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Afro-Peruvians are citizens of Peru desceneded from African slaves who were brought to the New World from the arrival of the conquistadores to the the end of the slave trade. They make about 1% of the Peruvian population.

Early history

The first Afro-Peruvians arrived with the conquistadores, briefly in 1521, and then when they returned-and then stayed-in 1525. They fought alongside the conquistadores as soldiers and worked wherever needed. Because of their relative command of Spanish and Spanish culture, they performed not only manual labor, but also worked as notaries and administrators.

Gradually, Afro-Peruvians came to be concentrated in fields that required relatively little training. As the mestizo population grew, the role of Afro-Peruvians as intermediaries between the indiginous residents and the Spaniards became redundant. There were more than enough mestizos to help the Spanish administer the country. Furthermore, as additional immigrants arrived from Spain and aggressively settled Peru, they attempted to keep the most lucrative jobs for themselves. Hence few Afro-Peruvians would become goldsmiths or silversmiths. They frequently worked in the gold mines, while the indigenous population tended to work in the silver mines.

Afro-Peruvians in the highlands

Afro-Peruvians went wherever the Spanish went. Thus they could be found in the cities of the Andes, as well as in the towns of the coast. With 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 Afro-Peruvian population came to be concentrated on the coast. However, there is a legacy of Afro-Peruvians living in the highlands. The tuntuna was created by Afro-Peruvians living there, as were, the Capaq, the Negritos of Huanuco, and other performance traditions.

Slave trade

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. Afro-Peruvians came from the same places as slaves in other parts of the Americas - from Senegal in the north to Angola in the south, with just a few from Moçambique. Unlike some slave buyers in other regions, Peruvian slave buyers did not attempted to purchase slaves from different regions of Africa and thereby prevent them from communicating with each other. Generally, 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. Peru was not a big enough market to support the intensive direct trade in slaves that would occur with Brasil or with the United States.

Slavers in Peru also preferred slaves who were from specific areas of Africa, and who 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. These slaves had marketable skills - they knew how to plant rice, how to break in horses, how to herd cattle on horseback. Second choice was for slaves from the area stretching from Ghana to Eastern Nigeria, and then third, for slaves from the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Mozambique.

Afro-Peruvians today

Currently, Afro-Peruvians represent 1% of the country's population and generally live in the arid and isolated coastal region of Peru. There are large Afro-Peruvian communities in the Ica Region, more specifically in the district of El Carmen in the Chincha Province.

Prominent Afro-Peruvians include Eva Ayllón, Susana Baca, María Elena Moyano, Luisa Fuentes, among others.

References

• Blanchard Slavery and Abolition in early Republican Peru
• Browser, F.P. The African Slave in Colonial Peru
• Lockhart, J. Spanish Peru 1532-1560: A Colonial Society
• Millones, Luis Minorias étnicas en el Perú

See also

• Afro-Latin American
• Negro

• Ethnic groups in South America