Juan Garrido

Juan Garrido was a black conquistador. He crossed the Atlantic as a freedman in the 1510s and participated in the siege of Tenochtitlan. ["Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience" By Anthony Appiah, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Henry Louis Gates. Page 327] He was known as "Handsome John." ["Slavery and Beyond: The African Impact on Latin America and the Caribbean" By Darién J. Davis] He was one of many black freedmen who came from Seville to the Americas. ["A Black Conquistador in Mexico"Peter Gerhard. "The Hispanic American Historical Review", Vol. 58, No. 3 (Aug., 1978), pp. 451-459] From the very onset of Spanish activity in the Americas, Africans were present both as voluntary expeditionaries and as involuntary colonists. Arriving in Santo Domingo in 1502 or 1503, Garrido was among the earliest Africans to reach the Americas. Juan Garrido was neither the only African to participate in the fall of Tenochtitlán, nor the sole black member of Spanish expeditions to the west; he and other Blacks went to Michoacán in the 1520s, and Nuño de Guzmán swept through that region in 1529-30 with the aid of black auxiliaries. [. Benedict Warren, The Conquest of Michoacán (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1985); James Krippner-Martínez, "The Politics of Conquest: An Interpretation of the Relación de Michoacán," The Americas 47:2 (October 1990), pp. 177-98.]

"I, Juan Garrido, black resident [de color negro vecino] of this city [Mexico] , appear before Your Mercy and state that I am in need of making a probanza to the perpetuity of the king [a perpetuad rey] , a report on how I served Your Majesty in the conquest and pacification of this New Spain, from the time when the Marqués del Valle [Cortés] entered it; and in his company I was present at all the invasions and conquests and pacifications which were carried out, always with the said Marqués, all of which I did at my own expense without being given either salary or allotment of natives [repartimiento de indios] or anything else. As I am married and a resident of this city, where I have always lived; and also as I went with the Marqués del Valle to discover the islands which are in that part of the southern sea [the Pacific] where there was much hunger and privation; and also as I went to discover and pacify the islands of San Juan de Buriquén de Puerto Rico; and also as I went on the pacification and conquest of the island of Cuba with the adelantado Diego Velázquez; in all these ways for thirty years have I served and continue to serve Your Majesty--for these reasons stated above do I petition Your Mercy. And also because I was the first to have the inspiration to sow maize here in New Spain and to see if it took; I did this and experimented at my own expense." [The opening of Juan Garrido's probanza (petitionary proof of merit) of September 27, 1538; Archivo General de Indias, Seville (hereafter AGI), México 204, f.1; there is also a facsimile of this first page, and a transcription of the whole document, in Ricardo E. Alegría, Juan Garrido, el Conquistador Negro en las Antillas, Florida, México y California, c.1503-1540 (San Juan: Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y El Caribe, 1990), pp. 6, 127-38.]

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* [http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/the_americas/v057/57.2restall02.html Black Conquistadors:Armed Africans in Early Spanish America]