An autonomous zambo (African-Indigenous) polity on Ecuador's Pacific coast, forged by shipwrecked Africans and coastal peoples under the mulatto captain Alonso de Illescas and his heirs, who negotiated with Quito rather than submit.
Governed the Esmeraldas littoral outside effective Spanish control for over half a century; the crown recognized its leaders as royal go-betweens (immortalized in the 1599 Quito portrait of the mulatto lords) before it was gradually absorbed into colonial Esmeraldas.
Devotes sustained attention to the Esmeraldas maroon polity and the Illescas lineage in exactly this period; the standard scholarly treatment.
Situates the Esmeraldas zambo polity within the wider history of African self-liberation in the Spanish Andes.