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

Maroon Government
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freedom was called Ocoyta”), and fugitives from surrounding areas such as
Capaya, Cupira, El Guapo, Aramina, Caucagua and Panaquire knew that to
reach Ocoyta was to reach the city of liberty. Zips (1999, 65–66), too, does not
accept that newcomers to Maroon communities in Jamaica were reduced to
slavery, but states that they remained in a subordinate position until their initiation
was completed. This initiation included political, cultural and psychological
socialization into their new society.
Louis (1979, 314–18), who belonged to the André settlement in French
Guiana, testified that the only people admitted into the settlement were
those whom the three senior leaders brought back after periodic trips outside,
and that the new recruits had to promise never to betray them or they
would be hunted down and killed. He did not say whether any of them were
abducted. He himself, along with his father Rémy, seems to have joined the
settlement willingly. However, André, captain of the settlement, refused to
allow anyone to leave it and return to the White settlements, obviously for
security reasons. Louis testified that he knew of six people who had asked
permission to return to their former overlords but that André had refused
their requests and had kept them in the settlement by threat of violence.
According to Moreau de Saint-Méry (1979, 141), Le Maniel Maroons
abducted people and enslaved them. He also states that they admitted into
their polity only people who came to them voluntarily, and only after ensuring
that they were not spies. On the least suspicion of infidelity, the Maroons
would execute them. The author’s statements are somewhat ambiguous,
since, in a sense, abducted people were also part of Le Maniel’s polity. What
he says here is inconsistent with his earlier statement (ibid., 139) that
Santiago, the maximum leader of the community, was a Spanish Creole
whom Maroons of that same settlement had abducted forty-five years earlier.
Santiago had no doubt passed the test of loyalty and demonstrated the leadership
capacities that raised him to the acme of power among his fellow
Maroons.
Pérez de la Riva (1979, 52–53) writes that the Cuban Maroons would not
allow anyone to leave the palenque until he (or, presumably, she) had spent a
minimum of two years there. Newcomers were often assigned to several senior
members of the Maroon state, and their length of service depended upon
factors such as their loyalty, abilities, dedication to hard work and capacity to
win the confidence and favour of those whom they served. After that, they
were usually assimilated into the ranks of the free members of the commu-