How Did African Americans Influence Spanish Colonization

Spaniards brought Africans to the New World at the very beginning of the Spanish conquest. Spanish influence determined Africans' social aptitude, acculturated them, and manipulated their role to serve Spanish needs for production. Despite Spanish dominance, Africans were able to retain some resemblance of their own cultural distinction, and acted independently against Spanish interests. Africans roles evolved as the Spanish faced problems of satisfying high labor demands and maintaining control over a population much larger than their own. Initially, Africans played a military and socio-political part in the Spanish conquest; however, more significantly, Africans provided Spanish colonialism with a capable labor foundation and a safeguard between the Spanish minority and the natives. Although African and Afro-Latino roles did not always support Spanish aims or ideals, they were vital to the Spanish capacity to manage a populace much larger than their own and yield from …show more content…
Through violence, cruel labor demands, and especially disease, the Spanish conquest resulted in the ultimate decrease of an immense majority of the native labor resource. Spaniards, having no intention of working themselves, supplanted their labor source by importing massive numbers of slaves directly from Africa. This resulted in the formation of a large mixed, or casta, population that required social definition. Spaniards usually defined social order in terms of ethnicity. Consequently, Africans and pardos had differing roles in terms of labor. Africans, directly from Africa, constituted the agricultural estate and slave population. Free Africans, and, more prominently, free pardos constituted "the majority of the skilled urban work force." Pardos also had the privileged opportunity to serve in militias designed to enforce and maintain Spanish order over