SLAVES

n.58 cm.76x101
semi-gloss on canvas

During colonization, the South American Indians, the Taino and Arauachi, did not have the physical requirements necessary to perform the toughest jobs and had resisted the smallpox epidemics introduced by the Spanish.
The blacks of Africa, by their nature more resistant, constituted from this point of view an alternative.
The slave trade between western companies was controlled by the French, Dutch, German and English. Of this huge movement, the most visible trace remains today, is a mixture of ethnic groups and languages in the Americas.
The population of the island of Hispaniola, was composed of three different ethnic groups: Europeans (about 32,000 in 1790) who held political and economic control, the gens de couleur (about 28,000) individuals free of Mixed Race and the African slaves (more than 500,000).
  Finally, there were the Maroon ex-slaves who escaped their masters, they lived completely unrelated to the rest of the colony.
The gens de couleur rebelled against the government, and the French National Assembly granted political rights to all free-born blacks and mulattos (without, however, changing the status of those who were still slaves). The slaves in the area of Cap-Haïtien rebelled against their masters and On 1 January 1804 the now former colony declared its independence, becoming only the second country in the Americas to declare independence, after the United Stat