They were brought in as labour for the mines in Honduras and Nicaragua, the sugarcane plantations of Amatitlán and San Jerónimo in Guatemala, the indigo plantations in El Salvador, and the cacao plantations in El Salvador and Costa Rica. They were also used to build structures like the military fort at San Fernando de Omoa, in Honduras, to cut timber in Belize and to carry goods towards Panama, which at the time was one of the main communication routes between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Others worked throughout Central America in domestic services, on small-scale construction projects, in agriculture and in the cattle industry (McLeod, 1980).  
Most of the enslaved Afrodescendants fought against their enslavement through flight. Some successfully created autonomous communities like the palenques of Portobelo and Bayano in Panama. Lokken (2001) and Komisaruk (1999) for Guatemala, and Acuña Léon (2005) for the case of Costa Rica have identified other resistance strategies. As these authors have demonstrated, the enslaved Afrodescendants knew and used Spanish legal tools to negotiate the change of their masters and the purchase of freedom, as well as to report physical and sexual abuses (Cáceres, 2016). These few cases demonstrate, however, the enslaved people's agency.