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Stones and slaves: labour, race and spatial exclusion in colonial Santo Domingo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2021

José R. Núñez Collado Open the ORCID record for José R. Núñez Collado [Opens in a new window]  and
Joanna Merwood-Salisbury
José R. Núñez Collado*
Affiliation:
Wellington School of Architecture, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
Joanna Merwood-Salisbury
Affiliation:
Wellington School of Architecture, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
*
*Corresponding author. Email: Jose.nunezcollado@vuw.ac.nz
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Abstract

Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in what was later called the ‘New World’, was a centre of the Atlantic slave trade. While it has been called the ‘cradle of blackness in the Americas’, discussion of racial exclusion and marginalization is mostly absent in the city's architecture and urban history. This article investigates how architecture and urban design helped reinforce the colonizers’ control over enslaved peoples. Specifically, we explore the Santa Bárbara neighbourhood, its church and the slave warehouse known as La Negreta. Drawing on historical maps and archival documents, we draw attention to how the spatial and material construction of Santa Bárbara constituted and maintained social and racial structures of oppression.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , November 2022 , pp. 746 - 770
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press.

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References

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29 For example, a sixteenth-century collection of documents presents a guide to slave owners about their responsibilities, including minimum requirements for housing and an infirmary. It also offers slaves and free blacks certain ‘rights’, as well as outlining penalties for violating rules about public behaviour. Papeles referentes a los esclavos negros en América [Manuscrito], Biblioteca Digital Hispánica (Madrid, n.d.), available online, http://bdh.bne.es/bnesearch/detalle/bdh0000059736.

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38 Larrazábal Blanco, Los negros y la esclavitud en Santo Domingo, 97. Translated by authors.

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47 Castillo, ‘El Santo Domingo del siglo XVIII’. While the term in this book is pluralized as ‘Las Negreta’, and there might have been several similar typologies before the construction of La Negreta, most scholars agree that this was a singular building, it is also remembered in oral histories as a single structure.

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71 Tragically, Puello was later sentenced to death for allegedly conspiring against the newly formed government and for ingratitude to the white race. A. Appiah and H.L. Gates, Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (New York, 2005), 452.

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76 M. Núñez, ‘Segunda Jornada de Visibilización Del Cimarronaje’, Municipios al Día, https://do.municipiosaldia.com/opinion/item/17177-segunda-jornada-de-visibilizaci%C3%B3n-del-cimarronaje, accessed 12 Sep. 2020.

77 For instance, NGOs such as ‘La Negreta Cultural Asociation’, which aims to preserve elements of African culture in the country, was inspired by the history of the La Negreta building. Furthermore, UNESCO's current efforts to bring to light issues of spatial and racial injustice in the city are based on historical manifestations of inequality in the barrio.