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An online community to discuss and share news about sixth-scale figures, with an emphasis on either custom or commercial articulated figures.


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Military Forces of Spanish Colonial Puerto Rico

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Theboo-bomb

Theboo-bomb
Hello everyone!
I've been a member for some time now, I posted on the introduction section a long time ago and since then I don't think I've posted anything else or even logged in for that matter, truth be told I've been busy and dealing with some personal issues of which I will not go into detail, nevertheless I thought today would be a good day for a very late first post and what better topic than something I love, history and re-using old uniforms and turning them into something else.

In this case these old soldier of the world uniforms have been turned into those worn by the colonial forces of Spanish Puerto Rico, specifically the Fixed Regiment, the Professional Militias and the Urban militias (tho they didn't really have a uniform). All of the figures I will post here are of the 1770's or later, they are the result of military reforms enacted by Alejandro O'reilly on his visit to Puerto Rico, the island's defenses before his reforms fell entirely on the hands of the Spanish Army that would be stationed in San Juan (and nowhere else), a position that was rotated between different companies of the Spanish army, tho there was a fixed battalion by the time O'reilly came to the island it was considered to be almost entirely useless due to the age of the men, the fact that many where injured and thus unfit for service, lack of uniforms, barracks, armories and the acceptance of anyone into the force, this was also made worse by the fact officers of the fixed battalion where the ones in charge of paying these men. O'reilly reformed this fixed battalion into the Fixed Regiment, he also went on to create the Professional Militias as a means to provide the rest of the island with some military presence by professionally trained men.

puerto rico spanish - Military Forces of Spanish Colonial Puerto Rico Ld8XsMJ
Pictured here a member of  the Compañia de Morenos Libres, an all black and mulatto company of around 110 men formed under O'reilly's reforms, their uniform was later on changed, the blue coat was stopped being used and their leather hats, considered to be too hot for the tropics where replaced with the typical tricorne hats used at the time.  The man in the middle is a member of the Regimiento Fijo, their uniforms just like those of the man on his left where required to be white and of good quality so that the men would have to wash them regularly, and also because of the tropical heat and lastly a member of the Compañias de blancos y pardos, unlike the fixed regiment which required all men to present proof that they where the sons of spanish born parents the company of whites and pardos did not have that requirement, instead the men where only required to be whites or at the least have one native parent, usually their mothers.
puerto rico spanish - Military Forces of Spanish Colonial Puerto Rico LXiec9W
And lastly an often time overlooked part of Puerto Rico's defenses from before the reforms, the Urban militias trace their origin back to the earliest days of colonization, comprised of locals and free men these militias where often times the first and last line of defense of the small towns and villages at the time, their armaments would have been comprised mostly of swords and spears. The Urban militias played important roles on all of the acts of defense, often times working on the rearguard, freeing professionally trained soldiers from mundane tasks but also sometimes being the only thing capable of defending a town such as the case of the British attack on Arecibo where the town's militia fought against a small landing force of british troops and won, or perhaps in a case of early guerrilla warfare when in 1797 a british invasion fleet lead by Ralph Abercromby and Henry Harvey tried in vain to wrestle the island from Spain, at that time the urban militias from Loiza (a historically black municipality of Puerto Rico) where among the first to race to defend the island, the urban militias engaged in guerrilla tactics, harassing the supply chain and forcing the british to strengthen them.
puerto rico spanish - Military Forces of Spanish Colonial Puerto Rico IlApTxM
A small collage of the uniforms and to whom they belonged, I tried to be as accurate as possible while also keeping the aesthetics of the SOTW figures which I love, I also tried to give that guy the golden/yellow brim on his hat but I failed miserably at making it look good.  I hope I didn't bore any of you with this long post but I felt it was important to share a bit of the history behind a part of Puerto Rico's history that is not often shared and shown, specially online where finding information about it can be a bit tricky.

Anyway, thanks for looking and I hope to post some more stuff soon enough, I got plenty of figures that just need to be photographed.


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I do this for fun, otherwise it would be my job. alien

All of my alt-history themed figures in one convenient link! BooBomb's alt history figures! puerto rico spanish - Military Forces of Spanish Colonial Puerto Rico 1f60e

GubernatorFan

GubernatorFan
Founding Father
Very nice custom figures, illustrating an aspect of history new to this site, and probably to many others. Thank you for sharing.


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I'll be back!
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Stryker2011

Stryker2011
Founding Father
Very informative and really cool figures. I appreciate the time and effort to gather the information and to make your figures as accurate as possible. Nice job, and glad to see you share them with us.


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Mark

He who dies with the most toys wins!

puerto rico spanish - Military Forces of Spanish Colonial Puerto Rico C8485110

PitViper

PitViper
Amazing job indeed. It is just great to see a fellow collector from PR showing a slice of our history. ¡Un fantástico debut! Espero poder ver pronto más de tu colección. BTW vivo en Mayaguez y me encantaria conectarme con mas coleccionistas 1:6 en PR.


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skywalkersaga

skywalkersaga
Welcome back! Excellent figures, and fascinating subject matter -- I look forward to seeing more from you! : )


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"The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read,
not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man."

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Theboo-bomb

Theboo-bomb
GubernatorFan wrote:Very nice custom figures, illustrating an aspect of history new to this site, and probably to many others. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you, I love this time period but it can be quite difficult to get right in our scale, add to that a lack of weapons and equipment from that era which forces us to do custom stuff, I don't think I'll try to make anymore of this time period for some time.

Stryker2011 wrote:Very informative and really cool figures. I appreciate the time and effort to gather the information and to make your figures as accurate as possible. Nice job, and glad to see you share them with us.
Thanks, the information of this time period in PR can be hard to find online, it took some time to gather the information tho the images where actually quite easy to come across.

PitViper wrote:Amazing job indeed.  It is just great to see a fellow collector from PR showing a slice of our history.  ¡Un fantástico debut! Espero poder ver pronto más de tu colección.  BTW vivo en Mayaguez y me encantaria conectarme con mas coleccionistas 1:6 en PR.
Thank you! I'm from Arecibo myself and I'm glad to know there are collectors here too, I do plan on taking photos of my other figures very soon.

skywalkersaga wrote:Welcome back! Excellent figures, and fascinating subject matter -- I look forward to seeing more from you! : )
Thanks, I plan on posting plenty of figures that I made for years but never took photos off, they've been sitting around just waiting for me to take their pictures and share them.


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I do this for fun, otherwise it would be my job. alien

All of my alt-history themed figures in one convenient link! BooBomb's alt history figures! puerto rico spanish - Military Forces of Spanish Colonial Puerto Rico 1f60e

MerylAkiba


This is really good. Will you be making any drummers? Did they have drummers?

Theboo-bomb

Theboo-bomb
MerylAkiba wrote:This is really good. Will you be making any drummers? Did they have drummers?

Thank you, for the time being I don't have any plans to put together any more figures of this time period. As for your question yes, both the fixed regiment and the professional militias had drummers. Most of my information about the professional militias has come from a Spanish website that has gathered quite a lot of information about the Spanish army including the Spanish army in PR (tho nothing about the fixed regiment yet), another font of references has been the Regimiento FIjo de Puerto Rico reenactor group who every year displays the uniforms and weapons used on the aniversary of the British invasion of San Juan in 1797, specifically those used by the Fixed regiment including the drummer, standard infantry and artillery uniforms.

puerto rico spanish - Military Forces of Spanish Colonial Puerto Rico K8RKnD3

I think it should be mentioned that the professional militias had a total of 19 companies of 110 men, and 5 companies of cavalry composed of 54 men, they where stationed at various places around Puerto Rico with some having two companies of infantry and cavalry.


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I do this for fun, otherwise it would be my job. alien

All of my alt-history themed figures in one convenient link! BooBomb's alt history figures! puerto rico spanish - Military Forces of Spanish Colonial Puerto Rico 1f60e

Ovy

Ovy
Wow I really don't know much about the history of that part of the world in this time of the world. You learn so much here.

I guess with all those vibrant colours and clean white clothing the figures will look even better outdoors, with a lot of sun and the Carribean Sea in the back.

blackpool

blackpool
That is indeed a very interesting thread with very cool custom figures and a great historical insight, I had little knowledge about the french west indies and their history but nothing about Puerto Rico or nothern caribbean islands!

Thanks a lot for sharing your work! Can't wait for another thread from you now! (and better late than never!)

Theboo-bomb

Theboo-bomb
Ovy wrote:Wow I really don't know much about the history of that part of the world in this time of the world. You learn so much here.

I guess with all those vibrant colours and clean white clothing the figures will look even better outdoors, with a lot of sun and the Carribean Sea in the back.
Thanks, I tried to summarize a few things to give everyone a clear view of what it was like during the time period, I'll see if I can take some photos outside, I was thinking of taking them at either El Morro or San Cristobal castles when the reenactors meet, it's a long ways until then so I'll have to remember it.

blackpool wrote:That is indeed a very interesting thread with very cool custom figures and a great historical insight, I had little knowledge about the french west indies and their history but nothing about Puerto Rico or nothern caribbean islands!

Thanks a lot for sharing your work! Can't wait for another thread from you now! (and better late than never!)
Thank you, I'm glad I managed to bring some new history to all on the board!


_________________
I do this for fun, otherwise it would be my job. alien

All of my alt-history themed figures in one convenient link! BooBomb's alt history figures! puerto rico spanish - Military Forces of Spanish Colonial Puerto Rico 1f60e

ThePhotogsBlog

ThePhotogsBlog
These are really great! Good Work!

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