Slave Families and the Hato Economy in Puerto Rico by David M. Stark (review)

This is an important book for Puerto Rican and Caribbean history as well as for comparative slave studies in the Americas. It is the first thorough examination of a period in the socioeconomic history of Puerto Rico that, if not entirely neglected, has been murky at best for lack of systematic exploration of primary-source documentation. Additionally, there have been overarching generalizations about a supposedly isolated and subsistence- oriented economy with little contact with international markets, other than sporadic smuggling with the non-Hispanic islands to the east of Puerto Rico, and about the minimal role that slave labor supposedly played.

Historians have relied on two detailed reports on late eighteenth-century Puerto Rico to understand the pre-1815 period in Puerto Rican history, which was when sugar and slavery became central to the island’s economy. The first was Alejandro O’Reilly’s 1765 Relación circunstanciada del actual estado de la población, frutos, y proporciones para fomento que tiene la isla de San Juan de Puerto Rico, which noted a small population of less than forty-five thousand. The second was Fray Íñigo Abbad y Lasierra’s 1788 Historia geográfica, civil, y natural de la isla de San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico, which provided a detailed census of the population. Both of these important informes generated images of isolation, imperial neglect, and economic backwardness, among many others. However, the accuracy of each has come into serious question, and David M. Stark’s book certainly contributes to a revision of the imagery produced by these two often-cited reports.

The focus is the structure of the hato economy and the role of slavery within it. Hatos were large extensions of land that were granted by the Spanish crown in usufruct with the objective of stimulating cattle ranching and that later became private property. In practice, they became mixed economic enterprises that raised cattle, pigs, chickens, and goats and grew a wide variety of subsistence and commercial crops, the most important of which were tobacco and coffee in the eighteenth century.

This is the very first study on this economic system and the role slave labor played in it during the “long” eighteenth century, roughly 1660 to 1815. It uses systematic time-series data derived from a meticulous examination of parish records, which included births, deaths, marriages, and baptisms. The focus of Stark’s book is the slave population, its family structures, and the question of how it was that this population was able to expand without any evidence of substantial slave imports into Puerto Rico during this time period. These records were created systematically in different jurisdictions, different geographic zones: Arecibo, Caguas, Coamo, San Juan, and Yauco.

This focus on slave demography is part of a decades-long reconsideration of it in the Americas. Historians have found that slave reproduction within fairly stable family structures was possible in particular regions, economic systems, and time periods. It has generally been accepted that slaves working in sugar plantation zones had much higher mortality rates and lower or negative reproductive rates compared to those working in urban areas or other rural endeavors. Another major finding, however, is that slaves “undisturbed” by large-scale African imports tended to both form families that could be stable over the long haul and have positive rates of natural reproduction. This kind of study has never been carried out for Puerto Rico for the eighteenth century or before and is rare even for the slave/sugar complex that prevailed on the island from 1815 to the mid-nineteenth century.

Slave reproduction is precisely what Stark has found in this pioneering study, and it is documented beyond reproach. Living and laboring within the context of family-farm pastoral, agricultural, or mixed enterprises, slaves tended to form relatively stable families with high fertility and reproductive rates that permitted a modest-sized Puerto Rican slave population to gradually expand through natural increase...