Before 1519, slavery existed on the Iberian Peninsula and in Mesoamerica, where Indians enslaved people as punishment or after their capture in war. Cortes and Narvaez established hereditary slavery early on, as both brought African slaves to Mexico.126
In 1528, the Germans Heinrich Ehinger and Hieronymus Seiler bought monopoly rights, which lasted for four years, to import African slaves into Spanish America. Their serving as agents of the German banking house of Welsher indicates the close relation between the slave trade and international finance. The Crown received cash for granting slave-import monopolies and later taxed products produced by slave labor.127
During the second half of the sixteenth century, the demand for labor in commercial agriculture, urban industry, and, especially, silver mines soared, while the Indian labor supply plummeted. The lack of Indians to cultivate fields even raised the specter of famine. As a result, from about 1580 to 1620, New Spain imported more African slaves than any other locale in the Americas. That colony received approximately 36,500 African slaves between 1521 and 1594. During the seventeenth century, an annual average of 1,871 African slaves were brought to Mexico.128
Residents of New Spain had few moral qualms concerning the African slave trade. In the midfifteenth century, papal decrees, or bulls, had proclaimed African slavery acceptable since those enslaved would be converted to Christianity. Spaniards took at face value Portuguese slave traders’ statements that, since they had been captured in just wars, those being sold into slavery had been legally enslaved. Once slavery began, slave owners rationalized the institution as a response to presumed black inferiority. A 1769 petition signed by virtually all the planters in the district of Cordoba, Veracruz, asserted: “If given freedom, blacks become increasingly more barbarous and bloodthirsty. The only proper condition for them is slavery.” Free blacks and others of mixed African ancestry owned their own black slaves, indicating how widespread acceptance of slavery had become.129
Arguments based on economic necessity quashed lingering doubts on the issue of slavery. During the 1665—1700 reign of King Carlos II, a report by the Council of the Indies declared:
First, the introduction of blacks is not only desirable, but absolutely necessary. . . The fatal consequences of not having them are easily deduced, for. . . they are the ones who cultivate the haciendas, and there is no one else who could do it, because of a lack of Indians.
The report concluded that without the slave trade Spanish America would face “absolute ruin.”130 A few isolated individuals did speak out against slavery. In 1560, Alonso de Montufar, archbishop of Mexico, wrote King Felipe II, “We do not know of any cause why the Negroes should be captives any more than Indians, since we are told that they receive the Gospel in good will and do not make war on Christians.” Thirteen years later, Bartolome Frias de Albornoz, a former law professor at the University of Mexico, wrote that Christianizing Africans did not constitute a sufficient reason for enslaving them. He declared that if indeed the Spanish wanted to convert heathens in Africa, it would be better to send missionaries. Not only did officials ignore his questioning of slavery, but the Inquisition placed his book dealing with the subject on its Index of Forbidden Books. Other isolated critiques would follow, but none had significant impact. Eventually, demographic change would halt the slave trade, not moral suasion.131
The Church, as an arm of the Crown, could not challenge slave policy. Dominicans and other orders worked African slaves on their haciendas. Other Church institutions, such as convents, owned slaves and financed others’ purchase of them. In 1517, Bartolome de las Casas, a priest who became famous for defending Indian rights, warned that unless indigenous people received some relief, they would soon disappear from Hispaniola. He proposed that each white resident of Hispaniola should receive permission to import as many as twelve African slaves.132
Initially African slaves were largely employed in urban areas. However, as the Indian population declined, African slaves increasingly worked in rural areas. Many worked in the port of Veracruz and on cattle ranches and sugar plantations along the east coast. Others worked to the north and west of Mexico City on ranches and in silver mines. Between Puebla and the Pacific Ocean, slaves worked in mines, on sugar plantations and ranches, and in the port of Acapulco. Slaves would work continuously, unlike Indian repartimiento laborers, who returned to their communities after an interval. The number of slaves in Mexico ranged between 20,000 and 45,000, a number far fewer than the 4 million slaves who would later labor in the U. S. south.133
In rural areas, slaves often served as intermediaries between whites and Indians, working in a supervisory capacity. They played a crucial role in the mining industry during the period of rapid Indian population decline. The 1570 Mexican mine census enumerated 3,690 slave workers, 1,850 Spaniards, and 4,450 Indians.134
Some slaves learned highly technical aspects of sugar production. Most commonly, though, rural slaves faced a lifetime of back-breaking labor in the fields. Slave labor came to dominate the sugar industry since the low-land Indian population had virtually vanished. The Spanish also felt that Africans withstood hot, heavy work better than Indians. King Felipe III’s forbidding the use of Indian labor on plantations increased the reliance on slave labor.135
The Mexican slave population required constant resupply from Africa. So many slaves died due to poor nutrition, disease, high infant mortality, and the rigors of sugar production that they failed to reproduce themselves. Traffickers imported only one woman from Africa for every three men, thus limiting the number of slave women who could bear children.136
Black slaves and their descendants, who lacked a stable community to preserve their culture, assimilated Spanish culture more rapidly than the Indian. Male slaves often had children by, and married, Indian women. This reflected the fact that Indians were often the only available sexual partners and that male slaves were aware that free mothers gave birth to free children.137
The Spanish legal system specifically outlawed “bad treatment” of slaves, including mutilation or killing, except when the law authorized such treatment for an offense. Slaves also had the right to marry, regardless of their owners’ wishes. Despite such legislation, as historian Colin Palmer noted, “Most masters were left to exercise their private power of discipline, whether excessively or not, with impunity.” In some instances, the Inquisition prosecuted slaves for blaspheming while being beaten by their master, but did not punish the master for the beating.138
Creoles adamantly opposed the emergence of an Afro-Mexican elite that might compete with their own sons for the limited number of desirable jobs, such as civil and clerical appointments, so they prohibited anyone with African blood from enrolling in the university. Similarly Afro-Mexicans could not become masters in many craft guilds.139
More than 200,000 slaves were imported to Mexico during the colonial period. However, slavery never assumed the fundamental role that it did in the export-oriented plantation colonies of the West Indies. In contrast to these colonies, during the eighteenth century slavery virtually vanished from Mexico. In most instances, due to increases in the Indian and mixed-race populations, it became less costly to pay wages than to import and maintain slaves.140
World History
