Cultural Complementarities in the Arisal of Zambo Groups at Cape Gracias a Dios in Mosquita, During 17th and 18th Centuries

Historical sources that recount the encounters between enslaved Africans and Amerindians suggest that there are occasions when the traditionalconcepts of acculturation and transculturation are inadequate to explain the processes that develop when peoples from two different culturescome into contact. Similarly, the concepts of cultural recreation and cultural transmission require certain conditions that are not always the same in cases of cultural contact. The goal of this article is to reflect on the issue of cultural contact and to propose that the concept of cultural complementarity be used as way to explain certain cases, such as that between Africans and Amerindians on Cape “Gracias a Dios” on the Mosquito coast in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This situation contrasts sharply with the processes of cultural recreation and transmission that occurred in Jamaica during this same period and in the context of the English-Spanish conflict on the Mosquito coast and in Jamaica. The article seeks to contribute to the international debate on the rise of sambo groups, suggesting other ways to explain the initial development of cultural “contacts.”