Multiple Disciplines Combine in Project to Explore Slavery

Nature | News

Filling in the gaps in the slave trade

Diverse disciplines combine forces to study dark chapter in human history.

• Jo Marchant

01 December 2011

Geneticists, archaeologists and historians are joining forces to investigate the history of transatlantic slavery, in a €4.3-million (US$5.8-million) project launched today. The researchers say that the project is a unique opportunity to improve our knowledge of the slave trade, but warn that some of their results might be “uncomfortable”.

Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, millions of people from west and central Africa were captured [abducted] and shipped across the Atlantic by European slave traders to a life of forced labour in the Americas. The subject has been well studied by historians, but one of the coordinators of the project, geneticist Hannes Schroeder of the Center for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, says that there are still “large gaps in our knowledge” regarding the origins of the people captured as slaves, for instance, and how the slave trade operated.

“The historical records are fragmentary,” he says. “For example, they tend to mention just the port of export, rather than the ethnic or geographical origin of the person. The idea is that by bringing in genetics, we get a different view.”

Schroeder got the idea for the collaboration after studying isotopes of strontium, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen in the bones and teeth of slaves buried at the Newton plantation in southern Barbados. Archaeologists were keen to find a method to distinguish between first-generation captives and individuals who were subsequently born on the island, and to relate that to ancient African cultural practices such as filing teeth or burying grave goods with bodies.

Of 25 individuals studied, Schroeder showed that 7 were first-generation captives born in Africa, including one who had made the Atlantic crossing as a child¹.

Schroeder was subsequently keen to use DNA to pin down the ethnic origins of slaves to particular regions within Africa, and to bring together researchers of different disciplines. The resulting project, called EUROTAST (for Europe and Trans Atlantic Slave Trade), is funded by a grant from the European Union’s Marie Curie network, and will support 15 researchers at 10 institutions in Denmark, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Iceland.

Ancient origins

Bioarchaeologists at institutions including the universities of Bristol and York, UK, will study the skeletal remains of enslaved Africans to investigate their demographics, health and quality of life, and use protein and isotope analysis to gain information about geographical origins and identify diseases such as scurvy and tuberculosis.

Meanwhile, historians at the University of Hull, UK, will compile and study written sources on the origins of African captives, and archaeologists based at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands will map and excavate plantations and slave villages in the Dutch Antilles.

But a large focus is on genetics. Several groups will study the DNA of modern populations, such as the Noir Marron people in French Guiana, to reconstruct the origins of Africans captured as slaves. The Noir Marron are direct descendants of slaves who escaped their Dutch masters during the era of plantation slavery, and have since interbred very little with other populations.

Researchers at the Center for GeoGenetics will study ancient DNA from enslaved Africans buried in the Caribbean, using more than 300,000 genetic markers on the nuclear genome. These are called ancestry informative markers², and will help to distinguish between people from different populations in West Africa.

Matthew Collins, a bioarchaeologist at the University of York, who will lead one of the projects, says that EUROTAST may reveal controversial findings. These could include, for example, the extent of interbreeding with native Americans and Europeans among US populations who see themselves as purely African, and the role of African people in the slave trade.

“I think it’s going to be a very uncomfortable project,” he says. “It’s going to come out with some things that people don’t want to hear, but that’s one of the things that’s interesting about it.”

Because of this, the researchers plan to discuss their work with involved communities ahead of announcing the results.

Journal name:  Nature

DOI:  10.1038/nature.2011.9535

Victimizing Children and Women: 101

From Yahoo News
Lawyer: third woman alleges mass rape of children
AP – 14 hrs ago

VIENNA (AP) — The lawyer for two women who claim they and other children were systematically raped in a public foster home says a third woman has come to him with the same allegations.

Johannes Oehlboeck says that woman additionally asserts that two children died of physical or sexual abuse at the Vienna home.

The two sisters who originally made the accusations in a weekend newspaper interview say the abuse occurred in the 1970s. The institution is now closed. Oehlboeck said Tuesday the third woman spoke of similar acts in the late 1940s and early 1950s, during her time in the Schloss Wilhelminenberg home.

The sisters allege the abuse began when they were 6 and 8, and ended in their early teens.

Marianne Gammer, the head of a victims' aid organization, says psychologists find the sisters' claims plausible.

18 October 2011 Last updated at 05:31 ET

Spain's stolen babies and the families who lived a lie

By Katya Adler BBC News, Spain

Manoli Pagador recalls her first-born child being taken away

Spanish society has been shaken by allegations of the theft and trafficking of thousands of babies by nuns, priests and doctors, which started under Franco and continued up to the 1990s.

I first met Manoli Pagador in Getafe, in a working-class suburb of Madrid. She was attending a meeting for people affected by the scandal Spaniards call "ninos robados" - stolen children.

She has three daughters and lots of grandchildren, but she has never got over the loss of her first-born - a son - nearly 40 years ago.

She had come to think she was crazy for believing he was alive, instead of dead and buried as hospital doctors had told her.

"Now," she said, gripping my hand tightly. "Look around the room at the other women here. All like me. The same background. The same experience. I'm not mad and my family finally believes me."

How many? More than 900 cases are being investigated, but new cases are still coming to light - lawyers say the total could reach 300,000

How long? Over a period of 40-50 years, beginning under Franco, up to the 1990s

Who benefited? Initially the Fascists by bringing up the children of their enemies - later children were taken from parents judged to be morally or economically deficient and placed with approved Catholic, often childless, families

Why did it take so long to expose? The Church and medical profession are highly respected, and Spanish law does not require the biological mother's name on the birth certificate

From Yahoo News
Mexican drug cartels recruiting Texas children
By Jim Forsyth | Reuters – 10 hrs ago

 

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - Texas law enforcement officials say several Mexican drug cartels are luring youngsters as young as 11 to work in their smuggling operations.

Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told Reuters the drug gangs have a chilling name for the young Texans lured into their operations.  "They call them 'the expendables,'" he said.

McCraw said his investigators have evidence six Mexican drug gangs -- including the violent Zetas -- have "command and control centers" in Texas actively recruiting children for their operations, attracting them with what appears to be "easy money" for doing simple tasks. "Cartels would pay kids $50 just for them to move a vehicle from one position to another position, which allows the cartel to keep it under surveillance to see if law enforcement has it under surveillance," he said. "Of course, once you're hooked up with them, there's consequences."

McCraw said 25 minors have been arrested in one Texas border county alone in the past year for running drugs, acting as lookouts, or doing other work for organized Mexican drug gangs. The cartels are now fanning out, he said, and have operations in all major Texas cities.

This month, "we made an arrest of a 12-year-old boy who was in a stolen pickup truck with 800 pounds of marijuana," he said. "So they do recruit our kids."

McCraw says the state of Texas is joining a program initiated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection called "Operation Detour," in which law enforcement officers meet with children and their parents in schools and at community centers to warn them about the dangers of what appears to be the easy money the Mexican drug gangs offer.

Law enforcement officers say children are less likely to be suspects than adults, are easily manipulated by relatively small sums of money, and face less severe penalties than adults if arrested.

Last month, Texas officials released a report indicating Mexico-based drug gangs are intent on creating a "sanitary zone" on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande, and are "intimidating landowners" in south Texas into allowing them to use their property as "permanent bases" for drug smuggling activity.

(Editing by Corrie MacLaggan and Jerry Norton)

From Today's Zaman

Cacho: Turkey transit route for human trafficking

25 September 2011, Sunday / YONCA POYRAZ DOĞAN, İSTANBUL

 

Lydia Cacho, the first woman in Mexican history to trail an organized crime ring involved in child pornography and trafficking women, arrived in Turkey in mid-September to receive her award from the Hrant Dink Foundation.

She has interviewed hundreds of victims of human trafficking around the world, including Turkey, and has put her life at risk for her investigative work. She has written several books about the issue and has been honored by many prestigious institutions, the most recent being the Hrant Dink Foundation, established in 2007 after the Jan. 19, 2007 assassination of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. Cacho came to Turkey two years ago and stayed for a month to investigate human trafficking. As she followed the trail of the Russian mafia, she discovered that it had links to the British mafia and that Turkey is a transit route. “Turkey is very similar to Italy, where the mafia is well-known and intertwined with the state. Drug dealing in the mafia is controlled by the state in both Italy and Turkey,” she told Sunday’s Zaman in an interview in İstanbul. She told the story of a Croatian woman to demonstrate how women, especially young ones, are conned. “A pretty 17-year-old woman from Croatia was hired to provide some nursing assistance to an elderly woman in İstanbul. But upon arrival she was put in a small house downtown and they told her that she no longer had a job and should pay for her trip back through prostitution. She was exploited every day and, after six months, an immigration officer came to raid the brothel with police and she told me that one of the policemen in the raid was a client. She was then deported back to Croatia,” she said. After interviewing women around the world, Cacho wrote the book “Slaves of Power: A World Map of Sex Traffickers.” She also interviewed many women’s rights activists and academics in Turkey while writing the book. “Many female academics in Turkey do great academic work, but I am surprised that there is not a big women’s movement here. They all told me that they know women trafficking is a big problem in Turkey, but why isn’t that issue in the media?” Cacho asked, adding that it is obvious that women’s studies departments at universities have increased in Turkey, but young women are not yet political. “Young women are not politically visible,” she said in regard to Turkish women, as opposed to women in her home country of Mexico. She noted that 8,000 women and girls are being sold as slaves in Mexico a year. The drug lords in Mexico and Colombia are not just involved in drug dealing, she said, they are also involved in the trafficking of women. “They are making more money from selling women than selling drugs,” she added. About her connection to investigating the trafficking of women, Cacho said she has some early childhood memories. “My mother told me when I was as young as 7 years old not to go to certain places in the city to avoid getting abducted,” she said, but she has no personal attachment to the issue beyond being a curious journalist. She has been imprisoned for her work and faces continued threats on her life. “A month ago, I received an email and phone call threatening me. I used to have three federal agents protecting me day and night. One mobster wanted to kill me, so the government gave me protection, but I was suspicious that the agents might be involved in the mafia so I have no guards anymore. I take care of myself. I take safety precautions all the time,” she said. Cacho’s work has touched many people’s lives. She founded a high security shelter for battered and sexually exploited women and children in Mexico. Defamation laws were also decriminalized after she was jailed when one of the pedophiles she named sued her. Because of her work, new laws were passed against sex trafficking and child prostitution and pornography in Mexico. Cacho stepped into the public spotlight after exposing a pedophilia ring in Cancún, Quintana Roo, with her book “Los Demonios del Edén” (Demons of Eden). Cacho became renowned for both her refusal to back down from those in power and her staunch defense of freedom of the press. Her latest book “Slaves of Power” was released in Mexico last September and in only seven months the book has been translated into French, Italian, German, Swedish, Croatian, English, Dutch and Portuguese and has also been published in Spain, Argentina and Colombia. It will soon be published in Turkey and Japan. She is a member of the Red Internacional de Periodistas con Visión de Género (International Network of Journalists with a Vision on Gender), which is dedicated to addressing gender issues within journalism. Big reaction to Hrant Dink’s assassination in Mexico Lydia Cacho recalls that Mexican journalists and the Armenian population in Mexico reacted strongly to Hrant Dink’s assassination, which remains unsolved after almost five years. The public prosecutor recently linked a cell of Ergenekon -- a clandestine underground network accused of inciting chaos and plotting to overthrow the government -- to the defendants in the case. However, Dink family lawyers point out that the prosecutor has still not called for testimonies from a significant number of public officials to determine their involvement in the preparation and perpetration of the Dink murder or their efforts to conceal and tamper with evidence afterwards. Dink, founder and editor-in-chief of the Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, had become a target for the General Staff after writing an article. He was charged with “insulting Turkishness” and sentenced to six months in prison, despite an opposing expert opinion, and became a target of negative mass media propaganda. The Hrant Dink Foundation states that the International Hrant Dink Award is presented to “individuals, organizations or groups that work for a world free of discrimination, racism and violence, take personal risks for their ideals, use the language of peace and, by doing so, inspire and encourage others.” This is the third year that the award has been given on Dink’s birthday, Sept. 15, when it was presented to the Taraf daily’s Editor-in-Chief Ahmet Altan and Mexican journalist Cacho. “I first received an email over the summer and replied that I knew Hrant Dink. It was so magical that I published my book and then got the award,” Cacho said.

African Slaves of American Indians

An Ancestry of African-Native Americans
Using government documents, author Angela Walton-Raji traced her ancestors to the slaves owned by American Indians
By Katy-June Friesen
Smithsonian.com
February 17, 2010

Angela Walton-Raji has been researching African-Native American genealogy for nearly 20 years and is the author of the book Black Indian Genealogy Research: African-American Ancestors Among the Five Civilized Tribes. She recently presented a series of genealogy workshops at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the exhibit IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas. Walton-Raji’s ancestors are Freedmen, African-Americans who were slaves of the Five Civilized Tribes – the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole Nations – in Indian Territory, which became Oklahoma in 1907. The Cherokee freed their slaves in 1863, and after the Civil War, the other tribes did the same. All but the Chickasaw eventually granted Freedmen full citizenship in their tribe. In preparation for Oklahoma statehood, the U.S. Congress created the Dawes Commission, which was charged with dissolving collective tribal land ownership and allotting land to individual tribal members. Thousands of Freedmen came before the commission to prove their tribal membership and their right to a share of land. I spoke with Walton-Raji about her research.

Rest of article.

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Who really has clean hands when it comes to herstory?  Not many.

Child Slavery in India

From The Times of India: Hostage horror for Bengal girls in Bihar 11 Feb 2008, 0240 hrs IST,Caesar Mandal,TNN KAKDWIP: Girls from Bengal, some as young as 10, are being held hostage and auctioned off in Bihar. A TOI investigation has revealed that they are locked up, starved, beaten and forced to dance sleazy numbers in front of violent, gun-toting crowds. One such group of youngsters from Kakdwip, 100 km from Kolkata, has been rescued after three weeks of captivity in Gopalganj, Bihar. But they are the lucky ones. Every year, over 500 girls taken to Bihar from this area are never seen again. TOI had done an exposé of the horrific racket on May 5 last year, but this time, we have gone deeper into the hellish world these helpless girls are trapped in. The girls and boys rescued from Bihar's Gopalganj were first sold for Rs 1 lakh by a local tout and then resold for Rs 2 lakh to an agent in Bihar without their knowledge. They were held at gunpoint and every little slip drew a vicious assault. The Kakdwip group had nine members - five girls and four boys. The youngest was 10 and the majority aged 14-16. Their leader, Prasenjit Haldar, got a contract to perform at a show in Mathurapur on January 21. After the event, a local tout - Somnath Dandapat - lured them to Sodepur in Kolkata with the promise of a bigger show and more money. But once in Sodepur, the group was handed over to Asim Mukherjee, another middleman. The next evening, they were made to board a Tata Sumo around 7.30 pm and told their venue was a three-hour drive away. But it turned out to be a much longer one. Panic set in when Somnath and Asim forced them to hand over their mobiles. The dancers were trapped. The vehicle sped out of the state. Early next morning, they reached Gopalganj and were taken to a heavily fortified house guarded by gunmen. All nine were herded into a small room and locked up. When one of the girls tried to speak, she was severely beaten up. "We did not know where we were. We were terrified. They threatened to kill us if we refused to follow instructions," said 10-year-old Monami. On January 24, the group was packed into a car and taken to perform at a wedding. The tired and terrified youngsters were forced to dance in three sessions without food or water. "We had no choice. They were carrying guns and would slap us whenever we asked for a break," said Kaushiki. On January 25, the group was split, with six of them taken to a wedding at Mirganj. On the way back, Monami's cousin Samar jumped out of the jeep and ran to a phone booth. He managed to call his brother Panchanan at Kakdwip and tell him where they were being held hostage before the gunmen captured him. Samar was beaten till he bled, but the call saved the hapless youngsters. (Victims' names have been changed) Related story: An endless cycle of slavery 11 Feb 2008, 0244 hrs IST,Caesar Mandal,TNN