Ingenio Cepi-Cepi de Diego Caballero (Near Carretera Sánchez, Azua Province, Dominican Republic). Panoramic view of the surroundings of the overall location of one of the oldest, early colonial sugar-mills of the Americas. In the middle of the image, the only surviving piece of masonry wall still standing of one of the sugar-estate buildings. In early 2010 the flat lands around it were cultivated with tomatoes. What seem to be the remains of a ‘milling house’ are located on the edge of the bush visible to the left of the photograph. Water to propel the machinery of the ‘ingenio’ or mill itself seems to have been drawn from the hills further to the left. All the way in the background the lower branches of ‘Cordillera de Ocoa’ (Ocoa’s Mountain Range) as they approach the coast of the Caribbean Sea. Partially visible to the right on the far background as well, the waters of the Caribbean in the Ocoa Bay. The Bay was a point of entry and departure in early colonial times of ships traveling loaded with sugar from the Azua region to Santo Domingo City, capital of Hispaniola, where the main port was and from where transatlatnic vessels would take it to Europe. The entire area was, therefore, a site of early residence of Black African slaves since the early sixteenth-century.
Posted by CUNY Dominican Studies Institute on 2010-03-23 22:30:44
Tagged: , Dominican Republic , Colonial City , sugar mill , Caribbean , CUNY Dominican Studies Institute , CUNY DSI , Colonial Period , República Dominicana , Primeros negros de las Américas , Ingenio colonial , Ingenios coloniales , Periodo colonial , Epoca colonial , Historia del azúcar , History of sugar , Route of sugar , Ruta del azúcar , Ruta de los ingenios , Route of mills , Ruta de los esclavos , Route of slaves , History of slavery , Historia de la esclavitud , Negros , Blacks , Slaves , Esclavos , Historia colonial , Colonial history , Afro-Latinos , Patrimonio monumental , Monumental patrimony , Patrimonio material , Material patrimony , Construcciones coloniales , Colonial constructions , Edificios coloniales , Colonial buildings , Hispaniola , La Española , Colonial sites , Sitios coloniales , Lugares coloniales , Colonial places , Colonial monuments , Monumentos coloniales , First Blacks of the Americas , Sugar plantations , Plantaciones azucareras , Afro-dominicanos , Afro-Dominicans , Fidel Tavarez