Negros, mulatos, esclavos y libertos en la Costa Rica del siglo XVII (review)

The publication of Rina Cáceres' study of Costa Rica's seventeenth century black and mulatto, slave and free, population is a significant event in Central American historiography. Until recently, for reasons of denial and racism too complicated to consider here, almost all Central American historians have ignored the important role of African slaves and their free descendants in the colonial and post-independence history of the region.

Following a useful Introduction, chapter 1 places Costa Rica in the history of European expansion, the Spanish conquest and settlement of Central America. Here, the author documents the relatively small size of the province's indigenous population both in conquered areas and in regions along the Atlantic coast. An already small total indigenous population of only 1,343 in pueblos under Spanish control in 1682 shrank by some fifty percent to only 662 by 1697. This downward trend had begun in the sixteenth century, even before Costa Rica's late conquest and resulted in a serious, province-wide labor shortage. Whether it was for internal or external defense or agricultural labor, manpower was in short supply and the use of black slave labor and free blacks and mulattos in the militia became vital to the province's survival.

Chapter 2, "Slavery in Seventeenth Century Costa Rica," looks at this institution through the lens of notarial documents, slave sales, dowries, donations, wills, mortgages, pawnings, exchanges (permutas) and manumissions. It was only with the rise of cacao production in the Matina Valley in the last three decades of the seventeenth century, however, that slave sales rapidly increased. Interestingly, these sales mostly were not of slaves imported from Africa or even elsewhere in Spanish America but, rather, "they were children of the slaves already residing in the province" (p. 48). Since Costa Rica was too small in terms of both its slave and total populations and was relatively insignificant economically, a formalized system of slave importation and sales did not exist. Even the largest slave owners owned less than twenty, more often less than ten slaves.

Chapter 3, "Of Blacks, mulattos and pardos libres," focuses on the free population of African and part-African descent. Although Cáceres argues that these groups and mestizos formed part of the república de los españoles, they "were a difficult population to assimilate (p. 87). While pardo militias were organized earlier in other regions of Spanish America, they were first established in Costa Rica in the early 1650s, both in Puebla and in other urban centers with sizeable free populations of African descent. Near the end of this chapter the author's brief discussion of "other economic activities" shows that free persons of African descent were able to obtain credit from elite Spanish sources and participate, at a subordinate level, in the province's economy. Despite social stigmas, discrimination, and outright exploitation, Costa Rica's seventeenth century free black and mulatto population held a significant if inferior position in society and even had a group identity. As the author points out, sadly, this was taken away from them after independence when Costa Rica's national identity and its population's supposed white origins were consistently mythologized.

While I would like to know more about the daily work and living environments of Costa Rica's seventeenth century slave and free population of African descent, including details of their formal and informal unions and their children, it would appear that the necessary documentary sources do not exist to tell that story. Rina Cáceres, however, sees this monograph as an initial study, forming part of a larger, long-term project covering the entire region and history of Spanish Central America. This larger study is currently underway in collaboration with Lowell Gudmundson. If the results of this new research are as...