Slavery came to Latin America along with the conquerors

When America was discovered in 1492, slavery was an aging institution. In the Middle Ages, the Romano-Germanic Empire subjected Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe, incorporating the languages ​​of the West, with slight variations, said term as a synonym for servitude.

With the establishment of Portuguese enclaves on the west coast of Africa during the first half of the 15th century, the black slave trade began a boom that would last four centuries, leading to one of the most dire episodes in the history of mankind.

At the beginning they served as labor for the mills and sugar mills of the Atlantic island domains –Madeira, Cape Verde, Azores and the Canary Islands–, but they also became fashionable as service personnel in palaces and mansions on the Iberian Peninsula. In 1455, 10% of Lisbon’s population were people of color.

The truth is that, with the occupation of the first shreds of beach and jungle in the Caribbean, together with the white conqueror, from the second voyage of Columbus in 1493 a party of blacks arrived in the role of mesnada or auxiliary troop.

With the rapid collapse of the aboriginal population due to diseases brought by Europeans to the new continent – smallpox, measles, bubonic plague, diphtheria and typhus – Black labor became indispensable in laundries and gold mines. On the island of Hispaniola, for example, from an original estimate of 100,000 Indians, in 1508 it was reduced to 60,000 and by 1570 to only 500.

At first, the Council of the Indies granted exceptional permits to introduce groups of slaves to serve as governors or encomenderos. At the time, Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro received the authorization as part of their capitulations for the conquest of Mexico and Peru, where there was a certain accompaniment of Africans in arms, although without much recognition from the chroniclers of the time.

With the demand for more labor, Emperor Charles V introduced the monopoly license regime, authorizing a first import of 4,000 blacks in five years, that would be renewed periodically. Over time, the concessions would be made for mere tonnage, which would aggravate the overcrowding of slave ships, meaning the death of between 10 and 20% of the passengers.

In 1525, a Portuguese ship was the first to make a direct crossing from Africa to the New World; they would do it, mainly, of Cape Verde, Guinea, Senegal and Angola, where they had their “factories” – true concentration camps – to the destinations of the Caribbean in Santo Domingo, Havana and Jamaica, deriving from there to continental ports such as Veracruz, Portobelo (Panama) and Cartagena de Indias, where they were led to the vast viceregal territories of New Spain (Mexico), New Granada and Peru.

Between 1551 and 1649, that is to say almost 100 years, 1,207 slave ships were counted, that transported 350,000 individuals of both sexes, mostly young people and children. Although the figure remains underreported due to the significant incidence of smuggling.

Angry definitions

In the markets the “pieces” were differentiated, according to the slang used; those newly brought from Africa were called bozales, who had the disadvantage of being prone to maroon age when they were born in freedom; while those who had already learned the Spanish-American language and customs were the ladinos, while those born in the colonies, the Creole. As part of the buying and selling process, the palmeo and the stamp; The first involved the measurement of height, which in the case of male adults should be at least seven palms or 1.70 m, and the second a red-hot iron marking on the back, chest or thighs, which was used as a sign of legal importation.

During the colony, prices varied, according to supply and demand and to the economic situation of the viceregal or the metropolis, usually varying between 240 and 600 pesos; In any case, it was a good with livestock status –which could be sold as part of plantations and cattle herds– being frequently exchanged with other tradable products such as sugar cane, cocoa, tobacco, pearls, etc.

Unstoppable miscegenation

In a rigid caste society, it was intended to maintain the separation of the three great ethnic groups: whites, indians and blacks, but from the first moment it was impossible to stop the mixing that took place profusely from top to bottom and vice versa. At first the mestizos emerged, a product of the union of white and Indian, followed by mulattoes, sons of white and black; and of course, the process continued when Negroes lay with Indians to give place to the zambos or pardos, which at the same time would mix with each other, giving rise to what the Mexican José Vasconcelos would call in the 20th century the “cosmic race”.

As most of the aboriginal population was settled in temperate zones, slave labor was used mainly in tropical areas in subsistence food agriculture, exportable agricultural production, as well as cattle raising; Furthermore, he was present, along with the Indians, in the exploitation of silver mines in Zacatecas and San Luis, in Mexico, and Potosí, in upper Peru.

The treatment they received in Latin America was better than that received by their peers in the Caribbean, English, French and Dutch colonies. that, from the middle of the seventeenth century, took over the lucrative slave trade. The Spanish crown maintained the figure of the prosecutor for the poor, Indians and blacks, who could be contacted in the event of cruel mistreatment. In order to curb the growing number of maroons, severe penalties were imposed: the first escape of more than six days was punishable by castration; the second, with the death of the fugitive; but the main objective was intimidation rather than mutilation or death of an asset.

Condemnation and abolition

In 1639, Pope Urban VIII issued a bull condemning the slave trade for depriving man of his freedom. From that moment on, an abolitionist preaching was activated that, reinforced by the thought of the Enlightenment in the 18th century, was reducing such a brutal traffic. In practice, the effective aid they rendered to their masters had enabled many Negroes to gain their freedom since the early conquest; They could also choose to “rescue” their loved ones by saving a lifetime; at the same time that it was usual on the death of a matron that in her will she granted freedom to her favorite slaves and children. By the end of the colony, for every black slave there were six or seven free; At the same time, slavery had become uneconomic, with the payment of wages being preferable.

In 1807, England proclaimed the illegality of the slave trade, which added to the independence processes of the time would give rise to the agony of a system whose memory still shames Christian civilization. (I)