Resistance to Spanish tribute in colonial Panama reflective of early Black community mobilization

LAWRENCE — The phrase “paying tribute” originated in ancient times, meaning a payment by a subordinate group to a dominant power. It was typically made to ensure peace or protection, and often to show submission.

But in a landmark event during the 1500s, a minority group in Panama fought against this practice.

“I want everyone to get a sense for how active free people of color were in engaging Spanish imperialism, for advocating for themselves, for securing privileges,” said Robert Schwaller, a professor of history at the University of Kansas.

His new article titled “Free Black Community in Sixteenth Century Panama: Collective Mobilization Against Tribute” details the tireless efforts and legal proceedings of a group of free Afro-descended residents to challenge the tribute imposed by King Philip II of Spain. The article appears in Global Black Thought.

Schwaller pored over 400 pages of legal briefs, testimony, judgments and opinions to reveal this history.

“In the 16th century, we have so few published works like that of Olaudah Equiano or later Black intellectuals that give us an understanding of the bureaucratic and legalistic tactics used by this community,” he said. “They utilized a very advanced approach to navigating their position, vis-à-vis the state and their contemporaries.”

In this case, a head tax of five pesos was assessed by the king of Spain on individuals of African descent in Panama. This annual charge had been applied to all Indigenous peoples in the Americas.

“The tax is a big deal,” Schwaller said.

“An average day laborer is probably making somewhere between 50 to 70 pesos a year. So at that scale, it’s like a 10% tax. The documents show that some of the older community members, who didn’t have much means of working because they were in their 60s or 70s, had to sell their clothes, which is their predominant movable asset for getting the money to pay the tax.”

Through his research, Schwaller confirmed how the creative legal maneuvering of these individuals in colonial Panama represented an important articulation of Black intellectual thought.

“It’s one of the earliest episodes where we can document a Black community in the Americas coming together to respond to a policy that’s affecting them,” he said.

“The documents actually preserve Black voices, and for the 16th century, that’s quite rare. In doing that, we can see how savvy this community is in terms of understanding the language of empire and the priorities of the monarch. We see them being able to craft arguments that then advance their interests while also responding to this landscape of governance and authority.”

The professor, who is also chair of KU’s Department of History, has spent years writing about free people of African descent in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

“As I was working through the Spanish maroon conflict, these documents became a useful source of showing that racial identities were not necessarily the sole determinant for how people of African descent were acting. This community is relatively aligned with the interests of the Spanish Crown, and they’re even willing to serve the Crown in military capacities,” Schwaller said.

At this point in history, Panama already had a predominantly Black population, but the majority of those residents were enslaved individuals of African descent.

“What we see in the longer arc is how self-advocacy by free Black residents helps in the centuries that follow to create an ever-growing free population of African descent. Eventually, we get a very large population that’s both free and Black in the colony. This early moment helps capture the strategies they’re using to then create this growing community,” he said.

A KU faculty member since 2011, Schwaller specializes in the history of the African Diaspora to Spanish America and the development of race in the Americas. His previous books include “African Maroons in Sixteenth-Century Panama: A History in Documents” (University of Oklahoma Press, 2021) and “Géneros de Gente in Early Colonial Mexico: Defining Racial Difference” (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016).

While the African Maroons of Panama earned a groundbreaking achievement when challenging the Spanish tribute, their victory came at a cost.

“The Crown ends up ignoring all their service and really homes in on a claim that exists throughout, which is they are a poor community,” Schwaller said.

“The final decision is that the king relieves those individuals who are categorized as ‘Black’ from tribute because they are considered poor, but people who are considered ‘Mulattos,’ who are also part of the petition, are not relieved because they’re deemed as having more assets. So it’s a little bit of a mixed victory, and one in which the monarchy, sadly, ignores their claims of service.”