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Marriage Among Slaves in Eighteenth-Century Puerto Rico" (2014)

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Marriage Among Slaves in Eighteenth-Century Puerto Rico Grand Valley State University ScholarWorks@GVSU Peer Reviewed Articles History Department 2014 The Family Tree is Not Cut: Marriage Among Slaves in Eighteenth- Century Puerto Rico David Stark Grand Valley State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/hst_articles Part of the History Commons ScholarWorks Citation Stark, David, "The Family Tree is Not Cut: Marriage Among Slaves in Eighteenth-Century Puerto Rico" (2014). Peer Reviewed Articles. 18. https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/hst_articles/18 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the History Department at ScholarWorks@GVSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Peer Reviewed Articles by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@GVSU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. David Stark THE FAMILY TREE IS NOT CUT: MARRIAGE AMONG SLAVES IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PUERTO RICO A people withoutthe knowledge of theirpast history, origin and cultureis like a treewithout roots. MarcusGarvey The frequencyand natureof slave marriagesin PuertoRico has long been a subjectof controversy.Scholars including Luis Diaz Soler (1953:174) affirm thatmarriages were not only commonbut, more importantly, that owners, alongwith religious and civilauthorities, encouraged marriage and family life among slaves throughoutthe colonial period. This served as a means of increasingthe number of enslavedlaborers on theisland withouthaving to relyon theintroduction of Africanslaves. Using nineteenth-centurycensus recordsand otherarchival sources, James Wessman (1980:288), JamesL. Dietz (1986:39), and Pedro San Miguel (1988:86) have refutednotions that civil and religiousauthorities alike soughtto promoteslave marriages.These same scholarshave also castdoubt on theactual number of formal unions that occurred.Since then,the assumption has been thatmarriage among slaves in thisCaribbean island was notcommon and thatslaves wereunable to estab- lish linksof associationor ties of kinshipeither within the structureof the dominantsociety or outsideof it. Unlikeother areas of LatinAmerica, many documentsin PuertoRico relatingto thefirst centuries of Spanishcoloniza- tionhave disappeared(Silvestrini & de CastroArroyo 1981:157), makingit difficultto assess thesedimensions of slave life.1Because of thescarcity of primarysources from the colonial period, slaves have oftenbeen perceived as a people withouta reconstructablepast. 1. Thedeficiency ofprimary sources for the study of Puerto Rico's colonial period is theresult of various events. "Archives of the jurisdictional office of Puerto Rico at the Audienciade SantoDomingo were lost, the city of San Juan was burned by the Dutch in 1625,[and] the Archivo Histórico suffered a fire in 1929"(Silvestrini & de Castro Arroyo:157). NewWest Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids vol 76no. 1 & 2 (2002):23-46 This content downloaded from 148.61.109.103 on Fri, 19 Sep 2014 10:00:38 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 24 DavidStark The use ofa methodknown as familyreconstitution is the key to fillingthis gap in ourunderstanding of colonialPuerto Rico. Familyreconstitution, which is based mostlyon parishregisters, consists of two stages(Knodel 1988:3). The firstinvolves linking together births (baptisms), marriages, and deaths (burials)to formfamily groups consisting of a marriedcouple and theirchil- dren.The secondstage entails computing measures of demographicbehavior, suchas birthand deathrates. However, the family reconstitution I have used is limitedto thefirst stage and is notthe classic formdeveloped by Louis Henry, et al.2 1 use parishbaptismal, marriage, and deathregisters surviving from the agriculturallyand geographicallydiverse island communitiesof Arecibo (1708-57),Caguas (1731-1804),Coamo (1755-1800),and Yauco (1751-90) to reconstructthe vital statisticsof individualslaves, theirfamilies, and their ownersover several generations. In orderto followslaves, their families, and theirowners, who mayhave movedto communitiesadjacent to ones selected forthis study, I consulted,whenever possible, surviving parish registers from borderingcommunities.3 In thisway, I was able to document237 marriages in whichone or bothspouses is a slave. Withthis information, I will discuss the frequencyof slave marriagein the eighteenth-centurycommunities to determinewhether it was higherthan in thenineteenth-century communities examinedby Wessmanand San Miguel,or by Dietz. The data setthat I com- piled also enabledme to ascertainwith whom, at whatage, and at whattimes of the year slaves most frequentlymarried. These data will allow me to demonstratethat marriage among slaves was notuncommon and thatthey had a familyhistory - a reconstructablepast - muchlike the rest of society. This articleis dividedinto several parts. My strategyis to providefirst a historicalframework for understanding economic conditions that shaped the island's slavery,then to examineslavery within the context of thework regi- 2. Myuse of family reconstitution andgenealogy as a toolfor social history is based uponthe recent work of Fernando Picó. 3. I havereconstituted theoldest marriage and death registers ( 1750-84) for La Tuna, knownas Isabela,a communitylocated on the island's north coast, and east of Arecibo. Additionally,I have reconstituted theoldest baptismal (1763-98), marriage (1771-1800), anddeath (1764-1800) registers for Río Piedras as wellas theoldest baptismal and mar- riageregisters (1773-1810) for Santurce. Both of these communities are located in the vicinityof San Juan, and north of Caguas. Furthermore, I have also reconstituted theold- estmarriage and death registers for both Juana Díaz (1787-1805) and Cayey (1776-1800), inaddition to the oldest death register for Guayama (1746-81). Once part of Coamo, these communitiesnow border Coamo on its eastern and western flanks, respectively. Finally, I havereconstituted SanGermán' s oldest marriage (1759-74) and death (1762-74) regis- ters.This community borders Yauco on itswestern flank. The inclusionof material obtainedfrom surviving parish registers inbordering communities allowed me to create a muchmore complete and statistically significant database than is typicallypossible employingthe standard techniques offamily reconstitution. This content downloaded from 148.61.109.103 on Fri, 19 Sep 2014 10:00:38 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Marriageamong Slaves inEighteenth-Century Puerto Rico 25 mensand materialconditions of lifeassociated with Puerto Rico's eighteenth- centuryagricultural economy. I continuewith a briefoverview of the religious contextand social implicationsof marriageamong slaves. Then, I will look at the examples of Pedro and Franciscaand Lázaro and Agustina,two slave couples marriedin thesouthern coastal communityof Coamo on December 29, 1793,in orderto providegreater insight into spousal selection patterns as well as theimpact of theliturgical and theagricultural calendars upon the sea- sonalityof slave marriage.4Finally, I will explorethe ways in whichslaves pursuedmarital strategies in orderthat they might manipulate material condi- tionsof lifewithin the constraints of slavery.Many slaves in PuertoRico dur- ing theeighteenth century not only asserted their humanity by marryingbut also createdviable patterns of familylife that we can reconstruct. The Agricultural Economy in Puerto Rico, 1508-1800 The institutionof slaveryin theCaribbean was shapedby uniquecultural and economicforces. Some Spanishcolonies including Puerto Rico experienced an initialcycle of sugar and slaverythat began in the 1540s. The Spanish Crownencouraged the rise of sugarcultivation through grants and loans,and theproduction of this commodity was initiallylucrative. However, sugar pro- ductionin PuertoRico declinedfollowing the attack on and subsequentbrief occupationof San Juanin thesummer of 1598 by an Englishfleet under the commandof thethird Earl of Cumberland.All ginger,hides, and sugarin the cityand surroundingcountryside were seized as booty.Cumberland made off with2,000 slaves and 200,000 poundsof sugar,and PuertoRico's agricultu- ral economynever recovered. In theyear 1600, severalyears after the attack, the Spanish Crown orderedthat monies be distributedamong the island's sugarmill owners and that200 Africanslaves be introducedon theisland as a compensationfor the losses sustained(Moscoso 1999:75). However,these concessionswere not immediately implemented. This, along withrestrictive trade policies associated with mercantilism,such as those requiringall Spanishcolonies to tradeexclusively with Seville using Spanish ships and merchants,limited opportunities for legal tradeand was disastrousfor the island'ssugar industry. Spanishmercantilist policies fostered an increasein smugglingby British, Dutch, and Frenchtraders and, even more harmfulfor Spanish trade,in piracy.This occurredprecisely at the same time thatproduction of sugar beganin thenon-Hispanic Caribbean during the 1630s and 1640s.As a result, thefocus of PuertoRico's agriculturaleconomy was graduallytransformed 4. ArchivoParroquial San Blas de Coamo(APSBC), Primer libro de matrimonios: 1778-98,folios 150-50V. This content downloaded from 148.61.109.103 on Fri, 19 Sep 2014 10:00:38 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 26 DavidStark fromone based on the produceof sugarplantations to one based on cattle ranchingand the productionof foodstuffs.For nearlya century,beginning around1675, these pursuits, together with the export of hides,dyewoods and hardwoods,along withthe cultivationof
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