Slavery In Latin America Essay example

“The new slavery flourishes where old rules, old ways of life break down” (Brazil 121). The old way of life is deteriorating; money is scarce. Now, people will do any type of work. The Brazilian slaves work in dangerous charcoal production plants called batterias. They work with little to no protection; the hot ovens leave the workers’ bodies covered in blistering burns. In the minds of the workers, there is nothing else to do but suffer through. The slavery in Brazil prospers because of the recruitment proccess and the isolated location of the batterias. However, efforts from human rights organizations have had positive effects on the modern day slavery.

Instead, the Latin Americans were auctioned off and forced into slavery. After taking the gold, ruling over the people, and forcing them into slavery, the Spanish did nothing to help out the people of Latin America.

When Europeans arrived along the West African coast, slavery already existed on the continent, however slavery in Africa and the brutal form of slavery that would develop in the Americas were completely different. African slavery was more like European serfdom. For example, in the Ashanti Kingdom of West Africa, slaves could marry, own property and even own slaves. And slavery ended after a certain number of years of servitude. Most importantly, African slavery was never passed from one generation to another, and it lacked the racist element that whites were masters and blacks were slaves.

Slaves in Spain were mostly Native Americans. New Spain valued Native Americans because they knew the land. The Native Americans knew the land so well that farming was easy for them. Not only did the Spanish enslave Native Americans but they also used some Africans for slave labor. The Spanish colonies eventually used African slaves only because the Natives often died from diseases. The same diseases the Europeans had brought over from England. Spain also had indentured servant who would work for a couple of years. In exchange for their work they would get food, clothing and a way to the new world. New France used Africans for slaves because they could get them in large amount. The French had many plantations that requires a lot of labor and because African slaves were cheap they had lots of them.

Before the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th cent., the Araucanians had long been in control of the land in the southern part of the region; in the north, the inhabitants were ruled by the Inca empire. Diego de Almagro, who was sent by Francisco Pizarro from Peru to explore the southern region, led a party of men through the Andes into the central lowlands of Chile but was unsuccessful (1536) in establishing a foothold there. In 1540, Pedro de Valdivia marched into Chile and, despite stout resistance from the Araucanians, founded Santiago (1541) and later established La Serena, Concepción, and Valdivia. After an initial period of incessant warfare with the natives, the Spanish

“Planter not only held the majority of slaves, but they controlled the most fertile land, enjoyed the highest incomes, and dominated the state and local offices and the leadership of both political parties” (Foner 411). There were fewer than forty-thousand families that possessed about twenty or more slaves that qualified them as planters. There were also fewer than two-thousand families owned about a hundred slaves or more. The ownership of slaves provided the route to wealth, status, and influence. Slavery was the profit-making system, and slave-owners kept a close watch on world priced for their products to invested in enterprises such as railroads and canals.

the American colonies. Lots of slaves died, the ones who survived were auctioned off in

Prior to its independence Latin America had been controlled by external forces for hundreds of years. To be freed of control from these outside interests did not in any way guarantee Latin America a return to the status quo. In fact, the inhabitants of Latin America had done very well in assimilating their in house controllers. They adopted European language, religion, color, and just about everything else that the European culture had to offer them. Although they were free to do as they please and run their own affairs in the global neighborhood as we know it, they struggled to create an entity for themselves. They embody too much of what is not native to their region, yet the people that used to represent their land 500 years earlier

Because certain forms of slavery had existed for centuries on the continent of Africa, Brazilian historians used to say that blacks imported from across the Atlantic were docile and ready to accept their new status as slaves. This assertion is based on the unwarranted assumption that was true of a limited area of Africa was typical of the continent as a whole.

Mainly demographics. In Latin America, namely Brazil, the slaves’ male to female ratio was quite large, in the South this ratio was about equal. Although Latin American slaves had a larger population of slaves being imported from Africa, the Southern United States had a higher number of birth, thus raising their numbers immensely. This led to the declining slave population in Latin America because the mortality rate was extremely high and the birth rate extremely low. “The average number of children born to an early nineteenth-century southern slave woman was 9.2—twice as many as in the West Indies.” The differences in the population held by slaves were quite different as well. In Latin America the norm seemed to be that wealthy landowners had working plantations but did not necessarily live on the plantations. This led to the appointment of paid managers, or overseers, being the one in charge of making sure the slaves performed the work needed to produce a profit, unlike their counterparts in the United States where majority of the landowners resided on the

Some five hundred years ago, ships began transporting millions of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. This massive population movement helped create the African Diaspora in the New World. Many did not survive the horrible ocean journey. Enslaved Africans represented many different peoples, each with distinct cultures, religions, and languages. Most originated from the coast or the interior of West Africa, between present-day Senegal and Angola. Other enslaved peoples originally came from Madagascar and Tanzania in East Africa

By 1750, about 200,000 slaves lived in the colonies and most of them in the south, where the warm climate and good soil permitted the great development of plantations such as rice, tobacco, sugar cane and cotton among others. Slaves therefore played a big role in these plantations working directly in the fields, though some others worked as servants craft workers, etc. In the northern colonies, slaves worked in factories, homes, and shipyards.

When the slaves first arrived in Brazil, they were sold as slaves in public auctions, as they were some kind of a merchandise. The merchants evaluated the strength of each one and also gave the value that each deserved. The strongest slaves could cost the double of the weak ones, and they were more often bought by the “senhores de engenho”, to serve as slave manpower on the Northeast.

However, the population was at a ratio of more women than men (due to the increase within the slave trade). The high demand for slaves cost the lives of many during slavery. For example, many slaves forcefully shipped across seas had a high mortality rate due to the harsh living quarters and lack thereof food and water. In addition to being shipped across seas, many Africans trapped within slavery would die after a few years working in the harsh environments where they were on plantations growing sugarcane and other various foods. Those who rebelled or ran away were known as maroons and they gathered within high vegetation or mountainous areas. Throughout the intermingling of slaves from various cultures, certain languages began to form that unified various words from European and African regions. Since the cost for slaves started to rise, many began to encourage slaves to form families and have kids. Lastly, of all the countries to abolish slavery the Saudia Arabia and Angola were the last at the date of

in the Caribbean, and eventually reached the southern coasts of America. The African natives were of all ages and sexes. Women usually worked in the homes cooking and cleaning, while men were sent out into the plantations to farm. Young girls would usually help in the house also and young boys would help in the farm by bailing hay and loading wagons with crops. They were shipped from Africa by the Europeans, "The Triangular Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade". This was an organized route where