I do a lot if research on post-Columbus Americas for my writing. I'm going to start sharing that here as FunFactFriday since I think some people are as interested in that history as I am. A new term I learned was Ladino vs Bozales. We are commonly taught that black folks were brought to the Americas only through the transatlantic slave trade. And for the bulk of our black ancestors that's true. However, there were black people on Columbus's very first voyage: black ladinos or "negros ladinos." These were black folks who had been raised in Spain, spoke Spanish and had been Christianized. Given Spain's proximity to Africa, and the way in which it had been conquered by Moors several centuries earlier, it's not surprising that Black folk and the Spanish had a much closer relationship that we've been taught. But that didn't stop Spain from participating in the horrific slave trade where they captured slaves on the continent and chained them before transporting them. They called captured slaves negros bozales, "muzzled Blacks," in order to distinguish them from the black Ladinos. In Spain's early system of slavery there was a distinct class system for slaves: those born in Spain, those brought over from the continent, and those born in the Americas. Divide and conquer in full effect an as early as 1492. #AceFunFactFriday #YourTextbooksBeLying #LetUsReviseThem
