Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799-1804, Vol.3 — 30 - Chapter 3.31, Part 6

The local authorities, or rather the rich proprietors, forming the Ayuntamiento of the Havannah, the Consulado and the Patriotic Society, have on several occasions shown a disposition favourable to the amelioration of the condition of the slaves.

* (* Dicen nuestros Indios del Rio Caura cuando se confiesan que ya entienden que es pecado corner carne humana; pero piden qua se les permita desacostumbrarse poco a poco; quieren comer la carne humana una vez al mes, despues cada tres meses, hasta qua sin sentirlo pierdan la costumbre.

Cartas de los Rev Padres Observantes Number 7 manuscript.

[Our negroes of the River Caura say, when they confess, that they know it is sinful to eat human flesh; they beg to be permitted to break themselves of the custom, little by little: they wish to eat human flesh once a month, and afterwards once every three months, until they feel they have cured themselves of the practice.

]) If the government of the mother-country, instead of dreading the least appearance of innovation, had taken advantage of those propitious circumstances, and of the ascendancy of some men of abilities over their countrymen, the state of society would have undergone progressive changes; and in our days, the inhabitants of the island of Cuba would have enjoyed some of the improvements which have been under discussion for the space of thirty years.

The movement at Saint Domingo in 1790 and those which took place in Jamaica in 1794 caused so great an alarm among the haciendados of the island of Cuba that in a Junta economica it was warmly debated what measure could be adopted to secure the tranquillity of the country.

Regulations were made respecting the pursuit of fugitive slaves,* which, till then, had given rise to the most revolting excesses (* Reglamento sobre los Negros Cimmarrones de 26 de Dec.

de 1796. Before the year 1788 there were great numbers of fugitive negroes (cimmarones) in the mountains of Jaruco, where they were sometimes apalancados, that is, where several of those unfortunate creatures formed small intrenchments for their common defence by heaping up trunks of trees.

The maroon negroes, born in Africa (bozales), are easily taken; for the greater number, in the vain hope of finding their native land, march day and night in the direction of the east.

When taken they are so exhausted by fatigue and hunger that they are only saved by giving them, during several days, very small quantities of soup.

The creole maroon negroes conceal themselves by day in the woods and steal provisions during the night.

Till 1790, the right of taking the fugitive negroes belonged only to the Alcalde mayor provincial, an hereditary office in the family of the Count de Bareto.

At present any of the inhabitants can seize the maroons and the proprietor of the slave pays four piastres per head, besides the food.

If the name of the master is not known, the Consulado employs the maroon negro in the public works.

This man-hunting, which, at Hayti and Jamaica, has given so much fatal celebrity to the dogs of Cuba, was carried on in the most cruel manner before the regulation which I have mentioned above.

); it was proposed to augment the number of negresses on the sugar estates, to direct more attention to the education of children, to diminish the introduction of African negroes, to bring white planters from the Canaries, and Indian planters from Mexico, to establish country schools with the view of improving the manners of the lower class, and to mitigate slavery in an indirect way.

These propositions had not the desired effect.

The junta opposed every system of immigration, and the majority of the proprietors, indulging their old illusions of security, would not restrain the slave-trade when the high price of the produce gave a hope of extraordinary profit.

It would, however, be unjust not to acknowledge in this struggle between private interests and the views of wise policy, the desires and the principles manifested by some inhabitants of the island of Cuba, either in their own name or in the name of some rich and powerful corporations.

"The humanity of our legislation," says M. d'Arango nobly,* in a memoir written in 1796 (* Informe sobre negros fugitives (de 9 de Junio de 1769), par Don Francisco de Arango y Pareno, Oidor honorario y syndico del Consulado.

), "grants the slave four rights (quatro consuelos) which somewhat assuage his sufferings and which have always been refused him by a foreign policy.

These rights are, the choice of a master less severe* (* The right of buscar amo.

When a slave has found a new master who will purchase him, he may quit the master of whom he has to complain; such is the sense and spirit of a law, beneficent, though often eluded, as are all the laws that protect the slaves.

In the hope of enjoying the privilege of buscar amo, the blacks often address to the travellers they meet, a question, which in civilized Europe, where a vote or an opinion is sometimes sold, is more equivocally expressed; Quiere Vm comprarme?

[Will you buy me, Sir?

]);

the privilege of marrying according to his own inclination; the possibility of purchasing his liberty* by his labour (* A slave in the Spanish colonies ought, according to law, to be estimated at the lowest price; this estimate, at the time of my journey, was, according to the locality, from 200 to 380 piastres.

In 1825 the price of an adult negro at the island of Cuba, was 450 piastres.

In 1788 the French trade furnished a negro for 280 to 300 piastres.

A slave among the Greeks cost 300 to 600 drachmes (54 to 108 piastres), when the day-labourer was paid one-tenth of a piastre.

While the Spanish laws and institutions favour manumission in every way, the master, in the other islands, pays the fiscal, for every freed slave, five to seven hundred piastres!

), and of paying, with an acquired property, for the liberty of his wife and children.

* (* What a contrast is observable between the humanity of the most ancient Spanish laws concerning slavery, and the traces of barbarism found in every page of the Black Code and in some of the provincial laws of the English islands!

The laws of Barbadoes, made in 1686, and those of Bermuda, in 1730, decreed that the master who killed his negro in chastising him, could not even be sued, while the master who killed his slave wilfully should pay ten pounds sterling to the royal treasury.

A law of saint Christopher's, of March 11th, 1784, begins with these words: "Whereas some persons have of late been guilty of cutting off and depriving slaves of their ears, we order that whoever shall extirpate an eye, tear out the tongue, or cut off the nose of a slave, shall pay five hundred pounds sterling, and be condemned to six months imprisonment."

It is unnecessary to add that these English laws, which were in force thirty or forty years ago, are abolished and superseded by laws more humane.

Why can I not say as much of the legislation of the French islands, where six young slaves, suspected of an intention to escape, were condemned, by a sentence pronounced in 1815, to have their hamstrings cut!

) Notwithstanding the wisdom and mildness of Spanish legislation, to how many excesses the slave is exposed in the solitude of a plantation or a farm, where a rude capatez, armed with a cutlass (machete) and a whip, exercises absolute authority with impunity!

The law neither limits the punishment of the slave, nor the duration of labour; nor does it prescribe the quality and quantity of his food.

* (* A royal cedula of May 31st, 1789 had attempted to regulate the food and clothing; but that cedula was never executed.

) It permits the slave, it is true, to have recourse to a magistrate, in order that he may enjoin the master to be more equitable; but this recourse is nearly illusory; for there exists another law according to which every slave may be arrested and sent back to his master who is found without permission at the distance of a league and a half from the plantation to which he belongs.

How can a slave, whipped, exhausted by hunger, and excess of labour, find means to appear before the magistrate?

and if he did reach him, how would he be defended against a powerful master who calls the hired accomplices of his cruelties as witnesses."

In conclusion I may quote a very remarkable extract from the Representacion del Ayuntamiento, Consulado, y Sociedad patriotica, dated July 20th, 1811. "In all that relates to the changes to be introduced in the captive class, there is much less question of our fears on the diminution of agricultural wealth, than of the security of the whites, so easy to be compromised by imprudent measures.

Besides, those who accuse the consulate and the municipality of the Havannah of obstinate resistance forget that, in the year 1799, the same authorities proposed fruitlessly that the government would divert attention to the state of the blacks in the island of Cuba (del arreglo de este delicado asunto.

) Further, we are far from adopting the maxims which the nations of Europe, who boast of their civilization, have regarded as incontrovertible; that, for instance, without slaves there could be no colonies.

We declare, on the contrary, that without slaves, and even without blacks, colonies might have existed, and that the whole difference would have been comprised in more or less profit, by the more or less rapid increase of the products.

But such being our firm persuasion, we ought also to remind your Majesty that a social organization into which slavery has been introduced as an element cannot be changed with inconsiderate precipitation.

We are far from denying that it was an evil contrary to all moral principles to drag slaves from one continent to another;

that it was a political error not to have listened to the remonstrances of Ovando, the governor of Hispaniola, who complained of the introduction and accumulation of so many slaves in proximity with a small number of free men; but, these evils being now inveterate, we ought to avoid rendering our position and that of our slaves worse, by the employment of violent means.

What we ask of your Majesty is conformable to the wish proclaimed by one of the most ardent protectors of the rights of humanity, by the most determined enemy of slavery; we desire, like him, that the civil laws should deliver us at the same time from abuses and dangers."

On the solution of this problem depends, in the West India Islands only, and exclusive of the republic of Hayti, the security of 875,000 free men (whites and men of colour* (* Namely: 452,000 whites, of which 342,000 are in the two Spanish Islands (Cuba and Porto Rico), and 423,000 free men of colour, mulattoes, and blacks.

)) and the mitigation of the sufferings of 1,150,000 slaves.

It is evident that these objects can never be attained by peaceful means, without the concurrence of the local authorities, either colonial assemblies, or meetings of proprietors designated by less dreaded names, by the old parent state.

The direct influence of the authorities is indispensable; and it is a fatal error to believe that we may leave it to time to act.

Time will act simultaneously on the slaves, on the relations between the islands and the inhabitants of the continent, and on events which cannot be controlled, when they have been waited for with the inaction of apathy.

Wherever slavery is long established, the increase of civilization solely has less influence on the treatment of slaves than many are disposed to admit.

The civilization of a nation seldom extends to a great number of individuals; and does not reach those who in the plantations are in immediate contact with the blacks.

I have known very humane proprietors shrink from the difficulties that arise in the great plantations; they hesitate to disturb established order, to make innovations, which, if not simultaneous, not supported by the legislation, or (which would be more powerful) by public feeling, would fail in their end, and perhaps aggravate the wretchedness of those whose sufferings they were meant to alleviate.

These considerations retard the good that might be effected by men animated by the most benevolent intentions, and who deplore the barbarous institutions which have devolved to them by inheritance.

They well know that to produce an essential change in the state of the slaves, to lead them progressively to the enjoyment of liberty, requires a firm will on the part of the local authorities, the concurrence of wealthy and enlightened citizens, and a general plan in which all chances of disorder and means of repression are wisely calculated.

Without this community of action and effort slavery, with its miseries and excesses, will survive as it did in ancient Rome,* along with elegance of manners, progressive intelligence, and all the charms of the civilization which its presence accuses, and which it threatens to destroy, whenever the hour of vengeance shall arrive.

(* The argument deduced from the civilization of Rome and Greece in favour of slavery is much in vogue in the West Indies, where sometimes we find it adorned with all the graces of erudition.

Thus, in speeches delivered in 1795, in the Legislative Assembly of Jamaica, it was alleged that from the example of elephants having been employed in the wars of Pyrrhus and Hannibal, it could not be blamable to have brought a hundred dogs and forty hunters from the island of Cuba to hunt the maroon negroes.

Bryan Edwards volume 1 page 570. ) Civilization, or slow national demoralization, merely prepare the way for future events; but to produce great changes in the social state there must be a coincidence of certain events, the period of the occurrence of which cannot be calculated.

Such is the complication of human destiny, that the same cruelties which tarnished the conquest of America have been re-enacted before our own eyes in times which we suppose to be characterized by vast progress, information and general refinement of manners.

Within the interval embraced by the span of one life we have seen the reign of terror in France, the expedition to St. Domingo,* (* The North American Review for 1821 Number 30 contains the following passage: Conflicts with slaves fighting for their freedom are not only dreadful on account of the atrocities to which they give rise on both sides;

but even after freedom has been gained they help to confound every sentiment of justice and injustice.

Some planters are condemning to death all the male negro population above six years of age.

They affirm that those who have not borne arms will be contaminated by the example of those who have been fighting.

This merciless act is the consequence of the result of the continued misfortunes of the colonies.

Charault, Reflexions sur Saint Domingue.

), the political re-action in Naples and Spain, I may also add, the massacres of Chio, Ipsara and Missolonghi, the work of the barbarians of Eastern Europe, which the civilized nations of the north and west did not deem it their duty to prevent.

In slave countries, where the effect of long habit tends to legitimize institutions the most adverse to justice, it is vain to count on the influence of information, of intellectual culture, or refinement of manners, except in as much as all those benefits accelerate the impulse given by governments and facilitate the execution of measures once adopted.

Without the directive action of governments and legislatures a peaceful revolution is a thing not to be hoped for.

The danger becomes the more imminent when a general inquietude pervades the public mind; when amidst the political dissensions of neighbouring countries the faults and the duties of governments have been revealed: in such cases tranquillity can be restored only by a ruling authority which, in the noble consciousness of its power and right, sways events by entering itself on the career of improvement.