6 Interesting Facts About Gaspar Yanga and the Revolt of 1570

Background 

There is very little known about the revolutionary Gaspar Yanga. From the available historic records, Yanga is said to have been a royal from the Bran, people in the country that would go on to be Gabon. Yanga was enslaved in New Spain or Mexico but he managed to free himself from bondage to create one the first free towns for Black people in all of the Americas after the start of the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Mexico Had a Large Population 0f Enslaved Africans

New Spain or modern day Mexico was home to some of the worst slavery in Latin America. Many scholars believe the colony had the second-highest number of enslaved Africans after Brazil and developed the largest free Black population in the Americas after slavery was abolished.

“A 1646 census enumerated 35,089 Africans and 116,529 persons of African descent in New Spain. With cessation of the slave trade, the enslaved population of New Spain steadily declined,” according to scholar of the African diaspora Herman L. Bennett.