¹ Duany, Jorge, The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002), p. 279.Google Scholar

² Puerto Rican historiography either gives special consideration to Spanish culture, or perpetuates the myth of an idealized past based upon the figure of the jíbaro (or light-skinned peasant who resided in the mountainous interior of the island), as in the case of Carrión, Juan Manuel, “Etnía, raza y la nacionalidad puertorriqueña,” in García Ruiz, Teresa C. and Rodríguez Fraticelli, Carlos, eds., La nación puertorriqueña: Ensayos en torno a Pedro Albizu Campos (San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1993)Google Scholaror privileges Puerto Rico’s African heritage and the contributions made by its slave population, as in the case of González, José Luis, El país de cuatro pisos (Río Piedras: Ediciones Huracán, 1980).Google Scholar There is also renewed interest in the Taino legacy as in the recent work edited by Haslip-Viera, Gabriel, Taino Revival: Critical Perspectives on Puerto Rican Identity and Cultural Politics (New York: Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, Hunter College, City University of New York, 1999).Google Scholar On the debates surrounding the formation of Puerto Rican national identity, see Flores, Juan, Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1993);Google Scholar also see Torres, Arlene, “La gran familia puertorriqueña ‘ej prieta de beldá’” (The Great Puerto Rican Family Is Really Black), pp. 285–306, in Torres, Arlene and Whitten, Norman E. Jr., eds., Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean: Social Dynamics and Cultural Transformations, Volume 2 Eastern South America and the Caribbean (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998).Google Scholar

³ See for example, Scarano, Francisco A., Sugar and Slavery in Puerto Rico: The Plantation Economy of Ponce (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984).Google Scholar

⁴ See for example, Díaz Soler, Luis M., Historia de la esclavitud negra en Puerto Rico (Río Piedras: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, first published 1953; 6th ed. published in 2000).Google Scholar Also, see Badillo, Jalil Sued and López Cantos, Angel, Puerto Rico Negro (Río Piedras: Editorial Cultural, 1986).Google Scholar For the nineteenth century see, Kinsbruner, Jay, Not of Pure Blood: The Free People of Color and Racial Prejudice in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996)Google Scholar and Santana, Raúl Mayo, Portillo, Mariano Negrón, and López, Manuel Mayo, Cadenas de esclavitud… y de solidaridad: Esclavos y libertos en San Juan, siglo XIX (Río Piedras: Centro de Investigaciones Sociales, 1997).Google Scholar

⁵ Chinea, Jorge L., “A Quest for Freedom: The Immigration of Maritime Maroons into Puerto Rico, 1656–1800,” Journal of Caribbean History 31:1–2 (1997), pp. 51–87;Google Scholar see also his more recent “Fissures in El Primer Piso: Racial Politics in Spanish Colonial Puerto Rico during its Pre-Plantation Era, c. 1700–1800,” Caribbean Studies 30: 1–2 (Jan.-Jun. 2002), pp. 169–204. For West-Indian Migration to Puerto Rico, see Chinea, Jorge L., “Race, Colonial Exploitation and West Indian Immigration in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico, 1800–1850,” The Americas 52:4 (April 1996), pp. 495–519;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Race and Labor in the Hispanic Caribbean (Gainesville: The University Press of Florida, 2005).

⁶ Dookhan, Isaac, A History of the Virgin Islands of the United States (Epping, England: Caribbean Universities Press and Bowker Publishing Co., 1974), p. 43.Google Scholar

⁷ This episode in Puerto Rico’s history is well documented. The earliest account is by Brau, Salvador, Historia de Puerto Rico (New York: 1914), p. 172;Google Scholar also see Díaz Soler, Luis M., Puerto Rico: Desde sus orígenes hasta el cese de la dominación española (Río Piedras: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1994), pp. 233–34;Google Scholar Carrión, Arturo Morales, Puerto Rico y la lucha por la hegemonía en el Caribe (Río Piedras: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1995), p. 103;Google Scholar and Scarano, Francisco A., Puerto Rico: Cinco siglos de historia (México, DF: McGraw Hill, 1993), pp. 277–78.Google Scholar

⁸ It is unclear when and where Spain’s policy of granting sanctuary to fugitive slaves first evolved. Both Tepaske, John J., “The Fugitive Slave: Intercolonial Rivalry and Spanish Slave Policy, 1687–1764,” in Proctor, Samuel, ed., Eighteenth-Century Florida and Its Borderlands, pp. 1–12 (Gainesville: The University Press of Florida, 1975), p. 3;Google Scholar and Landers, Jane “Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose”: A Free Black Town in Spanish Colonial Florida,” American Historical Review 95:1 (February 1990), pp. 9–30, p. 30, attribute the origins of religious sanctuary policy to events in Spanish Florida during the late-1680s.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This view is repeated in other works by Landers, , including Black Society in Spanish Florida (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), p. 25,Google Scholar and most recently “Cimarrón Ethnicity and Cultural Adaptation in the Spanish Dominions of the Circum-Caribbean, 1503–1763,” in Lovejoy, Paul E., ed., Identity in the Shadow of Slavery, pp. 29–53 (London: Continuum, 2000), p. 41.Google Scholar However, its origins probably were in 1664 with the actions of Puerto Rico's governor Juan Pérez de Guzmán.

⁹ Cantos, Angel López, Miguel Enríquez: Corsario boricua del siglo XVIII (San Juan: Ediciones Puerto, 1994), p. 109.Google Scholar

¹⁰ “Relación de los siete pueblos fundados por el gobernador Muesas,” Archivo General de Indias, Santo Domingo, 2361, folio 5v. Unfortunately, the document officially recognizing Cangrejos as a community does not list the names of the 55 heads of household who sought the official recognition of Cangrejos. For information on Pedro Cortijo, see Picó, Fernando, Vivir en Caimito (Río Piedras: Ediciones Huracán, 1989), pp. 45–46.Google Scholar

¹¹ Chinea, , A Quest for Freedom, p. 54.Google Scholar

¹² Moscoso, Francisco A., “Formas de Resistencia de los Esclavos en Puerto Rico, Siglos XVI–XVIII,” América Negra 55:10 (Diciembre 1995), pp. 31–48, p. 45.Google Scholar

¹³ Chinea, “A Quest for Freedom,” p. 56. Chinea's data is mainly based upon runaways claimed by foreign governments or apprehended in Puerto Rico after their arrival.

¹⁴ López de Haro, Damián, Constituciones Sinodales de Puerto Rico, 1645, ed. Huerga, Alvaro (Ponce: Universidad Católica de Puerto Rico, 1989), p. 71.Google Scholar

¹⁵ The terms pardo and mulato as well as moreno and negro are often used interchangeably in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Puerto Rican parish registers consulted for this study. These were somewhat fluid terms, and in different records the same person might be identified as pardo or mulato. My interpretation of the terms moreno and negro is that they both were used to identify a person who was black, with moreno indicating a person of lighter skin color as opposed to Negro which denoted darker skin color. Although pardo and mulato are typically used to denote race, they were also used as a substitute for freedman and thus to indicate a civil condition. I was only able to transcribe the baptismal entries through 1720 and from 1735 through 1739 due to the deterioration of the registers. Surviving death records for San Juan begin in 1749, but were not consulted for this study due to their deterioration.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Surviving death records for Cangrejos begin in 1854 and were not consulted for this study.

¹⁷ Loíza is located to the east of Cangrejos and was first settled in the 1630s; it was officially designated as a community in 1692. The population of Loíza is primarily of African origin and it is likely that fugitive slaves figured prominently among the community’s early inhabitants. Parish registers for Loíza were not consulted since the oldest, surviving ones date from 1792.

¹⁸ Torres, , “La gran familia,” p. 294.Google Scholar

¹⁹ See Sepúlveda, Aníbal and Carbonell, Jorge, Cangrejos-Santurce: Historia ilustrada de su desarrollo urbano (1519–1950) (San Juan: Centro de Investigaciones CARIMAR/Oficina Estatal de Preservación Histórica, 1987), p.10.Google Scholar

²⁰ Corrada del Río, Ramón S., “The Historical-Geographical Development of Santurce, 1582–1930,” PhD. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1994, p. 20.Google Scholar

²¹ Hostos, Adolfo de, Ciudad murada (La Habana: Editorial Lex, 1948), p. 85. The Crown lands were known as the Hato del Rey. An hato was a landholding dedicated to raising livestock. The Hato del Rey lent its name to the present-day suburb of San Juan called Hato Rey.Google Scholar

²² See Chinea, , “A Quest for Freedom,” p. 66.Google Scholar Spanish religious sanctuary policy varied by location and over time. Fugitive slaves in Florida were initially granted their freedom only after serving a four-year labor requirement. Later, the labor requirement was rescinded. Conversion to Catholicism and marriage within the church were also a prerequisite for obtaining freedom. See TePaske, , “The Fugitive Slave,” p. 6.Google Scholar

²³ López Cantos, Angel, Los puertorriqueños: Mentalidad y actitudes (Siglo XVIII) (San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico and Ediciones Puerto, 2000), p. 27.Google Scholar

²⁴ Rodríguez León, Mario A., Los registros parroquiales y la microhistoria demográfica en Puerto Rico (San Juan: Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe, 1999), p. 248.Google Scholar

²⁵ Rosario, José Colomban and Carrión, Justina, El Negro: Haití, Estados Unidos y Puerto Rico (Río Piedras: Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1951), p. 106.Google Scholar

²⁶ For a listing of the militia members, see Stark, David M. and de Castro, Teresa, “The Militia Muster Rolls Compiled by Gabriel Gutiérrez de Riva as Tools for Reconstructing Puerto Rico’s Population in 1700,” Boletín de la Sociedad Puertorriqueña de Genealogía 8: 1–2 (abril 1996), pp. 95–96.Google Scholar

²⁷ Archivo General de Indias-Santo Domingo [hereafter AGI-SD], legajo 2296, “Razón de la gente de milicias de esta ciudad y los partidos de la Isla que fueron al desalojo de ingleses extranjeros establecidos en la Isla de Vieques”. For more information on this overlooked episode in the island’s history, see Miller, Paul G., Historia de Puerto Rico (Chicago, 1922), pp. 169–70.Google Scholar

²⁸ Miller, , Historia, p. 170.Google Scholar

²⁹ Cantos, López, Los puertorriqueños, p. 32.Google Scholar Although López Cantos maintains that the ermita was established about 1720, the first mention that I have seen of its existence was 1737. See Archivo Histórico Diocesano [hereafter AHD], Libro cinco de bautismos para pardos y esclavos en San Juan, 1735–1739, folio 40v.

³⁰ For information on Cangrejos role in provisioning San Juan, see Brau, pp. 170–71; Torres, Gilberto Aponte, San Mateo de Cangrejos (Comunidad Cimarrona en Puerto Rico: Notas para su historia (San Juan 1985), p. 11;Google Scholar Picó, Fernando, Historia general de Puerto Rico (Río Piedras: Ediciones Huracán, 1986), p. 70 Google Scholar and Vivir en Caimito, p. 22; and Scarano, , Puerto Rico, p. 278.Google Scholar Various works discuss the role of Cangrejos militia companies in the island’s defense against the 1797 English invasion, including Torres, Aponte, San Mateo de Cangrejos, pp. 30–1;Google Scholar and Giusti Cordero, Juan A., “Piñones sí se acuerda: 200 años de la participación negra en la victoria sobre la invasión inglesa (1797–1997),” Revista de genealogía puertorriqueña 1:2 (octubre 2000), pp. 33–41.Google Scholar

³¹ Landers, , Spanish Society, p. 32 Google Scholar and her article “The Central African Presence in Spanish Maroon Communities,” in Heywood, Linda M., ed., Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora, pp. 227–41 (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 239.Google Scholar

³² See Chinea, , “A Quest for Freedom,” p. 54.Google Scholar

³³ Chinea, , “A Quest for Freedom,” pp. 61–63.Google Scholar

³⁴ Chinea, , “A Quest for Freedom,” p. 56.Google Scholar

³⁵ See note 8.

³⁶ Debien, Gabriel, “Marronage in the French Caribbean,” in Price, Richard, ed., Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), p. 130.Google Scholar

³⁷ A phrase I borrow from the title of Chinea's article “A Quest for Freedom.”

³⁸ For a more thorough discussion of push and pull factors contributing to the arrival of fugitives to Puerto Rico, see Chinea, , “A Quest for Freedom,” pp. 57, 67 and 76.Google Scholar

³⁹ This was precisely the case with Spanish colonial Florida. See Landers, , Black Society, p. 25.Google Scholar Hispaniola also welcomed the arrival of fugitive slaves with a community—San Lorenzo de la Minas— established by the island’s governor on unoccupied lands three miles from the capital in 1675. See Chinea, , “A Quest for Freedom,” p. 63.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Carrión, Morales, Puerto Rico y la lucha, pp. 102–103.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Scarano, , Puerto Rico, p. 77.Google Scholar

⁴² Nistal Moret, Benjamín, Esclavos, prófugos y cimarrones: Puerto Rico, 1770–1870 (Río Piedras: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1984), p. 29.Google Scholar

⁴³ Torres, Aponte, San Mateo de Cangrejos, p. 27.Google Scholar Interestingly, the first clause of the Spanish-Dutch agreement signed in 1791 addressed the flight of fugitive slaves from Saint Eustatius to Puerto Rico, as well as fugitives from Curaçao to Coro (Venezuela) Esequibo to Orinoco (Venezuela) as well as from Demerrara, Berbice, and Surinam. Torres, Aponte, San Mateo de Cangrejos, p. 27.Google Scholar The religious sanctuary policy in Spanish Florida remained in effect until 1790, when Spain bowed to pressure from the United States and abrogated the policy. Landers, , “Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose,” p. 30.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Angel López Cantos affirms that the number of fugitives was lower than others have claimed. He identified 102 legally documented arrivals. See Cantos, López, Los puertorriqueños, p. 26 note 51.Google Scholar Also, see Alvarez Nazario, Manuel, El elemento afronegroide en el español de Puerto Rico (San Juan, 1974), p. 76,Google Scholar who contends that the number of fugitive slaves arriving in Puerto Rico totaled 42 in 1747 and 19 in 1748 fleeing Saint Croix, 57 in 1765 fleeing from Dominica, and 28 that same year fleeing from Martinique. Overall, Alvarez Nazario was able to document 146 arrivals. Relying upon the dispatches of Spanish governors and treasury officials of Puerto Rico, Jorge Chinea was able to identify 346 reported cases of slave flight to Puerto Rico in the years 1656 through 1795. Chinea, , “A Quest for Freedom,” p. 56.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Baptismal entries were illegible for the following periods: July thru December 1716 and April 1727 thru August 1729. The baptismal register spanning the period from August 1729 thru July 1735 is also illegible.

⁴⁶ Chinea, , “A Quest for Freedom,” p. 56.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Chinea, , “A Quest for Freedom,” p. 56.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ The problem of water-damaged, insect-ravaged source material is particularly acute in Puerto Rico, where the tropical climate has accelerated the process of deterioration. This helps to explain the paucity of scholarly studies that concentrate on slave or free black societies of seventeenth and eighteenth century Puerto Rico.

⁴⁹ Chinea, , “A Quest for Freedom,” p. 56.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ The number of fugitive slaves documented would have undoubtedly been much higher if parish registers from Loíza still existed. This community was located to the east of San Juan along the coast; as such it was the easternmost community on the island and the closest in proximity to the non-Hispanic Caribbean.

⁵¹ For more information on Tari, see Law, Robin, “Problems of Plagiarism, Harmonization and Misunderstanding in Contemporary European Sources: Early (pre–1680) Sources for the ‘Slave Coast’ of West Africa,” in Jones, Adam and Heintze, Beatrix, eds., European Sources for Sub-Saharan Africa before 1900: Use and Abuse (Stuttgart, 1987), pp. 351–2. Reference kindly supplied to the author by John K. Thornton.Google Scholar

⁵² It is not clear how terms such as moreno and negro were used by the priest, though my own sense is that they were used interchangeably.

⁵³ Dookhan, , A History of the Virgin Islands, pp. 5–7.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Dookhan, , A History of the Virgin Islands, pp. 73.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Dookhan, , A History of the Virgin Islands, p. 72.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Dookhan, , A History of the Virgin Islands, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ According to Joseph C. Miller, the meaning of the term ‘Congo’ “changed through time and varied from European nation to European nation.” In general it referred to lands south of the Zaire (Congo) River, whereas the Loango Coast referred to lands north of this river. Miller contends that captives taken from Loango by English and Dutch slavers were often forest peoples from modern southern Gabon. Miller, Joseph C., “Central Africa During the Era of the Slave Trade, c. 1490s–1850s,” in Hey-wood, Linda M., ed., Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora, pp. 21–69 (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 41 and 56.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Landers, , Black Society, p. 30.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Miller, Joseph C., “Retention, Reinvention, and Remembering: Restoring Identities through Enslavement in Africa and under Slavery in Brazil,” in Curto, José C. and Lovejoy, Paul E., eds., Enslaving Connections: Changing Cultures of Africa and Brazil during the Era of Slavery, pp. 81–121 (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2004), p. 83.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ See Lewis, Maureen Warner, Central Africa in the Caribbean: Transcending Time, Transforming Cultures (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2003), pp. 14 and 39.Google Scholar Also, see Miller, Joseph C., “Retention,” pp. 84–88.Google Scholar

⁶¹ See Thornton, John K., “Religious and Ceremonial Life in the Kongo and Mbundu Areas,” in Heywood, Linda M., ed., Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora, pp. 71–90 (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 83.Google Scholar

⁶² See Schuler, Monica, “Alas, Alas, Kongo,” (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), p. 86.Google Scholar

⁶³ Miller, , “Retention,” p. 91.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Mintz, Sydney W. and Wolf, Eric R., “An Analysis of Ritual Co-parenthood (Compadrazgo),” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 6:4 (Winter 1950), pp. 341–368, pp. 341 and 353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁵ Vandekerckhove, Lieven A., “The Role of Godparents: On the Integration of a Non-Familial Role in the Structure of the Kinship System,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 12 (winter 1981), pp. 139–149, p. 148.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Pitt-Rivers, Julian, The Fate of Shechem or the Politics of Sex: Essays in the Anthropology of the Mediterranean (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 53–55.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Pitt-Rivers, , The Fate of Shechem, pp. 54 and 60–61.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Pitt-Rivers, , The Fate of Shechem, p. 59.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Prior to their baptism adults needed to know the following: the Apostles Creed or the articles of faith, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the seven sacraments. de Haro, López, Sínodo, Constitución 34, p. 48.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ AHD, Libro cinco de bautismos para pardos y esclavos, 1735–1739, folios 11 v. and 20.

⁷¹ Landers, , Black Society, p. 119.Google Scholar

⁷² Landers, , Black Society, pp. 113, 124, and 127.Google Scholar

⁷³ The oldest marriage register for nonwhites in San Juan spans the years 1748 through 1777. Of the 611 entries, only 457 or 75 percent are legible. Of course, not everybody who was not from Puerto Rico was indeed a fugitive slave; some may have been former slaves who had been manumitted or had acquired their freedom by means of self-purchase. Entries in the marriage register duly noted if the bride or groom’s were not from the city.

⁷⁴ Landers, , Black Society, p. 125.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ AHD, Libro tres de matrimonies para pardos y esclavos, 1748–1777, num. 37.

⁷⁶ AHD, Libro tres de matrimonies para pardos y esclavos, 1748–1777, num. 52. Of course, it may well have been that the marriage of Antonio and Manuela was not the result of Antonio choosing to marry into a established free black family, rather it may indicate preference for a spouse of a similar skin color.

⁷⁷ There is no way to know if the free adults baptized in Cangrejos from 1773 through 1810 were in fact fugitives since the entry in the parish baptismal register makes no mention of this. However, it is likely that they were fugitives given that they did settle in Cangrejos, where other runaways lived.

⁷⁸ Spain’s enemies responded to the Spanish religious sanctuary policy by granting slaves fleeing from Spanish dominions their freedom if they embraced the Protestant religion. Though the number of slaves who fled Puerto Rico is not known, there probably were not many who did so. For example, López Cantos discusses the flight of 23 slaves from a plantation owned by Miguel Enríquez, just outside San Juan, to Saint Thomas in 1728, however, most if not all of these slaves had themselves been acquired through raids undertaken by Enríquez against slave owners in Saint Thomas. See Cantos, López, Miguel Enríquez, p. 109 Google Scholar and Los puertorriqueños, p. 27, note 54. For information on the infrequency of slaves fleeing Puerto Rico see Westergaard, Waldemar, The Danish West Indies under Company Rule, 1671–1754 (New York: MacMillan, 1917), pp. 160–61.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Guinea was a vague term applied to slaves from African cultural groups located along the West Central coast. According to Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, in Portuguese and Spanish usage until 1650 at least, “Guinea” was practically synonymous with Upper Guinea (Sierra Leone). (Personal communication on 20 October 2001.) Thereafter, Guinea most likely came to mean lands comprising present-day Guinea-Bissau, where the commercial entrepots of Bissau and Cacheu were located. For further information on Guinea-Bissau as a source of slaves, see Hawthorne, Walter, Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 2003).Google Scholar

⁸⁰ See Stark, David M., “Surviving Slavery: Marriage Strategies and Family Formation Patterns among the Eighteenth-Century Puerto Rican Slave Population,” in Clark Hine, Dartene and McLeod, Jacqueline, eds., Crossing Boundaries: Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora, pp. 246–81 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), pp. 260–61.Google Scholar

⁸¹ See Landers, , Black Society, p. 158.Google Scholar

⁸² Archivo Parroquial San Mateo de Cangrejos [hereafter cited as APSMC], Primer libro de matrimonios en Cangrejos, 1773–1840, folios 4 and 35.

⁸³ Several of the founders of Guaynabo later turn up as residents of Cangrejos. See Muñoz, Generoso Morales, “Fundación del pueblo de San Pedro de Guaynabo, 1764–1768,” Boletín de Historia Puertorriqueña 1:12 (noviembre 1949), pp. 354–9;Google Scholar and Stark, David M., “The Founders of Guaynabo: 1764–1768,” Hereditas 5:2 (2004), pp. 54–61.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ In 1775, sugar cultivation totaled just 9 acres in Cangrejos out of 1,059 acres cultivated in the San Juan area, while coffee production was limited to 1,160 palos, or trees. Only Loíza had fewer coffee trees. Estado general de la Isla de Puerto Rico, microfilm collection at the Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, Facultad de Humanidades, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, Puerto Rico.

⁸⁵ Abbad y Lasierra, Fray Agustín Iñigo, Historia geográfica, civil y natural de la Isla de San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico, Estudio preliminar de Isabel Gutiérrez de Arroyo, reprint of third edition (Río Piedras: Editorial Universitaria, 1979), p. 119.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Scarano, , Puerto Rico, p. 278.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ For more information on the construction of military fortifications and the labor demands associated with it, see Lizardi Pollock, Jorge L., “Palimpsestos y heterotopias: El espacio y sus prácticas en el Viejo San Juan,” Revista Mexicana del Caribe 8 (1999), pp. 90–127, pp. 110–12.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ See Landers, , “Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose,” p. 18.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ The censuses for 1775 and 1795 form part of the microfilm collection at the Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, Facultad de Humanidades, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, Puerto Rico.

⁹⁰ In 1775, there were no pardos libres, 11 slaves, and only 7 white inhabitants out of a total population of 436. In 1795, there were 48 pardos libres, 208 slaves, and 83 white inhabitants out of a total population of 1,280.

⁹¹ APSMC, Primer libro de matrimonios en Cangrejos, 1773–1840, folio 21v.

⁹² Hanger, Kimberly S., Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769–1803 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), p. 95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹³ Landers, , Black Society, p. 125.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ APSMC, Primer libro de matrimonios en Cangrejos, 1773–1840, folio 17v. Dionicia was the natural child of Joaquina Andino (deceased), a morena libre, whose ancestors had most likely belonged either to the island’s governor Gaspar Martínez de Andino (1683–5), or one of his numerous descendants who remained on the island following his term of office.

⁹⁵ APSMC, Primer libro de matrimonios en Cangrejos, 1773–1840, folios 25v and 20v.

⁹⁶ APSMC, Primer libro de matrimonios en Cangrejos, 1773–1840, folio 11 v. Domingo and Manuela had four children and the baptismal register clearly records the couple's civil status. Domingo is listed as white and, in one instance as a blanco español, or white Spaniard, while Manuela is listed as morena libre.

⁹⁷ APSMC, Primer libro de matrimonios en Cangrejos, 1773–1840, folio 5v.

⁹⁸ APSMC, Primer libro de matrimonios en Cangrejos, 1773–1840, folio 62.

⁹⁹ Because there were few white citizens in Cangrejos, I was only able to determine the age at first marriage for one spouse.

¹⁰⁰ The age at first marriage among Puerto Rico’s eighteenth-century free population has not been studied. Nevertheless, scholars who study the island's colonial past speculate that the age at first marriage was young owing to the relatively easy access to land. See Picó, , Historia, p. 105.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ APSMC, Primer libro de matrimonios en Cangrejos, 1773–1840, folio 92v.

¹⁰² APSMC, Primer libro de matrimonios en Cangrejos, 1773–1840, folios 28v and 97.

¹⁰³ APSMC, Primer libro de matrimonios en Cangrejos, 1773–1840, folios 35 and 144v.

¹⁰⁴ For example, the average age at first marriage among 23 slave grooms in Coamo (1755–1798) was 25 years 5 months, while among 31 slave brides it was 23 years 0 months. Stark, Family Life, p. 187.1 should point out that my calculations of the average age at first marriage are limited by the observation period in this study. With my data, the oldest possible age for a bride or groom would be 37 years old. However, in several cases I was able to ascertain the age at marriage for inhabitants of Cangrejos using data from nearby communities to identify spouses older than 37. For example, one male named Manuel de Jesús Clemente was 39 years and 5 months old when he married María Gregoria on 7 July 1778. APSMC, Primer libro de matrimonios en Cangrejos, 1773–1840, folio 9. The age difference between spouses among Puerto Rico’s white population has not been studied.

¹⁰⁵ Parish registers from nearby communities such as Loíza and Río Piedras were consulted to account for migration in and out of Cangrejos. Moreover, Cangrejos was under the jurisdiction of Río Piedras prior to its official recognition as a separate community in 1773.

¹⁰⁶ My calculations are derived from the number of infants whose baptisms are recorded in the baptismal registers for Cangrejos and the nearby communities of Río Piedras and Loíza. However, they do not take into account the unbaptized infants whose deaths are recorded in the death register. Although the death registers for Cangrejos do not exist prior to 1854, I did include a handful of unbaptized infants whose deaths were recorded in Río Piedras.

¹⁰⁷ Archivo Parroquial Nuestra Señora del Pilar Río Piedras [hereafter APNSPRP], Primer libro de bautismos en Río Piedras, 1763–1771, folio 6v. Petrona and José Apolinario were married on 7 February 1782. Their first child was born seven and a half months later. Subsequent children were born at regular two to three year intervals, except for a six year period between the third and fourth child when Petrona may have had one or more miscarriages, stillbirths, and/or given birth to a(n) unbaptized infant(s) who died.

¹⁰⁸ Scholars have long alluded to but been unable to quantify the African contribution to Puerto Rico’s eighteenth-century population increase. See Cantos, López, Los puertorriqueños, p. 25.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ For example, Gutman, Herbert G., The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1770–1925 (New York, 1976), p. 260;Google Scholar and Morgan, Philip D., Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth- Century Chesapeake (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998), p. 497.Google Scholar

¹¹⁰ I observed the following proportion of nuptial births: 85.8 percent in Arecibo (1708–1757); 87.5 percent in Caguas (1730–1765); 87.3 percent in Coamo (1701–1722) and 89.3 in Coamo (1755–1800); and 87.0 percent in Yauco (1751–1776). See Stark, , Family Life, p. 211.Google Scholar

¹¹¹ I observed the following proportion of nuptial births: 30.2 percent in Arecibo (1708–1757); 30.5 percent in Caguas (1730–1765); 23.1 percent in Coamo (1701–1722) and 39.4 percent in Coamo (1755–1800); and 27.8 percent in Yauco (1751–1776). See Stark, , Family Life, p. 210.Google Scholar

¹¹² Sweet, James H., Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441–1770 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003), p. 36.Google Scholar

¹¹³ Duany, , The Puerto Rican Nation, p. 279.Google Scholar