✊🏾🇵🇷 History Lesson 📖⠀
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La Isla de Puerto Rico is composed of native Taínos, African and Spanish ancestry. ⠀ ⠀
African history in ⁣🇵🇷 begins with the immigration of free African men called libertos, who accompanied the invading Spanish Conquistadors 🧭 in the 1500’s.⠀ ⠀
Upon their arrive the Spaniards enslaved the Taíno population resulting in many of them dying from aggressive forced labor. ⠀ ⠀

This presented a problem for Spain’s royal government, which relied on slavery to staff gold mining ⛏ , fort-building 🧱, fledgling ginger, and sugar cane plantations in Puerto Rico. ⠀
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Spain’s ‘solution’ was to engage in the Atlantic slave trade 🌊 and import enslaved West Africans (mostly men) resulting in the number of enslaved Africans to rise from 1,500 in 1530 to about 15,000 in 1555. The lack of African women resulted in intermarriage with the remaining Taíno population, creating a mixture of ethnicities known as ‘mestizo’s’ or ‘mulattos’.⠀ ⠀
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Throughout the years several slave revolts occurred including the 1868 uprising against Spanish rule in what is known as the “Grito de Lares“. It was not until March 22, 1873, that the Spanish National Assembly finally abolished slavery in Puerto Rico. ⠀

Slave holders were compensated 35 million pesetas per enslaved African, and those enslaved required to continue working for three more years. ⠀ ⠀

The contributions of Africans to the 👉🏾 music, art, language, and heritage have been and continue to be instrumental to 🇵🇷 culture.