Family Relations

On the hacienda at least 60 percent of the slaves lived as couples, and any negotiations regarding freedom were likely to involve two heads of household. Insofar as slaves could gradually reduce their value or that of any specific family member, the probability of purchasing freedom for the entire family increased. In the worst of cases it would at least be easier to find a new owner and eventually live in Lima.

The incentive that encouraged slaves to remain on the hacienda also encouraged them to leave: namely, their families. Leaving or remaining on the hacienda depended on trivial, everyday, and personal factors: children's ages, other work opportunities, and earning potential on the hacienda. As we have seen, free persons might stay on the hacienda to assure the freedom of their children or spouses.

An entire family only rarely amassed enough money to leave the hacienda, on which all its members may have been born, at the same time. The usual pattern was staggered migration: one family member would leave, then another. If behind this gradual abandonment of the hacienda there was any logic that determined who should leave first—based on who had the greatest capacity to earn money to free the remaining family members or who had the best chances to exert pressure on the hacendado —then it should emerge from the frequency of

such occurrences. Which family members would stay, which would leave first? How was this departure to be accomplished?

A common figure during this time was a mother working in Lima whose slave children remained on the hacienda. The mother-child bond appeared to be the strongest, one that survived despite separation. When slavery was abolished in 1854 Magdalena Garcia, a free morena , was living in the city of Lima. Earlier she had worked on the Molina hacienda, where she had left a legitimate son under "exclusive patronage of the hacienda."^[55] After having worked in lama for some time Magdalena asked the court for a transfer of her son's patronage. In her petition she stated:

I, Sir, have yearned to free my son, the mentioned child, but my present work conditions have not allowed me this wish. It is for this reason, and as is a natural maternal feeling, that I am suffering from this separation from my child. Beyond this, in one of the visits I made to see my son, I found him incapacitated by wounds inflicted upon him in a cruel whipping by the present leaseholder. I made this fact known to the Síndico del Concurso who, aghast at the harm done to my son, consented to the request that I made ... that is, that my son's patronage be changed immediately.

As was usual in such cases, the slave was appraised, the former owner paid by the new owner, and the change of ownership ordered. Generally owners asked for a higher price—if only to keep the slave a bit longer. In Magdalena's case, given the maltreatment, this request was not heeded by the civil court; shortly thereafter the court determined that the sale of her son (in this case for zoo pesos) should proceed.^[56]

The slave's mother had maintained continual contact with her son on the hacienda, visiting him regularly. Thus, the mother—already free—became an external agent of security for her son; her goal was to free him. With much skill, she sought—given the inflicted abuse—the intervention of an official (in this case the Síndico del Concurso, since the hacienda had gone bankrupt and a judgment regarding its division among the heirs was pending) and quickly managed, while not to free, at least to loosen, for a relatively low price, the ties that bound her son to the hacienda and to relocate him to Lima. She had taken the first step toward his freedom and now she had him closer.

The Santa Clara estate was less removed from lama than the Molina hacienda. Francisco Mansilla worked here as a liberto among

the many slaves. His patronage belonged to Don Cristbal Armero, owner of the Santa Clara estate. Francisco had worked there for eight years. Although still a minor, he fell in love with a slave girl who worked on another estate belonging to Don Isidro Aramburú. One fine day he decided to elope with her. He immediately sought refuge with the Defensor de Menores in Lima, who, in a petition directed to the court judge, stated that Francisco had appeared in his office to accuse his master of maltreatment and noncompliance with the weekly payment of eight reales as decreed in November 1821. In addition, he pointed out that Francisco had found a new owner in Lima who was willing to purchase him for 250 pesos. Opposing the sale of his slave, Francisco's owner claimed:

Far from having acted with cruelty toward Francisco, I have always treated him with affection and generosity, and for that reason he remained with me, even after the emancipation of his mother and two sisters, which he took part in because of his prodigality and good behavior. Furthermore, Francisco Mansilla's mother, who should supervise and maintain guardianship of her son as he is still a minor, also opposes a transfer of ownership because under my patronage she has more facilities to free him, for which she has already amassed a certain amount of money.

While the slave was working on the Santa Clara estate, he had been able to free his mother and two sisters. The "prodigality" to which his owner refers can be interpreted in many ways, however; the most likely is that after many rounds of negotiations, Francisco was able to collect enough money to free the three women. The owner indicated that Francisco's mother had already accumulated a certain amount of money to purchase her son's freedom. And, effectively, the story ended when, three months after the Defensor's initial petition, Don Cristóbal Armero issued Francisco a carta de libertad . The mother paid his purchase price.^[57] Probably the next step was to purchase the girlfriend's freedom.

Here was a visible chain of decisions regarding freedom, with priorities based on the capacity for accumulation: inside the hacienda were the male slaves, outside the hacienda were the women, often mothers.^[58] Just behind them were collateral family members. And, once this process began—even if as in the previous case there were obstacles—the speed of accumulation increased as the number of family members multiplied. The owner's final allegation was probably correct:

Please permit me before concluding this petition, to make it known to the court as well, the pernicious example that has been set for the already corrupt slave population of this capital city, by favoring under false and frivolous pretexts the freedom of a slave who has committed a crime [in carrying off the slave girl from an adjoining estate], which has demoralized my own slaves, and which would demoralize them yet more, if this slave were to be granted the status he is requesting.

Perniciousness and corruption, however, often loitered on the road to freedom, and the slaves knew that the established facts made allegations of immorality mere rhetoric.

Part of the considerations of slaves to leave the hacienda was their family life cycle. It would be difficult for a mother with small children to leave for the city and quickly earn enough to free her husband and children. Neither could a parent easily abandon young children. Given such a situation there were three options, wait for a different phase in the family cycle, twist the master's arm, or struggle for permission to leave the hacienda. If, in addition, life on the hacienda offered no paid work, the only alternative was to find an owner in Lima interested in purchasing the slave and assigning him or her to day-labor. Some episodes on the Bocanegra hacienda illustrate the last two possibilities. A case of spectacular arm-twisting was perpetrated by Francisca and Josefa of the mentioned hacienda in 1840. The owner stated:

When the slave Francisca, wife of Joaquín, and Josefa, wife of Nicolás, managed to free themselves, each one was nursing a child, named Leandro and Evaristo, and had been ordered to leave the hacienda for being ungovernable. I mandated that each one be given four pesos a month to nurse their children.... A few months later they made several requests that I let them return to the hacienda, where the women, their husbands, and their children could be cared for.^[59]

Shortly afterward the hacendado threw them off the hacienda again, but this time they took their children and husbands. Other slaves followed their example. The Defensor de Menores, entrusted with the slaves' defense, claimed that the owner had not supplied them with food and that therefore in accordance with the law they were free. While the ex-slave mothers were outside the hacienda they lived in Lima, on Malambo street (in the familiar parish of San Lázaro), where they had contact with black maroons who cut firewood that the women sold in Lima. This urban experience of survival of-

fered them enough security to abandon the hacienda. The Bocanegra hacienda had long been considered a haven of thieves and maroons;^[60] it was probably the place where the link with the maroons came about. The judgment in this case was in favor of the libertos . The hacendado , Don Manuel Arsola, attempted an appeal but the. sentence was upheld. During the case the Defensor de Menores reappeared as a key player.

When in 1830 the same Don Manuel Arsola was Bocanegra's hacendado , one of his slaves, Udon, requested that he be sold, seeking protection in the decree on patronage of 1821. The hacendado stated that he would not consent to the sale because Udon had not been a victim of cruelty, and that in any case Udon should leave the hacienda with his wife and two children, one older, one recently born. Udon and his wife had both been born on Bocanegra. Apparently Udon's wife opted to stay on the hacienda, an understandable decision given the uncertainty of urban life and the minimum of security that the hacienda offered, especially for small children. This being the couple's choice, Don Arsola finally agreed to sell Udon, under the condition that he come to visit his wife and sons only on Saturdays and Sundays. Don Arsola received 300 pesos, and Udon went to work as a day laborer in Lima.^[61]

The hacendado knew that Udon was going to maintain relations with his family and thus become an external agent, who would not only free his family but also bring outside news that would spread to the other slaves on the hacienda. Therefore, he first attempted to remove the entire slave family and then to restrict Udon's access to the hacienda; family relations intervening, however, he could not prevent the perpetuation of family ties. The more slaves acted as did those on Bocanegra, the more time masters spent in court.

As time passed, slave children would mature and thus their value would increase. Therefore, many slave parents negotiated possibilities for purchasing their children before they reached full working age. This meant obtaining a pledge from one's master that he or she would proceed with the sale of the children and also quickly raising the money needed for manumission. The exposure of very young children to the unpredictability of the city not only represented a burden but also increased the risks of their death. Nearly adult children were too expensive. The most logical option was to free children at an intermediate age, between eight and ten years old, when they could contribute

to the family's expenses and were in good health. Circumstances did not always coincide, but for some these calculations worked out. Cases like that of the free morena Magdalena Garcia, who paid the appraised purchase price of 130 pesos to free her son on the Molina hacienda when he reached ten years of age,^[62] were repeated not only on haciendas but in the urban context as well and explain—as stated earlier—the very low concentration of a slave infant population on the haciendas.

Throughout the cases we see two important processes. One indicates a cycle of decisions by the slave family unit geared to finding bridges to Lima. The women were the first to leave, even if they had young children on the hacienda. They were the ones who forged and stabilized the urban links. This dynamic probably had much to do with the competition in the labor market between the free black and slave populations. Above all, men were the individuals who competed in an increasingly narrower labor market. Yet women also worked (because slave women did compete in the masculine labor market), at tasks always needed on the margin of the labor market's cycles of expansion and contraction (e.g., as wet nurses, cooks and bakers, household servants). An additional reason why women left the hacienda first could have been the greater propensity of masters to let women depart, not because they worked less but because without them the costs of reproducing the slave labor force were lowered. Although hacendados sought desperately to augment their slave labor force, bringing the costs of reproduction down was a way to confront the short-term crises of agriculture. Even though the average price of slave women was higher, their average productivity was less because they bore children.

A second key process was the nature of the relations that were established and maintained after women had left the rural sphere. The strength of these bonds was illustrated by the frequency of visits and by the degree of control exercised by those outside the hacienda over the status of those who remained inside. Furthermore, almost as an expected consequence of this behavior was the fear felt by owners who faced situations in which a slave outside with family inside became an agent of external security. Not only did the slave's own family have external ties, but by extension the rest of the hacienda workers did too. The new urban experiences of slaves could be transmitted even to those who had always experienced their world on the hacienda as a microcosm of conditions equal to or perhaps better

than those beyond the edges of the hacienda. Apprehensions about daily life existed among hacendados in Palpa, Nazca, and other areas discussed earlier.