Transcription
It's important to know a little bit about Colonial slavery under the Spanish so we can see some of the similarities and also some of the differences to that of the English and also so we can get inside of the mind of these Spanish conquerors and understand their strategies of domination. And so to do that, we're going to read from this book here called Race in North America by social Anthropologist Dr. Audrey Smedley. And so let's go in here and turn to page 139 where she writes this:
Unlike the English settlers, the Spanish had conquered lands in New Spain, Mexico, and Peru with armies of men and established an elaborate colonial bureaucracy that eventually controlled huge territories encompassing large numbers of indigenous peoples. Now, understand that the English colonizers first came and settled the area, and they conducted trade with the natives. They also created these treaties and so on and so forth, and they were more subtle and snakelike and slithering in conquering strategy in the beginning, right? But the Spanish, on the other hand, they got right to it and they brought out their armies, the Bible, right, and all the other tools necessary to start the immediate domination of these other people.
And so, Dr. Smedley writes that they had an elaborate colonial bureaucracy, which was a structured system of government which had a certain set of rules and regulations and also had a hierarchy where the crown was at the very top, ruling from afar over there in Europe, sitting back thinking and strategizing all day. And then, beneath the crown, they had what was called Viceroys, who were the highest-ranking officials who acted on behalf of the crown while they were in the New World. And then there was others that were underneath them, which all functioned together in a systematic approach to not only colonize the vast regions of land but also to colonize the minds of the inhabitants thereof.
Here we go. Under instructions from the crown and the mandates of the Catholic Church, they set about immediately not only to impose their laws on the heterogeneous population within the regions under their control but to convert the Indians to their religion and monitor their moral behavior. Did you hear that? They came in there and got to work immediately. And what did they do? The same thing all these other colonizers did. Come in there, set up rules and regulations, using the tool of the law. And how does that tool function? It creates these imaginary boundaries that govern the behavior of humans. It tells people what they can and also what they cannot do, what is and what is not acceptable within any particular society. So, human laws, they're ideas that's created within the world of imagination, and they're flexible and subject to change and also subject to disobedience, which is where the penalties come in as an act of enforcement.
And this is one of the reasons why they brought the military over there with them to act as an enforcing agent for the laws, right? Because the laws, they're not like natural laws, they're human-made laws, and the human has to impose artificial penalties on them for breaking them. And that European hot, fiery weaponry, that's one of the things that they used to keep law and order. And that must get pointed at somebody's head will keep somebody thinking twice about breaking any of these more severe laws. So, so they came, they established the law. And what else did they do? Immediately, they started taking over the mind and converting people into Christians, right? And most of this was done by force, by the use of the musket to usurp the mind. And this is the only reason why Latin America is Christianized the way it is today. The only reason it's not because they found some truth about Jesus that was so appealing that they voluntarily dropped what it is that they were doing, their belief system, and picked this up. That's not the case. Their ancestors, many of them, were forced to accept this. And then, once they accepted it and internalized it, they began making miniature copies of themselves, right, when they had kids. And that's the process that has largely continued over the centuries. And so, we have law and religion being immediately established by the colonial Spanish conquerors.
Now, let's keep going. Their primary aim as conquerors, however, was to exploit the wealth in gold, silver, and precious stones so abundant in the Aztec and Inca worlds. So, these material goods were the goals, and everything else was the tools that they deemed necessary to assist in achieving that goal. Here we go. Cortez set out to conquer Mexico in 1519, and within a decade, Pizarro formed a company in Panama to explore the wealth of Peru. According to Frederick Bowser, blacks figured in all the expeditions undertaken by the company between 1524 and 1528. Uh oh. Those who they named Los Negros, or black people, they had a role in this as well, and we're going to see their role as we keep going.
In 1534, Pedro de Alvarado sailed from Guatemala with 200 Africans in his company to claim some Peruvian territory. After the conquest of the Incas, when the followers of Pizarro and Alvarado came into conflict and civil war ensued, blacks were important in the battles on both sides. And so, the civil war between Pizarro and Alvarado was due to an internal power struggle between these two conquerors, and the blacks fought on both sides. Let's keep reading.
Even more significant was the role played by skilled Africans in the supply of the royal army. Black artisans were employed to manufacture harquebuses, swords, and lances, and an African woman was commissioned to supply the force with rosaries. These first Africans to come to the New World, having been brought from the Iberian Peninsula, were already Hispanicized, that is, acquainted with the Spanish language and culture. Although most were probably slaves, some were free men and women serving as retainers and employees of the conquistadors or church officials. When Africans served outstandingly in battles or scouts, they were often given their freedom along with land and other spoils of war, much as under Old World slavery. Bowser claims that Africans in Peru profited by the free and easy atmosphere of the conquest period to gain their freedom. Many more, he points out, came as free men on their own. They soon became an important component of coastal towns. All of this suggests that in the early years of colonization, the lifestyle that developed in Latin America was much more like that of the Old World ports and cities, including the ease with which the individual slaves could purchase or attain their freedom by virtue of their services.
Initially, it was the Indians whom the Spanish planned to use as slave labor in the mines and in food cultivation and provisioning. Colonial settlers everywhere applied the argument of the conquest of indenes in a just war to justify their actions, much as their Northern counterparts would later do. And in this just war, it was said to be sanctioned by God, and they used it as a tool to justify their conquest. And they convinced themselves that it was a necessary thing to do because they were bringing Jesus over to a barbaric people, when it was the Spanish who were in fact acting like the barbarians. And so, this stuff is crazy when you really sit back and you think about it, right? You think about the mind games and the tricks that they were using to just find a way to accumulate wealth.
Now, let's keep going. But within decades, the decline of the Indian population from disease and maltreatment by their Spanish overlords became disturbing to the Spanish crown and threatening to the labor supply. By 1550, the crown had outlawed Indian slavery. Although subsequent patterns of wage labor using the encomienda system, by which Indian districts or provinces had to provide laborers, and the organization of large haciendas reduced most remaining Indians to impoverished peasantry under the nominal protection of the crown. So, after wiping out nearly all of the indigenous people and then outlawing the enslavement of them, who was going to be used as the source of labor? Was it going to be the conquerors who were going to get out there in the blazing heat and do all of the hard physical work? Let's find out.
As Indian populations declined, a growing demand for labor resulted in decisions to import more Africans who had already demonstrated their viability as workers in tropical zones. Uh oh, get ready, because now they have the Africans on the hit list. And why would they think to import people from Africa? She just told us, because they already demonstrated their ability to work in these tropical, hot, and human environments, right? And on top of that, over there in West Africa, they were already selling lots of people in that region as slaves over there in what is called the trans-Saharan slave trade, particularly in Muslim empires like that of Songhai and Mali. And so, this gave the opportunity for the Spanish to get their greasy hands on some African slaves. Let's keep reading.
Beginning about 1518, the crown allowed slaves to be imported directly from Africa. These formed a new category of slaves, bozales, who initially spoke no Spanish and were not yet acculturated to the European way of life. Think about this. After the establishment of the African Atlantic trade, Peru and Mexico received the bulk of the slaves brought over during the first two centuries. It was in these territories that the dominant patterns of New World colonial slavery were first established. The numbers of African slaves increased steadily throughout the first century and much more dramatically after 1580, when the Spanish and Portuguese Empires were united under Philip II, and Spanish ships became directly involved in the slave trade.
Colonization and interaction among the Spanish, African, and Indians differed in many ways from the patterns later established in the English colonies. And this is important because although the English started late and they were slow in the game of enslaving Africans, they eventually developed a slave system that surpassed everyone out there. Let's keep reading.
Spanish efforts to govern and control the two major viceroyalties with capitals in Lima and Mexico City entailed strategies that either attempted to keep ethnically distinct populations separated or pitted some groups against others. Whenever Spanish officials dealt with incidents involving Indians, for example, they were always accompanied with their black slaves, whom they armed. In addition, the Spanish in both areas frequently passed laws that attempted to prevent contact between the bozales and Indians in order to insulate the latter from alien and sometimes heretical, such as Muslim, African influence and to preclude any possible unity among them, which was a wise thing to do in the eyes of the colonizer.
All conquered regions came under the direct control of the colonial administration, involving both church and state, and the administrative bureaucracy was spread widely and thinly over all territories. This meant that in towns, mining settlements, agriculture, plantations, and rural districts, a Spanish minority governed an increasingly heterogeneous society. And heterogeneous, meaning a diverse society, and in this case, it was with a mixture of natives, negros, and mulattos being ruled over by this small Spanish minority.
Here we go. The social structure that Latin rulers envisioned and tried to achieve was one in which clear status differences between the visibly distinct populations could be retained to facilitate the organization and efficient governance of the colonies, which was another wise strategy from the perspective of the conquerors. Why? Because there were already visible differences, and so it just made sense to capitalize off of those differences and to use them as indicators of status, right? It just makes sense because it lends itself to that type of stratification. And so, it was a very effective way to structure a society for the purpose of domination, right? And what they envisioned, it worked very well, although they were not nearly as good as the English came to be. Let's keep reading.
Their vision followed the model of estates that had been developed in Spain under the Catholic Kings, in which a system of castas distinguished Jews, Muslims, and Christians. The Casta system was transmitted to the New World colonies, but ultimately, the term itself came to be used to specify people of mixed blood: the mestizos, mulattos, zambos, African Indians, and various subsequent mixtures among these. The social structure was further complicated by class and status divisions and internal rankings within the European, Indian, African, and mixed groupings. A variety of civil laws were passed to keep the Africans, Indians, and mixed bloods apart. And for what was it? Because they believed that these people coming together was something naturally wrong to do? No, it's because they wanted to retain physical differences. Why? So the status could be easily recognized by those physical identifiers, right? That's all that these colonial systems were about, right? They're strictly about strategies of domination, that's it, that's all that's coming out of there. And one of these strategies was keeping the groups with obvious physical differences as separate, right, which is an obvious thing for them to do when you're trying to dominate people.
And so, what Dr. Smedley is saying, that this is what they envisioned, but did it work out that way? Let's see. They were often separated into distinct residential areas and, to some extent, by kinds of occupation open to them. Sanctuary rules placing prohibitions on dress, occupations, access to military, universities, and hospitals, and restrictions on marriage were repeatedly promulgated. But efforts to enforce these laws were ineffectual or only weak attempts. And I wonder why? Because both the Spanish and their slaves were predominantly male, and the slaves identified with the Spanish as conquerors. Both turned to Indian women for sexual partners. Uh oh. The human pleasures and desires began to take over both the Spanish and Los Negros, right? Both of them wanted private partnership with the Indian woman.
Here we go. In Mexico, Palmer (1976) relates frequent complaints were lodged throughout the 16th century against Africans who absconded with Indian women and who often mistreated and intimidated the Indian men with whom they worked in the mines on haciendas. Similar processes took place in Peru. Blacks assumed a position of superiority over Indians and often forced the latter to serve them. Now, haven't I told you before that these character traits can be expressed by anyone with any skin color, right? We've talked about this before. Now, look who we have here. Los Negros, or the blacks, being puffed up and forcing them to serve them, according to this account. Now, there's cases with the natives doing the same thing. So, you have to understand that these are human traits, and they're latent within all humans, and they find expression in certain circumstances.
Now, let's keep reading. The crown imposed harsh penalties on Africans who mistreated Indians, attempted to prevent sexual relationships between slaves and Indian women, and tried to bar blacks from carrying arms. The government appointed an Indian agent, Defensor de Indios, to protect the Indians and prevent contact with black slaves. Despite official government policies, none of these numerous efforts at social control worked. The African slaves preferred to mate with or marry Indian women because their children would then be free. And Spanish men exercised their dominance as conquerors by mating with both Indian women and their female African slaves.
Now, look what we have going on here, right? This sexual intermingling between the different populations began early and continued right through the colonial period and beyond, following customs very much like Old World slavery. On occasion, intermarriage with Indians was encouraged by the crown, such as when Spanish men were pressured to establish strategic marriages with high-status Indian women. And what was the strategy behind doing this? To strategically position the Spanish men in these indigenous populations, right? So they could be used as an influence and a source of control over these groups. That's one instance where this would make sense. Let's keep reading.
On other occasions, local attempts were made to prevent the mixture of peoples because of the confusion of status that resulted, which we already talked about. But none of the Latin colonies passed laws, as did North Americans, strictly prohibiting intermarriage on pain of legal penalties, which is another one of the major differences between these Latin colonies and that of the English. The church was responsible for more than a few marriages, as it periodically forced Spanish men to legitimize their unions and their children by Indian, mestizo, and mulatto women. As in the Old World, marriage was considered a normal state for men and women. Colonial laws permitted slaves to marry, while both custom and the Catholic religion pressured slave owners to recognize such marriages.
Well before the 18th century, according to Leon Campbell, miscegenation had caused racial lines in Peru and elsewhere to become hopelessly blurred. And miscegenation is what they call race mixing. But it was not race that was blurred, it was the biophysical variation that the Spanish had tried to use to structure a society in a hierarchy of social categories. And so, basically, it became much more difficult to physically distinguish between the populations in Peru. Campbell asserts the hierarchy placed Spaniards on top, mestizos next, then Negros, and below them, the large mass of Indians who retained much of their traditional culture and communities. And so, this is one of the few times where you're going to find that the Negro was placed at the very bottom. Instead, it was the one who the Europeans called the Indians who were at the very bottom of this pit.
Here we go. With the confounding of physical distinctions, new social criteria for signifying status had to be adopted. This allowed for a certain fluidity in the social hierarchy, so that some wealthy castas could purchase certificates of whiteness, and children could be registered at birth in higher social strata for a fee. Wealth and or occupation alone was often the catalyst of change in Casta identity and further complicated the social status of mixed groups. Moreover, some who were phenotypically recognizable as white also sank in status as their fortunes declined, right down into the pit they went, right? It didn't matter if they were white phenotypically, what they call, they were going down.
Here we go. An important feature of these societies was the number of Spanish or high-status men who recognized their children by Indian and African-descended women. Bowser notes that sexual contact between Spanish men and African women was widespread and persistent throughout the colonial period, right? The freak off was happening. These preferences of Spanish males for women were observed early in Spain. Their children were frequently freed, often provided education and or training, bequeathed estates or some form of wealth, and permitted to hold significant positions in the colonial hierarchy. In a process of whitening, some mestizos and mulattos were allowed to inherit the social status of their European fathers, despite the even greater burden of illegitimacy. In some cases, whiteness, or being of pure Spanish ancestry, because that symbolized the conquerors, represented the pinnacle of the social system. You see that in both Mexico and Peru. Whiteness was the social category that provided numerous privileges and advantages, and families in this numerically small upper crust continued to preserve as much of their declared purity of blood as possible. And so, they linked the idea of whiteness to status and advantages, and as a result, they conditioned the rest of the society to aspire to be like this, right? To get that status. They created this new bubble of consciousness to trap the people's attention and personal aspirations into.
Let's keep reading. But it is clear that the elite assimilated considerable numbers of mixed persons. At the same time, the great masses of indigenous people absorbed both Spanish genes and those of the negro population, so that in most of Peru and Mexico, the combination of distinctive African negroid physical characteristics virtually disappeared as they were blended into the dominant mestizo population. Similar processes took place in Brazil, where a genetically mixed population soon came to predominate, particularly in the northern state of Bahia. Both Donald Pearson and Carl Daler describe a colonial society sensitive to the multifarious intermixtures of people and offering special benefits and higher status to mulattos. The mulatto escape hatch, as Daler called it, allowed those of mixed backgrounds to function in interstitial areas of the economy, to have training and skills not available to freed blacks, and to achieve levels of political and social status closer to that of whites. So, not all the way down in the pit with the blacks, but still not all the way up there with the whites, right? In the middle, a nice comfortable spot for a lot of people that that is acceptable for a lot of folks out there.
Here we go. In all of Latin America, the European colonist not only recognized the intermixture of people but allocated distinct names to the various combinations and attempted to utilize their gradation within the social structure. Now, who was doing the naming? It was the European conquerors who understood the importance of creating classifications for the purpose of domination. The people who they called mestizos and mulattos, these people didn't originally call themselves that, but they learned to function under that identity, which gave life to it and made it a reality under the colonial social structure. Let's keep reading.
Rank often came to depend on to what degree of Spanish or Portuguese ancestry was manifest in one's phenotype. Even though early in the conquest period, negative connotations were associated with castas, primarily for their supposed illegitimacy. The social hierarchy, however, was a complex one, not easily fitted within the parameters familiar to North Americans. Prejudice and discrimination against individuals with rich skins, which reflected their slave ancestry, characterized all of the Latin colonies in various forms and intensities. The value hierarchy ensured the persistence of color preferences, which were exacerbated in the postcolonial period. Black, Indian, and white, and every mixture among them, became not racial classifications, but synonyms of individual social rank. As a consequence, before the end of the colonial period in the 19th century, some degree of fluidity had allowed mixed persons to achieve high status, wealth, and even fame, while poor whites declined in status. And so, they were getting dragged down into the pit because they were not keeping up financially with the idea of whiteness. And this is a very different system than what was established over here by the English in North America.
And so, the English, they implemented an idea very different than that. They made sure that the poorest white person still retained more value than the wealthiest negro or Indian, right? That's how they set it up. Let's keep going. As Emilia Viotti da Costa and others have revealed, the society was in fact structured according to criteria of wealth, rank, color, and legal status. Da Costa further argues that in Brazil, money and status could change black, or at least mulatto, to white. Think about this stuff that's happening. Look at this. In none of these Latin areas was there a stigma attached to elite individuals or families for having had African ancestors, although recognition of such ancestry declined with increasing interactions with North Americans in the 20th century.
In summary, the documented evidence from a variety of sources on Latin America suggests that whereas minute physical variations and intermixtures were recognized and utilized to create an ideology of social inequality, they were not homogenized and translated into specific, exclusive, and distinct groupings. And even the names and categories invented to try to represent every possible ancestral combination were not associated explicitly with stereotyped behavior or institutionalized as dogma about innateness. Meaning, they didn't go to the extreme with creating these extra wild philosophies about people being naturally inferior or innately beast-like, right? Like they did over here in North America in reference to the Negro and the natives. And so, the Spanish definitely did take the mind, let's understand that for sure. But they didn't completely create an environment where every ounce of inferiority would be expressed in a group of people. Now, that's not to say that people with rich brown skin didn't develop an inferiority complex over there in those areas because they in fact did. Right? A lot of them did. But there are levels to this inferiority complex, and the deeper depths of the pit, only the Negro consciousness constructed in America has experienced that. But let's continue reading.
The continued reproduction of genetically mixed people ensured that easy boundaries could not be drawn on physical traits alone, and individuals shifted about with various social strata on the basis of criteria other than what would have been considered race in North America. Instead, the criteria were markedly varied and included education, social class, family background, occupation, and wealth, as well as color and physiognomy. Moreover, as da Costa also tells us, in Brazil, blacks, slave or free, had a wide variety of personalities reflected in literature and in the minds of whites. Their image was never relegated to the [ __ ] ornat that dominated white minds in 19th century North America. You see that? Take that in and understand it very well.
And also understand that the Spanish, although they were very good conquerors, they never reached the level of the conquering ability of the English, right? They just weren't on the same level. There's levels to the conquering. The Spanish, they were a little bit more lenient, and they also incorporated some of the Old World slavery ideas, which the English, they did not. The Spanish, they also allowed for some form of social mobility and flexibility within their system of domination. They weren't as rigid as the English were, right? Which could be looked at as a weakness when we're dealing with the domain of conquering, right? But nevertheless, they still accomplished their goals, right? What are their goals? Taking over mass amounts of land, extracting wealth, getting free labor, and taking over the minds of people. Understand. And so, hopefully, this video has shed some light on the subject and has given you something to think about, right, as you find your way on the path. And so, I want to thank you for watching all the way until the end. My name is Brooklyn St. Michael, and I'll see you in the Free World.