Gaspar Yanga (Yanga, Veracruz, Mexico)

Gaspar Yanga (Yanga, Veracruz, Mexico)

Subject (Topic)
Slavery-Emancipation
Middle Passage
Transatlantic Slave Trade
Slave Trade
Diaspora
Yanga, Veracruz, Mexico

Subject (Name)
Yanga, Gaspar

Subject (Object Type)
Commemorative sculpture

The muscular, semi-nude figure looks resolutely forward as he raises a machete in his right hand and holds a long (sugar cane?) in his left. A shackle with a broken chain is still attached to his left wrist. The work was created to celebrate Gaspar Yanga, a 17th century self-emancipated (former slave) leader of a maroon colony of self-emancipated people (former slaves) near Veracruz, Mexico. He successfully resisted a Spanish attack on the maroon colony in 1609 and later negotiated with the Spanish colonial government to secure self-rule for the maroon settlement.

Lendechy, Erasmo Vásquez, b. 1918

Wikipedia Commons

Dedicated: August, 1976

To read about UNSECO's decision to name the city of Yanga, Veracruz a World Heritage Site, click here.

JPEG

English

Visual Arts-Sculpture

Yanga Park, Av. 2, Centro, 94930 Yanga, Ver., Mexico

An English translation of the Spanish inscription on the base:

"African Black liberator and precursor of the black slaves who founded the town of San Lorenzo de Cerralvo (now Yanga) by agreement of the viceroy of New Spain, Rodrigo Pacheco, on the third day of October 1631 by order of the viceroy’s pen.Village Captain Hernando of Castro Espinosa H. Ayuntamento Constl. 1973-1976.”

Renée Ater

Sculpture