The Other Slavery (59 page)

39. The
mita
system has been extensively studied. See Enrique Tandeter,
Coercion and Market: Silver Mining in Colonial Potosí, 1692–1826
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993); Jeffrey A. Cole,
The Potosí Mita, 1573–1700: Compulsory Indian Labor in the Andes
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985); and, more recently, Melissa Dell, “The Persistent Effects of Peru’s Mining Mita,”
Econometrica
78:6 (2010), 1863–1903. For a broader consideration of labor arrangements in the mines of Latin America, see Brown,
A History of Mining in Latin America,
especially chaps. 3 and 4.

5. THE SPANISH CAMPAIGN

1. An antislavery crusade of this scope and ambition in the seventeenth century fits poorly with our current understanding of the history of human rights. The dominant view today is that human rights were a product of the Enlightenment. They were “invented” only in the eighteenth century, in time to spark the great Atlantic upheavals of the 1770s, when the French revolutionaries insisted that all men were “equal” and “born free” and the Founding Fathers in the United States were given to write about “self-evident” and “inalienable” rights. And yet the Spanish crusade of the previous century forces us to reexamine this pervasive narrative. At the very least, its existence suggests that perhaps we’ve drawn too straight a line between the French and American Revolutions, the end of transatlantic slavery, and the rise of human rights around the world. Just as peoples other than Africans suffered from enslavement, so the history of emancipation is more diverse than we generally assume. For the traditional narrative, see Lynn Hunt,
Inventing Human Rights: A History
(New York: Norton, 2007). Indeed, the antislavery movement of the eighteenth century was remarkably modern in its tactics, including sugar boycotts, lobbying campaigns, and tell-all memoirs. For an example of such a memoir, see Vincent Carretta,
Equiano the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005). See also Adam Hochschild,
Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005).

2. For Philip’s early art education and his collection, see Jonathan Brown, “Philip IV as Patron and Collector,” in Andrés Ubeda de los Cobos, ed.,
Paintings for the Planet King: Philip IV and the Buen Retiro Palace
(Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2005), 45–62. For a few telling pages on Philip and the theater, see Martín Andrew Sharp Hume,
The Court of Philip IV: Spain in Decadence
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907), 201–207.

3. I was initially drawn to the life of Philip IV by Joaquín Sánchez de Toca’s
Felipe IV y Sor María de Ágreda
(Madrid: Tipografía de los Huérfanos, 1887), and the more accessible but no less vicarious treatment by John Langdon-Davis,
Carlos: The King Who Would Not Die
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962), 35–57. For more serious works, see John Elliott,
The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988); Henry Kamen,
Spain in the Later Seventeenth Century, 1665–1700
(London: Longman, 1980); and R. A. Stradling,
Philip IV and the Government of Spain, 1621–1665
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

4. Philip was especially devoted to a painting titled
Nuestra Señora del Milagro
(Our Lady of the Miracle), housed in a nearby Franciscan convent. In front of this powerful image, he conducted fervent ceremonies in which he placed his family and the entire empire under the Virgin of Miracles’ protection. The king even had a banner made of silk and gold, displaying the royal coat of arms on one side and her on the other. Eleanor Goodman, “Conspicuous in Her Absence: Mariana of Austria, Juan José of Austria, and the Representation of Her Power,” in Theresa Earenfight, ed.,
Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain
(Hampshire,
UK: Ashgate, 2005), 170. The quote about taking over the oar is from John Elliott, “Philip IV: A Portrait of a Reign,” in Andrés Ubeda de los Cobos, ed.,
Paintings for the Planet King: Philip IV and the Buen Retiro Palace
(Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2005), 38. For Philip’s mysticism, see Stephen Haliczer,
Between Exaltation and Infamy: Female Mystics in the Golden Age of Spain
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 27. The gathering took place in the spring of 1643 in the city of Zaragoza. The most important source for this conclave is Fray Francisco Montaron, “Historia apologetica donde se cuenta el beneficio singular que ha hecho Dios en estos tiempos del año 1643 al rey D. Felipe IV en haverse enviado a muchos siervos suyos con el espiritu profetico desde diversas partes de la christianidad,” cited in Haliczer,
Between Exaltation and Infamy,
26. For the correspondence with Sor María, see Carlos Seco Serrano, ed.,
Cartas de Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda y de Felipe IV,
vols. 108 and 109 of
Epistolario español: Colección de cartas de españoles ilustres antiguos y modernos
(Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1958), passim.

5. The quotes are from King Philip IV to Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda, Zaragoza, October 4, 1643, and Sor María to Philip, Ágreda, November 25, 1661, both in Seco Serrano,
Cartas de Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda y de Felipe IV
. Time and again, the king promised to heed Sor María’s advice and appease God with sound policies. See, for instance, Philip to Sor María, Madrid, June 12, 1652, or Philip to Sor María, Madrid, January 9, 1664, in ibid.

6. Philip III’s royal decree legalizing Indian slavery in Chile, May 26, 1608, AGI, Chile, 57. For Philip IV’s involvement, see “Real cédula al virrey del Perú,” Aranjuez, April 13, 1625, in Álvaro Jara and Sonia Pinto,
Fuentes para la historia del trabajo en el reino de Chile
(Santiago: Editorial Andrés Bello, 1982), 276. See also José Bengoa,
Historia de los antiguos mapuches del sur: Desde antes de la llegada de los españoles hasta las paces de Quilín
(Santiago: Catalonia, 2007), 317–348; José Bengoa,
Conquista y barbarie: Ensayo crítico acerca de la conquista de Chile
(Santiago: Ediciones Sur, 1992); Jara,
Guerra y sociedad en Chile;
and Eugene Clark Berger, “Permanent War on Peru’s Periphery: Frontier Identity and the Politics of Conflict in 17th Century Chile” (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 2006).

7. This progression can be neatly followed in the 1648 real cédula on the need to keep paying the royal fifth (a royal tax consisting of one-fifth the value of the transaction) on Indian slaves; the 1656 real cédula prohibiting customary slavery, whereby Indians sold their children into slavery; the 1660 real cédula curtailing
obrajes,
or textile sweatshops, in which Indians labored as virtual slaves; the three reales cédulas issued in 1662 prohibiting the exportation of Chilean Indian slaves and curbing their mistreatment; the 1663 real cédula urging authorities to fully comply with the real cédula of 1656 prohibiting customary slavery; the 1664 real cédula reiterating the prohibition to export Indians out of Chile; and the 1665 real cédula reducing the amount of work required of slaves so that they could attend their
doctrinas,
classes where they learned the mysteries of the Catholic faith. The real cédula of April 9, 1662, directed the governor of Chile, the bishop of Santiago, and other ecclesiastical authorities to get together to discuss and avoid the abuses caused by the taking of Indian slaves.

8. Early on, Mariana was a giggling adolescent amused by the dwarfs and fools of
Philip’s court. With the passage of time, however, her spontaneity withered away, and she became withdrawn. As a mature woman, she often dressed with the severity of a nun. According to the stipulations of Philip’s will, Queen Mariana was to rule the empire until her son Carlos (who would rule as Charles II) came of age. Her power was limited by a governing committee handpicked by Philip, whose advice she was forced to heed. On the terms of Mariana’s regency, see
Testamento de Felipe IV
(Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1982), especially clauses 22 and 33. The quote is from the Duke of Maura,
Vida y reinado de Carlos II y su Corte,
2 vols. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1954), 1:55. For more on Mariana, see Kamen,
Spain in the Later Seventeenth Century,
27, 330–331.

9. The quote is from Langdon-Davis,
Carlos,
62.

10. The quote is from a letter from Sor María to Father Manero reproduced in the prologue to Seco Serrano,
Cartas de Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda y de Felipe IV,
xxxviii. More generally, see John Kessell, “Miracle or Mystery: María de Ágreda’s Ministry to the Jumano Indians of the Southwest in the 1620s,” in Ferenc Morton Szasz, ed.,
Great Mysteries of the West
(Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 1993). For the most complete English-language treatment of Sor María today, see Marilyn H. Fedewa,
María of Ágreda: Mystical Lady in Blue
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009). Alonso de Benavides, head of the Franciscan order in New Mexico, became so intrigued by the spontaneous conversions of Indians in his province that he went through the trouble of traveling first to Mexico City and then to Madrid to report on these occurrences. He wrote a report for the king in August 1630. While Benavides waited at court, the minister-general of the Franciscans assured him that the mysterious “lady in blue” could only be a young nun he had met years earlier named Sor María. An expectant Benavides made his way to Ágreda to interview María and was able to match some of the details he had heard from the Jumanos with what she told him. Sor María said that she had traveled in spirit to the Americas no less than five hundred times. Benavides no longer had doubt that this young nun was indeed the lady in blue. The news traveled fast to the court, and it caused a great sensation. See the prologue to Seco Serrano,
Cartas de Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda y de Felipe IV,
xxxix. Eduardo Royo cites valuable sources in
Autenticidad de la Mística Ciudad de Dios
(Barcelona: Herederos de Juan Gili Editores, 1914). See also Juliana Barr,
Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), especially chap. 1.

11. Fedewa,
María of Ágreda,
242, 247.

12. Although scholars working on colonial Chile, New Spain, Trinidad, the Philippines, and elsewhere are aware of some of these royal initiatives, it is only with the recent digitization of Spain’s most important colonial archives that one can finally grasp the full extent of this movement. All but the Chilean and Ecuadorean documents are digitized at PARES,
http://pares.mcu.es/
.

13. The first two quotes are from “Memoria de los caciques de paz que degolló el Capitán Pedro de Ripete y de las piezas de paz que cautivó . . . by Chaplain Diego de Rosales,” Concepción, July 25, 1672, and “Memoria de los caciques e indios que vinieron a dar la paz con todas sus familias, ganados y alahas al capitán Bartolomé de Villagrán . . . ,” n.p., n.d., both in AGI, Chile, 57. The next two quotes are from Governor
Juan Enríquez to King Charles II, Santiago, October 8, 1676, AGI, Chile, 57. The last two quotes are from Miguel de Miranda Escobar, cited in Jara,
Guerra y sociedad en Chile,
149. The research on Indian slavery in Chile is extensive. For excellent introductions, see Jaime Valenzuela Márquez, “Esclavos Mapuches: Para una historia del secuestro y deportación de indígenas en la colonia,” in Rafael Gaune and Martín Lara, eds.,
Historias de racismo y discriminación en Chile
(Santiago: Uqbar Editores, 2009), 38–59; and Walter Hanisch Espíndula, “Esclavitud y libertad de los indios de Chile, 1608–1696,”
Historia
16 (1981), 65.

14. For Spanish slaving in Paraguay and Tucumán, see Governor Ángelo de Peredo of Tucumán, September 13, 1671, describing how his predecessor, Governor Antonio Mercado, had captured and distributed among his soldiers many Indians from the Calchaquí Valleys, who were then taken to other provinces, AGI, Chile, 57. Royal decrees on behalf of the Natives from Tucumán and Paraguay can be found in
Libros registros-cedularios del Tucumán y Paraguay, 1573–1716
(Buenos Aires: Instituto de Investigaciones de Historia del Derecho, 2000). For the best introduction to the subject, see Gaston Gabriel Doucet, “Sobre cautivos de guerra y esclavos indios en el Tucumán,”
Revista de Historia del Derecho
16 (1988), 59–152; and Christophe Giudicelli, “‘Identidades’ rebeldes: Soberanía colonial y poder de clasificación; sobre la categoría calchaquí (Tucumán, Santa Fe, siglos XVI–XVII),” in Alejandra Araya Espinoza and Jaime Valenzuela Márquez, eds.,
América colonial: Denominaciones, clasificaciones e identidades
(Santiago: Ril Editores, 2010), 137–172. See also Juan Carlos Garavaglia, “Invaded Societies: La Plata Basin, 1535–1650,” and James Schofield Saeger, “The Chaco and Paraguay, 1573–1822,” both in Frank Salomon and Stuart B. Schwartz, eds.,
The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas,
vol. 3, part 2 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 1–58 and 257–286, respectively. A reasonable discussion of the number of slaves taken by
bandeirantes
can be found in John M. Monteiro,
Negros da terra: Índios e bandeirantes nas origens de Sâo Paulo
(Sâo Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1994), 73–74. And as Hal Langfur reminds us, the
bandeira
did not end in the seventeenth century. Langfur, “The Return of the
Bandeira:
Economic Calamity, Historical Memory, and Armed Expeditions to the Sertão in Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1750–1808,”
The Americas
61:3 (January 2005), 429–461.

15. The Spanish report is quoted in Whitehead,
Lords of the Tiger Spirit,
186–187. See also Jiménez G.,
La esclavitud indígena en Venezuela;
Nancy C. Morey and Robert V. Morey, “Foragers and Farmers: Differential Consequences of Spanish Contact,”
Ethnohistory
20:3 (Summer 1973), 229–246; Joseph Gumilla,
El Orinoco Ilustrado
(Madrid: M. Aguilar Editor); and Juan Rivero,
Historia de las misiones de los llanos de Casanare y los ríos Orinoco y Meta
(Bogotá: Imprenta de Silvestre y Compañía, 1883).