Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
used slaves merely to supplement scarce supplies of indigenous and
mestizo labor. Slavery operated alongside the imperfect free labor
regime in colonial Argentina.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, an estimated 100,000 African slaves
arrived at the port of Buenos Aires, a number probably equal to the total
numbers of white Spanish immigrants. From Buenos Aires, the internal
trade carried slaves upriver to Paraguay and overland to Chile, Bolivia,
and the interior provinces of Argentina. Landowners in Tucumán pro-
duced cane sugar and used African slaves in the milling process more
than in the arduous work cutting cane in the fields, where itinerant
Indian and mestizo laborers toiled. Mendoza hacendados used slaves
in their households, truck gardens, vineyards, and wheat fields. In
the cattle and mule-breeding haciendas of Córdoba and Buenos Aires,
African slaves served as year-round laborers tending to the livestock,
wheat harvests, and general maintenance.
Compared to Brazilian plantations, Argentine rural estates made less
harsh demands on their slave field-workers. Argentine stockbreeding
operators, for example, permitted relative mobility and freedom for
slaves. Landowners commonly locked up newly arrived African-born
slaves, called
negrosbozales,
at night and strictly supervised them by
day at first, but once acclimated, the slaves gained increasing privi-
leges and responsibility. Africans who mastered Spanish might serve
their owners by supervising itinerant peons in the planting and har-
vesting of wheat or in the branding and slaughtering of cattle. Many
rural landowners came to trust their long-serving slaves and granted
requests for extra rations, tobacco, clothing, and horse tack; owners
even sought suitable wives for favored male slaves from among both
slave and free women. African slaves did sometimes run away from
their owners but found it difficult to mix with the mestizo and indig-
enous peoples since their distinctive physical appearance and African
accents betrayed them as runaways. Africans in Argentina established
no runaway slave communities as they did in Brazil.
Urban slavery in Argentina was perhaps more important and cer-
tainly more concentrated and visible than rural slavery. Colonial policy
forbade the enslavement of indigenous persons except in unusual
circumstances, so wealthy Spanish families often purchased African
slaves for household work. They sought women, in particular, as cooks,
nursemaids, house cleaners, and laundresses. Spaniards purchased
males to serve in livery or the families' urban businesses. Merchants
and artisans bought male slaves in small numbers for carrying mer-
chandise, baking bread, and learning the rudiments of a craft. Urban
