Daily Life In Colonial Latin America (31 page)

Enslaved cattle herders, on the other hand, might see their
owners no more than a few times a year. In the meantime, they led a threadbare
but relatively independent existence in the remote depths of the sertão, where
the dominance of the ranching economy was so thorough that even household
utensils and window coverings were made of leather. The lifestyle of these
enslaved laborers was essentially identical to that of the free
caboclos,
local
residents of mostly Portuguese and native descent who often worked alongside
them in the tasks associated with ranching. Slaves who did their work and
remained loyal to their owners, the local cattle barons who ultimately
dominated the lives of everyone who lived on their lands, enjoyed about as much
freedom as was available to any poor person living in the harsh environment of
the sertão.

Social Mobility and Its Limits

Legal and social discrimination against people with
non-European ancestry was no less intense in Brazil than in Spanish America,
with grinding poverty and forced labor of one variety or another the lot of
most. At the same time, the demographic significance of nonwhite majorities
everywhere in Latin America brought opportunities for social mobility even to
enslaved individuals when they filled the more advantageous of the economic
niches left open by the relative dearth of people of Iberian origins. Cattle
ranching provides one obvious example, although the mobility enjoyed by
landless ranch hands living a decidedly marginal existence is probably better
described as spatial than social. More possibilities for the acquisition of
land and other wealth existed in areas of Brazil dominated by the sugar
economy, at least below the level of the planter elite. By the 18th century,
some 30 percent of Bahia’s
lavradores
were said to be nonwhite,
although, in a sign of the limits to mobility, no engenho owner was identified
thus. During the same century, the burgeoning mining communities of Minas
Gerais produced some spectacular examples of individual ascent beyond one’s
prescribed place in the social order. The most celebrated case was Ouro Preto’s
great sculptor, Antônio Francisco Lisboa, better known as Aleijadinho. The
disabled son of an enslaved woman of African descent and a Portuguese
craftsman, he created a life-size series of the 12 apostles and numerous other
works now considered to be among the very finest pieces of colonial-era art.

DEFENDING THE SYSTEM

Native Peoples in the Service of Iberian
Rule

One of the most striking features of Iberian rule in
colonial Latin America is the extent to which it was dependent on majority
populations of color, or at least portions of them, for preservation from both
foreign and domestic threats. While both the Spanish and the Portuguese tended
to distrust the people over whom they ruled in the Americas, both found it
necessary to recruit some of those same people to assist in the maintenance of
colonial order. During their initial invasions, European newcomers had found
native allies among various groups seeking advantage against imperial overlords
like the Aztecs and Incas, or other traditional enemies. Some of these allies
were eventually used in campaigns aimed at pacifying frontier regions, like the
Tlaxcalans of central Mexico who fought alongside the Spaniards to conquer
Tenochtitlán and, later, Guatemala. By the end of the 16th century, Tlaxcalans
were being settled in the northern Mexican deserts to counter the threat posed
by nomadic bands of “wild” native peoples lumped together as
Chichimecas
(a
Nahuatl term), who long remained free from outside rule.

In Brazil, the mamelucos of São Paulo and their indigenous
relatives acted as the spearhead of Portuguese movements into the South
American interior. They and similar native-dominated forces also played a key
role in the defeat of the
quilombo
of Palmares and other smaller
settlements of escaped slaves that were established at the margins of
plantation society, a phenomenon discussed at more length below. In response to
the threat posed by escaped slaves, the authorities would commission a
capitão
do mato
(bush captain) to assemble a band of fighters, and the bush captain
in turn often relied largely on natives who were not only accustomed to the
local environment but also possessed the martial techniques best adapted to it.
Their skills were attested to in the early 17th century by Frei Vicente do
Salvador, often referred to as Brazil’s first historian. He wrote that escaped
slaves were most afraid “of the Indians who with a Portuguese captain seek them
out and return them to their masters.”

Despite their evident usefulness as allies in certain
situations, natives were rarely inducted en masse into the formal militias that
began to be established for purposes of general defense in Latin America during
the mid-16th century. Outside of a few key ports, these local militias, rather
than regular troops, constituted the sole armed forces in Iberian-ruled
territories prior to the mid-18th century. Staffing these militias with
conquered peoples was considered to be a dangerous business, especially in
Mesoamerica and the Andes, where indigenous populations far outnumbered
Spaniards and other non-natives and were more likely to be perceived as a
potential threat to societies that were constructed largely on their backs than
a dependable defense force. As a result, militia service was at first
restricted to men of European origins. In Spanish America, it was initially
confined to elite
encomenderos,
whose obligations included the
maintenance of a horse and armor and the duty to fulfill local defense needs.

Militiamen of Color and the Challenge to
Racial Hierarchy

In the 17th century, a threat very different from the one
posed by suspect indigenous majorities thoroughly undermined the initial
Iberian policy of restricting militia service to the small minority of European
origins. A spate of attacks on both Spanish and Portuguese territory in the
Americas by Dutch, French, and English marauders forced colonial authorities to
rethink policies of exclusion that had placed the entire burden of defense on a
relatively small elite whose members were in many cases no longer much
interested in military adventure. Given that doubts persisted over the wisdom
of formally arming large numbers of native peoples, only one realistic
alternative presented itself: enlisting castas, notably the free descendants of
enslaved Africans. The trick for both Spaniards and Portuguese who wished to
preserve their own privileges was to offer sufficient incentives to blunt the
dangers of putting weapons in the hands of people they had legally marginalized
without at the same time giving them full equality. Such a balancing act
required compromises with the people whose bodies were needed, who in turn
quickly seized the opportunities opened up to them to alter, although not
entirely overturn, existing social relationships.

In truth, Africans and their descendants had participated
alongside Spaniards in armed conflict in the Americas since the initial invasions
of Mesoamerica and the Andes. Although operating for the most part as slaves or
servants during the conquest era, they provided sufficiently important support
to Spanish forces in at least a few cases to achieve fame and fortune in their
own right. Juan Garrido, born in West Africa and transported at a young age to
the Iberian Peninsula, participated in the Spanish invasions of Puerto Rico,
Cuba, and Mexico, where he earned a plot for a house and the post of town crier
in the new capital, Mexico City, that was established on the ruins of
Tenochtitlán. Another man of African ancestry, Juan Valiente, was living as a
slave in Puebla, Mexico, when he sought permission from his owner to serve
among adventurers heading for Peru in 1533. He later invested as a horseman in
Juan de Valdivia’s expedition to Chile, rose to the rank of captain, and was
eventually rewarded with an estate outside Santiago and a grant of native
laborers, all without formally acquiring his freedom!

As exceptional as these two cases may have been, they
formed part of a larger pattern of mostly informal military service by Africans
and their descendants that continued after the era of major conquests. When
northern European harassment of Spain’s American possessions picked up during
the later 16th century, both slaves and free people of African ancestry
participated in repelling coastal attacks. In 1595, for example, a small force
made up of “fourteen mounted
mulatos
and some Spaniards” ambushed a
French raiding party that landed on the Honduran coast. For their efforts, the
14
mulatos,
identified further as “freedmen as well as slaves,” received
a handsome monetary reward from the crown.  At the time, royal legislation
banned the arming of any person of African origins, especially a slave. The crown’s
action was further evidence of the gap between the ideal, hierarchical world
that Spaniards sought to construct in the Americas and the one that
circumstances forced upon them.

As enemy incursions intensified during the early 17th
century, colonial authorities eventually took the logical step of formalizing
militia service by non-Spaniards. By the 1640s, companies of
gente parda,
yet
another term for free people of part-African ancestry, were being mustered
throughout Spanish America. Mestizos, however, tended to be inducted into
Spanish companies, swelling their ranks and simultaneously reducing the
potential for social unrest on the part of a broadly unified, and now armed,
casta population. But a policy of unequal treatment of militiamen whose common
bond was African ancestry carried its own risks for the ruling elite. It
strengthened their sense of sharing a distinct, common identity, as well as a
set of shared grievances, at the very same time that they were acquiring
additional means with which to challenge subordinate status predicated on
supposed group inferiority.

Soon enough, ongoing foreign pressure on Spain’s American
territories built up to the point of enabling newly powerful militiamen of
African ancestry to exact concessions from royal officials by threatening to
withhold their increasingly vital military service. As early as 1631, members
of free
mulato
militia companies, which had helped Lima stave off a
Dutch attack in 1624, obtained relief from the laborío, the alternative tribute
payment owed by free people of African ancestry. Over the next few decades,
similar developments took place in New Spain, Central America, and the
Caribbean. In all of these places, black and
mulato
militiamen exploited
the Spanish crown’s dependence on their military usefulness to escape tribute
obligations, heretofore a key marker of inferiority under the law.

Brazil, too, saw the emergence to prominence of militiamen
of African ancestry during this era of increased hostile activity on the part
of northern European powers. Among the Portuguese forces that ended a quarter
century of Dutch control over the major sugar-producing region of Pernambuco in
1654 was a famed contingent of
preto
(black) troops under the command of
Henrique Dias. By the 18th century, militia companies made up of free blacks
and
mulato
s, known as
Henriques
to commemorate Dias’s feats, were
to be found all over colonial Brazil. But since Brazil was a slave society
based primarily on the policing of Africans and their descendants, the authorities
appear to have made a deliberate effort to mix native militiamen into these
companies, probably to offset the perceived dangers of solidarity among armed
nonwhites of shared ancestry. Nevertheless, the incentives provided for loyalty
to colonial authorities tended to outweigh the ancestral connections that may
have linked, say, a Brazilian-born, free
mulato
militiaman and an
enslaved, recently arrived Angolan. After all, African roots were no more a
guarantee of common interests than the backgrounds shared by the Spanish and
the English or the Mexica and the Tlaxcalans. The historical evidence indicates
clearly, for example, that most of the “Portuguese captains” described by Frei
Vicente do Salvador as commanders of native slave hunters were actually free
individuals of African ancestry. They were, quite naturally, well compensated
for their work.

CHALLENGING THE SYSTEM

Although the strategies of nonwhite majorities for
surviving, sometimes even prospering, in societies in which they were designated
as inferior involved accepting the rules imposed by elites, overt and sometimes
violent resistance was not at all uncommon. In an important sense, such
resistance was simply one more, albeit extreme, negotiating tactic. It rarely
threatened the larger colonial order, because its effects generally remained
localized owing to the swift measures undertaken in most cases by authorities
to prevent the spread of unrest. Indeed, in many cases overt resistance may
have achieved fewer permanent gains for marginalized peoples than working
within the system, an issue that remains very much open to debate. That such
overt resistance occurred regularly in a variety of forms is not, however, in
any doubt.

Maroon Communities and Rebel Slaves

An obvious example of violent resistance is provided in the
experiences of escaped slaves in Brazil alluded to earlier. Contrary to slave
owners’ fantasies of happy plantation workers, resistance in one form or
another to the brutalities of the slave system was a constant of plantation
life, which explains the need for the whip, not to mention more extreme forms
of torture devised by some masters for their recalcitrant human property. The
Jesuit administrator of one 18th-century Brazilian engenho referred to the
slaves under his control as “devils, thieves, and enemies,” hardly a
description of a docile, contented group.  Whether simply dragging their feet
in response to orders or stealing sugar from under the nose of an unwary master
sugar maker in order to sell it privately, these and other unwilling workers
caused no end of frustration to their bosses, who were forced against their
wishes to acknowledge the humanity of “devils” whose actions continually
escaped the bounds of the role to which their owners wished to confine them.