is also found in contemporary AfroHispanic language, e.g. in Palenquero, in the Colombian Choc´o, in parts of the Dominican Republic, and elsewhere. This pronunciation, however, pertains to rustic Spanish in general, and is widespread in rural areas with no African substrate. The farsas also demonstrate grammatical modifications, most of which are characteristic of second-language varieties of Spanish. These include verbs in the uninflected infinitive form, defective subject-verb concordance, and unstable noun-adjective concordance. Despite the occasional presence of elements of Portuguese origin, S´anchez de Badajoz’s habla de negros bears the earmarks of a spontaneously formed Spanish pidgin, representing the speech of African bozales who encountered European languages for the first time in Spain. Although they must be treated with care, these texts can tentatively be labeled as corroborative evidence that at least some Afro-Hispanic language arose spontaneously in early sixteenth-century Spain without a prior pidgin Portuguese basis. The peak of sixteenth-century habla de negros: Lope de Rueda The best-known examples of sixteenth-century literary habla de negros come from Lope de Rueda, in plays written in between 1538 and 1545 (Chapter Three Appendix #6–8). Rueda evidently had firsthand knowledge of the speech of Africans in Spain, and it has been suggested that he himself may have played the part of Africans in productions of his plays. “Africanized” Spanish occurs in the Comedia de los enga˜nados, the Comedia de Eufemia, and the Comedia de Tymbria. Together, the three plays provide a high degree of consistency in the use of Afro-Hispanic pidgin, which makes these texts among the most important early literary documents. Of all the early Spanish and Portuguese writers, Lope de Rueda was in the best position to accurately describe the language of African bozales residing in Spain. Rueda was born and apparently raised in Seville. After trying his hand at various trades, he formed a theatre company in which he was one of the

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principal actors, an expert at portraying the linguistically and culturally marginalized characters which fill Spanish Golden Age theatre. As in the majority of Spanish drama, the negros in Rueda’s plays are always cast in comical roles, are nearly always women, and stand out by their wildly improbable malapropisms, incoherent asides, and constant preoccupation with food, drink, love, and dancing. The texts contain such a density of mocking humor and crude puns that it is easy to dismiss the entire corpus as xenophobic rambling. Veres (1950:207) says that the jerga de los negros: “. . . presenta caracter´ısticas m´as arbitrarias todav´ıa y es dif´ıcil deducir qu´e es lo que puede haber de realidad en la transcripci´on de esta habla jergal; encontramos vulgarismos comunes en varias regiones dialectales, al mismo tiempo que otros fen´omenos dif´ıciles de explicar fonol´ogicamente.” While Veres is correct in noticing the use of rustic and dialectal forms in Rueda’s literary “Africanized” language, he apparently was not familiar with African areal characteristics that might have influenced bozal Spanish; this stands in contrast to Veres’ analysis of the jerga de moros. Cotarelo y Mor´ı (1908:312) dismisses the “formas caprichosas que de seguro no usaban las interesadas, y que aunque as´ı no fuese, en nada pueden ilustrar el idioma, porque eran tan variables como distintos los individuos.” Sarr´o L´opez (1988:610), on the other hand, believes that Rueda made use of actually existing linguistic modalities; she distinguishes (i) normal sixteenthcentury Spanish; (ii) vulgar or rustic language of the time; and (iii) a possibly Portuguese-influenced Afro-Hispanic pidgin. Other investigators, e.g. Chasca (1946), Weber de Kurlat (1962a), have focused only on the phonetic component of these and other Afro-Hispanic literary texts, concluding that at least some African areal characteristics are in evidence. Close inspection of Lope de Rueda’s habla de negros reveals complete consistency with Afro-Iberian texts from all time periods, as well as the first inklings of phenomena which became common in later texts. Rueda’s examples give the first convincing evidence that something resembling a coherent Afro-Hispanic pidgin might once have been spoken by first-generation Africans in Spain. Excluding phenomena which are simply the results of foreign-talk Spanish (e.g uninflected infinitives, lack of agreement, loss of prepositions), the recurring pidgin traits, almost all of which can be independently verified, include: (1) loss of /s/ in the verbal ending -mos. This compares to the nearly categorical retention of syllable-final /s/ in other contexts. The use of apu´e < despu´es may also represent systematic loss of /s/ in this near-automatism. Veres (1950:212) dismisses this loss of /s/ as a “rasgo completamente convencional, ya que Lope de Rueda hace hablar continuamente a sus negras articulando la -s final.” This observation fails to note the particular morphological conditioning of loss of final /s/ in these early texts. Later (1950:215) Veres returns to cases of loss of final /s/, describing them as “simples fen´omenos fon´eticos.” Weber de Kurlat (1962b:161) recognizes the clear

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morphological conditioning of the loss of /s/ in -mos and also in nouns in which the final /s/ is lexicalized, and is not part of the singular-plural opposition (e.g. Jes´us, m´as, etc.). The pronunciation Jes´u for Jes´us was found among non-African rustic characters of the time period, and cannot be taken as evidence of Africans’ pronunciation of final /s/. Rueda’s Africanized imitations contain a few other possible instances of loss of preconsonantal /s/. For example Celetinas < Celestina, in the Comedia de Eufemia, and refriados < resfriado in Tymbria, may be metathesis (as in the frequent preterite forms dijites < dijiste, hablates < hablaste, etc., found in many Mexican-American dialects) or a true case of loss of /s/, combined with insertion of hypercorrect /s/ at the end of the word.5 In the Comedia de los enga˜nados, the African character Guiomar uses jam´ın < jazm´ın, another isolated instance which is set against the general retention of final /s/ by all of Rueda’s characters.6 Rueda’s African characters also exhibit many instances of hypercorrect final /s/. Rueda’s texts do not give evidence of widespread loss of syllable-final /s/ in sixteenth-century Andalusia, even among Africans, so the hypercorrect [s] which appears in the habla de negros is more likely due to Africans’ unfamiliarity with Spanish (suffix-based) inflectional systems, and the consequent haphazard use of final /s/, felt to be authentically “Spanish” without regard for its grammatical function. (2) Use of sa (with rare variant san) as uninflected copula, replacing both ser and estar. The occasional samo also occurs. Veres (1950:216) attributes use of san as first person singular to confusion with the third person plural. He seems to concede little linguistic importance to this verb, which is in fact a key common element in most Afro-Iberian texts, dismissing it as a “pintoresca conjugaci´on de las negras.” (3) Intrusive nasalization, usually before obstruents: dalen diabro, tan diabro, por an mar, Punto Rico, etc. These literary representations usually represented either a prenasalized stop or a nasalized vowel, both transcribed as an intrusive nasal consonant by Spanish writers. Rueda was the first Spanish writer to accurately observe the full range of nasal phenomena in Afro-Hispanic pidgin.7 (4) Delateralization of /λ/ is the rule among the African characters, while not yet attributed to rustic or Andalusian Spanish. In the Comedia de los enga˜nados, 5 6

7

N´un˜ ez Cede˜no (1986, 1987a). Sarr´o L´opez (1988:606) believes that many of the instances of first person plural forms are in fact singular in reference, suggesting an incipient grammaticalization of this form as an unmarked and uninflected verb in early Afro-Hispanic language. Some examples are clear; for example in the Comedia de los enga˜nados, Guiomar says “. . . ya tenemo un prima m´ıa . . .” and “yo, si˜nor, queremos muntipricar mundos.” In Tymbria, Fulgencia says “¿No mira que samo refriados y pechigona?” This would correspond to use of invariant am in early Black English of the United States, a phenomenon apparently more frequent in literary imitations than in actual usage. Dunzo (1978), Lipski (1992b).

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we also find the Portuguese-derived forms trabaiar < trabalhar, fiyo < filho. (5) As in most contemporary Afro-Hispanic texts, prevocalic /d/ is realized as [r]. (6) In the Coloquio de Tymbria, a local rustic, playing the role of simple, refers to his lord as se˜nor mosamo; this is strikingly similar to the use of misuamo in later Afro-Hispanic texts, particularly in the Caribbean, and hints that the bozal expression may not result from simple analogy and wrong division, but rather from an already existent vernacular combination in use among peasants. Lope de Rueda’s Africanized Spanish texts are undoubtedly the most complete, most consistent, and arguably most authentic to come out of sixteenthcentury Spain. They give evidence of the incipient formation of a stable pidgin, although not with the degree of consistency that could eventually coalesce into a creole. Africans in sixteenth-century Spain never lived in such isolation from native speakers of Spanish, nor did large groups of Africans sharing no common language gather together. The pidginized language depicted by Rueda and other early dramatists was quite rudimentary, but common elements did tie these speakers together. In the seventeenth century, many of the original common elements, some of which may be of Afro-Portuguese origin, vanished from Afro-Hispanic speech. The resulting language was at the same time more random in its departures from Spanish usage, and more Spanish-like in its morphology and syntax. In some cases, this may signal that the habla de negros was no longer as common in the streets of southern Spain, and that the remaining literary stereotype was losing continuity with the original model. In other instances, it appears that fewer bozal Africans were arriving in Spain, and that blacks born in Spain either acquired regional Spanish with no ethnolinguistic traits, or retained at most a phonetic accent, while using reasonably standard Spanish grammar. There is no question that, especially after Lope de Rueda (and, in Portugal, Gil Vicente), the literary stereotype of the habla de negros became a stock in trade, which needed no introduction. Thus for example in Gil Vicente’s play Floresta de enganos (1536), a doctor (who is having an affair with a married woman), reverts to the habla de negros in front of her husband. This language is immediately recognized by the audience, despite there being no other ethnic references: Porque vos, mia Senora, estar tanto destemplada? Ya tudo estar peneirada, que bradar comigo aora? Que cosa estar vos hablando? A m´ı llama Caterina Furnando, nunca a m´ı cadela nao.

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Minor ‘Africanized’ texts from the sixteenth century A number of minor texts from approximately the same time period give brief examples of the early habla de negros in Spain. For example, Juan Pastor’s “Farsa de Lucrecia, tragedia de la castidad” (ca. 1529) provides a few instances (Chapter Three Appendix #9). This curious fragment, although too short to probe for consistent pidgin traits, shows some Afro-Portuguese characteristics, including non-diphthongized forms (dente, quere, bona, be, vene), some apparently Portuguese words (fogir, meyior < melhor), and two instances of the copula sa. The fragment also uses uninflected infinitives, confuses ser and estar, and shows some phonetic modification (e.g. delateralization of /λ/, and the unusual change of /s/ > [y] in yi˜nor < se˜nor). It is possible that the author had a vague awareness that blacks in Spain spoke a highly broken language with some Portuguese elements thrown in, and that he created such a concoction without ever having heard Africanized Spanish firsthand. A very brief fragment of Afro-Hispanic imitation appears in the Retrato de la loc¸ana andaluza by Francisco Delicado, first published in 1528 and evidently written between 1513 and 1527. The work was first published anonymously, and authorship was not determined until the nineteenth century. A single copy of the work survives, and contains the following brief fragment:8 – Xe˜nora llamar. – ¡O qu´e linda tez de negra! ¿C´omo llamar t´u? ¿Conba? – No, llamar Penda, de xe˜nora. – Yo dar a ti cosa bona. – Xe˜nora, x´ı. Venir, venir, xe˜nora dezir venir.

In this brief exchange between the “esclava” and Lo¸cana, the former begins by speaking normal Spanish (e.g. “Se˜nora, all´ı est´a una gentil muger, que dize no s´e qu´e de vuestra madre”), then switches to pidginized Spanish (with more “Moorish” and Lingua Franca characteristics than sub-Saharan African traits) when Lo¸cana addresses her in broken Spanish. This fragment is principally of interest for sociolinguistic reasons, hinting that Spaniards may have deliberately spoken Spanish “baby talk” to African slaves without regard for the latter’s achievements in Spanish. Little is known of Delicado’s life or of the circumstances in which he may have been exposed to Africanized Spanish. Belonging to a Jewish converso family, Delicado (born ca. 1480 around C´ordoba) left for Italy by the end of the fifteenth century, and it may have been in this country that he acquired familiarity with the Italianized Mediterranean Lingua Franca that appears to permeate his “African” Spanish imitation. Indeed, most of the Loc¸ana is set in Rome, and the characters speak a fluid mixture of Spanish and Italian, together with fragments of Portuguese, Catalan, and Latin. Men´endez 8

Damiani (1974:21), Mor´ua Delgado (1975:199–200).

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y Pelayo9 stated that this work “far from being written in ‘very lucid Castilian’ as the frontispiece announces, is written rather in that Lingua Franca or ItaloHispanic jargon used in Rome by the Spaniards of the lowest classes who had been residing there a long time, and who, without really having learned the foreign language, muddled their own language with all types of Italianisms . . .” The Italo-Spanish fragments which pepper the Loc¸ana presage the hybrid cocoliche language which became popular in Buenos Aires and Montevideo in the first decades of the twentieth century. Thus, Delicado’s representation of “Africanized Spanish” may well have been intended to depict a more Italian-based Lingua Franca used by the not-inconsiderable black slave population of Italy during the sixteenth century. Two of the spinoffs of the Celestina also contain brief fragments of putatively Africanized Spanish. The Segunda Celestina (1534–36) of Feliciano de Silva provides several examples (Chapter Three Appendix #10). Despite the assertion that this is the speech of blacks in Spain, these fragments show characteristics of “Moorish” or Arabic-influenced pronunciation (especially the writing of syllable-final /s/ as x, which represented the sound [ˇs]). Arabic words are also included, e.g. gual´a < wa allah “by Allah”.10 Most of the features are not typical of the sub-Saharan African speech found in earlier works, but given that black Africans in southern Europe had often arrived overland through Arabicspeaking North Africa, the text may not be totally irrelevant.11 The remainder of the features are unremarkable: unconjugated infinitives, vocalic instability, defective concordance. Only the use of (a) m´ı as subject pronoun provides a link with other legitimately Afro-Iberian texts. The Tercera parte de la tragicomedia de Celestina, by Gaspar G´omez de Toledo, was written at about the same time (ca. 1536). In this work, a few brief fragments of presumed bozal Spanish are found (Chapter Three Appendix #11). The replacement of syllable-final and syllable-initial /s/ by x [ˇs] is part of the “Moorish” literary stereotype, and is unlikely to have represented legitimate Afro-Hispanic speech of any time period.12 Nor can this be uncritically attributed to an early Portuguese palatalization of syllable-final /s/, which did not emerge in Portugal until some two centuries later (although occasional hints of palatalized /s/ appear in the earliest Afro-Portuguese texts). Rustic characters in sixteenth-century Spain occasionally palatalized syllable-final /s/; in Lope de Rueda’s works, for example, the pastores use such forms as oyxte < oiste, moxquito < mosquito, etc. Of the latter form, Cotarelo y Mor´ı (1908:324) states that it was common at the time, and suggests that the Andalusian pronunciation with aspirated preconsonantal /s/ derived from this pronunciation (see Walsh [1985] for a more recent version of such an approach). On the other hand, the 9 11

Cited by Damiani and Allegra in Delicado (1975:83). 12 Barrick (1973:22, 447–48). Sloman (1949).

10

Silva (1988:127).

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use of a m´ı as subject pronoun falls more in line with Afro-Iberian pidgin, not with Arabic-influenced speech. The same holds for the shift /d/ > [r] (e.g. vira < vida) and delateralization of /λ/ (cayar < callar). In sum, this text is a rather confused example of “alien” Spanish, evoking the speech of foreigners who were not held in repute, but unlikely to be an accurate representation of any particular group. The remainder of the sixteenth century gives few Afro-Hispanic texts of note. Jaime de Guete’s Comedia intitulada Tesorina contains a few brief examples (Chapter Three Appendix #12). This is a strange text, vaguely resembling earlier imitations of African and Moorish speech, but consistent with no other purported “Africanized” speech. The palatalization of /s/ harks back to moro imitations, the uninflected infinitives are common to all foreign imitations of Spanish, as is the confusion of ser and estar. Yo and m´ı are both used as subject pronouns (this is one of the last times that use of m´ı as subject pronoun appears in Afro-Hispanic language), and few of the phonetic modifications point unequivocally to an African substrate. A manuscript dated 1590 and containing an Africanized romancerillo rounds out the picture for sixteenth-century Spain (Chapter Three Appendix #13). This poem offers no new insights into early Afro-Hispanic language. The majority of the departures from standard Spanish involve phonetic deformations, including loss of final /r/ in the infinitive, and apparent loss of preconsonantal /s/ (paqua < pasqua, and piritu < esp´ıritu). The turn of the seventeenth century: Aguado’s Entrem´es de los negros The turn of the seventeenth century brought a flourishing of the habla de negros as a viable literary device in Spain, and the greatest writers of the Golden Age were quick to join the tradition. The first well-known seventeenth-century representation of Afro-Hispanic speech is the Entrem´es de los negros of Sim´on de Aguado (Chapter Three Appendix #14; ca. 1602). This is also the first play in which Africans, and their pidginized speech, rise to become main characters. Many of the stereotypical names, words, and phrases which became associated with the literary habla de negros make their first appearance in this skit. The pidginized language of the black characters reveals a much closer approximation to normal Spanish than most of the preceding examples, as well as a wide range of phonetic and morphological distortions. Most pidgin forms continue those of earlier texts: paragogic vowels (siolo/si˜nolo < se˜nor, dioso < Dios), the copulas sa(r) and samo; loss of final /s/ in the verbal suffix –mos; interchange of /l/ and /r/ in onset clusters (plinga < pringa); intrusive nasalization before (usually voiced) obstruents (e.g. a Dios > an dioso > an dioso), delateralization of /λ/, and flap pronunciation of prevocalic /d/. There is also frequent hypercorrect final [s], although loss of syllable-final /s/ in other contexts does not occur.

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The earlier cases of apparent loss of preconsonantal /s/, e.g. in Lope de Rueda, may be sporadic aberrations; on the other hand, early bozal speech, with minimal accommodation of Spanish phonotactic patterns, may have resulted in Africans’ failure to pronounce final [s], which was still strong in local varieties of Spanish. By the time Aguado wrote his skits, a native-born black population was in existence, and while most if not all spoke Spanish with no “African” characteristics, those ethnolinguistic traits that did remain evidently did not include widespread loss of /s/. Among the stereotyped expressions are the use of primo as a term of address among blacks, and the lament aunque negro, samo honraro. Variants of this refrain would be used in imitations of Afro-Hispanic speech until the end of the nineteenth century.13 G´ongora weighs in Just a few years after the Entrem´es de los negros, two of the most prominent writers of the Golden Age turned their hand to imitations of “black” Spanish; G´ongora in poetry, and Lope de Vega in drama. G´ongora mocked Afro-Hispanic pidgin in the poems “En la fiesta del Sant´ısimo Sacramento” (1609), “A lo mismo [al nacimiento de Cristo nuestro se˜nor]” (1615), “En la fiesta de la adoraci´on de los reyes” (1615), and the sonnet “A la ‘Jerusalem conquistada’ de Lope de Vega” (1609). In the last-mentioned poem, G´ongora trades blows with Lope de Vega, continuing a long-standing polemic (Chapter Three Appendix #15–18). Luis de G´ongora (1561–1627) was a native of C´ordoba, where he lived for the better part of his life. He subsequently traveled to Seville and Madrid on several occasions, and thus was exposed to writers who were employing the habla de negros, as well as possibly coming into contact with speakers of Afro-Hispanic pidgin. G´ongora’s parents and uncle owned slaves, so perhaps he observed this language at close range.14 The mocking tone of his verses leads us to believe that he did not always take this challenge very seriously. The least convincing example is the satirical sonnet “A la ‘Jerusalem conquistada’ de Lope de Vega,” where G´ongora takes a cheap shot at Lope de Vega, using only the most hackneyed stereotypes. Ciplijauskait´e (1976:273) describes the language as “escrito imitando el dialecto que hablan los negros de las colonias portuguesas . . . en varias composiciones de verso menor usa este dialecto, que no hemos logrado descifrar.” Jammes (1980:180), speaking of the other poems, observes “numerosos lusismos, como en las dem´as poes´ıas de G´ongora en que intervienen esclavos negros.” In reality, the Portuguese element is minimal (except for isolated passages, such as se chora o menin Jes´u), in comparison to earlier Afro-Hispanic texts, and the language is easy to 13 14

Jammes (1980:154) traces this stanza back to the Cantar de los cantares. Jammes (1967:241).

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comprehend, despite the phonetic and morphological modifications. G´ongora’s habla de negros contains a handful of well-established traits, which had become incorporated as stock literary devices: dropping of /s/ in the verbal suffix -mos, use of the copulas sa/samo, chaotic use of paragogic vowels, unstable concordance and final vowels of nouns, etc. In the 1615 poem “A lo mismo,” we find por en Diosa, indicating a prenasalized consonant. G´ongora may actually have heard this common variant, or may have copied this particular combination from earlier writers. It is virtually certain that G´ongora actually heard bozal Spanish, and his imitations cannot be dismissed as irrelevant. The master of seventeenth-century habla de negros: Lope de Vega By far the most prolific user of literary “Africanized” Spanish was Lope de Vega, in numerous major and minor dramatic works. In many of Lope’s plays, black characters speak standard Spanish, but Afro-Hispanic pidgin appears in the following works, written in the general time period 1602–18: El amante agradecido, El mayor rey de los reyes, La siega, Vitoria de la honra, Madre de la mejor, El negro del mejor amo, El Santo Negro Rosambuco, La limpieza no manchada, El capell´an de la virgen (Chapter Three Appendix #19–27). Lope de Vega was born and raised in Madrid, and lived in that city for most of his life. He also lived for shorter periods in Valencia and Salamanca. His literary career took him to many other parts of Spain, including Seville, where the largest black population of Spain was to be found, and where the pidginized Spanish attributed to Africans in Golden Age drama was most likely to be encountered. Prior to writing the plays in which Africanized Spanish occurs, Lope took part in two military campaigns that may have put him in close contact with AfroPortuguese pidgin. In 1583, after enlisting in the armed forces, he took part in a campaign to suppress an insurrection in the Azores. In 1588, Lope joined the Spanish Armada, via a considerable stopover in Lisbon. This was the time period in which Lisbon was teeming with African-born slaves and workers, many of whom undoubtedly worked on and for the ships which were preparing to sail. Taken together with G´ongora’s poems, Lope de Vega’s representations of bozal Spanish represent the most complete statement on the state of AfroHispanic language in the early seventeenth century. Like his contemporaries, Lope de Vega made abundant use of vulgar puns and linguistic stereotypes that were unlikely to have represented the speech of Africans in Spain. The use of cagayera for caballero was becoming a stock device, as was the pronunciation neglo. In the latter case, although /r/ in onset clusters was indeed shifted to [l] in some Afro-Iberian varieties (e.g. S˜ao Tom´e creole), a more common strategy, which can still be observed in regions where Spanish and Portuguese are in contact with African languages, is elimination of the liquid; thus negro > nego.

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The latter development, prominent in contemporary Afro-Iberian dialects, was never used by Golden Age writers, suggesting that the facile stereotypes often took precedence over observable Afro-Hispanic language. Lope de Vega was clearly aware of intrusive nasalization, more so than any other Golden Age writer except Lope de Rueda. His plays contain clear indications of prenasalized consonants (e.g. ens´a, en samo [El Santo Negro Rosambuco]). Lope is also the only Golden Age writer to indicate progressive nasalization in nenglo < negro (Vitoria de la honra, El Santo Negro Rosambuco). Half a century later, Sor Juana In´es de la Cruz would present the same pronunciation in the Spanish Caribbean, and nasalized variants such as nengro, nengre, nengue, nenglo, etc. abound in later Afro-Hispanic texts from Latin America. That these were not just fanciful literary inventions is demonstrated by the survival of similar forms in several Caribbean creoles, e.g. Sranan Tongo and Saramaccan. Lope de Vega’s texts show frequent use of first-person-plural verb forms with singular meaning, although this usage is suspect as a stock stereotype. It is possible that African bozales occasionally hit upon the longer plural forms, in view of the prominent verbal affix lacking in most other verb forms, but the main preference was for the third person singular as the most unmarked verb, followed by the infinitive, tendencies that can be observed today in many language-contact situations. In other respects, Lope’s bozal language is a continuation of earlier traits: use of invariant sa as substitute for both ser and estar, loss of /s/ in the verbal ending -mos and loss of /r/ in verbal infinitives, sporadic errors of concordance. Like G´ongora, Lope de Vega had abundant opportunities to experience Afro-Hispanic language of the time, and several innovative features of his literary imitations indicate that he was often a good listener. On the other hand, Lope’s near-obsession with Africans as buffoons (a view shared by nearly all his contemporaries) increases the likelihood that his writings are padded with established stereotypes that may not have accurately represented Afro-Hispanic language in the early seventeenth century. Less authentic seventeenth-century “Africanized” language After these early seventeenth-century examples, changes in the literary representation of Africans become evident, although some later texts continue to duplicate earlier patters, well into the eighteenth century. In general, grammatical deformations become less frequent, except for stereotyped morphological distortions such as diosa < Dios. Greater emphasis is placed on phonetic patterns. Taken at face value, this would indicate that by the middle of the seventeenth century, “black Spanish” in Spain was mostly a phonetically influenced “accent,” comparable perhaps to Black English in the United States, rather than constituting the pidginized speech of foreign-born slaves. There is abundant evidence that by this time, several generations of native Spanish-speaking blacks

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had been born in Spain. Nearly all were freeborn, and many worked as artisans, soldiers, and entrepreneurs. To the extent that they were at least partially integrated into Spanish society, a grudging acceptance of blacks as unremarkable human beings began to occur. Spanish writers began to differentiate between European-born blacks, whose speech was usually rendered in standard Spanish, and (African-born) slaves, who continued to speak a pidginized Spanish, sometimes laced with Portuguese elements. A good example of the contrast is El valiente negro en Flandes, by Andr´es de Claramonte (ca. 1640; Chapter Three Appendix #28). The protagonist of the play, Juan de M´erida, is a freeborn black from a town which gave Latin America some of its conquistadores. He speaks in sublime, oratorical Spanish, far superior to the rustic speech of white peasants and soldiers. Throughout the play, he reaffirms that blacks are at least the equal of whites, and offers his services to the Duque de Alba, at war in Flanders. The Duke acknowledges Juan’s valor and gives him several promotions, which infuriates the bigoted white soldiers. In the end, Juan is triumphant over his adversaries, and his point is driven home. The other black character, Ant´on, is a slave, and judging by his speech, is a true bozal. His language reflects the usual comic devices, including cagayera for caballero and the oath jurandioso. He apes Juan’s words, translating them into bozal language, and is more preoccupied with his next meal than with his honor. In this role, Ant´on fulfills the destiny of the buffoon, the role assigned to all blacks in earlier works. In El valiente negro en Flandes, however, the dual perspective begun by Lope de Vega in El santo negro Rosambuco (where pidgin-speaking blacks are contrasted with the impeccable Spanish of the African king) is continued. “Black” Spanish was becoming the language of foreign-born slaves, and as the latter group shrank in size and importance, the literary habla de negros remained behind as a folkloric memory, ever distant from linguistic reality, but which was to endure in poetry, drama, and music for another century and a half. The seventeenth century saw several other plays and skits in which bozal language was used. Many were patent imitations of earlier works which had achieved popularity. Lope de Vega’s El negro del mejor amo gave rise to at least two offshoots. The first, with the same title (Chapter Three Appendix #29), is attributed to Antonio Mira de Amescua 1574?–1644), although Cotarelo y Mor´ı (1931:167–69) rejects this authorship. Many critics attribute the play in question to Luis V´elez de Guevara, whose Negro del seraph´ın (1643) is nearly identical (Chapter Three Appendix #30). A glance at the two texts suffices to demonstrate that one has been copied from the other, or both from a common source. It is unlikely, however, that both were written by the same author, since no other Golden Age writer who used habla de negros so drastically changed the linguistic features of this stage dialect from one work to another; the possibility that printers’ errors or modifications lie behind the

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systematic differences between the two texts is very remote. Moreover, Spanish playwrights did not publish essentially identical plays under different titles, although it was not uncommon for plays by the same author to share great plot similarities. Both the second Negro del mejor amo and the Negro del seraph´ın fall in line with other seventeenth-century portrayals of Afro-Hispanic pidgin. Both exhibit a greater attention to phonetic modification, together with a closer approximation to standard Spanish grammar and morphology. Of the two plays, the Negro del seraph´ın exaggerates the phonetic distortion beyond all reasonable expectations; the bozal character combines c¸ec¸eo, ye´ısmo, paragogic vowels, replacement of virtually all /r/ and /d/ by [l], and all the standard puns and key words. At the same time, this play consistently uses the copula sa/samo, has more examples of plausible intrusive nasalization, and exhibits use of first-person-plural verbs with singular meaning (e.g. yo tambi´en me persinamo). Both plays eliminate the final /s/ of -mos; in El negro del seraph´ın, the final /s/ of second-person verb forms is also variably elided. Neither play shows other examples of /s/-reduction where no morphological conditioning is involved, e.g. in word-internal preconsonantal position, or final lexical /s/. Since the authors of both plays were mimicking Lope de Vega’s play, written several decades before, it is possible that neither of the later playwrights had firsthand experience with bozal language, which by all indications was fading out by the middle of the seventeenth century. By this time, the accumulated intertext of habla de negros, in drama, poetry, and music, was so considerable, that writers could and undoubtedly did invent passages in this dialect without ever having heard an African speak Spanish. The same of course holds for the imitations of Gypsies, Moors, and shepherds who used sayagu´es. In the second half of the seventeenth century, Pedro Calder´on de la Barca included brief passages of bozal Spanish in several skits written between about 1650 and 1670 (Chapter Three Appendix #31–35). The plays in question are La rabia – primera parte, Las carnestolendas, La pandera, and La casa de los linajes.15 Another brief fragment comes in the play La sibila de oriente y gran reyna de Saba. Calder´on did not place the same emphasis on stage dialects as Lope de Vega, and his literary attempts at imitating Africanized Spanish are hardly to be taken as accurate specimens of Afro-Hispanic speech in the second half of the seventeenth century. As in other plays of the later seventeenth century, his African characters’ speech is principally confined to phonetic modifications. They also use the zezeo which is in fact modern seseo (merger of all sibilants to a non-apical [s]), a trait by that time not confined to literary representation of Gypsies’ speech, but becoming the norm for Andalusia. In sharp contrast to the generally correct verb conjugations, including use of subjunctive, past, and perfect forms, Calder´on employs the copula za to occasionally replace both ser 15

Lobato (1989).

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and estar. It is hard to imagine that Africans who so deftly handled Spanish verb morphology would at the same time use this pidgin form. Several poems, plays and skits of approximately the same time period round out the use of Africanized Spanish in seventeenth-century Spanish drama. One is the “Entrem´es s´eptimo: de los negros de Santo Tom´e,” appearing in an early volume of Lope de Vega’s plays and attributed to him by some scholars (Chapter Three Appendix #36). Ana Caro de Mall´en used brief fragments of habla de negros in her writings (ca. 1639; Chapter Three Appendix #37), as did Avellaneda in the “Negros,” Agust´ın Moreto in the “La fiesta de palacio” (ca. 1658), Antonio de Sol´ıs, in the “Entrem´es del ni˜no cavallero” (1658), and a number of others. The language is unremarkable, continuing the stereotypes found in other texts of the time period. Indirect accounts of Golden Age literary production reveal that literally hundreds of short pieces containing imitations of Africanized Spanish were written; past a point, most writers simply learned this language as a stage device, completely removed from reality. Afro-Hispanic language as phonetic distortion: Quinones ˜ de Benavente Afro-Hispanic language took on a new turn in several of the entremeses of Luis Qui˜nones de Benavente, the master of the Spanish short skit. Bozal language appears briefly in El borracho and in the Sacristanes burlados; a considerable use of pidginized Spanish occurs in El negrito hablador, y sin color anda la ni˜na (Chapter Three Appendix #38–40). Qui˜nones, a native of Toledo, wrote the works in question during the 1640s, following on the heels of Lope de Vega’s success with the habla de negros, as well as many other contemporary plays in which this literary device was increasingly familiar. In his many entremeses, Qui˜nones also employed sayagu´es, Basque-influenced Spanish (the vizca´ıno), thieves’ jargon (lenguaje de german´ıa), and the rambling asides typical of the dimwit or bobo. It is obvious that Qui˜nones was adopting for his own use literary tools which had already become well established in the seventeenth century, and which the theatre-going public expected in large quantities. Given the facts of Qui˜nones’ own life, inasmuch as they are known, his contact with Africanized Spanish was most probably confined to second-hand imitations by other writers, although in Madrid he could have encountered legitimate bozal speakers. A glance at his imitation of this language shows both similarities and some differences, in comparison with the by now canonical patterns set down by Lope de Rueda, Lope de Vega, and other earlier writers. Bergman (1965:97, fn. 3) feels that Qui˜nones’ habla de negros scarcely goes beyond Quevedo’s formula of exchanging /l/ and /r/.16 A better way of putting 16

The seventeenth-century Spanish satirist Francisco de Quevedo (1988:127) once joked in the Libro de todas las cosas, that “sabr´as guineo [= bozal Spanish] en volviendo las rr ll, y al contrario: como Francisco, Flancico; primo, plimo.”

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the matter would be that phonetic modifications predominate over grammatical distortions. There is a much higher degree of correct verb conjugation and noun-adjective concord. Gone are the uninflected infinitives, the hybrid copula sa, use of first person plural with singular meaning, and wildly improbable malapropisms. Qui˜nones’ negrito uses seseo and ye´ısmo, traits also attributed to Andalusians and Gypsies. The shift /d/ > [r] is found in other Afro-Hispanic texts, and in Qui˜nones de Benavente we find the highest proportion of shift /r/ > [l]. Qui˜nones breaks from most earlier writers by also indicating lateralization of /r/ in preconsonantal and word-final position: impeltinensia, goldos, cuelpo, pielnas, etc. This change is much more Hispanic in character, occurring nowadays in the vernacular speech of several Caribbean dialects, as well as in parts of the Canary Islands and occasionally Murcia. It is hard to take Qui˜nones’ bozal language seriously, since the known facts of Spanish-African language contacts do not support the notion that a speaker who so accurately commands Spanish verb, noun and adjective morphology (typically among the most difficult for the foreign language learner) would so completely mispronounce the language. Literary leftovers: eighteenth-century habla de negros in Spain During the course of the eighteenth century, bozal language continued to appear in plays, songs, and poems, in Spain, Portugal, and sporadically in Latin America, following the same basic patterns established during the Golden Age. In addition to the Portuguese examples discussed earlier, several Spanish skits carry the Golden Age habla de negros well through the eighteenth century, although it is all but certain that legitimate Afro-Hispanic pidgin had long disappeared from Spain by this time. One eighteenth-century play employing Afro-Hispanic language, written around 1762–63, is the anonymous “Un vizca´ıno, un indiano, un gallego, un mercader, una tapada y un negro.” Another is “El indiano de la oliva,” by Pedro Antonio Gonz´alez Rub´ı, written during the last third of the eighteenth century. Around 1792, Luis Monc´ın published “El chasco por el honor o el indiano escarmentado” (Chapter Three Appendix #41–43). None of the texts departs significantly from earlier examples, showing great similarity with fragments written as much as 200 years previously. By this time, the literary habla de negros was not only a stereotype, but was so far removed from daily reality in Spain that few if any living authors had ever heard such language. The bozal language is limited to phonetic deformations, including loss of /s/ in the ending -mos, ye´ısmo, seseo, rather haphazard replacement of /r/ by /l/, and hackneyed lexical items such as siolo, Dioso, etc. Pampagaya < papagayo in “El indiano de la oliva” demonstrates prenasalized consonants, but this is the only suggestion of legitimate Afro-Hispanic language. In “El chasco por el honor . . . ,” for example, the “African” character of the language consists of formulaically

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replacing all instances of /r/ by /l/, following Quevedo’s maxim, and producing the effect of a speech defect rather than a foreign accent. In 1764, Manuel Vicente Guerrero published his Comedia famosa: el negro valiente en Flandes, segunda parte, following the tradition of writing sequels to well-received plays by other authors. The plot is similar to the original work by Claramonte, although the linguistic details are somewhat different. The play has two black characters, Don Juan de Alba, a caballero, and Antonillo, a “negro gracioso.” Don Juan generally speaks high-sounding Spanish, while Antonillo oscillates between a stereotypical bozal speech and standard Spanish. It is this alternation which makes his speech at once questionable as an approximation to actual Afro-Hispanic pidgin, and potentially important as a sociolinguistic commentary on the speech of the native black population in early eighteenthcentury Spain. Most of Antonillo’s deviations from standard Spanish come in the form of isolated words, particularly sioro, plimo, juro an Diosa, neglo, and the quintessential Afro-Hispanic stereotype cagayera [caballero], which Antonillo utters in his first sentence. There are also several instances of intrusive nasal elements in determiners, suggesting prenasalized consonants (an Diosa, lon diabla, den miedo tirito, Jesun Crisa, men daba dulce, vengo an siora, yo non puedo, cangayera). Throughout his lines, Antonillo omits the final -s of the first person plural verb endings in -mos. At one point, Don Juan dresses as an aguador (water carrier), and enters into a dialogue with Antonillo. Don Juan lapses into “black” dialect at several points, especially leaving off the -s of -mos verbal endings: “Vamo, que tambien le comeremo mermelada, cangalona, lo chorizo”; “ya, plimo, andamo severo.” He uses the shibboleth words siora and plimo to underscore his disguise; when speaking to Do˜na Leonor, he says: “Aunque moreno, torpe, bozal, de rustiqueces lleno, ver´a todo lo mundo a´ tu defense lo que ahora, siora, en m´ı no piensa . . .” Although the second Valiente negro adds little to the literary dimension of the Spanish Golden Age, it suggests that as late as the eighteenth century, a nativized “black Spanish” may have existed in Spain, in which certain ethnolinguistic markers such as sioro and neglo coexisted with relatively standard nativized Spanish. Literary habla de negros in the musical tradition Another rich source of literary imitations of Africanized Spanish in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is the Spanish musical repertoire. Curiously, for the modern reader, the most fecund source of “black” language was the church and cathedral performance, where villancicos and other songs of a religious nature were routinely performed on key feast days. Literally hundreds of songs were composed and performed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in all the major cathedrals of Spain, as well as throughout Spanish America. In the colonies, for example, “Africanized” villancicos cast in the

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Golden Age mold were produced and performed in great numbers in the cathedrals of Lima, Cuzco, La Paz, Bogot´a, Mexico City, Puebla, Guatemala City, etc. Even the songs composed on American soil bear the indelible mark of Spanish Golden Age literature; many of the composers had been born in Spain, and all were familiar with the “Africanized” villancico and the bailes de negros of the Peninsular literary tradition. One of the major composers was Alonso Torices, whose musical activities reached their peak around the middle of the seventeenth century. He worked in M´alaga and Zaragoza, and apparently later moved to Spanish America, where his works were performed at the Bogot´a cathedral, and perhaps elsewhere.17 Gaspar Fernandes (1546–1629), another composer who liberally used “Africanized” language in his songs, was born in Portugal. He rose to become choirmaster in Portugal, and later in Mexico; his songs reflect both Spanish and Portuguese elements. Juan Bautista Comes, a mid-seventeenth-century Spanish composer, also wrote a number of Africanized songs.18 Many anonymous villancicos were found in the cathedrals of Madrid, Huesca, Zaragoza, Granada, etc. (Chapter Three Appendix #44–45). The music of the villancicos is typical of Renaissance and Baroque choral style; there is nothing “African” about the melodies, and in performance these pieces are indistinguishable from the standard choral repertoire, except by paying close attention to the lyrics. A modern spectator may find it difficult to comprehend how crudely humorous dialect poetry, mocking the halting speech of slaves and servants who spoke Spanish as a second language, could find a place in the midst of a religious ceremony, and even be performed in cathedrals as part of the most revered rite, the mass. During the Spanish Baroque period, a much different attitude was taken toward sacred objects and celebrations. Statues of the Virgin Mary and saints were often dressed in costumes more appropriate for a wedding or a costume ball than for a church,19 and street processions during Christmas time, Holy Week, All Saints Day, etc., were accompanied by carnivalesque dancing, mime, and music. The poems of G´ongora and Sor Juana, meant to be sung during religious festivals, give testimony to the merging of sacred and profane, and underscore the fact that a writer with profound religious sentiments could make use of barroom humor, including parodies of socially marginalized groups. The language of the “Africanized” villancicos is in no way different from the remainder of the Golden Age corpus, and the pieces composed in Spanish America are identical to those written and performed in Spain, with all the aforementioned stereotypes firmly in place. 17 18

19

Claro (1974). Comes (1977), L´opez-Calo (1983:118). Other villancicos include (Tejerizo Robles 1989) “¡Ah Flansiquiya!” by Francisco Garc´ıa Montero Solano (1673), “Aquellos negros que dieron,” “Qu´e gente, plima, qu´e gente?,” and “Az´ı Flaziquiya” by Alonso de Blas y Sandoval (1694–1701), “Los narcisos de Guinea,” by Antonio Navarro (1717), “Apalte la gente branca” and “Los negrillos esta noche,” by Esteban Redondo (ca. 1783), etc. Crow (1985:232).

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A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

The Golden Age in the colonies: Afro-Hispanic texts from seventeenth-century Latin America In Latin America, several seventeenth-century writers and composers continued the Spanish tradition of using bozal language. Some were undoubtedly influenced by the speech of Africans whom they actually encountered in the New World setting, while others merely continued traditions learned in Spain. Since nearly all the writers in question were born in Spain, or had received higher education in the Iberian Peninsula, it is not feasible to consider most of the seventeenth-century Afro-Latin American texts as constituting a substantially different corpus from the Peninsular materials. The fact that virtually none of the linguistic traits represented in these early Afro-Latin American texts can be independently verified, for example in surviving Afro-Iberian creoles or vestigial Afro-Hispanic isolates, places additional constraints of credibility on these Latin American Baroque texts as anything other than imitations of literary stereotypes transported from Spain along with printing presses and paper. The only well-known seventeenth-century Latin American writer to use bozal Spanish was Sor Juana In´es de la Cruz, in several villancicos written around 1676 (Chapter Three Appendix #46).20 The similarities between Sor Juana’s poems and earlier Peninsular texts is too great to be due to chance, even assuming that such language was actually used by Africans as late as the end of the seventeenth century. Jim´enez Torres (1998:281) refers to Sor Juana’s bozal imitations as “un pseudodialecto afro-hispanoportugu´es, recreaci´on po´etica del habla de los negros de la Colonia, que aunque no corresponde exactamente a un dialecto real . . . procede de la observaci´on de las variantes dialectales del habla de los negros de la e´ poca.” Some inconsistencies in the text (for example the alternation of Dios and Dioso) are due to metrical considerations. Zielina (1998) examines the serious and rather complex nature of the black characters in Sor Juana’s villancicos, who stand in sharp contrast to the humorous linguistic simplifications attributed to their speech. Many of the puns, and the stereotypical names, are identical. There are some innovations in Sor Juana’s writings, which hint at an ongoing evolution of Afro-Hispanic language in the Latin American setting, where it would soon evolve into patterns never attested for the Iberian Peninsula. In Sor Juana’s writings, loss of preconsonantal /s/ is still very sporadic, with only a handful of cases in her entire Afro-Hispanic corpus: Flasica [Francisca], fieta [fiesta] (alongside fiesa and fiesta), naquete [en aqueste], etc. In Sor Juana, we find some of the first consistent cases of another example of morphological conditioning of /s/-reduction: loss of plural 20

Gabriel de Santillana also wrote almost identical verses, including the “Villancico de San Pedro, 1688” (Chapter Three Appendix #47).

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/s/ in nouns when preceded by a plural article in which /s/ is generally retained: las leina [las reinas], las melcede [las mercedes], lus nenglu [los negros], lo billaco [los bellacos], las paja [las pajas], etc. This configuration, where plural /s/ appears only on the first available position of a NP, is typical of vernacular Brazilian Portuguese, and is found in many basilectal varieties of Latin American Spanish, particularly those with a strong African connection, in the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Ecuador, and in the Spanish of Equatorial Guinea. Final assessment of Golden Age habla de negros The last of the Golden Age imitations of Africanized Spanish were written nearly three centuries ago, during a time in which no independent verification of Afro-Hispanic speech existed. Given the high degree of parody and plagiarism evidenced by Golden Age habla de negros texts, the issue of their usefulness to the linguistic reconstruction of Afro-Hispanic pidgin becomes crucial. A comparison of bozal texts representing more than three centuries of Afro-Hispanic contacts suggests that these documents may, if used with caution, represent a key component in the assessment of the African contribution to Spanish dialect differentiation. Although bozal characters became frozen as a literary stereotype, authors’ depictions of Afro-Hispanic pronunciation continued to evolve in parallel with regional language. To this end, several observations combine to justify a cautious consideration of Golden Age literary texts as sources of evidence on earlier Afro-Hispanic speech. First, although no single text can be taken as a faithful transcription of bozal language, most of the early texts contain phonetic and morphological traits which are empirically documented in existing Afro-Iberian pidgins and creoles, or which are logical extensions of African areal characteristics. Second, the African traits found in the literary habla de negros has no obvious non-African source; the remaining dialect imitations found in Golden Age literature (e.g. of Moorish, Basque, Galician, Gypsy, Sayagu´es, Italian, etc.) are not only internally consistent and compatible with actual instances of contact with the languages in question, they also differ qualitatively from all but a handful of habla de negros imitations (i.e. those which are clear parodies of Moorish speech). Such phenomena as massive conversion of prevocalic /r/ to [l], intrusive nasalization, use of (a) m´ı as subject pronoun, invariant copular sa, and flapping of prevocalic [d] are found in existing Afro-Iberian creoles, and (with the exception of the last trait, found in nearly all non-native varieties of Spanish) are not attested for other contact varieties of Spanish. Finally, the historical and social circumstances surrounding key authors and texts indicate likely familiarity with Afro-Hispanic pidgin, not only among a select group of writers, but also by the general public, who

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enjoyed – and more importantly, comprehended – plays, songs, and religious processions containing imitations of Africanized Spanish. When combined with Latin American bozal texts from later centuries, the Golden Age Afro-Iberian documents offer a useful tool in reconstructing the first approximations to Spanish and Portuguese by speakers of sub-Saharan African languages.21 21

Vodovozova (1996) provides a thorough and useful linguistic analysis of bozal language in numerous villancicos from Golden Age Spain and colonial Latin America.

4

Africans in colonial Spanish America

This chapter will present historical data on the most significant African populations in Latin America, beginning with the areas in which the largest and linguistically most important concentrations were found during colonial times. These are the regions for which the greatest amount of written descriptions of Africans’ speech is available. Africans in colonial Peru African slaves and their descendants were found in Peru from the earliest colonial periods to well into postcolonial independence, but the demographic distribution and geographical location varied across time, as did the interaction with speakers of Spanish.1 The use of African slaves had already been authorized for other areas of Spanish America, to replace dwindling indigenous workers, and African slaves were carried to the highland mines of Bolivia and Peru.2 Few demographic traces remain of these first African arrivals for several reasons. Nearly all were adult males, who were deprived of opportunities for procreation. Mortality rates were extremely high; the combination of altitude, cold temperatures, inadequate nourishment and harsh working conditions ravaged the slave population. At the same time, more stable nuclei of Africans began arriving in Cuzco and other developing colonial centers such as La Paz. As in other colonial towns, African slaves worked as domestic servants and artisans’ assistants, living patterns which were conducive to learning Spanish, and to leaving some linguistic and cultural legacy. A small but interesting collection of songs and indirect descriptions of Africans’ dances and language, to be analyzed in the following chapter, survives as testimony of a much larger cultural patrimony. As occurred, for example in Mexico and central Colombia, 1 2

Lipski (1994b). Harth-Terr´e (1971, 1973), Millones Santagadea (1973), Bowser (1974), Crespo (1977), Pizarroso Cuenca (1977), Portugal Ortiz (1977), Cuche (1981), Frisancho Pineda (1983), Aliaga et al. (1991), Aguirre (1993, 2000), Tardieu (1993, 1997, 1998), Lipski (1994b), Bridikhina (1995), Gobierno Municipal de La Paz (1993), Luciano Huapaya (1995), Luciano and Rodr´ıguez Pastor (1995), Angola Maconde (2000), Delgado Aparicio (2000), del Busto Duthurburu (2001).

95

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the population of African descent blended into the overwhelmingly mestizo population. No documented permanent linguistic phenomena can be attributed to this earlier African population, but the data provided by the early language samples gives a first glimpse into language in early seventeenth-century Peru. Later African arrivals in Peru were concentrated along the coast, particularly in Lima, where the increasingly affluent lifestyle of the city’s elite permitted the use of slaves as household servants.3 In other coastal regions, African slaves and free laborers worked in agriculture, including sugar and cotton plantations, and Afro-Peruvian communities are still found along the coast.4 The full extent of Afro-Hispanic cultural remnants preserved by these groups has yet to be determined.5 Although Peru was not the scene of massive slave importation during the nineteenth century, such as occurred in Cuba, African-born slaves were still to be found throughout the century, and in some instances even American-born blacks retained African languages. Rossi y Rub´ı (1791) gave ample evidence of the use of African languages in late eighteenth-century Lima. Santa Cruz (1982:70) reproduces a poem in Kikongo composed in 1812 in honor of a colonial official. In one of his own poems, “En la era colonial,” Santa Cruz (1982:434–35) gives examples of the African-based cal´o used among Peruvian slaves. The primary mechanism for the concentration and retention of African languages in colonial Peru were the societies formed by members of the same African ethnic groups. As in other Latin American cities with large African slave and free populations, Africans in colonial Lima formed cofrad´ıas or brotherhoods, ostensibly religious organizations that served as mutual aid societies and cultural gatherings. Each society was formed by the members of a single naci´on or ethnic group, and was associated with a particular parish and church. Rossi y Rub´ı (1791), in describing Afro-Peruvian cofrad´ıas, refers to several by name. A number of these names appear elsewhere in Latin America, and can be identified with specific linguistic and ethnic groups in West Africa: Lucum´e, Mandinga, Cambunda (Kimbundu), Carabal´ı, Cang´a, Terranovo, and Congo. A Spanish official, military or religious, was nominally in charge of each African society, but internally the groups were ruled by hierarchical structures modeled on African patterns. Within these societies, African languages were spoken during many ceremonies, together with whatever Spanish was known by the participants. For example, speaking of funeral ceremonies, we have:6 “Los condolientes saltan, y dan vuelta al rededor, par´andose algunas veces para murmurar en voz baxa algunas preces seg´un su idioma nativo y sus ritos.” There 3 4 5 6

Flores Galindo (1984:chap. IV), Romero (1987), Blanchard (1992), H¨unefeldt (1992). Romero (1904), MacLean y Esten´os (1947), Centuri´on Vallejo (1954), Cushner (1980), Arroyo (1981), Aranda de los R´ıos (1990). Cuche (1981), Tompkins (1981), V´azquez Rodr´ıguez (1982), Feldman (2001). Rossi y Rub´ı (1791:123).

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is no indication of the languages used by these cofrad´ıas, but given the names of the naciones involved, at least Kikongo, Kimbundu, Yoruba, Akan, Igbo, Ewe/Fon, and Mandinga can be supposed. Africans in colonial Mexico At various times and places during the colonial period, the African population was equal to or greater than the white European population, a proportion which rises even more when the mulatto population is taken into account.7 Veracruz was one of the three ports authorized to receive African slaves during much of the Spanish colonial era,8 and once trans-Pacific trade with the Philippines was established, Africans also entered Mexico through the ports of Campeche and Acapulco.9 Africans worked in mines and agriculture, and then in cities and towns throughout Mexico, from the Gulf of Mexico to areas which are now part of the United States.10 In some areas, the African presence is noticeable even today, in regional music, folklore, and cultural practices.11 Palmer (1976:3) divides African slavery in Mexico into three periods. The first period extends from 1519 (the date of the first slave arrival) to 1580, the end of an epidemic which devasted white, African, and indigenous populations. The second period extends from 1580 to 1650, and represents the heyday of Mexican slavery. It was during this period that Mexico was the second-largest slave importer in Spanish America (second only to Peru), and the period in which Africans greatly outnumbered Europeans in much of Mexico. The final period, stretching from 1650 to the official abolition of slavery in 1827, was marked by a rapid decline in slave importation, the development of an Afro-mestizo class with increasingly weaker cultural ties to Africa, and the absorption of much of the African population into the mestizo classes of Mexico. It is impossible to know how many African slaves were taken to Mexico during its colonial history; figures of 200,000 have been suggested,12 but the true facts will probably never be known. At the beginning, Africans in Mexico worked primarily in domestic servitude, with a few working in small-scale agriculture. Slaves were found primarily in urban areas, and were a status symbol for families who could afford them. Mexican society reproduced patterns found in contemporary Spain, particularly Seville. As the number of large estates, ranches and haciendas grew, so 7

8 9 11 12

Mendoza (1956), Aguirre Beltr´an (1958, 1972), Brady (1965) Carroll (1991), Brading (1971), Mayer (1974), Naveda Ch´avez-Hita (1979, 1987), Guti´errez Avila (1988), Herrera Casas´us (1989, 1991), Vald´es and D´avila (1989), Serrano L´opez (1993), the articles in Mart´ınez Montiel and Reyes (1993), and Mart´ınez Montiel (1995). Carroll (1991), Winfield Capitaine (1993). 10 Palmer (1976). Ngou-Mve (1994:150–52), Aguirre Beltr´an (1972). E.g. Guti´errez Avila (1988), Aparicio et al. (1993), Mart´ınez Maranto (1995). E.g. Palmer (1976:3).

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did the number of African slaves who worked in rural settings. As in Spain, many slave-owners allowed their slaves to rent themselves out to others for a wage or jornal, most of which was passed on to the owner. By the eighteenth century, the black population in Mexico was largely concentrated in the sugar plantations of Veracruz state: in Jalapa, C´ordoba, and Veracruz.13 These plantations continued to buy some slaves from Africa, but for the most part relied on an already existing Mexican-born black population. For all intents and purposes, following the middle of the seventeenth century, the presence of African-born bozales in Mexico was a rare occurrence. This partially explains the lack of identifiable vestigial Afro-Hispanic linguistic traits even in isolated Afro-Mexican villages; the absence of an African substrate has characterized these regions for several centuries. Muhammad (1995:175) observes that “the language of Afro-Mexicans is sometimes said to be ‘unintelligible Spanish . . . this unique Spanish dialect . . . developed because maroon communities were isolated from the rest of the country.’ ” In reality these modern Afro-Mexican dialects are in no way “unintelligible,” but merely show the signs of isolation and lack of prestige.14 Beginning with the first stages of colonial slavery, Africans in Mexico rebelled against their captors and escaped bondage. As early as 1560 – only a few decades after the initial colonization of Mexico – bands of escaped blacks were attacking travelers around Guanajuato. Earlier accounts of such bands had come from Nueva Galicia (around Zacatecas) in 1549. Mexico was also home to numerous maroon communities, the most famous of which was named after the Maroon slave leader Yanga in the early seventeenth century. The village survives today in the state of Veracruz, and while few Afro-Mexicans live in Yanga, there are several small afromestizo communities in the surrounding area. Cuajicuinalapa (Cuijla) was another palenque (Maroon village) formed in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century. Vestigial Afro-Hispanic language and culture are found in this and other nearby towns in Guerrero and Oaxaca states. Two other maroon communities straddled the boundary between modern Oaxaca and Veracruz states: Amapa and Mandinga. The latter community survived well into the nineteenth century, providing a safe haven for the last of postcolonial Mexico’s black slaves. Smaller maroon communities existed throughout the country, particularly during the height of the African slave trade to Mexico, in the early seventeenth century.15 13 14 15

Carroll (1979, 1991), Naveda Ch´avez-Hita (1979, 1987), Mart´ınez Maranto (1995). Aguirre Beltr´an (1958), Althoff (1994). Powell (1952:62), Cruz Carretero et al. (1990), Laurencio (1974), Corro (1951), Aguirre Beltr´an (1958), Davidson (1973), Carroll (1977). It is even conceivable that the once sizable AfroMexican population contributed to the weakening of syllable- and word-final /s/ in some parts of the country; see Lipski (1994d) for some ideas.

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Afro-European creole languages in Mexico Africans in colonial Mexico usually arrived directly from Africa, via the port of Veracruz and later Campeche. There is little documented evidence of the arrival of Caribbean creole languages in Mexico, unlike what occurred in the nineteenth-century Spanish Caribbean. There are a few isolated instances, however, where such contacts may have briefly affected Afro-Mexican speech. In the early 1800s, a group of Gullah-speaking Afro-Seminoles migrated southward from Texas and the Oklahoma Territory and founded the village of Nacimiento de los Negros, near Melchor M´uzquiz, Coahuila.16 This group had been forcibly relocated from the southeastern United States at the end of the eighteenth century. Immigration from Bracketville, Texas continued throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, bringing in modern varieties of English, but, particularly in religious contacts, some Gullah (known locally as “Seminole”) was retained. Today, all speakers in Nacimiento, most of whom retain some African physical traits, speak the regional dialect of Spanish with no distinguishing characteristics, but it is likely that earlier generations spoke with the secondlanguage traits found, for example, among the black English-speaking residents of the Saman´a Peninsula in the Dominican Republic. Strictly speaking, the AfroAmerican population of Nacimiento does not fit the traditional Afro-colonial pattern, but at the time the town was founded, black Afro-Mexican descendents of colonial slavery were still to be found in this part of northern Mexico, and some cross-fertilization may have occurred. In the mid-nineteenth century, during the Cuban sugar plantation boom and as the African slave trade was gradually abolished, Cuban planters briefly imported Mayan Indian laborers from the Yucatan;17 their approximations to Spanish were even documented by the lexicographer Esteban Pichardo (1849). Less well known is the fact that a group of rebellious Afro-Cubans were exiled to the Yucatan region in 1795, following the Haitian slave uprisings.18 The black Cubans were relocated in a settlement known as San Fernando Ak´e, near Tizim´ın. This location was chosen since it was far from both M´erida and Campeche, and its isolation would prevent any further uprisings by its residents. Although the climate and working conditions evidently precluded a significant population increase, blacks from other areas eventually made their way to Ak´e. At the high point of population, in the early nineteenth century, the town contained Mandingas, “Senegales,” Congos, “criollos de Santo Domingo,” and (presumed free blacks) from Charleston, New York, and Jamaica. The principal language of the community was reported to be “French,” but given the makeup of the community it is more likely that Creole French was in use. Further 16 18

17 Men´ Gavald´on (1970), Hancock (1980, 1986) . endez (1928, 1932). Fern´andez Repetto and Negroe Sierra (1995:54–57).

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research may reveal the true nature of this transitory Afro-creole community in the Yucatan. Blacks in colonial Argentina and Uruguay The second largest corpus of Latin American bozal language comes from the R´ıo de la Plata zone of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Until the middle of the nineteenth century these urban areas contained some of the largest black communities in all of Latin America. In the flourishing literary environment of nineteenth-century Argentina and Uruguay, imitations of bozal speech proliferated. In a few instances, such texts were evidently written by blacks themselves, and the tone of many of the other texts is not as mocking and exaggerated as found in texts from Spain and other Latin American areas. This fact, combined with the very high degree of internal consistency among Afro-R´ıo de la Plata texts allows for a relatively high degree of linguistic credibility to be assigned to this corpus.19 During much of colonial and early postcolonial period, the population of African origin represented a significant demographic proportion in Montevideo and Buenos Aires, approaching 40 percent of the total in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Argentines and Uruguayans of African descent fought in the wars of colonial liberation, contributed to the Gaucho lifestyle and culture (particularly to the payada song tradition), and figured in the political and literary life of the R´ıo de la Plata nations. The tango, enjoying worldwide fame and intimately part of the R´ıo de la Plata cultural tradition, almost certainly received a strong African contribution, and several words of African origin figure prominently in the porte˜no lexicon. When remembered today, however, the Afro-Hispanic contribution is usually limited to Carnival comparsas (the groups presenting individual carnival floats), and many mistakenly feel that the only African presence in Montevideo and Buenos Aires represents a recent contribution from Brazil. African slaves were brought to the R´ıo de la Plata colony at Buenos Aires throughout the colonial period, beginning in the mid-sixteenth century. At first, there was little need for slaves in Buenos Aires, whose residents did not enjoy a degree of affluence that would permit slaves to be used in large quantities. Most Africans arriving at Buenos Aires were shipped to the hinterlands, including Paraguay and Bolivia.20 When the Banda Oriental colony at Montevideo was settled from Buenos Aires, beginning in 1726, few Africans were found on either side of the R´ıo de la Plata, but the black population of Montevideo rose 19 20

Lipski (2001c). Masini (1962), Sempat Assadourian (1966), Zaval´ıa Matienzo (1973), Mayo (1980), Rojas (1985).

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sharply in the course of the eighteenth century, peaking at figures estimated at between 30 percent and 40 percent for the turn of the nineteenth century.21 In both Montevideo and Buenos Aires, black slaves worked as domestic servants and as laborers. As the free black population grew, many Africans themselves became artisans, others became itinerant vendors, water-carriers, camungueros (emptiers of chamber pots), chimney-sweeps, lamplighters, coachmen, pest exterminators, and household servants. Black women worked as itinerant washerwomen, as well as in private homes. With the coming of independence, black soldiers fought against Spain, then in the myriad civil conflicts marking the first half century of the postcolonial R´ıo de la Plata. The role of African soldiers has been acknowledged in poems such as “Los negros federales” (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Rioplatense #8), and in military and social records of the time. Despite the disproportionately high representation of black soldiers in these wars, the promised liberation from slavery and discrimination was long delayed, and many Afro-Argentines and Afro-Uruguayans felt completely betrayed by their white compatriots. As happened in the American West, many Africans in the R´ıo de la Plata chose the Gaucho life, some escaping slavery and others, already free, opting for greater personal freedom in an arena where individual prowess was valued over racial stereotypes. During the early part of the eighteenth century, the majority of Africans in the R´ıo de la Plata were still bozales, speaking African languages and little or no Spanish. A Spanish missionary arriving in Buenos Aires in 1730 observed that most Africans spoke no Spanish.22 Noticing that the majority of the Africans were from “Angola, Congo y Loango,” he was forced to learn “la lengua de Angola,” presumably Kimbundu, but possibly Kikongo. Well into the nineteenth century, interpreters were required for African-born slaves who spoke no Spanish,23 and African languages continued to be spoken in Buenos Aires and Montevideo past the middle of the nineteenth century. Some form of bozal Spanish was also in existence well into the second half of the nineteenth century. For example Wilde (1960:126), writing in 1881 and describing earlier decades of Buenos Aires life, speaks of meetings among members of candombe groups, commenting that “era digno de presenciarse las discusiones all´ı sostenidas y de o´ır perorar en su media lengua al se˜nor presidente y a los se˜nores consejeros.” Elsewhere (128), Wilde describes conversations among Afro-Argentine hormigueros or pest exterminators: “pero el inter´es del espectador y oyente aumentaba cuando se juntaban dos profesores, y en los casos dif´ıciles, ten´ıan una consulta, en castellano chapurreado.” In Montevideo, Magari˜nos Cervantes 21 22

Pereda Vald´es (1937, 1941, 1965); for modern Uruguay Graceras (1980), Monta˜no (1987), Porzecanski and Santos (1994). 23 Fontanella de Weinberg (1987a:85). M¨uhn (1946:153).

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(1878:387), commenting on the bozal representations by the poet Acu˜na de Figueroa, declares: “El Canto de los Negros ofrece una curiosa muestra de la especie de dialecto inventado en nuestro continente por los africanos bozales . . . nuestros nietos ya no oir´an hablar esa graciosa jerga . . .” The media lengua (“half speech”), jerga (“jargon”), and castellano chapurreado (“broken Spanish”) refer to bozal Spanish pidgin. Residents of Montevideo and Buenos Aires were aware of the general characteristics of Afro-Hispanic bozal speech during the period in which these texts were produced, which ensures a certain measure of accuracy in the literary representations, which were meant to be understood and appreciated by residents of the two cities. In Afro-American religious ceremonies, including Afro-Brazilian Yoruba cults transplanted to the R´ıo de la Plata,24 vestigal remnants of African languages could even be found in the twentieth century, but an Afro-Hispanic linguistic contact could no longer be postulated. In view of the demographics of the African population in the R´ıo de la Plata, it is doubtful that a coherent bozal Spanish was found in Montevideo or Buenos Aires much before the second half of the eighteenth century, although individual African slaves would speak a rudimentary approximation to Spanish when first learning this language. By the end of the eighteenth century, AfroHispanic speech in the R´ıo de la Plata was more than a minimal pidgin, and appears to have had some consistent traits which were recognized by native Spanish speakers and used in literary representations of bozal speech. AfroRioplatense texts, mostly representing Buenos Aires and Montevideo, recur throughout the nineteenth century and continue into the first decades of the twentieth century, representing little more than a century of Afro-Hispanic language, during which time little evolution can be noted. By the end of this period, only a few true bozales remained in the R´ıo de la Plata, but given de facto social and cultural segregation of the black population in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, it is conceivable that second-generation Afro-Americans in these cities exhibited speech patterns that did not entirely coincide with those of white criollos (colonists of European descent). In urban areas of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, blacks in the postcolonial era lived predominantly in poorer areas such as conventillo tenement housing, retaining an ethnic unity well past the abolition of slavery and postdating the arrival of bozales from Africa.25 Although it is unlikely that a stable “black Spanish” was retained more than a single generation beyond bozal Africans who learned Spanish as a second language, collective awareness of bozal and neo-bozal language was tenacious among both black and white residents. For whites, as in other Spanish-speaking areas, imitation of bozal speech was mostly frequently employed in humorous, condescending portrayals of blacks. These 24

Moro and Ram´ırez (1981), Pallavicino (1987).

25

Luz (1995, 2001).

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representations, even if well-meaning, often create an image of buffoonery and mental incompetence by drawing too close a parallel between Afro-Rioplatense Spanish and baby-talk or deranged rambling. Available documentation on the African slave trade to Latin America suggests that most African slaves taken to the R´ıo de la Plata came from the Congo Basin or Angola,26 although Andrews (1980) claims that at least 25 percent of the Africans in Buenos Aires came from West Africa and Mozambique. In 1787, the cabildo (municipal government) of Montevideo authorized the construction of a large walled-in area just outside the city limits of the time, known as the Caser´ıo de Negros.27 This zone was to serve both as a quarantine zone for disease-ridden slaves, and as a holding station from which slaves would be sent to their eventual destination within the city or in rural regions. The Caser´ıo was in operation for several decades, bringing together Africans of various ethnic groups, among which prevailed slaves from the modern countries of Congo/Zaire and Angola, with Kikongo and Kimbundu being the major languages. The ethnic profile of Africans in the R´ıo de la Plata is reflected by the names of the principal naciones or mutual aid societies, among which the most promiment were the Congo, Angola, Lubolo, Benguela and Cambund´a, all representing groups from the Congo-Angola region. Among the smaller societies, other regions of Africa were represented: Mina, Mozambique, etc.28 Early slave arrivals were mostly from the Windward Coast, ranging from contemporary Senegal to Sierra Leone. The Slave Coast (Togo and Benin) was important throughout the slave trade, as was the Bight of Benin and Niger Delta regions. Among the principal African groups in the R´ıo de la Plata were the “Congos,” a term usually applying to speakers of Kikongo but sometimes also encompassing Kimbundu and other Angolan languages, although the ethnic designation Umbundu does not appear as frequently as Congo, Mandinga, Mina, etc., except in Brazil. Slaves taken from the Kimbundu-speaking region of Africa were more frequently referred to as Angolas, although the latter designation occasionally applied to speakers of other languages. Africans in Cuba Figures regarding the total number of African slaves imported into Cuba vary widely, as do claims as to the relative proportions of various African ethnic groups and languages found among Cuban slaves. Humboldt (1956:218–23) estimated that some 644,000 Africans had been taken to Cuba up until 1853. This number is not significantly different than the figure of 684,000 embarked and 564,000 landed offered by Eltis et al. (1999). Aimes (1907:264), adding up 26 27

Scheuss de Studer (1958), Molinari (1944). 28 Andrews (1980:144). Pereda Vald´es (1965:41–42).

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approximate annual figures, came up with a total of around 528,000 Africans brought to Cuba up until 1865. According to P´erez de la Riva (1974a:78–79; 1979:41–44), up until 1761, approximately 60,000 African slaves had been taken to Cuba. Between 1762 and 1780 some 20,000 more slaves were imported. From 1780 to 1820 the number jumps dramatically: more than 310,000 African bozales arrived during this period, bringing the total number of slaves taken between the first colonization and 1820 to around 390,000. By 1861, this number had jumped again, to an astonishing 849,000, which means that nearly 86 percent of all slaves taken to Cuba arrived during the first half of the nineteenth century. Extrapolating to allow for underreporting and clandestine traffic, P´erez de la Riva estimates a total of 1,310,000 African bozales taken to Cuba during the entire slave trade. Castellanos and Castellanos (1988:137) use somewhat lower figures, suggesting that between 850,000 and 921,000 black Africans arrived in Cuba during the slaving period. These figures demonstrate that there was a large number of bozales in Cuba during the nineteenth century, a fact reflected in the many appearances of bozal language in Cuban literature of the time. However, slave mortality was relatively high, and once importation of slaves from Africa ceased for all intents and purposes, the number of bozales fell off dramatically. For example in 1873 it is estimated that there were some 136,000 African-born blacks in Cuba; by the end of the century this number had dropped to 13,000, and by 1907 there were fewer than 8,000 native Africans in Cuba.29 Blacks in colonial Cuba were drawn from all parts of Africa, as well as from other Caribbean territories, but at least during the nineteenth century, the majority of the bozal population came from a handful of well-delimited geographical and ethnic regions of Africa. Curtin (1969:247) gave the following proportional breakdown for slaves imported into Cuba in the period 1817–43, which represents the most intense period of slave importation in the entire history of Spanish America:30 Bight of Benin (Yoruba, Fon, etc.): Mozambique (Macu´a, etc.): Northern Congo: Angola/Congo: Bight of Biafra (Igbo, Ijo, etc.): Sierra Leone: 29 30

31.1% 29.5% 13.0% 11.3% 9.9% 3.3%

P´erez de la Riva (1979:38–39); also Franco (1985). Curtin’s figures are a bit strange, especially the reference to Mozambique, which according to his data supplied nearly 30 percent of the slaves imported to Cuba during the first half of the nineteenth century. It is known that towards the end of the slave trade, Mozambique and other east African venues rose in importance in supplying the Atlantic slave trade, particularly to Portuguese possessions, but there is no evidence that such a high proportion of southeast African slaves ever arrived in Cuba. In particular, the linguistic panorama is quite bare as regards the possible influence of Mozambican languages in the development of bozal Spanish in the Caribbean.

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Eltis (1977:419) gives a somewhat different breakdown:

1821–25 1826–30 1831–35 1836–40 1841–43

West Guinea

Bt. of Benin

Bt. of Biafra

North Congo

Angola

SE Africa

27.9 34.8 18.7 28.8 34.0

26.8 20.9 18.7 24.3 36.0

45.4 44.2 46.2 21.9 3.1

— — 6.6 6.5 22.0

— — 9.8 3.5 —

— — — 14.9 5.0

Moreno Fraginals (1978, vol. II:9) estimated that during the period 1850–60), bozales on Cuban sugar estates represented the following ethnic divisions, according to Cuban usage: Lucum´ı: Carabal´ı: Congo: Gang´a: Mina: Bib´ı: Other groups:

34.52% 17.37% 16.71% 11.45% 3.93% 2.84% 13.18%

African ethnic designations in colonial Cuba require some comment, since not all coincide exactly with established African linguistic and cultural boundaries. The major terms, and the corresponding linguistic and cultural referents, are as follows: L u c u m ´ı . This term was invariably applied to Yoruba-speaking Africans from present-day Nigeria, but the origins of the term itself are unclear.31 One plausible etymology comes from the Yoruba salutation oluku mi “my friend.”32 In Cuba, the term lucum´ı was used by whites and blacks alike, while the term yoruba referred only to the language. The Yoruba language in Cuba represents a conservative and archaic form of varieties currently spoken in Nigeria. In this respect, it is similar to vestigial forms of Yoruba spoken in Trinidad and Brazil.33 A r a r a´ . This term is apparently derived from the historical area of Ardra, in Dahomey (modern Benin). In Cuba, this term was usually applied to speakers of Ewe/Fon, and mixture with the dominant lucum´ı/ Yoruba culture was frequent.34 C a r a b a l ´ı . This term derives from Calabar, the eastern coastal region of modern Nigeria. The linguistic referents of this term are not as clear. In contemporary Africa, the term refers to a dialect zone of Ijo., a language 31 33 34

32 Law (1991:23). Castellanos and Castellanos (1988:28–30). Olmsted (1953), Silva (1958), Warner-Lewis (1971, 1982), Yai (1978). Ortiz (1916), Castellanos and Castellanos (1988:31), Vinueza (1988).

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important in the formation of Berbice Dutch creole,35 and carabal´ıes were found throughout Spanish America. Castellanos and Castellanos (1988:35) suggest that the term referred to a heterogeneous mix of ethnic groups from southeastern Nigeria, including Igbo, Ibibio, Ijo., and possibly Efik, quoting the remark of the Colombian priest Sandoval who as early as 1627 remarked that “los caraval´ıes son incontables y no se entienden unos a otros, ni hablan lenguas mutuamente inteligibles . . .” In Cuba, carabal´ı culture gave rise to the religious and social ceremonies known as abaku´a and n˜ a˜niguismo.36 M a n d i n g a . This is one of the most widely used and imprecise terms in all of Afro-Hispanic literature. Objectively, this term currently refers to a well-delimited group speaking Mandinkan languages, generally professing Islam, and living in the Senegambia region. However, since earliest colonial times, Mandinga was loosely used to designate any black from northwestern Africa. In Cuba, the term usually referred to black practitioners of Islam, from the Senegambia region, but not limited to the Mandinkan languages and cultures; speakers of Bambara and Diola were also included.37 C o n g o . This is another term which has enjoyed a long history of vague and often contradictory reference to African ethnic and linguistic groups. In Cuba, congos were definitely Bantu speakers, most of whom spoke Kikongo and related languages from the northern Congo (former Portuguese Congo) region. The religious and cultural practices of the congos were known variously as regla de congo, palo monte, or mayombe, and are described by Cabrera (1979), as well as by many earlier travelers and even participants, such as the former slave Esteban Montejo.38 Together with Yoruba, Kikongo is one of the few African languages which survived past the last bozal generation in Cuba, largely in the form of religious rituals and songs.39 M i n a . This term usually referred to members of the Akan group (Asante, Fanti, Twi) from the former Gold Coast (modern Ghana), particularly those from around the old Portuguese fort at Elmina. G a n g a´ . This term was used frequently in colonial Cuba, and according to Moreno Fraginals (1978 vol. 2:9), gang´a slaves represented some 11.5 percent of the workers on Cuban sugar estates during the period 1850–60. 35 37 39

36 P´ Robertson (1979), Smith, Robertson and Williamson (1987). erez et al. (1982). 38 Barnet (1966). Castellanos and Castellanos (1988:30). Gonz´alez Huguet and Baudry (1967), Garc´ıa Herrera (1972), Granda (1973b), Garc´ıa Gonz´alez (1974), Vald´es Acosta (1974), Garc´ıa Gonz´alez and Vald´es Acosta (1978), Perl (1984). In fieldwork carried out in Cuba in late 2002 Armin Schwegler (personal communication) discovered at least one Afro-Cuban able to converse in Kikongo, thereby indicating that this language may still survive in more than ritualistically fossilized form.

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For many Cubans, the term gang´a was synonymous with black Africans, in the same category as Mandinga, Congo, Lucum´ı, etc. Unlike the remaining ethnolinguistic designations used to describe Africans in Cuba, gang´a does not derive directly from the name of any specific African ethnic group, nor apparently to any single region of Africa. Slaves designated as gang´a did not participate in recognizably unique cultural or religious practices, nor was a particular language or group of languages ever associated with this group.

Afro-European creole languages in Cuba By the first few decades of the nineteenth century, anti-slavery movements in Europe were strong, and slaving ships en route to the Americas were routinely intercepted and confiscated. The African slave trade could not provide sufficient workers to satisfy Cuban demands, and laborers from all over the Caribbean were sought. A burgeoning contraband labor trade ensued, and the Dutch station at Cura¸cao was instrumental in making up the difference between the slaves coming from Africa and the total needs of the Spanish colonies. For much of the colonial period, the Dutch had maintained an asiento or franchized slave market on Cura¸cao, from which slaves were reshipped to Spanish, French, and English possessions in the Caribbean. The asiento was revoked in 1713, but clandestine traffic from Cura¸cao and St. Eustatius continued past this point, transshipping Africans throughout the Caribbean. For nearly two centuries, the Dutch depot at Cura¸cao supplied both authorized and clandestine slave traffic to Cuba and, on a much reduced scale, to Puerto Rico. The participation of Cura¸cao in the labor trade to Cuba added the already established creole language Papiamento to the mix of languages present in Cuba.40 Papiamento is documented for Cuba, by both residents and visitors. For example, in the first decades of the nineteenth century, the Dutch traveler Gerardus Bosch (1836:226) encountered Papiamento speakers in Cienfuegos.41 According to Granda (1973a), Bosch’s previous knowledge of Papiamento as spoken in Cura¸cao would assure that he was not mistaking a local Afro-Cuban creole or pidgin for legitimate Papiamento. Hesseling himself did not rule out the possibility that Bosch was confusing the Dutch-based creole Negerhollands with Papiamento, although according scant probability to such a hypothesis. Other, briefer, descriptions document the presence of Papiamento speakers in other parts of Cuba. Papiamento was rarely commented on by Cubans themselves; those few who had ever heard the language referred to it as espa˜nol ara˜nado. Given Cubans’ negative attitudes toward the speech of Africans, it is unlikely that most observers had either 40

Lipski (1993, 1996a, 1998a, 1998c, 1999a).

41

Also Hesseling (1933:265–66).

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the experience or the inclination to differentiate the halting pidgin spoken by African-born laborers from the well-established Afro-Iberian creole in use on Cura¸cao. In addition to the well-organized slave and plantation laborer supplies offered by commercial traders, Cuba attracted thousands of workers from throughout the Caribbean, who emigrated to Cuba voluntarily and individually. The largest contingent came from Haiti and settled in eastern Cuba. This immigration began in the latter part of the nineteenth century, but in the early decades of the twentieth century the Cuban and Haitian governments entered into accords which guaranteed a steady annual supply of Haitian contract laborers, not only in Oriente but also in the sugar-growing areas of central Cuba. The plight of these hapless workers is documented in Alejo Carpentier’s first novel, EcueYamba-O. Another major source of laborers for eastern Cuba was Jamaica, although the Jamaican contingents in Cuba were never as numerous as in the Dominican Republic.42 In Cuba, the heaviest Jamaican immigration occurred in the early decades of the twentieth century, and coincided with the influx of Haitian cane cutters. Smaller numbers of laborers came from the Virgin Islands and from the lesser Antilles. Of all the Spanish Caribbean, nineteenth-century Cuba was also the largest recipient of non-black plantation laborers, in the form of Chinese recruits. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Cuba received at least 150,000 Chinese laborers, known as cul´ıes (English coolie), who worked in the sugar plantations and mills as virtual slaves, side by side with Africans and workers from other Caribbean islands. The linguistic conditions surrounding the lives of Chinese laborers in Cuba closely parallels that of African bozales, and, according to available evidence, Chinese workers’ acquisition of Spanish followed similar paths. Moreover, the linguistic model for Chinese workers was frequently the speech of bozales who had already learned some Spanish, as well as the Spanish spoken as a second language by workers from Caribbean territories, who spoke other creole languages. Finally, since most of the Chinese were recruited through the Portuguese colony of Macao, where a Portuguese-based pidgin and creole was spoken among the native Chinese population, there exists the possibility that some of the Chinese workers added their knowledge of a Portuguese creole to the already rich mix of creole and creoloid elements present in nineteenthcentury Cuba. Macao creole Portuguese shares many of the patterns common to Afro-European creoles implicated in the formation of Afro-Lusitanian varieties in Cuba and elsewhere in the Caribbean, including Cape Verdean, Papiamento, Palenquero, and more distantly S˜ao Tomense and Annobonese. There are also noteworthy parallels with Haitian Creole, Jamaican Creole, Negerhollands and other creoles known or suspected to have been spoken in nineteenth-century 42

Serviat (1986:ch. 6), Alvarez Est´evez (1988).

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109

Cuba. The implications for the study of bozal Spanish are immediate and far-reaching, for if it can be demonstrated that Chinese workers in Cuba brought with them, at least some fragments of Macao creole Portuguese, and added it to the linguistic mix in which bozal Spanish was formed in the Caribbean, this provides yet another route of entry of certain creoloid constructions in attestations of Afro-Cuban Spanish. Such a demonstration – whose full realization is as yet beyond the grasp of currently available documentation – would not invalidate claims that bozal Spanish derives from an Afro-Lusitanian pidgin originally formed in West Africa and used throughout the Atlantic slave trade. It would, however, reduce the necessity of such a hypothesis. In comparison with Africans in Cuba, the number of Chinese was small indeed, although once the Chinese moved to urban environments, their pidginized Spanish became nearly as familiar to middle-class Cubans as the speech of African bozales. So familiar was the habla de chino to the average Cuban, that a literary stereotype quickly developed, almost always portraying the Chinese in a somewhat comical but never totally unfavorable light. As with bozal literary texts, even some transparently derivative literary texts depicting pidgin-speaking Chinese characters show substantially the same linguistic characteristics as authenticated instances of Chinese interference in Spanish.43 Some of the features include the change of /r/ to [l] in nearly all prevocalic positions, loss of word-final /s/, and some in situ questions (of the sort ¿t´u fuiste d´onde? “where did you go?” in which the interrogative word has not been moved to the beginning of the sentence. Throughout Latin America, the stereotype of the habla de chino is the change of /r/ > [l], and the occasional change of /d/ > [l], as commented early on by the nineteenth-century Cuban lexicographer Pichardo (1849: liv): Los Chinos o´ Asi´aticos, que ya superabundan principalmente en La Habana, no han formado dialecto, ni el vulgo les ha pillado m´as que alguna rara palabra . . . ellos pronuncian con claridad las Vozes Castellans que aprenden pronto, aunque con el acento criollo como los Yucatecos, y trocando rr y a veces la r y la d por la l, cuyo u´ ltimo sonido prodigan exesivamente diciendo, (v.g.) “luce de sopa bolacha; al´o con flijole:” Dulce de sopa borracha: arroz con frijoles.

A number of pidgin or creole English elements in Cuba may have come directly from West Africa, via a number of unsuspected routes. For example, the Cuban folklorist and anthropologist Fernando Ortiz (1916:238–39) registered such items as tifi-tifi ‘to steal,’ chapi-chapi ‘to chop weeds,’ luku-luku < look ‘look, see,’ n˜ ami-˜nami < nyam ‘to eat,’ etc. Although these items have cognate variants among Caribbean English creoles, they appear in this case to come directly from West African Pidgin English, which has been in existence at 43

Lipski (1998b, 1999e, 2000c).

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least since the beginning of the eighteenth century. Ortiz claimed that Pidgin English items formed the true lingua franca used by slaves while acquiring Spanish on Cuban plantations. If true, this considerably antedates the arrival of free creole-English-speaking laborers from other Caribbean islands. There are two known routes of arrival of Pidgin English in nineteenth-century Cuba. The first is coastal Nigeria, where Pidgin English was already flourishing in the nineteenth century, and whence came the largest number of slaves brought to Cuba in the final stage of the slave trade. The second is a more indirect route, via the West African island of Fernando Poo. In the 1860s, the Spanish government deported white Cuban revolutionaries to this distant land, together with some rebellious Afro-Cubans. Many languished and died from tropical diseases, some eventually emigrated to Spain, and others finally made it back to Cuba. By this time, West African Pidgin English was already well-established on Fernando Poo, being the lingua franca of most of the African-born population. This in turn is due to the fact that England had been using the island as part of its antislaving activities, and had recruited Pidgin-English-speaking Africans from Liberia and Sierra Leone to work in their colony. It is very likely that at least some West African Pidgin English entered nineteenth-century Cuba through returning exiles.44 There are also reports of isolated black English speakers in rural southern Cuba. Such groups were attested on the Isle of Pines (Isla de la Juventud) in early decades of the last century.45 In Cuba, French Creole speakers were more common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, forming a significant portion of the population of eastern Cuba, including Santiago.46 (Creole-) French-speaking blacks in Cuba even organized into musical societies known as the tumba francesa.47 These societies still exist, and although many of the musicians are no longer completely fluent in Haitian Creole, some of the songs mix Spanish and Haitian Creole.48 These texts cannot be confused with bozal Spanish, but rather constitute Spanish-Haitian code switching. In earlier periods, however, native speakers of Haitian who arrived in Cuba and learned Spanish as a second language spoke with many of the same traits documented for the Dominican Republic. Haitian is noted for use of a sort of double negation, combining the usual preverbal pa with cliticized phrase-final -non (ending affirmative sentences with cliticized -wi is an even more common strategy). Some of the modern Cuban tumba francesa songs exmplify this:49 44 45 46 47 48

Balmaseda (1869), Saluvet (1892), Gonz´alez Echegaray (1959:22), Le´on (1976), LinigerGoumaz (1988:25), Sarracino (1988), Fayer (1990), Sundiata (1990), Lipski (1992e). Carlson (1941), Mart´ınez Gordo (1985b), Castellanos and Castellanos (1988), Perl and Vald´es (1991). E.g. Wallace (1898:14). Franco (1959:76–77); Mart´ınez Gordo (1985a, 1985b, 1989); Al´en Rodr´ıguez (1986, 1991); Betancur Alvarez (1993:43–48). 49 Al´ Al´en (1986), Mart´ınez Gordo (1989:18). en (1986:57).

Africans in colonial Spanish America yo di mu´e contan mu´e pa capa contan no . . . mu´e pa capa ri no

111

‘they say I am happy’ ‘I can’t be happy’ ‘I can’t laugh’

Given that Spanish no is cognate with Haitian non, while Spanish no occupies the same syntactic position as Haitian pa and is easily acquired by speakers of the latter language, the pathway to the formation of double negation in HaitianSpanish contact situations is straightforward. The songs and poems characteristic of these groups combine Spanish and Haitian Creole in a fashion reminiscent of texts produced in the Dominican Republic, and without proper context could be confused with earlier bozal language in which no Caribbean creole language served as intermediary between Africa and the Americas.

Africans in the Dominican Republic Among the Latin American nations whose Afro-Hispanic populations form a major part of the national profile, no country figures more prominently than the Dominican Republic, and yet to date not a single example of true bozal language has been found in the Dominican literary and folkloric corpus, despite the abundant documentation of Dominican popular culture, in the form of stories, songs, poems, legends, and the like, and the equally rich tradition of negrista literature in the Dominican Republic.50 This startling gap in an otherwise welldocumented Afro-Dominican cultural tradition should arouse inquiry, but in fact the topic has been scarcely mentioned. In the Dominican Republic, although African-born bozales were still found in the nineteenth century, they were proportionately few in comparison to criollo blacks (born in the colonies), and no verifiable corpus of Dominican bozal language is known to exist. Moreover, many remnants of highly non-standard language among contemporary Afro-Dominicans are much more likely to derive from contact with Haitian or varieties of English than to represent a direct continuation of earlier bozal Spanish.51 Following the initial importance of Santo Domingo as Spain’s front door to the New World, the Spanish colony rapidly declined in both prosperity and population. Small gold deposits discovered by the first Spanish explorers were soon exhausted, and the discovery of fabulous wealth in Mexico and Peru enticed colonists away from the Antilles. On the French side of the island, the proportion of African slaves grew astronomically, and blacks came to far outnumber whites at an early period in the history of Saint-Domingue. The French were aware of the potential danger in such a demographic imbalance, 50

Caama˜no de Fern´andez (1989).

51

Lipski (1994a).

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and Spanish observers at the other end of the island grew increasingly uneasy at the prospect of a large-scale slave revolt that might overrun the entire island. Slave uprisings had already occurred in Spanish Santo Domingo; the first reported revolt occurred in 1521 when the slaves on Diego Col´on’s sugar plantation rebelled.52 Beginning in the sixteenth century and continuing for two centuries thereafter, rebellious slaves or cimarrones escaped to fortified villages known as manieles. As early as the seventeenth century, maroon communities were found along the northern coast, including the Saman´a Peninsula.53 Spanish fears of even larger uprisings, if the proportion of Africans to Europeans were to attain the levels found in the French colony, were in large measure responsible for the Spanish reluctance to import African slaves in quantities similar to those found in French Saint-Domingue. Ultimately, however, it was the economic marginality of Spanish Santo Domingo, and the inability to prosper under the Spanish monopolistic system, which dictated the patterns of slave importation. As a consequence, the proportion of blacks in Spanish Santo Domingo never came close to the figures found in French Saint-Domingue. Bozal importations in the Spanish colony slowed to a trickle by the eighteenth century, and although African-born slaves could still be found in Santo Domingo well past the time of independence, they did not form a large proportion of the population, unlike Cuba and Saint-Domingue during the same time period. Of equal importance is the fact that at no time in earlier colonial history did African-born bozales (the group most likely to permanently affect the developing Dominican Spanish dialect) represent a very large or sociolinguistically prominent segment of the Dominican population. Beginning with the Haitian revolts of the late eighteenth century and continuing through the nominal transfer of Santo Domingo to French and then Haitian control, the population of the Spanish colony dropped drastically. Thus from a high of some 120,000 residents in Spanish Santo Domingo registered in 1782, and the approximately 180,000 residents found in the last decade of the eighteenth century, a census of 1819 revealed only 71,000 people in the Spanish colony. By 1844, i.e. the end of the Haitian occupation, the population had risen to 126,000; in 1863 the population was 207,000, and in 1887 more than 380,000 residents of the Dominican Republic were counted. Jos´e Alvarez de Peralta, visiting Santo Domingo in 1860, estimated (probably too high) a total population of 400,000, of which 200,000 were white or mestizo, 70,000 were black, and the remainder mulatto.54 Most of the repopulation which occurred during the first half of the nineteenth century was the result of settlement by Haitians. This is amply documented in testimony from the time period. To cite but a single example, in 1884 the statesman Pedro Bon´o commented that the southwestern 52

Deive (1989a:33).

53

Ibid. (80).

54

Rodr´ıguez Demorizi ed. (1970:162).

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border region of the Dominican Republic was “expuesta a una invasi´on perenne y progresiva de poblaci´on extranjera (haitiana), que hace desfallecer cada d´ıa m´as el elemento dominicano, el cual, desarmado y exhausto, desaparecer´a por completo de esa region.”55 Toward the end of the century, occasional immigration from Cuba and Puerto Rico occurred, following aborted independence movements in those colonies. This was also the period when Sephardic Jews and traders from Cura¸cao, Chinese, Syrians, and other groups immigrated to Santo Domingo. Afro-European creole languages in the Dominican Republic Spanish Santo Domingo never experienced the last-ditch importation of sugar plantation laborers from all over the Caribbean, as occurred in Cuba and Puerto Rico. Eltis et al. (1999) document only 6,000 African slaves sent directly to Santo Domingo during the colonial period. As French Saint-Domingue became the world’s richest sugar colony, the Spanish side of the island could not compete, and instead Dominican farmers devoted themselves to supplying meat, hides and other agricultural products to French planters. Following the Haitian Revolution, Spanish planters were not inclined to repeat the mistakes that had led to the destruction of the French sugar colony. The Spaniards had already experienced smaller-scale slave revolts, and invasions by Haitian troops were already on the horizon. There were probably a few speakers of Papiamento in Santo Domingo, since a number of merchants and traders, largely Sephardic Jews, arrived from Cura¸cao, and lived in a neighborhood called Punda, recalling a similarly named neighborhood on Cura¸cao. However, in the Dominican Republic, these (presumed) Papiamento speakers formed part of the urban bourgeoisie, unlike in Cuba and Puerto Rico, where Papiamento-speaking laborers worked in the canefields side by side with African- and American-born workers. There is little likelihood that Papiamento ever affected Dominican Spanish. The major extra-Hispanic influence on nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury Dominican Spanish was Haitian Creole, carried first by invading Haitian armies, then by settlers who arrived from the western end of the island during the Haitian occupation, and in the twentieth century by migrant sugar plantation laborers. It was during the period 1822–44, more so than in earlier decades, that the definitive Haitian-Dominican linguistic and cultural contacts were firmly cemented.56 It is impossible to precisely date the emergence of Haitian as a stable creole language systematically different from French, but a date somewhere towards the end of the seventeenth century does not appear unreasonable. 55 56

Rodr´ıguez Demorizi (ed.) (1964:280); also Hoetink (1972:63–64). See Granda (1991) for some additional thoughts.

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By the middle of the eighteenth century, Haitian was an established language, and when Moreau de Saint-M´ery visited French Saint-Domingue (Moreau de Saint-M´ery 1958) in 1783, he observed a language which does not greatly differ from contemporary Haitian (e.g. Carden and Stewart 1988). Illiterate slave leaders such as Boukman, as well as the former slaves who became incorporated into Toussaint’s army, presumably spoke only Haitian Creole. In his reconstruction of the Dominican resistance to Haitian occupation, Henr´ıquez Ure˜na (1951:236) observed that “en todo el occidente de la isla la gran mayor´ıa del pueblo s´olo habla patois o cr´eole . . .” The Saman´a Peninsula, scene of earlier French attacks, received a predominantly Haitian-speaking population; as early as 1862, a document describing Saman´a states that “la poblaci´on la supone de 2.000 almas, entre franceses, canarios, negros de la Florida y Haitianos . . .” The Spanish language has survived unchallenged as the official language of the Dominican Republic, as well as the de facto language in all urban and most rural regions, but Haitian Creole has always maintained a vigorous presence in rural villages, and has affected regional varieties of Spanish as well. Only the effects of an improved educational system, better means of transportation and communication, and an effective network of radio broadcasting, have purged the traces of Haitian Creole from all but the most marginalized varieties of Dominican Spanish.57 United States Black English also made its way into the nineteenth-century Dominican Republic. The presence of black Americans began with the Haitian occupation, part of an ambitious plan initiated in 1824 by Haitian president Boyer to create a settler-state of dispossessed blacks from throughout the Americas, who would owe unswerving allegiance to the Haitian revolution.58 Although today the only speakers of black English are found in Saman´a, the Afro-Dominican village of Villa Mella was also the scene of immigration of speakers of United States Black English. A more recent source of creole English in the Dominican Republic arrived through the importation of workers from the British West Indies, especially Barbados and Jamaica. In the Dominican Republic, these workers are usually referred to as cocolos, and although they often work together with Haitians (referred to as congos or ma˜ne´ s), the West Indian laborers enjoy greater freedom and a higher standard of living. West Indians’ approximations to Spanish, however, are scarcely distinguishable from Haitianized Spanish. This language, 57 58

Hoetink (1972:ch. 2), Rodr´ıguez Demorizi (1973:333), De la Cruz (1978:30), Moya Pons (1978), Mar´ın˜ ez (1986). Rodr´ıguez Demorizi (1973, 1975), Puig Ortiz (1978), Tejeda Ortiz (1984). For recent linguistic observations, Benavides (1973, 1985), Poplack and Sankoff (1980, 1987), DeBose (1983, 1992, 1995), Tagliamonte and Poplack (1988), Poplack and Tagliamonte (1989), Tagliamonte (1991, 1997).

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spoken by socially stigmatized foreign laborers, is unlikely to have permanently influenced Dominican Spanish, but it does form a prominent part of the Dominican linguistic landscape. As the children of these workers grow up in the Dominican Republic, there exists a potential for subtle transfers from the pidginized Spanish of their parents to the most marginalized sociolects of Dominican Spanish. Africans in Puerto Rico The history of black slaves in Puerto Rico is rather similar to that of Santo Domingo. Puerto Rico remained as a backwater during most of the Spanish colonial period, and slave importation only became important towards the middle of the nineteenth century, as Puerto Rico took a small piece of the sugar plantation boom that followed the uprising in French Saint-Domingue. According to Alvarez Nazario (1974:72–77), some 6,000–8,000 African slaves were taken to Puerto Rico during the sixteenth century, some 8,000–12,000 in the seventeenth century, between 20,000 and 30,000 in the eighteenth century, and between 20,000 and 30,000 in the nineteenth century, for a maximal total of 75,000 African slaves taken to Puerto Rico. Eltis et al. (1999) documents only 10,000 African slaves arriving in Puerto Rico, with the majority disembarking between 1780 and 1840. The African population in Puerto Rico came from various African ethnic and cultural groups, basically following the patterns found elsewhere in Latin America. Wolofs (Jelofe), Biafras, Fulas, Mandingas, and other slaves from the Senegambia region were represented among the earliest slaves taken to the island. In the eighteenth century, British slavers brought Mende-speaking slaves (known in Puerto Rico as gang´a) from the Windward Coast of Sierra Leone. The Portuguese also brought in slaves from the Gold Coast (Minas), and when the French became established in Dahomey (Whydah), Yorubas and other Kwa-speaking groups were sent to Puerto Rico, together with Carabal´ıes (Igbo- and Efik-speaking Africans from the Calabar Coast of Nigeria). Finally, slaves from the Congo and Angola region arrived in large numbers in Puerto Rico.59 In Puerto Rico it is still possible to find African cultural remnants, but there is none of the ethnically homogeneous ceremonies and songs, found for example in Cuba, where Yoruba, Efik, and Kikongo carryovers survived slavery to form the basis for Afro-Cuban religious practices. The demographic figures tell the story: there was never a large enough number of African bozales, much less a group of slaves from a single ethnic or linguistic area of Africa, for an African culture to be transplanted to Puerto Rican soil. 59

Alvarez Nazario (1974:44–47), Gir´on (n.d.), Sued Badillo and L´opez Cantos (1986).

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Afro-European creole languages in Puerto Rico In San Juan, during the nineteenth century most slaves were Puerto-Rican born, but there were significant numbers from Martinique, Cura¸cao, St. Martin, Haiti, Guadalupe, and St. Thomas, with Guadalupe being the largest non-Puerto Rican supplier from the Caribbean.60 Among free foreigners living in nineteenthcentury Puerto Rico, significant numbers came from Antigua, Barbados, Cura¸cao, Denmark (via the Danish Virgin Islands), Dominica, Guadaloupe, Haiti, Holland (through Dutch Caribbean colonies), Martinique, St. Kitts, St. Barts, St. Eustatius, St. Croix and, in greatest numbers, St. Thomas.61 These facts are important since many of these individuals brought with them slaves from their respective islands. The greatest concentrations of foreigners were in San Juan and Ponce; Fajardo also contained numerous natives of the Virgin Islands, while Carolina was home to many natives of Antigua. In 1872 the British consul affirmed that 90 percent of the population of Vieques consisted of British (e.g. West Indian) contract laborers.62 Many were from nearby Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands. In 1878, there were more than 100 contract laborers from Antigua alone working in Puerto Rico.63 Earlier in the century, many residents were “Danes” (i.e. from the Danish Virgin Islands).64 In addition, western Puerto Rico received numerous slaves from Cura¸cao, as well as from the Danish colony in the Virgin Islands, and from St. Barthelmy, Martinique and Guadeloupe.65 Both during and after the slaving period, the greatest number of non-Spanish speaking blacks in Puerto Rico came from the neighboring Virgin Islands, a fact with some linguistic consequences for reconstruction of Afro-Puerto Rican speech. While the islands were still a Danish slave-holding territory, slaves frequently escaped to the Puerto Rican islet of Vieques,66 which is easily reached by swimming. Following the aboltion of slavery in the Virgin Islands, social and economic upheavals caused large numbers of Virgin Islanders to seek work in Puerto Rico, and the trend continues even today. During the early nineteenth century, slaves on St. Croix and St. John mostly spoke the Dutch creole Negerhollands; English-based creoles later came to dominate the Virgin Islands. During the nineteenth century Negerhollands was still the principal language of the black population, and was also spoken by a not inconsiderable proportion of the white population. After the abolition of slavery and the dismantling of 60 62 63 65

66

61 Cifre de Loubriel (1962), Marazzi (n.d.). Carbonell Fern´andez (1988:26–27). Brau (1912), Carrillo de Carle (1974:16), Ramos Mattei (1981:134). 64 Langhorne (1987:33). Ramos Mattei (1981:138). Morales Carri´on (1978:39), D´ıaz Soler (1981). Echevarr´ıa Alvarado (1984:74) partially attributes the origin of the Puerto Rican musical form the plena to nineteenth-century Ponce, in particular some musicians descendent from Virgin Islanders or natives of St. Kitts. Westergaard (1917:160–64), Hall (1992:126–28).

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large plantations, many Negerhollands-speaking Virgin Islanders emigrated to other islands in search of work; some went to Cuba, and an even larger number arrived in nearby Puerto Rico. Although to date there is no direct evidence of Negerhollands being used in Cuba and Puerto Rico, it should be noted that the grammatical structures of this quintessential Afro-Atlantic creole coincide with those of other creole languages used in the Caribbean, and the traces of a former Negerhollands presence could not always be distinguished from the remnants of better-known creoles. A speaker of Negerhollands, upon encountering varieties of Spanish already influenced by other Caribbean creoles, would find the structural patterns to be identical, and even some core vocabulary would be recognized, especially if, as suggested by Hesseling, Negerhollands already bore the earlier imprint of contact with Papiamento. Hesseling (1933) analyzed many features of nineteenth-century Negerhollands as bearing the earlier influence of Papiamento, stemming from a time when the Dutch also controlled parts of the Virgin Islands, and transfers of Africans from Cura¸cao to St. Thomas and St. Croix were frequent. During the twentieth century, groups of Haitians have always been present in Puerto Rico, but their numbers are small in comparison to the Haitian presence in Cuba and especially the Dominican Republic, and their linguistic impact is negligible. Beginning toward the end of the nineteenth century and continuing through the first decades of the twentieth century, Atlantic creole-speaking laborers from many Caribbean islands began to migrate in significant numbers to Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico to work in the sugar harvests. Although by this time bozal Spanish had nearly ceased to exist, the presence of these creole speakers who acquired the rudiments of Spanish in plantation-like conditions reinforced vestigial Afro-Hispanic language throughout the Spanish Caribbean. Emigration from St. Martin to the Spanish Caribbean began around 1890. Arubans migrated in large numbers to Cuba but also to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, where a small group of Arubans remains in Cata˜no, near San Juan.67 Emigration from Cura¸cao, an island which had already supplied laborers to nineteenth-century Cuba and Puerto Rico, and whose Papiamento language had contributed to bozal Spanish, intensified in the early twentieth century.68 The numbers are not large, but illustrate the continuing linguistic impact of creole-speaking immigrants among the most marginalized Afro-Hispanic populations of the early twentieth-century Caribbean. 67 68

Hartog (1961:230), Pietersz (1985:57–59), Sypkens Smit (1995:126). As an example, in 1917 144 workers from Cura¸cao and seventy from Aruba migrated to Cuba; by 1919 the annual figures were 1,405 and 1,321, respectively; just in the period 1917–20, more than 2,400 residents of Cura¸cao and more than 2,800 from Aruba went to Cuba; smaller numbers arrived in Puerto Rico (R¨omer 1981:95).

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Africans in colonial Ecuador The contemporary Afro-Ecuadoran component may be as high as 25 percent of the national total, and was higher during the colonial period.69 The majority of the black and mulatto population is concentrated in the northwest sector, principally in Esmeraldas province, where over 80 percent of the residents are of African origin. Guayaquil once contained a large black population,70 although subsequent events changed the demographic profile of that city. Even Quito contained a considerable black population, not only in the early colonial years, but through the end of the eighteenth century.71 Smaller African populations were found in other highland towns, such as Loja.72 The origin of Ecuador’s black population is surrounded by some controversy and doubt, since although it is evident that black Ecuadorans arrived from the north, dates of arrival and region of origin have yet to be determined satisfactorily. One theory, as yet unproved,73 maintains that the first permanent black residents arrived on the Ecuadoran coast as the result of a shipwreck at the end of the sixteenth century, and of another in l600, although it is known that the first blacks arrived in Ecuador in l533–36. Von Hagen (1940:282) believes that the blacks of Esmeraldas come from a shipwreck that took place off the coast in 1650. Whitten (1965:22–24) reviews some of the competing accounts for the black presence in Esmeraldas, some of which verge on modern myth. West (1957:106) traces the black population of Esmeraldas to the last hundred years, particularly following colonial independence in Colombia, as well as of blacks from the highlands to the coast. In highland Ecuador, blacks are documented as early as 1550, but little is known as to how they arrived there. Subsequently, the Jesuits were responsible for large-scale importation of black slaves to work on plantations both on the coast and in the central highlands, and this example was followed by other planters and landowners, since indigenous labor was scarce in certain areas and rebellious in many others. Early in the nineteenth century, the wars of colonial liberation brought contingents of black soldiers to Ecuador, coming substantially from Colombia, and when manumission of slaves came to Ecuador in 1852, many of these black subjects remained in Esmeraldas province. Yet another group of black citizens arrived in the late nineteenth century, when some 4,000–5,000 Jamaican laborers were brought to work on plantations and on construction projects; this was the last significant migration of Afro-Americans to Ecuador. Other scholars have maintained that the black population of Esmeraldas province results from the immigration of laborers from plantations 69 70 71 72

Rout (1976:211, 232), Preciado Bedoya (1995), Whitten et al. (1995). Garay Arellano (1988a, 1998b, 1992), Jurado Noboa (1990a). Jibaja Rubio (1988, 1990), Castro Chiriboga (1990), Garc´ıa (1990), Lucena Salmoral (1994). 73 Toscano Mateus (1953:19–20), Estupi˜ Anda Aguirre (1993). na´ n Tello (1967:45–48).

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in the central highlands;74 this theory, however, is difficult to reconcile with the historical and demographical facts of colonial and postcolonial Ecuador.75 In the highlands, the predominant racial type is the indigeneous or mestizo configuration, together with the small European population, and black or mulatto residents are quite rare in highland Ecuador. The one exception to this demographic trend is the Chota river valley and its environs, in northcentral Ecuador in the provinces of Imbabura and Carchi. This valley, formerly known as El Valle Sangriento and Coangue, is a tropical lowland surrounded by Andean uplands, and the population of the Chota region is almost entirely black with some mulattoes, in contrast to the exclusively indigeneous/mestizo population of neighboring areas.76 The origin of this singular black population in highland Ecuador is surrounded by a great uncertainty; some investigators have suggested that chote˜nos are descended from freed or escaped slaves from the coastal province of Esmeraldas, but it appears that most of the blacks in Imbabura and Carchi provinces are descendents of slaves held by the Jesuits on their extensive plantations. Another fact shrouded in intrigue is the establishment of black slave breeding centers owned and supervised by the Jesuits in the highland areas, with the aim of maintaining an adequate slave population while improving racial properties whenever possible. It is difficult to uncover accurate documentation of this enterprise, which is nonetheless well-attested both in oral tradition and in historical references, but the fact is that when the Jesuits left Ecuador, behind them stayed a considerable group of slaves, freedmen and cimarrones, all of whom gradually came to form the unified population nuclei of the Chota valley. It has even been claimed that much of the black population of Esmeraldas province derives from chote˜nos who immigrated to the coast, but this remains to be demonstrated conclusively.77 On the Ecuadoran coast, the population of African origin is concentrated in the northwestern province of Esmeraldas, although smaller numbers of AfroEcuadorans can be found all along the coast. For most Ecuadorans, Esmeraldas is synonymous with black culture; this province is also the home of the indigenous Cayapa and Colorado peoples, whose life has been even more marginal than that of black Ecuadorans. The first black slaves in Esmeraldas arrived early in the sixteenth century, as Spaniards were attracted by the emeralds that gave the province its name.78 The number of African slaves brought to work on this enterprise was probably quite small. During the seventeenth century, slaves escaping from the Colombian mines at Barbacoas arrived in Esmeraldas; according to Jurado Noboa (1992a:33), these included Mandingas, Congos, and 74 75 76 78

Wolf (1892:525), West (1957:106). Franklin (1943:269), Pe˜naherrera de Costales and Costales Samaniego (1959), Whitten (1965:22–25). 77 Estupi˜ Klumpp (1970). na´ n Tello (1967:49). Jurado (Noboa 1992a); Rahier (1985:30–32); Savoia (1988).

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Angolas. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, some small gold mines were opened in Cachav´ı, Playa de Oro and Uimb´ı (Jurado Noboa 1992a:37; Savoia 1990), in which some African slaves were taken to work. The total number of African slaves taken to the villages of Esmeraldas in the eighteenth century did not exceed a few hundred (Jurado Noboa 1992a:38), but given the even smaller white population and the subsequent abandonment, the population of African origin increased rapidly, creating a predominantly black coastal strip (but also including considerable mixture with the local indigenous groups). Early descriptions of Esmeraldas, dating from the eighteenth century, already describe the province in terms of its heavy African concentration. A description written in the later decades of the eighteenth century by a Jesuit priest affirmed that:79 . . . los negros venidos de la Africa retienen la lengua de su Guinea. Esta hablan entre s´ı, con ella se entienden y de ella retienen sus cantinelas, y aunque se les procura imbuir el castellano, en que muchos con el tiempo se hacen muy ladinos, pero los m´as de ellos se mantienen muy bozales toda la vida, de manera que le pronuncian muy truncado y lleno de barbarismos.

These descriptions say nothing of the languages spoken by the Africans in Esmeraldas; in the eighteenth century, a high proportion of Bantu-speaking Africans from the Congo/Angola region is to be suspected, although the Spanish of even the most isolated areas of Esmeraldas province shows few definitive Africanisms. Following the independence of Colombia and Ecuador, black Colombians – principally from Barbacoas – continued migrating to Esmeraldas.80 Many of the d´ecimas (improvised ten-line songs in verse) which form part of the Afro-Ecuadoran folk tradition in Esmeraldas make reference to Colombian towns and villages. For this reason it is difficult to separate authentically Ecuadoran Afro-Hispanic remnants which may shed light on earlier bozal language in this region from late nineteenth-century Afro-Colombian Spanish, natively spoken by ex-slaves and their descendants and carried southward to Ecuador. Africans in colonial Colombia The port of Cartagena de Indias was the principal entry of African slaves to much of South America during the Spanish colonial period, and Colombia itself received a large number of slaves. Other important Colombian ports were Portobelo (in what would later become Panama), R´ıo de Hacha, and Santa Marta. The earliest slave arrivals worked in highland mines and placer deposits, in Popay´an, the Choc´o, around Bogot´a, and in other interior areas. The 79

Savoia (1992:19–20).

80

Rahier (1985:38–39).

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Caribbean coast was always home to large numbers of Africans, especially Cartagena, which grew and prospered as the Spanish colonial enterprise in South America took hold.81 A large proportion of the slaves in Cartagena is presumed to have come from Angola, especially during the seventeenth century, when Portugal still controlled the slave trade to Latin America. Many of these slaves made their way to mines in Zaragoza and Antioquia.82 Escalante (1964:chaps. 9–10) has demonstrated that slaves from all the major slaving regions of West and Central Africa arrived in Colombia, with differing groups predominating at any given time, due to the asiento system of slaving monopolies. During the first Portuguese asientos, slaves from the Senegambia, the Windward Coast, and the Gold Coast predominated. Africans from the Slave Coast and Nigeria entered the mix by the seventeenth century, and later in the century, slaves from the Congo/Angola region arrived in large numbers. The funeral rites of the former maroon village of San Basilio de Palenque recall the people from Congo, Loango, and Angola,83 and toponyms from all major coastal African areas are found throughout Colombia. Slaves taken to Colombia worked in both agriculture and in mines. The latter were located both in coastal regions and in the interior. Placer gold extraction was also a frequent occupation of slaves, in the Cauca Valley and in the Choc´o. Some of the richest gold deposits were found in Popay´an, which received the greatest number of African slaves of any interior area of Colombia. The mines of Bucaramanga in Santander were also productive, and even far-flung Boyac´a, on the Venezuelan border, had gold mines worked by African slaves. The mining town of Barbacoas was also a heavy consumer of African slave labor. The first slaves in this region were evidently from the Congo/Angola region. In later years, many of the slaves were supplied from Guayaquil, whence some had arrived from Africa, while others were American-born. In the eighteenth century, many minas were taken to this region, in the belief (real or imagined) that they possessed previous experience in placer gold mining. African slaves also worked in haciendas and mines around Cali; from this town, many slaves also passed in to the cuadrillas of the Choc´o. In the Choc´o, there was a dramatic increase in the number of African slaves in the eighteenth century. Maroon communities or palenques were found throughout highland and coastal Colombia during the colonial period, and allowed for many African cultural retentions and – in such places as San Basilio de Palenque – for the formation and retention of creole languages. In the cities, black slaves formed cabildos, ethnically based cultural and religious societies that were reluctantly tolerated by the ruling classes. Cartagena contained cabildos based on the 81 82

Friedemann (1992, 1993), Friedemann and Arocha (1995). 83 Schwegler (1996b). Toribio Medina (1978:60–61), Wade (1993:75).

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Carabal´ı, Arar´a, Angola, Mandinga, Mina, and other ethnic/linguistic groups,84 and cities with smaller black populations had fewer such organizations. African languages were still present in Colombia throughout the colonial period, especially in Cartagena, although blacks born or raised in the colonies often learned only Spanish. For instance, a 1693 document refers to a black slave named Francisco G´angora . . . “que es de Guinea y vino peque˜no, le llamavan sus amos el Congo no save lengua . . . ,”85 meaning that he did not speak an African language. Sandoval (1956:335), writing in the late seventeenth century, noted that “la dificultad est´a en que de ordinario sus amos no tienen int´erpretes ni se les da nada por buscarlos; y nosotros parece moralmente imposible que aprendamos todas estas lenguas por ser tanta su multitud y no haber alguna general, como por no haber quien pueda ense˜narlas ni ser la comunicaci´on que con los negros tenemos la que baste para peg´arsenos naturalmente,” a clear admission that most bozales in Cartagena spoke no Spanish or Portuguese. Further on (338), Sandoval reiterates: “. . . tambi´en conviene advirtamos la diferencia de castas que hablan algunas, para que as´ı una pueda servir por muchas y ahorrar trabajo y molestia. Y porque as´ı como las lenguas e int´erpretes ladinos suelen hablar varias lenguas, as´ı los negros bozales tambi´en las suelen hablar y entender . . . ,” one of many references to the use of African lingua francas. Sandoval (1956:60) gives Cacheu, in modern Guinea-Bissau, as the principal port in “Guinea,” as West Africa was still called. He indicates (90) that most slaves arriving in Cartagena came from Cape Verde, Cacheu, S˜ao Tom´e, and Angola. He notes (94) that from Cape Verde and S˜ao Tom´e came bozales (who speak no Portuguese or Spanish), ladinos raised on the islands, “que hablan lengua portuguesa,” and naturales, born on the islands and baptized as children (and also speaking Portuguese). Blacks from Guinea, according to Sandoval (1956:64), “aun estando en su gentilidad, suelen los principales preciarse de aprender nuestra lengua . . .” Referring to the Kongo kingdom, he notes that “. . . las mujeres de los grandes se precian mucho de saber leer y o´ır misa cada d´ıa” (86) evidently in Portuguese. He makes reference to the Angolan use of the term encombo for cattle (88), a term which survives as ngombe in the lengua of San Basilio de Palenque. On several occasions, Sandoval makes reference to the diversity of African ethnic groups and languages spoken on S˜ao Tom´e. For example (83): “De aqu´ı [ = S˜ao Tom´e] . . . salen al rescate de todas las varias naciones que desde la sierra Leona hemos referido y demarcado en este y aquel cap´ıtulo.” He also states (94) that “los negros de la isla de San Thom´e (que es como puerto de donde salen los nav´ıos para el rescate de los negros que com´unmente decimos venir de San Thom´e, y no son sino de la tierra firme, reinos y puertos que hemos dicho, donde los espa˜noles van a su rescate) son de menos que ley que los que hemos nombrado venir de los r´ıos de Guinea, y de menos 84

Arr´azola (1970:163), Wade (1993:88).

85

Arr´azola (1970:233).

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valor . . . las castas que de ordinario traen de aquellas partes son minas, popoos, fulaos, ardas or araraes, que todo es uno, offons, tambi´en casta arda; lucumies o terranovas; barba, temnes, binis, mosiacos, agares, gueres, zarabas, iab´us, caravalies naturales o puros que decimos . . .” On another occasion (347) Sandoval refers to “los que vienen de la isla de San Thom´e, araraes, lucumies y caravalies puros . . .” Yet again (379): “Si son de San Thom´e, ardas o araraes, caravalies, lucumies, minas y otras innumerables castas que de aquella isla vienen . . .” S˜ao Tom´e even served as a transshipment point for slaves from East Africa and India: “En estas embarcaciones de San Thom´e suelen de ordinario venir algunos negros de los reinos y naciones que tratamos de la Etiop´ıa Oriental, sobre Egipto, como son mozambiques, melindes, etc., y tambi´en de all´a de la India, como ceilanes . . .” Africans in colonial Panama Politically, Panama was part of Colombia until the early twentieth century, but historically it was isolated from the remainder of Colombia and enjoyed de facto autonomy during the colonial period. Panama was the site of one of the most prolonged Afro-Hispanic demographic contacts, since almost all slaves destined for the Pacific coast of Spanish America passed through Panamanian ports. With Balboa’s discovery of the narrow crossing to the Pacific Ocean in 1513, the slender isthmus of Panama immediately became important to the Spanish colonial effort. To reach the wealthy colony of Peru, it was more feasible to land on Panama’s Caribbean shore and transport goods overland to the Pacific coast than to travel around the tip of South America. On the return voyage, ships laden with Peruvian gold and silver sailed to the port at Panama City. The treasure was unloaded and carried overland by mule train and then along the Chagres River to the Caribbean shore, reloaded onto waiting Spanish vessels, and shipped to Spain. The first Spanish port on the Caribbean side was Nombre de Dios, but this village lacks a good natural harbor, and frequent pirate attacks forced the treasure-shipping operation out of the area. The next Spanish port was established at Portobelo, on a deep bay providing an excellent natural harbor. Once a year ships from Spain docked at Portobelo, to receive the treasure and to sell goods from Spain and other Latin American colonies. This event drew citizens from all over Panama, and grew into a festive feria, the memory of which is still preserved in local folk traditions.86 Reflecting its colonial and postcolonial history, modern Panama has a large population of African origin. Afro-Panamanians descend from two different groups. Spanish-speaking Afro-Panamanians, referred to in anthropological documents as afrocoloniales, descend from slaves held during the 86

E.g. of the negros congos; Drolet (1980a, 1980b), Joly (1981), Lipski (1989), (1997).

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colonial period.87 Although found throughout Panama, the largest concentrations are along the Caribbean coast, particularly in the towns of Portobelo and Nombre de Dios. These Panamanians speak only Spanish, of the rural variety, with only a slightly higher proportion of African lexical items than found elsewhere in the country. Part of regional Afro-Panamanian culture are the negros congos, community members who participate in folkloric rituals during the annual Carnival season, and which is a partial reproduction of the life of slaves in colonial Portobelo, during the annual feria or trade fair. As part of the congo ritual comes a special way of speaking, the hablar congo, which local residents claim is derived from the earlier Afro-Hispanic pidgin or bozal speech.88 During the construction of the Panama Canal, thousands of black West Indian laborers were recruited, most of whom spoke creole English.89 Many subsequently obtained jobs in the US Canal Zone, due to their ability to communicate in English and the perception that, as “foreigners,” their loyalties would not be challenged by Panamanian nationalism. This in turn caused resentment among the remaining Panamanian population, which had already borne the brunt of American racial discrimination, and resulted in a backlash against the chombos, a derogatory term applied to the afroantillanos. The latter retreated to the English language, learning Spanish only imperfectly and continuing to identify with the West Indies rather than with Panama. Eventually, frictions were ameliorated, Afro-Antilleans were granted Panamanian citizenship, and many have risen to positions of prominence in both the US Canal Zone and in Panamanian governmental and private sectors. Most younger Afro-Antilleans speak Spanish natively, although English continues to be used frequently when speaking to community members.90 A smaller but also significant number of workers were brought to Panama from the French Antilles, particularly Martinique and Guadaloupe, beginning in the last decades of the nineteenth century, when a French company attempted the construction of the first interoceanic canal. In the single year 1906–07, for example, more than 2,800 workers from Martinique and more than 2,000 from Guadaloupe arrived in Panama.91 These workers spoke the French-derived creoles of their home islands (these creoles were referred to as patois by other Panamanians), and most eventually settled on the Caribbean coast, in and around Col´on.92 87 88

89 90 91

Castillero Calvo (1969), De la Guardia (1977). Research by Lipski (1989) indicates that this assertion has a basis in historical fact, although the congo speech has largely degenerated into an inventive play language with deliberate distortion of words taking precedence over historically accurate retentions from Afro-colonial speech. See also Drolet (1980a, 1980b), Joly (1981). Westerman (1951), D´ıez Castillo (1968), Davis (1980), Conniff (1985), Lewis (1980). Cohen (1971, 1976b), Fuentes de Ho (1976), Jones (1976). 92 Ibid. (35–39). Marrero Lobinot (1984:24).

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The black population of colonial Panama was frequently as large or larger than the white population, and the latter was never very large in this colony, which served only as a way-station for traffic to South America. The first slaves were acquired in small numbers; later, the asiento or slaving monopoly brought hundreds of African slaves through the port of Portobelo, originally one of the three points officially designated as slave entry ports (together with Veracruz and Cartagena de Indias). Determining the total number of Africans imported into Panama is rendered difficult by the fact that most of the African slaves listed as arriving at Portobelo were destined for transshipment to South American destinations. Some approximate figures have been obtained, however, which demonstrate that throughout most of the colonial period, until the last decades of the nineteenth century, Panama’s black population was at least equal to the population of European origin. In the decade 1703–13, the French asiento brought nearly 7,000 slaves to Panama. The subsequent British asiento brought nearly 16,000 slaves between 1718 and 1726. More than 2,000 slaves arrived in Panama in 1734–38; the following decade brought some 1,600 more. Between 1743 and 1757, some 7,200 black slaves were legally imported into Panama; the true figures were higher. The remainder of the century saw some 5,000 African slaves arriving, and by 1803 the slave trade to Panama had effectively ended. The number of slaves using Panama as a zone of transit was much higher, at least by a factor of ten. The African origins of the Panamanian slaves are equally uncertain.93 The terms Guinea and Congo were used in Panama with the same vague reference as in the rest of Spanish America. As the major crossover point for slaves destined for western South America, Panama received the full crosssection of slaves sent to other colonies, and the demographic profile changed over time as the Spanish obtained slaves from various European traders, dealing respectively with different areas of the West African coast. For example, Guzm´an Navarro (1982:ch. 2) feels that many of the slaves who arrived during the seventeenth century and early eighteenth century were supplied by the French, through slaving stations in the Senegambia, particularly Gor´ee. During the English period, lasting through the middle part of the eighteenth century, slaves were taken principally from the Windward Coast and the Gold Coast, although some Senegambians also arrived at this juncture. In the latter years of the eighteenth century, the Compa˜n´ıa Gaditana was authorized to import slaves, mostly from sources in the New World. This included slaves transshipped from Cartagena, Havana, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and French Antillean ports. By the end of the eighteenth century, importation of slaves from Africa had all but ceased in Panama, although thousands of slaves still remained, and new arrivals from Caribbean ports were to continue during the first decades of the nineteenth century. De la Guardia (1977) provides a variety of documents 93

Fortune (1993:219–36).

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showing that slaves in colonial Panama represented the same basic crosssection of African ethnic and linguistic groups as were found in other Spanish American areas. These include Vai, Mina, Lucum´ı, Carabal´ı, Congo, Mozambique, Mandinga, Wolof, Arar´a, Biafra, Pop´o, Angola, Cuango, Fula, etc. However, this scanty documentation, consisting of a name here, another name there, does little toward resolving the issue of demographic proportions. Africans in colonial Venezuela For most of the colonial period, Venezuela imported African slaves, but it was never a major agricultural producer, nor did it have large urban centers to absorb the huge quantities of slave laborers found in such cities as Lima and later Buenos Aires and Havana. African slaves were first brought to Venezuela in the early sixteenth century as pearl divers around Margarita Island. Africans also worked in agricultural production, including cacao, tobacco, coffee, sugar cane, and other products, but no large-scale plantation agriculture was found. Indeed, more than a single coherent colony, Venezuela was in reality a series of mini-colonies, each centered around a developing city (Cuman´a, Caracas, Maracaibo, etc.), and with local commercial and agricultural interests. Although Venezuela was officially prohibited by Spanish monopolistic practices from selling its products to other colonies, with the help of Portuguese intermediaries, Venezuelan cacao was sold in large quantities to Mexican buyers. The seventeenth-century cacao “boom” resulted in the largest importation of African slaves to Venezuela. By the end of the century, the coastal area around Caracas contained a majority black and mulatto population. Social and economic distinctions between most whites and most blacks in Venezuela were not as marked as in wealthier colonies, and racial mixture was immediate and continuous. There were some maroon (cimarr´on) communities formed by escaped slaves, but those Africans who remained in the colonial labor force – including African-born bozales – were not as segregated from native speakers of Spanish as in the large plantations of Cuba, Brazil, and Peru.94 The distribution of African slaves in Venezuela was well delimited, with the overwhelming majority concentrated in the coastal strip on either side of Caracas.95 Smaller but significant numbers were found in the interior of Miranda state, in Cotro, and along the eastern and southern shores of Lake Maracaibo. The total number of slaves and their descendants present in Venezuela at any given time has never been accurately calculated. The explorer Humboldt calculated some 60,000 slaves in Venezuela at the beginning of the nineteenth century,96 but this figure is at best a rough approximation. What 94 95

Wright (1990:16–17), Berm´udez and Su´arez (1995). 96 Acosta Saignes (1967:178). Acosta Saignes (1967:104).

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is known is that a significant proportion of Africans in colonial Venezuela – perhaps as much as one third at times – lived in maroon communities known as cumbes or quilombos, creating the possibility for the retention of African linguistic and cultural elements beyond the usual period of transculturation and assimilation which affected Afro-Venezuelans living in constant contact with the white population. Given the heavy African presence in much of coastal Venezuela, particularly in the eighteenth century, Venezuelan Spanish absorbed some African lexical items, as well as cultural and musical practices.97 There is a rich Afro-Venezuelan linguistic, literary, and folkloric tradition, which is not widely known outside of the immediate area. For example, the festivals of San Juan and San Pedro, celebrated in June along the coastal region to the east of Caracas, typify the Afro-Hispanic syncretism found in much of Venezuelan culture. At the southern end of Lake Maracaibo, the festival of San Benito, celebrated in December particularly in the town of Bobures, involves the chimb´angueles, a word which refers to the musical groups which perform during the fiesta, and to the drums which they play.98 The religious cult of Mar´ıa Lionza (a syncretic accretion based originally on indigenous legends), prominent among the working classes throughout Venezuela, represents syncretic aspects of contact among Spaniards, Africans, and Native Americans. On December 28, many Afro-Venezuelan communities celebrate the locaina, wild dances and festivals which date back to early slave-owning days when masters permitted their slaves certain days in which the usual rules of Christian conduct were temporarily suspended.99 The arrival of African slaves into Venezuela began during the sixteenth century, and by the seventeenth century was a regularly established practice. According to Acosta Saignes (1967:33–34), during the first century and a half of slave trading in Venezuela, slaves predominantly came from West Africa, including the Senegambia, the Gold Coast, and the Slave Coast. During the eighteenth century, the numbers of African bozales introduced into coastal Venezuelan cities, from Cuman´a to Maracaibo, became significant enough to raise the possibility of longer-lasting linguistic influences. Well into the eighteenth century, the principal slave-trading group in Venezuela was the French Guinea Company, who drew slaves mainly from the Senegambia. By 1713, the official monopoly on slave trading in Venezuela had passed to the British West Indies Company, which was drawing slaves from the Windward and Gold Coasts. Many slaves were also transshipped from Barbados, where some might have already acquired the English-based creole that had developed on that island 97 98 99

Sojo (1943), Ram´on y Rivera (1971), Pollak-Eltz (1972), Megenney (1979, 1980, 1985c, 1989a, 1990c, 1999), Mart´ınez Su´arez (1986b), Alvarez (1987). Mart´ınez Su´arez (1983, 1994), Salazar (1990). Pollak-Eltz (1991:64). Other aspects of Afro-Venezuelan culture and folklore are covered by Pollak-Eltz (1972, 1991) and Brandt (1987).

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prior to the eighteenth century. Later in the eighteenth century, slaves were also taken from British Trinidad to Venezuela; once more, it is uncertain whether these slaves spoke the English- and French-based creoles of that island. By the end of the colonial period, around 1800, Venezuela still had a population 18 percent slave, and as much as 60 percent of the remaining population had some African blood.100 The Venezuelan-Trinidad linguistic connection extended well into the postindependence period, particularly in the mining town of El Callao in Guayana province and the Paria Peninsula. The former town was founded around 1850 by gold-seekers, and brought in English and French creole-speaking Trinidadians to work in the newly opened mines. The mines were soon closed, but the workers remained, speaking vestiges of creole English and French patois.101 In G¨uiria, in the Paria Peninsula, creole-English-speaking residents continue to maintain family ties with Trinidad and St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. Calypso music predominates in this region, including many innovative songs mixing Spanish, Antillean English and French creole. Although certain well-defined African areas predominated in the slave trade to Venezuela, due to the shifting alliances with European slaving companies established at particular points along the African coast, Venezuela eventually received Africans from most major linguistic and cultural groupings.102 Few well-defined cultural traits from specific African ethnic groups survived in Venezuela, with the exception of some Loango ceremonies.103 100 102

101 Pollak-Eltz (1991:80) Llorente (1994, 1995). Brito Figueroa (1961:32). 103 Dom´ınguez (1989). Acosta Saignes (1967:95–106).

5

Afro-Hispanic texts from Latin America: sixteenth to twentieth centuries

The Afro-Latin American bozal corpus Although Afro-Hispanic language was originally forged in West Africa, Portugal, and southern Spain, it was in Spanish America that successive generations of African-born slaves and free laborers acquired the Spanish language in the most diverse circumstances, and impressed those around them by their approximations to natively spoken Spanish. The earliest Latin American bozal texts come from highland mining regions in Peru, Bolivia, Mexico, and Colombia, and probably owe more to imitation of the already well-established stereotype of the habla de negros in Spain than from actual observation of Africans’ speech in the colonies. By the end of the eighteenth century, poets, playwrights, short-story writers, and novelists had accumulated sufficient observational evidence on Afro-Hispanic language as to incorporate plausible (although probably exaggerated) imitations in their literary works. Occasional travelers’ accounts, court transcriptions, legal documents, military reports, and sundry letters and testimonies provide non-literary corroboration of bozal language. The trickle of texts antedating the nineteenth century quickly became a torrent of literary, musical, and folkloric production during the nineteenth century, as thousands of Afro-Argentines, Afro-Uruguayans, Afro-Peruvians, Afro-Puerto Ricans, and especially Afro-Cubans took their places in poems, songs, stories, and novels, reflecting demographic events which brought large numbers of African-born slaves to these regions in a relatively short period of time. The present chapter surveys the most salient Afro-Latin American bozal texts as well as various less easily classifiable linguistic byproducts of the African diaspora in Spanish America. The data will be presented in the same country-by-country order as in the preceding chapter.

The Afro-Peruvian linguistic corpus To date, the limited but significant Afro-Peruvian bozal corpus has not been drawn into a wider perspective; the only linguistic studies are Romero (1987, 129

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1988) and Lipski (1994b). The African population in highland Peru reached its height in the mid-seventeenth century, diminishing rapidly thereafter due to a combination of high mortality, minimal reproductive possibilities, and intermingling with the indigenous population. There are, however, important documents which purport to represent the speech of bozal Afro-Peruvian speech of this time. These are primarily songs or poems associated with religious services. Particularly popular was the villancico, especially Christmas songs based on the birth of Christ and the arrival of the Reyes Magos. One text comes from Juan de Araujo (1646–1712), apparently written in the second half of the seventeenth century. This song was performed in Cuzco and possibly elsewhere, and claims to portray the speech of African bozales in seventeenth-century Peru (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Peru #1). Another song from the same time period comes from the Cuzco seminary (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Peru #2). Possibly also composed in the same time period, but not performed in Cuzco until 1753, is the anonymous “Pasacualillo” (Chapter Five Appendix AfroPeru #3). These early texts exemplify many key bozal features well attested in Afro-Hispanic literature from other regions. Imitation of Peninsular models was frequently at work, given the close contact between the Cuzco clergy and their counterparts in Spain. At least one example supports this notion, the song “Negro de Navidad” (text #6) by the mid-seventeenth-century Spanish composer Alonso Torices, who lived in M´alaga and Zaragoza, then apparently in many areas of Latin America. The manuscript in question was found in the Bogot´a cathedral, but apparently was also performed in Peru. Most of the Afro-Peruvian texts do not support the hypothesis of direct imitation, since the recurring traits are found in nearly all Afro-Hispanic linguistic encounters of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. The degree of consistency among these bozal texts is worth considering systematically, since it suggests a relatively high degree of authenticity of the early Afro-Peruvian texts, and helps provide a picture of the language used by Africans in the first two centuries of Spain’s wealthiest colony. Early Peruvian bozal texts show little resemblance to any contemporary Spanish dialect, but share many similarities with Afro-Hispanic language of other regions and time periods. Grammatically, there are no signs of stable creolization; common to all contact varieties of Spanish is instability of agreement, including subject-verb and noun-adjective inflectional agreement. Similar features are found in contemporary Peru, among Spanish-recessive bilinguals in the Andean region. There is no indication that syntactic features of early bozal Spanish survived past the first generation. The phonological similarities with other forms of Afro-Hispanic language are more significant, since in some regions transfer to local Spanish varieties spoken natively has been postulated. Noteworthy throughout the bozal texts is the representation of intervocalic /d/

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as r (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Peru #18-1). In contemporary Peru, stop /d/ is found only in areas characterized by Spanish-recessive bilingualism;1 in coastal regions where an Afro-American population still remains, loss of intervocalic /d/ (presumably following an intermediate fricative stage) prevails.2 In some areas, however, the change of /d/ > [r] is found, together with the opposite shift of intervocalic /r/ > [d] (e.g. quiero > quiedo); this is examplified for the Afro-Peruvian population of Chincha by the stories of G´alvez Ronceros (1975, 1986),3 and in folkloric texts from the Ica region (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Peru #16). Although most coastal areas of Peru ultimately adopted the “lowland/Andalusian” weakening and loss of /d/, vestiges of the occlusive or flap articulation have survived vestigially among Afro-Peruvians. This suggests an accurate representation of early Afro-Hispanic pronunciation in Peru. Found throughout the early Afro-Peruvian texts is the loss of the /λ/-/y/ opposition. In modern Peru, the palatal lateral /λ/ still exists as a separate phoneme in most of the Andean highlands, including Cuzco and Puno. The phoneme /λ/ is retained in all of Bolivia. Along the Peruvian coast, /λ/ has merged with /y/, a change that began in the sixteenth century. Texts from the seventeenth-century Peruvian writer Juan del Valle Caviedes are often cited as among the first indications of ye´ısmo in either Spain or Latin America,4 suggesting that Lima may have been in the vanguard in the loss of /λ/. The Afro-Peruvian texts are of particular importance, since most other bozal texts come from regions where ye´ısmo already affected the surrounding Spanish dialects. In the early Afro-Peruvian texts, lateralization of /r/ to [l] occurs in two contexts not found in any former or contemporary dialect of Spanish, but which are found in the majority of Afro-Iberian languages and dialects. The first is in prevocalic environments (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Peru #18-2). The same texts show lateralization of /r/ as the second member of o b s t r u e n t +l i q u i d onset clusters (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Peru #18-3).5 Among seventeenth-century Afro-Peruvian texts, some lateralization of syllable-final /r/ is found. No Andean dialect of Spanish lateralizes syllablefinal /r/; assibilation is the only commonly occurring modification of /r/. Coastal Peruvian dialects, even those in predominantly Afro-American areas, often elide final /r/, but lateralization of syllable-final /r/ is vanishingly rare. 1 3 4 5

2 Mendoza (1976, 1978). Mendoza (1976:71–81), Escobar (1978:35–36). Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Peru #17, also Cuba (1996). Alonso (1953:247–51), Guitarte (1971), Lapesa (1980:571), Rivarola (1990:54–55). In modern Andalusia the change of /r/ to /l/ in onset clusters is occasionally found (Salvador 1978). The opposite change, of /l/ to /r/ in onset clusters, is documented for Galician and some Leonese dialects, and occurs in early Peninsular Afro-Hispanic imitations.

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Highland Spanish in Peru and elsewhere in the Andean zone is noted for the extreme resistance of syllable-final /s/ to erosion, unlike Peruvian coastal dialects, which pattern with Caribbean and Andalusian varieties. In seventeenthcentury Afro-Peruvian bozal texts, the limitation of /s/-reduction to verb forms in -mos suggests more than just an unprincipled elimination of /s/ by Africans whose native languages did not permit this consonant in syllable-final position (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Peru #18-4); in such a situation, one would expect a more randomly distributed pattern of /s/-reduction, rather than the tightly constrained category which actually occurs. The conclusion to be drawn is that in regional Spanish of the time (a strong component of which was derived from Andalusia), word-final /s/ in the weak unstressed syllable of -mos was already perceptually imprecise. Bozal speakers, acquiring Spanish under far from ideal conditions, failed to perceive the weakened sound (probably an aspiration alternating with occasional [s] as well as total elision), and pronounced no /s/ at all. After the seventeenth century, the locus of bozal Spanish in colonial Peru shifted from the highland mines and the settlements at Potos´ı and Cuzco to the coastal areas centering on Lima. The documentation of Afro-Peruvian language is not continuous; following the seventeenth-century texts, no bozal examples are found until the very end of the eighteenth century, although indirect evidence of Afro-Hispanic speech for Lima and its environs appears earlier in the eighteenth century. By the final decades of the colonial period, Africans worked throughout Lima, as domestic servants, in public works, as street vendors, as teamsters and laborers. Under these circumstances, Spanish speakers would be in frequent contact not only with Africans and Afro-Americans, but also with their speech patterns. For instance, street vendors or pregones developed characteristic chants to sell their wares.6 Each vendor used some form of Africanized Spanish, ranging from rudimentary bozal speech to more fluent varieties, but the fact that citizens could remember these chants decades after the vendors had disappeared is testimony to the deep-seated penetration of bozal speech patterns (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Peru #15). Indirect comments on the speech, music and other behavior of Africans in nineteenth-century Peru permit some conclusions as to bozal language at this time.7 Beginning at the turn of the nineteenth century, a new group of bozal Peruvian texts emerges, representing a more evolved Afro-Hispanic language, concentrated in coastal regions. The nineteenth-century Afro-Peruvian texts bear a much closer resemblance to contemporary vernacular speech of the Peruvian coast, as well as to Afro-Hispanic dialects elsewhere in Latin America. The first surviving text from the second period of Afro-Peruvian documentation is actually from a highland region, an anonymous entrem´es from 1797 (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Peru #7). The “Entrem´es del Huamanguino entre un Huantino 6

Ayarza de Morales (1939).

7

Estenssoro Fuchs (1988).

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y una Negra para la Navidad en el Monasterio del Carmen de Huamanga, a˜no de 1797” was signed by “una R. R. Madre del Monasterio de Santa Teresa para su representaci´on en la Navidad del a˜no 1797.” If this attribution is correct, then at least some Peruvian nuns were engaged in literary pastimes similar to those of Sor Juana, in another American colony, a century earlier. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the author of this work, or the circumstances of its composition. The Quechua of the Huamanguino is accurate, as is the intercalation of Spanish and Quechua segments in the speech of the indigenous characters. Neither the indigenous characters nor the Negra are portrayed flatteringly, but neither does the play contain the crude stereotyping and puns of the Golden Age habla de negros. The linguistic characteristics of bozal speech are all found in independently verified specimens of Afro-Hispanic speech, and the black woman’s use of occasional Quechua elements is consistent with the living patterns of black servants and slaves in highland areas. In the balance, this text provides an important insight into a period of Afro-colonial history that is scarcely represented by other documentation. The other highland Afro-Peruvian language fragment comes from the “Entrem´es para la Navidad que se ha de representar en el Monasterio del Carmen, siendo recreacionera la se˜nora Sor Manuela G´alvez” (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Peru #8). This play was written in 1828 in Ayacucho, and is linguistically very similar to the play from Huamanga. Despite the apparent attribution of authorship, this text is essentially as anonymous as its predecessor, since nothing is known about “Sor Manuela G´alvez.”8 In this entrem´es, the black character speaks much more Quechua, but a broken Quechua that can be reconstructed by contemporary speakers only with some difficulty. The language, although not as highly deformed as in the Huamanga text, is consistent with other reproductions of Afro-Hispanic pidgin, which lends credence to the author’s depiction of the black servant’s broken Quechua. The authors of both plays were evidently Quechua-Spanish bilinguals, who found Africans’ limited proficiency in either language amusing and worthy of inclusion in their literary texts. Presumably, these two surviving plays are merely part of what was once a much more widespread literary production, more of which may come to light one day. In these texts, the black characters shift into Quechua, thus constituting the only known Afro-Hispanic texts which document what must have been a much more widespread phenomenon, the use of indigenous languages by African slaves. The remaining Afro-Peruvian texts represent the speech of coastal regions, mostly Lima. One of the most prolific sources of Afro-Peruvian language was Felipe Pardo y Aliaga, a satirical writer who also imitated the speech of indigenous Peruvians. Pardo did not portray Africans in a favorable light, but his 8

In fact, Ugarte Chamorro (1974:lxxxvivi–vii) disputes this authorship.

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purported imitation of Peruvian bozal Spanish of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is completely consistent with independently verified AfroHispanic texts from other regions. Any exaggeration or distortion is probably in the area of lexicon and plot, rather than syntactic and phonological structure. Pardo employed bozal language in several texts, including the skit “Frutos de la educaci´on” of 1829, and some humorous poems (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Peru #9, #11). Pardo was born in Lima in 1806, of a Galician father and a Peruvian mother. Shortly after his birth his family moved to Cuzco, where Felipe spent the first years of his life. In 1815 the family temporarily returned to Lima, and in 1821, after San Mart´ın’s declaration of independence, the Pardo family traveled to Madrid. Felipe Pardo y Aliaga continued his education in Spain until his return to Peru in 1828. The young Pardo was variously a teacher and a lawyer, and began his literary activities immediately upon arriving in Lima. He was editor or publisher of several important newspapers, the most famous of which is the Mercurio Peruano. Throughout his career, Pardo was a keen observer of social and political life in Lima, and his satirical remarks rarely missed their target. His satirical writings reached their culmination in El espejo de mi tierra, a collection of local-color articles which first came out in 1840. The Afro-Hispanic language of the poem “Mi amo se˜no´ Benarito,” as well as other satirical pieces in El espejo de mi tierra prompted the acerbic reply in the pamphlet Lima contra el espejo de mi tierra, by Bernardo Soffia (1840). Pardo replied with “El tamalero” in the next number of the Espejo (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Peru #10). This would be the last time he would use bozal language in print. Pardo was clearly in the right place at the right time to observe the final half-century or so of Peruvian bozal language, as well as the possibly nativized Afro-Peruvian language which persists vestigially even today. Moreover, the itinerant steeet vendors typified by “El tamalero” were usually blacks, and following the abolition of slavery often were free bozales who could find no better work opportunities. The Diccionario de peruanismos of Juan de Arona (1883:469) defines tamalero as “el vendedor ambulante (generalmente un negro bozal montado a burro) de tamales,” and cites Pardo’s poem as representative.9 In those few works in which Pardo uses bozal language, the purpose is not to ridicule the African characters in question (a servant in Frutos de la educaci´on and a street vendor in “El tamalero”), but merely to add realism to the crosssections of Peruvian life that had become his stock in trade. The longest single running text of Afro-Peruvian bozal language comes in the poem “La libertad,” by Manuel Atanasio Fuentes (born 1820), evidently written in the first half of the nineteenth century (perhaps between 1840 and 1850) (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Peru #12). This is a satirical poem mocking the 9

Mongui´o (1973:423).

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aspirations of blacks freed by abolition and the wars of colonial independence: Yo quiele s´e diput´a . . . lo blanco a tir´a calesa . . . neglo ser´a presilente, and similar lines, reveal the author’s scorn. Born in Lima of upper-middle-class parents, Fuentes was for a time the proteg´e of important politicians. Throughout, he was involved in polemical and satirical wars of words with other writers. Fuentes’ portrayals of black Peruvians’ speech in “La libertad” is far from flattering, and the prevalence of the shift /r/ > [l] combined with relatively standard grammar arouses the suspicion of a crude literary stereotype. However, the poem does contain some elements that coincide with Afro-Hispanic texts from other regions (e.g. the invariant copula s´o, corresponding to the use of invariant son in Cuban bozal Spanish), use of the third person singular as invariant verb form (yo quiele, etc.). Like Pardo y Aliaga, Fuentes was in the right place at the right time to have observed authentic Afro-Peruvian speech, the last generation of bozales who still worked as street vendors and servants, and his racist parody cannot be dismissed out of hand as linguistically irrelevant. Another work providing fragments of Afro-Peruvian speech, El gran doctor Copaiba: protom´edico de la Lima jaranera, by Eudocio Carrera Vergara (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Peru #13), was apparently written in the early years of the twentieth century, although it was not published until 1943. The author was from Ica, a region of heavy Afro-Peruvian presence, and the home to some of the last twentieth-century vestiges of Afro-Peruvian language. His literary activities were concentrated in Lima, but the solitary example of AfroPeruvian language in El gran doctor Copaiba occurs in a scene set in Ca˜nete, another region of heavy black population. The brief bozal passage in El gran doctor Copaiba is not proferred by a bozal speaker, since presumably at the time setting of the novel (apparently late nineteenth or early twentieth century), few bozales remained in Peru. Rather, the words were embedded in a song. This brief passage contains unmistakable signs of earlier Afro-Hispanic language, including reduction of onset clusters (negrito > neguito), flapping of intervocalic /d/ (demonio > remonio), use of subjunctive instead of indicative (sargano for salimos), intrusive nasalization or prenasalization (de > den), etc. The grammatical underpinning of this phrase is essentially Spanish, and this passage is consistent with other two- and three-sentence fragments of AfroHispanic language which have been collected in Ica and other Peruvian regions with a significant rural black population. The text gives ample evidence of the author’s intimate knowledge of the folklore and customs of Ica and Ca˜nete, and it is likely that this bozal morsel is more than a mere literary invention. Another brief glimpse into what might have been Afro-Peruvian bozal language in the nineteenth century comes in the neo-realist novel Matalach´e, by Enrique L´opez Alb´ujar (1872–1969). L´opez Alb´ujar was born in the coastal Peruvian city of Chiclayo, and from 1873 until 1886 he lived in Piura, a city to which he would continue to return, and which forms the setting for Matalach´e.

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The novel is set in the early nineteenth century, beginning in 1816, when a slave-fed plantation society still prevailed in Piura and other coastal areas of Peru. The title comes from the nickname given to Jos´e Manuel, a mulatto slave that L´opez Alb´ujar (himself a mulatto) partially modeled after himself. Like so many other literary works dealing with Afro-Hispanic populations, Matalach´e deals with illicit cross-racial intimacy during the most strictly enforced racial separation of the slaving period. Perhaps because of his own racial background, L´opez Alb´ujar does not treat this theme as luridly as in the writings of many other Latin American authors; instead, he seeks to make Matalach´e an extension of his entire literary production, designed to portray all aspects of the Peruvian population. Although Afro-Peruvian speech does not figure prominently in this novel, several key characters are made to speak in fashions differing from the neutral language of the narration and of the white characters. Jos´e Manuel himself speaks a vernacular coastal Spanish, replete with lost consonants and contractions. This is not “Afro-Peruvian” language except inasmuch as it represents the most colloquial speech of the lower classes on the coast, among which Afro-Americans are disproportionately represented. A bozal slave (a “congo”), speaks with definitive Afro-Hispanic pidgin traits (Chapter Five Appendix AfroPeru #14). In other works, L´opez Alb´ujar proved to be an accurate and careful observer of indigenous-influenced highland Spanish, and given his personal background, the reader will not suspect him of overt racism and facile stereotyping in his historical portrayal of the Peruvian bozal population. The history of African slavery in Peru did not experience the sudden infusion of African-born laborers at the end of the eighteenth century, such as happened in the Caribbean as a result of the sugar plantation boom. By the first decades of the nineteenth century, African-born bozal Peruvians were increasingly scarce. In some isolated cases, Africans, free and slave, retained some aspects of bozal language beyond the first generation, but approximation to local Spanish dialects was increasingly close. Given the high density of native Spanish speakers as compared to the small number of bozales, the latter had more opportunities for acquiring typical Spanish phonological patterns. Africans in Lima absorbed linguistic features of the lowest working classes, some of whom worked in the same professions, while Africans working as domestic servants often acquired an incongruous overlay of aristocratic expressions and mannerisms, giving rise to the habla palangana,10 the Peruvian equivalent to the Cuban stereotype of the negro catedr´atico. Acquisition of Spanish grammatical structures, in particular morphological agreement and syntactic patterns involving prepositions, articles, and relative pronouns, lagged behind pronunciation in the development of bozal language. Afro-Peruvian language of the nineteenth century contains 10

Romero (1987:159–60).

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frequent grammatical distortion, but even the order of major syntactic constituents and overall complexity of sentences is closer to Spanish than in the seventeenth-century examples, with truncated sentences and limited syntactic complexity. The Afro-Bolivian corpus The African population rapidly dwindled in modern Bolivia (known in colonial times as Alto Per´u), although an identifiable Afro-American population still remains in the Yungas to the east of La Paz.11 It is difficult to distinguish those early colonial Afro-Hispanic texts from Bolivia and those from the remainder of Peru. Only two anonymous seventeenth-century songs, both written in the Peninsular habla de negros, can be traced to Bolivia. One is the bozal song “Esa noche yo baila” (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Peru #4). Yet another anonymous text from Alto Per´u, apparently written in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, is the villancico “Afuela apalta” (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Peru #5). These songs are identical to those from seventeenth-century Peru and Spain, and do not warrant a separate analysis; indeed, imitation of Spanish models is the most likely source for these “Bolivian” documents. Following these early examples, which suggest no independent Afro-Hispanic language in Bolivia, but rather the literary imitation of established Peninsular stereotypes, the AfroBolivian corpus is nonexistent until the beginning of the twentieth century, when a few stories representing the late nineteenth century uncritically attribute to black Bolivians a language which contains some bozal characteristics (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Bolivia #1). Most of the features represent the speech of the Bolivian lowlands or llanos, including aspiration/loss of final /s/ and diminutives in -ingo, but a few cases of intervocalic /r/ > [l] as well as the extent of phonetic erosion may reflect a legitimate Africanized Spanish, perhaps spoken natively by descendants of slaves in isolated Bolivian villages. The contemporary Afro-Bolivian population has intermarried with the Aymaras, most speak Aymara as well as Spanish, and identify themselves as more Aymara than black. The preceding examples contain legitimate eastern Bolivian regional characteristics. Within the central Yungas valleys, however, reduction of /s/ is not a normal concomitant; in fact this region shares with the Bolivian Altiplano a very resistant syllable-final /s/. Among the remaining features of the Afro-Bolivian texts, few are typical of Aymara interference, which is usually characterized by reduction of the Spanish 5-vowel system to three vowels, a tendency towards OV word order, pleonastic or non-agreeing direct object lo in combination with inanimate object noun phrases, and a wide gamut of lapses in subject-verb and noun-adjective agreement. This is 11

Leons (1984a, 1984b).

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exemplified in a Bolivian story (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Bolivia #2), whose black character speaks “en su castellano peculiar y tonadeante que pos´ee esta raza de color” (Pizarroso 1977:111), but which is in reality an Aymara-based interlanguage. Despite these examples, Spedding (1995:324) asserts that AfroBolivians “speak a dialect of local Spanish with an acent and styles of expression different from those used by Aymara-Spanish bilingual speakers,” while the language of the Afro-Bolivian community of Chicaloma is described as “. . . el aymara y el castellano con ciertas variantes fonol´ogicas.”12 Angola Maconde (2000) also gives some brief examples of contemporary Afro-Bolivian speech (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Bolivia #3). Conversion of syllable-final /r/ to /l/ does not normally occur anywhere in Bolivia, while the shift /r/ > [l] in onset clusters and the change of intervocalic /d/ to [l] are exclusively Afro-Hispanic phenomena, documented since the early seventeenth century. It would appear that some form of Africanized Spanish characterized by these phonetic traits may have at the very least persisted in isolated Bolivian areas at least through the end of the nineteenth century. The Afro-Mexican linguistic corpus The African presence in Mexico has been the subject of intense research, beginning with the superb study of Aguirre Beltr´an (1972; first edn. 1946), and scholars continue to delve into this little-known dimension of Mexican history. In the linguistic realm, however, there has been surprisingly little work done on what was once a rich mosaic of Afro-Hispanic contact phenomena. In fact, with one exception, the only “Afro-Mexican” linguistic studies have focused on contemporary manifestations of Afro-mestizo culture in Mexico: Aguirre Beltr´an’s (1958) ethnographic study of the Afro-mestizo town of Cuajicuinalapa makes brief mention of vestigial Afro-Hispanic language; Althoff (1994) describes the contemporary speech of this area, in which nearly all the most un-Spanish traits have disappeared, but in which the suprasegmental characteristics still sound remarkably like vernacular Caribbean Spanish, with a strong African background.13 One of the early Afro-Mexican texts discussed by Megenney (1985b) contains clearly Portuguese elements (Chapter Five Appendix AfroMexico #1). The reference to S˜ao Tom´e is relevant, since the Portuguese slaving station on that island reached its peak around 1640, and slaves who had been held on that island would be expected to speak a Portuguese-based pidgin or 12 13

Gobierno Municipal de la Paz (1993:6). Aparicio Prudente et al. (1993) provide a glossary of Costa Chica Afro-mestizo lexical items. Afro-mestizo musicology and culture is also described by Guti´errez Avila (1988) and P´erez Fern´andez (1990). The language of earlier generations of Africans is covered only in the groundbreaking work of Megenney (1985b), which brings to light several previously unknown AfroMexican texts. Zimmermann (1993, 1995) provides additional commentary on Afro-Mexican texts. Mendoza (1956) contains other unanalyzed Afro-Mexican texts.

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creole, possibly even as a native language. The remaining bozal texts from colonial Mexico are indisputably Spanish. The principal Afro-Mexican bozal texts are all anonymous songs, whose time and place of composition can only be approximately determined. One is a song, apparently from Puebla, which once had the second-largest black population of Mexico, after Mexico City (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Mexico #2). There is no date of composition for this song, but the language is both modern and devoid of the most non-Spanish bozal characteristics. Most verbs are nearly or totally conjugated in accordance with normal Spanish usage. Noteworthy above all is the loss of word-final /s/ and /r/, typical of coastal Caribbean pronunciation as well as earlier bozal language but not found in any interior region of Mexico, where final consonants are tenaciously retained. Another song (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Mexico #3) is apparently from Morelia, Michoac´an, where blacks once worked in mining and domestic servitude. There is no date for this text, but the language is identical with that of seventeenth-century Spanish Peninsular habla de negros, with the addition of a few possibly Portuguese items (home < homem for hombre, quere < quer for quiere, etc.). It is possible that blacks in early colonial Mexico once spoke in this fashion (Sor Juana’s villancicos, if accurate, would point in this direction), but given the formulaic repetition of elements found in Golden Age literary parodies, the text is suspect. Coastal Oaxaca state in Mexico still contains the last remnants of the Afromestizo population, and one surviving text purportedly from Oaxaca contains phonetic deformations typical of the rural coastal speech which exists even today along the coasts of Oaxaca and Guerrero (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Mexico #4). As with the song from Puebla, this text is probably a reasonable approximation to Afro-Mexican speech sometime during the eighteenth century. Most of the modifications are phonetic and consistent with prevailing tendencies in this region. The remaining Afro-Mexican bozal texts consist of Baroque villancicos, following Peninsular patterns, and which represent at best a highly exaggerated version of the Spanish pidgin spoken by bozales in seventeenth-century Mexico (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Mexico #5). The pronunciation Zuz´e for Jos´e in (#5) suggests a Portuguese influence, as does the mention of the Afro-Brazilian musical instrument birimbao (berimbau). Thus this text may not represent Mexico at all, even though performed at times in that colony. In the early seventeenth century, the composer Gaspar Fernandes (1585–1629) (born in Spain but living in Antigua, Guatemala and then Puebla, Mexico) wrote “Eso rigor e repente” (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Mexico #6). This song is cast in the Peninsular habla de negros mold, and contains no elements suggestive of a developing Afro-Mexican language. From 1653 comes the song “A siolo Flasiquiyo” by Juan Guti´errez de Padilla (Chapter Five Appendix AfroMexico #7); as with the other seventeenth-century “Afro-Mexican” texts, the

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verses typify the Peninsular stereotypes.14 Although following in the established Golden Age pattern, these texts contain demonstrably Afro-Hispanic elements, such as magre < madre, pagre < padre also found in Palenquero, as well as in some vernacular varieties of Spanish. From the seventeenth century come some anonymous songs (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Mexico #10). By far the most extensive “Afro-Mexican” songs are the villancicos of Sor Juana In´es de la Cruz and Gabriel de Santillana (Chapter Three Appendix #46–47), written in the 1670s. The early Afro-Mexican corpus contains several phenomena which are typical of Afro-Hispanic language elsewhere, albeit not surviving to the present in any non-creole dialect of Spanish. The first involves the frequent shift of intervocalic /d/ to [r] (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Mexico #15-1), conversion of prevocalic /r/ to /l/) (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Mexico #15-2), and in onset clusters (e.g. negro > neglo) (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Mexico #15-3). Among phonetic modifications which are still to be found among Spanish dialects, albeit not in highland Mexico, early Afro-Mexican texts demonstrate lateralization of syllable-final /r/ > [l] (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Mexico #15-4). Erosion of final /r/ is commonplace, not only in infinitives but also in words ending in – or (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Mexico #15-5). Among the first Afro-Mexican texts, loss of /s/ was primarily found in the verbal desinence /-mos/, following the patterns established in Golden Age Spain and found in contemporaneous bozal texts from Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Mexico #15-6). A few of the Afro-Mexican texts from later periods reflect a more systematic loss of final /s/, in which the original morphological conditioning is disappearing. For example, from Puebla comes la mujere; from the Costa Chica de Oaxaca come adi´o, vite, pu´e, que baila este son, langohta, mihtequito, Di´o, eta, cota. The texts in question are apparently from the eighteenth century, and contain other examples of a more Caribbean/coastal pronunciation, including loss of final /r/ and occasional elision of /d/. Although today the Costa Chica exhibits high rates of weakening of /s/ and word-final /r/, as does the speech of Veracruz at the lower-working-class level, Puebla is noted for its strong retention of /s/ and /r/ in all positions. Finally, a few early Afro-Mexican texts show paragogic vowels instead of final consonant loss (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Mexico #15-7), following trends found in other seventeenth- to eighteenth-century bozal examples. A couple of more modern texts also present vestigial or remembered AfroMexican speech. A son jarocho from Veracruz state (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Mexico #12) is primarily in standard Spanish, except for the elimination of final /r/ in verbal infinitives. However, in the first line, “Jes´us Mar´ı que me espant´a,” the unconjugated infinitive is clearly a bozal carryover. Most 14

Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Mexico #8 contains other songs by Gaspar Fernandes.

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modern imitations of Afro-Mexicans simply make use of phonetic traits such as aspiration of syllable-final /s/ and loss of word-final /r/, for example in a couple of stories from Colima, on the Pacific coast of Mexico (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Mexico #13). Much more significant as a linguistic and cultural document is the Guaranducha of Juan de la Cabada (1980), a musical drama meant to be a comparsa from the Campeche carnival (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Mexico #11). Most of the characters are black, and they alternate between regional coastal Spanish (with much loss of /s/, /r/, and /d/), “African” speech (including some elements recognizably Yoruba or pertaining to other Afro-Cuban rituals), and bozal Spanish. Little is known about this work, which depicts Afro-Mexican carnivals which survived until the first decades of the twentieth century. The author declares that the work is based on his memory of comparsas which he witnessed during his childhood: “Para entonces, en la ciudad de Campeche, los participantes no eran negros. Vecinos de los barrios de Santana, San Rom´an, San Francisco, Santa Luc´ıa, se pintaban para figurar serlo alg´un mulato, uno que otro cuarter´on, mestizos claros, mestizos con mayor dosis de sangre maya.”15 Found in the play are the following bozal or post-bozal traits: (1) unconjugated infinitives (lacking final /r/) as invariant verb: Ay, mi se˜nora, de tanto que yo te am´a . . . ¿Que yo lo ten´e econd´ıo, Candemo? ¿Y a’onde nangand´a t´u? (2) Use of unconjugated infinitives with auxiliary verbs, similar to creole p a r t i c l e +v e r b constructions: no me siga’ mole’t´a. (3) Reduction of onset clusters: record´a que yo te comp’´a tu sombrerito T´u quer´ıa un neguito (4) Use of infinitive with explicit preverbal subject, a combination virtually nonexistent in Mexican Spanish: ahora ver´a pi˜no´ n de la mata pa yo cur´a . . . (5) Use of the portmanteau article/determiner nan. This element was sometimes included as a prefix to nouns and verbs, possibly suggesting prenasalized consonants; it dœs not appear to be related to the portmanteau item lan/nan found in Golden Age and some nineteenth-century Caribbean bozal texts:16 preguntando po’ la casa ’e nan Figueremo. Pu´e’ nanaita, se˜no´ ’ ju´e’, que ya nanans´e tr´e’ d´ıa se sal´ı’ nanchiquit´ın de nancasa. Ese mero nandi-quer´ıa yo dec´ı’, se˜no´ . Bueno’ d´ıa’ nanpapa´ıto. Bueno’ d´ıa’, nanchiquit´ın. ¿Y a’onde nangand´a t´u? Nanpasiando. 15

De la Cabada (1980:9).

16

Lipski (1987c, 1992b).

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(6) Use of voseo verbs ending in dithongs -ai and -ei. These forms were found by Aguirre Beltr´an (1958) for the Afro-Mexican village of Cuijla, although they have since disappeared:17 Ora recordai que tenei padre. Although the bozal population has long since disappeared from Mexico, the isolated Afro-mestizo communities of the Costa Chica of Guerrero and Oaxaca and the existence of former maroon villages such as Yanga and its environs are receptacles of language which differs subtly but noticeably from the remainder of Mexican Spanish dialects. The existence of plays and carnival songs from less than a century ago in which unmistakably Afro-Hispanic language appears unglossed suggests that the trail may not be entirely cold, and it is not inconceivable that additional Afro-Mexican linguistic data will be uncovered. Afro-Argentine and Afro-Uruguayan linguistic texts An intriguing corpus purports to depict the speech of African bozales in Buenos Aires and Montevideo from the middle of the eighteenth century to the midnineteenth century. A few Afro-Porte˜no (Afro-Rioplatense) texts give an idea of what native-born Afro-Hispanic language may have sounded like in the late nineteenth-century R´ıo de la Plata zone.18 Many of these texts are humorous or even derisive, and must be utilized with the same caution which applies to any materials claiming to represent the speech of socially marginalized groups.19 The earliest known bozal texts from the R´ıo de la Plata come from the first decades of the nineteenth century, which, extrapolating backwards, can be taken to represent Afro-Rioplatense speech of the final decades of the eighteenth century. In view of the demographics of the African population in the R´ıo de la Plata, it is doubtful that a coherent bozal Spanish was found in Montevideo or Buenos Aires much before the second half of the eighteenth century, although individual African slaves would speak a rudimentary approximation to Spanish when first learning this language. By the end of the eighteenth century, Afro-Hispanic speech in the R´ıo de la Plata was more than a minimal pidgin, and appears to have had some consistent traits which were recognized by native Spanish speakers and used in literary representations of bozal speech. Afro-Porte˜no texts recur throughout the nineteenth century and continue into the first decades of the twentieth century, representing little more than a century of Afro-Hispanic language, during which time little evolution can be noted. By the end of this period, only 17 19

18 Lipski(2001c). Althoff (1994). Despite the large Afro-Porte˜no corpus, and the importance of this area for Afro-Hispanic studies, prior to the insightful study of Fontanella de Weinberg (1987b), the Afro-Rioplatense bibliography consisted only of speculative lexical lists of putative Africanisms (e.g. Pereda Vald´es 1965:181–86), together with a handful of amateurish surveys (e.g. Car´ambula 1952b). Young (1990) offers a penetrating analysis of several Afro-Uruguayan literary texts. Britos Serrat (1999) offers a list of putative Africanisms in Uruguayan Spanish, some of which are of questionable authenticity.

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a few true bozales remained in the R´ıo de la Plata, but given de facto social and cultural segregation of the black population in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, it is conceivable that second-generation Afro-Americans in these cities exhibited speech patterns that did not entirely coincide with those of white criollos. Afro-Hispanic language in the R´ıo de la Plata exhibits several phonological traits not found in any contemporary variety of Argentine or Uruguayan Spanish, but which are typical of bozal texts from other Latin American areas (e.g. Peru, Mexico, the Caribbean), from Golden Age Spain, and from existent Afro-Iberian pidgins and creoles. These include conversion of prevocalic /d/ to [r] (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Rioplatense #16-1), shift of word-initial and intervocalic /r/ to [l] (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Rioplatense #16-2), and in two-element syllable-initial consonant clusters (Chapter Five Appendix AfroRioplatense #16-3), lateralization of syllable-final /r/ (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Rioplatense #16-4). There is some textual evidence that interchange of syllable-final /l/ and /r/ may once have been more common in the R´ıo de la Plata in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,20 but the examples adduced as evidence are common in nonstandard Spanish worldwide, and may be archaisms, the results of dissimilation, or non-Castilian survivals. A number of such words appear, for example, in Mart´ın Fierro, the quintessential representation of rustic Argentine speech. In none of the non-African texts does a categorical /r/ > [l] shift appear; liquids interchange almost randomly and quite often represent the change /l/ > [r]. Examples of syllable-final liquid neutralization in Afro-Rioplatense bozal texts invariably favor /r/ > [l], the same as found in other positions, reinforcing the consistency of the literary representations and the likelihood that a high degree of phonetic accuracy is involved. Also found in Afro-Rioplatense bozal texts is the loss of word-final /r/, especially in verbal infinitives and in forms ending in – or (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Rioplatense #16-5). Afro-Rioplatense texts show widespread loss of final /-s/, particularly in the verbal desinence /-mos/, where loss of /s/ in AfroHispanic texts was common since the latter decades of the sixteenth century in Spain and Latin America (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Rioplatense #16-6). In Afro-Rioplatense, elision of /s/ is also found when -/s/ signals nominal or adjectival plural, and much less frequently in word-internal preconsonantal position. None of the cases of loss of final /s/ would be out of place in contemporary vernacular R´ıo de la Plata speech, but two centuries ago it is likely that final /s/ received a stronger articulation in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Complete loss of preconsonantal /s/ is rare today even at the vernacular level, and was certainly not typical of received R´ıo de la Plata speech of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Afro-Rioplatense bozal texts, while reducing /s/ in the same environments where /s/-reduction occurs in popular R´ıo de la Plata 20

Fontanella de Weinberg (1987a:57–58, 100–01).

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speech, carried the reduction to far greater extremes than the pronunciation of any known dialect of Spanish in Argentina or Uruguay. Afro-Rioplatense bozal imitations show a few instances of paragogic vowels (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Rioplatense #16-7). The items shicoba and seclava, embodying metathesis, are almost identical to the form taken by the cognate Portuguese words in Kikongo. Since the Congo naci´on was the largest and most organized in nineteenth-century Buenos Aires and Montevideo, the proposed legitimacy of Afro-Rioplatense bozal texts as linguistic reflections of the time is reinforced.21 In Afro-Rioplatense bozal documents, although the /s/ of verb forms in -mos is routinely lost, paragogic vowels are found when final /s/ follows a stressed vowel, which suggests a differential interpretation of Spanish /s/ by Africans, depending upon the prosodic structure of the word. The Afro-Rioplatense data permit the inference that /s/-weakening was already well underway in the R´ıo de la Plata area by the end of the eighteenth century, but affected principally preconsonantal /s/. Linguistic transculturation of Africans in the R´ıo de la Plata was rapid, with “Africanized” registers of Spanish not surviving beyond the first generation of American-born blacks. As a consequence, the proportion of Afro-Hispanics in Buenos Aires or Montevideo who spoke any type of bozal Spanish would be quite limited at any given time period. Judging both by the data on the slave trade and on written attestations of Afro-Rioplatense language, the bozalspeaking population reached its peak at the turn of the nineteenth century, with the last large importation of slaves coming directly from Africa, or via Brazil. In earlier centuries, African-born slaves must have spoken bozal Spanish, but their numbers were small enough and acquisition of Spanish was rapid enough as to preclude any literary representation. The last wave of African slaves, coming at a time when literary representation of vernacular language was very intense, gave rise to a fleeting moment of bozal language immortalized by observers of the time. Several factors combined to thrust the language of these newly arrived Africans into a position of prominence transcending the demographic strength of the African-born population. One was the frequent employment of Africans as pregones or street vendors, shouting their services and bringing their version of the Spanish language from house to house.22 Another was the important role played by black soldiers in the wars of independence and in the internecine wars in Argentina and Uruguay. The voice of the black soldier was imitated, sometimes in expressions of admiration and gratitude, sometimes with scorn. These configurations brought to the attention of the general public some aspects of Afro-Rioplatense bozal speech, which at this time was not demographically predominant in any region of the R´ıo de la Plata. 21 22

Lanuza (1967), Pereda Vald´es (1965), Rodr´ıguez Molas 1957, 1961). E.g. Car´ambula (1952a, 1952b).

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Afro-Rioplatense bozal speech began its decline even before the AfroAmerican population of Montevideo and Buenos Aires started on the road to ethnic oblivion. The “window of opportunity” for observation of bozal language is the turn of the nineteenth century, although the black population of the R´ıo de la Plata continued to be a significant demographic and political force through the end of the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, bozal language and Afro-Hispanic cultural patterns have faded from memory, and even the last cultural remnants no longer bring before the public the sociolinguistic reality of a century and a half ago. The Buenos Aires Carnival is no more, and the “African” comparsas of the Montevideo Carnival have more white than black participants.23 Citizens of Argentina and Uruguay are often unaware of an earlier Afro-Hispanic linguistic and cultural presence in their nations, and few would link features of contemporary R´ıo de la Plata Spanish and any type of African speech. That Afro-Hispanic language was once prominently, if not frequently, heard in Buenos Aires and Montevideo has been obscured by political and demographic events that have profoundly changed the character of R´ıo de la Plata society and language. The Afro-Cuban bozal corpus By far the greatest number of Afro-Hispanic bozal representations come from nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Cuba. The literary outpouring of Cuban costumbrista literature, together with travel narratives, anthropological works, popular songs, and even a few religious texts, placed the speech of Cuban bozales in a prominent position. Brief fragments of Afro-Cuban language occasionally appeared in stories, newspaper articles, and travelers’ descriptions.24 A representative selection of these texts is found in the appendix; several of the most important texts will be analyzed in this chapter. The accuracy of many of the texts is questionable, but the common denominators are also many, and given the high degree of consistency among the texts, as well as the possibility of verifying some of the linguistic traits in vestigial Afro-Hispanic language of the twentieth century, it appears that at least some Cuban authors gave a reasonable approximation to bozal language. The first known explicit reference to Cuban bozal Spanish comes in one of the most curious linguistic documents of all times, the Explicaci´on de la doctrina christiana acomodada a la capacidad de los negros bozales, written by Nicol´as Duque de Estrada and published in 23 24

Ayestar´an (1990). Among the latter, the Puerto Rican journalist Luis Bonafoux, upon a visit to Havana in the late 1800s, remarked on a black calling out “agua y duse,” presumably agua de dulce (Bonafoux 1990:390). While not clearly pertaining to bozal language rather than to phonetically reduced vernacular Cuban Spanish, this cry fits in with the calls of pregones in nineteenth-century Cuba, Peru, Uruguay, and Argentina, many of whom were black bozales or ladinos.

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1797, with a second edition published in 1818, and a third (upon which nearly all subsequent studies have been based) published in Havana and Bologna in 1823. Duque de Estrada was a Cuban priest in the Havana diocese, and in contrast to most Cubans of the time – including the clergy – he felt that bozal Africans were not only in urgent need of Christian redemption, but were mentally and morally fit to receive catechism. The premise of his pamphlet was that any priest could teach the Catholic catechism to the rudest bozal, if only the language and style were simplified, and the arcane metaphors and allegories of the Bible replaced by commonplace situations found in the Cuban ingenios. Much of the text in effect constitutes a training manual for Cuban priests: instructions on the proper method of imparting Christian doctrine to African slaves are interspersed with sample sermons and explanations. By today’s standards, Duque de Estrada was a racist who adopted a condescending and paternalistic stance toward Africans, and who was cruelly indifferent to the onerous labor performed by blacks on Cuban sugar estates, and indeed tacitly accepted slavery itself. Castellanos and Castellanos (1988:101) note that the book “refleja una insensibilidad aterradora hacia los derechos m´as elementales de los esclavos. Jesucristo . . . es un mayoral bueno . . . la obligaci´on del siervo, si quiere salvarse, es trabajar intensamente para el amo, pues tal era la voluntad de Dios . . .” For the period, however, Duque was ahead of his time in his notion that Africans could receive the most subtle forms of religious instruction, and deserved such training. It is not clear how carefully Duque had observed bozal speech as used by blacks in Cuba. The author describes bozal speech as “aquel lenguaje de q. usan ellos sin casos, sin tpos., sin conjunciones, sin concordancias, sin orden . . .”25 This general characterization is similar to later accounts by Pichardo, Bachiller y Morales, and other observers of Afro-Cuban speech (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #65). The Doctrina contains only a single purported example of bozal language as used by Cuban blacks: “pa nuetro ta seno cielo.”26 The phonetic deformations are consistent with Afro-Hispanic pidgin of other areas, but when Duque de Estrada offered examples of sermons which might be offered to Cuban bozales in a contrived version of their own speech patterns, there are no phonetic modifications, only the most general grammatical reductions (use of third person singular as invariant verb stem, loss of articles, and very simple phrase structure), e.g.: “yo soi un pobre esclavo, yo tiene dos gallinas no m´as, gente tiene suelto su cochino, cochino come mi gallina. Yo ya no tiene con que comprar tabaco ni nada . . . yo va andando en cueros?”27 In the balance, the Duque de Estrada text is more important for the elements which are lacking, rather than for the presence of definitive bozal characteristics. A careful perusal of the Doctrina reveals no hint – direct or indirect – that anything remotely resembling a stable creole was used by Cuban blacks as of the end of the eighteenth century. 25

Lavi˜na (1989:67).

26

Ibid. (75).

27

Ibid. (119).

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One of the earliest surviving bozal texts from Cuba is an anonymous eighteenth-century canto de cabildo (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #1). In addition to exhibiting many vernacular Cuban phonetic traits, including gemination of obstruents following the reduction of syllable-final liquids, this text gives the first hint of what was to be a commonly recurring feature of Cuban bozal Spanish, the use of so(n) as an uninflected copula. In this example, no creoloid features appear. Evidently written in Havana around the turn of the nineteenth century,28 during the Napoleonic period, comes the mysterious document “Proclama que en un cabildo de negros congos de la ciudad de La Habana pronunci´o su presidente, Rey Monfundi Siliman” (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #2). For Alvarez Nazario (1974:137), this document is the oldest specimen of Afro-Antillean Spanish, but the format of this pamplet, giving a pidginized Spanish version “en dialecto natural y propio de ellos” in one column and an en face translation in Spanish in a parallel column, casts some doubt on the authenticity of the examples, or at the very least of the authorship, since the text appears to have been written by a white native speaker of Spanish, rather than by a true Congo, whether bozal or ladino. The language of the text bears a striking resemblance to the pseudo-bozal writings of Creto Gang´a (Jos´e Crespo y Borb´on) a few decades later, although the humorous and self-mocking tone is absent. In the “Proclama” the supposed author exhorts other Afro-Cubans to join in the defense of Havana against the armies of Napoleon, based on loyalty to Spain. In addition to the serious tone of the document, the text contains none of the word-play or outrageous distortion of elements found in other putative bozal examples, and which often represent white speakers’ crude parodies of secondlanguage Spanish. Among the authentic elements of the “Proclama” that can be verified with other authenticated specimens of Afro-Hispanic language are the following: (1) Intrusive nasalization. This occasionally takes place word-internally (mingo < amigo, unt´e < usted, traind´o < traidor), but more often signals the prenasalization of word-initial obstruents, a process common in many AfroHispanic idiolects for several centuries: graciandio < gracias a Dios, ingrit´a < gritar, ancant´a < cantar, anbail´a < bailar, lan grecia < la(s) iglesia(s), lan pare < lo(s) padre(s), lan Vrige < la Virgen, lan dinela < el dinero, lan crabo < el esclavo, endice < dice, and others. (2) Use of the bare infinitive as invariant verb form instead of conjugated verbs: ven´ı [venimos, hemos venido], ingrit´a [gritaba(n)], curr´ı [corr´ıa], sab´ı [saben], mat´a [matan/han matado] etc. The bare infinitive was one of the manifestations of the Afro-Hispanic verb, together with the invariant third person singular form, also manifested in the “Proclama”: save [saben], jase [hacen], dice [dicen], mila [miran], etc. 28

Alvarez Nazario (1974:137) gives the date as 1808.

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(3) Use of other inappropriately conjugated verb forms or innovative creations: viti [han visto], me vita [he visto], tingue [tiene], vite [han visto]. These deformations are not commonly attested in other written imitations of Afro-Hispanic language, but are frequent, for example, in the speech of the negros congos of Panama.29 (4) Use of so(n) as invariant copula. This form has been attested in AfroCuban texts, and is also found in some Afro-Puerto Rican specimens, as well as in Chinese pidgin Spanish examples from Cuba, the Spanish spoken by descendants of black Americans in Saman´a, Dominican Republic, and very occasionally in Afro-Peruvian and Afro-Uruguayan texts):30 “. . . rice que son su mrec´e una larron.” (5) Use of the pidgin English verb tifi-tifi “to rob” (< English thief ), an early manifestation of the presence of West African pidgin English (presumably brought from the coast of Nigeria, by Yoruba-speaking lucum´ıes and Efik-, Ijoand Igbo-speaking carabal´ıes), later documented by Ortiz (1916) for the early twentieth century. The presence of this item in the “Proclama” is particularly significant since the pamphlet was presumably written at the beginning of the period of intensive slave importation from Nigeria, and may suggest an even earlier pidgin English presence in Cuba than has previously been acknowledged. (6) Change of intervocalic /d/ to [r]: jur´ı [jud´ıos], trair´o [traidor], rise [dice], marita [malditos], Romingo [Domingo], etc. (7) Shift /r/ and /rr/ > [l] in intervocalic position and in onset clusters: bolacha [borrachos], flanc´e [franceses], bandela [bandera], palente [parientes], Flancico [Francisco], dinela [dinero], mil´a [mirar], picalo [p´ıcaro], belaco [berracos], and many others. That this was not a simple stereotype is reflected by the many remaining instances of [r] in the text, including dir´e, se˜nore, Carabal´ı, pareci, quiere, and negro, the latter being the item most frequently stereotyped as neglo in literary texts far removed from actual speech. This change, welldocumented for Golden Age bozal texts, is indicative of the Bantu influence, since this language family does not distinguish /l/ and /r/ and normally instantiates the sole liquid phoneme as [l], often alternating allophonically with [d]. Later Afro-Cuban bozal texts do not as frequently exhibit this change, reflecting the predominance of Kwa/Congue-Benue languages (e.g. Yoruba, Igbo, Efik) which routinely distinguish /l/ and /r/. The appearance of the /r/ > [l] shift in a document attributed to “Negros Congos” (i.e. speakers of Kikongo or related Bantu languages) suggests an authentic rendering of this group’s phonetic approximations to Spanish. The “Proclama” also contains several instances of /l/ > [r] in onset clusters, a shift which harks back to early Afro-Portuguese texts, and which indicates that neutralization of liquids in Afro-Iberian speech

29

Lipski (1989).

30

Lipski (1999c, 2002c).

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was not a unidirectional affair: crabo [esclavo(s)], brancos [blancos], diabro [diablo], jabran [hablen], diabrura [diabluras], etc. (8) The “Proclama” contains several examples of the invariant third-person pronoun eye, widely found in Afro-Cuban texts and still used by some elderly Afro-Cubans in isolated areas.31 At times eye is used as a disjunctive object pronoun instead of the usual object clitics, similar to vernacular Brazilian Portuguese: para quit´a eye su tierra ‘to take their land away from them,’ da eye copeta ‘give them muskets,’ da eye tambo ‘give them drums.’ (9) The text embodies the word jurumiga [hormigas], containing an otherwise unattested epenthetic vowel, also found in the word jurumingue of the negros congos of Panama and in the Afro-Venezuelan dances tamunangue and jurumung´a.32 (10) The “Proclama” offers several examples of metathesis involving o b s t r u e n t +l i q u i d combinations: from´a [formado], mrec´e [merced], jrocao [ahorcado], proqu´e [por qu´e]. These are frequent in the rustic vernacular Spanish that often provided the input for bozal language, but Afro-Iberian language frequently extended methathesis even further, as evidenced by many Papiamento words. (11) There are instances of /b/ > [m], a change not unheard of in vernacular Spanish of other regions, but particularly characteristic of the interface with African languages which prefer initial prenasalized obstruents over simple voiced stops: Manapate [Bonaparte], matis´a [bautizada]. (12) Omission of definite articles. There are several examples of this trait, common to many contact-varieties of Spanish and Portuguese: quema [los] conuco[s], por [la] boca [del] mor[r]o. (13) Defective noun-adjective concord and faulty morphological endings. The text abounds in such discrepancies, including la nav´ıo [el nav´ıo], la jento [la gente], la brancos [los blancos], caballere [caballeros], bolacha [borrachos], la flanc´e [los franceses], la pa˜no´ [los espa˜noles], una larron [un ladr´on], la belaco [el berraco], la Santa Romingo [el Santo Domingo], lan dinela [el dinero], yo mima [yo mismo]. (14) The substitution of caballere for caballeros is attested in other AfroCuban texts, such as Villaverde’s Cecilia Vald´es: g¨ueve [huevos], dinere [dinero], bonite [bonito], jierre [hierros]. The same shift is found in the writings of the Dominican satirist Juan Antonio Alix, in his imitations of Haitians’ pidginized Spanish: le mime diable [el mismo diablo], and so forth. An early imitation of Haitians’ Spanish (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Dominican #1) also contains examples such as un cose [una cosa], while in the Dominican novel Over by Marrero Aristy (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Dominican #4), a Haitian refers to la dominicane [los dominicanos] (although conceivably referring to 31

Ortiz L´opez (1998).

32

Lipski (1997).

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la Dominicanie, “Dominican Republic” in Haitian Creole. the novel Jengibre by Pedro Andr´es P´erez Cabral (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Dominican #8) contains items like papasite [papacito], attributed to Haitians, while the mocking poem “Rabiaca del haitiano que espanta mosquitos” by the Dominican Ram´on Sur´o (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Dominican #9) provides examples like maldite moquite [malditos mosquitos]. Data collected by Ortiz L´opez among contemporary Haitian L2 speakers of Spanish in the Dominican Republic confirm that the neutralization of Spanish morphological markers -o and -a to -e does indeed occur, although not to the extent found in some literary imitations.33 Given the frequency of Spanish plurals ending in -e(s) in the Caribbean, a model already existed upon which caballere could be constructed. The next explicit commentary on Cuban bozal language comes in the preface to one of the first dictionaries of Cuban Spanish, the Diccionario provisional casi-razonado de vozes cubanas, by Esteban Pichardo. The first edition of the Diccionario was published in 1836, but the remarks in question do not appear until the second edition, of 1849. In speaking of Afro-Cuban language, Pichardo remarked:34 Otro lenguaje relajado y confuso se oye diariamente en toda la Isla, por donde quiera, entre los Negros bozales, o naturales de Africa, como suced´ıa con el Franc´es Criollo de Santo Domingo: este lenguaje es comun e id´entico en los Negros, sean de la Naci´on que fuesen, y que se conservan eternamente, a m´enos que hayan venido mui ni˜nos: es un Castellano desfigurado, chapurrado, sin concordancia, n´umero, declinaci´on ni ¯ la E por conjugaci´on, sin R fuerte, S ni D final, frecuentemente trocadas la Ll por la N, la I, la G por la V &; en fin, una jerga m´as confusa mientras m´as reciente la inmigraci´on; pero que se deja entender de cualquiera Espa˜nol fuera de algunas palabras comunes a todos, que necesitan de traducci´on. Para formarse una ligera idea de esto, vertiremos una respuesta de las m´enos dif´ıciles: “yo mi n˜ ama Frasico Mandinga, neglito reburujaoro, crabo musuamo n˜ o Mingu´e, de la Cribaner´ı, branco como carabon, su˜na como nan gato, poco poco mir´a ot´e, cribi papele toro ri toro ri, Frasico dale dinele, non gurbia dinele, e laja cabesa, e bebe guariente, e coje la cuelo, guanta qui guanta” . . . los negros criollos hablan como los blancos del pa´ıs de su nacimiento o vecindad: aunque en la Habana y Matanzas algunos de los que se titulan Curros usan la i por la r y la l, v.g. “poique ei ni˜no puee considerai que es mejoi dinero que papel” . . .

These remarks have been taken by some later investigators as evidence that Cuban blacks spoke a systematic Afro-Hispanic creole, despite the fact that Pichardo explicitly attributes such language only to African-born bozales. Pichardo’s “rendering” of bozal Spanish is inherently suspect, given the crude stereotypes and locker-room humor exemplified in this fragment. This fact notwithstanding, all of the deviations from monolingual Cuban Spanish found in Pichardo’s imitations can be independently verified for Afro-Hispanic pidgin, 33

Ortiz L´opez (1999a, 1999b, 2001).

34

Pichardo (1849:iv–v).

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both in Cuba and in other regions, so even Pichardo’s obvious scorn for bozal blacks and their speech did not impede him from including a reasonable linguistic facsimile. An important if somewhat obscure literary text that attempts to portray nineteenth-century Cuban bozal Spanish is the “Exclamaciones de un negro en las fiestas efectuadas con motivo de la inauguraci´on del patrono de este pueblo San Marcos, el d´ıa 25 de abril de 1857” by the poet Manuel Cabrera (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #3). Cabrera was born in 1824 in Artemisa, and died in 1872. He wrote d´ecimas (ten-lined poems meant to be sung) that described life on the hacienda San Marcos. Little is known about the life of this poet, most of whose verses have not been published, except that he was “un vate incorrecto, precario en concepciones y hasta poco original; pero de estro felic´ısimo y muy ingenioso, para poner en verso, a usanza de la e´ poca, el acaecimiento m´as insigificante.”35 Manuel Cabrera apparently offered an accurate description of the religious ceremonies which took place in Artemisa each year, and given the large number of black slaves who worked on the nearby plantations, he had intimate knowledge of bozal speech. Although his text contains many comically grotesque modifications of standard Spanish, his writing is not the mindless parody of the negrito that so frequently appeared in texts produced by urban writers. The linguistic features of this text are consistent with other observations of bozal Spanish. There is considerable use of the infinitive as invariant verb, alternating with the invariant third person singular. There is some use of the construction ta + Vinf , the most creoloid of all bozal features and the one that links some Afro-Cuban texts to a wider Afro-Iberian creole lineage. In Manuel Cabrera’s poem this construction alternates with the progressive in -ndo, suggesting phonological erosion of the gerund rather than the infinitive as the source of the verbal stem combined with the particle ta. Other pan-bozal features include unstable non-adjective agreement, incorrect assignment of grammatical gender, pleonastic clitic lo, the invariant third person pronoun neye, omission of definite articles, redundant use of the subject pronoun yo, use of invariant son as copula, and lack of any plural marking on nouns and adjectives. A favorite butt of literary humor in nineteenth-century Cuba was the negro catedr´atico, the presumptuous Afro-Cuban who wildly concocted eruditesounding nonsense words, or used real Spanish words in grotesquely improbable fashion. Catedr´aticos were not usually portrayed as bozales (although some bozal characters used similar malapropisms), but were supposed to be native or near-native speakers of Spanish, whose flowery language resulted from a combination of insecurity and pomposity. That some such figures really 35

Guerra (1938:9).

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existed is beyond doubt; in all language contact situations where a subordinate group is struggling to attain social and economic legitimacy through education and self-realization, linguistic over-extension is a frequent concomitant. Among Afro-American societies in the Caribbean, the United States, and elsewhere, “fancy talking” is also a highly esteemed trait, and every community has acknowledged experts, whose “performances” are marked by improvizations based on real or invented words used with the intent to verbally dazzle, rather than to communicate a specific message (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #29, #47). One of the most extensive – and most controversial – sources of nineteenthcentury Afro-Cuban bozal language comes in the writings of Bartolom´e Jos´e Crespo y Borb´on, who under the pseudonym Creto Gang´a, wrote newspaper columns and plays in a literary version of bozal language. Crespo y Borb´on was a Spaniard, who spent most of his adult life in Cuba and who fully assimilated Cuban culture and language. Jose Bartolom´e Crespo y Borb´on was born in Galicia in 1811. Twelve years later Crespo y Borb´on moved with his family to Havana, where he was to spend the remainder of his life. By the end of the 1830s, he began writing satirical letters and poems in local newspapers. Although Crespo y Borb´on was not yet using his self-assigned African designation, there are several early attempts at using bozal language in these poems, which in comparison to his later writings, reveal him to have already listened very carefully to the speech of the Afro-Cubans that surrounded him. Cruz (1974:49) suggests that he may have worked in a sugar mill infirmary; in any case, his working-class life in Havana, as well as his tendency to associate with progressive young writers and activists, virtually guaranteed that he would be in contact with Cuban bozal language. As an outsider, whose own form of Spanish was – and still is – the butt of jokes and bufo comedies in Cuba (in the stereotyped gallego figure), Crespo y Borb´on would be naturally sensitive to questions of language usage, and to the power inherent in accurate imitations of particular social and cultural groups. One of Crespo y Borb´on’s pre-Creto Gang´a writings, the L´atigo del Anfibio, contains a dialogue between an aristocratic white woman and her black slave. The former speaks in meaningless vacuities, while the latter gives pithy responses in bozal language (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #4). The same collection contains the “Serenata del negro Pascual a Francisca,” set in a sugar mill, which is the first of many such “dialogues” which punctuate Creto Ganga’s writings (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #5). In 1846, after the famous escalera conspiracy in which hundreds of supposedly seditious blacks were killed or deported, Crespo y Borb´on published a series of d´ecimas entitled “Laborintos y trifucas de Canav´a,” purporting to be “. . . veraero hitoria en veso de lo que pas´a en la m´acara a yo Creto Gang´a y nengrita m´ıo Frasica lucum´ı,

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cuent´a po yo memo”.36 This humorous writing was immediately picked up by the newspaper La Prensa, and thus began a long-running series of newspaper poems, articles, “reviews,” and commentaries by Creto Gang´a. The literary bozal Gang´a quickly acquired a newspaper rival, “Francisco Carabal´ı,” writing in the Faro Industrial de la Habana. It appears that Crespo y Borb´on was also the author behind Francisco Carabal´ı, although the two “Africans” at times adopted somewhat different linguistic styles. The newpspaer La Prensa, on April 11, 1849, stated that “El escritor que se firma Creto Gang´a es una verdadera especialidad en su g´enero, en ese dialecto gracioso y oportuno para expresar cosas que de otro modo ser´ıan duras de decir y m´as duras aun de escucharse . . .”37 Calcagno, in his literary dictionary, noted that “. . . bajo el seud´onimo de Creto Gang´a [Crespo y Borb´on] comenz´o una serie de s´atiras en el lenguaje llamado bozal, y bien que el uso de esa gerga semib´arbara le acarre´o una cencerrada period´ıstica, no puede negarse que por medio de ella dijo verdades que s´olo con tal disfraz pudieron haber escapado a la r´ıgida censura.”38 Although Crespo y Borb´on showed no obvious hostility toward Cuban blacks, and in fact appears to have regarded them with considerable feelings of sympathy and solidarity, there is no a priori guarantee that his use of bozal language is to be trusted. Alzola (1965:98) indicates that “representar el habla de los negros en Cuba no fue un tema festivo, sino un inter´es nacional. Tras el habla deformada de Creto Gang´a se ocultaba el peninsular . . .” Cruz (1974:56) notes approvingly Gang´a’s “supresi´on de preposiciones en determinados casos y los cambios morfol´ogicos que recoge fielmente de la expresi´on bozal.” At another point (58) she states that “. . . Crespo, blanco, escog´ıa el habla de la clase humillada del pa´ıs, la ‘media lengua’ de los esclavos bozales . . .” Is this assessment accurate? If so, it would place Crespo y Borb´on in a relatively privileged position among Cuban writers – indeed among Spanish authors in general – in providing a reasonable version of bozal Spanish free of contamination from ideological burdens or racist stereotypes. The Havana newspapers of the 1840s contained other articles and commentaries written in bozal language, at least some of which were probably also written by Crespo y Borb´on, using other pseudonyms. In other instances, it appears that his Creto Gang´a prompted other Cuban writers to also try their hand at bozal language and humor. One of the most accomplished characters was “Ciriaco Mandinga,” who in the pages of El Faro Industrial de la Habana sustained a long literary dialogue with Creto Gang´a. Although some observers feel that Crespo y Borb´on was responsible for both characters, Cruz (1974:167–68) documents a number of significant linguistic differences between the two “Africans” that make us strongly suspect two authors (or else a Crespo y Borb´on 36

Cruz (1974:49).

37

Ibid. (192).

38

Ibid. (94).

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with a much more sophisticated grasp of linguistic variation and Afro-Hispanic peculiarities than is revealed in the remainder of his writings). These differences are partly orthographic (biyete vs. villete, mug´e vs. muj´e), occasionally lexical (macho vs. bar´on), but mostly deal with subtle morphophonological differences that bespeak of true variation in Afro-Cuban bozal language. For example, for Creto’s ahuora Ciriaco has uhora. The first is clearly more reminiscent of Papiamento awor (Lipski 1993, 1999b), while the second appears to be a simple vocalic transpostion of the Spanish word. The same holds for Creto’s ahuoy (similar to Papiamento awe) vs. Ciriaco’s uhoy. There are other apparently legitimate differences among bozal speakers (some of whom were evidently serving as linguistic models for Crespo y Borb´on and for the author behind Ciriaco Mandinga). This includes Creto’s iguariente, atrise, sintimao, dineru, and t´ıguere to Ciriaco’s goriente, tri, sitimao, ninero, and t´ıguire, respectively. Both writers use the portmanteau form nelle, but for Creto Gang´a the term refers only to simple pronouns (´el, ella, la, los, las, etc.), while Ciriaco also extends the term to cover the equivalent of de e´ l, de ella, de ellos, etc. Finally, where Creto uses the preposition in/en (e.g. en e´ l), Ciriaco uses ne < en e´ l. In this case, Ciriaco’s choice fits more closely with Afro-Iberian creoles (especially Papiamento) than does Creto’s pure Spanish form. This type of variation is consistent with other observations of bozal Spanish; nearly all the variants used by Creto Gang´a and Ciriaco Mandinga are well attested elsewhere in the AfroHispanic corpus. This fact in itself does not prove that the writers involved were accurately imitating the speech of Afro-Cuban bozales, but given both internal consistency and systematic differences between the two writers, we are led to ascribe a high level of credibility to the overall imitation. Crespo y Borb´on’s literary imitations come closest to being believable when he creates conversations (or written exchanges) between two bozales. Despite the raucous parodies contained in these dialogs, it is in conversations among pidgin speakers that the greatest deviations from the target language are typically observed. A relevant comment on Afro-Cuban Spanish comes from Antonio Bachiller y Morales, a Cuban writer whose life spanned the greater part of the nineteenth century. In the late 1800s the German pioneer creolist, Hugo Schuchardt, began to investigate several forms of hybrid contact languages based on Spanish and Portuguese, including what he called “Malayo-Spanish” (i.e. Philippine Creole Spanish or Chabacano), “Negro-Portuguese” (S˜ao Tomense), and so forth. In order to gather information on what were at the time exotic linguistic phenomena, Schuchardt carried on an extensive correspondence with linguists and writers around the world. Many of Schuchardt’s long-distance investigations were subsequently published and form part of his extensive bibliography of creole studies. Around 1880 Schuchardt became interested in the possibility that a “Negro-Spanish” – pidgin, creole, or contact language – might exist somewhere in Latin America, and he focused on the area whose social history made the

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likelihood of an Afro-Hispanic contact language greatest: Cuba. Schuchardt was apparently unaware of Papiamento, which for later investigators would be the quintessence of “Negro-Spanish.” At this point, he elicited the help of Bachiller y Morales, as regards the speech of blacks in late nineteenth-century Cuba. Schuchardt never incorporated this correspondence into his writings, but Bachiller y Morales (1883) included some of the results he had gleaned for Schuchardt in a much-cited article appearing in Cuba. In the course of the article, he affirmed that bozal Spanish could never be confused with the speech of Cuban-born blacks or criollos, nor with the (natively spoken) Afro-Cuban jive talk of Havana, spoken by the negros curros. In his response to Schuchardt and in the subsequent article published in the Revista de Cuba, Bachiller y Morales commented extensively on the linguistic and musical traditions of blacks in Cuba. For example (98–99): La mayor parte de los negros conservan los cantares de su tierra, con los aires y lenguas respectivas: pero los congos por lo com´un se un´ıan a los criollos y la letra de sus tangos en las fiestas de campo . . . era en el castellano que hablaban. Cuando los amos asist´ıan a sus fiestas era un medio de hacerles s´uplicas y pedirles justicia. Si el mayoral era malo, los cantores hac´ıan acompa˜nar a los ecos de sus tambores palabras significativas: <<mayor´a come gente>> – <<mayor´a so malo>>, etc.

Bachiller y Morales continues (99): Pero es singular que las modificaciones de la lengua, al aceptarla el negro, no fuesen las mismas para el bozal o africano que para sus descendientes, y que estos introdujesen otras sobre las que la gente menos culta, especialmente de las provincias de fuera de Cuba ya hab´ıan generalizado. El negro bozal hablaba el castellano de un modo tan distinto al que sus hijos usaban, que no hay o´ıdo cubano que pudiesen confundirlos. No era s´olo la expresi´on trastornada, sino aun la inflexi´on el dejo especial de cada interlocutor: a oscuras, con los ojos cerrados, de cualesquiera modo podr´ıa conocerse a ese negro y si era bozal ladino o criollo. Dif´ıcilmente podr´ıa explicarse por qu´e el bozal empleaba la o y la u supliendo otras vocales . . .

Bachiller y Morales cites an anonymous mid-ninteenth-century text as an example of the bozal speech of his time; this text reveals few consistent creole features, but is rather an example of second-language Spanish (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #6). Indeed, this example is far less removed from non-African Spanish than Pichardo’s text, despite the fact that both represent the same time period. The example cited by Bachiller y Morales (published in Matanzas earlier in the nineteenth century) contains only two elements which cannot be analyzed as simply imperfectly pronounced Spanish minus a few connecting words: the element tempo instead of tiempo, contains a nondiphthongized root homologous with Portuguese and Papiamento. Bachiller y Morales also revealed his familiarity with Golden Age habla de negros imitations – citing in particular Lope de Rueda – as well as with the bozal

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renderings of his contemporaries. He conceded that the imitations were rarely motivated by the desire for linguistic accuracy: “Algunos escritores del pa´ıs, no con objeto filol´ogico sino en agradables burlas, imitaron su lenguaje corrompido en poes´ıas populares, como lo hicieron los espa˜noles en sus piezas dram´aticas que reflejaban las costumbres, y los portugueses que antes llenaron de negros a Lisboa” (99) . . . “Varios escritores han empleado en sus horas de buen humor el lenguaje de los bozales ladinos y el de los criollos negros . . .” (100). Interestingly, Bachiller y Morales, examining both the Lope de Rueda examples and nineteenth-century Cuban bozal language, suggested that certain deviations from Spanish usage could be attributed to Portuguese: “Si se han copiado con fidelidad las escenas aludidas, se ve que los negros en Espa˜na a la h la convert´ıan en f . . . y esto me parece que ven´ıa de Portugal, pues fueron los importadores portugueses, que hacen lo mismo y han dado origen a fetizo en vez de hechizo . . .” (99) . . . “Rep´arese que lo mismo ha sucedido para el africano ladino en Cuba. Ha suprimido las eses finales; ha convertido a la h de los portugueses en f, como aqu´ı la j de los andaluces; ha suprimido y maltratado la palabra despu´es: y la l de platos se vuelve r.” (100). He thus indirectly anticipated later claims of an Afro-Lusitanian basis for Caribbean bozal language, although not through reference to monogenetic theories of creole formation, which were not to appear until more than half a century later. His description of the difference between bozal and ladino Afro-Cuban speech is therefore of considerable importance: No es posible confundir un lenguaje con el otro: la supresi´on de letras, la conversi´on de otras, no es peculiar de todo negro: la i final por la l, propiedad del criollo, es lo esencial que le toca; la o por la u en combinaci´on al principio de la palabra y el trastorno de los pronombres y los sexos en ellos, predominan en el africano. Por lo dem´as, tiene que confesarse que una gran parte de sus alteraciones las inicia la generalidad de la gente del pueblo, con especialidad la del campo. Fueron andaluces los m´as de los pobladores, y sigu´eronles los isle˜nos, los catalanes, y otros malos hablistas, que dejaron huellas, que van desapareciendo, aunque no tanto como deb´ıa esperarse, en las clases m´as desatendidas. (101)

Another key figure in the study of Afro-Cuban language and culture is Fernando Ortiz (1881–1969), the Cuban anthropologist and ethnographer who studied Afro-American groups in Cuba in the early decades of the twentieth century. Few actual examples of bozal language appear in Ortiz’s writings, but his works are filled with examples of words and phrases used by the AfroCuban population, as well as extensive accounts of cultural and religious practices. His principal Afro-Cuban works include Los negros brujos (1906), Los negros esclavos (1916), Glosario de afronegrismos (1924), La african´ıa de la m´usica folkl´orica de Cuba (1950), Los instrumentos de la m´usica afrocubana (1952–55), and the posthumous Los negros curros. He was also co-founder of Estudios Afro-Cubanos, Archivos del Folklore Cubano and other seminal

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journals. Ortiz was born in Havana in 1881, and a year later his family took him to Minorca, and later (1901) to Madrid. In the latter city he undertook university studies, while from 1902–05 he traveled back and forth between Europe and Cuba. His first anthropological work, Los negros brujos (hampa afro-cubana) was first published in Madrid, and was intended as much as a work on criminology as an ethnographic study. This is a surprisingly mature work (although based on the racist premise that black Africans harbor innate criminal tendencies), and was but the first of many treatises, whose linguistic high point came in the masterful Glosario de afronegrismos, first published in 1924 and revised subsequently. By the standards of today’s etymological and lexicological research, the work is flawed, since many items are uncritically attributed to African etymologies. At the time, this dictionary was revolutionary, for, instead of simply cataloging oddities and barbarismos, the author undertook a serious valoration of Afro-Cuban speech. In this respect, the Glosario is diametrically opposed to Pichardo’s dictionary, which although generally based on sound linguistic principles, reveals the author’s prejudices as regards Afro-Cuban language. In other works, Ortiz cataloged Afro-Cuban musical, religious, and cultural traditions, at times giving brief fragments of songs, dances, poems, verbal games, and religious ceremonies. These fragments, although short, are crucial to the understanding of Afro-Cuban bozal language in that they are authentic transcriptions by the author, and not literary inventions (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #7). These texts give some idea of the type of language retained in songs and dances from the bozal era, but still in use in Cuba well into the twentieth century. A brief fragment of nineteenth-century Cuban bozal language comes in the travel narrative of Mar´ıa de las Mercedes Santa Cruz y Montalvo, the Condesa de Merl´ın. Mar´ıa de las Mercedes was born in Cuba, the daughter of a wealthy aristocratic family that owned plantations and slaves. She spent her first twelve years in Cuba, before her family took her to Madrid, where they maintained contacts with the best families of Spain and France. In 1809, she married a French general who had once been Joseph Bonaparte’s aide de camp; the new Condesa de Merl´ın then moved to Paris with her husband, and began a literary and cultural career based on the French language. Her husband died in 1839, and in 1840 the condesa fulfilled a long-standing dream and returned to Cuba for a visit. Although her stay was a brief two months, she subsequently described her trip in a book, which provides a dual perspective of a woman who was simultaneously Cuban and foreign, familiar with and shocked by Cuban culture and life. On two occasions, she gave brief descriptions of the speech of bozal slaves: ¿Su melc´e dar´a pa tabaco a nego viejo, mi ama? A m´ı no bebe aguariente, mi ama.

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These two sentences are hardly significant in themselves as specimens of bozal language, but when inserted into the entire Cuban bozal corpus, they acquire some importance. The Condesa de Merl´ın had originally been raised in a slaveowning society, and presumably shared the generally low opinion of black slaves with other aristocratic Cubans of the time. However, her long stay in Europe had rendered the slave society of the Spanish Caribbean exotic and foreign, and her description of other observations suggests a high degree of detached objectivity. There is nothing in her writing to suggest that she would deliberately distort the speech attributed to Cuban blacks. The second sentence is also of importance since it is one of the few instances in Latin American bozal Spanish of a m´ı being used as a subject pronoun, instead of the more usual yo. Variants of bozal language appear in several nineteenth-century Cuban novels, most of which were written as anti-slavery documents. By far the most famous is Cecilia Vald´es, by Cirilo Villaverde (Chapter Five Appendix AfroCuba #9). Of the many Cuban anti-slavery novels, Cecilia Vald´es has received the highest literary acclaim, and takes its place among the foremost works of Cuban literature, irrespective of theme. Cirilo Villaverde was born in 1812 in Pinar del R´ıo province, western Cuba, moving to Havana in 1823. After several minor literary contributions, he produced a first – and very rough – version of Cecilia Vald´es in 1839. In this early novel, all characters spoke a uniformly homogeneous Spanish, from slaves to aristocrats. The definitive version of the novel was not to be finished until 1881, and the changes were considerable. Most noteworthy is the author’s incorporation of different linguistic registers for the various groups of characters, including bozal and criollo slaves, peasants, Spaniards, etc. In the intervening years, Villaverde wrote and published prolifically, and was also active in Cuban politics. He conspired with Narciso L´opez (the filibustero whose plans included annexation of Cuba to the United States), was jailed for his participation, escaped jail and fled to the United States where he worked as a journalist and Spanish teacher. He eventually received amnesty and returned to Cuba, only to establish residence in the United States once more. Still active in the various Cuban independence movements, Villaverde spent most of the rest of his life in the United States, where he died in 1894. From a linguistic point of view, the representation of known entities (Cuban peasants and aristocrats, immigrants from various parts of Spain) are accurate, although at times there are inconsistencies or overgeneralizations. Rodr´ıguez Herrera (1982:157) notes that “se observa . . . que siempre las imitaciones no fueron del todo correctas o felices, sobre todo trat´andose del lenguaje de los negros bozales . . .” However, he concedes (158) that Villaverde “ten´ıa de modo igual buen o´ıdo para captar palabras y reproducirlas exactamente de acuerdo con la fon´etica de las mismas, en lo cual no han acertado siempre todos los que han tratado de imitar el extra˜no lenguaje de la gente inculta o extranjera, en

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relaci´on con el habla com´un de determinado pa´ıs.” Comparing the bozal speech of Cecilia Vald´es with Lope de Rueda’s plays, he (158) declares that “. . . las negras Eulalia y Guiomar trataban de hablar como los espa˜noles de su tiempo, pronunciando eses que jam´as se han o´ıdo en boca de los negros cubanos. Y Villaverde sab´ıa distinguir el entoav´ıa o entuav´ıa de un bozal del entodav´ıa ultracorrecto uso por n˜ a Chepilla y Menesia, para luego escribir todav´ıa por propia cuenta . . .” Some inconsistencies remain, however: “. . . a veces falla al poner en boca de algunos esclavos palabras como Cruz, dispu´es y otras, en vez de Cr´u y dispu´e o dimpu´e, como se advierte en algunos pasajes.” Villaverde was in a position to closely observe different varieties of Afro-Cuban speech (De la Torriente 1946:74–96), and indeed he based his black characters on individuals whom he had known personally (Deschamps Chapeaux 1982; Luis 1990:104–05). He was also sympathetic to the situation of Cuban blacks, and did not seek to ridicule any of his characters through use of language. We may therefore tentatively take the bozal imitations in Cecilia Vald´es to have at least some basis in observed reality. Villaverde’s use of bozal language in Cecilia Vald´es can be compared with the less fictional Excursi´on a Vuelta Abajo (1842). In this text, Villaverde also describes the speech of bozal blacks he encounters, and the linguistic structures are similar to those of Cecilia Vald´es (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #10). Another well-known Cuban abolitionist novel is Francisco, by Anselmo Su´arez y Romero, originally published in 1839. Most of the characters are house slaves, speaking unremarkable Spanish, and only a few instances of examples of purported bozal language creep in (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #11). The protagonist, Francisco, is described as an African-born negro de naci´on, but as Williams (1994:79–81) observes, “although Francisco’s stated identity as a ‘tribal black’ presupposes his being born into an African language, his speech bears no trace of his foreignness, despite repeated references throughout the novel to the distinctiveness of slave speech. In describing the slaves’ return from the fields, for example, the narrator points out that they were . . . hablando un guirigay a su manera, ininteligible (Su´arezy Romero 1947:65) . . . the phonological and syntactical irregularities that mark the text are conventional strategies for signaling the alien status of blacks in Hispanic literature. The loss of final consonants and first syllables from certain words, the elision of prepositions, and the improperly conjugated verbs are all linguistic markers of foreignness, which were often invoked for comic effect . . . .” Francisco speaks only standard Spanish, in contrast to the language used by certain slaves. Like Villaverde, Su´arez y Romero was both sympathetic to the plight of Cuban slaves and in a position to observe their speech. The language of these fragments is nearly identical to the other nineteenth-century Cuban writers surveyed above, and reinforces the notion that the basics of Cuban bozal Spanish were reasonably approximated at least by the core of abolitionist writers.

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Mart´ın Mor´ua Delgado, another nineteenth-century Cuban abolitionist writer, employed bozal language in his novels Sof´ıa (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #12) and La familia Unz´uazu (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #13). Sof´ıa is generally considered to be a rewriting of (the final version of) Cecilia Vald´es, a novel that Mor´ua Delgado found meritorious but stylistically flawed. Sof´ıa was written in the period 1888–90, i.e. well after the abolition of slavery in Cuba, while the author was living abroad. It was published in 1891. La familia Unaz´uazu was finished in 1896, and was published in 1901. These novels thus come at the end of the string of abolitionist novels. It was also written more than half a century after the African-born bozal had begun to become a less common figure in Cuba by an author whose own family had experienced slavery first-hand. Mor´ua Delgado was born in Matanzas in 1857, of a Basque father and an African gang´a mother. In theory, his mother was a bozal, although little is known about her life or linguistic proficiency in Spanish. From available information, it appears that Mor´ua Delgado’s mother was a house servant for a well-to-do family, and within the family received a reasonable education. It is possible that his own mother’s speech retained some bozal traits, and Mor´ua Delgado’s work in Matanzas brought him into close contact with African-born blacks. In his novels, he gives accurate linguistic imitations of the speech of gallegos, andaluces, and working-class Cubans. Coupled with the facts of his own background, this makes for a high degree of credibility for Mor´ua Delgado’s brief but tantalizing bozal fragments. There are several linguistic features of Mor´ua’s use of bozal speech that coincide with the proposed reconstruction of nineteenth-century Afro-Cuban language, and which contain peculiarities not derivable from simply producing “broken Spanish.” One is the use of the undifferentiated pronoun nelle/neye, which figures prominently in many Afro-Cuban texts. Another feature is the use of son as uninflected copula, another common trait in Afro-Cuban speech, and not found elsewhere in the Afro-Hispanic bozal corpus. There is also the use of yijo for hijo, a variant which may be related to Papiamento yiu, and which does not appear in Villaverde’s novel. Cecilia Vald´es does contain examples of elle, and one example of son used incorrectly, but corresponding to the first person plural, rather than the more common third person singular, which became nearly categorical in Cuban bozal language: “Mosotro no son cas´a por le iglese.” It is of course possible that Mor´ua Delgado simply copied such constructions from earlier writers such as Creto Gang´a, whose prolific newspaper outpourings he must certainly have seen. The fact remains that Mor´ua’s two novels contain brief but credible bits of bozal language, and do not suggest that the linguistic examples are derived entirely from imitation. A few nineteenth-century Cuban novels contain only tiny fragments of bozal language. For example, Francisco Calcagno’s Romualdo: uno de tantos (first

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published in 1881, and written some time before) contains only the word pori´o for por Dios, and the phrases: e´ se no son la jijo franc´e, e´ se viene langenio chiquitico . . . no quiere la mayor´a. no quiere cadena on maza.

Even this glance at Afro-Cuban language contains the undifferentiated copula son, as well as the frequent use of the feminine la as generic undifferentiated article. Calcagno also spoke of bozal language in his lesser-known Los cr´ımenes de Concha (1887), finished in 1863. In speaking of the protagonist, he states (7) “. . . la influencia pecuniaria del amo, con cuya l´ogica por otra parte no puede luchar el lenguaje bozal en que cuenta sus miserias.” Of another African-born character, Calcagno says (21) “. . . a despecho de sus muchos a˜nos pasados en Cuba, no hablaba sino bozal: espa˜nolizaremos su lenguaje para evitar al lector ese enojoso trabajo de traducci´on.” One of the characters states that “. . . dej´o un piquinini en Africa . . . ,” using a Pidgin English word which made its way to Cuba in the nineteenth century. Despite his intentions to spare readers extensive passages in bozal language, Calcagno offers one example (34), when an African-born slave attempts to describe the location of a farm: “Ya no sabe si˜no´ , mu lejo, rio taa all´ı, mata grande, tabaco mucho, la suelo coror´a, buj´ıo guano.” In chapter IX of the novel, the author describes n˜ a´ n˜ igo and lucum´ı words and ceremonies in detail, giving evidence of close observation. Another abolitionist novel is Jos´e Antonio Ramos’ Caniqu´ı (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #14). This novel is set in the slaving area of Trinidad, Cuba, in the 1830s, but it was written a century later, in a modern Cuba where slavery was but a distant echo of the past. From a linguistic standpoint, the few bozal fragments of the novel are much more “Spanish” than the examples culled from nineteenth-century novels. The author’s main deviations from popular (monolingual) Cuban Spanish is the use of third person singular as invariant verb (e.g. yo mata), occasional loss of articles (e.g. Yo mimo saqu´e bridio y pone telara˜na), occasional loss of copula (e.g. ni˜na asust´a), and some incorrect noun-article pairs (camina po lo suelo). The majority of the deviations from standard Spanish merely involve “eye-dialect” representations of uneducated Cuban Spanish. This provides indirect evidence that by the early decades of the twentieth century, bozal language was fading from the memory of most Cubans; although African-born blacks could still be found, nearly all were elderly individuals who were not in constant linguistic contact with middleclass Cubans, as in earlier times when African-born slaves and workers worked commonly in homes, stores, and on the streets of Cuban cities. Similar conclusions hold for nearly all twentieth-century literary creations that attempt to imitate nineteenth-century bozal language, particularly those written in the second half of the century. Thus for example, we have the novel Quiquirib´u Mandinga (se lo llev´o el diablo), by Ra´ul Acosta-Rubio, and

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published in 1976 in the Miami Cuban exile community (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #15). This novel presents a rather stereotyped view of Cuban bozales, together with abundant literary imitations of Afro-Cuban speech. Despite the author’s apparent lack of personal familiarity with earlier bozal language, the imitations coincide in large measure with nineteenth-century examples. This language, which contains such “authentic” bozal phenomenon as uninflected infinitives as invariant verbs, invariant copular son, and many discrepancies of noun-article and subject-verb agreement, bears a close resemblance to the writings of Creto Gang´a and some nineteenth-century authors of teatro bufo. These rudimentary pidgin forms alternate with correct Spanish conjugations (e.g. past subjunctive forms), as in Gang´a, and given the late date of publication of this novel, it is obvious that the author has based himself principally if not exclusively on earlier literary imitations of bozal speech. In the phonetic dimension, the imitations are a little closer to contemporary reality, especially as regards gemination of consonants following absorption of syllable-final liquids: pogque, sinvegg¨uenza, etc. Another twentieth-century novel containing even more questionable examples of bozal language is M´as all´a de la nada by Armanda Ru´ız Garc´ıa (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #16). This author uses invariant infinitives and invariant copular son, together with phonetic modifications typical of vernacular Cuban Spanish. Also used very frequently is the archetypal creoloid verb construction based on ta + Vinf . However, the text contains a chaotic mixture of uninflected infinitives, verbs of the form ta + Vinf and correctly conjugated verbs, a mixture scarcely likely to have been used by either bozal or criollo Afro-Cubans. If the author had intended to represent a true creole using preverbal ta as particle, this usage would have been consistent (e.g. as in Papiamento, Palenquero, and Cape Verdean), whereas a true bozal speaking hastily acquired Spanish would not combine two well-established verb systems (one based on particles and one based on suffixal inflection) with the stop-gap measure of throwing in an uninflected verb. In addition to the questionably accurate linguistic traits, the novel also contains a plot line replete with facile stereotypes and romantic exaggerations, which renders the entire creation suspect as a source of information on earlier bozal language. An even more sensationalistic twentieth-century Cuban novel to make use of purported bozal language is Yamba´o, by Julio Alba. This novel uses a formulaic set of transpositions, most prominent of which is the widespread use of ta + Vinf verbal constructions: “m´ı t´a sab´e que t´u no t´a quer´e a la negra Yeye,” etc. (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #17). Unlike what occurs in legitimate Afro-Hispanic creoles, the bozal characters in Yamba´o even use ta as part of the hybrid copula ta s´e. The use of m´ı as subject pronoun coincides with earlier stereotypes of Afro-Hispanic pidgin of the “Tarzan-talk” variety, but is not in accordance with known facts of nineteenth-century Afro-Cuban usage

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(except in isolated instances, when contact with Papiamento, Jamaican Creole, or possibly Negerhollands occurred). There are several shorter examples of bozal language scattered throughout Cuban literature written in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most come in novels and short stories, but non-fictional descriptions also contain brief fragments. Mar´ıa de Santa Cruz’s Historias campesinas provides several interesting examples of bozal language (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #18).39 Little is known about the author, or the composition of the historias. The bozal fragments are important, however, because they exhibit in a single text a cluster of traits which appear to reflect contact with speakers of Papiamento: (1) verbal constructions based on ta + Vinf ; (2) use of ag¨ue for hoy (Papiamento awe); (3) use of bisa for decir “to tell, say”; (4) use of disjunctive m´ı as subject and object pronoun; (5) possibly g¨uet´a. Another source of examples of nineteenth-century Cuban bozal language is the novel En el cafetal, by Domingo Malpica La Barca (1890) (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #19). Little is known of this author, but the bozal examples are quite realistic. The use of third person singular for invariant verb stem is a well-attested trait of Afro-Hispanic pidgin, while the use of cosa as interrogative word corresponding to qu´e is found throughout Iberian-based creoles, including Papiamento (kiko < qu´e cosa/coisa) and Philippine Creole Spanish. Of all the Latin American writers whose works have been taken as central to the debate concerning the nature of Afro-Hispanic bozal language and its possible creolization, Lydia Cabrera’s works form the centerpiece of virtually all arguments, both pro and con. For example, Granda (1971:483) offered the claim that “. . . Cuba ha pose´ıdo y posee a´un entre su poblaci´on negra rastros y manifestaciones ling¨u´ısticas ‘criollas’ . . . uni´endose as´ı al ‘papiamento’, al ‘palenquero’ . . . y a las manifestaciones puertorrique˜nas en la formaci´on de un ‘corpus’ dialectal ‘criollo’ de superestrato espa˜nol . . .” To prove his case, Granda made ample use of El monte by Lydia Cabrera (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #38), originally published in 1954, an anthropological text containing data on religious beliefs among Afro-Cubans, and which includes extensive imitations of bozal Spanish. Granda unquestioningly accepts the accuracy of Cabrera’s imitations, given her high reputation in other linguistic and folkloric matters, and suggests that such language, “caracterizadores de una estructura ‘criolla’ de lengua, persist´ıan en el ‘registro’ hablado de negros cubanos . . . como continuaci´on de la modalidad ling¨u´ıstica adoptada por generaciones anteriores de esclavos . . .” In this article, Granda did not explicitly link the putative Afro-Cuban creole to the monogenetic Portuguese pidgin hypothesis, but this claim was eventually made in Granda (1976). Lapesa (1980:560) believes that “las postreras supervivencias del criollo espa˜nol parecen ser el 39

This is not the same Mar´ıa de Santa Cruz as the Condesa de Merl´ın.

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habla ‘bozal’ que se usaba entre negros de Puerto Rico en el siglo pasado y todav´ıa entre los de Cuba a mediados del actual . . .” Cabrera’s extensive writings, particularly El monte, have figured importantly in most subsequent writings on a putative Afro-Cuban creole. Otheguy (1973) adds to the list of creoloid traits mentioned by Granda, and claims that Cabrera’s work demonstrates the prior existence of an Afro-Hispanic creole in the Caribbean. Perl (1982:423–24) also refers to El monte, as well as to the brief bozal fragments from Miguel Barnet’s Autobiograf´ıa de un cimarr´on (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #68). Perl asserts that “. . . the Cuban ‘habla bozal’ was no idiolectally determined jargon of the Blacks in the nineteenth century but a social variety of Spanish comparable with other varieties of Spanish- and Portuguese-based creoles.” With respect to a possible extra-territorial origin, Perl suggests that “. . . especially the morphosyntactic features of the ‘habla bozal’ are very suitable for demonstrating the relations to other Iberian-based creoles and the embedding of the ‘habla bozal’ within the Creoles and the ‘intermediate varieties’ in the Caribbean area.”40 Why is Lydia Cabrera (1900–91) considered to be the “best” source of accurate information regarding Cuban bozal language? The answers are as complex and varied as the elusive personality of this remarkable writer. Lydia Cabrera was born in Havana in 1900, one of eight children in an upper-class intellectual family. In her earliest childhood years, she was attended by a black aya, a situation typical of upper-class children of the time. From this earliest contact with Afro-Cuban society, Lydia probably derived some preliminary notions of the beliefs, attitudes, and cultural practices of black Cubans, and when she ultimately began to explore Afro-Cuban culture in earnest, she at least had some point of reference. Lydia Cabrera’s father was a writer and political activist, and the Cabrera house was always filled with writers, philosophers, and literati of all sorts. Lydia, the youngest daughter, was reputedly her father’s favorite, and she led a capricious childhood. In one area, however, Raimundo Cabrera y Bosch would not yield: Lydia was not allowed to attend high school or university. By age fourteen, Lydia was already escaping from the house to attend art classes, but her frustration mounted, until in 1920 she threatened to commit suicide if her father did not send her to France and let her study at the Sorbonne. Lydia Cabrera was not to arrive in France until 1927, but she was to remain in Europe (except for a brief visits to Cuba in 1930 which led to several more trips over the years) until 1938. During her years in Paris, Lydia Cabrera encountered the budding n´egritude movement in Europe, which had repercussions for both art and literature. Expatriate Latin Americans, typified by Miguel Angel Asturias, were “rediscovering” that not all of Latin America’s roots lay in Europe. Lydia Cabrera recalled 40

This line of approach is extended in Perl (1985, 1987).

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the powerful African presence in Cuba. Although she lived in Paris for many years, her several trips to Cuba were the time when she began to explore the hitherto distant Afro-Cuban culture, beginning in the Pogolotti neighborhood of Marianao, in greater Havana. She sought the aid of a seamstress who had previously worked for the family; the woman’s name was Teresa M., and her lucum´ı designation was Om´ı Tom´ı. Om´ı Tom´ı in turn introduced Lydia to Calixta Morales, also known as Oddedei, and the two elderly Afro-Cuban women gave Lydia her first initiation into Afro-Cuban religious rituals.41 The three-month sojourn in the company of these women gave Lydia enough material to enable her to begin writing on Afro-Cuban themes upon her return to Paris. During this time period Alejo Carpentier was collecting materials for his first novel, the Afro-Cuban Ecue-Yamba-o; he later remarked that around 1927 “tropec´e con Lydia Cabrera en un juramento n˜ a´ n˜ igo celebrado en plena manigua, en las cercan´ıas de Marianao.”42 If these recollections are accurate, it would indicate that Lydia Cabrera had begun her ethnographic explorations of Afro-Cuban culture at a very early age, although the first fruits of these contacts were to appear in stylized fiction. Some thirty years later, Cabrera was to bring these contacts with secret Afro-Cuban brotherhoods into sharper focus, in the monograph La sociedad secreta abaku´a. In the 1920s, however, Lydia Cabrera was still somewhat of a dilettante, and the lighthearted way in which she dismissed her anthropological inclinations, both at the time and in later decades, has caused many critics to assume that her entire corpus of writings is but the product of a fertile imagination enriched by the Afro-Cuban environment, but devoid of any value as legitimate ethnographic research. In fact, Lydia Cabrera’s writings show a steady progression toward an ever more accurate depiction of the most intimate details of Afro-Cuban culture, but she never abandoned her sense of literary creation, her picaresque sense of humor, and her loving embrace of Afro-Cuban life as the most magnificent form of magical realism to be found in all of Latin America. It is this mixture of fact and fantasy, and her refusal to be classified as an anthropologist, which is the root of the great ambivalence with which Cabrera’s books have been treated by scholars in various disciplines. Her first book, Cuentos negros de Cuba (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #39) was not intended to be a landmark in Afro-Cuban literature, but merely an attempt to draw upon materials that were familiar to the writer in her foreign setting, and even which might be considered attractively “exotic” to a French-speaking readership which was fascinated by African and Native American cultures, provided that they were safely grafted onto a familiar European cultural and literary trunk. Things were to change, however. In 1940, after Lydia Cabrera had returned to Havana to live, she was visited by Gabriela 41

Perera (1971:21–22).

42

Soto (1988:38).

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Mistral, who expressed her disappointment at finding Cabrera to be very bourgeois.43 These criticisms stung Lydia, and perhaps as a result she began to write more intensively. A flurry of books followed, and her literary and anthropological writings continued throughout the rest of her life – half a century. Por qu´e: cuentos negros de Cuba was published in 1948 (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #32). El monte, the massive treatise on folk medicine and folk practices among various Afro-Cuban naciones, and which many researchers consider to be Cabrera’s premier Afro-Cuban study, appeared in 1954 (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #38). The humorous and whimsical Refranes de negros viejos came out the next year (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #31). Anag´o, a glossary of lucum´ı [Yoruba] words used in Cuba was published in 1957. In 1958 Cabrera published La sociedad secreta abaku´a, a stunning testimony to the talent of this amateur anthropologist to penetrate a hermetic and secretive all-male Afro-Cuban group (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #37). Twelve years were to pass before Cabrera’s next book, Ot´an iyebiy´e: las piedras preciosas, dealing with magical properties of rocks and minerals. Rapidly following are Ayap´a-cuentos de Jicotea (1971; Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #36), Yemay´a y Och´un (1974) – dealing with santer´ıa rituals (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #34), Anaforuana (1975) – another book dealing with Abaku´a rituals (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #67), Francisco y Francisca: chascarrillos de negros viejos (1976) – a book of humorous anecdotes (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #30), and the important Reglas de congo, palo monte, mayombe (1979) – a major treatise on cultural and religious practices of Bantuspeaking Afro-Cuban groups (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #64). Most of the above-mentioned texts contain examples of Afro-Cuban bozal language, sometimes inserted with no preamble, and at other times explicitly attributed to particular groups or speech communities. Several minor books also appeared during this time period. In the last decade of her life, Cabrera published several more books, including La medicina popular en Cuba (1984), but there were no more fragments of bozal language. The bozal language in Cabrera’s apparently non-fictional works such as El monte and Reglas de congo has the same characteristics as the fragments appearing in avowedly fictional books such as Francisco y Francisca and Por qu´e. This fact, combined with the high degree of detail in the anthropological works and Cabrera’s positive valuation of Afro-Cuban culture, have led the majority of researchers who have examined her texts with an eye toward reconstructing earlier Afro-Cuban bozal language to conclude that her bozal language is tantamount to a first-hand transcription. The truth, it would seem, falls a bit short of this assertion, although, from any viewpoint, Cabrera’s Afro-Cuban writings constitute the single most important contribution to the documentation of 43

Cabrera (1980b:15), Simo (1984:10).

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Caribbean bozal language. Lydia Cabrera had phenomenal powers of observation, a keen ear, and an equally impressive memory. Except for the last years, in which she used a tape recorder to accompany her field interviews, Cabrera used notebooks and note cards to record her observations of bozal language and culture. At best, then, her bozal fragments must be taken as approximations written on the fly, or reconstructed long after the fact from the author’s recollections of the general speech patterns of her Afro-Cuban informants. A more serious consideration in dealing with Lydia Cabrera’s bozal approximations is the fact that even the most anthropological-like texts are in fact literary approximations, while the stories and other fictional works represent even greater flights of the author’s imagination. In one interview Cabrera declared:44 No me considero nada. Yo he escrito para divertirme. Y te voy a ser franca: he escrito s´olo para tres personas . . . me refiero a Pierre Berger . . . Roger Bastide y Alfred Metraux . . . y para mis amigos los negros viejos, que encontraban bien lo que yo escrib´ıa. Pero nunca me he considerado escritora, ni antrop´ologa . . . turista, si t´u quieres. Lo que me ha llamado la atenci´on de los negros es la poes´ıa de sus mitos. Y eso es lo que yo he tratado de captar.

This statement in itself does not invalidate the possible anthropological and linguistic significance of Cabrera’s writings; it only shows that accurate linguistic reporting was not foremost in her mind upon giving a literary rendition of AfroCuban culture and language.45 At other points in her career, however, Cabrera ascribed a greater value to her anthropological observations, although cautioning that she merely reported what she saw, rather than offering interpretations:46 Ha sido mi prop´osito ofrecer a los especialistas, con toda modestia y la mayor fidelidad, un material que no ha pasado por el filtro peligroso de la interpretaci´on, y enfrentarlos con los documentos vivos que he tenido la suerte de encontrar.

Elsewhere, Cabrera was even more revealing. To the question “Entonces, ¿usted contempla la posibilidad de que el habla bozal, en los cuentos, en las leyendas que la utilizan, est´e permeada de cultura hisp´anica?”, Cabrera replied:47 . . . En la misma religi´on se produjo un sincretismo . . . y desde luego, en los cuentos tambi´en hay sincretismo. Cuando yo escrib´ı los Cuentos negros hice lo que me dio la gana. As´ı que no podemos decir que sean puramente folkl´oricos. Aunque otros, s´ı est´an tomados sin alteraci´on alguna. Y bozales, los hab´ıa todav´ıa en Cuba cuando yo vine para ac´a. Te ibas a Matanzas, a Pinar del R´ıo, a Camag¨uey, y all´ı encontrabas al negro del campo, sin contacto con La Habana, que era el negro bozal. Estaba viviendo como en los tiempos de la colonia . . .

Cabrera openly confesses that her bozal imitations were often playful, written to entertain and to capture the flavor of Afro-Cuban culture and language, rather 44 46

Zald´ıvar (1986:7). Cabrera (1983:8).

45 47

Vald´es-Cruz (1978). Zald´ıvar (1986:11).

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than the recorder-like near-transcriptions that some researchers have assumed. This admission does not invalidate her entire corpus, since Lydia Cabrera had a good ear and a phenomenal memory, and much of what she wrote was indeed based on an accurate recollection of Afro-Cuban speech. It does, nonetheless, introduce a critical element of caution, and invalidates attempts to perform, for example, quantitative analyses or other detailed linguistic analyses on Cabrera’s writings as though they were true transcriptions. The end of the preceding quotation is also revealing, since Cabrera apparently extends the meaning of bozal from the more widely accepted ‘born in Africa, only partially acculturated to Hispanic language and society’ to a more general meaning of rustic, uneducated, and isolated from urban society. The latter meaning, however, does not necessarily imply that any pidgin or creole language remained, only a certain distance from the mainstream of Cuban life. It is not clear that Cabrera used the same broad interpretation of bozal in her earlier writings, and in her younger years she indeed had much contact with true African-born bozales. Among Cuban scholars, the full impact of Lydia Cabrera’s Afro-Hispanic language has seldom been recognized, possibly given the prevailing notion among many non-specialist Cubans that Cuban blacks in general (i.e. those born and raised in Cuba and speaking Spanish monolingually) speak a “special” form of Spanish. When pressed for details, most (older) Cubans simply refer to phonetic traits which, while definitely more prevalent among the lower sociolects of Cuban Spanish, cannot be definitely ascribed to an African substratum, are also used by white Cubans of comparable socioeconomic status, and are usually found in other Spanish dialects including those for which no African connection can be postulated. Thus, for example, the literary scholar Vald´es-Cruz (1974:93) describes Cabrera’s use of “espa˜nol deformado”: Cuando incluye palabras en un espa˜nol deformado que imita el habla de los negros, se vale de ciertos recursos, como la supresi´on de la “s” o de otras consonantes finales y a veces hasta de toda la s´ılaba final (m´a por m´as; se˜no por se˜nor, t´o por todo). Otro recurso es el de la asimilaci´on y la p´erdida de consonantes interiores o el de la confusi´on de los sonidos “l” y “r” (cansao por cansado; yebba por yerba; arma por alma).

These same pan-Caribbean traits have been used by Afro-Cuban authors such as Nicol´as Guill´en, as well as by white Cuban writers who imitated the speech of blacks, including Emilio Ballagas, Ram´on Guirao, etc. Historically, it was even commercially feasible to maintain this artificially exaggerated “black” Spanish. One case comes from a black Cuban radio comedian, Amador Dom´ınguez, who aspired to becoming an intellectual commentator and not simply a slapstick artist. Upon learning of Dom´ınguez’s aspirations, his boss replied: “¡Bah! El d´ıa que aprendas a hablar como blanco no te van a llamar para ning´un programa y te quedar´as sin trabajo. ¡Tu negocio es seguir hablando como negro!”48 Long 48

L´opez (1981:393), also Lipski (1985b).

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after African-born bozales had disappeared from Cuba, and when Afro-Cuban pidgin was at best a distant and rapidly fading memory, Cuban popular music, in the form of the son and occasionally the rumba, continued to coin new examples of bozal speech. Indeed, such songs continue to appear sporadically even today. Among the most famous practitioners of the neo-bozal musical tradition are Celia Cruz, Miguelito Vald´es, and, from earlier decades, Bola de Nieve (Ignacio Villa, 1911–71). The latter was also a poet, composing several poems in bozal language in which creoloid elements figure prominently. Villa, born scarcely more than a decade after Lydia Cabrera, lived at a time in which bozal language could still be heard, and there is every reason to consider his imitations as authentic (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #8). A brief fragment of purportedly authentic Afro-Hispanic language comes in the Biograf´ıa de un cimarr´on (1966) by Miguel Barnet (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Cuba #68). This book is essentially a transcription of the autobiography of an elderly black Cuban who had been a cimarr´on (escaped slave) in his youth. Esteban Montejo was born in Las Villas around 1859. Miguel Barnet learned of him 104 years later, in 1963, when he was interviewed by a Cuban newspaper. Montejo was a Cuban-born criollo. His father was a Lucum´ı (Yoruba speaker) from Oyo, in Nigeria, while his mother was evidently born in Cuba “de origen franc´es,”49 a term which Montejo applied to Haitians. At another point Montejo referred to Haitians in Cuba singing tumba francesa songs in patu´a.50 Montejo escaped from slavery at a very young age, and never really knew his parents. His godfather was named Gin Congo, suggesting that he was also African-born, but Montejo never learned of his existence until the 1890s. The young cimarr´on was apparently first raised by the owner of the sugar estate on which he was born, then by a succession of escaped slaves. By the time Barnet interviewed the old man, he apparently spoke native vernacular Cuban Spanish, although Barnet alludes to “formas de lenguaje, giros, sintaxis, arca´ısmos y modismos de su habla.”51 This apparently refers to a disjointed narrative style in highly vernacular language, rather than to any Africanized bozal speech. This is confirmed by the later remark (Barnet 1966:10): that “De haber copiado fielmente los giros de su lenguaje, el libro se habr´ıa hecho dif´ıcil de comprender y en exceso reiterante. Sin embargo, fuimos cuidados en extremo al conservar la sintaxis cuando no se repet´ıa en cada p´agina.” Although Esteban Montejo was a native speaker of Spanish, he did recall the speech of older bozales he had known in his youth, and thus gave approximations to the Afro-Hispanic pidgin used by African-born blacks in early nineteenth-century Cuba: Criollo camina all´a adonde yo te diga, que yo te va a regal´a a ti una cosa . . . Ust´e, criollo, son bobo . . . mire, ust´e ve eso, con eso ust´e consigue t´o en cosa . . . (127) 49

Barnet (1966:16).

50

Ibid. (31).

51

Ibid. (9).

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Mientras t´u trabaja mayombe, t´u son due˜no e tierra (130). T´u ve y haz este trabajo y cuando t´u tiene problema resuelto, t´u viene a m´ı y paga . . . T´u son bueno y callao, yo va a cont´a a ti una cosa . . . (154) Ust´e, criollo, no sabe qu´e son lifiante, ese que ust´e ve aqu´ı en circo no son lifiante, lifiante mi tierra son mayore, come coraz´on de palma . . . (155)

The language of these fragments is unremarkable, in no way suggesting a stable creole language with non-Hispanic syntax. Montejo himself declared (158): “Les dec´ıan bozales por decirles algo, y por que hablaban de acuerdo con la lengua de su pa´ıs. Hablaban distinto, eso era todo . . . Si queda alguno por ah´ı tiene que ser m´as viejo que yo veinte veces.” Several texts document the beginnings of Creole French-influenced Spanish as spoken in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Cuba. In the story “Luna verde,” Carlos Carreras (1958:13–15) has some black characters, evidently Haitians emigrating to Cuba to cut sugar cane, speaking in “un franc´es roto,” but which in reality is neither French nor French creole, but more likely Spanish as spoken by French creole speakers: T´u ten´e canma, Col´ın, las mujeres son as´ı . . . Yo ten´e canma, t´u no apure . . . T´u, hijo bonito de blanco . . . Ella tener guang´a . . .

Several key features of creole carryover are present in this example, including unconjugated verbs without particle representing “have,” lack of reflexive verbs (t´u no apure), and missing copula (t´u hijo bonito de blanco). Haitian Creole was an important linguistic and cultural element in Cuba. In the twentieth century, the Machado and Batista governments imported thousands of Haitian contract laborers to cut sugar cane,52 creating generations of Cuban-born Haitians, whose plight is typified in Alejo Carpentier’s novel Ecue Yamba-´o. These Haitians often spoke a rudimentary Spanish which the uninitiated observer might mistake for an Afro-Hispanic creole. Moreover, Haitian Creole influence in Cuban Spanish antedates these twentieth-century contacts. French Creole-speaking laborers were very common in nineteenth-century Cuba, being especially prevalent around Santiago de Cuba. A few nineteenthcentury Afro-Cuban texts hint at Haitian Creole influence; for example the use of pa m´ı “mine,” identical in structure to Haitian pa-m (< pa-mwe): colaz´on pa m´ı ta brincando dentro la pecho como la cuebro. (Ben´ıtez del Cristo 1930) No se˜no´ , veg¨uenza no e pa m´ı, e pa amo Tom´a. (Berenguer y Sed 1929)

52

Alvarez Est´evez (1988).

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(Creole) French-speaking blacks in Cuba organized into musical societies known as the tumba francesa; these societies still exist, and, although many of the musicians are no longer completely fluent in Haitian creole, some of the songs mix Spanish and Haitian.53 These texts cannot be confused with bozal Spanish, but rather constitute Spanish-Haitian code switching. In earlier periods, however, native speakers of Haitian who arrived in Cuba and learned Spanish as a second language spoke with many of the same creole-like features documented for the Dominican Republic. The last generation of such speakers still survives in eastern Cuba. Some Haitians, despite having lived as long as seventy years in Cuba, still speak Spanish with second-language characteristics which are similar if not identical to bozal Spanish attestations of earlier centuries: lack of subject-verb agreement, use of the third person singular or bare infinitive as invariant verb form, misuse and elimination of prepositions, unstable noun-adjective agreement, and incomplete targeting of Spanish words:54 Yo contrao [encuentro] un paisano m´ıa nosotro habla su lengua e nosotro poco catellano e´ l sabe yo sabe poco nosotro habla tambi´en Yo trabaja, yo come. Yo trabaja lo ca˜naverale Nosotro habla catellano, habla creol tambi´en Yo cr´ıa mucho animal, siembra mucho animal, se roba to, toro, toro Yo no sabe mucho catellano, pero sabe poquito El val´on son teniente [en] La Habana Yo tene do hijo . . . y var´on yo ten´ıa se muri´o (O r t i z L o´ p e z (1999a )) Yo prende habl´a catellano con cubano . . . yo me guta habl´a catellano, pero poca cosa no sabe Yo tiene aqu´ı, tengo 16 a˜no. Siempre una haciendo una trabajo yo com´e, yo va bien. Yo hacel mucho trabajal; coltal, coltal ca˜na balato; recogel caf´e a sei kilo Depu´e ut´e decansal Ut´e lo habl´a, ut´e ta trabando con un due˜no ma grande, quello dec´ı ut´e hac´e (O r t i z L o´ p e z (1999b ))

The Afro-Cuban corpus is at once the most extensive and the most ambiguous as regards the nature of pan-Caribbean Afro-Hispanic language, and the eventual fate of bozal Spanish. The search is far from over; archives in Cuba contain much unpublished material that can potentially shed further light on the subject. Fieldwork in Cuba in search of vestiges of Afro-Hispanic language can still turn up valuable results, as evidenced by Ortiz L´opez (1998). Afro-Cuban religious rituals contain embedded bozal and post-bozal elements, and in some instances practitioners who are “possessed” by ancestral spirits speak in what is claimed to be bozal language.55 Regardless of the eventual deductions and 53 54

Franco (1959:76–77), Perl (1981), Mart´ınez Gordo (1985a, 1989), Al´en Rodr´ıguez (1986, 1991), Betancur Alvarez (1993:43–8), Perl and Grosse (1994, 1995). 55 Castellanos (1990). Ortiz L´opez (1999a, 1999b, 2001).

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conclusions, Afro-Cuban language will remain at the center of the reconstruction of earlier Afro-Hispanic speech and its permanent contributions to regional varieties of Spanish. The Afro-Dominican linguistic corpus Although the Dominican Republic contains a high proportion of citizens of African descent, the tiny Afro-Dominican written corpus is entirely lacking in legitimate bozal examples, in sharp contrast to neighboring Cuba and Puerto Rico. By far the greatest number of “Afro”-Dominican linguistic texts in reality depict the Spanish of Haitians, and thus represent the substratum influence of an established creole language, rather than the speech of African-born bozales. Rodr´ıguez Demorizi (1975:16), speaking of the French and Haitian presence in western Santo Domingo, beginning at the turn of the nineteenth century, states that “as´ı se produjo en la isla el desplazamiento, transitorio e imperfecto, pero desplazamiento al fin, de la lengua espa˜nola.” The French government established a French language publishing enterprise during the brief French occupation. Shortly after the Haitian occupation began, Haitian president Boyer ordered the military conscription of all male Dominicans between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five, an event which surely put them in contact with the language of the Haitian troops – Creole, not European French. In 1824 Boyer decreed the prohibition of the use of Spanish in official documents. All official usage was in French, but once more Haitian Creole was much more likely the language of the Haitian occupying forces, except for a small cultural elite. French became the language of many cultural events in the capital city, but it is unlikely that this had much of a linguistic effect on the majority of the Spanish-speaking population.56 Rodr´ıguez Demorizi (1975:18), in speaking of Saman´a, does not acknowledge the direct implantation of Haitian Creole during or after the Haitian occupation of Santo Domingo, preferring instead to attribute the minority status of Spanish to a variety of sources: “Si en la villa de Saman´a y en sus regiones aleda˜nas no predomina de manera absoluta el espa˜nol, ello se debe a la inmigraci´on negra de los Estados Unidos . . . y a las anteriores incursiones de piratas ingleses y franceses. Entonces naci´o el patois usado en la Pen´ınsula samanesa, confusa mezcla de espa˜nol, franc´es e ingl´es.” In reality, the linguistic situation in Saman´a is much more systematic:57 three well-delimited languages are spoken: Spanish, English (in several varieties), and an archaic variety of Haitian Creole (known locally as patois). There is none of the “confusa mezcla” as stated above, although inevitably the languages have mutually affected 56 57

Rodr´ıguez Demorizi (1975:18). Benavides (1973) and Gonz´alez and Benavides (1982).

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one another. The ignorance of the situation in Saman´a on the part of otherwise well-informed Dominican scholars (who evidently had little active knowledge of either English or Haitian) has distorted the true situation of this region. To a Spanish-speaking Dominican, the use of either Haitian or the extremely vernacular forms of English found in Saman´a, interlarded with borrowings from Spanish, must surely have seemed like an unintelligible jargon, but the fact remains that Haitian Creole, followed by English, are stable substrate influences in Saman´a. One of the very earliest parodies of the speech of Haitians resident in Santo Domingo comes in 1845, a year after the final Haitian withdrawal (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Dominican #1). This article, appearing in a newspaper and poking fun at the endless political conversations taking place in cafes and on street corners, portrays Haitian expatriates as speaking French rather than Haitian Creole, which is not unreasonable among the more elite Haitians who frequented the improvised tertulias of Santo Domingo. This grotesque parody bears no resemblance to French- or Creole-influenced Spanish, but it does document Dominicans’ contempt for the languages of the former French colony. These early comic representations set the stage for later, more accurate, imitations of Haitianized Spanish. Beginning in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, Dominican literature and folklore is replete with legitimate examples of the use of Haitian in fluid combinations with Spanish. For example, in a Dominican folktale a bewitched bird speaks some lines in a mix of Haitian Creole and Spanish (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Dominican #2). In this fragment, mue is Haitian mwe ‘I, me.’ Larraz´abal Blanco does not identify langu´e, but it is possibly Haitian lagu`e ‘war,’ in which nasalization is common in the vernacular pronunciation.58 Of more interest than the individual words themselves is the smooth interweaving of Spanish and Haitian elements in this peasants’ folktale. Rather than bilingual code-switching, this text suggests a gradual interpenetration of the two languages resulting in a creoloid form of Spanish which in the absence of knowledge of the Haitian contact could be taken for a vestige of an earlier purely Afro-Hispanic creole. Indeed, Larraz´abal Blanco (1975:197) cautions that “la existencia de voces criollas haitianas en nuestros cuentos no debe ser ´ındice de su origen afro, como pudiera suponerse.” In Villa Mella, considered one of the most “African” villages in the Dominican Republic, Haitian words have been recorded as part of the core vocabulary (for example, nu for nosotros ‘we’).59 In songs still sung by the Cofrad´ıa del 58

59

An alternative possibility is the vulgar Haitian epithet langu`et mama (u) ‘your mother’s clitoris,’ corresponding to Caribbean Spanish el co˜no de tu madre. Given that Haitian coco is also a vulgar term meaning ‘vagina,’ the latter hypothesis is quite plausible. Rodr´ıguez Demorizi (1975:108).

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Esp´ıritu Santo, the words m’al´e ‘I’m going’ are frequent),60 and the combination ti mag¨uelo could combine Haitian ti “little” with Spanish ag¨uelo, the vernacular pronunciation for ‘grandfather.’61 Reported for Monte Plata is amodec´ı ‘por ejemplo,’ which the observer speculated came from a mi decir.62 A much more likely etymology involves the archaic French creole pronoun mo (modern mwe in Haitian), still found for example in Louisiana Creole French and in the archaic Haitian Creole of the Saman´a Peninsula. Dec´ı may be a hybrid of Haitian di and Spanish decir, or a combination involving Haitian d´ezi ‘desire.’ Also reported for the same area is ples´ı (of uncertain meaning), possibly from Haitian plez´ı ‘pleasure, pleased.’ In Santiago, sip´on (< Haitian zipon < French jupon) ‘skirt, slip,’ ful´a ‘kerchief,’ and possible dol´ın (< Haitian dol`e ‘pain’) “anger” have been reported.63 Other Haitian forms appear throughout the Dominican Republic, at the vernacular level among rural, predominantly Afro-American populations; few have been recorded in glossaries or other dialectological accounts. In Dajab´on, near the Haitian border, a report made in 1922 (Rodr´ıguez Demorizi 1975:219) noted that at least 40 percent of the population was Haitian, speaking patu´a. The author went on to state “es muy rara la persona de nacionalidad dominicana que no sabe hablar el ‘patu´a’ . . . sucede tambi´en que las familias acomodadas utilizan los servicios de las haitianas como cocineras y de los haitianos como peones. De ah´ı la oportunidad que favorece la influencia del ‘patu´a’ siendo accesible a los escolares y hasta a los ni˜nos de 4 a˜nos de edad en adelante.” The reference to “la persona de nacionalidad dominicana” clearly refers only to the western regions along the Haitian border, but it does give a feeling for the use of Haitian among a broad spectrum of Dominicans, in conjunction with rural vernacular varieties of Spanish. Many Dominican writers have incoporated imitations of the Spanish spoken by Haitians in the Dominican Republic. The richest literary representation of “Haitian” Spanish comes from the writings of the satirist Juan Antonio Alix (1833–1917), writing at the end of the nineteenth century. The best example is the “Di´alogo cantado entre un guajiro dominicano y un pap´a boc´o haitiano en un fandango en Dajab´on” (1874) (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Dominican #3). This poem demonstrates that Alix had a profound knowledge of Haitian Creole. All the Haitian examples are authentic, and some correspond to earlier forms which have now evolved. For example, the earlier vu < Fr. vous is now u ‘you’ in Haitian; both vu and u appear in Alix’s poem. The first person singular pronoun, mwe in modern Haitian, was mo/mu as late as the end of the nineteenth century, as reflected in the “Di´alogo.” More than an example of Haitianized Spanish, this poem demonstrates code-switching, with entire sentences in Haitian intermixed 60 62

Hern´andez Soto (1996:131). Rodr´ıguez Demorizi (1975:98).

61

Hern´andez Soto (1996:133). 63 Ibid. (146–49).

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with phrases in broken Spanish, of the bozal variety. A closer look at the latter elements reveals a number of combinations which, when occurring in AfroHispanic texts from other regions, have often been cited as evidence in favor of an earlier pan-Latin American Afro-Hispanic creole. Although Alix’s poems are the best known and most humorous imitations of Haitians’ attempts at speaking Spanish, other examples are found in Dominican literature and folklore, children’s games, etc. Dominicans once invented a pseudo-Haitian oath, to be said while making the sign of the cross:64 por la pe por la panta cr´u quilif´u quilif´u Mar´ıa quitif´u ump´a umj´u

The first line is legitimately pu la p`e “for peace.” The second line, an obvious deformation of Santa Cruz, is reminiscent of the mocking habla de negros of Spanish Golden Age literature. Quilif´u is quite probably derived from Haitian qui li fu ‘who he/she [is] crazy,’ while quitif´u could be interpreted as ‘who [is a] little crazy.’ Among more realistic representations of Haitian-Spanish interlanguage are passages from the novel Over, by Marrero Aristy (1939), which documents the situation of Haitian and West Indian laborers on Dominican sugar plantations or bateyes (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Dominican #4). In this novel, similar examples are also attributed to cocolos, speakers of West Indian Creole English (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Dominican #5). In the poem “Cocolos de Cocolandia – II” Antonio Fr´ıas G´alvez includes the following verses, which imitate Spanish as spoken by West Indians, including creole French speakers:65 Ya Primo est´a cans´a Ya Primo est´a fatigu´e

Another novel representing the speech of Haitians is Ca˜nas y bueyes by Francisco Moscoso Puello (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Dominican #6). This author also represents the speech of cocolos: mi no comprendi, Chencho! The Spanish of cocolos is also imitated by Ferreras (1982), for example: t´u no voy a salir del escuelo si no tengo t´u necesidad de hacerlo. (18) . . . estoy coge el ca˜na yo tenga pic´a pa aument´a el suya, si soy as´ı yo no voy segu´ı ser compa˜nero suyo, conio. Tu soy muy sabio . . . (29)

The story “Luis Pie” by Juan Bosch (1978) also contains some revealing examples of Haitianized Spanish (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Dominican #7). 64

Ibid. (305).

65

Mota Acosta (1977).

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Although giving representations of Haitianized Spanish consistent with the earlier texts, Bosch evidently knew less about Haitian Creole than the Dominican writers mentioned above. No Haitian cane-cutter would say, e.g. mon per, but rather papa-m, nor mon pit´ı but rather pitit-mwe. A few brief and not particularly realistic imitations of Haitianized Spanish are found in the novel Jengibre by Pedro Andr´es P´erez Cabral (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Dominican #8). These fragments also exhibit the stereotype pronunciation of turning all final vowels to e, as well as confusing French forms (ils and on instead of yo). However, the remaining combinations consistently reflect Haitians’ approximations to Spanish. Several twentieth-century Dominican poets have also imitated Haitianized Spanish, with varying degrees of accuracy. One example comes from Rub´en Suro, in the poem “Rabiaca del haitiano que espanta mosquitos” (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Dominican #9). By the same author is the “Mon´ologo del negro con novia” (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Dominican #10). These verses exhibit the time-worn stereotype of replacing final vowels with e (or schwa), but also demonstrate the use of the third person singular (yo quema), and the infinitive (yo ten´e), found in both bozal language and as a transfer from the Haitian uninflected verb system. The use of eye for ella is superficially similar to the pronoun elle/nelle/ne found in many bozal texts from Cuba and Puerto Rico, and possibly reflecting a Papiamento input to Afro-Hispanic language in the latter areas. In the Suro text, however, eye falls in line with the remaining instances where final vowels are replaced by e, instead of representing an otherwise unattested bozal pronoun in Afro-Dominican Spanish. Chery Jim´enez Rivera is another poet who has used “una jerga dom´ınicohaitiana nacida por el choque cultural y ling¨u´ıstico de dos pueblos que se encuentran en el panorama fronterizo y tratan all´ı de reducir sus diferencias.”66 The poem in question is “L’aitianita divariosa,” and most of the language is an eye-dialect representation of colloquial Cibao Spanish, in which the vocalization of syllable-final liquids is represented by e instead of i, as is more common in Dominican literature (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Dominican #11). The origin of this phenomenon has yet to be satisfactorily determined.67 66 67

Caama˜no (1989:152). Golibart (1976a, 1976b:74–76) believes that vocalization of liquids is of Canary Island origin (particularly fishermen from villages in the Canary Islands), although this pronunciation is very rare in contemporary Canary Spanish. He observes that MacCurdy (1950) found traces of vocalization in the speech of the Isle˜nos of Louisiana, a vestigial Spanish-speaking community derived in part from Canary Island immigrants who arrived towards the end of the eighteenth century. Most Isle˜no vocalization is of the sort paire < padre (although currently the form parde is more common [Lipski 1990c]), but this phenomenon is widespread in rural Spanish throughout the world, being especially prevalent in Chile. Megenney (1990a:80–81) hints at an African origin for the same pronunciation. Few other areas of Latin America have ever manifested this phenomenon. Puerto Rican j´ıbaro speech of the nineteenth century apparently had this trait, now absent in all Puerto Rican dialects (Gir´on n.d., Cadilla de Mart´ınez 1938:

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Occasional fragments in Haitian Creole (written in Spanish orthography) are interspersed, but despite Caama˜no’s classification, this text cannot really be considered a specimen of Haitianized Spanish: mue pa ue a˜ne´ , ¿e u´ comp´e, u p’anc´o ue li? ‘I don’t see anything, and you friend, do you still see him?’

Even more so than the Alix poems, this text exemplifies code-switching rather than true penetration of Haitian Creole into Spanish. Despite acknowledgment that Haitian Creole or patois is one of the major languages used in the Saman´a Peninsula (together with several varieties of English), Gonz´alez and Benavides (1982) use data from nonstandard Saman´a Spanish to raise the issue of the prior creolization of Spanish in this region. Closer examination of the Saman´a Spanish data suggest instead the interlocking influence of Afro-American English and Haitian Creole, both impacting Spanish as acquired as a second language by older residents of Saman´a. Leaving aside the data from Saman´a, the only contemporary evidence of what might have been a legitimate bozal Spanish in the Dominican Republic comes in a few isolated words reported for some marginal dialects, whose phonetic deformations are more typical of attested bozal language from other regions than the results of contact with French- or English-based creoles. Among the remaining attestations of what might be bozal leftovers in Santo Domingo, we find some anonymous coplas (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Dominican #13), supposedly written by Dominican blacks in gratitude to Haitian president Boyer for his abolition of slavery in Spanish Santo Domingo.68 The use of the third person singular verb form va in combination with a first person subject is typical of bozal language, but also characterizes Haitianized Spanish. The use of the French/Creole word libert´e suggests a Haitian basis for this poem, rather than an Afro-Hispanic bozal remnant. Caama˜no (1989:234) regards this text as an Afro-Hispanic creole leftover, noting that “el limitado testimonio documental que representa el texto bajo estudio no permite otras observaciones sobre el antiguo afroespa˜nol criollo de Santo Domingo.” The Afro-Puerto Rican bozal corpus Depicting the life and language of African slaves and free workers never achieved the status in Puerto Rican literature that it enjoyed in neighboring

68

105–07; Alvarez Nazario 1990:80–81, for examples as early as 1814). Vocalization of liquids was also prevalent among the negros curros of nineteenth-century Cuba, free blacks living in Havana who adopted a distinctive manner of speaking (Bachiller y Morales 1883, Ortiz 1986), more related to Andalusian than to Afro-Hispanic patterns. It is thus possible that vocalization of liquids was once more common in many Spanish-speaking regions, being now reduced to a few small areas. Granda (1991) believes that liquid vocalization is due primarily to sociolinguistic marginality, rather than to substrate influences. Deive (1980:228), Rodr´ıguez Demorizi (1973:52–53).

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Cuba, and though black characters and references abound in Puerto Rican novels, stories, and poems, only the tiniest fraction of these works yields any insight into the speech of Afro-Puerto Ricans, and even fewer documents reveal anything beyond brief accounts of foreigners’ blunders and malapropisms. A handful of texts represents the Afro-Hispanic speech of Puerto Rican bozales. The small number of Puerto Rican bozal texts stands in sharp contrast to the literally scores of Afro-Cuban texts. This is a function of the history of both islands. Cuba was swept up in the nineteenth-century sugar plantation boom, and received hundreds of thousands of new slaves within a few decades in the first half of that century. Puerto Rico participated only marginally in this enterprise, and in particular there was no rush to suddenly import huge numbers of slaves in the nineteenth century. Puerto Rico was also relatively unpopulated in comparison with Cuba, had a much lower standard of living, fewer cultural opportunities, and a greatly reduced number of writers. By the nineteenth century, when most literary bozal imitations were produced in Latin America, the vast majority of black slaves in Puerto Rico were island-born and speaking Spanish with no second-language traits, although some ethnolinguistic markers may have remained: “Es obvio suponer que en cuanto a los negros y las negras nacidos en la isla, su lengua se cimentar´ıa sobre las bases del lenguaje popular puertorrique˜no, con sus variaciones. Los negros de tala o los trabajadores de suelo adquirieron el espa˜nol del campesino, mientras que los de la casa grande tal vez desarrollaron una modalidad, m´as refinada, de acuerdo con la manifestaci´on de los amos en el a´ mbito dom´estico.”69 The Puerto Rican text which shows the greatest evidence of a systematically reconstructed Afro-Hispanic language is the skit La juega de gallos o el negro bozal (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Puerto Rico #1) by Ram´on Caballero, originally published in Ponce in 1852, and first brought to the attention of linguists by Alvarez Nazario (1974). Little is known about the author of this play, other than the fact that he was born in Venezuela, and eventually moved to Ponce.70 Nor is there any information about his familiarity with the speech of Africanborn bozales, but the latter were certainly present in Puerto Rico during the time in which the play was written. La juega de gallos combines scattered structures reminiscent of other Afro-Iberian creoles, set against a generally unremarkable bozal pidgin. The play contains such attested Afro-Hispanic elements as the use of ta + Vinf , the invariant copula son, the use of the bare infinitive minus final /r/ as invariant verb, the West African Pidgin English form yari yari ‘cry,’ and intrusive nasalization as in br´angaman < v´algame.71 These forms appear against the backdrop of imperfectly learned Spanish such as might be found in any foreign language classroom. On the basis of this text, Granda (1968:194, fn. 4) believes that “. . . es f´acil demostrar el car´acter igualmente ‘criollo’ 69 71

70 Gir´ Ortiz Lugo (1995:14). on (n.d.). Lipski (1986g, 1987b, 1992b, 1992c, 1999c, 2002c).

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de la modalidad ling¨u´ıstica puertorrique˜na . . .” From this point forward the claim that an Afro-Hispanic creole was once spoken in Puerto Rico has never been seriously challenged, despite the fact that the case rests on such a small corpus. In particular, since Ponce was the site of a large colony of Papiamentospeaking workers in the nineteenth century, the possibility that such creole-like verbs as yo ta quer´e might be influenced by Papiamento (which has identical constructions) warrants further exploration. Among later studies of “Caribbean bozal Spanish,” little attention has been paid to a possible Afro-Hispanic creole in Puerto Rico, with the latter region usually lumped together with the more extensive Afro-Cuban corpus. Another source of Afro-Puerto Rican language is another skit, Tio Fele by Eleuterio Derkes (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Puerto Rico #2), published in 1883. There are several scenes in which bozal fragments occur; these do not suggest a systematic creole, but rather the imperfect learning of Spanish. These extremely brief fragments do little in the way of reconstructing bozal language in colonial Puerto Rico, but they do indicate some awareness of Africanized Spanish during the nineteenth century. In 1883 Rafael Escalona published two humorous skits, inspired by the Cuban literary stereotype of the negro catedr´atico. The title of Flor de una noche (Escalona 1883b) was intended to be a spoof of the Romantic Puerto Rican poem “Mi flor de un d´ıa” by Jos´e Gautier Ben´ıtez, who in turn had derived his title from the play by the Catalan writer Francisco Camprod´on Flor de un d´ıa (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Puerto Rico #10). Escalona’s play was first performed in 1881. Amor a la pompadour (Escalona 1883a) was first performed in 1882. The second play contains dialect imitations of j´ıbaros and negros catedr´aticos; the first, of catedr´aticos and bozales. The catedr´atico examples represent vernacular Puerto Rican Spanish, with typical phonetic reductions and hypercorrections, together with the heavy dose of malapropisms that formed the basis for this literary stereotype. In the same play, the character Diego is a negro congo; his speech contains many typical bozal traits, including faulty nounadjective agreement, improper use of definite articles, use of the third person singular as invariant verb, all in variable opposition to correct Spanish usage. None of the traits points to anything more than second-language acquisition of Spanish. The character Juan is described as a negro carabal´ı, that is, from eastern Nigeria (speaking Ijo, Efik, or Ibibio), but his speech is that of a Puerto Rican-born negro ladino. Amor a la pompadour also has catedr´atico speech, as well as j´ıbaro dialect. In addition to the dramatic pieces, an odd and completely unexplained d´ecima referring to the Spanish-American war of 1898 was published in a folklore collection,72 containing what appears to be Afro-Hispanic language (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Puerto Rico #3). This poem contains a number of creoloid 72

Mason and Espinosa (1918:361).

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elements, such as the use of the generic article lan/nan,73 but given the lack of information regarding its composition, one can only speculate as to the authenticity of the language. There are a few other short Puerto Rican poems purporting to represent bozal language. The “D´ecima de negros,” which according to Degetau (1925:44) was “una canci´on de los negros bozales,” contains some non-agreeing conjugated or infinitive verbs, as well as popular non-Africanized Puerto Rican Spanish (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Puerto Rico #5).74 The poem “Yo so un negrito angolo” also contains a few suggestions of non-native bozal Spanish, but not of a stable creole (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Puerto Rico #6).75 A number of songs and bombas from Puerto Rico contain verses sung in what may be African languages.76 The second song, according to Cadilla de Mart´ınez (1953), was observed and transcribed in Santurce. It is not clear whether the non-Spanish items of these songs represent African items or are merely onomatopeic, pseudoAfrican jitanj´aforas. Speaking of the first song and dance, performed in Santurce by natives of Lo´ıza, Cadilla de Mart´ınez (1953:26) comments: Seg´un averig¨ue´ y pude observar, esos bailes de negros se llevan a cabo los s´abados por la noche y algunas veces durante el d´ıa. Los de d´ıa son muy raros y s´olo de cuando se trata de celebrar fiestas conmemorativas. Se reunen negros en un barrio formando un c´ırculo, en cuyo centro empiezan a cantar y a bailar uno de ellos . . . la canci´on y el coro son de entonaci´on mon´otona y chillona. El baile se ha denominado en algunas Antillas Congo, sin duda por su procedencia africana. Algunos authores le han cre´ıdo mezclado, o por lo menos derivado, del misterioso rito del Vod´u.

In the poem “Buscando dinero,” Llanos Allende (1962:31–33) offers a dialog between a brujo and a congo although the latter, presumably an African-born bozal, in reality uses vernacular Puerto Rican Spanish devoid of specific secondlanguage traits (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Puerto Rico #8). A little-known but important literary representation of Afro-Puerto Rican speech comes in the story “Tate” (Chapter Five Appendix Afro-Puerto Rico #9) by Mar´ıa Cadilla de Mart´ınez (1945:49–60). The protagonist is an elderly black woman, a freed slave of the writer’s grandfather, who was apparently born on a Puerto Rican plantation of an African father captured on the African coast and taken to the Caribbean by European slavers. The author gives no further information about this presumably real-life character (including the background of the mother, who was supposed to have died when Tate was very young), nor does she comment on the unusual speech, except to give glosses of words which no Puerto Rican or Spanish speaker from another region would recognize today. This lack of metacommentary is itself suggestive that bozal or hybrid bozalCaribbean creole speech was not unusual enough in Puerto Rico as late as the 73 76

74 Cadilla de Mart´ınez (1953:111). 75 Ibid. (308). Lipski (1987c). For example Cadilla de Mart´ınez (1933:25–26) Rosa-Nieves (1957:62–63) (Chapter Five Appendix Puerto Rico #7).

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early part of the twentieth century as to require extensive explanation. Several observations arise from this text: (1) The form don´a ‘give’ is essentially equivalent to Papiamento duna, and it is difficult to derive this word from any Afro-Hispanic source which does not include at least some hybridization with creole languages. (2) Reduction of syllable onset clusters (negro > nego) is typical of AfroIberian pidgin, rather than more nativized Afro-Hispanic language. (3) The use of son as invariant copula (como son t´u) coincides with other AfroHispanic examples, especially from nineteenth-century Cuba.77 (4) Parra and parr´a ‘say’ appear to be a cross between Spanish hablar and French/creole parler. (5) Branca < blanca is a change found in Portuguese, but also in early AfroHispanic language. This word appears to have become part of a panHispanic Africanized jargon, a sort of early “black Spanish” used perhaps even by descendants of Africans who learned Spanish natively in Golden Age Spain and colonial Spanish America. (6) Although Cadilla translates bell´a as ‘tengo,’ it is much more likely to be