The Subtle Racism of Latin America Carlos Moore sees a disguised racism permeating Latin American society, invented by Arabs in the Iberian Peninsula.
Anson Musselman, a_musselman@yahoo.com
While many believe that Arab and Latin American societies have a better track record in regard to race than the United States, Dr. Carlos Moore, resident scholar at Brazil's Universidade do Estado da Bahia, contends that this impression is wrong. Moore, a black man raised in pre-Castro Cuba, believes that while these societies may look color blind on the surface, race actually dominates every aspect of social and political life. Moore is best known for his book Castro, the Blacks, and Africa (CAAS, 1989), and African Presence in the Americas, co-edited with Shawna Moore and Tanya R. Sanders (Africa World Press, 1996).
This lecture took place in UCLA's Haynes Hall May 19 and was sponsored by the African Studies Center, the Ralph Bunche Center for African American Studies, and the UCLA Department of Political Science.
The Arab Model
Moore in his youth set out to find what historical events led to the establishment of a racial hierarchy in Latin America, where race mixing is the norm, yet lightness and darkness of skin still matters. His findings led him to believe that the paradigms of race in Latin America are directly descended from the time when Arabs controlled the Iberian Peninsula, the homeland of Spanish and Portuguese colonialism in the Americas.
Arabs successfully invaded the Iberian Peninsula (today Spain and Portugal) in 711 CE. The Moorish culture that was established was known as Andalusia. By the late 1200s Christian armies had expelled the majority of Muslims from Iberia.
"I have had the privilege to have lived in Arab countries," Moore said, "and to be shocked by the extraordinary similarities to Latin America of structures of race in countries like Egypt. It was familiar ground. I was twenty-one, had just left Cuba. I lived in Egypt for a year. I was surprised to see how it was as though I had not left Cuba except for the fact that they spoke Arabic and adhered to the Muslim religion. From then on I began to study the structures of race relations in the Arab countries in a comparative way with relations in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America. That became my focus."
Arab Slavery on the Iberian Peninsula
“Through the Sahara alone," Moore said, "four million blacks were brought over to the Arab Iberian Peninsula. The Arab world was a world in which slavery was essential." Some scholars are skeptical of the size of the numbers Moore cites.
Moore sees the export of Arab-model slavery and race relations to the New World by the Spanish and Portuguese, who had absorbed it during the Muslim occupation of Iberia. "The conquest of America begins when the Arabs are expelled from this part of the world by Europeans." Moore added that the Reconquista was accomplished by south Europeans who had already had long experience of intermarriage or less formal sexual relations with Arab and African peoples and who "are perfectly accustomed to a situation of familiarity of race relations between black and white in a situation of superiority and inferiority."
Moore sees two alternate models of racial rule. The one more familiar in the Northern Hemisphere is the Anglo-American one, where power relations and socio-political structures were based on two distinct groups: the Northern European and African prototypes. "We have a stable racial social order achieved and perpetuated through enforcement of an inflexible two-track system whereby extreme racial polarization is involved between two opposing somatic prototypes: The proto-Nordic types with blonde hair, pale white skin, and sharp facial features, and the proto-African type, with crispy hair, very black skin, voluptuous facial features."
Interracial Sex and Commingling
The Arab-Spanish-Latin American pattern was far more permissive of interracial sex and incorporating racial differences, but, Moore adds, not without its own light-skinned hierarchy. Moore asserts that racial mixing was a very normal occurrence in the Arab world; socially acceptable racial mixing, however, only goes in one direction. Moore postulates the existence in Latin America of a "racial philosophy of eugenics" that encourages a "unilateral … sexual commingling between white [or light skinned] males and the females of the physically conquered and socially inferior race."
Like the classification of "colored" in the former Apartheid South Africa, which was ranked as a higher class than the pure African, Moore sees the mixed race "mulatto" in Arab and Latin American society as a higher class than the purebred African or Indian. "The mulatto has a particular rank in society. In Arab societies there are all sorts of ranks. There are infidels, those who are believers, and the mulatto category which is viewed as a ladder for ascension."
The racial mixing that took place in Latin America that was socially acceptable, Moore said, was only between white males and the black or American Indian females.
According to Moore, the possibility of a black or American Indian man having sex with a white woman would have been destabilizing to the state because the black or American Indian penetrating the female would have been viewed as flipping the established racial hierarchy on its head.
Mixed race children from white fathers and dark mothers were totally accepted into society, according to Moore. In each generation males are expected or permitted to marry females of their own skin color or darker. "The production of a stable intermediary swarthy white type is very important to the Latin-Arab model of race relations. It is so important that the state encourages it." Moore views this as "the sexual enslavement of black women by the conquering white males."
The First Slaves in the Americas Were Imported from Spain
The system developed in Iberia under Arab rule was exported to the Americas as part of the Spanish and Portuguese conquest in the sixteenth century. Moore says that the Portuguese and Spanish added American Indians to their already-enslaved black populations brought from Iberia. “The first black slaves that came to the Americas were not slaves from Africa, but black slaves that came from the Iberian Peninsula, who spoke Portuguese and Spanish."
Moore told the audience that the Northern Europeans, “inventors of Apartheid," have traditionally feared the black person, while Europeans from the Iberian Peninsula, as well as their descendants in Latin America, have no such fear. As he put it, "in the U.S. one drop of black blood makes someone black. In Latin America one drop of white blood makes you white."
When Spain and Portugal conquered vast parts of Latin America, Moore said, they established a black slave trade, continued the mixing of the races with white Europeans at the top of the social ladder and American Indian and African descendants at the bottom. Whites lived in close physical proximity to black and American Indian populations, however those of a white European ancestry (Spanish and Portuguese) had the political and economic power. The lightness or darkness of one’s skin strongly affected one’s social rank.
The Rules of the Subtle Race Game
Moore recalled that Hollywood wanted to make a film about Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. They had cast an African American in the role, only to have to pull the plug on the project when Sadat objected to a black man portraying him. Sadat, being the leader of Egypt, considered himself white, according to Moore. Moore said there are black-looking Arabs and Latin Americans who consider themselves white because they have some distant white ancestry. “The only problem is when they go to New York."
Moore expressed some concern about the implications for race relations in the United States posed by the increasing immigration from Mexico and Latin America. While he clearly regarded the often overt racism of the North as perhaps even more objectionable than the Arab-Spanish form in the South, he saw a particular problem in the general Latin American denial of race as an issue. This has made it socially disreputable to raise demands for reform in Latin America around race issues.
Moore concluded by expressing the hope that these new Latin American immigrants will not import their Arab-Latin American model of race relations, as with it comes a false color blindness. To Moore, the U.S. model of dealing with race, while far from ideal, enables groups to make demands on society, and to be able to work for change.
Joined: 02 May 2006 {Posts: 363 } Location: Île-de-France
Posted: Tue 20 Mar 2007 14:06 Post subject:
Quote:
According to Moore, the possibility of a black or American Indian man having sex with a white woman would have been destabilizing to the state because the black or American Indian penetrating the female would have been viewed as flipping the established racial hierarchy on its head.
Interesting, but I think he misses an important point. In most of Latin America, there were simply almost no European women for any men of any color to reproduce with until the mid 19th century. This is reflected in the DNA evidence. The DNA evidence and other historical evidence also reflects that african men did better than native men. Take Puerto Rico as an example. While 62% carry native mitochondrial DNA, less than 5% carry a native Y chromosome. But while 27% carry subsaharan mitochondrial DNA, 20% carry subsaharan Y chromosomes. And according to the author of the study, these markers do not correspond to phenotype. If african men were only mating with african women, subsaharan markers, especially subsaharan Y chromosomes, would correspond somewhat to phenotype. Also, if you search for marriage records from the early 19th century in Puerto Rico, you find instances of "esclavos" marring "pardas libres" and a son of a "liberto" (freed slave) marrying a "blanca."
This is a link to some marriage records that a geneologist put online.
The arab connection is interesting, and I don't necessarily doubt there is some connection, but I think anyone who has heard the frase "negrito lindo" said even slightly seductively knows its not that cut and dry.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Tue 20 Mar 2007 14:42 Post subject:
MisterLawyer wrote:
Quote:
According to Moore, the possibility of a black or American Indian man having sex with a white woman would have been destabilizing to the state because the black or American Indian penetrating the female would have been viewed as flipping the established racial hierarchy on its head.
Interesting, but I think he misses an important point. In most of Latin America, there were simply almost no European women for any men of any color to reproduce with until the mid 19th century. This is reflected in the DNA evidence. The DNA evidence and other historical evidence also reflects that african men did better than native men. Take Puerto Rico as an example. While 62% carry native mitochondrial DNA, less than 5% carry a native Y chromosome. But while 27% carry subsaharan mitochondrial DNA, 20% carry subsaharan Y chromosomes. And according to the author of the study, these markers do not correspond to phenotype. If african men were only mating with african women, subsaharan markers, especially subsaharan Y chromosomes, would correspond somewhat to phenotype. Also, if you search for marriage records from the early 19th century in Puerto Rico, you find instances of "esclavos" marring "pardas libres" and a son of a "liberto" (freed slave) marrying a "blanca."
This is a link to some marriage records that a geneologist put online.
The arab connection is interesting, and I don't necessarily doubt there is some connection, but I think anyone who has heard the frase "negrito lindo" said even slightly seductively knows its not that cut and dry.
Puerto Rico is not Latin America. The genetic statistics of that island does not extrapolate easily. In lot of places of Latin America there wasn't lack of European women at all, except in the first decade of the conquist. European immigration was also in large scale in many places, like Southern Brazil, Austral South America and Costa RIca.
That African men "did better" than Natives, simply mean a large number of Africans were imported to the Caribbean with a very high mortality rate as well. Remember that more males were imported than females. Besides, Natives males usually died fighting.
The African males were the survivers, not the attraction of the town.
Natives had smaller populations in the Caribbean and were simply flooded with foreigners, both Blacks and Whites. That's what shows in the DNA. It is surprissing that Native mtDNA is so high in there.
Finally, the frase "negrito lindo" has anything to do with African beauty. Is Is the weird and racist Hispanic sense of humour.
Joined: 02 May 2006 {Posts: 363 } Location: Île-de-France
Posted: Tue 20 Mar 2007 15:27 Post subject:
Quote:
Puerto Rico is not Latin America.
Puerto Rico is part of latin america, and while each locality is unique, there are some very common elements.
Quote:
European immigration was also in large scale in many places, like Southern Brazil, Austral South America and Costa Rica
Genetic evidence continually shows that the base of the population, prior to large scale European immigration that began in the 19th century, was meztiso, and was spanish men and indian women. It is blunted in some places, and ocassionaly surpassed by african slaves corresponding to the quantity that were imported, but even in places considered to be black/white dichotomies, like Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Brazil the evidence of a founding Mestizo population is striking. By this I mean the level of native mtDNA in the general population. Your own Santiago is of native mitochondria to the tune of 84%.
Quote:
Finally, the frase "negrito lindo" has anything to do with African beauty. Is Is the weird and racist Hispanic sense of humour.
Weird and racist sense of Chilean humor, you mean. Look at my link. There is both genetic and written historical evidence that light skinned mestizas-yes, looking probably just like any woman you pass on the street in Santiago any given day- were marrying big strong "negrito lindos." Yes, there is some prejudice againts marrying some one darker than onself, but certainly a "white" daughter has come home countless times and said, "Mami, pero es un negrito lindo, y tiene buen trabajo, excetera, excetera," and sometimes added at the end, "estoy embarazada."
Yes, the African males were the survivors of the slave trade, as were the African females. What is your point? Does it bother you to think that the meztiso populations of latin america were not as racists as many might have though?
In most of Latin America, there were simply almost no European women for any men of any color to reproduce with until the mid 19th century. This is reflected in the DNA evidence.
The DNA evidence undoubtedly shows that Euro-Amerind mating was overwhelmingly Euro male with Amerind female, and that a startling percent of today's Latin Americans have Amerind mtDNA. But this is not evidence of a gender imbalance among the early colonists. It is simply one more indication that women are monogamous but men are polygamous.
In fact, even the earliest Spanish conquerors brought their wives on their military campaigns, and subsequent shiploads of immigrants from Spain to the New World (amounting to 200,000-300,000 souls during the sixteenth century alone--before Pocahontas was even a gleam in Powhatan's eye) carried roughly equal numbers of males and females. For accounts of the wives of Cortez’s officers, see Bernal Diaz del Castillo and J. M. Cohen, The Conquest of New Spain (Baltimore, 1963), 320. For numbers of Spanish colonists, taken from passenger manifests, see Murdo J. MacLeod, “Spain and America: The Atlantic Trade 1492-1720,” in The Cambridge History of Latin America: Colonial Latin America, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge UK, 1984), 341-88, 356. For ratio of female to male Spanish colonists, see Analola Borges “La mujer pobladora en los origenes americanos,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos, 29 (1972) 389-444. For detailed tabulations of passenger manifests, see Peter Boyd-Bowman, “Patterns of Spanish Emigration to the Indies until 1600,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 56 (no. 4/November, 1976), 580-604.
I pick this nit only because overwhelming but under-publicized evidence shows that the "lack of Euro women" story is a myth.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Tue 20 Mar 2007 16:00 Post subject:
MisterLawyer wrote:
Your own Santiago is of native mitochondria to the tune of 84%.
Yes, we know it. We are a mainly mestizo country.
MisterLawyer wrote:
Weird and racist sense of Chilean humor, you mean. Look at my link. There is both genetic and written historical evidence that light skinned mestizas-yes, looking probably just like any woman you pass on the street in Santiago any given day- were marrying big strong "negrito lindos."
In Latin America, all men are called "negros" at bed, regardless of race. That's were the weird humour comes from.
MisterLawyer wrote:
Yes, there is some prejudice againts marrying some one darker than onself, but certainly a "white" daughter has come home countless times and said, "Mami, pero es un negrito lindo, y tiene buen trabajo, excetera, excetera," and sometimes added at the end, "estoy embarazada."
Yes, that's true. Some dark and rich immigrants from the Middle East usually marry blond.
MisterLawyer wrote:
Yes, the African males were the survivors of the slave trade, as were the African females. What is your point? Does it bother you to think that the meztiso populations of latin america were not as racists as many might have though?
My point is that Indian males didn't appear in the genetic stock as frequently not because they were weak, but because they were the main target of brutality, particularly at the beginning of the conquest. European and African populations were being replaced continuosly. Native population decreased and mixed quickly. The main target was the Native male.
Joined: 30 Mar 2005 {Posts: 1057 } Location: New Jersey
Posted: Tue 20 Mar 2007 16:11 Post subject:
Frank wrote:
I pick this nit only because overwhelming but under-publicized evidence shows that the "lack of Euro women" story is a myth.
That is very interesting. I also believed this myth. In fact, I've found this myth numerous times in otherwise respectable sources, like encyclopedias and books about populations of the world. It must have been an assumption that became "common knowledge" and was promulgated all over the place, even though it was wrong.
I've found this myth numerous times in otherwise respectable sources, like encyclopedias and books about populations of the world. It must have been an assumption that became "common knowledge" and was promulgated all over the place, even though it was wrong.
I have gradually come to think that this is in fact the case. I chose the word "myth" deliberately, meaning a tale of importance to a culture, that teaches children the foundation beliefs upon which the culture is based. I should also mention that some respected scholars who embrace the "lack of Euro women" story claim that the passenger manifests are wrong or incomplete; that some Spanish men were listed as women, or that even more hundreds of thousands of single men migrated to the New World secretly and so do not show up in the passenger manifests.
I put it in the same category as Piltdown Man, which despite the fossils' visually obvious evidence of being a manufactured fraud, was embraced by Brits because, at the time, it was important for Brits to believe that they were the first intelligent humans.
Similarly, high school biology textbooks until the mid-1950s carried pictures clearly showing our species's 46 chromosomes, along with the caption that "humans have 48 chromosomes." (The correct number, of course, is 46.) I have no idea why.
Last edited by fwsweet on Tue 20 Mar 2007 16:31; edited 1 time in total
Joined: 30 Mar 2005 {Posts: 1057 } Location: New Jersey
Posted: Tue 20 Mar 2007 16:27 Post subject:
Anson Musselman wrote:
“Through the Sahara alone," Moore said, "four million blacks were brought over to the Arab Iberian Peninsula. The Arab world was a world in which slavery was essential." Some scholars are skeptical of the size of the numbers Moore cites.
I'm very skeptical of this inordinately high figure as well. I would like to know where Moore obtained this. Actually, I've never seen an estimation of the numbers of sub-Saharans brought to Iberia (or Sicily, Crete, etc.) during the Arab period (as opposed to the African-slave-trading days of the 1400-1600's). I have only ever read that the "Moors" or "Saracens" were very heterogeneous, with North Africans, Turks, Levantine peoples, Europeans, and sub-Saharans all being part of the mix.
Last edited by William on Tue 20 Mar 2007 17:14; edited 1 time in total
I'm very skeptical of this inordinately high figure as well. I would like to know where Moore obtained this.
Pier M. Larson, “Reconsidering Trauma, Identity, and the African Diaspora: Enslavement and Historical Memory in Nineteenth-Century Highland Madagascar,” William and Mary Quarterly, 56 (no. 2, April 1999), 335-62 shows four million subsaharan slaves taken to the Indian Ocean plantations, eight million to the Mediterranean basin, and eleven million to the New World between 1500 and 1900. But he does not break the 8 million to the Mediterranean basin into North Africa versus Iberia. Most people assume that the overwheming majority of the 8 million slaves marched north across the Sahara stayed in North Africa. The most commonly cited number for Iberia in this period was about 100,000 (Encyclopedia Britannica).
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Tue 20 Mar 2007 16:39 Post subject:
Just some data.
The total population of Spain by the Age of the Discovery was four million people. The population of foreigners in Spain (every foreigner) was quite small in relation to the local Spanish population that become Muslim.
There is not evidency of massive immigration of foreigners to Spain at Middle Ages, except by some Sirians. The largest groups of foreigners were Arabs, Berbers and Middle Easterners.
Blacks were usually at the service of the upper classes and there was not mass slavery in the fields. Peasants did the job. The exception are certain batallions of soldiers from the Sahara that arrived in Spain in a sudden and brief invasion during the 12th century.
Berbers were present in Spain, though. I don't know how numerous they were, but they could be perhaps 100.000 easily. That's fact.
Joined: 02 May 2006 {Posts: 363 } Location: Île-de-France
Posted: Tue 20 Mar 2007 16:39 Post subject:
Quote:
For detailed tabulations of passenger manifests, see Peter Boyd-Bowman, “Patterns of Spanish Emigration to the Indies until 1600,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 56 (no. 4/November, 1976), 580-604.
Could you please provide what these patterns are as I do not have access to this material.
Note I did not say that there we no women, I said there were almost no women. And if there were, for some reason they seem to have had a very difficult time producing many procreative daughters. Clearly there were some. But take parts of Colombia where the Y chromosomes approach 100% European and the mtDNA 100% amerindian. How is this explained if there were a significant number of fertile women colonisits?
Quote:
The DNA evidence undoubtedly shows that Euro-Amerind mating was overwhelmingly Euro male with Amerind female, and that a startling percent of today's Latin Americans have Amerind mtDNA. But this is not evidence of a gender imbalance among the early colonists. It is simply one more indication that women are monogamous but men are polygamous.
While I have no hard data-at least in the form of ship manifests- to back up my conclusions, this seems illogical to me for several reasons. One--there is no genetic evidence I have seen that Anglo-american colonists who brough there wives were similarly sampling the local flavor, so to speak, on a comprable level. Are spaniards just more promiscuous and willing to cheat on their wives? Two-historical accounts in Latin America-specifically the spanish Caribbean-tell of how every spanish soldier stationed in San Juan, or Santo Domingo, rather that living in barracks was living outside the fort with either an indian or african "wife" with lots of mixed children running around. They did not have wives from spain with them. See, eg The Puerto Ricans, A Documentary History, Olga Jimenez de Wagenheim and Kal Wagenheim (editors) 1973.
I don't doubt that many women came later, but in the initial colonization, Anglo-americans brought families to farm, Spain sent soldiers to extract wealth with labor already present or imported from africa and priest to baptize. It think that the DNA evidence and historical evidence is quite strong that these men were not from immigrant familes or couples who also were cheating on there wives, and that this initial mixture created the foundation that would reproduce very sucessfully both among themselves and with future immigrants from europe and africa to create the current population of Latin America.
Last edited by MisterLawyer on Tue 20 Mar 2007 16:41; edited 2 times in total
Joined: 30 Mar 2005 {Posts: 1057 } Location: New Jersey
Posted: Tue 20 Mar 2007 16:39 Post subject:
Frank wrote:
I should also mention that some respected scholars who embrace the "lack of Euro women" story claim that the passenger manifests are wrong or incomplete; that some Spanish men were listed as women, or that even more hundreds of thousands of single men migrated to the New World secretly and so do not show up in the passenger manifests.
Is it known if these scholars have any evidence of these theories? I'm getting the sneaking suspicion that they simply don't want to let go of a long-held idea. Even scholars aren't immune to this sort of thing.
Frank wrote:
I put it in the same category as Piltdown Man, which despite the fossils' visually obvious evidence of being a manufactured fraud, was embraced by Brits because, at the time, it was important for Brits to believe that they were the first intelligent humans.
I enjoyed the PBS documentary on Piltdown Man. Bones were artificially aged. Even the remains of an old cricket bat were used as "evidence" of the existence of Piltdown Man.
Even the remains of an old cricket bat were used as "evidence" of the existence of Piltdown Man.
I had not known of the cricket bat showing that the "missing-link" was a Brit until I saw the PBS special. It made me wonder if the hoax did not start out as a silly prank, which took on a life of its own because it satisfied a social need.
Joined: 30 Mar 2005 {Posts: 1057 } Location: New Jersey
Posted: Tue 20 Mar 2007 16:49 Post subject:
fwsweet wrote:
William wrote:
I'm very skeptical of this inordinately high figure as well. I would like to know where Moore obtained this.
Pier M. Larson, “Reconsidering Trauma, Identity, and the African Diaspora: Enslavement and Historical Memory in Nineteenth-Century Highland Madagascar,” William and Mary Quarterly, 56 (no. 2, April 1999), 335-62 shows four million subsaharan slaves taken to the Indian Ocean plantations, eight million to the Mediterranean basin, and eleven million to the New World between 1500 and 1900. But he does not break the 8 million to the Mediterranean basin into North Africa versus Iberia. Most people assume that the overwheming majority of the 8 million slaves marched north across the Sahara stayed in North Africa. The most commonly cited number for Iberia in this period was about 100,000 (Encyclopedia Britannica).
I've also read that 100,000 were brought to Iberia during this period, with about 35,000 of them going to Portugal (mainly the Algarve, southern Alentejo, and Lisbon). The 35,000 figure is from A Consice History of Portugal, by David Birmingham, Cambridge University Press, 1993.
But Moore was referring to the Arab period of Iberia, which was centuries earlier. I have never seen any numerical breakdown of ethnic types for this period.
Joined: 02 May 2006 {Posts: 363 } Location: Île-de-France
Posted: Tue 20 Mar 2007 16:51 Post subject:
Before we continue this debate, after reading and considering the posts, I have found a logical way to explain the evidence and harmonize are conclusions. I do not think it is being debated that the initial conquistadors were all men. Nor that it is being suggested that the soldiers in the first say 20 or so years after the conquest brought their wives with them. Even if after this time, nearly equal numbers of men and women came, as long as this initial population soldier/native woman population keeps up a high fertility rate among itself, you could get current DNA profiles. Just an added thought.
Could you please provide what these patterns are as I do not have access to this material.
I do not have a PDF on my computer (I just checked), all I have is the following note that I took when I used the paper as research material for one of my books.
research note wrote:
A summary of some of the demographic studies contained in the author's five-volume Indice geobiográfico de de 40,000 pobladores españoles de América en el siglo XVI. Covers overall patterns of emigration, regional emigration, cumulative emigration by provinces, emigration from cities, by merchants, and by women to the Indies, and the destinations in America, 1493-1600. The one area of Spain from which there was a constant flow of emigrants was Andalusia, especially Seville. Since this was primarily commercial in motivation, it may explain why, since its destination was to port cities and centers of commerce, the coastal variety of American Spanish is largely Andalusian, in contrast with other phonetic patterns in highland areas. 5 maps, 4 tables, 10 notes. JSTOR
But I think that I have a hard-copy of the article at home (we are visiting the latest grandkids in Ft. Lauderdale this week). If so, I shall scan it in and post it. Either way, I shall let you know. In the meantime, since I got it from JSTOR, anyone who has a JSTOR subscription should be able to download a PDF.
Joined: 30 Mar 2005 {Posts: 1057 } Location: New Jersey
Posted: Tue 20 Mar 2007 17:03 Post subject:
oevega wrote:
Just some data.
The total population of Spain by the Age of the Discovery was four million people. The population of foreigners in Spain (every foreigner) was quite small in relation to the local Spanish population that become Muslim.
I have heard figures similar to what you wrote above, although I cannot recall where. Add to the 4 million Spaniards the 1.5 - 2 million Portuguese, and we have at most 6 million Iberians. Looking at it this way, a claim of the importation of 4 million sub-Saharans into the peninsula looks ridiculous.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Tue 20 Mar 2007 17:17 Post subject:
Yes William:
Sometimes I get the impression some people want to change the history manipulating statistics.
The presence of North Africans is documented, though, although it was not as numerous as usually though, and they weren't slaves, but usually administrators or soldiers. Andalucia (ancient Al-Andalus) is the place were the influence is strong and the physical difference between people of that place and northern Morocco is not sharp. The same happens between Sicilia and the Maghreb. But I guess that similarity existed BEFORE the Arab invasion, because the distance between both regions is minimal.
'
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