Blacks in Colonial Quito

Sherwin Bryant’s Rivers of Gold, Lives of Bondage: Governing through Slavery in Colonial Quito offers an analysis of slavery in colonial Ecuador to suggest the centrality of slavery to colonial development and the emergence of race as a modality of early modern colonial governance (29). Bryant suggests that scholars sometimes lose themselves in their focus on the labor metaphor of slavery so they do not heed adequate attention to slavery’s role in colonialism, social practice and race (28). According to Bryant, “This book argues, however, that race was inscribed and conditioned through early modern practices of differentiated rule, insisting that it is possible to recuperate an early modern history of race as constituted over time through a series of colonial governing practices” (35).

Fundamental to Bryant’s analysis is a theory linking the formulation of race as a constitution of Europe and non-Europe through systems of governance (37). The first chapter contextualizes this development through the history of Castilian expansion, an expansion based on war and making slaves out of captives. Enslavement and the encomienda were dual modes of establishing colonial authority, extracting labor, and extending Christian discipline (60). Moving on to colonial Quito, Bryant draws on examples of maroons, slave codes, and the use of slaves in the battles between royalists and Pizarrists in the 1540s and 1550s. Bryant concludes, “Laws governing slavery aided, therefore, in the extension of royal sovereignty” (69). The colonial government naturalized slavery’s association with blacks and to foreign African territorial subjection while indigeneity was associated with vassalage (72). Additional examples of his argument tie slaves to the development of markets, claiming new territories, and the gold-mining labor force of Barbacoas (90). The second chapter shifts to an analysis of of the slave trade, diverse origins of Africans, varying rates of arrival and points of entry. The mechanisms of slave trading to and within Quito helped form Castilian governance based on race relations (97).  Africans who entered the Americas were a people identified as having “black” territorial origins, dubious “national” affiliations and physical or moral qualities legitimizing their enslavement (98). This governance based on race relations marked by slave status formed the context in which Africans developed diasporic kinship practices (103). Thus, the “social death” of blacks relied on the living processes of racial governance through the marking, constitution, and governance of non-European bodies for the elaboration of imperial power (104). Blackening, branding, and baptizing became the constitutive practices of slavery (105). Blackening, in short, binds subjects to territorial origins and assemblages of power (105). Baptism served to incorporate blackened subjects as new but debased subjects of servitude. 

The third and fourth chapters shift to communities and enslaved rebels, fugitives and litigants. In the former chapter, Bryant analyzes black cofradias, the role of the Church in legalizing the status of slaves, and the racializing practices of Church baptism and marriage. To the author, African "nations" were productions of the racialized colonial gaze (167). The fourth chapter uses examples of civil cases and the strategies of slaves in political and radical ways before and after 1750. The combination of slave marronage, the use of courts for redress, and rebellion coexisted, with the threat of violent resistance shaping the legal system. Per Bryant, “The legal system thus served as a safety valve, allowing an avenue for redress so they did not have to resort to more violent, extralegal measures” (224).  

The overall thrust of the text is a call for the importance of slavery in the shaping of societies like Quito, where slaves were a minority of the population. Also important are the larger role of racialization and Spanish crown authority in the development of slavery in colonial Quito and Spanish America. Beyond its function as a source of labor for the development of markets and the economy, slavery also functioned as an assertion of crown rule and power. In order to legitimize their enslavement, the foreign territorial origins of Africans and their moral and physical qualities were used by pro-slavery voices to create a subject people. Slavery in colonial Quito, therefore, was vital to the foundation of the colony, the establishment of colonial governance, and the formation of race.

Black subjectivity in Rivers of Gold is best exemplified in chapters 3 and 4, where the focus shifts to slave marriage, family structures, sacred communities, and the legal system. In those areas one comes closest to glimpses of black subjectivity, of blacks as subjects whose lives were within, but not entirely defined by social structures. While the overall argument of the book appears to be one based on the structural factors of slavery in colonial Quito as related to colonial governance, black subjectivity was part of this process.

Slave marriage, family or kinship networks, and sacred communities provides some of the best examples of articulations of black subjectivity. Indeed, “Their processions, marriages, and baptisms reveal how the enslaved crafted moments to seize pleasure, repossess their bodies, fix kin, and pool resources as sacred communities.” (167). Although their African diasporic ethnicities reflected the colonial gaze, people of African descent created forms of kinship and belonging among themselves. For instance, in baptisms, enslaved people sometimes chose free blacks as godparents for their children, but not the other way around (184). This suggests the strategic choices made in determining kin that illustrate slaves choosing kin who could help their progeny. Examples of black women serving as godmothers to Indian children also complicate notions of kinship (187). Slave marriages additionally point to exogamous, or interethnic partners in Barbacoas (201). Moreover, slaves appealed to authorities to protect their conjugal rights, as in the case of Joachin and Ysabel Congo, who sought new owners (196). In the case of slave communities on Jesuit-owned plantations in the 18th century, one finds even more evidence of slave kinship and community formation. For instance, Jesuits did not disrupt families on the estates. However, after the expulsion of the order and the sale of their complex of plantations to various buyers, slaves were relocated or resold and estates were neglected. This led to a petition by Pedro Pascual Lucumin in 1778, alleging that the Concepcion estate was neglected and its enslaved laborers mistreated (212). The Jesuit-owned complex points to forms of kinship and solidarity among its workers that lasted for generations, as well as forms of collective resistance. Indeed, the 266  enslaved workers at the Quajara sugar plantation threatened to kill the new owner’s indigenous workers and flee to the mountains if he continued with plans to prohibit their movement and sell some of the estate’s labor force (230).

Using civil cases and testimonies from people of African descent also indicates examples of black subjectivity. According to Bryant, slaves used the courts in political and radical ways throughout the colonial period. They used their right to bring suit while also engaging in marronage and violent resistance. When presenting their cases to the audiencia, slaves quickly learned how to perform within what was European-derived and European-ordered spectacle to achieve their goals (232). One fascinating case from 1675 involved the free black, Adan Pardo, who defended his family honor after the alcalde ordinario of Cali forced his children to serve him (235). Thus, notions of family honor were also used by people of African descent in the colony. Or another case, from 1690, of a free black suing for the freedom of his wife, Phelipa. According to Bryant, “Pedro and his wife endeavored to showcase their honorable, law-abiding behavior while highlighting the deplorable actions and disposition of Phelipa’s master” (236). This discourse of honor in lawsuits of people of African descent predated the Bourbon era and suggests some of the ways in which people of African descent thought of themselves, their family units, and their place in a society. Undoubtedly, this discourse of honor shaped the case of Juana, who sued her master who promised to free her after purchasing her. Unfortunately for Juana, her lawsuit failed to win her freedom, but gave her an opportunity to find a new owner (251). 

Thus, black subjectivity, in Bryant’s account, is one in which black historical subjects, though constricted by slavery and racialized forms of colonial governance, asserted themselves in kinship choices, marriage patterns, and civil or criminal cases against abusive slaveholders or whites who they saw they as disrespecting their sense of honor. While still acting within the confines of the larger racialized structure of colonial governance, one finds glimpses of the interior lives, thoughts, and strategies of people of African descent in colonial Quito. They displayed agency as historical agents, but also as historical subjects with a consciousness and awareness of their own vocality.