60199616-flight-to-freedom-african-runaways-and-maroons-in-the-americas

Chapter 4
Establishment of Maroon
Communities
Creating a Life of Their Own
Marronage defined most clearly the conflict between Blacks and Whites, the
struggle between the forces of freedom on the one hand and bondage on
the other. Some writers suggest that the plantation’s nemesis was the
palenque, the first a death-dealing institution and the second a life-giving
one, though others regard the contrast as being somewhat overdrawn. Nicolás
del Castillo Mathieu’s (1982, 89–90n106) observation that marronage became
more or less endemic in Cartagena from 1570 is equally applicable to all the
large plantation societies in the Americas, though with differing time
frames. 1 David Nassy (1788, 1:87) declares that especially in the second half of
the eighteenth century Suriname became a theatre of continuous warfare as a
result of Maroon activities and Maroon-hunting expeditions organized by
the authoritarian state. Guillermo Baralt (1982, 31–45, 158–59) notes that
Bayamon in Puerto Rico became notorious for desertions (though relatively
few Maroon settlements actually developed anywhere in the island). A common
view is that where opportunities existed for large-scale marronage, such
as in Mexico, Cuba, Brazil and Suriname, revolts based on the plantations
were less common. This view has some merit, but Jamaica provides the outstanding
exception; there, marronage and revolt on the plantations were both
common and large scale. This is why that country gained such notoriety for
insurrections, at least within the British circuit of slavery.
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