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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 June 2021
Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in what was later called the ‘New World’, was a centre of the Atlantic slave trade. While it has been called the ‘cradle of blackness in the Americas’, discussion of racial exclusion and marginalization is mostly absent in the city's architecture and urban history. This article investigates how architecture and urban design helped reinforce the colonizers’ control over enslaved peoples. Specifically, we explore the Santa Bárbara neighbourhood, its church and the slave warehouse known as La Negreta. Drawing on historical maps and archival documents, we draw attention to how the spatial and material construction of Santa Bárbara constituted and maintained social and racial structures of oppression.
1 The island of Hispaniola was later controlled by the French, becoming the independent Republic of Haiti in 1804. The island was split when the Dominican Republic, occupying the eastern part of the island, was formed in 1844.
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5 For an analysis of the ‘informality’ of Barrio Santa Bárbara, see Vicioso, E. Prieto and Sasso, V. Flores, ‘Barrio de Santa Bárbara: primer asentamiento informal del nuevo mundo’, Intus-Legere Historia, 14 (2020), 151–68Google Scholar.
6 H. Dilla Alfonso, Ciudades en el Caribe: un estudio comparado de La Habana, San Juan, Santo Domingo y Miami (México, 2014), 35. Authors’ translation.
7 B. de Las Casas, Historia de Las Indias, vol. I (México, 1877); G.F. de Oviedo, Historia general y natural de Las Indias, vol. III (Madrid, 1853).
8 P.B. Neill, ‘No town of its class in Spain: civic architecture and colonial social formation in sixteenth-century Santo Domingo, Hispaniola’, Hemisphere: Visual Cultures of the Americas, 1 (2008), 6.
9 De Oviedo, Historia general, vol. III.
10 Lemoine, R. Martínez, ‘The classical model of the Spanish-American colonial city’, Journal of Architecture, 8 (2003), 355–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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12 Neill, ‘No town of its class’, 6.
13 Ibid, 10
14 On the architecture of Santo Domingo, see E.E. Crain, Historic Architecture in the Caribbean Islands (Gainesville, 1994); and R. Gutiérrez, Arquitectura y urbanismo en Iberoamérica (Madrid, 1997).
15 F. Moya Pons, ‘Prólogo’, in J. Chez Checo (ed.), Imagenes insulares: cartografía histórica Dominicana (Santo Domingo, 2008), 17–25.
16 For original manuscript, see L.J. Peguero, Historia de la conquista de la Isla Española de Santo Domingo [Manuscrito]: traducida de la historia general de las Indias, escrita por Antonio de Herrera, y de otros autores que han escrito sobre el particular (Santo Domingo, 1762), 14, available in Biblioteca Digital Hispánica, http://bdh.bne.es/bnesearch/detalle/bdh0000010189, accessed 17 Sep. 2019.
17 For a historical overview of the cathedral, see R.F. Vega, ‘A decolonial analysis of La Catedral de Santo Domingo Primada de América’, University of Colorado at Boulder, Master's thesis, 2015.
18 Fr. C. de Utrera, Santo Domingo: dilucidaciones históricas (Santo Domingo, 1927), 221. Utrera spent years in the Archivo General de Indias (AGI), or General Archive of the Indies, studying colonial documents. In this book, he presents historical evidence on the motives for the construction of the Santa Bárbara church. On Utrera, see Demorizi, E. Rodríguez, ‘Fray Cipriano de Utrera’, CLÍO: Órgano de La Academia Dominicana de La Historia, 113 (1958), 1–6Google Scholar.
19 De Utrera, Dilucidaciones históricas, 218–25. See also Valero, L.R., Sasso, V. Flores and Vicioso, E. Prieto, ‘In situ assessment of superficial moisture condition in façades of historic building using non-destructive techniques’, Case Studies in Construction Materials, 10 (2019), 3Google Scholar.
20 Prieto Vicioso and Flores Sasso, ‘Barrio de Santa Bárbara’, 157.
21 M.D. Mena, Poética de Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo, 2000), 9; M. Errasti, El primer convento de América: historia y forma de vida de los Franciscanos en su convento de la ciudad de Santo Domingo, 1516–1820 (Santa María de la Esperanza, 2006), 55; and Valero, Flores Sasso and Prieto Vicioso, ‘In situ assessment’, 3.
22 ADN, Patrimonio cultural del Barrio Santa Bárbara. Ciudad Colonial de Santo Domingo (Ayuntamiento Distrito Nacional, 2008).
23 Houses of prostitution existed in Santo Domingo as early as 1508, when the city had a population of barely 500 people. Franco, F.J., ‘La sociedad colonial dominicana del siglo XVI: mitos y realidades’, Global, 53 (2013), 46–52Google Scholar. See also M.M. Guerrero Cano, ‘La ciudad de Santo Domingo a raíz de la anexión a España’, in B. Torres Ramírez (ed.), Andalucía y América. La influencia Andaluza en los núcleos urbanos Americanos (Andalucía, 1990), 81.
24 For a detailed historical analysis of how the original bohío typology evolved to become common, see V.M. Durán Núñez and E.J. Brea García, Arquitectura popular Dominicana (Santo Domingo, 2009).
25 J.J. Ponce Vázquez, Islanders and Empire. Smuggling and Political Defiance in Hispaniola 1580–1690 (Cambridge, 2020), 49.
26 D. Wheat, Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570–1640 (Chapel Hill, 2016).
27 Real Audiencia de Santo Domingo. AGI, Santo Domingo, 49, R.9, N.59. The role of slaves in the construction of religious buildings in the city is still a matter of controversy. While archaeological and documentary evidence points towards this, the Catholic church has never accepted this fact.
28 M.O. Wilson, ‘The home of the oppressed: democracy, slavery and American civic architecture’, Sekler Lecture at the Society of Architectural Historians Annual Conference, 2020.
29 For example, a sixteenth-century collection of documents presents a guide to slave owners about their responsibilities, including minimum requirements for housing and an infirmary. It also offers slaves and free blacks certain ‘rights’, as well as outlining penalties for violating rules about public behaviour. Papeles referentes a los esclavos negros en América [Manuscrito], Biblioteca Digital Hispánica (Madrid, n.d.), available online, http://bdh.bne.es/bnesearch/detalle/bdh0000059736.
30 Torres-Saillant (ed.), Introduction to Dominican Blackness; and A. Gutiérrez Escudero, ‘La estructura económica de Santo Domingo, 1500–1795’, in F. Moya Pons (ed.), Historia de la Republica Dominicana (Madrid, 2010).
31 Stone, E. Woodruff, ‘America's first slave revolt: Indians and African slaves in Española, 1500–1534’, Ethnohistory, 60 (2013), 195–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
32 AGI, ‘Respuesta a carta de frey Nicolás de Ovando’, INDIFERENTE, 418, book 1, fols. 180v–181v.
33 Memén, F.A. Pérez, ‘El Indio y el negro en la visión de la iglesia y el estado en Santo Domingo (siglos XV–XVIII)’, Revista de Historia de América, 143 (2010), 99–115Google Scholar; and C. Andujar, The African Presence in Santo Domingo (East Lansing, 2012).
34 The voyages are documented in the Slave Voyage Database, available online, www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/database; for further analysis using archive documents from the sixteenth century, see C. Larrazábal Blanco, Los negros y la esclavitud en Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo, 1967).
35 Castillo, A. Moreta, ‘El Santo Domingo del siglo XVIII a través del libro becerro’, CLÍO: Órgano de La Academia Dominicana de La Historia, 174 (2007), 43–66Google Scholar.
36 For example, in Cartagena, see C. Bernand, Negros esclavos y libres en las ciudades Hispanoamericanas (Madrid, 2020). In Veracruz, see De la Serna, J.M., ‘Negros, mulatos y pardos en la historia de Veracruz’, Arqueología Mexicana, 21 (2013), 52–7Google Scholar. In Lima, see Polar, M.A. Morales, ‘El espacio del esclavo negro en las aciendas del Valle de Cañete, 1747–1821’, Investigaciones Sociales, 12 (2014), 161–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ojeda, M., ‘De la Ciudad de los Reyes a Malambo: espacio, resistencia y reconstrucción identitaria en Malambo de Lucía Charún-Illescas’, Afro-Hispanic Review, 32 (2013), 129–42Google Scholar.
37 For an introduction to these buildings and their relation to larger social structures, see M. Arrelucea Barrantes, Sobreviviendo a la esclavitud: negociación y honor en las prácticas cotidianas de los Africanos y Afrodescendientes. Lima, 1750–1820 (Lima, 2018).
38 Larrazábal Blanco, Los negros y la esclavitud en Santo Domingo, 97. Translated by authors.
39 AGI, Justicia, 103-A, fols. 3281r–3283v, 3569v–3572r, 3607v, CUNY DSI Dominican Colonial Documents Collection, available online, http://firstblacks.org/en/manuscripts/ Manuscript 53 parts 1–11, accessed 21 Jan. 2021.
40 First Blacks in the Americas, Legal and Illegal Slave Trade (City University of New York), http://firstblacks.org/en/summaries/arrival-03-legal-and-illegal-slave-trade/, accessed 12 Jan. 2021.
41 For an analysis on these typologies as well as the architecture of black subjects during the European colonization of ‘the Americas’, see Edwards, J.D., ‘Unheralded contributions across the Atlantic world’, Atlantic Studies, 5 (2008), 161–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
42 AGI, INDIFERENTE, 421, book 12, fols. 151r–152r.
43 Moya Pons (ed.), Historia de la República Dominicana, 53; Ponce Vázquez, Islanders and Empire, 33.
44 Manuel Del Monte, ‘La Negreta’, Aclaraciones de la historia, 2016, https://manueldelmonte.wordpress.com/2016/09/02/la-negreta/, accessed 12 Apr. 2019.
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46 Archivo General de la Nación (Dominican National Archives, or AGN), ‘Proceso civil iniciado por Romero Blainne relativo a la homologación para hipotecar la mitad de una casa, situada en el barrio de Santa Bárbara’, Leg. 307546, 3 Jun. 1886.
47 Castillo, ‘El Santo Domingo del siglo XVIII’. While the term in this book is pluralized as ‘Las Negreta’, and there might have been several similar typologies before the construction of La Negreta, most scholars agree that this was a singular building, it is also remembered in oral histories as a single structure.
48 For a complete source on the story of Enriquillo, see M. de Jesús Galván, Enriquillo. Leyenda histórica Dominicana 1503–1533 (Barcelona, 1909). For a complete analysis of Enriquillo linked to the early colonial history of the city, see Altman, I., ‘The revolt of Enriquillo and the historiography of early Spanish America’, The Americas, 63 (2007), 587–614CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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50 Papeles referentes a los esclavos negros en América.
51 Quirós, C.B. de, ‘La Picota de Santo Domingo’, Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación, 111 (2005), 25–7Google Scholar.
52 Wilson, ‘The home of the oppressed’.
53 De Utrera, ‘Dilucidaciones históricas’, 222.
54 Valero, Flores Sasso and Prieto Vicioso, ‘In situ assessment’.
55 De Utrera, ‘Dilucidaciones históricas’, 221.
56 M. Ugarte, Monumentos coloniales (Santo Domingo, 1977); and M. Dominguez, ‘La fachada de Santa Bárbara contada por sus fotos’, Arquitexto (2013), 45–9.
57 Slave route tour in the colonial zone of Santo Domingo as part of the 5th Jornada por la Visibilización del Cimarronaje, 27 Oct. 2019.
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60 De Utrera, citing AGI, 54-1-9, 224. Translated by authors.
61 Moreta Castillo, ‘El Santo Domingo del siglo XVIII’.
62 D.A. de Alcedo, Diccionario geográfico-histórico de Las Indias Occidentales o América (Madrid, 1786), 39.
63 S. De Covarrubias, Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana, o Española (Madrid, 1611).
64 For detailed analysis of the evolution of term arrabal, see Villarreal, C.C. Zamorano, ‘La palabra periferia en México, sus vecinas y sus falsas amigas’, L'Ordinaire des Amériques, 207 (2007), 13–30Google Scholar; and Hiernaux, D. and Lindón, A., ‘La periferia: voz y sentido en los estudios urbanos’, Papeles de Población, 10 (2004), 101–23Google Scholar.
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66 Diccionario del Español de México (Mexican Spanish Dictionary, published by the Colegio de México). Translated by authors.
67 Moreta Castillo, ‘El Santo Domingo del siglo XVIII’.
68 J.E. Delmonte (ed.), Santo Domingo: guia de arquitectura (Seville, 2006), 179–81.
69 M.D. Anderson, ‘Disaster and the new patria: cyclone San Zenón and Trujillo's rewriting of the Dominican Republic’, in Disaster Writing: The Cultural Politics of Catastrophe in Latin America (Charlottesville, 2015), 29–54.
70 Dominguez, ‘La fachada de Santa Bárbara contada por sus fotos’.
71 Tragically, Puello was later sentenced to death for allegedly conspiring against the newly formed government and for ingratitude to the white race. A. Appiah and H.L. Gates, Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (New York, 2005), 452.
72 L.E. Alemar, La Ciudad de Santo Domingo: Santo Domingo, Ciudad Trujillo (Santo Domingo, 1943), 123. Authors’ translation.
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75 V.C. Bencosme, Texto introductorio a la programación del II Encuentro Ancestral Musical, La Negreta (Santo Domingo, 2009). Translated by authors.
76 M. Núñez, ‘Segunda Jornada de Visibilización Del Cimarronaje’, Municipios al Día, https://do.municipiosaldia.com/opinion/item/17177-segunda-jornada-de-visibilizaci%C3%B3n-del-cimarronaje, accessed 12 Sep. 2020.
77 For instance, NGOs such as ‘La Negreta Cultural Asociation’, which aims to preserve elements of African culture in the country, was inspired by the history of the La Negreta building. Furthermore, UNESCO's current efforts to bring to light issues of spatial and racial injustice in the city are based on historical manifestations of inequality in the barrio.
