Africa In My Blood
Wherein Teófilo continues his quest to untangle his ancient genetic roots, this time focusing on the ones sunk deep in Africa; ending with a paean to his ancestors and to his Puerto Rican identity.
All roads lead back to Africa because for the human race, all roads have their origin in Africa. To return to Africa is to return to our earliest origins no matter where you’re from, or what you consider yourself to be. As Toto used to sing, I bless the rains down in Africa because Africa has rained a lot of its waters into me, so-to-speak.
My Three Regions of African Genetic Origin
According to Ancestry.com, my central African genetic heritage amounts to 14 percent: 7 percent from Cameroon, Congo, and Western Bantu Peoples; 6 percent from Senegal, and 1 percent from Nigeria:
Central Africa’s Congo Basin and Cameroon have been home to human populations for at least 30,000 years, and more than 250 different ethnic groups can be found in the area today. Many are considered Bantu peoples. Bantu (meaning “people”) refers to a group of Niger-Congo languages that trace their origin back to the western border of modern Cameroon and Nigeria. The Bantu language group is among the world’s most diverse, with more than 500 languages. More than 310 million people speak a Bantu language.
Senegal has been inhabited since prehistoric times. For the last millennium at least, trade routes have helped shape the area. Trans-Saharan trade flowing to and from the interior of Africa helped establish and maintain the Ghana, Mali, and Wolof (or Jolof) Empires, each of which bordered or included portions of modern-day Senegal. Trade and conquest brought wealth, Islam, and people into the region—and sometimes pushed people out.Despite its relatively small size, the area is home to several ethnic groups. Today, the predominant population groups are the Wolof (43%), the Fula (23%) and the Serer (14%). Others include the Jola and the Mandinka.
Nigeria takes its name from the most populous country in Africa today. From its tropical south to the arid north, Nigeria as a country is a concept and product of colonialism, bringing together more than 250 ethnic groups within fairly arbitrary borders. The oldest human remains found in Nigeria have been dated to 9000 B.C., though the region was likely inhabited before then. There is evidence of iron-working from around 600 B.C. The earliest known Iron Age civilization in Nigeria is the Nok, who lived in northern and central Nigeria between about 1000 B.C. and 300 A.D. They are known for their life-sized terracotta statues. Following the Nok, large kingdoms and smaller, village-based groups established themselves in the area over the next millennia. Its principal ethnic groups are the Yoruba, the Edo, and the Hausa.
The Slave Trade: Out of Africa in Chains
Although much of southeastern Africa was spared the worst effects of the transatlantic slave trade, West and Central Africa, including the area from Cameroon through Angola, were not. More than half of all Africans enslaved in the Western Hemisphere came from West Central Africa. Portuguese merchants began taking slaves from the west coast of Cameroon in the 15th century. Many individuals from the coastal regions of Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea ended up in what is now the US Atlantic states of Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina - but also in the Spanish West Indies, including Puerto Rico (Ancestry.com). The Spanish didn’t engage themselves in the slave trade; they depended on the Portuguese, British, and French slavers for their “merchandise.”
Slave raiding and trading were major sources of revenue for the region’s kings, and the island of Gorée (just a mile off the coast of Senegal, opposite Dakar) became the largest slave-trading center in Africa. Controlled at various times by the Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French, the island served as a warehouse where, over a 200-year period, millions of slaves were taken from their homeland. The island, with its House of Slaves museum and memorial, is now a pilgrimage destination for the African diaspora of the slave trade (Ancestry.com).
On Nigeria’s southern coast, slave traders often contracted with local kings or chiefs to provide slaves, with the kingdom of Oyo and the Aro Confederacy, an Igbo group, becoming two major suppliers.
Great Britain abolished slavery in 1807, but a profitable trade continued well into the 19th century, with traders running British blockades off Nigeria. Some estimates put the number of slaves sent to the Americas from Nigeria at 3.5 million (Ancestry.com).
According to Puerto Rican historian Luis M. Díaz Soler, slavers justified their trade by invoking doctrines held by both the Church (or churches) and the State: that pulling the black man from its African roots was a Christian and humanitarian labor aimed at transforming savage and heretics into an individual able to enjoy the advantages of Western civilization. Therefore, in the name of civilization and progress they enslaved men and women born free (Source).
The slave trade, then, was a historic confabulation between African tyrants seeking to rid themselves of their undesirables, and European powers seeking laborers with whom to erect their empires in North, Central, South America and of course, the Caribbean, blessed in many instances by Catholic churchmen or by clergy belonging to smaller Protestant bodies - as in the US and British insular possessions in the Caribbean.
Africans in Puerto Rico
Though records are lacking, it is certain there were many African slaves in Puerto Rico before 1509, the year when the African slave trade reached Puerto Rico in earnest. The Spanish established African slavery in order to replace Taíno manpower, much depleted after Spanish abuses due to illness, mistreatment, and emigration. As a consequence, Spanish royal authorities emancipated the Taíno while bringing enslaved Africans to work in the nascent sugar industry in Puerto Rico. By 1827 a census recorded 100,430 free mulattoes (people of mixed white and African descent), 26,857 black freemen, 34,240 enslaved Africans, along with 162,311 free whites. With the exception of wealthy whites, other whites, people of mixed race (white and African, or white and Taíno, or African and Taíno) worked the fields together, often in equality of conditions and little in the way of distinctions, though these did exist in a way similar to those prevailing in the American south during that time, affecting the most the enslaved population.
As Puerto Rico’s population grew during the 19th century, the ratio of enslaved Afro-Puerto Ricans to freedmen experienced a sharp decrease until the abolition of slavery on the Island in 1873. The same forces that once advocated for the enslavement of Africans - the Catholic Church and the Spanish Crown - now facilitated the abolition of slavery, with the tenacious insistence of Puerto Rican liberal politicians otherwise suspected by the Crown for their often pro-independence convictions.
As the sugar industry expanded toward southern Puerto Rico, the slave trade moved along with the expansion. It was in this, my native region, where my ancestral mixing between the Spanish, Taíno, and African, first took place, injecting into my line downstream.
The contribution of people of African origin to the culture of Puerto Rico started right after their arrival. They brought with them the mysterious and sensual rhythms of their native lands, rhythms impregnated by the spiritualities proper to the heart of Africa, their traditions, and customs (Source). Music genres such as bomba and plena; culinary specialties like mofongo and colorful vejigante customes are integral to our culture. Other derivative musical genres like salsa in Puerto Rico; merengue in the Dominican Republic, and bakosó in Cuba, bear witness to the African musical heritage in the once Spanish Antilles.
African Convergence in Yours Truly
African genes have come down to me from both my father’s and mother’s side of my family tree. According to Ancestry.com, all the Cameroon, Congo, and Western Bantu genetic heritage flows only through my mother’s side of the family; the Senegal heritage flows from both my parents, though more from my mother’s side; and the Nigerian heritage flows only through my father. In census forms, my Father was denoted as colored on the 1930 Census, though that might mean colora’o or person of mixed-race. The same notation is found on the 1940 Census, but in the 1950 Census he was noted as white. On my mother’s side of the family, there are people of colors and shades, but my mother and her paternal and maternal ancestors that I’ve been able to determine were optically white, so the admixture they transmitted to me must’ve occurred earlier in Puerto Rico’s history.
I am Puerto Rican
I want to bring the discussion of my ancestral genetic lineages to a close by declaring that I am immensely proud of my multi-ethnic heritage. I don’t break who I am into single pieces: I’m neither Spanish, nor Taíno, nor African, I am a convergence of all of them, I am Puerto Rican without thought of fragmentation or division. Puerto Rican: that’s my ethnicity. I’m a member of a single culture fed by three peoples. I celebrate all of them.
I thank the Spanish for my Catholic Christian faith and my Spanish language; the Taíno for the love of my Island-earth, and the African for my strength of body and impetus to survive and look forward to better and greater things. My ancestors all did their best with the lights God bestowed unto them and it is because of them I’m here, with roots deep in the past of the human race, the only race that counts, not the ones we’ve created according to our physical appearance or the color of our skins. The least I can do is also do my best for the generations I’ve had the honor to beget, my one jump into - I hope - a better future for all.