This resulted in a significant mestizo population that, over the years, has continued to dilute traces of African ancestry in many cases.

They originally came from the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent (Antilles), where escaped enslaved Africans and Amerindians intermingled and created a society and culture of their own.

After realizing the small island could not sustain their population, groups of Garifuna later settled on the Caribbean coasts of several mainland Central American countries, including Guatemala.

And in the eighteenth century, they came from Biafra (Nigeria), West Congo, Angola, Guinea and Benin (from Kingdom of Whydah).

In this century also arrived slaves Aja (who were known as Arará, coming from Allada, Benin) and "creole", from Puerto Rico and Jamaica.

However, the first significant costs report data from 1543, when an estimated "150 pieces pig" of Santo Domingo were taken to the Caribbean coast of Guatemala.

African slaves arrived in Guatemala to replace the indigenous population as labor, as their numbers had been reduced drastically from diseases such as measles, smallpox or bubonic plague.

Since Santiago was the political and economic center of Guatemala (and throughout the Spanish Central America), many of the slaves brought to the region were bought and sold there, and were baptized in their churches and parishes and possibly also in their monasteries.

Because of the rise in power in the Middle East at the end of the sixteenth century, a large number of people started to be identified as mulatto.

[4] Between 1595 and 1640, the Spanish crown signed a series of contracts with Portuguese traders to dramatically increase the number of African slaves in America.

The impact of African immigration in early colonial times was deeper in the sugar mill in Amatitlán and mint of Escuintepeque shores in San Diego de la Gomera.

Because most Spanish who emigrated to Latin America at this time were men who did not bring their wives, they often had sex with her maids and female slaves, causing racial mixtures.

This mixing increased while growing the Spanish settlers in the territory, racial mixture which was maintained until the destruction of Santiago by severe earthquakes in 1773 and the jurisdiction of the new capital in Guatemala City in 1770.

Although we know little about Afro - Guatemalans working in the agricultural sector, several sources in the last third of the sixteenth century identified Afro farming communities in the present Jalapa, El Progreso, Santa Rosa and Jutiapa departments, and in the area surrounding the city of Sansonante, in the current El Salvador.

The Pacific coast was also home to many free blacks and mulattoes sticking by their great abilities as vagueros, to the extent that the laws of the sixteenth century forbidding them riding on horses or have weapons were almost always ignored because their skills were as necessary as feared-- skills that would later make them valuable recruits from colonial militias and gave opportunity for upward social mobility.

Free people of African descent and slaves also worked on the production of indigo in the Pacific coast of Guatemala and, especially, of El Salvador.

This station lasted only one or two months a year, making it unprofitable to maintain a permanent workforce of only enslaved workers to produce indigo.

Between 1595 and 1640, the Spanish crown signed a series of contracts with Portuguese traders to dramatically increase the number of African slaves in America.

[4] In 1611, when the free mulattoes helped defeat the Maroons of Tutale, people of African descent were not allowed to officially participate in militia companies.

In the 1630s, a wave of attacks in Centre - America, by corsairs Dutch, French and British persuaded the Audiencia to enlist free people of African descent in regular militia companies, although segregated.

Because of that, several companies of militia were granted temporary tax exemptions from Laborio during the 1690s, including the San Diego de la Gomera.

Soon, the rest of the Afro - descendants also expected to be relieved from the Laborío tribute, and prepared to face the authorities on the subject, rebelling against them.