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

262 Flight to Freedom
Maroon assaults. The point is that they established a modus operandi and
modus vivendi with the Maroons that served them well.
Flory (1979, 122) believes that both positive and negative interaction with
Maroon economies transcended racial lines, though he emphasizes the positive
or cooperative aspects of such interaction. Though he does not articulate
it, he certainly implies that it was an important medium of transculturation.
He (ibid., 121) even argues, though much more controversially, that “some
Brazilian quilombo economies mirrored the White economies from which
they sprang to such an extent that it is misleading to think of them as discrete
entities rather than ‘outlaw’ parts of a single economy”.
Part three of this study has clearly shown that, contrary to what the White
enslavers chose to believe, the Maroons were capable of high levels of organization,
and their settlements offered a viable alternative to the slavery system
that dominated most colonial and early post-colonial states in the region.
Physical security and food security occupy important places in the organization
of all human societies. However, they occupied an inordinate degree of
attention among the Maroons, who often lived under conditions of continuous
warfare that threatened to abridge their hard-fought freedom and sometimes
to divest them of life itself. Overall, the Maroons displayed innovative
responses to their environment and put to good use the knowledge that they
had brought with them from Africa, not simply to survive but to improve the
quality of their lives.