African labor replaced atrophying Indian labor across New Spain’s mines and plantations

Evidence

David Davidson argues that: “It is now fairly certain that in the period 1519–1650 the area [New Spain] received at least 120,000 slaves, or two-thirds of all the Africans imported into the Spanish possessions in America.” Enriqueta Vila’s more recent studies, as we have already seen, confirm Davidson’s impressions while substantially expanding the total number of transported Africans. The colonial industries of sugar and cloth production, and later of the silver mines, were the primary sites to which African labor was assigned. As Indian labor atrophied during the second half of the century in consequence of its unnatural declines or legal restrictions37 and the settlers “stumbled upon the richest silver mines in the world,” African workers began their domination of the labor of the plantations and the mines. By 1570, Mexico contained over 20,000 Africans; by 1650, their numbers were believed to be closer to 35,000—by then, what amounted to a supplement to the more than 100,000 Afromestizoes of Black-Indian parentage. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 634

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the arc the reader is tracking: this is the origin phase of Africans in the Americas, replacing Indian labor — the seed of the colonial economy that the Black radical tradition would later confront.