The language of liberation: Slave voices in the wars of independence

HAHR - Hispanic American Historical Review

Volumn 82, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 499-523

  Blanchard, Peter ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 3142691436     PISSN: 00182168     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00182168-82-3-499     Document Type: Article

References (104)

1. "Sumaria información promovida contra Juan Izaguirre por propagar ideas de rebeldía entre los esclavos," Maracay, 19 Apr. 1815, Archivo General de la Nación, Caracas, Venezuela (hereafter cited as AGN-C), Archivo de Aragua, vol. 75, fol. 78
2. John Lynch, Latin American Revolutions, 1808-1826: Old and New World Origins (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 27-34
3. and Tulio Halperín-Donghi, Politics, Economics and Society in Argentina in the Revolutionary Period, trans. Richard Southern (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1975), 111-24
4. "Expediente seguido por Da Petronila Ferreyros," 1822, Archivo General de la Nación, Lima, Peru, (hereafter cited as AGN-L), Expedientes judiciales, Causas civiles, cuad. 1, leg. 12
5. On the extensive postmodern literature on interpreting language, see Patricia Seed, "Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse," Latin American Research Review 20, no. 3 (1991)
6. and D. S. Parker, The Idea of the Middle Class: White-Collar Workers and Peruvian Society, 1900-1950 (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1998), 12-13
7. Stuart B. Schwartz, Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels: Reconsidering Brazilian Slavery (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1992), 21
8. "Contribución de fincas, comprobantes de pago," Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires, Argentina (hereafter cited as AGN-BA), Contribución directa, 1813-817, sala III-35-4-5
9. For an interesting analysis of a document involving slaves in the late colonial period, see María Eugenia Chaves, María Chiquinquirá Díaz: Una esclava del siglo XVIII: Acerca de las identidades de amo y esclavo en el puerto colonial de Guayaquil (Guayaquil: Archivo Histórico del Guayas, 1998)
10. and Núria Sales de Bohigas, Sobre esclavos, reclutas y mercaderes de quintos (Barcelona: Ed. Ariel, 1974), 76
11. Camilla Townsend, "'Half My Body Free, The Other Half Enslaved': The Politics of the Slaves of Guayas at the End of the Colonial Era," Colonial Latin American Review 7, no. 1 (1998): 107, 118
12. Silvia C. Mallo, "La libertad en el discurso del estado, de amos y esclavos, 1780-1830," Revista de Historia de América 112 (1991)
13. and Emilia Viotti da Costa, The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histories (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1985), 10-12
14. Cristina Ana Mazzeo, El comercio libre en el Perú: Las estrategias de un comerciante criollo, José Antonio de Lavalle y Cortés, Conde de Premio Real, 1777-1815 (Lima: Pontificia Univ. Católica del Perú, 1994)
15. Ildefonso Pereda Valdés, El negro en el Uruguay: Pasado y presente (Montevideo: n. p., 1965), 45, 46, 244-48
16. and Lyman L. Johnson, "Manumission in Colonial Buenos Aires, 1776-1810," HAHR 59, no. 2 (1979): 260 n. 4
17. There is no unanimity with regard to the number of slaves. These are taken from John Lynch, Argentine Dictator: Juan Manuel de Rosas, 1829-1852 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 119
18. Allan J. Kuethe, Military Reform and Society in New Granada, 1773-1808 (Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 1978), 29
19. John Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions, 1808-1826, 2d ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986), 191
20. Christine Hünefeldt, Paying the Price of Freedom: Family and Labor Among Lima's Slaves, 1800-1854, trans. Alexandra Stern (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1994), 9
21. Guillermo Feliú Cruz, La abolición de la esclavitud en Chile: Estudio histórico y social, 2d ed. (Santiago: Ed. Universitaria, 1973), 32, 33
22. and P. Michael McKinley, Pre-Revolutionary Caracas: Politics, Economy and Society, 1777-1811 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985), 9-11, 22
23. For alternative figures, see Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848 (London: Verso, 1988), 334-35
24. See Nicholas P. Cushner, Lords of the Land: Sugar, Wine, and Jesuit Estates of Coastal Peru, 1600-1767 (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1980)
25. McKinley, Pre-Revolutionary Caracas, 22-23, 46-51, 55-57
26. William Frederick Sharp, Slavery on the Spanish Frontier: The Colombian Chocó, 1680-1810 (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1976), esp. chap. 7
27. Chaves, María Chiquinquirá Díaz, 10
28. Marta B. Goldberg and Silvia C. Mallo, "La población africana en Buenos Aires y su campaña: Formas de vida y de subsistencia (1750-1850)," Temas de Africa y Asia 2 (1993): 36, 37, 39, 46
29. On the revolutionary potential of slaves in America, see Peter M. Voelz, Slave and Soldier: The Military Impact of Blacks in the Colonial Americas (New York: Garland, 1993), 275, 277
30. and Eugene D. Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1979), 18-19
31. Manuel Lucena Salmoral, Sangre sobre piel negra: La esclavitud quiteña en el contexto del reformismo borbónico (Quito: Ed. Abya-Yala, 1994), chaps. 1, 2, 6
32. McKinley, Pre-Revolutionary Caracas, 122, 125
33. David Patrick Geggus, "Slave Resistance in the Spanish Caribbean in the Mid-1790s," in A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean, ed. David Barry Gaspar and David Patrick Geggus (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1997), 132-33, 136
34. For a discussion of slave rebellions and conspiracies in the circum-Caribbean area between 1789 and 1815, see David Patrick Geggus, "Slavery, War, and Revolution in the Greater Caribbean, 1789-1815," in Gaspar and Geggus, A Turbulent Time, esp. 46-49
35. There has been some debate over the source of this unrest: whether it should be traced to the presence of increased numbers of African versus American-born slaves, that is, to changes within the slaveholding societies, or to the spread of revolutionary ideas. Both can be seen to have been present in Spanish South America. For the debate, see Geggus, "Slave Resistance in the Spanish Caribbean," 131-32
36. Winthrop R. Wright, Café con Leche: Race, Class, and National Image in Venezuela (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1990), 25-26
37. Carlos M. Rama, "The Passing of the Afro-Uruguayans from Caste Society into Class Society," in Race and Class in Latin America, ed. Magnus Mörner (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1970), 33-34
38. Paulo de Carvalho Neto, El negro uruguayo, hasta la abolición (Quito: Ed. Universitaria, 1965), 95
39. See Frederick P. Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524-1650 (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1974), 154-56
40. and Carvalho-Neto, El negro uruguayo, 96
41. For example, slaves were used as auxiliary labor battalions for the Cuban forces in the 1760s and in the artillery, serving in the ammunition and storage sections. In late-eighteenth-century Florida they also served in the artillery and as sailors and rowers to transport supplies. None of these duties involved bearing arms. See Herbert S. Klein, "The Colored Militia of Cuba: 1568-1868," Caribbean Studies 6, no. 2 (1966): 20
42. Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1999), 206-7
43. Jane Landers also writes that Spaniards "employed free and enslaved Africans in local self-defense, as plantation and town militias, as coastal sentinels, and even as sailors on locally organized patrol boats," but her references are to the specific case of Cuba. See Jane Landers, "Africans in the Spanish Colonies," Historical Archaeology 31, no. 1 (1997): 89. The situation in the Spanish Caribbean and the northern borderlands may have been different from Spanish South America
44. The fact that the military was considered by some to be an institution reserved for the respected classes was a factor in this, as it was in the opposition to recruiting slaves. See Seth Meisel, "War, Economy, and Society in Post-Independence Córdoba, Argentina" (Ph.D. diss., Stanford Univ., 1998), 46-47
45. Voelz, Slave and Soldier, 118-21
46. For studies of the military reforms that also cover black recruitment, see Kuethe, Military Reform and Society
47. Lyle N. McAlister, The "Fuero Militar" in New Spain, 1764-1800 (Gainesville: Univ. of Florida Press, 1957)
48. Christon I. Archer, The Army in Bourbon Mexico, 1760-1810 (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1977)
49. Ben Vinson, "Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia Univ., 1998)
50. Allan J. Kuethe, Cuba, 1753-1815: Crown, Military, and Society (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1986)
51. Klein, "The Colored Militia of Cuba," 17-22
52. Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, chap. 9
53. and Leon G. Campbell, The Military and Society in Colonial Peru, 1750-1810 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1978)
54. George Reid Andrews, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1800-1900 (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1980), 94-95
55. For the tradition of freeing slaves who provided military service, see Sales, Sobre esclavos, 132-34. Examples can be found from as early as the conquest period
56. "Expediente formado por el negro Francisco, esclavo de Dn. José Alberto Calsena y Echevarria: reclamando su libertad," 1813, AGN-BA, Administrativos, leg. 29, exp. 984
57. and Mallo, "La libertad en el discurso," 136-37
58. Andrews, The Afro-Argentines, 42-44, 47-48
59. Johnson, "Manumission in Colonial Buenos Aires," 258-79
60. Jaime E. Rodríguez O., The Independence of Spanish America (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998), 86, 87, 117
61. José Apolinario Sauco, 1815, AGN-BA, Solicitudes militares, sala X-8-7-6
62. Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions, 198-99, 204-07
63. See Orlando Patterson, Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, vol. 1 of Freedom (New York: Basic Books, 1991), xiii-xvi
64. This seems a rather limited definition of "freedom," which, nevertheless, does not negate the relationship, particularly in this situation where individuals were seeking to free their countries and to justify that freedom. For an alternative concept of freedom, see Anthony McFarlane, Colombia before Independence: Economy, Society, and Politics under Bourbon Rule (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), 248
65. Gazeta Ministerial del Gobierno de Buenos Ayres, no. 71, 19 Sept. 1813, 448
66. Artigas to Junta, 27 Apr. 1811, AGN-BA, Representantes de la Junta, Castelli y Belgrano, Ejército del Norte y Banda Oriental, sala X-3-2-4
67. Artigas to Elío, 21 May 1811, Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain (hereafter cited as AGI), Buenos Aires 98
68. "Proclama a los habitantes de la Isla Margarita," 31 Aug. 1814, AGI, Caracas 825
69. and Gaceta Extraordinaria del Gobierno de Lima, 11 Mar. 1819, 142
70. Chile, Boletín de las leyes i decretos del gobierno, 1819-1820 (Santiago: Imp. Nacional, 1900), 273
71. Quoted in Simón B. O'Leary, Bolívar en el Perú (Caracas: Archivo General de la Nación, 1971), 45
72. AGN-BA, Solicitudes militares, 1818, sala X-10-9-5
73. Gazeta Ministerial de Buenos Ayres, no. 61, 30 June 1813, 135
74. El Triunfo del Callao (Lima), 16 June 1824
75. and Timothy E. Anna, The Fall of the Royal Government in Peru (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1979), 226
76. Copy of a letter of José González Llorense, 14 Apr. 1815, AGI, Santa Fé 747
77. Feliú Cruz, La abolición, 38-40
78. Argentina, Registro oficial de la República Argentina que comprende los documentos espedidos desde 1810 hasta 1872, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: La República, 1879), 1:194
79. and Peter Blanchard, Slavery and Abolition in Early Republican Peru (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1992), 7
80. Argentina, Registro oficial de la República Argentina, 1:168
81. Suplemento a la Gaceta Ministerial (Buenos Aires), 15 May 1812
82. See Argentina, Registro oficial de la República Argentina, 1:194, 213
83. Bolívar to Santander, 5 May 1820, in Cartas Santander- Bolívar 1820, 6 vols. (Bogotá: Biblioteca de la Presidencia de la República, 1988), 2:137
84. John V. Lombardi, The Decline and Abolition of Negro Slavery in Venezuela, 1820-1854 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing, 1971), 37-42
85. and Correo del Orinoco (Angostura), no. 116, 13 Oct. 1821
86. Rondeau to Junta, 13 May 1811, AGN-BA, Representantes de la Junta, Castelli y Belgrano, Ejército del Norte y Banda Oriental, sala X-3-2-4
87. and Pereda Valdés, El negro en el Uruguay, 107-8
88. AGN-BA, Guerra, Rescate de esclavos, 1813-1817, sala X-43-6-7
89. Blanchard, Slavery and Abolition, 11
90. The concept of nationhood was very weak in the new states, as Anthony McFarlane shows in "Identity, Enlightenment and Political Dissent in Late Colonial Spanish America," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series 7 (1998)
91. AGN-BA, Solicitudes militares, 1820, sala X-35-8-3
92. AGN-BA, Solicitudes civiles y militares, 1816, sala X-9-2-4
93. AGN-BA, Solicitudes militares, 1817, sala X-9-7-10
94. AGN-BA, Solicitudes militares, 1815, sala X-8-7-4
95. AGN-BA, Solicitudes militares, 1815, sala X-8-7-6
96. AGN-BA, Solicitudes militares, 1817, sala X-10-1-1
97. "Domingo-negro esclavo con causa contra Antonio Apirón," 1818, AGN-BA, Administrativos, leg. 29, exp. 986, sala IX-23-8-3
98. Townsend, "'Half My Body Free'," 112-18, and quote from pp. 115-16
99. "La morena Juliana García, esclava que fué de Don Pedro García, reclamando su libertad," AGN-BA, Administrativos, leg. 33, exp. 1179, sala IX-23-8-7
100. Lombardi, The Decline and Abolition of Negro Slavery, 46
101. ANE-Q, Esclavos, caja 22, 1818-1824, exp. 17
102. Lecuna and Bierck, Selected Writings of Bolívar, 2:512
103. See Gaceta de Buenos Aires, no. 42, 14 Feb. 1821, 182
104. See also AGN-BA, Solicitudes militares, 1824, sala X-13-4-8