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Alma en boca y huesos en costal: Una aproximación a los contrastes socio-económicos de la esclavitud, Santafé, Mariquita y Mompox, 1610–1660

2005; Duke University Press; Volume: 85; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-85-2-333

1527-1900

Aline Helg,

Cuban History and Society

Carlos Eduardo Valencia Villa’s study is a welcome addition to the scarce historiography on slavery in Colombia. After pioneering works by Jaime Jaramillo (1963), Germán Colmenares (1973 and 1979), William Sharp (1976), and David Chandler (1981), Ildefonso Gutiérrez, María Cristina Navarrete, Anthony MacFarlane, Hermes Tovar, and Francisco Zuluaga have written short studies of slave revolt and marronage in New Granada. More recently, with the new interest in afrocolombianidad, some anthropologists have focused on African survivals among Colombia’s black communities. Published after Guido Barona Barrera’s study of slavery in Popayán from 1730 to 1830 (Universidad del Valle, 1995) and Rafael Antonio Díaz Díaz’s examination of the institution in Santafé de Bogotá between 1700 and 1750 (Centro Editorial Javeriano, 2001), this book revives the debate on the economy of slavery and the relationship between slaves and la gente de todos los colores who constituted the great majority of colonial Colombia’s population.To be sure, the scarcity of publications on Colombian slavery is partially explained by the fact that slaves were a minority in New Granada. Yet, throughout the colonial period and until the abolition of slavery in 1852, gold dust produced primarily by slave labor was New Granada’s main export.Alma en boca y huesos en costal—a phrase generally included in all slave transactions to protect the seller from any liability if the slave died or showed defects after sale— compares the economic viability of slavery in three regions: the more urban Santafé de Bogotá, Mompox (where slaves worked principally in haciendas and river transportation), and the silver-mining area of Mariquita. The study focuses on 1610–60, which Valencia characterizes as a period of relative expansion, due particularly to the increase in contraband. The author takes a double perspective. First, he focuses on slaveholders by studying slave transactions (sales, purchases, exchanges, and so on). Then he examines the perspective of the slaves through the lens of their economic conditions and options, notably freedom through self-purchase, in the context of their relationships with their masters and with the free population of all colors.Valencia acknowledges that the paucity of archival holdings makes his source material uneven and incomplete: notary records concerning 1,301 slaves in Santafé, sales tax (alcabala) records for Mompox, silver production records for Mariquita, and criminal records in all three areas. Moreover, none of these sources provides information on slave contraband. Yet, the author reaches a number of important conclusions for our understanding of slavery in the periphery. Few new slaves were legally imported, from Africa or elsewhere, and slavery tended to reproduce itself in seventeenth-century New Granada (even taking contraband into account). Few slaves chose the legal option of purchasing their freedom to escape from slavery.Slaves participated in the colonial economy not only as a labor force but also as producers of wealth and—in the case of the mines in Mariquita, whose workforce was predominantly Indians submitted to the mita (forced labor draft) and poor unskilled libres—technology. Mineowners were thus dependent on slaves, and slaves enjoyed a position often less wretched than that of other mine workers. In contrast, in urban Santafé many slaves lived independently from their masters (whom paid them a daily wage) and kept some earnings for themselves. As a result, according to Valencia, in a society where the economic conditions of most other subalterns were miserable, slaves had no major economic motivation to buy their freedom. This doesn’t mean that Santafé’s slaves were “alienated” and consented to their bondage; rather, they managed to create significant spaces of freedom for themselves even as slaves. Slaves in Mompox had fewer possibilities to earn wages than in Santafé, and they faced more difficult conditions than those in Mariquita. In Mompox, however, marronage was a real option. Many runaway communities resisted in Mompox’s hinterland, and masters did not declare fugitive slaves to avoid ensuing penalties.Finally, women tended to manumit themselves more often than men—a phenomenon common to all urban Latin America. This, in Valencia’s view, resulted from the fact that, once free, men had to pay the requinto, or tribute reserved to free people of African descent, which acted as a fiscal deterrent. This argument is problematic. First, according to colonial law, single women were subjected to half the requinto. Second, according to the existing historiography, in reality the requinto was not collected. More generally, Valencia’s emphasis on slaves’ economic reasoning at the expense of other motivations prevents him from a deeper understanding of the complexities of the issues he raises, but his work will interest all specialists of slavery.