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CHAPTER 8

Slavery

A T the time of Spanish conquest, the institution of slavery was already well
known to both Spaniards and Indians. Indeed, slavery was deeply in-
grained in the Spanish mentality and was ‘‘taken completely for granted as
an ancient tradition.’’ 1 Nonetheless, slavery on the Iberian Peninsula was very
limited when compared to the colonial expansion of the institution.2 Slaves
were used to provide all sorts of labor, and in the colonial period few ques-
tioned either the morality or legality of the practice. Two general types of
slavery, African and Indian, existed in the colonies. Early royal legislation pro-
hibited Indian slavery, except in certain circumstances, but African slavery
was used throughout the period.

African Slavery
African slavery existed in the region throughout the colonial period, and slaves
were brought to Latin America from the beginning of European contact.3
The conquistadors brought personal slaves with them, and slaves served
aboard Spanish ships. Although as early as 1501, African slaves were among
those classes of people prohibited from traveling to the Spanish colonies, lead-
ing Spaniards obtained royal licenses to bring African slaves with them, first
to the Antilles, and shortly thereafter throughout the Spanish colonies. It ap-
pears that the earliest African slaves in the Spanish colonies had a higher place
in society than conquered Indians. They might purchase their freedom and
might even become assimilated into the Spanish levels of society, all due to
their association with the conquering Spaniards. Nonetheless, by 1570 such
possibilities of gaining liberty and joining the ruling segments of society were
no longer available in the more settled areas such as Mexico, Peru, and Chile.
Throughout the period, not all blacks in the colonies were slaves, and some
free blacks were entitled to the rights of a Spanish subject.4
Spaniards and Creoles viewed African slaves as a good source of labor,
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especially after the Laws of Burgos of 1512 limited their hopes of fully ex-
ploiting Indians. The sources of Indian labor were not only limited by legisla-
tion, but also by a dramatically declining population. In areas such as Central
America, the coastal areas of Venezuela and Colombia, and southern Mexico
where the labor market was hit the hardest by rapidly diminishing Indian
populations, African slavery moved in to fill the gap, especially for agricultural
production. Where a large supply of indigenous workers could be exploited,
such as in the mines of Peru and Colombia, African slavery never displaced
the labor of Indians.5
The main justifications offered for enslaving Africans were that they were
criminals condemned to death commuted to slavery, or people already having
slave status in Africa, usually through capture in war, or people taken as
slaves through license from African sovereigns.6 Shortly after the slave trade to
Spanish colonies was running, however, it appears that very few of the esti-
mated 1.5 to 3 million people violently wrenched from their homes and sold
though a massive and highly profitable machinery had been actually taken
into slavery though capture in ‘‘just war,’’ as their documentation usually
recited.7
Profit from slavery was possible on both an individual and commercial
level. Officials appointed by the Council of Indies were permitted to import
African slaves, on the theory that they were prohibited from using the per-
sonal services of Indians. The officials were also exempt from taxes and duties
on the importation of slaves, and thus used this as a means of importing and
then, even though not officially permitted, selling them for a quick profit.8
With great sums to be made in the slave trade, the crown moved quickly to
regulate the commercial aspects and to adapt institutions to this commerce
over the centuries of colonial slavery.
On a commercial level, at first, the legal instruments (asientos) authoriz-
ing the importation of slaves to America created a monopoly for the holder
for a certain number of years for a certain number of slaves.9 For example,
quite small in quantity, ‘‘the first license was for 4,000 African slaves in five
years’’ granted in 1518 by Charles V to one of his favorites.10 The Portuguese
controlled the African ports where slaves were obtained, and slaving was nec-
essarily a complex international maritime activity.11 With this in mind, the
Board of Trade and the consulado of Seville took over the issuing of exclusive
licenses from 1532 to 1589. These licenses were granted to royal officials and
clergy, those who had helped in the conquest, local powerful cabildo members,
individuals favored by the crown for their service, and private merchants and
businessmen.12 ‘‘It was only rarely and under specifically controlled conditions
that those involved in shipping the slaves were also allowed to market them
at their eventual points of destination.’’ 13 Thus smaller slave traders handled
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distribution in the colonies after the slaves had arrived in the legal ports of
entry. Even though the crown required almost all commerce to adhere to the
set schedule of travel with the fleet between the peninsula and the colonies,
slave ships, because of their unexpected arrival from Africa and the fragile
nature of their ‘‘cargo,’’ were permitted to travel outside the regular pattern
of the fleet.14
From 1595 to 1640, licenses were granted directly to the Portuguese, re-
flecting the union of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns under Philip II dur-
ing that period. Although the Portuguese successfully saturated the permitted
market, there were still many areas seeking slaves but prohibited by the li-
censes. A booming slave smuggling industry, centered in the Río de la Plata,
provided slaves for Chile, Ecuador, Peru, the River Plate region, Tucumán,
and Upper Peru (present-day Bolivia).15
The slave trade in the second half of the seventeenth century was marked
by an active Brazilian smuggling business, while the Board of Trade and the
consulado of Seville granted legal Spanish monopolies from 1651 to 1676.
Genoese and Dutch slaving companies reached significant agreements with
the crown in this period. New methods of measuring the number of slaves
shipped, moving from measurement based on piezas to tonnage, increased
the possibilities for exceeding the limits imposed by licenses as well as for
inhumane conditions in transport. The pieza system involved measuring the
height of the slaves: a full pieza was a male slave 5 feet, 7 inches tall; fractions
of a pieza were assigned to slaves under that height. Under the tonnage sys-
tem, at first one ton was one slave, the crown then accepted three slaves to a
ton, but the practice was to include up to seven slaves to a ton. Earlier slaving
ships had a capacity of about 100 tons, later the average was around 220 tons,
with 500 tons being the largest slavers used during the period.16
Portuguese and Spanish activity was replaced during the first half of the
eighteenth century by French and English slaving enterprises that became the
major supplier to the Spanish colonies. Freer trade in slaves began in the sec-
ond half of the eighteenth century. The erosion of Spanish monopolistic trade
policies, a booming smuggling trade, and the English control of Havana for
part of the period all led to a slow broadening of permissible slave trade with
Spanish colonies. During this period, new ports were opened to direct impor-
tation of slaves and various restrictive duties were dropped in 1765. Free trade
of African slaves was permitted for a number of important colonial provinces
such as Caracas and Cuba in 1789; two years later the viceroyalties of Buenos
Aires and Santa Fe de Bogotá obtained the same status. By 1793, colonials
were permitted to launch their own slaving ventures to Africa.17 ‘‘By 1804 all
the major ports of Spanish America had rights of complete freedom of trade
in African slaves.’’ 18
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Slaves were used to produce agricultural goods for local consumption and
export, especially on large tropical plantations. Other tasks slaves were forced
to undertake included construction projects, serving municipal or religious
institutions, transporting materials and goods by water or overland, and con-
structing and maintaining public works. Some slave owners hired out slaves
for short periods.19
Along with the social institution of slavery, there was a well-developed
body of law. Roman law, the root of Castilian law, not only recognized slavery
but addressed it at length. Many of the Spanish fueros provided for slavery, and
in turn, the cornerstone of Castilian and colonial Latin American private law,
the Siete Partidas also provided legal rules governing slavery.20 Several chap-
ters of book 8 of the Recopilación of 1680 address slavery. For example, title
18 provides regulations for the disembarkation of slaves without royal license,
prohibits transportation of slaves already in the colonies to Peru, levies a port
tax on slaves arriving in Cartagena to fund the capture of escaped slaves, pro-
hibits audiencias from freeing slaves, and provides methods of accounting for
live and dead slaves at various points in the slaving passage.21
Other regulations, such as the Black Codes, Códigos de Negros, from the
late eighteenth century, provided minute rules concerning the treatment and
obligations of slaves and were the products of colonial drafting. These pro-
visions were not universally applied throughout colonial Latin America but
were limited to smaller geographic areas, such as the Caribbean island of
Santo Domingo, where the Codígo Negro Carolino attempted to borrow the
perceived economically and socially successful aspects of French slave law
of the Code Noir and apply them to newly imported slave labor for Spanish
agricultural expansion on the island.22 Further regulations ‘‘prohibited slaves
from carrying arms, wandering at night without permission of their owners,
going into the Indian markets, entering private property, cutting down trees,
and engaging in commerce.’’ 23 Some regulations concerning the treatment
of slaves are in retrospect particularly ironic. For example, one provision re-
quires slaveholders to send slaves to churches or monasteries to be instructed
in Catholicism.24 Furthermore, laws concerning slaves attempted to maintain
certain societal barriers between races in the new social environment of the
colonies. Blacks, slave or free, were prohibited from living with Indians and
Europeans.25
Other rules, usually directly adopted from Castilian sources such as the
Siete Partidas, addressed the private law aspects of property ownership in
slaves, including methods of transfer, inheritance, and manumission.26 The
rules for manumission were intricate and depended on the duties the slave
performed, the personal relationship of the owner to the slave, and the age of
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the owner among other factors. Other activities led a slave to freedom under
Castilian law, such as marrying a free person with the owner’s knowledge or
being appointed the owner’s heir.27 Testamentary manumission was not un-
common as an act of Christian charity.28 Rules also governed the punishment
for slaves who had escaped and the division of expenses for their recapture.29
The jurisdiction of the Santa Hermandad was expanded to the capture and
return of slaves who had escaped.30
Some legal developments surrounding slavery appear to have arisen from
customary practices or substantial extensions of the legal texts. The ability
of a slave to purchase his or her freedom by himself, herself, or through an-
other, coartación, was an important aspect of the law of slavery. Once a down
payment was made, the slave acquired the new legal status of a coartado.31
Coartación has not been studied enough to ascertain its prevalence throughout
colonial Latin America. It appears to have been an established but seldom-
used practice by the mid eighteenth century.32 Some areas, however, such as
nineteenth-century Cuba, had a significant population of coartados. Indeed,
Cuban slaves had a right to initiate self-purchase.33
In other ways, possibilities for freedom were more limited in the colonies.
The special circumstances of the colonies, including racial population distri-
butions and the fear of slave revolt, required that some established Castilian
rules, such as that granting free status to the offspring of a slave, be specifically
modified by royal act. In this case, offspring of slaves were slaves. Thus the
child of a woman, who was a slave, was a slave. The child of a man, who was
a slave, and a free Indian wife was also a slave on the theory that the mother
was to be considered a slave. Owners of slaves who fathered children with
them often freed their children.34 Another adaptation of the Castilian laws
concerning slavery was the status of a slave who married a free person. Under
the Siete Partidas, a slave who, with the owner’s consent, married a free per-
son became a free person. Recognizing that because Indians were free persons
under Castilian law and because a slave who married an Indian would as a
result become free, the crown saw the potential dilution in slave population
and provided a law that maintained the slave status of slaves who married free
persons. Thus, the policies of encouraging Christian marriage and securing
property rights in slaves were harmonized.35
In 1789 there was an attempt to restate the laws governing slavery in the
colonies by royal decree, the Real Cédula de su Magestad Sobre la Educacíon,
Trato y Ocupaciones de los Esclavos, en Todos sus Dominios de Indias e Islas Fili-
pinas, which included limits on the corporal punishment of slaves by their
owners. The decree was suspended from local application to colonial slave-
holding areas because of its potential to stir excitement and insurrection. The
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local slaveholders believed their treatment of slaves was appropriate, perhaps

even more charitable than in other contemporary slave societies, without ad-
ditional guidance from the crown.36
Despite suffering substantial legal disabilities, slaves, under certain cir-
cumstances, might testify in colonial Latin American courts. It appears that
their testimony would only be admitted where other, more respected testi-
mony was unavailable. For example, in an eighteenth-century case concern-
ing adultery, the Santa Fe de Bogotá audiencia stated that ‘‘in domestic af-
fairs and in hidden crimes, the law permits the slave to testify; because in
these cases the truth is revealed by the only method through which it can be
communicated.’’ 37
The independence period affected the slave trade on both a practical and
theoretical level. With the outbreak of war, the slave trade could no longer
be conducted because of the dangers of marine travel. Furthermore, in some
areas, production by slaves became uneconomical and reliance was placed on
paid workers or semislave debt peons, often the children of slaves.38 In the in-
dependence period, movement from one group to another in society became
somewhat easier, but the period was also marked by a reinvigoration of harsh
colonial provisions that had fallen into disuse; one author cites the Puerto
Rican Reglamento de Esclavos (1826) as an example, and Havana enacted regu-
lations as late as 1842.39

Indian Slavery
At the beginning of exploration and colonization, some Indians were en-
slaved. Slavery existed in preconquest societies, and Columbus in 1495 and
Isabel in 1496 made references to Indian slaves. Slaves from before the con-
quest remained slaves, and slaves could be made from those taken as prisoners
in a ‘‘just war.’’ In the 1520s, for example, ‘‘the Spanish branded and sold as
slaves thousands of captured Quiches and Cakchiquels. The king’s treasury
received the yield from one-fifth of all slaves sold.’’ 40
Legislation affecting slavery was common. Branding slaves was abolished
in 1532. Their being sent to Spain was prohibited by the crown in 1536. When
slavery resulting from ‘‘just war’’ conquest was abolished in 1530, it appears
Spaniards found it easier to kill those who lost on the battlefield. The practice
of taking slaves however continued until the New Laws of 1542, which con-
firmed the 1530 prohibition. The New Laws were the result of the Dominican
Bartolomé de las Casas’s advocacy on behalf of the Indians, and he continued
his work with the publication of The Indians Who Have Been Made Slaves
(1552), which received substantial criticism in the colonies. The New Laws re-
sulted in a civil war in Peru, but other areas chose to ignore the legislation and
make slow progress toward the abolition of ‘‘just war’’ Indian slavery. Indians
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who proved their unjust enslavement received exemption from tribute pay-
ments for three years and lifetime exemption from forced work.41 Enforce-
ment of protective laws proved to be politically and practically difficult.42
Indian labor through encomiendas and other unquestioned colonial insti-
tutions discussed in the next chapter provided a ready replacement to Indian
chattel slavery. Thus Indian slavery was abolished early on, although Indi-
ans continued to be subject to deplorable conditions and treatment and were
readily exploited for their labor.43
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