[Gocamino] Slavery in the Americas

[Eldor Pederson]

The comment that "it is well known that the countries formed by the Spaniards in continental America never had slavery" is one of the more absurd statements ever posted on this list. European-style slavery (there was also pre-Conquest bonded servitude among some of the indigenous populations, but that is a story too complex to retell here) was introduced to the Americas by the Spaniards and the Portuguese who began with efforts to enslave the indigenous peoples shortly after Conquest. That mostly failed because in many areas the indigenes died in massive numbers due to diseases introduced by the Europeans as well as to the hideous conditions under which they were forced to live as slaves. In some regions of Latin America, including coastal parts of Mexico on both the Gulf and Pacific sides, parts of Colombia, Venezuela, the islands and the continental shores of the Caribbean, large numbers of Africans were imported as slaves beginning in the 16th century and continuing well into the 19th.  Any respectable history of Mexico, Brasil, Venezuela, or the Caribbean Islands will have a chapter on slavery shortly after the chapter on the European conquest. When Louisiana and Florida were held by the Spanish slavery flourished! And, of course, slavery existed in Spain itself.

The consequences of slavery in Latin America are very evident to even a casual observer today. A few regions have populations of almost pure African ancestry, and some even retain cultural traits easily traceable back to Africa (this is most visible in Brasil, admittedly not a Spanish settlement). Elsewhere there has been more intermarriage with people of indigenous and European ancestry, but there is clear evidence of African ancestry among the population, a fascinating topic for geneticists. In countries where slaves of African origin made up a sizable fraction of the colonial population, racism not too different from that we suffer from here in the United States is still virulent, in Venezuela for example. Racism in Latin America is made much more complex by the addition to the population mix of mestizos and indigenes, but sadly where there are significant numbers of people of African ancestry, they tend to remain at the bottom of the social and economic pyramid, just as they do here in the US. I haven't been there for a number of years, but several decades ago virtually all of the beggars and squatters in Acapulco were clearly of African descent (probably not true today, for the wealth of the resort has attracted numerous migrants from rural Guerrrero and other nearby areas). Under Spanish control there was a very elaborate and formal system for racial classification in the colonies. A recent exhibit of Spanish art and artifacts at the Seattle Art Museum included a series of panels illustrating that system painted in the 18th century. In Louisiana there is still some use of language like "quadroon" that evolved from the classification.

Slavery persisted in parts of Latin America, in fact if not in name, much longer than even here in the US. I do not have the date at hand, but if I remember correctly Brasil was the final large country to formally abolish slavery, and that was not until about 1880. 

In short, far from being absent in Latin America, slavery was present almost from the time of European conquest and has had historical consequences of immense importance to the contemporary world. Both the Spanish and the Portuguese practiced slavery in their respective colonies until those European powers were driven from the Continents (slavery had been abolished in Puerto Rico and Cuba, in law if not in practice, before the Spanish were driven out of those islands), and slavery lasted in some of the countries of Latin America (and in the United States) for some years after the European powers left.

E. O. Pederson