An Invisible History conversation opens the door to a deeper look at the Indigenous and African histories that helped shape the Caribbean.
Before the borders of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the island Europeans called Hispaniola was already home to people with their own communities, knowledge, and traditions. Its history reaches beyond the familiar story of Christopher Columbus. In the Invisible History episode “Ayiti,” host Dr. Margarita Lila Rosa and guest Dr. Lissette Acosta Corniel turn their attention to the island’s early colonial past, inviting audiences to reconsider a place too often pushed to the margins of world history.
Understanding that past begins with the Indigenous people who inhabited the Caribbean before European arrival. The Taíno maintained complex political, social, and religious systems. They farmed, navigated surrounding waters, and expressed their lives through art, music, and poetry. European colonization brought devastating upheaval, including diseases that contributed to catastrophic population losses. Yet Taíno influence endured in Caribbean language, beliefs, and cultural practices. Recognizing that continuity gives the people behind the history a presence beyond the moment of European contact.
The island also holds a foundational place in the history of Black people in the Americas. African enslavement and resistance were part of its colonial experience centuries before the United States existed. Research published by the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute examines the Santo Domingo slave revolt of 1521 and the colonial slave ordinances issued in January 1522. These records reveal how early the struggle between coercion and freedom took shape in the Caribbean—and how quickly colonial governments developed laws to control Black lives.
Corniel’s scholarship helps broaden that picture. The collection she edited, Transatlantic Bondage: Slavery and Freedom in Spain, Santo Domingo, and Puerto Rico, examines nearly four centuries of history through archival research. Its subjects include slavery laws, resistance, migration, gender, family, and community building among free Black people. That range matters: it allows readers to encounter African-descended people as individuals navigating relationships, creating communities, and pursuing freedom within deeply unequal societies.
For Current Urban, revisiting Ayiti means asking whose experiences become central when history is told. An account built around European explorers leaves much of the island’s human story outside the frame. Bringing Indigenous societies and Black experiences into view changes the questions we ask about power, identity, and belonging. The Caribbean becomes a place through which we can examine the making of the Americas—and recognize the people whose lives, creativity, and resistance deserve to be remembered.
Watch the original conversation on Invisible History.
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