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Garrido, João  

Trevor Hall

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 January 2018

an enslaved West African who lived in Portugal and worked as a translator and mariner aboard Portuguese ships trading in West Africa. He appears in the historical record in 1477, during a war between Portugal and Spain (1475–1479) when he escaped his Portuguese master, who had taken him from Portugal to West Africa many times as a translator aboard Portuguese trading vessels. But on what proved to be his last voyage, Garrido escaped and remained in the region of Guinea in West Africa. It was there that he wrote Prince João, the future King João II (r. 1481–1495) of Portugal, requesting his freedom. Because Garrido was then resident in Africa, his request was granted.

In his 1477 letter to Prince João Garrido stated that he was a Christian who had been enslaved in Lagos southern Portugal by the squire Gonçalo Toscano The African informed the ...

Article

Garrido, Juan  

Jane G. Landers

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

explorer, Indian fighter, and gold miner, was born in West Africa and traveled to Lisbon, Portugal, in the late fifteenth century. It is not known if he went to Portugal as a slave or as a free man: both were possible. From Lisbon, Garrido went to Seville and joined a Spanish expedition sailing for the island of Hispaniola (modern Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Garrido may have been part of Governor Nicolás de Ovando's expedition of 1503 and he stated he was a free man when he sailed for the Americas. Alongside other free blacks, Garrido took part in the “wars of pacification” against the Taíno Indians, and there he found a patron in Juan Ponce de León. In 1508 Ponce de León received a charter to conquer Puerto Rico and Garrido went with him as did several other free and enslaved blacks Garrido identified himself ...