Maroons, Bandits, and Militiamen: Darker Links between Countryside and City

Sporadically—yet persistently—maroons and brigands turned up in the life of the Lasmanuelos family, and one of its members even belonged to a band. Bands of guerrillas flourished before, during, and after the wars of independence. They appeared on the haciendas, cut firewood on the periphery of the city, and languished in jails and panaderías . They were the most mobile component of the slave population: an important link between countryside and city, a terror of the road for travelers and merchants as for the indigenous, casta , black, and slave populations.

At different times and in varying contexts, militiamen, soldiers, bandits, and maroons shared two fundamental experiences: segregation by ethnic group and use of weapons within or beyond the law. Slaves were members of all these groups and often found that participation broadened their horizons and increased their awareness of the weaknesses of the slaveholding system.

Companies of urban soldiers were formed during the seventeenth century, and blacks and their free descendants were found in their ranks. Their central function was ceremonial: to welcome and see off the viceroys. They occasionally achieved police duties. Around 1765 this situation began to change. Isolated signs of indigenous discontent in northern Peru (O'Phelan 1976), sporadic slave revolts on the coastal haciendas (Kapsoli 1975), as well as the Tupac Amaru uprising in 1780 in the southern Andes, convinced the colonial state that it was necessary to think about the permanent and conscientious organization of a military corps.

In 1776 Lima's infantry regiment of pardos included 947 men and the battalion of morenos had 474. The cavalry regiment of pardos numbered 104 horsemen and the cavalry battalion of morenos , 77. Similar companies began to emerge in the cities of the coastal region. They were commanded by whites; the colonial state preferred officers who were peninsulares (Spaniards) or criollos (Spaniards born in the New World) to an entirely casta corps with its risk of greater and

greater autonomy. The presence of castas tarnished the image of military duties, and morenos and pardos themselves soon realized that serving in these armies was not a privilege but rather an obligation from which it was difficult to free oneself (Burkholder 1972, 142–143). Moreover, the salaries they received were so low that soldiers usually engaged in some artisanal trade on the side and had permission to marry only if they could prove that their future wife had adequate resources to maintain the family. Yet in 1816 blacks, mulatos , and pardos made up approximately 4 percent of the entire viceregal military, and 53 percent of Lima's contingents.^[63]

Soldiers were part of the viceregal military structure under the ultimate authority of the viceroy. Before independence these corps had demonstrated the potential to rebel and revolt against the colonial state. In 1779 when Inspector Areche came to the colonial territory and wanted, among other things, to impose taxes on the castas , the soldiers of Lambayeque refused to pay what they called the "military tax." They wrote to the viceroy, who, faced with the threat of a casta riot, had to yield to the soldiers' petition. Armed and united, blacks, mulatos , and pardos negotiated an exemption from a payment they saw as denigrating because it relegated them to the same social rung as the Indians (Burkholder 1972, 124 ff.). Whatever the authorities' apprehensions and experiences, they had to trust the castas with some of the duties of defense and repression. Between 1779 and 1812 new military corps were created, but none in Lima.

We can assume, for lack of evidence, that a substantial part of these corps organized before the struggles for independence later enlarged the ranks of the royalist army. It is possible that many grew disaffected and deserted—as some in the patriot army did—since the wars of independence crystallized loyalties and perceptions but allowed margin for maneuver on the fringes of official acts.

Before the struggles for independence, the varying attempts to conscript slaves into the patriot ranks and the reactions by slaves illustrate an interesting gamut of alternatives and options. The choices slaves made reflect the diversity of labor conditions and life on the various rural production units. In fact, General San Martín sent commissioners to the haciendas of Lima's northern outskirts to read edicts to the slaves. They promised freedom and rewards for slaves who enlisted in the patriot armies: emancipation for slaves and capital punishment for owners who infringed the new proclamations (see

chapter 1). Recitation of the edicts was to proceed in the absence of masters; it was believed they would inhibit the slaves' free choice. The responses documented by the commissioners varied. After visiting several units in the district of Sayán, the commissioner Juan Delgado reported the outcome of his trip to the secretary of war and the navy, Bernardo Monteagudo: "I installed myself in the Quispico hacienda ... and ordered all the hacienda slaves to assemble without the presence of their master. And after making the proper reflections, eighteen slaves declared their willingness, stating that they would gladly serve in the army."

Matters proceeded otherwise among the slaves on the Andahuasi hacienda, many of them "having been deserters for some time, only one slave who desired to serve in the army voluntarily was produced." In the village of Sayán the commissioner ordered all the slave owners to present their slaves in the plaza, and when they were assembled "they were not only read the edict and communiqué on this matter but I also made known to them the prerogatives they would enjoy from their freedom by taking up arms; to which they replied that they could not forsake their owners."^[64]

The possibilities of slaves reflected the range of limited choices during the wars of independence. Slaves could take up arms and have faith that they were fighting for a cause and their freedom. They could flee from an uncertain future at a time when the overall atmosphere was turbulent. Or they could, as in the village of Sayán, remain with their master, either as the result of threats or as the most secure alternative in the general disorder of the time. Despite slaves' active participation on the battlefield, promises of freedom and rewards were not usually kept. Given the circumstances and opportunities on the haciendas and estate farms, the choice of remaining at the side of one's owner was surely the most rational because it allowed slaves to continue on a slow but sure route to freedom. Not all slaves were ready or willing to become soldiers.

Far from one's master, with-a rifle in hand, in contact with free blacks in the armies, and with permission to kill whites of the adversary's flag, a slave struggled with issues more complex than loyalty to patriots or royalists. The wartime experience undid old social ties and brought distinct ethnic groups, rich and poor, face to face (Bonilla and Spalding 1984, introduction). After five years of war, events such as that documented in the city of Callao in 1825 where the "slaves on the

Spaniards' haciendas revolted, ... imprisoning all officials," were not unusual.^[65]

In contrast to armies drawn from descendants of the black population and from soldiers captured by either side during the struggles for independence were the maroons, slaves who had escaped rural (and sometimes urban) slavery to band together and live by robbery and looting. Maroons did not emerge during the struggles for independence; they had existed since the establishment of slavery. Maroonage relates to slavery in the same manner that contraband does to monopoly, as a natural response to an arbitrary imposition. Throughout the colonial period the viceroys sporadically felt obligated to dispatch military expeditions to exterminate the havens of maroons each time that the complaints of those affected by the presence of the fugitives grew too loud. These complaints voiced not only property owners' fears of continual assaults, especially around the perimeter of the Lima valley, but also apprehensions of Lima's slave owners that the impunity of bandits and maroons would become a permanent incentive for their own slaves to escape.

It is not an easy task to uncover the essence of these groups of fugitives, vagrants, and social renegades. They had distinct strengths, leaders with divergent goals, and missions of varying objectives; and they were wary of one another. The strongest absorbed the weakest and kept the biggest part of the booty. In some respects their behavior was not unlike that of other sectors of society. Lima's wealthy residents paid certain gangs to protect their assets and properties against the urban incursions of their lesser cohorts. A contemporary noted dryly that "the practice of respecting persons of influence must to a great extent be attributed to the degree of impunity that these gentlemen of industry enjoy" (Miller 1829, 2:267). His statement indicates the propinquity of gangs to the urban area and explains the fluidity of relations between maroons and slaves, in Lima's hinterland as well as the city proper.

However, we can occasionally detect the more clear-cut and coherent objectives of these gangs in terms of a shared social aim. Army deserters, restless household slaves, and artisans displaced from their trades not only added members to these bands. The growth of their presence helped encourage attitudes that reflected incipient notions of social justice. It is no coincidence that their recorded beliefs were based more on social status than on ethnicity. Rather than bar certain

ethnic groups, some gangs brought together the displaced of all colors and occupations.

In 1811 a gang was captured that consisted of nothing less than the Europeans Antonio and Juan, the Oriental native of Chincha, Blanco, the friend of el Segatón, Mariano Marchan, black Joaquín from the Biejo sugar mill, Francisco Negro from the Puente estate, José Salas, Antonio Barrionuevo, known as Antonaso, Agustín Lesama, an old mulato, the zambo known by the learned woodcutter of Bocanegra, Indian Lucas of the Monte de Santa Rosa, and the black Josef Carabali, an alfalfa muleteer.^[66]

Assistance to the poor, downtrodden, and imprisoned could be seen as the concrete expression of social concerns.^[67] A short history of what happened in the Chillón valley illustrates not only this new social dimension, but also the manner in which maroons, slaves, and other social groups organized their relations, conversed, and communicated. Not everything that highwaymen needed to survive was found in sufficient quantity and at the appropriate moment in the knapsacks of travelers. For this reason, they would negotiate for whatever else they could secure through owners of tambos in exchange for protection, a strategy similar to the one wealthy limeños used. It was through these contacts—with merchants and shopkeepers—that the neighboring population could communicate with these gangs. And this dialogue did indeed exist.

On one of their raids the bandits stole chickens from a mestiza . The tambo 's owner, a Spaniard, described the events:

Owing to the fact that I am in charge of the tambo called Chillón, a mestiza named María came to me and told me that the stated blacks had taken some hens and chickens from her, and that since the aforementioned blacks intended to go to the tambo to secure food, I should tell them to hand over the chickens. She was poor and in need and advised me to give the said blacks something so they would agree to hand over the stated chickens. As a result of the request made of me by the aforementioned person, I summoned the black Antonio, who was the first to arrive at the tambo after this miserable girl had given up the chickens, and he responded that he would send the fowl, but only under the condition that I give him four reales because he was in need, and that I give a peso to another black, his companion, the one who would bring the fowl later. Thus it was that considering the good of the mestiza and in virtue of her request, I gave him the four reales; soon afterward the other black arrived, with fourteen chickens and hens in all, ten live and four dead, and I gave him the peso.^[68]

Although we have descriptive gauges to measure the composition and frequency of the actions of maroons and brigand groups (also see Flores Galindo 1990, Aguirre 1990), exact figures are elusive. Furthermore, to assess their numbers we must weigh accusations of banditry and maroonage that may owe more to fears than to objective and observational interest. In many of the cases examined we have seen how a slave's departure from the hacienda—even with a paper signed by the owner or mayordomo —could, in the hands of a soldier or urban owner, be taken for maroonage or banditry. In spite of this, there seems to be a consensus on two points. First, that maroonage and brigand bands (of mounted rebels, guerrillas, or maroons, the differences are not very dear) increased during the struggles for independence; and second, that brigandage in general (whatever its social connotations) seems, in the words of Flores Galindo, "to distance itself from the conscious history of the popular classes, reducing itself only to the expression of social malaise, a sign of the deterioration of the haciendas, the beginning of the commercial crisis and the political decomposition that preceded independence" (1990, 67).

The experiences of these groups during the independence period are pivotal to our general assertion that manumission through self-purchase accelerated. Bands of fugitives grew, in part because slaves did not want to join either army and there was no other option but to flee haciendas. Slaves felt increasing uncertainty, as from every direction came promises of freedom intended to gain their support. Occasionally, these gangs of maroons managed to ally or associate themselves with bands of bandits with more diverse ethnic composition and during the struggles for independence to become more cohesive, and dangerously autonomous, forces. Some of the leaders of the guerrillas and mounted rebels (such as General Miller in the south and Commander Francisco Paula Otero in the central highlands) incorporated these heterogeneous bands into their ranks. The most important bands were located in provinces nearby Lima and could block and stash in their headquarters supplies of food and munitions headed for Lima.

The English traveler Proctor described the extent of this situation:

This species of force [i.e., bands of guerrillas] was first encouraged by General San Martín and produced such an effect by its intrepidity that the men of which it was composed actually sometimes defeated large bodies of regular troops. They received no pay, but were allowed to plunder from the en-

emy wherever they could fall upon them. Nor were their depredations as may be supposed, confined to the Spaniards; for ere long they degenerated into bands of licensed and organized robbers, under the lax and defective police of the patriot governors: any wild idle fellow who had a little spirit and a great deal of disinclination to useful employment had nothing to do but to set up as a guerrilla official, or as he was termed, Capitán de Montoneros.^[69]

These groups became the "terror of civilized society" and sporadically appeared, always acting beyond the control of the current governor or military commander.

On the whole, the experiences of soldiers, bandits, and fugitives cover the diversity of the black and slave population's military options. The distinctions between what lay within the law and what was outside it grew increasingly tenuous, even though the military tried to locate fugitive havens and combat the maroons. The haziest distinctions were those assembled and coordinated throughout the struggles for independence. The experiences of the black population during the struggles for independence—spread among patriots and royalists, brigands, guerrillas, and mounted rebels—generated greater fluidity in the relations of mutual aid and support. Slaves' experiences and insurrectionary desires were absorbed into a changing system. In 1851—three years before slavery was abolished—fewer people were frightened by rumors of slave uprisings, "rebellious slaves" were sentenced to minimal punishments, and soon warnings of slave insurrections were revealed as little more than rhetorical flourishes to disguise the interests of white political factions (Blanchard 1991).