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‘Enraged to the limit of despair’: Infanticide and Slave Judicial Strategies in Barbacoas, 1788–98

2009; Frank Cass & Co.; Volume: 30; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01440390903098029

1743-9523

Marcela Echeverri,

Politics and Society in Latin America

This article analyses the use of judicial spaces by slaves organised in a mining gang located along the Telembí River in Barbacoas (Colombia). I study their alternative uses of violence and legal tactics during one decade in the late eighteenth century, a time of changing juridical opinion in the Hispanic world. From my examination of six infanticide cases (or child killings) among slaves in the mining gang of the Cortés family between 1788 and 1789, I argue that slaves strategically used both violence and judicial spaces to escape the conditions of slavery in Cortés's mine. Evidence of legal reform in the Bourbon context and a plea for collective rights in court by slaves from the same gang in 1798 speak of the profound link between Bourbon juridical reform and the slaves' choice to reject violence. A comparison between slaves' violent strategies (the infanticides) and their concerted judicial claim a decade later, proves that slaves' understanding of their rights under the new law enabled a practical defence of their communal interests. Slaves 'univocally' used legal channels and demanded their right to protection. They placed their complaints in relation to a critical contextual moment in which the opposed interests of their masters and those of colonial institutions might yield them benefits. This strategic expression of collective identity is remarkable given the adverse circumstances of slavery in Barbacoas and it illustrates how ideas of justice and rights in the context of Hispanic government had relevance for slaves.