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The Competition of Slave and Free Labor in Artisanal Production: Buenos Aires, 1770–1815

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2009

Lyman L. Johnson
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Summary

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Between 1770 and 1815 the population of Buenos Aires nearly doubled. Despite this impressive growth, the city and its hinterland suffered from a chronic labor shortage. Efforts to expand artisanal production were undermined by the resultant high wage levels. Similar problems affected the countryside where slaves and the forced labor of Indians and convicts failed to meet harvest needs. This paper examines the competition among these forms of labor. Economic, social and cultural factors that helped determine the allocation of labor types are also analyzed. Finally, since scores of slaves and Indian laborers gained freedom and entered the labor market each year, the economic and cultural factors that facilitated this movement are examined.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , December 1995 , pp. 409 - 424
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1995

References

1 Andrews, George Reid, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires (Madison, 1980), p. 24Google Scholar.

2 See my “Estimaciones de la població de Buenos Aires en 1744, 1778, y 1810”, Desarrollo Econónmico, 19, 73 (1979), pp. 107–120.

3 Slatta, Richard W., Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1983), especially ch. 7Google Scholar.

4 Among the many recent contributions see Mayo, Carlos, “Estancia y peonaje en la región pampeana en la segunda mitad del XVIII”, Desarrollo Económico 92 (1984), pp. 609–616CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Salvatore, Ricardo and Brown, Jonathon, “;Trade and Proletarianization in the Colonial Banda Oriental. Evidence on the Estancia de las Vacas, 1791–1805”, Hispanic American Historical Review, 67 (1987), pp.431–459CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Data for the last decade of the British asiento are fragmentary. SeeStuder, Elena F. Scheuss de, La trata de negros en el Río de la Plata durante el siglo XVIII (Buenos Aires, 1958)Google Scholar.

6 These sources clearly under-represent actual arrivals. Some scholars have put the total for the period 1740–1822 at more than 45,000. The importance of the contraband slave trade is suggested by the altered racial distributions found in contemporary censuses. These sources indicate that the African-originated population of the city rose from 17 per cent in 1744 to 29 per cent in 1778. See Goldberg, Marta B. and Mallo, Silvia C., “La población africana en Buenos Aires y su campana. formas de vida y de subsistencia (1750–1850)”, Temas de Africa y Asia, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires (1993), pp. 15–69Google Scholar.

7 See Johnson, Lyman L. and Socolow, Susan M., “Población y espacio en el Buenos Aires del siglo XVIII”, Desarrollo Económico, 20, 79 (1980), especially pp. 332–334CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 It is difficult to assert with confidence a manumission rate for Buenos Aires, or any other colonial city, but a close analysis of the surviving notarial records indicates that by the last decades of the colonial period just under 1.5 per cent of the slave population gained freedom each year. See my “Manumission in Colonial Buenos Aires, 1776–1810”, Hispanic American Historical Review, 59 (1979), pp. 258–279.

9 Most of these sources suggest that only 20 per cent of the urban population was white. The difference between the census counts and the perceptions of visitors to the city reflects the necessarily imprecise line that separated “white” from “mulatto” in colonial Buenos Aires. Where visitors saw mulattoes, locals often saw whites. See Goldberg and Mallo, “La población Africana”, p. 18.

10 The concentrated nature of the distribution became very clear when the governing junta sought to conscript slaves during the independence struggle. SeeJany, Goldberg y, “Algunos problemas referentes a la situación del esclavo en el Río de la Plata”, IV Congreso Internacional de Historia de América (Buenos Aires, 1966)Google Scholar.

11 de Aparicio, Francisco, “Relación de un viaje entre Mendoza y Buenos Aires en 1794”, Anales del Instituto de Etnografia Americana (Mendoza, 1942), vol. III, p. 236Google Scholar.

12 Archivo General de la Nación, Escribania, Registros 1–7, anos 1776–1810. Approximately 11 per cent of all the manumissions granted during the viceregal period required that the slave continue making a weekly or monthly payment to the owner.

13 Archivo General de la Nación, Interior, Legajo 26, Expediente 4, 25–25 vta.

14 “Telégrafo Mercantil”, Reflexiones cristianas sobre los negros esclavos (Buenos Aires, 1914), vol. II, pp. 191–196. This article is somewhat misleading on the price of recently-arrived African slaves, bozales. During the last two decades of the colonial era, the price of African males in Buenos Aires fluctuated between 200 and 250 pesos. A slave who became a master artisan could bring as much as 600 pesos.

15 This conclusion is drawn from a close examination of a number of matriculations of artisans from 1780 that show residence arrangements. See the census of Albañiles, for example, in Archivo General de la Nación, Tribunales, Legajo 66, Expediente 15.

16 Portions of the 1810 census have disappeared and, as a result, my estimate of the percentage of native-born based on this census is less reliable than that for 1744. The best analysis of the 1810 census is found in Belsunce, César García et al. , Buenos Aires: su gente, 1810–1830 (Buenos Aires, 1976)Google Scholar.

17 See my “Salarios, precios y costo de vida en el Buenos Aires colonial tardío”, Boletin de Historia Argentina y Americana, 3rd series, ler semestre (1990), pp. 133–158, for a preliminary analysis of wages.

18 Archivo General de la Nación, Interior, Legajo 41, Expediente 14, 11–17 vta.

19 These libertos were to gain their freedom upon marriage or upon reaching age 16 for women and age 20 for men. They were all required to serve their masters without salary until age 15. From 15 years old until emancipation 1 peso per month was to be deposited on their behalf with the police.

20 Many authors have written on this topic. See Slatta, Gauchos, especially ch. 7; and Lynch, John, Argentine Dictator. Juan Manuel de Rosas, 1829–1852 (London, 1981)Google Scholar, especially ch. 3: “Patrón and Peon”.