Chapter 13

We were fortunate that we did not encounter an area of little or no winds, so we made good time to Santo Domingo following the trade route that had been established since the time of Columbus. My brothers demonstrated their skills as pilots by keeping us on the route that was already well known to mariners. After 30 days we arrived at the port of Santo Domingo on Hispaniola and lay at anchor for several weeks while I gathered information about the island and the surrounding islands such as Cuba. I paid the crew and allowed them to entertain the local women who were eager to earn a few maravedis by providing services to men who had not been in the company of women for almost a month since leaving Las Palmas. As I learned later on my voyage with Magellan, if men are not allowed access to the services of women for a long time, some among them will turn to the page boys or cabin boys to satisfy their lust. I also replenished our water and food supplies. The port of Santo Domingo was busy with traders exporting sugar and rum, while others imported all the products that could not be found locally. I was interested to see that there was also a steady flow of human cargoes who had come to try to make their fortune as indentured servants. These men and women were not slaves. Instead, they had sold themselves into the service of some rich man, with the money going to support their families or to pay off their debts. In exchange, they agreed to work for no remuneration apart from the necessities of life such as food and lodging for a number of years. When the terms of the agreement had been fulfilled, they were free to seek any paid work that suited them. There were even 250 black slaves who arrived from Spain in 1510, and who were brought to work on the sugar plantations because the natives of those islands often succumbed to illnesses and were not hard-working. These 250 slaves were known as ladinos, and the term referred in general to the black slaves who were familiar with the religion, cultures, and languages of Spain or Portugal either because of having been born and raised in those territories or due to long contact with or exposure to these cultures.

Santo Domingo had been founded in 1496 by Bartholomew Columbus, Christopher Columbus’s brother. It was the capital of the first Spanish colony in the New World, and by 1511 there were 10,000 people from Spain living there. When we arrived in November 1511, the Governor of the island was Diego Columbus, the son of Christopher Columbus. In 1509, he was appointed as the fourth Governor and Viceroy, succeeding Nicolás de Ovando who had replaced Francisco de Bobadilla in 1502. Bobadilla had been sent by the king to investigate accounts of ill-treatment of the local population known as Taíno by Columbus and his brother. Bobadilla actually ordered the arrest of the Columbus brothers and the confiscation of their property. However, he died during a hurricane in 1502. The appointment of Diego Columbus signified that the Columbus family was once again in favour with the royal court in Sevilla and Valladolid. Therefore, the year after he arrived, Diego Columbus had begun the construction of a palace known as the Alcázar de Colón which contained 55 rooms when it was completed in 1514. This palace was a demonstration of the power of Spain in its new colony.

The palace was paid for by the taxes on trade and especially on the gold that had been discovered in the central mountains of Hispaniola in 1500. The gold rush lasted until 1508 and the total sum of gold extracted during the first two decades of the mining operation was estimated at 30,000 kilos, an amount greater than the production of all gold mines in Europe in those years and more than the total gold collected by the Portuguese in Africa. This gold mining operation brought great wealth to Spain, but it also brought great misery to the Taíno people. When Christopher Columbus arrived in Hispaniola in 1492, it was estimated that there were about 400,000 natives living there. When we arrived, I was told that there were only about 20,000 still alive. The rest had succumbed to disease, the hardships of forced labour and deliberate slaughter by the Spanish, especially under the governorship of Ovando. As a result, it became necessary to bring black slaves to support the economy of the colony.

Black slaves did most of the labour that kept the colonial economy going after the decimation of the local population. This included the mining of gold that the colonizers focused on during the earliest stage of the settlement; the work in farms that provided most of the food produced locally; the cattle breeding that produced abundant meat and hides; and the labour in commercial plantations, including the cane-sugar plantations which had been established with sugar cane plants brought from the Canary Islands.

Although most Spanish, the owners of land, and the local government supported the encomienda system that led to the enslavement and destruction of the Taíno people, I discovered a different viewpoint when I visited a Dominican friary which had been established the year before we arrived. The friars were so appalled by the injustices they saw committed by the slave owners against the Indians that they decided to deny slave owners the right to confession. For devout Catholics, this was a major penalty and they complained to the Governor about being denied their rights as Christians. Diego Columbus supported the slave owners and complained to the king. Perhaps because of this, and also because of a sermon that I heard preached by a Dominican friar called Antonio de Montesinos, I later came to know that the king ordered the Dominicans to return to Spain. I can still recall the passionate sermon in which the system of encomienda was denounced by the friar.