LATIN AMERICA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 185
The record of Latin American slavery in the nineteenth century, it should benoted, does not support the thesis of some historians that cultural and religious
factors made Hispanic slavery inherently milder than the North American va-
riety. In its two main centers of Cuba and Brazil, under conditions of mounting
demand for Brazilian coffee and Cuban sugar and a critical labor shortage, ample
evidence exists of systematic brutality with use of the lash to make slaves work
longer and harder. The slaves responded with a resistance that varied from slow-
downs to fl ight to open rebellion—a resistance that contributed to the fi nal demise
of the institution.
Patriarchal family organization, highly ceremonial conduct, and leisurelylifestyle continued to characterize the landed aristocracy and Latin American
elites after independence. The kinship network of the large extended family ruled
by a patriarch was further extended by the institution of compadrazgo,which es-
tablished a relationship of patronage and protection on the part of an upper-class
godparent toward a lower-status godchild and his or her parents. The lower-class
family members in turn were expected to form part of the godparent’s following
and to be devoted to the godparent’s interests.
As in colonial times, great landowners generally resided most of the time inthe cities, leaving their estates in the charge of administrators (but it must not
be assumed that they neglected to scrutinize account books or were indifferent
to considerations of profi t and loss). From the same upper class came a small mi-
nority of would-be entrepreneurs who challenged the traditional agrarian bias of
their society and, in the words of Richard Graham, were “caught up by the idea
of capitalism, by the belief in industrialization, and by a faith in work and prac-
ticality.” Typical of this group was the Brazilian Viscount Mauá, who created a
banking and industrial empire between 1850 and 1875 against the opposition
of traditionalists. Mauá’s empire collapsed, however, partly because the objective
conditions for capitalist development in Brazil had not fully matured and partly
because of offi cial apathy and even disfavor. The day of the entrepreneur had
not yet come; the economic history of Latin America in the nineteenth century
is strewn with the wrecks of abortive industrial projects. These fi ascos also repre-
sented defeats for the capitalist mentality and values.
After mid-century, with the gradual rise of a neocolonial order based on theintegration of the Latin American economy into the international capitalist sys-
tem, the ruling class, although retaining certain precapitalist traits, became more
receptive to bourgeois values and ideals. An Argentine writer of the 1880s noted
that “the latifundist no longer has that semibarbarous, semifeudal air; he has be-
come a scientifi c administrator, who alternates between his home on the estate,
his Buenos Aires mansion, and his house in Paris.” In fact, few estancieros or
hacendados became “scientifi c administrators.” They preferred to leave the task