Each week for Black History Month, ESSENCE is highlighting stories of Black resistance in unexpected places.
Black people have never just sat back and tolerated their oppression, despite what some ignorant of history may claim. We have fought back in many corners of the world, including Latin America.
Well before there was Joseph Cinqué on the Amistad, there was Gaspar Yanga. Yanga is considered one of the first freedom fighters in the Americas after he led a revolt against Spanish colonizers in Mexico over 400 years ago. Centuries later, he now has a town named after him in the state of Veracruz in Mexico, fittingly named “Yanga.”
Here’s the story of how he became a legend.
In the mid 1500s, the state of Veracruz on Mexico’s east coast had the country’s largest enslaved population. Gaspar Yanga– who is believed to have been in a royal family in either Angola or Gabon in West Africa– was among those held captive. They chose the wrong one! Or the right one in this case.
Slavery was a violent, capitalist enterprise. Africans who freed themselves and were re-captured were subject to unfathomable punishment in Mexico. As one law stated:
“…the Negro or Negro woman absent from the service of his or her master for four days shall suffer fifty lashes of the whip… and if they should be away more than eight days, for a distance exceeding one league, each of them shall suffer a hundred lashes, iron fetters weighing twelve pounds shall be tied to their feet with a rope, which they shall carry for two months and shall not take off under pain of two hundred lashes for the first offense; and for the second, each shall take two hundred lashes and shall not take the weights off for four months.”
Despite the risk, Gaspar Yanga led an uprising of hundreds of other enslaved Black people and escaped captivity. They formed their own community, and for decades Spanish colonizers attempted to attack the freed men and women, but they never recaptured them. There were even fears among the Spanish that Yanga and his fellow rebels (known as Yanguícos) were going to overthrow the Spanish government in nearby towns.
The Yanguícos and the Spanish came to an agreement in the 1600s. Yanga and the other freed men and women would have their own settlement, where Yanga would serve as governor, and the Yanguícos agreed to no longer raid colonial towns. This settlement, now known as Yanga, features a statue in his honor today.
Yanga town would be considered “the first self-liberated and independent town in the Americas.”
While Afro-Mexicans have settled in many other parts of Mexico, including Guerrero and Jalisco, Veracruz still has over 200,000 Black Mexicans.
The city of Yanga, Veracruz continues to hold an annual festival of the “First Free People of the Americas” honoring his uprising and leadership, and the town has been designated a heritage site by the Mexican government.
