CIMARRONS

The Cimarrons or Cimarrones in Panama, were Black African slaves who had escaped from their Spanish masters and lived together as outlaws. In the 1570s, they allied with Sir Francis Drake of England to defeat the Spanish conquest and plunder their riches.

In Sir Francis Drake Revised (1572), Drake describes the Cimarrons as "a black people which about eighty years past fled from the Spaniards their masters, by reason of their cruelty, and are since grown to a nation, under two kings of their own. The one inhabiteth to the west, the other to the east of the way from Nombre de Dios".