The Other Slavery (49 page)

Epilogue

I
N THE LATE
nineteenth century, as the United States emerged as an economic superpower and a magnet for workers from around the world, new forms of the other slavery arose all across the nation. Labor intermediaries, or brokers, known as “padrones”—an Italian term meaning “boss” or “lord”—proliferated at this time. The image of the Italian padrone employing children to sell newspapers in New York City or Chicago became the most familiar. But many other immigrant communities, including Greeks, Croatians, Bulgarians, Japanese, and Mexicans, had padrones too. All of these labor intermediaries made possible the transportation of their compatriots to the United States; brokered their employment in mines, railroads, and other industries; and looked after their basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter. Yet padrones charged handsomely for their services, pocketed much of their employees’ salaries, and sometimes held them in virtual or actual bondage. Historian Gunther Peck has examined the activities of padrones among Italians, Greeks, and Mexicans and has underscored the fact that far from being throwbacks to the slave owners of the past, padrones were a product of the new industrial pressures of American capitalism and made use of new means of transportation to mobilize workers from distant corners of the world to create immediate and disposable workforces. And what
is more, these enterprising individuals justified their activities by casting themselves as champions of progress and even of free labor.
¹

Italian American families, including many children who were kept out of school, are shown picking cranberries under the supervision of a padrone in Burlington County, New Jersey, in 1938. As the area surrounding the cranberry bogs was sparsely populated, the padrones had to bring in work gangs when the fruit ripened.

More recently, author Kevin Bales has brought attention to the plight of contemporary slaves. His discussion is anchored in a fundamental distinction between what he calls “the old slavery,” based on legal ownership of certain racial groups, and “the new slavery,” in which formal ownership has been replaced by a variety of mechanisms of control, such as indebtedness or threats of violence, directed not at a particular race, but at poor and vulnerable populations regardless of color or ethnicity. Following the lead of Bales and others, scholars, activists, and the media are paying considerable attention to the victims of this “new slavery” and are trying to address fundamental questions about numbers and geographic distribution. Currently, the Walk Free Foundation provides yearly estimates of the number of slaves around
the world and ranks more than 160 countries according to the prevalence of slavery there.
²

With this resurgent focus on present-day slavery, what lessons can we derive from the four-hundred-year experience of Native Americans with the other slavery? Three considerations seem especially relevant.

First, the emphasis on the newness of contemporary forms of bondage is myopic. Many social scientists trace the beginnings of the new slavery to the end of World War II or even later, to the economic liberalization of the 1980s and 1990s. Some place the blame on “globalization,” that ill-defined catchall term with its popular connotation of newness. They point to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its related economic dislocations as the origin of the sex trade involving Eastern European women, or to the opening up of the economies of the developing world over the past thirty years, which has led to the proliferation of sweatshops to make products for the developed world. One cannot deny that such situations have indeed promoted and accelerated the traffic and exploitation of humans. But in this book, I have tried to show that the mechanisms of coercion that underpin such practices today are much older than many analysts realize. Historically speaking, “the new slavery” did not replace “the old slavery” (African slavery) but was there all along. This is not just a minor quibble over labels—“other” instead of “new” slavery. By placing the emphasis on the newness of this phenomenon, we underestimate the staying power and extraordinary adaptability of slavery itself. In spite of formal legal prohibitions against Indian slavery in 1542 and African slavery in 1865—as well as antislavery campaigns conducted by the Spanish crown in the seventeenth century, the Mexican government in the early nineteenth century, and the U.S. government in the Civil War era—extralegal slavery, in various forms, has endured. The long-running experience of Native Americans with the other slavery helps us see its true causes. Modern incarnations of involuntary servitude and human trafficking are hardly by-products of economic dislocations or the growing inequality of the contemporary world. Such nefarious endeavors have existed for centuries as a substitute for formal slavery and have expanded in times of war, revolution, lack of state control, and globalization defined
in a broader sense—starting with Portugal’s exploration of western Africa and the Admiral’s discovery of the New World, as opposed to just the latest twist on this process over the past thirty years. Only by contemplating this longer trajectory can we gain a measure of the breathtaking dynamism and staying power of the other slavery and related forms of involuntary servitude.

Second, the other slavery that affected Indians throughout the Western Hemisphere was never a single institution, but instead a set of kaleidoscopic practices suited to different markets and regions. The Spanish crown’s formal prohibition of Indian slavery in 1542 gave rise to a number of related institutions, such as encomiendas, repartimientos, the selling of convict labor, and ultimately debt peonage, which expanded especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In other words, formal slavery was replaced by multiple forms of informal labor coercion and enslavement that were extremely difficult to track, let alone eradicate. This remains true today: formal slavery is prohibited practically everywhere in the world, yet there are multiple practices of human bondage and trafficking that have some features in common, as well as others that are unique to each market and region of the world. As Louise Shelley has noted while studying the sex trafficking of Russian-speaking women, the smuggling of children for adoption, and other forms of bondage, there is no one business model for the trafficking of humans. The long experience of Native Americans shows that this variability of practices, supremely adapted to each social and legal context and region, is one of the defining characteristics of the other slavery—and of its related forms of involuntary servitude today.
³

The third and final lesson of this book has to do with the enormous difficulties of combating the other slavery. It was not enough simply to prohibit Indian slavery. The New Laws of 1542, the Spanish campaign of the late seventeenth century, the Thirteenth Amendment of 1865, and the Peonage Act of 1867 did not end the other slavery. Since those who benefit from forced labor will always find ways to get around the law, it is necessary to deploy a very flexible and dynamic regulatory system that matches the adaptability of involuntary servitude and enforces the law effectively. The Native American experience shows, for instance, that
the other slavery was capable of shifting geographically and targeting new groups. Attempts to liberate one group often resulted in the enslaving of a neighboring group. In the long history of Indian slavery, we have seen how Chichimecs, Utes, Apaches, Navajos, Yaquis, Mayas, and others took turns as the most heavily enslaved peoples at different times. When one group became more difficult to enslave, another one took its place. Similarly, in combating human trafficking and slavery today, we should be mindful that the successful reduction of slavery in one group or one region may result in a comparable expansion in another. Attacking the multiple guises of bondage requires real commitment. Spanish monarchs, Mexican independence leaders, and U.S. congressmen historically attempted to end an entrenched web of coercive practices that kept many Indians in bondage throughout North America. However, these actions—well-intentioned as they may have been—were handed down from afar and were ultimately uneven and had mixed results. Dynamic, adaptive, often invisible, stretching the limits of accepted institutions or posing as legitimate work, the other slavery and its related forms of involuntary servitude continue to endure today.

Acknowledgments

T
HIS IS A
hybrid work of synthesis and original research. That means I have relied on the works of many scholars whose insights and documentation have informed this book, as is evident in the chapter notes. Even though historians tend to write single-authored books and articles, history itself remains a collective enterprise. The intellectual debts I have incurred while writing this book are, therefore, too long to list here. Ultimately, the most detailed acknowledgments can be found in the citations.

A more manageable group of individuals had a more personal influence on my writing of
The Other Slavery.
My literary agent, Susan Rabiner, helped me turn a sprawling subject into a reasonable book proposal. All along Susan’s suggestions were absolutely essential. In the early stages of the project, Amanda Cook served as my editor, offering excellent advice before accepting a position at another publisher. Deanne Urmy brought the project to fruition with great enthusiasm and the hand of a seasoned editor, for which I am very grateful.

In the history department at UC Davis, my greatest intellectual debts are to Arnold Bauer, Joan Cadden, Ari Kelman, Lorena Oropeza, Alan S. Taylor, Charles F. Walker, and Louis Warren. Arnie, Joan, Ari, and Chuck generously went over chapter drafts and indulged my half-baked ideas. Also at UC Davis, Evan Fletcher read several chapters and made
time to talk about them over coffee, for which I thank him profusely. In addition, a cabal of Latin Americanists from various universities in northern California (Latin American Historians of Northern California, or LAHNOCA) occasionally meet to discuss works in progress, and I was fortunate to be the beneficiary of one of these sessions.

Over the years, I have presented various chapters and material pertaining to this book at conferences, symposia, and invited talks; during archival visits and casual hallway encounters; over coffee, beer, or a meal; or just out of the blue in person or email. The scholars who shaped this project in one way or another include (but are not be limited to) Ida Altman, Carolyn Arena, Roberto Baca, Juliana Barr, Arne Bialuschewski, James Brooks, Vera Candiani, Paul Conrad, Susan Deeds, Brian DeLay, Alberto Díaz Cayeros, Maria Manuel Ferraz Torrão, Ross Frank, Alan Gallay, Sarah Barringer Gordon, Steven Hahn, Pekka Hämäläinen, Rick Hendricks, William Kiser, Cármen Mena García, José Moya, Nara Milanich, Brian Owensby, Brett Rushforth, Cecilia Sheridan, Erin Woodruff Stone, David Sweet, Samuel Truett, Jaime Valenzuela Márquez, Eric van Young, and the late David J. Weber. Juliana, Arne, Paul, Susan, Brian, Alan, Pekka, Rick, David, and Sam read chapters or the entire manuscript, for which I am greatly in their debt.

My dear friend Samuel R. Martin has supported this project in multiple ways. Nothing would have been possible without my mother, María Teresa Fuentes Magaña; my wife, Jaana Remes; and our children, Samuel and Vera Reséndez. I do not have words to express my gratitude to them.

Appendix 1

Indian Slaves in the Americas, 1492–1900 (in thousands)
¹