life-in-latin-america
life-in-latin-america
Life, Economics and Class in Colonial Latin America
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life-in-latin-america · 6 years ago
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Overview
The colonial period in Latin America and the Caribbean spans three centuries:
The early colonial period—beginning in 1492 with the initial encounter between the Spaniards and the Amerindians and lasting until the end of the conquest era in approximately 1575. (1)
The middle colonial period—beginning in 1575 and lasting until approximately 1725, or comprising the seventeenth century. (2)
The late colonial period—from 1725 until independence, which occurred in the majority of Latin America countries (except Cuba and Puerto Rico) between 1808 and 1826. (3)
During each of these time periods key economic activities contributed to the rising definitions of class structure within Latin America and the Caribbean. The following presentation presents an overview of economic and social activity by class during the colonial period, focusing on the mestizos, the black Africans and poor whites of European ancestry.
Steve J. Stern, “Latin America’s Colonial History: Invitation to an Agenda ,” Latin American Perspectives 12, no. 1 (Winter 1985): 3, accessed December 15, 2019, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2633559.
John E. Kicza, “Native American, African, and Hispanic Communities during the Middle Period in the Colonial Americas,” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 31 (1997): 9, accessed December 15, 2019, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25616512.
James Lockhart and Roger A. Kittleson, “History of Latin America ,” Encyclopædia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/place/Latin-America/The-north-and-the-culmination-of-independence.
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life-in-latin-america · 6 years ago
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During the colonial period in Latin America and the Caribbean a class structure defined primarily by race began to emerge. However, later during the colonial period a blurring of these racial categories was more frequent.
With the emergence of a populous, vibrant, and economically powerful mixed-race class, mestizos and mulattoes, political discontent and protest began to emerge in Latin America and eventually contributed to independence movements.
Amber Russell, “Social Structure of the Spanish Colonies,” Smithsonian Learning Lab, accessed December 18, 2019, https://learninglab.si.edu/collections/social-structure-of-the-spanish-colonies/Az7K7pzsxgRahMwn.
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life-in-latin-america · 6 years ago
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Poor Whites
Early period: 
White indentured servants in Latin America and the Carribean were from various European backgrounds and were originally the most popular working class
White indentured servants would work for a contractually established period of time usually from 3-5 years(French called is trente-six mois- “36 monthers”)  Often servants were awarded land after they served their term. Although the servants were white that did not stop there from being major abuses of servants. One account of how servants were treated written by Du Tertre describes the condition of the white indentured servant. 
“They are worked to excess; they are badly fed and are often obliged to work in  company with slaves, which is a greater affliction than the hard labour; there were masters so cruel that they were forbidden to purchase any more; and I knew one at Guadolupe who had buried more than fifty upon his plantation whom he had killed by hard work, and neglect when they were sick.” 
These servants were often they were enticed under false pretenses and or kidnapped to come work in the colonies(popular in England) and many were poor and emigrated to the colonies in search of a better life in the colonies.(1)
Eric, Williams. From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean. London, Random House INC, 1970. 
Later period 
White indentured servitude became less popular and was replaced by the enslavement of Africans. The ratio of White to black people/population changed drastically with the influx of millions of African Slaves. European powers like Spain and England realized there were more Africans to enslave and buying black slaves were cheaper than white servants. These powers decided that it would be easy to have people born into slavery than try to make white people slaves because it would be easier to have Africans born into slavery. European powers continued to try and attract white servants to make the discrepancy between black and white people in the colonies lower(security in case of a revolt).The British began paying white people to move to Jamaica. When sugar emerged as the main and most profitable industry whites only could be overseers or plantation owners otherwise they had no place in society. As more time went on White indentured servitude became less profitable and viable and in 1774 in Jamaica large scale white indentured servitude was considered over.(2)(3)
Now: 
White indentured servitude left a legacy of white people being higher socially than African slaves and natives but still not as wealthy or powerful as wealthy white people. The economic structures in Latin America in the Carribean now are commonly dominated by wealthy white people. In many countries poor white people have more economic advantages to escape poverty. For example, in Brazil more white looking Brazilians receive jobs that relate to the public, while darker people are forced to work jobs where less or no people can see them even though Brazil is majority minority country. These colorist ideals show the impact of white economic advantages and white supremacist ideologies.(4)
5. Pedro,Atilla, "Brazil in Black and White." Interview conducted by Gregory
Warner. Npr.org, 14 Aug. 2017, www.npr.org/transcripts/ 542840797. Accessed
18 Dec. 2019.
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life-in-latin-america · 6 years ago
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This photo shows the influx of slaves to Grenada. This picture shows how over time white slaves became a large part of the population and more favored over white servants. The second data table shows the breakdown of the population in the island of Dominica. 
Eric, Williams. From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean. London, Random House INC, 1970. 
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life-in-latin-america · 6 years ago
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Early Period/Middle Period - Mestizo/Mulatto
Early Period: Colonizers from Spain sought out gold during their conquests. As they failed to find gold, their attention shifted to mining silver.
Demographic shift: During the early period of colonization there was a precipitous decline in the indigenous population of Latin America, brought about by their enslavement and abuse by European colonists, disease, and genocide.
 Middle Period: The mining of silver became the most important economic activity in Latin America. In particular, Mexico and Peru dominated the mining and trade of silver and became the most Hispanicized colonizers of Latin America in the seventeenth century. (1) The indigenous cultures of Mexico and Peru (the Aztecs and Incas) were sophisticated and they integrated relatively easily into the Spanish settlements and economic activities. In addition, during the middle colonial period in Mexico, Peru, and across Latin America “haciendas,” or small farms, also flourished in these societies. (2) Haciendas grew a variety of crops. Mestizos and hispanicized natives became an important source of labor on haciendas.
 Demographic shift: A large population of mixed-racial people, or “mestizos,” began to emerge as Spanish men (who vastly outnumbered Spanish women) married native women and the population intermixed.
 Mestizo: A term used to designate the people of mixed-European and indigenous non-European ancestry.  
 Castas: Another term for the mixed-blood people of Latin America during the colonial period.
Creoles: People of Spanish descent who are born in the New World.
Peninsulares: Mestizos and castas were differentiated from peninsulares (who were born in Europe). Peninsulares held the highest status in Latin America. Many castas claimed to be Spaniards
1. John E. Kicza, "Native American, African, and Hispanic Communities during the Middle Period in the Colonial Americas," International Journal of Historical Archaeology 31 (1997): 10, accessed December 15, 2019, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25616512. 
2. Ibid.
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life-in-latin-america · 6 years ago
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Virgin of Guadalupe by Luis de Mena in 1750 is an example of a casta painting. Casta paintings were produced in the 18th century in Mexico and were revolutionary in Mexican colonial art. They visually depicted the racial-class system adopted by elites and provided a visual record of daily life in the late colonial period. (2) 
This painting depicts, at the bottom--the fruits of Mexico, in the middle—four casta families, and on top--scenes of colonial life. The Dark Virgin in the center divides and penetrates all the images—celebrating the diversity of Mexico.
1. Sarah Cline, "Guadalupe and the Castas: The Power of a Singular Colonial Mexican Painting," Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 31 (Summer 2015): 220, accessed December 15, 2019, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/msem.2015.31.2.218.
2. Ibid
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life-in-latin-america · 6 years ago
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Later Period - Mestizo/Mulatto
Later Period (mid-17th century through the 19th century): Sugar emerged as the most important commodity in Latin America and a plantation-based economy developed in many Latin American nations and the Caribbean, such as Barbados, Guadeloupe, Cuba and in Brazil.
 Demographic shift: The plantation economy was dependent on African slaves, who arrived in exponential numbers throughout the 18th century and in the late colonial period and formed the backbone of the sugar economy in the Caribbean and in Brazil.
 The need for slave labor on sugar plantations brought Africans to Latin America and the Caribbean where they worked both as enslaved and as free skilled technicians in sugar mills and in silver mines. However, a significant population of Africans also lived in urban centers where they worked as artisans, construction workers, and in marketplace stalls. (1)
 Archeological fieldwork done by Gibson on an 18th and 19th-century sugar plantation in Guadeloupe revealed “proto-peasant” activity under slavery that paved the way for eventual emancipation. The structure of the plantation was dynamic, allowing for economic pursuits linking cities and plantations and free and enslaved Africans with Creoles. (2)
 In the middle and later colonial period, a class of mulattoes emerged, frequently from mixing of Africans and mestizos in urban centers where both classes became important contributors to the market economies and their lives overlapped.
 Mulattoes: Black Africans mixed with white Europeans or mestizos.
1. John E. Kicza, "Native American, African, and Hispanic Communities during the Middle Period in the Colonial Americas," International Journal of Historical Archaeology 31 (1997): 12, accessed December 15, 2019, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25616512.
2. Heather R. Gibson, "Domestic Economy and Daily Practice Guadeloupe Historical Archaeology at La Mahaudière Plantation," International Journal of Historical Archaeology 13, no. 1 (March 2009): 28, accessed December 15, 2019, https://ww.jstor.org/stable/20853180.
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life-in-latin-america · 6 years ago
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Natives
In the early days of Latin colonization, Native Americans were treated as little more than uneducated savages, but it was no less brutal than the treatment of African slaves or white indentured servants. Like Africans, Native Americans were deemed as “Natural slaves” by the Spanish, leading to mass bondage on first colonization. As time passed the mystery that surrounded Natives helped them take on their own identity, aided by European scholarship. Eventually, Native Americans received protected status throughout many Spanish colonies. They were treated in the same way as widows or orphans: poor societal rejects who deserved pity. In other colonies, they received the opposite treatment, not even being considered their own group. After a time Natives managed to break the bonds of slavery but were still considered lower class citizens. Operating somewhere between enslaved Africans and those with European blood, Natives were allowed many civil liberties without much opportunity for economic gain. Native American population steadily declined over the centuries from a combination of persecution and interbreeding, and many Natives by blood lost their cultural identity due to European conversion, both forced and voluntary. The attrition of their population caused disputes between the remaining “true” natives and those that had assimilated, often leading to those who held on to their culture isolating themselves from the rest of society, further crippling their economic potential.
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life-in-latin-america · 6 years ago
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A map showing the distribution of slaves across North and South America.
"African Diaspora ", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed December 19, 2019, http://slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/664
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life-in-latin-america · 6 years ago
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This circa 1770-1780 painting of two overseers, one holding a whip, shows them forcing an African slave to remove his clothes to give him a beating.
Juliao, Carlos. “Whipping an Enslaved Male, Serro Frio, Brazil, ca. the 1770s” Slaveryimages.org, (1770-1780). Accessed December 16, 2019. http://slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/1228
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life-in-latin-america · 6 years ago
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Slavery
Current Day Latin America:
Although slavery ended once and for all in Latin America in 1888, the presence of African cultures had a great effect on Latin American culture. Many people in Mexico have ties to African culture and african family members within their bloodline. It also caused an innate feeling of white superiority between blacks and whites. This natural white supremacy has caused a huge class and culture divide between races that perpetuates racism and hate. 
Developed Latin America:
As Latin America became more developed, slaves grew in numbers and their quality of life diminished significantly. Of the 10.5 million slaves that were abducted and purchased from Africa, approximately 40% of those slaves were taken to Brazil and put to work on sugarcane farms, while 20% were taken to Spanish America. Some countries worked with the United States as “Many of the Africans who arrived in colonial Virginia went through a period of ‘Seasoning’ in Barbados en route”. Many descendants of slaves also began purchasing slaves themselves as a status symbol. The Portuguese were especially brutal to their slaves as the conditions on their sugar cane refineries were extremely unsafe. Slaves would work from dawn to dusk refining sugar, tending to sugarcane plants and collecting timber to keep fires going. In each refinery, slaves worked with a vertical sugarcane roller. Occasionally, slaves would get their hands caught in the roller due to being overworked and exhausted. In the event of their limbs being engulfed, their owners would have to sever their arms with a hatchet to keep them from being crushed by the machinery. This is just one example of the cruel living conditions slaves were subjected to in Latin America from 1600 to 1888 when it was finally abolished in Brazil. 
Early Latin America:
In the beginning exploration stage of Latin America, African Slaves, freedmen, and the Europeans arrived together on the new frontier. Due to how expensive slaves were, the Spaniards attempted to enslave the natives but deemed them a weak and unreliable labor force. Whenever possible the Spaniards and Portuguese would purchase African slaves to build their infrastructure and provide a dependable labor force for the many commodities they were to develop on their newfound land. Examples of certain exports include dye, rice, cotton, tobacco and most importantly, sugar. These exports were the main reason for them owning slaves as “In many ways it was sugar that shaped the destination of slave ships and the very nature of the Atlantic Slave system”.
T. H. Breen, Timothy Hall “Colonial America in an Atlantic World: A Story of Creative Interaction” Pearson. Accessed December 12th 2019. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R1LIMSspFIGP6bRssaPcowC1i2ma0ROm/view This source discusses the conditions Africans had to endure in Barbados, and the sugar production they were forced to take part in.
Brion Davis, David “Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World” Oxford University Press 2006. Accessed December 12th, 2019. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lokq71PIXShqB1lmR1b8SpJ7ETEZPlPX/view This source discusses the Atlantic Slave trade and the conditions Africans went through in Brazil.
Terrazas Williams, Danielle. “‘My Conscience is Free and Clear’: African-Descended Women, Status, and Slave Owning in Mid-Colonial Mexico” Cambridge University Press 10 July 2018. Accessed December 13, 2019. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/americas/article/my-conscience-is-free-and-clear-africandescended-women-status-and-slave-owning-in-midcolonial-mexico/72B8590D2B9EB4CCD3C126FD8ED53737/core-reader
This source discusses the phenomenon of descendants of slaves in Mexico acquiring their own slaves and using them as status symbols.
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