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Observations on Blacks and Bondage in Uruguay, 1800-1836

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

John Hoyt Williams
John Hoyt Williams*
Affiliation:
Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana
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Extract

In the last ten years there has been a great deal of interest in the scholarship devoted to the related issues of slavery and race relations in Latin America. This writer has himself published works which shed some light on the Black “experience” in isolated, interior Paraguay in the nineteenth century. The ongoing task to more fully understand the different patterns of racial (in all of its aspects) relations in Latin America has been fruitful and has elucidated much of a story, an experience, long hidden. There is, however, much to be done, for the vast bulk of the studies published to date deal with a few, selected countries (or colonies); most notably Brazil and Cuba. Nations such as Chile, Uurguay, Colombia and even Argentina, have received as yet very little attention from the scholars of slavery and race relations.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , April 1987 , pp. 411 - 427
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1987

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References

1 See my “Tevegó on the Paraguayan Frontier. A Chapter in the Black History of the Americas,” Journal of Negro History, LVI, No. 4 (Oct., 1971), pp. 72–84; “Esclavos y pobladores: observaciones sobre la historia parda del Paraguay en el siglo XIX,” Revista paraguaya de la sociología, No. 31 (Sept./Dec, 1974), pp. 7–29; “Observations on the Paraguayan census of 1846,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 56, No. 3 (August, 1976), pp. 424–438; and, “Black Labor and State Ranches: the Tabapí Experience in Paraguay,” Journal of Negro History, LXII, No. 4 (Oct., 1977), pp. 378–390.

2 For instance; Freyre, Gilberto The Masters and the Slaves (New York, 1949)Google Scholar; Tannenbaum, Frank Slave and Citizen, the Negro in the Americas (New York, 1947)Google Scholar; Klein, Herbert S. Slavery in the Americas. A Comparative Study of Cuba and Virginia (Chicago, 1967)Google Scholar; and Degler, Carl Neither Black nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States (New York, 1971).Google Scholar

3 Roade, Juan Rial “Sources for Studies of Historical Demography in Uruguay (1728–1860)” Latin American Research Review, 15, No. 2 (1980), pp. 180–200.Google Scholar See also my “The Archivo General de la Nación of Uruguay,” The Americas XXXVI, No. 2 (Oct., 1979), pp. 257–268.

4 See my “Archivo General de la Nación” article.

5 Isola, Ema La esclavitud en el Uruguay desde sus comienzos hasta su extinción (1743–1852) (Montevideo, 1975).Google Scholar

6 See Tannenbaum, Klein and Freyre books for this widely-accepted argument.

7 In Archivo General de la Nación (AGN-M), Libro 252.

8 In AGN-M, Libro 247.

9 “Resumen general de todas las calles,” Oct. 17, 1810,signed Damián de la Peña, in AGN-M, Libro 240: calles Pilar, San Fernando, San Juan, San Joaquin, San Felipe, San Francisco, San Pedro, San Luis, San Miguel and San Telmo.

10 See Boxer, C.R. The Portuguese Seaborne Empire: 1415–1825 (New York, 1969), pp. 141,Google Scholar 165.

11 “Libros de Entrada” (Port records, Montevideo), in AGN-M, Libros 103, 373, for various years.

12 For example, Calle San Juari, 154 male and 131 female slaves; San Sebastian, 74 and 89; San Vicente, 46 and 48; etc.

13 In AGN-M, Libro 252.

14 In AGN-M, Libros 261, 264.

15 In AGN-M, Libro 262.

16 Howell, John Journal of a Soldier of the 71st, or Glasgow Regiment (Edinburgh, 1819), p. 33.Google Scholar Howell was in the 1806–1807 British expedition which conquered Montevideo.

17 In AGN-M, Libro 279.

18 In AGN-M, Libro 271.

19 In AGN-M, Libro 281.

20 In AGN-M, Libro 146.

21 In AGN-M, Libro 255; “Padrón de hombres de color, esclavos, colonos y libertos,” Montevideo, Nov. 9, 1841. The above data deals with the city’s Second Section.

22 Ibid. In this census, one also sees a sizeable number of young, Africa-born slaves, aged 9–15. Since it was very rare to export very young children from Africa because of their extremely high mortality rate, it is not unreasonable to think that these were new arrivals, again arrivals, again suggesting a persistence of the slave trade, albeit on a lower level than before.

23 Ibid.