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

Introduction
7
study also looks at the various threats to their freedom, from both inside and
outside the Maroon settlements (variously called palenques, rancherias,
ladeiras, mambises, quilombos, mocambos, magotes, cumbes, manieles and so on).
It shows how they utilized the natural landscape and modified it to guard
their freedom, and examines the dangers posed by complacency, authoritarianism
and militarism.
As Thomas Flory (1979, 117) put it, Maroon communities emerged where
those who fled from slavery finally stopped running. This study follows the
Maroons where they went. In the words of Kevin Mulroy (1993, 1), “As history
unfolded, true liberty would acquire connotations of crossing international
boundaries, fighting wars, living in exile, and establishing communities
on hostile frontiers.” Mulroy (1993, 2) goes on to summarize the commonalities
among Maroon communities in the Americas:
Similarities included the building of settlements in inaccessible, inhospitable
areas for concealment and defense; the development of extraordinary skills in
guerrilla warfare; impressive economic adaptation to new environments; substantial
interaction with Native Americans; existence in a state of continuous
warfare, which strongly influenced many aspects of their political and social
organization; the emergence of leaders skilled in understanding whites; and an
inability, because of various needs, to disengage themselves fully from the enemy
which proved to be “the Achilles heel of maroon societies throughout the
Americas”.
One of the features emphasized in this study is the striking similarity of
the problems that Maroons faced and the solutions that they forged. Though
most of them enjoyed little or no contact with other communities across geographical
and linguistic boundaries, the similarity of these solutions suggests
an inner logic to their actions that transcended spatial and linguistic barriers.
Of course, Africans (who constituted the vast majority of enslaved persons
and Maroons) came with a cornucopia of thoughts, ideologies and skills.
These were modified under the circumstances of New World slavery and the
new physical and social environments into which they were thrust. Their
remarkable resilience and adaptability in the face of the incubus that threatened
to destroy them are a tribute no less to their ancestral heritage than to
their own ingenuity and will power.
I hope that what emerges from this study is a strong sense of the need of
the people in the Americas to guard against threats to the freedoms that our