African Experiences in the Slave Routes to the Rio de la Plata, 1780–1810

This paper examines the experiences of violence, death, and rebellion in the slave trade to late-colonial Buenos Aires and Montevideo, the gateway to the Río de la Plata region of South America. It tracks how the regional features of the trade from Africa (the Bight of Biafra, Angola, and Mozambique) as well as its coastal counterpart and continuation, the slave traffic from Brazilian ports to Buenos Aires and Montevideo, shaped slave mortality and overall African experience in the vessels. This paper also offers a comprehensive history of the quarantine barrack for recently disembarked slaves in Montevideo, the Caserío de los Negros, which is now a site of memory for the UNESCO’s slave trade route project in the Río de la Plata. Finally, this paper analyzes instances of slave resistance and rebellion in this section of the South Atlantic.