116 CHAPTER 5 STATE, CHURCH, AND SOCIETY
to see them dead as a result of such great
inhumanity.By the end of the eighteenth century, some 9.5
million slaves had been brought to the Americas.
Especially dense concentrations were found in Bra-
zil and in the Caribbean area, which were domi-
nated by plantation economies. Historians have
hotly disputed the relative mildness or severity of
Latin American black slavery. Recent studies gen-
erally support the view that the tempo of economic
activity was decisive in determining the intensity
of slave exploitation and the harshness of planta-
tion discipline. Certainly manumission of slaves
was more frequent in the Hispanic than in the Eng-
lish, Dutch, or French colonies, but it is likely that
the unprofi tability of slavery under certain condi-
tions contributed more than cultural traditions
to this result. Whatever the reasons, by the close
of the colonial period, slaves formed a minority of
the total black and mulatto population. Whatever
their treatment, slaves retained the aspiration for
freedom. Fear of slave revolts haunted the Spanish
ruling class, and slaves frequently fl ed from their
masters. Some of them formed independent com-
munities in remote jungles or mountains that suc-
cessfully resisted Spanish punitive expeditions.
This stubborn attachment of the black slaves
to freedom, refl ected in frequent revolts, fl ights,
and other forms of resistance, suggests that the de-
bate over the relative mildness or severity of black
slavery in Latin America evades the main issue:
the dehumanizing character of even the “mildest”
slavery. Brought from Africa by force and violence,
cut off from their kindred peoples, the uprooted Af-
ricans were subjected in their new environment to
severe deculturation. For reasons of security, slave
owners preferred to purchase slaves of diverse eth-
nic origins, language, and religious beliefs, and de-
liberately promoted ethnic disunity among them.
The economic interest of the planters dictated that
the great majority of the imported slaves should
be young, between the ages of fi fteen and twenty.
This contributed to the process of deculturation,
for very few aged blacks, the repositories of ethnic
lore and traditions in African societies, came in the
slaveships.
The scarcity of women (the proportion of fe-
males in the slave population on Cuban planta-
tions between 1746 and 1822 ranged between 9
and 15 percent) distorted the lives of the slaves,
creating a climate of intense sexual repression and
family instability. The church might insist on the
right of the slave to proper Christian marriage and
the sanctity of the marriage, but not until the
nineteenth century was the separate sale of hus-
bands, wives, and children forbidden in the Spanish
colonies. The right of the master to sell or remove
members of a male slave’s family and his free sex-
ual access to slave women made it diffi cult if not
impossible for a slave to have a normal family life.
The world of the slave plantation, which resembled
a prison rather than a society, left to independent
Latin America a bitter heritage of racism, discrimi-
nation, and backwardness, problems that in most
Latin American countries still await full solution.
Because of harsh treatment, poor living condi-
tions, and the small number of women in the slave
population, its rate of reproduction was very low.
Miscegenation between white masters and slave
women, on the other hand, produced a steady
growth of the mulatto population. Free blacks and
mulattos made important contributions to the co-
lonial economy, both in agriculture and as artisans
of all kinds. Free blacks and mulattos also were re-
quired to pay tribute.LIFE IN THE CITY AND ON THE HACIENDA
In addition to indigenous communities, social life
in the Spanish colonies had two major centers: the
colonial city and the hacienda, or large landed es-
tate. Unlike its European counterpart, the colonial
city as a rule did not arise spontaneously as a cen-
ter of trade or industry but developed in planned
fashion to serve the ends of Spanish settlement and
administration of the surrounding area. Some-
times it was founded on the ruins of an ancient
capital, as in the case of Mexico City. More often
it was founded on a site chosen for its strategic or
other advantages, as in the case of Lima. By con-
trast with the usually anarchical layout of Spanish
cities, the colonial town typically followed the grid-
iron plan, with a large central plaza fl anked by the