The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez
CategoriesCase Studies
Citing from David Treuer’s L. A. Times article:
“The major difference between Indian and European populations was the fact that Indians were enslaved to work on gold mines and silver mines in alarming numbers beginning on Columbus’ second voyage whereas Europeans were not.”
“By 1520 whole Caribbean islands had been depopulated — the inhabitants moved to gold mines in what is now the Dominican Republic. Tens of thousands of Indians were worked to death even after the Spanish monarchy outlawed slavery.”
As his narrative moves to Mexico, New Mexico and parts north, at each place and phase of the “other slavery” he shows a masterful grasp of the history and an astonishing command of archival material in not a few languages. He also shows, with startling clarity, how even after slavery was outlawed by the Spanish and then the Mexican and the American governments, those interested in profiting from the enterprise deployed a bouquet of legal terms and frameworks to continue the practice.”
“The perpetrators of this regime included explorers such as Cortes (the owner of the largest number of slaves in Mexico), territorial governors of New Mexico and U.S. officials. For many years white Southern colonists exported more Indians from the southeastern United States than they imported black slaves. Conflicts, such as the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, were in large part spurred by the ceaseless capture and conscription of Indians from all over New Mexico for export to the silver mines of Mexico.”
“What is profound about Reséndez’s argument isn’t simply that there was a kind of slavery older, more widespread and more pernicious than African slavery (or that it continued longer) but that there is a clear and direct relationship between the two. “In 1865-1866,” he writes, “southern states enacted the infamous Black Codes aimed at restricting the freedom of former slaves. Adopting tried-and-true tactics such as vagrancy laws, convict leasing, and debts, white southerners sought to nullify the provisions of the Thirteenth Amendment.” The tactics he lists were pulled from the playbook that had kept Indians in servitude in the West and in Mexico long after slavery had been made illegal.”
“Lest this carefully researched and compelling book make readers feel bad about every aspect of the settlement of the New World, the conclusion should make us feel bad and think hard about our own times as well. The “old slavery” based on the legal ownership of certain racial groups had been, for quite some time, replaced with a kind of “new slavery” based less on race and without legal standing and more on economic vulnerability: mechanisms of control meant to deprive workers of their freedom in order to extract their labor.”
“Reséndez concludes, “the other slavery that affected Indians throughout the Western Hemisphere was never a single institution, but instead a set of kaleidoscopic practices suited to different markets and regions. The Spanish crown’s formal prohibition of Indian slavery in 1542 gave rise to a number of related institutions, such as encomiendas, repartimientos, the selling of convict labor, and ultimately debt peonage….In other words, formal slavery was replaced by multiple forms of informal labor coercion and enslavement that were extremely difficult to track, let alone eradicate.”
“He is too careful a historian to make unsupported leaps and the book is wonderfully devoid of ideology, but there is a larger point hiding in these pages that has everything to do with the world in which we live today: The institution of “the other slavery” — the thinking behind it, the ways in which laws were passed and interpreted, how the practice of slavery itself took on many different guises — is alive today and in a world where the richest people exercise so much authority (in the form of political influence, economic power, and cultural capital) over a vast (and growing) underclass; where more and more jobs are in the service sector; where the poor are subjected to so many disproportionately onerous taxes and fines and fees. To think about the enslavement of Indians over the last 500 years can help us think about the ways in which people are enslaved today.”
Source: The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America” Andrés Reséndez
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