Slave Cowboys in the Cattle Lands of Southern Brazil, 1800-1850
SLAVE COWBOYS IN THE CATTLE LANDS OF SOUTHERN BRAZIL, 1800-1850. SPENCER LEITMAN Purdue University. (Indiana. USA). Perhaps the most striking feature of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, in the first part of the nineteenth century was the presence of slave cow- boys. Giuseppe Garibaldi, who had fought for many years in Rio Grande do Sul alongside the black Ragamuffins in the Ragamuffin War, 1835-1845, considered these recently freed slaves among the finest busters, ropers, and horse soldiers in all the province, so famous for its gauchos (1) . Venezuela, Texas, and Cuba had slave cowboys., too, but the data on the social organization and culture in these areas is lacking (2). Slave cowboys in the Spanish lands, it appears, were used in small numbers before the develompent of large scale plantation agri- culture, as was the case in Cuba (3) . However, after a search through the secondary socio-historic literature on Latin America, one is left with the impression that slavery and ranching did not mix. Two Pla- (1). — Giuseppe Garibaldi, The Life of General Garibaldi Written by Himself. Trans, by Theodore Dwight (New York, 1859), 86; The Portuguese crown also considered slaves excellent cowbovs. In 1820 the crown ordered four slaves from the Royal Ranch in Rio Grande do Sul to Maranhão to instruct slaves there in the use of the lasso and bolas. Thomas Antônio de Villanova Portugal to Conde de Figueira, Rio de Janeiro, February 16, 1820 Arquivo Histórico de Rio Grande do Sul, (AHRGS), Avisos do Governo. (2) . — Miguel Acosta Saignes, Vida de los esclavos negros en Vene- zuela (Caracas, 1967), 179-180; Philip Durham and Everett L.
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