Black Women Enterprising Freedom in Colonial Santo Domingo

Black women have been “winning” for Black freedom since the sixteenth century. Groups of enslaved African and African-descendant women who were known as “earners” by colonists in Santo Domingo, the first sugar plantation economy of the Americas, were also called “Las Ganadoras,” which translates to “the winners.” These groups of Black women were allowed to travel freely to sell goods and return to the plantation. Las Ganadoras’ enterprising spirit did not stop with earning money for their enslavers—they also reclaimed enslaved Black laborers’ earnings by selling on their behalf. The entrepreneurship of African and African-descendant women in Santo Domingo began around 1500 when the archive indicates that a free Black woman founded the inaugural hospital-like site and a chapel for La Altagracia on the western bank of the Ozama River before colonizers dubbed the space Santo Domingo.

A Black woman’s ingenuity crafted a healing and spiritual space that was co-opted and transformed into the first successful epicenter of the Spanish empire and Catholic Church in the Americas. While the name of the free Black woman from the hospital is unknown, colonial documents describe her as someone who received donations from the residents in the village to operate her “business.” Her founding contributions exist in the shadows of Nicolás de Ovando’s legacy, the governor who built a more modern facility in the same place where the free Black woman resided and ran her infirmary. In this same city, founded by Black women’s entrepreneurship, colonists sought to restrict Black women’s enterprising spirit.

Entering archival purview on March 16, 1542, Las Ganadoras were recorded as a problem. The outraged Archdeacon of Santo Domingo Álvaro de Castro warned the Supervisory Council of the Indies that groups of Black women were stealing gold, furs, and money from the colonial city to hide in the countryside. Álvaro wrote with grave dismay: “Blacks walk at least in this city so rich in gold and dresses, and so full of their own importance, that they appear freer than we are.” Unfreedom is a prerequisite of freedom. When you earn freedom, you walk with a heavy knowledge of its cost and relish its liberties in ways that Álvaro, unlikely to lose autonomy over his body nor experience the indignities of brutal sugar cane slavery, would never know.

Las Ganadoras labored daily to maintain their ephemeral freedom, outsmarting slave ordinances to work on their behalf. The division of enslaved labor permitted conditional Black mobility, a mobility that Álvaro viewed as the root of the rebellious Black problem.

In Santo Domingo, enslaved labor was divided into three categories: (1) agricultural labor by “esclavos de tala,” who planted, cut the cane, and operated complex sugar refining machinery; (2) domestic labor by “esclavos domésticos” laboring in the colonizer’s home; and (3) market labor in which “esclavos jornaleros” or enslaved day laborers were tasked with selling foodstuffs. Enslavers of day laborers would collect the profits and charge a “jornal: a hiring fee of one tomín,” the cost of the permit that granted Black mobility. However, jornaleras did not just earn money for their enslavers, they also earned money for themselves and their community of enslaved kin. We know Las Ganadoras were jornaleras because Álvaro wrote about his discontent with the “two or three hundred black women they call ‘ganadoras’, who go about this city to earn money like I’ve said . . . and to pay their hiring fee every day, or every month, or by the year, they go off and roam the whole island.” After paying their jornales, Las Ganadoras moved freely, ephemerally unencumbered by their bondage.

Black women’s episodic freedom posed a significant threat to the Spanish empire’s colonial project. The danger was two-fold: 1.) enslavers were not fully benefiting from Las Ganadora’s earnings; and 2.) enslaved Black people were also profiting, adding a new level of competition. Álvaro interpreted Black earnings as theft. In his letter, he asserted that “these days [Black people] are involved in so much commerce and trade of such value and shrewdness, which is why so many famous robberies are carried out in all the farms in the countryside, so no matter how much of a newcomer he is, there is no black on this island who doesn’t already know for a fact that every day he has to steal a little or a lot.”

During the 1530s – 1570s sugar boom, there was abundant money to earn because enslaved African labor transformed Santo Domingo into an exceedingly lucrative colony. The island received the inaugural vessel of enslaved Africans in 1502, and the legal importation of enslaved African women began in 1504. Colonial administrators believed that introducing Black women would help subdue enslaved male populations and assist in quelling the rebellious Black problem. However, Las Ganadoras rendered quite the opposite effect by helping fund Black freedom practices.

Las Ganadoras funded freedom by hiding money in freed Black communities and by selling goods on behalf of enslaved people who could not leave sugar plantations. Enslavers sent jornaleras with root vegetables, woven goods, firewood, flowers, and other foodstuffs, expecting their profits under penalty if sales went poorly. Las Ganadoras were thus earning the cost of their mobility fee, profits for their enslavers, and additional money. The seething Álvaro wrote, “black women they call ‘ganadoras,’ . . . take the things they have stolen and sell them and they bring back whatever they make and hide it in the interior.” Las Ganadoras were likely hiding these funds in “maroon,” known as “cimarrón,” spaces in the colony’s interior. Based on an accord from May 20, 1544, that restricted “any jornalera or free Black woman from receiving a black slave, that does not bring identification or license from their master, fruits or provisions from the countryside,” we can infer that Las Ganadoras were earning excess money by selling goods they acquired from other enslaved people. Jornaleras’ mobility offered Black enterprise an ideal camouflage. Part of their effectiveness was grounded in their gender.

In the colonial Caribbean, Black women were masters of the stealthy movement. Black women needed to be everywhere for society to run. Marisa Fuentes shows us how “racialized gender dynamics” in colonial Barbados influenced the practice of masters dressing up enslaved boys in women’s clothing to not arouse suspicion and ensure that messages traveled smoothly in tricky situations. Las Ganadoras’ success was also rooted in Black networks nourished by conversations, shared knowledge, and trust. Akin to how Black people organized during revolts, everyday resistance, and refusal emerged from the interpersonal work of relation that Black women regularly practiced.

Self-liberated Black women rarely appear in archival spaces. Black women were often denied literacy and deemed unworthy subjects for the colonial archive, outside of attempts to control or exploit them. As scholars of Black women’s intellectual history, we must ask what are the repercussions of studying freedom-seeking people who sought to camouflage their movements? Who are we to go searching for the freedom seeker, the “flying negro,” the cimarron? Our desire to convene with the dead does not mean they wish to greet us in the violent contexts they sought to escape. Yet, as Black women, we live in the afterlives of their thinking. Las Ganadoras’ thoughts, sentiments toward the Spanish empire, tactics for recovering after sexual assault, birth control and birthing practices, home remedies, laundering methods, botanical knowledge, recipes, anecdotes, and modes of loving constitute a living intellectual legacy. Types of knowledge they passed down to their children, girls, girl’s girls, neighbors, friends, comrades, and fictive kin. Perhaps this is not recovery work but rather a method of accounting. Recovery work presumes we have not carried our foremothers’ knowledge for centuries. Accounting argues that Black women have always influenced thought across Hispaniola and that the tally of their contributions has yet to be summed.