The Black Devil Pirate: El Mulato Diablo

Diego Grillo escapes slavery when he is 13 years old and finds shelter in the mangrove swamps. There he waits for escqpe to flee from captivity once and for all. Afterwards, he joins a band of Spanish buccaneers that trafficked in the Caribbean sea. Francis Drake: After four years sailing through the waters of the Mexican Gulf and the Caribbean sea, when he had gotten certain experience as sailor, Diego is captured by pirate Francis Drake near the Isle of Pines, Cuba in 1572. So Drake takes Diego Grillo under his protection and brings the youngster to England.

Already in Europe, the Cuban pirate fights under the commands of the Count of Essex and other English gentlemen. When he is 22 year old, Diego Grillo is the court's favorite man, being welcomed by the Monarchs themselves who confer him various honors for his duties to the British crown.

Diego Grillo, also known as “El Mulato,” was of mixed ancestry – He was born as the result of a romance between a Spanish slaver and an African slave .Diego was born in Havana. Most likely sold by his father he fled Spanish enslavement at Nombre de Dios, Panama,and he held a lifelong hatred of the Spanish slavers because of the cruelty he had suffered at their hands as a child. in 1626 when he is sailing in company with the Dutch freebooter Hendrick Jacobson. Jacobson (or Jakobzoon) was known as "the worst shark in the sea" and was often referred to by the Spanish along the Main as "The Shark" Whom Diego learned to sail.

Jacobson died in 1627 and by that time, doubtless having learned from the old shark, Diego was ready to take command of his flagship Ter Veer. He sailed in and out of various ports, including Tortuga, Honduras, Havana (where he claimed his mother lived) and Providence, hitting Spanish shipping along the coast of Mexico in particular.

In 1633 his first big land raid occurred. Diego, some speculate returning for the revenge he nursed for years at sea, raided Campeche, plundering the city and burning the fort of San Benito. He killed the illustrious Captain of the Guard, Galvan, who some writers say was Diego's godfather and may have been the very man who insulted him. An orgy of drunken mayhem ensued and for two days those Spanish citizens who could not or would not escape into the jungle were tortured for information on where their wealth was hidden.

Diego, for his part, spent the time searching for a certain army officer known as Calvo or Galvez. Diego ranted about cutting the man up, removing his ears and nose for whatever he had done to him as a youth. This behavior has led certain researchers to conclude that Calvo was the source of Diego's indignation. If so, the pirate was left unsatisfied: Calvo was never found. At that time in Cuba punishments were harsh for slaves

In sharp contrast to his blood lust as Campeche, the story goes that when Diego sailed away from that wretched city he took a Spanish barco (ship) that was ferrying the recently widowed Dona Isabel Maldonado y Caraveo to Mexico City. When he discovered the lady and her retinue on board he moved her to his own cabin aboard his ship, treated her with all civility and saw to it that none of her things were plundered. He put she and her ladies safely on land just a few days later, although he did keep their ship for his own use.

His long career had only just begun, however. He is known to have sailed with buccaneer Pierre le Grand the following year and Thomas Newman in 1636. In the 1640s he raided Sisal, Trujillo and other cities along the Yucatan, usually in concert with one or more of the Brethren of the Coast. He seems to have sailed with Francois L'Olonnais along the Darien coast and may very well have been among those who deserted the butcher to his fate, cut to pieces while still alive and forced to watch as the Natives burned his flesh to ashes. Or ate it; the stories vary. A Diego the Mulatto, most probably the same man, added his men and ships to Henry Morgan's raids on Portobello and Panama.

Diego's successes against the Spanish were so overwhelming that the hated enemy finally came courting. Spain offered Diego a pardon, money and the title of Admiral if he would stop his pillaging and sign on with the Empire. Diego turned down the Spanish crown and went back to the Yucatan to plunder more Spanish merchants. But time was not on Diego's side and two years later the Spanish used every resource to capture him and succeeded. In late 1670, Roche Braziliano one of the cruelest, most feared pirates in history known for roasting men alive and chopping off their limbs joined forces with Diego Lucifer, Edward Collier, Francis Witherborne , and Jan Lucas. Diego needed ruthless men like this to battle the Spanish he had seen first hand the levels of their own cruelty to slaves and natives.

In 1673, after Diego's capture of a Spanish ship led to the slaughter of 20 men aboard her because of their Spanish birth, the Crown put a serious effort into capturing the Mulatto. Three more ships were sent to capture him, but he defeated them all and slaughtered every sailor aboard who had been born in Spain. During his time as a pirate he was Spain's deepest and deadliest foe and they spent no expense hunting him down. As for Roche Braziliano After 1671, Roche Braziliano disappears completely from the pirate record, never to be heard from again. Whether he retired, was captured, or was lost at sea with his entire crew is unknown.

His partner in crime, Jan Lucas, was captured, sent to the dungeons at Veracruz and garroted without trial, probably after being tortured. Information thus rung from Lucas may have led to Diego's capture as two months later he was in the hands of the Spanish authorities. The contemporary accounts are surprisingly silent on the details. All we know is that Diego Grillo, who was known by so many names, was hanged at Campeche for piracy.

His adventures became the subject of a novel by Justo Sierra O'Reilly, El filibustero, published in 1842.José Antonio Cisneros wrote a verse drama in three acts called Diego el Mulato that premiered on 2 June 1846 in the Teatro San Carlos in Mérida, Yucatán. Many Hollywood films were based off his exploits and the fear he inspired in the greedy slavers of whom he held no compassion or mercy for.

"The pirate’s is a vital story intertwined with the rise of the English empire, the rise of capitalism, the imperial conquest of other lands, and the emergence of English trading peoples whose wealth and power is derived increasingly, not from land but from the trade of mobile property. The pirate of the English imagination is a product of English nationalism; he is alternately defiant, compliant, a student, and a teacher of English ideology, trade, and colonial conquest, and as such, he eventually be comes the rightful inheritor o f English wealth and power, a legitimate and respected

member of polite English society through becoming a privateer. This role and access was offered to the White privateer but a black pirate could expect only enslavement.

Much more attention has been paid to pirate personalities than to their principles. This is somewhat understandable for only recently has a scholar dared to rank pirates above slave-traders in a moral hierarchy. When not simply ignored--as once were the “Buffalo Soldiers” and black cowboys, racial stereotypes and expectations of a predominantly white middle-class audience heavily conditioned fictional depictions of pirates of African descent. Frequently used as convenient stock characters to be killed off to serve as spectral sentinels for the treasure caches of tradition, Black pirates were, in other instances, used to exploit fear and prejudice through portrayal as particularly demonic creatures within an especially heinous category of crime.

In fact the authorities who paid these pirates as privateers to harass their trade competitors tried their best not to inform the public that as many as 30-40 percent of the pirates were of African descent as many slave ships captured would see their human cargo take up arms against them rather than be sent back into bondage or face a certain death with their captors.

Only fleeting glimpses of pirate attitudes can be glimpsed through the perspectives of victims or persecutors. Enough exists, however, to prompt some to view 18th-century pirates not as simple sea-borne thieves, but as "marginal men" driven by desperation and rage to vengeful acts of theft and violence against an oppressive and unjust society (Pringle 1953, Burg 1977, Rediker 1981, Bromley 1985, Hill 1986, Ritchie 1986, Rediker 1987, Marx 1992, Hill 1996).

In the early 1630s Daniel Elfrith invited Diego el Mulatto to make his base on Providence Island, home of the puritan Providence Island colony. A force of eleven ships and two sloops one under the Dutch pirate Cornelis Jol and the other captained by Diego el Mulatto Martín attacked Campeche on 11 August 1633. The total force was 500 men. When the defenders of the city claimed that they did not have the money to pay the ransom, the pirates burned it down.

The Spanish officials in Havana sent a letter to Diego Martín in 1638 in which they offered him the opportunity to serve as a "valiant soldier of the king, our lord. "if he would guard the coasts of Cuba against the Dutch or any other ships. All agree that Diego was of Spanish and African descent and that he – much like the bulk of the enslaved – hated Spain and all that came from her considering it was his own Spanish father who sold him into slavery it seems justifiable.

His father was a Spanish Criolo of some standing and his mother was a maid of African descent. Even with a wealthy father, Diego's African ancestry kept certain of Spanish society's doors closed to him and at age 13 his father sold him. This seems to be the sticking point that turned a child into a pirate feared and hated by a nation rather than a slave. Some time in his youth Diego was offended by the Spanish and the cruelties they had inflicted on him in the highly stratified caste system in the Spanish New World, Diego vowed to have satisfaction. And in time was able to avenge himself to the chagrin of the Spanish crown. Diego went to sea and wreaked his revenge on all that represented Spain and Slavery to him.