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

Introduction
Slavery is the most perverse and alienating form of domination of one man by
another, the absolute negation of freedom and the corruption of all political
order that aspires to protect human dignity.
– Charles Esteban Deive, Los Cimarrones del Maniel Neiba
Slavery is a denial of all freedom and, as such, is a denial of humanity, of the very
essence of the human condition, for it is an attempt at objectification, at making
the person a thing, a chattel.
– Orlando Patterson, “Slavery and Slave Revolts”
This book examines the struggles of enslaved Africans in the Americas to
achieve freedom through flight, in the face of overwhelming military odds on
the part of their oppressors. The study of marronage (marronnage, maroonage,
maronage), especially in the past few decades, has opened up a new frontier of
knowledge in slavery studies in the Americas. It presents a more contextualized
discourse on slave resistance than studies that focus on resistance within
the geographical framework of the plantation or the White urban centres.
The face of oppression has been, and in many places still is, all too visible
in the region. It began with the European assault on the Amerindians and
continued with the Africans and Asians. African slavery in the Americas has
left indelible marks on the geographical, political, economic, social and cultural
landscapes of the hemisphere. An important part of that indelibility is
marronage, which involved both flight from slavery and the establishment of
free communities.
Maroon societies have fascinated writers from almost every discipline –
history, sociology, politics, linguistics, anthropology, folklore, music, medicine,
journalism and fiction. The authenticity of “Maroon studies” was given
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