Daily Life In Colonial Latin America (22 page)

Labor Discipline on the Plantation

One of the assumptions of the Brazilian slaveholder was
that physical coercion was necessary to keep the slaves working. In the absence
of any institution charged with overseeing the slaveholder’s choice of coercive
methods, he was free to apply extreme forms of physical punishment and even
death with virtual impunity. The authorities assumed that an owner would not
lightly cause the loss of his investment, but while this concern may at times
have stayed the owner’s hand, it was balanced by the desire to set an example
that would keep the fear of punishment alive. Many plantation owners and
administrators viewed terrorizing the workers as the only way a small number of
white owners could control a much larger number of black enslaved workers. Even
plantations run by religious orders relied on fear to keep the workers working.
One 18th-century writer offered the opinion that the Portuguese peasant treated
his oxen better than the Brazilian slaveholder treated his workers.

When one slave who sued for freedom due to her master’s
abuse won her freedom in court, Bahia’s governor refused to enforce the decision,
claiming the case set a dangerous precedent for other abused workers. There is
considerable evidence of the dehumanization that was an essential
characteristic of slavery. Frequent references are made to castration as a form
of punishment of black men whether enslaved or free; this punishment does not
seem to have been applied to workers of other races for their transgressions.
In a case from 1737, a slaveholder who had one of his enslaved workers “hung .
. . by his testicles” until dead escaped punishment because he was from a
wealthy and important family. He also killed two enslaved workers of a
different owner and a freedman because they had injured one of his oxen. 

Punishment could backfire however. A disgruntled worker
might cause problems by taking out his vengeance on the product. Workers’
sabotage, not to mention frequent instances of running away, discussed in a
later chapter, delayed the production process or ruined the sugar. For this
reason, most plantations adopted an approach that mixed punishments with
rewards. Incentives sometimes turned out to be a stronger motivator than the
whip. These incentives usually took the form of distributing
garapa,
a
form of alcohol made from sugar, or assigning piecework that allowed the
diligent worker to finish his task while there was still time to pursue his own
activities. Some workers, especially the more highly skilled, might receive a
small wage, or a worker might be given a tip for running an errand. The
opportunity to sell the excess product from a garden plot also served as an
incentive. The possibility of rising on the occupational ladder was an
incentive, the threat of demotion another. The strongest incentive may have
been the possibility of buying one’s freedom, along with hope of manumission.
One Jesuit observed a direct connection between a slave’s hope of gaining
freedom and how well he worked.

Plantation Owners

Any study of labor in the colonial period must devote some
attention to the work of those who did not do manual labor, but rather other
kinds of work. In much of Latin America, the most important people in society
were the owners of large estates. In order to understand the planter class and
its work, the plantation must be seen as a business run by a group of owners,
the planter family. There was no such thing as a personal decision that did not
affect the business. All decisions were business decisions, and every family
decision was organized around the imperative of keeping the business alive,
marching into the future. As one historian has written, “Property and family
were intimately entwined in the planters’ minds.” 

It may be impossible to get an accurate idea of the daily
life of the planters in the colonial period, but certain conclusions suggest
themselves. In the Iberian Peninsula, the nobility was made up of landholders
who ruled over many dependents, so this social structure served as the model on
which the American colonists fashioned themselves. The Brazilian planters have
been called “men of new wealth seeking traditional forms of social
legitimacy.”  Frequently, they lived in town where they could enjoy the comfort
and social life of their equals. In Brazil, the wealthiest planters lived
mostly in the city of Salvador, while their engenhos were located farther in
the interior of Bahia where they could be reached in a couple of hours by boat.

The lives of the planter families were ruled by public
opinion. They built an honorable reputation through their faithfulness in
meeting government, church, and military obligations. A good engenho owner ran
his business honestly, controlled his workers, paid his bills, equitably
divided his gains with those who provided cane to his mill, and paid his
skilled workers a fair wage in a timely fashion. While he did not do manual
labor, his work was his life and vice versa. The way he conducted his family
affairs reflected on his reputation as a businessman, and the respect he
commanded in business raised or lowered his family on the social ladder.

The planter families were fashioned on the patriarchal
model widely accepted by the colonists and their descendants. The contract in
this model—whether followed or not—was that the father/ master managed the
family in the best interests of all its members, and they repaid him with
gestures of respect and obedience. Dependents, children, and slaves regularly
sought and received the blessing of the head of the family. He was also
responsible for disciplining family members and for defending the family honor,
in part by conducting his own affairs in an honorable way. This was the context
within which female seclusion was enforced. Chaste women were a sign of a
well-ordered home, and this order was imposed from the top: “The honor of the
house was tied to the honor of the women.” 

As we saw in the chapter on marriage and the family,
however, the patriarchal model was violated in various ways. In spite of
society’s rules, regulations, and expectations, at times the head of the
engenho family was a woman, usually a widow who had inherited that position. In
Brazil in 1817, women owned 10 percent of farms supplying cane to one engenho,
and 15 percent of all engenhos had women owners.

Others among the planter class were of Jewish origins, in
spite of the prohibition against New Christians in the colonies and the best efforts
of the Inquisition to locate them and send them back to Europe. Often they had
been merchants, a group not held in high esteem in 15th- and 16th-century Spain
and Portugal, who had found their way to the Americas in spite of the
restrictions against New Christians. Once in the Americas, they employed the
capital gained in commerce to buy land and sometimes accumulated an amount
sufficient to set up a mill of their own. Toward the end of the 16th century, a
synagogue was discovered on one engenho. A brief period of rule by the more
tolerant Dutch over much of northeastern Brazil (1630–1654) revealed a more
widespread Jewish presence, as fear of the Inquisition was temporarily
suspended. But a vicious campaign against Portuguese merchants suspected of secretly
practicing Judaism in Peru during the 1630s ensured that many of their
counterparts in Dutch-controlled areas of Brazil departed when Portuguese
Catholics regained control over the area, bringing the Inquisition with them.

Cane Farmers

Just below the planter class were the
lavradores,
or
farmers. Because of the importance of sugarcane in the Brazilian economy, the
cane farmers ranked highest among the lavradores, followed closely by tobacco
farmers. In Brazil, the cane farmers played a crucial role in sugar production
since engenho owners relied not only on the sugar produced on their own
estates, but also on cane supplied to the mill by the lavradores. Income from
sugarcane was normally divided equally between the lavrador who had supplied
the cane and the engenho owner, but because a good supply of cane was the key
to a profitable season, some lavradores were well positioned to bargain with
the mill owner for extra benefits. These benefits might include the loan of
slave labor or the best position on the grinding schedule. Often cane-growing
lands were rented to lavradores by the engenho owners with the lavrador paying
his rent by turning over one-quarter to one-third of his half of the crop to
the owner. In this case, the lavrador would end up with an income that was only
one-sixth to one-quarter of all the cane he produced.

Engenho owners normally preferred renting their land to
selling it outright and thereby reducing the size of the estate. The mill owners
also tried to avoid granting long-term rental contracts, since lavradores on
long-term contracts tended to behave as if they owned the land. If the contract
was not renewed, they might refuse to leave the land, preventing new renters
from taking possession of it. Without title to the land they farmed, however,
the lavrador families had no long-term stability apart from maintaining good
relations with the engenho owners. In the 17th century, the terms of the lease
usually ranged from 6 to 18 years, tending to increase as the century wore on.
Some leases were as long as 50 years, or even perpetual (
emphyteusis)
,
with stipulations, for example, that the cane be supplied only to the owner of
the engenho that leased the land, or that another engenho could not be put
there.

Even when their cane was under contract, lavradores often
sold their cane to other mills, running the risk that the landowner might
invoke the law against them and even call out his private armed force to seize
their cane or remove them from the property. Different leasing arrangements
defined the social structure within the lavrador group; there were people of
considerable wealth and power, generally holding their lands without
restriction, followed by those who owned their land with restrictions, and
finally by sharecroppers and tenant farmers. The last group had at best a
precarious hold on the land they worked.

Many of the lavradores owned slaves but also participated
in manual labor on their farms. In the early 18th century in the area around
Bahia, lavradores owned oxen and carts to move the cane to the mill and to
provide wood for the milling process, and a small workforce of between 1 and 40
slaves, with 10 being the average. At times, the mill owners lent field hands
to the lavradores who were under contract with the engenho to ensure a steady
supply of cane for the engenho.

The social origins of the lavradores who occupied the upper
levels of that social category were the same as those of the engenho owners. In
early colonial Brazil, nearly all lavradores were white. At the turn from the
17th to the 18th century, there was only 1
pardo
(person of color) in
400 Bahian growers. By the end of the 18th century, however, almost one-sixth
of the lavradores were people of color. Some lavradores were women, mostly
widows; some were priests, merchants—sometimes New Christians—and militia
officers, government functionaries, and judges with aspirations to owning an
engenho. Some of the lavradores were religious orders, and in some cases, these
orders went on to establish an engenho and enter the milling business.

The owner of the engenho wielded power over the lavradores
since he might refuse to mill a particular batch of cane before it went sour,
thereby ruining the lavrador, or he could short change the lavrador when
returning to him his portion of the sugar or payment for it. The engenho owners
and their families viewed the lavrador families as dependents with obligations
to the mill owners’ families. The bigger and more successful owners tended to
be more dictatorial, often treating their sharecroppers and tenants like
servants. For their part, the lavradores could also cause problems for the mill
owners by not supplying wood and cane on schedule.

The most important lavradores aspired to become engenho
owners. They shared the political, social, and economic interests of the mill
owners to a great extent. They also relied on the same inputs: slave labor,
oxen, and carts. Since the lavradores used their status as a stepping stone to
mill ownership, they viewed their interests as similar to those of the planters
rather than to those of the groups below them in the social hierarchy. The
lavradores did not promote social change or challenge the sugar economy
hierarchy. As the colonial period continued, the mill owners tended to solidify
their power, while the lavradores tended to grow weaker. The larger planters,
defended by the armed men on their payroll, found numerous ways to cheat the
lavradores, who had little recourse but to accept the deal offered by their
more powerful neighbors.

Wage Labor in the Economy of Slavery

Occupations

One function of wage labor in plantation society was to
foster the hope among the enslaved that they might climb the ladder of upward
mobility and join the wage workers. Various kinds of skilled workers were hired
at the mill. The jobs of sugar master, kettleman, and boatman or cartman were
often filled by wage laborers whose pay might be supplemented with food or
housing. Other tasks usually carried out by wage workers were carpentry,
blacksmithing, coppersmithing, and masonry; some contemporary observers noted
that wages were paid on an annual basis or every two years, with the workers
being housed, clothed, and fed in the meantime and a record kept in order to
deduct these costs from the salary to be paid. Within plantation society, these
workers occupied the level of artisans or craftsmen; sugar could not be made without
their skill, which gave them some negotiating power and social status.
Blacksmiths and coppersmiths, whose skills made them among the best-paid
workers, might even set up their own workshops on the engenho and run them with
their own equipment and their own slaves.