DEFINING THE TARGET LANGUAGE IN LANGUAGE GENESIS 67

pidgin known as Sao Thome,3 a 'corrupt' Portuguese that was used to
communicate with 'barbarous nations.' Apparently, the existence of
this pidgin facilitated communication between the Spaniards and
Africans, who then were able to communicate with some simplified
register of Spanish. Schwegler has argued rather convincingly that this
Portuguese pidgin underlay Palenquero:

 Hoy, un numero creciente de especialistas concuerda en que el habla
 palenquera no es, como solia pensarse, el resultado de una evoluci6n
 esencialmente local, sino el product de contacts linguisticos con
 raices en un pidgin afroportugues, traido a Cartagena y otras Areas
 del Caribe afrohispano por esclavos africanos arrojados de las vastas
 zonas del litoral occidental africano, donde los portugueses
 mantuvieron, como bien se sabe, un prolongado monopolio sobre el
 flujo de esclavos hacia America (1997:230).

 Schwegler points out that it is not possible to determine the exact
ethnic composition of the Africans representing the first inhabitants
of Palenque. However, we do have an idea of the composition of the
Africans that arrived in Cartagena before and around the period that
PSB was established. The ethnic groups and geographic origin of the
slaves was extremely diverse and varied across the different time
periods. In 1620, Del Castillo (1982) estimates that the number of slaves
had reached nearly 20,000 Africans (although this number reduced
rapidly) and (in Friedemann 1993:51) provides us with a good indication
of their origin by time period:

 1533-1580 Wolofs (extra Bantu)
 1580-1640 Congo-Angolan (Bantu)
 1640-1703 Arara and Mina
 1703-1740 Arara and Carabali
 1740-1811 Carabali, Angola, Congo, and Mozambique

 Palenquero de San Basilio (PSB) was formed at some point in the
17th century, when Cartagena was overwhelmingly multilingual, with
both Bantu and extra-Bantu speakers. Schwegler (1997) and Friedemann
(1993) do not deny the possibility that el Palenque de San Basilio (PSB)
was initially formed by 'cimarrones' (runaway slaves) coming from


 :' Sao Thome likely refers to the pidgin Portuguese used between Europeans and
African slave traders.