Negotiating Rights Under Slavery: The Slaves of San Geronimo (Baja Verapaz, Guatemala) Confront Their Dominican Masters in 1810

From the start those who studied the comparative history of slavery in the Americas recognized, and proceeded to argue for decades over, the importance of Latin America's legalistic and institutionally prolific concern with both slavery and the treatment of slaves themselves. Frank Tannenbaum was indeed the right author at the right time, with his Slave and Citizen, to provoke and orient an entire generation or more of work on this problem. ¹ However, his recognition of traditional Hispanic legalist interpretations of slavery was hardly novel. It would have been all but impossible to ignore, built as it was on decades of lawyerly historical studies as well as countless codes and reglamentos drawn up by practicing lawyers in the societies being studied.

Many of the early, institutionally comparative studies were quite rightly criticized for paying undue attention to the (good) intentions of jurists and statesmen, essentially begging the question of their impact on the lives of the enslaved. However, that same institutional framework could occasionally be used more directly by slaves themselves in their own defense. Perhaps one of the best known and extreme examples of this was studied by Stuart Schwartz in eighteenth century Brazil, where slaves in armed rebellion actually negotiated terms under which they would lay down their arms and return to their homes and their former owners. ²

The document presented below does not involve armed rebellion, but it does offer a similarly extreme case of slave assertiveness and the demand for improved conditions under slavery. Dominican slave-holding authorities in Guatemala City were persuaded to sign an agreement in 1810 with their slaves in San Gerónimo, Baja Verapaz, the "majority" having "personally" presented the petition via the good offices of the Protector of Slaves, Francisco Arrivillaga. In the agreement their defender referred to the slaves' "rights" and to the "maturity" with which they should be treated. Henceforth they would give up their customary clothing and food rations in exchange for wages similar to those of "free workers" (mozos libres). Slave women were also offered the chance to work under these new conditions if they so chose. Even more surprising, artisans such as carpenters, blacksmiths, and smelters were recognized to have the right to work off the Hacienda on days when work was lacking there. Artisan salaries paid on the Hacienda for an eight hour day were differentiated by master and apprentice levels, while work off the Hacienda on their own account would be done with the Hacienda's forges and tools but at the laborers' risk if lost or damaged. The slaves would have to pay for their own charcoal and all earnings would be divided by the master artisan in charge among his helpers, proportionate to the Hacienda's own wage scale. Similarly, slaves were accorded rights to sharecropping lands and for pasturing their mules and horses, the first three or four animals free of charge, once again with rates charged for both concessions tied to those prevailing for free workers.

Whatever the level of (dis)trust, each side sought security in the implementation of this agreement. In this new arrangement the friars were not to change their customary fees for marriage services, and the holy sacraments were to remain free in San Gerónimo. The friars were also admonished not to take reprisals against individual slaves who had sought out the Protector's support in this matter. For their part, the Dominicans specifically denied that this agreement in any way abrogated the condition of slavery into which their own slave bargaining partners had been born and remained.

While the document is without doubt extraordinary, it is perhaps not simply a situation in which an inexplicably powerful group of slaves forces their seemingly powerless owners to accept demands that made them virtually equal to free laborers. A brief description of the parties to this document...