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As far back as the late 15th century, enslaved people from Africa were used in the exploration of Latin American land and the need and the use of them in this new foreign land was very diverse. “Fueled by the demand for human labor in European enterprises in the new world, the transatlantic slave trade would bring millions of Africans to bondage in the Americas”. Certain operations in different parts of the land maintained a different experience for the enslaved people. These experiences and situations are sometimes worse than others when dealing with the morality of the treatment of the enslaved people and their suffering. There are different factors involved which determine the type of experience one would have, and each of those have their own consequences as well. This essay will look at these different situations and explore the factors that determined the treatment of slaves, the consequences of that treatment, and the conditions that lead to resistance by the slaves working in their various capacities.
After the initial conquest of Mexico and South America it was time to develop the
economy and export the resources that would benefit the monarchy back home in Spain and Portugal. Silver and Gold were two such commodities. Silver mines in Northern Mexico were supervised by blacks that directed the Indians in the arduous task of extracting the precious metal. Blacks also mined gold in Central Mexico. The Gold mining regions were hot, tropical, isolated areas of the jungle. The regions were sparsely populated and it was difficult to keep the locals as a work force. The introduction of disease in the tropics made these areas death zones to the indigenous people, as they had no resistance to the virulent plagues. “At first the Europeans thought the native peoples would provide all the labor they needed. The Spanish forced Mesoamerican Indians into slavery, making them work in a feudal system known as the encomienda.” But this labor was not enough. There was a need to get cheap or free labor that would be capable of resisting the disease and who would be easier to dominate than the locals who could run off and establish themselves elsewhere relatively easily. The natural answer was to obtain slaves from the African continent where the slave trade was already in operation. Coastal cities there often enslaved inland peoples so it was not difficult to obtain the stock and export them to the Americas. Slaves in the mining regions were subject to harsh, isolated conditions. There were few females and little or no community amongst the slaves. Some of the workers did have access to money and as a result could negotiate their freedom for a price. In 1732 1/3 of the African population of Choco were free as a result. Less fortunate slaves who found the conditions unbearable fled to even more isolated areas of the backcountry to survive on their own or in small colonies.
The Sugar plantations of Northern Brazil were a major client of the slave trade. The more temperate climate made of better environmental conditions for the blacks but the work was hard. Although the climate was better “the worst fate was to be sent to a sugar cane plantation, as on Barbados and other Caribbean sugar islands. Nothing in the slaves homeland had prepared them for the sort of conditions that prevailed on these plantations a life of unremitting hard labor driven by fear of punishment.” After working for the plantation the slaves had to work a spot of land for their own sustenance as well. They could sell what they produced on their own and this gave them money with which to effect manumissions. The plantation life had a hierarchy that separated the slaves into three levels with value attached to each one. “The lowest level of the hierarchy was the "Bozal." These were slave born on the African continent with little or no acculturation with the Spaniards and Portuguese who enslaved them. They were of the least value as the least skilled and there were plenty more where they came from. Though they were not completely disposable, they were of the least consequence should they die or run off. The "Ladino" was next in this hierarchy. These slaves had more time in country and had developed skills useful to the plantation owner. They were often in working positions of a bit higher value as well. The top of the chain was the "Criollo." These were slaves that were born in Latin America. They were often times offspring of Spaniards or Portuguese and as such had more ties to the community”. Mulattos were not looked down upon as they were in the American south. The Criollo held trusted positions in transportation, and were most often manumitted. Field hands made up the bulk of the population of any given plantation. They were most often women and very nearly always Bozal. They were rarely able to achieve manumission and the conditions in which they worked were the worst of the plantation economy. Though they were able to have a social life, as the whites really did not care what they did with their own time, they were the most likely to resist their conditions. This is done in a variety of ways, which will be discussed later. There was a fairly healthy community life amongst plantation slaves. They spent time together, had cultural activities and because of the near equal ratio of men to women were able to marry and raise families. The slave population was fully 80-90% of the overall population in these regions as they did all the work and there were no towns in the area where whites and Indians went for jobs.
Cities were a third environment that utilized slaves. These slaves, however, tended to be made from the Criollo group. An exception was the slaves taken right off the ships by white artisans who taught them to be smiths and coopers. These trades were then passed down to the slave children and to their children after them. Europeans immigrated to Latin America in far fewer numbers than in the U.S. and as a result otherwise free blacks and slaves working toward manumission held menial jobs held by white lower classes there. Where you might find an Irish maid on the Main Line in Philadelphia, you would find a black, or mulatto in Latin America. This helped in keeping the racial prejudice at bay in Latin America, as it served no purpose to create the perception that blacks were an inferior race. City slaves enjoyed a good amount of freedom to associate and they took advantage of it to form societies and groups that worked to systematically manumit slaves.
Resistance to enslavement came in a variety of forms and much went into whether a slave would resist or not. In one event “on the Caribbean island of Saint-Domingue, the slaves attempted to abolish plantation slavery. Saint-Domingue’s slaves burned down plantations and slaughtered slave owners and their families”. But it was clear that all out revolt would not have any lasting affect. Therefore resistance came in a more passive form. Slaves would pretend not to understand the direction of their masters or they would sabotage equipment and crops. Suicide was another way to freedom. When this method was employed the slave often killed their master and then turned themselves in to suffer their fate. This gave value to their own death, as they knew their master was now unable to replace him with another slave. Flight was the most plausible form of resistance. Often plantation slaves would take off and go to another plantation to visit for a number of days. The slave knew what the punishment would be upon his return and was willing to endure it for the needed break. Sometimes they would even get a white person to negotiate their return or outright trade to the plantation they had been visiting. “More permanent forms of flight were undertaken by groups of slaves who would organize and flee to the edges of the plantation and beyond to form renegade settlements”. The larger the group and the further from the plantation they fled, the more chance they had to succeed. Criollos often fled alone to cities where they attempted to pass themselves off as free men living by their wits in order to outsmart any who would suspect them as runaway's. Slaves who were the most recent arrivals to the new land endured the worst conditions and were the least likely candidates for manumission and therefore most likely to resist. The field workers and the gold miners were high risks for resistance. Ladino's were less likely to resist though conditions in the mines only slightly tempered their likelihood of flight. Mulatto's had it relatively easy in comparison to the Bozals and were less likely to resist as there was a great probability that they would achieve manumission and life was not all that bad in the mean time. Especially in the cities where they had family and social community. There were jobs for free slaves in the cities and little competition from immigrants from Europe making them necessary as freemen even outside of slavery.
Climate, disease, economic conditions and geographic location were critical to slave reproduction, mortality, productivity and resistance. Slaves isolated from family life and culture working in miserable conditions were often flight risks as they had no real options and the terrain lent to good hiding. There were also no whites around to hire as cheap labor to search them out and return them. There are also certain slaves like the Mulatto and Criollo that were higher on the socioeconomic ladder than the Bozal and were therefore less likely to resist as they were a step away from freedom which meant they would not consider fleeing as good an option as remaining in the social circle and family they had established. Slavery under any conditions is not the optimum existence for human beings. It is a fact that human nature seeks to dominate. Greed and money are often at the root of such efforts. “The long history of human slavery shows us that, at different times, virtually all cultures have been the slavers or the enslaved”. African Cimarron communities even enslaved other African fleeing the plantations. It is not rooted in race as much as it is rooted in human nature. The preceding essay is just a synopsis of how it functioned for African's in certain regions during a space in history.
References:
Bowser, Frederick P. The African-American Slave Trade. Great Britian: Hodder Wayland, 2002.
Hull, Mary and Macht, Norman L. The History of Slavery. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1997.
Grant R. G. The African-American Slave Trade. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974.
Monaghan, Tom. The Slave Trade. Austin and New York: Raintree Steck-Vaughn, 2002.
Captive Passage. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002.
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