At the same time, when those who enslaved in the United States and the Caribbean survived in inhuman conditions on cotton or sugar plantations, as well as on the Canary Islands, people brought on the strength of the African continent and their descendants were undergoing extreme work in the houses of landowners and sugar mills. The system of slaves on the islands remained for three hundred years until the nineteenth century. In Tenerife, Rosalia Gomez and their three children, Antonio, Vivian and Simon, are documented as the last enslaved on the island and, according to the Canary Islands and Spain. His story was collected by the writer Nelson Frias in the book of Rosalia Gomez. The last slave of the island of Tenerife. “The slavery of people, mostly black Africans, is also part of the darkest and ignored side of the history of our archipelago,” the author says on the first pages of his research work.
Rosalia Gomez was born in a submarine, Tenerife, in 1801. It came from women who were enslaved in the south of the islands for minimum, two centuries. The work done by Frias, who is also the dean of Judge Arona, shows that the genealogy of Rosalia dates back to the seventeenth century with Ana Serrana, an enslaved woman, “the daughter of Maria Serrana, from the color of Mulatto.” The mother of Rosalia, Ursula Gonzalez, was enslaved that she was born with a woman who was also. The law “Birth that follows the stomach” in the slave system noted that his son inherited the legal status of his mother, so every son, born of the enslaved mother, even if his father was free, automatically became enslavement.
Rosalia’s mother was already enslaved with five years in the house of her masters, in the San Lorenzo Valley, Arona, since the cold is going to her work. Years later, her owner handed her his daughter as part of the dowry for her marriage and moved from the municipality. Nevertheless, Ursula resisted life without freedom and fled, just like his two older brothers, as was required in the book. Finally, she was again captured by her masters and sold another family in Granail de Subone. Sales between rich families or donations within the framework of the family’s daughters were a regular procedure. Ursula had two children, including Rosalia, from which in their baptism it was indicated that they were “unknown parents.”
The usual practice in the slave system was sexual violence, especially masters for enslaved women. An undesirable pregnancy was an order of the day, since the owners of the enslaved sought to increase labor for their extensive land. The author includes in his work the story of the oral tradition, which says that the black enslavement of Fuerte -e -Eaea was taken to the Santiago valley to have sex with other women subject to slavery in order to create new enslaved ones. In the case of Rosalia and their children, Frice talks in detail about his book that you cannot check whether they were the result of violations by their owners or other people in the area or agreed with other enslaved or released. From the absence of a recognized father, as a rule, people who suffered slavery accepted the names of their owners. Rosalia was called Homes as the first Lord for which he was responsible.
According to the history of Frias, Rosalia was separated with her mother when she was very small, and before it turned 13 years old, she was already sold twice. Juan Bettenkurt Medina, a rich Indeite, who extinguished in Havana and in Karakas, was a master with whom he spent more years in his house in Aron, near the church of the municipality. There, as the author indicates, he undoubtedly devoted himself to household chores, such as washing, getting water from the tank or caring for children and the children of his owner. Presumably, a young woman would have lost contact with her mother as soon as they were separated, another usual practice in the slave system. “The teacher’s interest was to always have the whereabouts of his slave in order to avoid temptations (such as leaks that were shot in the uncles of Rosalia, in search of his freedom),” he says in his book.
The freedom of Rosalia and her children did not reach until 1840 or 1841, three years after the approval of the law on abolitionists, which prohibited slavery in all Spanish territories, with the exception of Cuba and Puerto -Riko. Jose Betthekur instructed his daughter to give her freedom “if he behaves honestly.” At that time, the children of Rosalia, also enslaved children, were from 8 to 17 years old. Since then, according to Frias, Rosalia continued to work in the Medina family in exchange for wages to the death of her owner. Then he moved to Arton Hamlet from Tunisia, to a modest hut of a plant built with stones, where he died in 1874. “He was sixty years old, from unknown parents and was taken to this city (aron) as a slave,” confirms the parish priest Arona in his funeral care, was examined in detail in the work of Free.
Canary Islands, the key in the trading of enslaved people
After the Castilian conquest won, the landscape in the south of Tenerife, today in the tourist zone of the island, was suffering from a large expansion of the Earth, dotted sugar mills and villages with barracks on the sides where the enslaved population was used. For internal work and the production of sugarcane, it was important to have abundant work, and the population in the Canary Islands did not cover this demand. As Frias notes in his work, like other historians, before the arrival of Europeans, slavery did not exist among the amazing population that lived on the archipelago, so that the merchants went to the market of black people who were already active after the conquest of America. “The slave source was Black Africa, which became the island of Gerey, the then French colony today, belonging to the Senegal, in the exact place where the slave market was created,” says Frias.
Some ships that bargained with black people and who were intended for the Caribbean stopped in Canary ports. Here they were bought by merchants, landowners and good families, especially in Tenerife, Gran of Canaria and La Palma, islands, on which there will be more black people, as described in detail by historian Manuel Lobo.
Sugar reed was introduced in the fifteenth century on the islands noting the beginning of the White Gold industry, whose production was exported to Europe and which brought with it the creation of large states in some areas of the Canary Islands. In the south of Tenerife, where most sugar mills of the island were located, the presence of enslaved people expanded. “He was 1779, a group of slaves, Fried and his descendants, estimated him more than 7% of the total population of Adea,” says Friaas in his book. He also emphasizes that the games of baptism, marriage and burials of blacks and methors in Ada were ordinary between the 16th and 18th centuries.
In this municipality, slavery, in the visible one, is especially connected with the house Fuert -de -ada, founded by Pedro de Ponte, the descendants of which fell on the tent of Ada and who listed enslaved people who were responsible for “slave plays”. The possession of the African enslaved by Marquis de Adea was also noted by the British traveler George Glass, who visited the municipality in 1764: “(…) has some lands in which he supports a thousand black slaves for sugarcane and manufactures this product.”
The great presence of the enslaved population of black origin was stored in the collective memory of ADEJE and had consequences almost to the present. Its inhabitants know how the enslaved black population of the Fuerte house -e -doe is like “la -nograda”, according to Friaas. The author notes that during several generations, descendants who belong to the poorest families were “indicated by a finger, marginalized and stigmatized”. “As some elderly people told us, until the twentieth century, it was dishonorable to marry some members of the families, about which he was known for the oral tradition, who were descendants of the ancient black slaves (..),” the author says.
