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Reseña De" Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth Century Puerto Rico" De Luis Figueroa," La Esclavitud Menor: La Esclavitud En Los Municipios Del Interior De Puerto Rico En

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Reseña De Centro Journal ISSN: 1538-6279 [email protected] The City University of New York Estados Unidos Denis, Milagros Reseña de "Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth Century Puerto Rico" de Luis Figueroa, "La esclavitud menor: la esclavitud en los municipios del interior de Puerto Rico en el siglo XIX" de Mariano Negrón Portillo and Raúl Mayo Santana y "Slave Revolts in Puerto Rico" de Guillermo Baralt Centro Journal, vol. XXI, núm. 1, 2009, pp. 236-245 The City University of New York New York, Estados Unidos Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=37721248012 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative CENTRO Journal Volume7 xx1 Number 1 spring 2009 review essay The Problem of Slavery in the Puerto Rican Society Mi l a g r o s De n i s Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth Century Puerto Rico By Luis Figueroa Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005 304 pages; $55.00 [cloth] La esclavitud menor: la esclavitud en los municipios del interior de Puerto Rico en el siglo XIX By Mariano Negrón Portillo and Raúl Mayo Santana San Juan: Centro de Investigaciones Sociales, UPR, 2007 152 pages; $10.00 [paper] Slave Revolts in Puerto Rico By Guillermo Baralt [Translated by Christine Ayorinde] Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2007 190 pages; $26.95 [paper] [ 236 ] Studies on race and racial exclusion cannot be conducted without assessing the review socioeconomic strategies used by the institutions that were established to maintain the social order. Throughout history, racism has changed and evolved, yet it has remained a dominant and pervasive force in virtually every society. In Puerto Rican society racism is subtle and has being trivialized by proclaiming that the island’s history is based on a long tradition of mestizaje (Blanco 1985 [1942]). The claim that essay the island is a “colorblind” society is another way to disguise a problem that finds its roots on the island’s colonial history and in slavery. It has become a shameful episode, which as Godreau et al. (2008) put it “is thorny and problematic topic for nation building projects.” In the Puerto Rican context, race is characterized and defined as a phenomenon of non-racist racism. While the Puerto Rican government declares the absence of institutionalized racist practices, the conditions of Afro-Puerto Ricans contradict this position. For instance, in the folkloric traditions of the 1940s and 1950s, only those with European ancestry were privileged as constitutive founders of the new nation. The newly projected images and rhetoric coincide with the massive implementation of modernization in Puerto Rico in which dramatic changes took place in the economy and society (Denis 2005). These changes affected the working class, which was comprised mostly of African descent people positively and negatively. Comparable to Latin American scholarship, in Puerto Rico the history of slavery reflects a tendency of being tamed and limited. The history of slavery is as—Godreau et al. pointed out—“instrumental in the reproduction of national ideologies of mestizaje.” In finding a solution to the socioeconomic disadvantages that are characteristic among the Afro-Puerto Rican population, the history of slavery is instrumental (Díaz-Quiñones 1985). But what kind of historical interpretations should one refer that can be useful for public policy making or to understand the dynamics in a society that everyday is turning even whiter, and blackness is suppressed and rejected? How a historian or a social scientist can use those sources that mostly focus on slavery as an economic institution and silence the human aspect of the enslaved? How educators and intellectuals can shift the paradigms of a “colorblind” society without underestimating relevant research on slavery in Puerto Rico? Perhaps in this context one might apply a very critical judgment to that information. It is one’s responsibility. This essay revisits the history of slavery in Puerto Rico using Slave Revolts in Puerto Rico (translated from Spanish), La esclavitud menor and Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico. This essay also analyzes specific aspects on the treatment of slavery, resistance and emancipation that are addressed in each one of the books reviewed. Furthermore, in this narrative is used the mentioned texts to test what historians and social scientists have pointed out somewhere else that a better understanding of the history of slavery help us to “elucidate the roots of contemporary racial inequality and related racial identities” (Godreau et al. 2008). The most recent publications on the topic of slavery in Puerto Rico, Slave Revolts in Puerto Rico (translated from Spanish to English), La esclavitud menor: la esclavitud en los municipios del interior de Puerto Rico, and Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth- Century Puerto Rico highlight some aspects that previous scholars have overlooked: 1) the degree to which slaves in Puerto Rico through rebellions and others manifestations struggled to gain their freedom, 2) the individual and collective lives of former slaves in the subsequent decades after the abolition of slavery, 3) and the correlation between slavery and race in the Puerto Rican society. [ 237 ] Slaves Revolts in Puerto Rico, which its original Spanish publication dates back to the early 1980s, represents a step forward in making accessible to a broader public an influential study about how slaves in Puerto Rico resisted enslavement. In this study the historian Guillermo Baralt sustains that the Haitian revolution was a catalyst agent of all the insurrections and rebellions that took place in Puerto Rico (chapter 1). The text focuses on the period from 1795 to 1873 covering the so-called downfall of Haiti to the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico (1873). In the late eighteenth-century Puerto Rico’s sugar economy experienced a “radical change.” As a direct consequence of the revolution in Haiti, an increase in the sugar production forced the hacendados to acquire more labor force, that is, enslaved Africans, in order to satisfy the demand for sugar products. This situation brought about a significant increase in the African descent population on the island. Since Spanish colonial times, blacks (free and enslaved) have been subjected to harsh measures of surveillance and social control. During the period immediately following the Haitian Revolution (1810–1850), the colonial government and the hacendados took steps to prevent possible uprisings among the black population (Baralt 2007 [1981]; Moscoso 1995; Nistal-Moret 2000 [1984]). Slave Revolts in Puerto Rico shows repeatedly how the Spanish colonial authorities implemented measures to suppress the enslaved and free black population. An excellent example of this is seen in the numerous decrees and edicts enacted by the Spanish governors right after the first conspiracy erupted. This is from Governor Toribio Montes to the infamous Bando de Prim, better known as the “bando contra la raza Africana.” This proclamation was a code of conduct, which attempted to institutionalize racial control of blacks whether or not they were free or enslaved. Moreover, it entitled the white Puerto Ricans, particular the ruling elite to subjugate and discriminate against blacks. This kind of persecution against people of African descent became the norm of the day. It decisively influenced the racial discourse on the island. Most of the Puerto rican historiograPhy about slavery has silenced the agency of enslaved PeoPle to resist a condition that is not natural. The subsequent chapters of the book demonstrate that slaves were informed, well organized, and more importantly, they were part of a large network of enslaved people who were fighting to be emancipated. The book executes an interesting portrayal of what African Diaspora scholars call a “culture of resistance” (Craton 1982; Okihiro 1986; Ohadike 2007). Most of the Puerto Rican historiography about slavery has silenced the agency of enslaved people to resist a condition that is not natural. It suggests that slaves rarely revolted (Díaz Soler 2000 [1953]). Documenting about these events breaks with this silencing. Slaves Revolts documents that as part of a “culture of resistance” slaves in Puerto Rico resorted on the same strategies that other slave societies (including marronage, arson, and the [ 238 ] use of bomba dancing to organize rebellions). This type of information in the way review that is addressed in the text allows the reader to establish comparisons with other slave societies. At the same time, it deconstructs the misconceptions that Puerto Rico, in comparison to other systems in the Caribbean, slavery was relatively milder (Tannnebaum 1992 [1946]; Flinter 1976 [1832]). In Puerto Rico the slave population revolted. They caused fear and chaos. The white elite were afraid of blacks. essay By rebelling, the slaves made the unthinkable and the unexpected. They broke up the racial and class hierarchies imbedded in the island’s colonial system. Así comenzó el forcejeo racial: The abolition Dilemma The abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico (1873) is a topic that is mostly focused from the point of view of the planters and the colonial authorities. Again, one cannot deny the relevant role that many of the abolitionists played in this ordeal. Furthermore, one should highlight that in comparison to other slave societies, Puerto Rico placed itself at the avant-garde of the liberal movement in the Spanish colonial Caribbean. The Puerto Rican diputados disagreed with their Cuban counterparts in the Cortes over the issue of the abolition of slavery. For Cuban planters, the abolition of slavery was perceived as an “econocide” because when this proposal was introduced Cuba was enjoying of a boom in its economy (Knight 1970; Ferrer 1999; Pérez 2006).
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