CHAPTER XXXI
NEGRO SLAVERY IN PUERTO RICO
From the early days of the conquest the black race appeared side by side with the white race. Both supplanted the native race, and both have marched parallel ever since, sometimes separately, sometimes mixing their blood.
The introduction of African negroes into Puerto Rico made the institution of slavery permanent. It is true that King Ferdinand ordered the reduction to slavery of all rebellious Indians in 1511, but he revoked the order the next year. The negro was and remained a slave. For centuries he had been looked upon as a special creation for the purpose of servitude, and the Spaniards were accustomed to see him daily offered for sale in the markets of Andalusia.
Notwithstanding the practical reduction to slavery of the Indians of la Española by Columbus, under the title of "repartimientos," negro slaves were introduced into that island as early as 1502, when a certain Juan Sanchez and Alfonso Bravo received royal permission to carry five caravels of slaves to the newly discovered island. Ovando, who was governor at the time, protested strongly on the ground that the negroes escaped to the forests and mountains, where they joined the rebellious or fugitive Indians and made their subjugation much more difficult. The same thing happened later in San Juan.
In this island special permission was necessary to introduce negroes. Sedeño and the smelter of ores, Giron, who came here in 1510, made oath that the two slaves each brought with them were for their personal service only. In 1513 their general introduction was authorized by royal schedule on payment of two ducats per head.
Cardinal Cisneros prohibited the export of negro slaves from Spain in 1516; but the efforts of Father Las Casas to alleviate the lot of the Indians by the introduction of what he believed, with the rest of his contemporaries, to be providentially ordained slaves, obtained from Charles II a concession in favor of Garrebod, the king's high steward, to ship 4,000 negroes to la Española, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica (1517). Garrebod sold the concession to some merchants of Genoa.
With the same view of saving the Indians, the Jerome fathers, who governed the Antilles in 1518, requested the emperor's permission to fit out slave-ships themselves and send them to the coast of Africa for negroes. It appears that this permission was not granted; but in 1528 another concession to introduce 4,000 negroes into the Antilles was given to some Germans, who, however, did not comply with the terms of the contract.
Negroes were scarce and dear in San Juan at this period, which caused the authorities to petition the emperor for permission to each settler to bring two slaves free of duty, and, this being granted, it gave rise to abuse, as the city officers in their address of thanks to the empress, stated at the same time that many took advantage of the privilege to transfer or sell their permit in Seville without coming to the island. Then it was enacted that slaves should be introduced only by authorized traffickers, who soon raised the price to 60 or 70 Castilian dollars per head. The crown officers in the island protested, and asked that every settler might be permitted to bring 10 or 12 negroes, paying the duty of 2 ducats per head, which had been imposed by King Ferdinand in 1513. A new deposit of gold had been discovered about this time (1533), and the hope that others might be found now induced the colonists to buy the negroes from the authorized traders on credit at very high prices, to be paid with the gold which the slaves should be made instrumental in discovering. But the longed-for metal did not appear. The purchasers could not pay. Many had their property embargoed and sold, and were ruined. Some were imprisoned, others escaped to the mountains or left the island.
From 1536 to 1553 the authorities kept asking for negroes; sometimes offering to pay duty, at others soliciting their free introduction; now complaining that the colonists escaped with their slaves to Mexico and Peru, then lamenting that the German merchants, who had the monopoly of the traffic, took them to all the other Antilles, but would bring none to this island. However, 1,500 African slaves entered here at different times during those seventeen years, without reckoning the large numbers that were introduced as contraband.
Philip II tried to reduce the exorbitant prices exacted by the German monopolists of the West Indian slave-trade, but, finding that his efforts to do so diminished the importation, he revoked his ordinances.
A Genoese banking-house, having made him large advances to help equip the great Armada for the invasion of England, obtained the next monopoly (1580).
During the course of the seventeenth century the privilege of introducing African slaves into the Antilles was sold successively to Genoese, Portuguese, Holland, French, and Spanish companies. The traffic was an exceedingly profitable one, not so much on account of the high prices obtained for the negroes as on account of the contraband trade in all kinds of merchandise that accompanied it. From 1613 to 1621 during the government of Felipe de Beaumont, 11 ship-loads of slaves entered San Juan harbor.
During the eighteenth century the traffic expanded still more. To induce England to abandon the cause of the House of Austria, for which that nation was fighting, Philip V offered it the exclusive privilege of introducing 140,000 negro slaves into the Spanish-American colonies within a period of thirty years; the monopolists to pay 33-13 silver crowns for each negro introduced, to the Spanish Government.[66]
War interrupted this contract several times, and long before the termination of the thirty years the English ceased to import slaves.
Several contracts for the importation of slaves into the Antilles were made from 1760 to the end of the century. First a contract was made with Miguel Uriarte to take 15,000 slaves to different parts of Spanish America. In 1765 the king sanctioned the introduction by the Carácas company of 2,000 slaves to replace the Indians in Carácas and Maraeaíbo, who had died of smallpox. All duties on the introduction of negroes into Santo Domingo, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Margarita, and Trinidad were commuted in the same year for a moderate capitation tax, and the Spanish firm of Aguirre, Aristegui & Co. was authorized to provide the Antilles with negroes, on condition of reducing the price 10 pesos per head, besides the amount of abolished duty.
This firm abused the privileges granted, and the inhabitants of all the colonies, excepting Peru, Chile, and the Argentina, were allowed to provide themselves, as best they could, with slaves from the French colonies while the war lasted (1780).
Four years later, January 16, 1784, a certain Lenormand, of Xantes, received the king's permission to take a ship-load of African slaves to Puerto Rico on condition of paying 6 per cent of the product to the Government.
In this same year the barbarous custom of branding the slaves was abolished.
The abominable traffic was declared entirely free in Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Puerto Rico by royal decree, February 28, 1789. Foreign ships were placed under certain restrictions, but a bounty of 4 pesos per head was paid for negroes brought in Spanish bottoms, to meet which a per capita tax of 2 pesos per head on domestic slaves was levied.
By this time the famous debates in the British Parliament and other signs of the times announced the dawn of freedom for the oppressed African race. Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Buxton, the English abolitionists, continued their denunciations of the demoralizing institution. Their effects were crowned with success in 1833. The traffic was abolished, and ten years later Great Britain emancipated more than twelve million slaves in her East and West Indian possessions, paying the masters over one hundred millions of dollars as indemnity.
Spain agreed in 1817 to abolish the slave-trade in her dominions by
May 30,1820. By Articles 3 and 4 of the convention, England offered to
pay to Spain $20,000,000 as complete compensation to his Catholic
Majesty's subjects who were engaged in the traffic.
The Spanish Government illegally employed this money to purchase from
Russia a fleet of five ships of the line and eight frigates.
The slaves in Puerto Rico were not emancipated until March 22, 1873, when 31,000 were manumitted in one day, at a cost to the Government of 200 pesos each, plus the interest on the bonds that were issued.
The nature of the relations between the master and the slave in Puerto Rico probably did not differ much from that which existed between them in the other Spanish colonies. But these relations began to assume an aspect of distrust and severity on the one hand and sullen resentment on the other when the war of extermination between whites and blacks in Santo Domingo and the establishment of a negro republic in Haiti made it possible for the flame of negro insurrection to be wafted across the narrow space of water that separates the two islands.
There was sufficient ground for such apprehension. The free colored population in Puerto Rico at that time (1830-'34) numbered 127,287, the slaves 34,240, as against 162,311 whites, among whom many were of mixed blood.[67] Prim, the governor-general, to suppress every attempt at insurrection, issued the proclamation, of which the following is a synopsis:
"I, John Prim, Count of Ecus, etc., etc., etc.
"Whereas, The critical circumstances of the times and the afflictive condition of the countries in the neighborhood of this island, some of which are torn by civil war, and others engaged in a war of extermination between the white and black races; it is incumbent on me to dictate efficacious measures to prevent the spread of these calamities to our pacific soil…. I have decreed as follows:
"ARTICLE 1. All offenses committed by individuals of African race, whether free or slaves, shall be judged by court-martial.
"ART. 2. Any individual of African race, whether free or slave, who shall offer armed resistance to a white, shall be shot, if a slave, and have his right hand cut off by the public executioner, if a free man. Should he be wounded he shall be shot.
"ART. 3. If any individual of African race, whether slave or free, shall insult, menace, or maltreat, in any way, a white person, he will be condemned to five years of penal servitude, if a slave, and according to the circumstances of the case, if free.
"ART. 4. The owners of slaves are hereby authorized to correct and chastise them for slight misdemeanors, without any civil or military functionary having the right to interfere.
"ART. 5. If any slave shall rebel against his master, the latter is authorized to kill him on the spot.
"ART. 6 orders the military commanders of the 8 departments of the island to decide all cases of offenses committed by colored people within twenty-four hours of their denunciation."
This Draconic decree is signed, Puerto Rico, May 31, 1843.