‘Little Angola’ of Latin America: The Secondary Politogenesis in the Communities of Fugitive Slaves

The present article raises an interesting question, namely the secondary politogenesis and the re-creation of traditional African forms of social and political organization in the communities of runaway slaves (the so-called cimarrones) in Latin America in the first half of the seventeenth century. The article is devoted to the problem of revivalism (restoration) of traditional social and political structures in the communities of fugitive slaves (cimarrones) in colonial Latin America. The author studies a number of such communities in the first half of the seventeenth century and shows the link between the traditional structures and the Central African traditions of the Bantu people. I also examine the close connection of these phenomena with the development of the slave trade in the period of the union between Portugal and Habsburg Spain (1580–1640), in particular, with the Portuguese slave wars in Angola. The connection between these events and the examples of secondary politogenesis, as well as with the Bantu type of military leadership, allow the examples of such communities to be considered as unique phenomena, characteristic only of this historical period, which ended with the destruction by the Portuguese colonists of the early state of Palmares in colonial Brazil (1696).