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

Negotiations and Treaties
283
In 1790 in Santiago de Cuba, where roving bands were causing dismay
among the colonists at a time of heightened tensions between Spain and
Britain, the regional government decided to strengthen its fortifications and
needed cheap labour to do so. It therefore offered all runaways who would
turn themselves in an unconditional pardon, and promised that they would
not be returned to their overlords. In return, they were to work on rehabilitating
the fortifications. It remains unclear whether the government’s offer
included freedom for the runaways or meant that they would now be
enslaved by the state. In any event, very few took up this offer (La Rosa
Corzo 2003, 76). In the same country, Governor Eusebio Escuerdo once put
forward a plan to grant Maroons amnesty and recognize their freedom (not
through formal treaties, as in other jurisdictions) if they should agree to
become a bounty-hunting band to catch their fellow Maroons. The experiment
was tried with the Maluala Maroons but was not very successful (La
Rosa Corzo 2003, 114), apparently since few of them liked the idea.
By contrast, in 1676 over one hundred Palmarinos returned to their overlords,
presumably under negotiated terms, after an expeditionary force sacked
several of their chief towns (Conrad 1983, 371; Carneiro 1946, 90). In 1734 in
Venezuela, through the persuasion of two Capuchin clergymen, 180 Maroons
gave themselves up on the understanding that a plea for amnesty would be
forwarded to the Crown on their behalf. In that same country in 1774, following
the death of Guillermo Rivas, several of his followers returned to their
overlords (Brito Figueroa 1985, 210–11, 218). In 1816, after an attack on El
Frijol settlement in Cuba, in which the expeditionary forces destroyed the
houses and crops and made settled life almost impossible, eighty-nine
Maroons eventually turned themselves over to the colonial authorities, but
we are not told whether this was on condition of any form of amnesty (La
Rosa Corzo 2003, 112). A similar event occurred in Dominica in 1785–86
involving the remnants of the devastated settlement led by Balla (Atwood
1971, 249). In 1834 in Suriname, fifty-three people fled from plantation
Victoria because their overlord was about to sell them to another person.
They returned to the plantation when they received news that the sale was
cancelled and that they would not be punished (Hoogbergen 1993, 186). In
1820 an offer of amnesty in Belize to some recent runaways was also apparently
successful (Bolland 2002, 55–56; Bolland 2003, 71). 15
Some runaways actually preferred to live on the plantations than in the
environmentally more challenging Maroon settlements, especially if they