Afro-Peruvian Spanish in the context of Spanish Creole Genesis

Abstract

This study presents linguistic and sociohistorical data on Afro-Peruvian Spanish (APS), an Afro-Hispanic dialect spoken in the province of Chincha (coastal Peru) by the descendants of the slaves taken to this region to work on sugarcane plantations in the seventeenth century. The present work provides new information on the origin of APS. In so doing, it casts new light on the genesis and evolution of Afro-Hispanic languages in the Americas and shows that, in light of recent works on the nature of Venezuelan, Ecuadorian and Bolivian slavery (Díaz-Campos & Clements 2008; Sessarego 2013a, 2014), colonial coastal Peru did not represent a “canonical breeding ground” (McWhorter 2000,7) for a creole language to form.