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Afro-Peruvians arrived with the conquistadores, the first time in 1521, and then, for sure, when they returned-and then stayed-in 1525. And they fought alongside them as soldiers. Initially, they worked wherever needed, not only in the mines and such, but also, because of their relative command of Spanish and Spanish culture, as notaries, administrators, and so forth. As time went by, you would find them concentrated in fields that required relatively little training-e.g. working as muleteers. One reason for this is that as the mestizo population grew, the role of Afro-Peruvians as intermediaries between the indigenes and the Spanish became redundant-there were more than enough mestizos to help the Spanish administer the country. Furthermore, Spaniards aggressively settled Peru, and they attempted to keep the most demanding, and subsequently, the most lucrative, jobs to themselves. Hence few Afro-Peruvians would become goldsmiths or silversmiths. Moreover, the indigenous population was nearly decimated, and those who remained proved difficult to channel into intensive labor. Hence, when the Spanish opened up the coast of Peru, Afro-Peruvians were the laborers of choice (please note that Afro-Peruvians would continue to be the main workers in the gold mines, for gold mining took place in relatively humid areas, and the Spanish felt that the climate was amenable to Africans-though I would suggest that economies of scale had a lot to do with this, as gold mining was done by small operators panning rivers, so it would be fine to use a few slaves. With the silver mines though the bulk of the laborers would be indigenes; slaves were costly, and you would need an awful lot of them to do the large-scale mining that was taking place in Peru; and they died quickly in the mines, while all around, though it was greatly diminished, there was still a relatively massive indigenous population at hand; so it only made sense to make use of the indigenes, somehow).
Afro-Peruvians went wherever the Spanish went-thus you would find them in the cities of the Andes, as well as in the towns of the coast. A popular saying in Peru is that "El gallo no canta en la puna," or that the rooster doesn't crow in the highlands, in the Andes. And its meaning is that just as roosters don't crow in the Andes (which may or may not be true) Afro-Peruvians cant't be found in the Andes either. And people will explain that it is too cold for Blacks, and they just can't thrive in the climate. It would be more accurate to acknowledge that indeed for a long time, the gallo did cantar en la puna. But again, because of the increase in the mestizo community and the need for vast numbers of laborers to work on the ranches, truck farms and plantations that the Spanish were creating on the coast in order to produce food for the ever-growing number of urban dwellers in the area, in time, the gallo would wind up on the coast. The legacy of Afro-Peruvians in the highlands though is great-the tuntuna was created by Afro-Peruvians living there, and as well, the Capaq, the Negritos of Huanuco, and other performance traditions (and what is the huayno but a highland version of the marinera?). And the calabazas burladas that are such a big tourist item in Huancayo came to Peru with slaves from Nigeria. And still, we would be at fault if we believed that the thousands of Afro-Peruvians who lived in the highlands simply disappeared, and did not, instead, intermix thoroughly with the indigenes that they found there-it was the Spaniards of Peru's earliest years afterall who came up with terms like zambo, and china.
Again, the first Afro-Peruvians were those who arrived in 1521. Over the course of the slave trade, approximately 95,000 slaves would be brought into the country, with the last group reportedly arriving in 1850. It is worth mentioning that Afro-Peruvians came from the same places as slaves in other parts of the Americas-that is to say, from Senegal in the north to Angola in the south, with just a few from Moçambique. So you'll find in the literature mention of Gelofos (Wolofs), Mandingas (Mande speakers from everywhere, from Guinee-Conakry to Mali), Minas (from Ghana-think Elmina castle), Terranovos (from Benin), Lucumies (Yoruba from the border area with Benin), Sartomes (from Sao Thome), Congos (from Congo-Brazzaville and the DRC), Cambundas (Kimbundu speakers from Angola), Chalas (from Moçambique), etc. Peruvian slave buyers never attempted to ensure that their slaves were from different regions of Africa, if only to prevent them from communicating with each other. First, they bought whatever they could get. They purchased their slaves in Cartagena (Colombia) or Veracruz (Mexico) at trade fairs; and they took back to Peru whatever the slaveships had brought over. And this was because Peru was not a big enough market to support the intensive direct trade in slaves that would occur for example with Brasil or with the United States. Second, if anything, slavers in Peru wanted slaves who were from specific areas of Africa, and who you would expected, would be able to communicate with each other. First choice was for "Guinea" Blacks, slaves from the Senegal River down to the Slave Coast. They were welcome because the Spanish considered them to be easy to manage. More importantly, though no one ever said it, these slaves had marketable skills-they knew how to plant rice, how to break in horses, how to herd cattle on horseback, and so forth. So they would be an asset to any slaveholder. Second choice was for slaves from the area stretching from Ghana to Eastern Nigeria, and then third, for slaves from Congo, the DRC, Angola and Mocambique.
For some very good sources on the history of the Afro-Peruvian community, I would point you to F.P. Bowser's The African Slave in Colonial Peru, Luis Millones's Minorias etnicas en el Peru, F. de Trazegnies Granda's Ciriaco de Urtecho, Litigante por amor, P. Blanchard's Slavery and Abolition in early Republican Perú. C.F. Aguirre's Agentes de su propia libertad, J. Lockhart's, Spanish Perú 1532-1560: A Colonial Society, Tardieu's and Cuche's articles and books on Afro-Peruvians, and the wealth of other materials that exists.