Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [42]
In the late eighteenth century, observers and officials recommended that the Spanish Crown increase the size and number of sugar plantations and import more Africans to provide a controllable alternative to the intractable local labor force. A cap was imposed so that slaves wouldn’t comprise more than 12 percent of the population.
As the number of slaves on the island increased, so did their maltreatment. In order to regulate the behavior of slaves and owners, the Spanish government issued slave codes, the most recent in 1842. Owners were to “diligently make [slaves] understand that they owed obedience to the authorities, that they were obliged to revere priests, to respect white persons, to behave courteously toward colored people, and to live in good harmony with fellow workers.” The code defined how much food slaves should be allotted, how many items of clothing should be given every year, and how many hours made up a workday (ten, but sixteen during harvests). Slaves were “obliged to obey and respect their owners, mayordomos, mayorales and other supervisors as if they are their fathers, and [they are obliged to] perform their chores and jobs they are assigned and if they do not fulfill any of their obligations, they are to be correctively punished by the person charged as boss according to the defect or excess, with prison, fetters, chains, stocks or clamps, which will be placed at the feet and never on the head, or with whips not to exceed twenty-five lashes.”
Owners were supposed to abide by the forty-eight articles of the code, but abuses were rampant, and if an owner was reported for mistreatment, he was rarely prosecuted.
In 1845, the same year that Ana, Ramón, and Inocente established Los Gemelos, the Spanish government banned the importation of captured Africans into Puerto Rico. By then eighteen slaves—more than half the adult workforce at the hacienda—were bozales: men and women abducted from Africa. Most of them had worked on Danish St. Thomas or St. Croix, or on the sugar plantations of the French colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe. In efforts to escape, they took to the sea, where ships trawling the horizon for runaways picked them up. Rather than return them to their original plantations, the captains sold the runaways at clandestine auctions on hidden coves and beaches on other islands. By buying them in covert sales, the new owners avoided the twenty-five-peso tax the Spanish government imposed for each. Ten of the thirty-five slaves owned by Hacienda los Gemelos were acquired in unauthorized sales by Severo Fuentes.
Severo, who leased them to the hacienda, owned the most-skilled slaves. José the carpenter, his wife, Inés, and their children belonged to Severo. So did Flora, Marta the cook, Teo the houseman, his wife, Paula, and a timid little girl called Nena, who carried water, cleaned the house, and washed clothes by the river.
Criollos made up the rest of the workforce. Born into slavery in Puerto Rico, they had no more rights or license than those captured from other places.
Severo kept a close watch on the bozales because they were more likely than criollos to attempt escape. They were forbidden to speak their own languages. No matter where they came from, once in the Spanish colonies, they were baptized and given new names. Those from Martinique and Guadeloupe, from St. Croix or St. Thomas, spoke French, Dutch, or English.