Hacendados and Mayordomos: Absence, Presence, and Ethnicity

An element that influenced the form of labor in the productive units was the type of control owners exercised. Some hacendados had no control over the labor force and others rigorously established varying relationships with their slaves, according to marital status, years of residence, their perceived loyalty, and their abilities and familiarity with the work. Masters varied from those who barred or at least limited slaves' contact with the outside to those who were concerned only with receiving daily wages: in short, from the situation documented in the words of Stevenson about Huaito to that on the smaller estates in the parish of San Lázaro. Apart from the owner's level of leniency and his or her ethnic group, the slave's readiness to receive and comply with orders also depended on the owner's gender. There were distinctions between a male white owner—or in his absence—of a mayordomo , an indigenous man or woman, or a casta . Even if frequently the larger properties were in the hands of whites, and the small and medium-sized properties in not-so-white hands, it was another issue altogether who effectively managed the reins of production. In the eyes of the slaves, perhaps the

combination that merited the least respect was that of female and indigenous.^[26] In order to gain an idea of the relative looseness that contemporaries carped about so much, perhaps it is worth the trouble to examine the figures we have for the owners, mayordomos , and caporales of the haciendas of Magdalena and Miraflores.

In Miraflores, all the property owners lived within the gates of Lima and had entrusted their properties to third persons; two haciendas had been leased to Spaniards. For Magdalena, six of the fifteen owners lived in Lima, whereas the remaining nine managed their own properties and six of these employed neither mayordomos nor caporales . Regarding the composition of mayordomos and caporales we see that of the fifteen caporales two were mestizo , three were casta , and one was black. In the ten noted properties of Miraflores, five were in the hands of Spanish caporales , one in the hands of two mestizas , and two in the hands of zambos . There was a relatively high percentage of absentee owners on the larger properties. The average number of slaves for all Magdalena's haciendas with absentee proprietors was 57.6, whereas the same average for those with owners present was 26.4. For Miraflores where, as we have indicated, all the owners were absent, the mean number of slaves per productive unit was 53.1 (close to Magdalena's average). In Miraflores the average number of slaves per unit of production not controlled by Spaniards, whether owners or mayordomos , came out to 59, and of those controlled by Spaniards, 49.8. This number suggests a slight imbalance toward non-Spanish mayordomos or administrators on the bigger haciendas, even if the numeric relation weighed in favor of the white administrators. The participation of castas and mestizos is surprising and seems to have been stronger on the properties of Magdalena.^[27] If it is true that there existed a correlation between absentee owners, nonwhite administrators, and greater disorder on the haciendas, then ethnic relations could serve as clues to explain the complaints and fears of those who observed the conduct of slaves in Lima's rural zones. What turns out to be more difficult to explain, without recourse to subjective racial evaluations, is the owners' choice of nonwhite mayordomos and administrators. Disinterest, falling agricultural profits, and even fear could be plausible explanations.

Less open to subjective evaluations is the analysis, in more general terms, of what occurred on a medium-sized hacienda when the legitimacy of control was under question. We have an extreme case: the

events on the estate of Buena Muerte, administrated by the religious order of the same name, where the property and management were in different hands. This estate in 1809 housed some twenty slaves. Apparently the religious order's chaotic condition (which the hacienda only prolonged) had been fermenting for several years.^[28] In March 1809 twenty black slaves, nine women and eleven men, decided to march to Lima. They came from Cañete, from the Quebrada hacienda, and wished to speak with the Buena Muerte priests since the hacienda belonged to the order. On their way—the hacienda's mayordomo reported—"Yesterday afternoon the people from Quebrada arrived, so haughty and insolent that from Cantagallo they started to throw flares: and when they arrived, even the church bells rang." The slaves brought to Lima a request for a change of caporal because of excessive abuse. They reached the church and were immediately surrounded by the city's militia. The slaves defended themselves with dried adobe and bricks from the convent's tower, but they were caught and taken to a panadería . They left the panadería each day from two to three in the afternoon to take food to all those in the monastery. Soon they were transferred back to the convent, from where—now that they were pacified—it was decreed that "persons not acquainted with these occurrences made them disappear from the place, without others ever seeing the action."^[29] Authorities tried to prevent such occurrences: people in Lima could easily be thrown into a panic.

After the convent episode the slaves were sent back to the hacienda, and soon afterward another priest came to speak to them. A riot broke out; the slaves reiterated that they did not want the mayordomo they had been assigned; the caporales they had were enough. They did not complain of excessive work but rather of a state of permanent punishment and said that even though they possessed papers giving them permission to leave their hacienda, the mayordomos still considered that to go beyond the hacienda's gates was a misdemeanor. Finally, the doters among the slaves were removed from the hacienda, and the priest in charge of the hacienda and considered responsible for the happenings was recalled to the monastery.^[30]

Slaves from the Quebrada hacienda had managed to procure some sort of papers that granted them the privilege to venture outside the hacienda. The papers enabled them to leave Cañete and go as far as Lima, confront the militia, and alert all the hacendados in the region.

This episode worked to intensify the fears of hacendados and limeños that if this stray gang were not contained—as one of the mayordomos explained—"all the haciendas would be up in arms, they have assured me that with news of the revolt, those in Gualcará were stirred up, and also those on the Guaca hacienda, and the slaves said that if those of la Quebrada being so well attended to and cared for, more so than on other haciendas, committed such excesses and fared well, they themselves had an even greater reason to protest." The dissemination of news of insurgency and defiance was not to be allowed. The desire to hush up such acts explains the swift judicial decision that ruled against the priest who had run the Quebrada hacienda and also sentenced the slaves to imprisonment.

The Quebrada case was an extreme one. Not all slaves marched to Lima to complain about mistreatment. Yet this case illustrates the mobility of slaves, as much in the context of relations established with the hacienda (they could live outside it and move about relatively freely), as in relations between countryside and city (march to Lima) or in the countryside (slaves on other haciendas perceived how much better or worse they were treated). Cañete was a few days' walk from Lima, and opposition had recently been encountered there. The slaves knew where to look for their owners to complain; they went straight to the Buena Muerte convent. If we listen to the tone of the mayordomo 's comments, we can add that apparently the slaves were taken aback by the lack of immediate reprisals and that they and many others interpreted the officials' response as an invitation to act as the Quebrada slaves had and with even more reason because on other contiguous haciendas slaves were more harshly treated.

And in fact, despite the precautions, there was an uprising on the Gualcará hacienda, which belonged to the marqués de Fuente Hermosa, and on the Guaca hacienda (owned by the count of Vista Florida), over the course of which nine male slaves, one female slave, and seven "vagrants and suspected thieves" were caught and sent to Lima with a company of soldiers consigned by the viceroy. Four more slaves were later sent to Lima by the subdelegate of Cañete, among which figured the leaders of the riot. The slaves from Guaca (more than twenty) returned to the hacienda after having tracked down a padrino ; the royal forces were unable to capture those from Gualcará.^[31]

A higher incidence of banditry or an increasing number of maroons often accompanies situations of economic crisis. Following this line of reasoning, Vivanco (1990, 42, 50) suggests that until the end of the eighteenth century the gangs that crowded the outskirts of Lima were primarily drawn from household slaves escaped from their masters. Between 1796 and 1810 agrarian slaves and hacienda day laborers dominated these groups of outlaws. To explain their increased presence, we must look beyond economic cycles to differing levels of internal control within the haciendas. A higher number of rural slaves in bands may reflect the loosening of social control on haciendas, which in turn reveals a decreasing interest from owners of small- and medium-sized estates. It is no coincidence that cases such as that of Gualcará or that of the priests of Buena Muerte involved the specific racial conditions of their respective owners and mayordomos , an intermediate property size and number of slaves, and the absenteeism of proprietors. Diversity of control, as well as access to maroon gangs, marked the slave population's options and opportunities for mobility and therefore influenced its avenues to freedom. Although slaveholders still exerted control and power, they saw this same power fade right before their eyes, as more and more slaves secured their small new prerogatives. The changes were tenuous but real and we can appreciate them if we turn our attention to slaves' deeds and actions within the hacienda. Recounting the episodes and lives of slaves helps us document the heterogeneity of conditions within, and the probability of leaving, the hacienda.