Rocío Jiménez Díaz, a researcher from the Doctoral Program in Territory and Society co-supervised by the ULPGC and the ULL, has conducted a critical review of secondary literature to reconstruct the dynamics of enslavement of the aboriginal people of the Canary Islands and their integration into the Atlantic trade circuits of the era.
The majority of enslaved Canarians were transported to Valencia, where their market value was lower than in Seville, due to Valencia's redistributive role in the Mediterranean context. The author points out that these individuals were used as an economic resource to settle debts and generate profits. The predominant age range was between 14 and 25 years, although enslaved individuals under 13 in Valencia and over 35 in Seville are documented. Both men and women were traded in these markets.
Jiménez Díaz notes that enslaved Amazigh-Canarian people have always been a subsidiary study within broader monographs on slavery in Europe. Her work aims to deepen the understanding of the specific dynamics of slavery originating from the Canary Islands, collecting more information about the lives of these individuals: who they were, where they came from, how they arrived in these cities, how they were framed within the heterogeneous group of enslaved people, how they were valued, and what processes are reflected in historical documentation.
The researcher also considers it necessary to revise the traditional historiographical language, where the term "slave" objectifies the person. She proposes using "enslaved person" to shift the focus to the enslaver, thereby changing the centrality of the historical subject and helping to avoid dehumanizing perspectives. Not adopting the colonial discourse allows these individuals to be placed at the center of their own processes and the forced geographical dissemination they endured.
Another aspect addressed is the depersonalization suffered by enslaved people, which involved the loss of their cultural and linguistic identity. For example, baptism replaced their aboriginal names with Christian names, making documentary tracking difficult. Living outside their place of origin also facilitated the adoption of European languages and customs, leading to the gradual erosion of their original identity.
The results of this work, part of her doctoral research on the forced diaspora of enslaved Canarians in Western Europe, have been published by Rocío Jiménez Díaz in the journal Sociedades Precapitalistas. In addition to the aforementioned universities, this research is supported by European Funds PNRR (Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza), managed by Italy, and the Bulgarian company Takin Solutions, a Digital Humanities company.
