The Other Side: Mechanisms of Control

The ease with which slaves—and certainly other groups as well—moved about the city suggests questions about society's mechanisms of control. Generalized disorder and the absence of a reliable and well-organized police corps can explain much of slaves' easy mobility. However, society's forms of control were multiple and sometimes extremely complex. It is difficult to know where they began and ended. They ranged from very individual mechanisms such as the owner's whip to more sophisticated mechanisms of broader yet more diffuse

social control, which were manifested through expectations of social ascent, racial prejudices, and dissension within black society.

As in all cities, Lima's inhabitants knew that some places were more dangerous than others, where rowdy and disorderly characters met for various purposes. These places were usually associated with the consumption of alcoholic beverages; for the period we are examining these places were taverns and pulperías . Such locales abounded, in spite of the complaints voiced by neighbors, and offered amusement and diversion for some sectors of the popular classes. It was not unusual for Indians and individuals of black ancestry, including women, to be the proprietors of these establishments, many of which sprung up without the consent of the municipal authorities. In 1816—in response to yet another neighborhood complaint and upon the initiative of the taverners' guild—the municipal council ordered the "closing of the taverns of this capital not possessing a license." Although this decree existed, many managed to remain in business by pretending to sell other goods or by barring street access.^[17] More than one villain found asylum and refuge in these places. Taverns and pulperías were one facet of the image of urban disorder bewailed by contemporaries.

From at least the close of the eighteenth century, commentaries about urban social malaise were heard, ranging from robberies to the physical disintegration of urban space. Lima was "a Babylon." Confronted with this situation, Jorge Escobedo, the inspector general and superintendent of the Peruvian viceroyalty, decreed Lima's division into districts and barrios. An edict dated 17 April 1785 established alcaldes de barrio , to be elected from "persons of distinction." Each neighborhood mayor would be in charge of a body of serenos , who would protect the peace of the city. The serenos were authorized to use arms after ten at night, the slaves' curfew hour.^[18] Notwithstanding the authorities' vigilance, problems about the inefficiency of the urban police subsisted until at least the end of the nineteenth century. In 1827 the indictment about the ineffectiveness of the neighborhood watchmen recurred, but apparently the underlying problem was the lack of jails: "The lowest common citizen holds that inspectors in the practice of their post are nearly worthless bodies because they cannot order the apprehension of anyone, even if caught red-handed, because there is no place to deposit them and it is for this reason that every class of crime is repeatedly executed" (see also Távara 1855).

Widespread violation of another ordinance—which decreed that each resident had to have a light at the entrance of his or her house—made darkness the refuge of robbers and thieves. The meager salary of the serenos came from the city's residents, who seldom paid their assigned quotas. Consequently, serenos did not take their job very seriously.^[19] Another reorganization of the police force was ordered in 1835. Yet the panorama was the same: every day wrongdoers were up to their tricks in the streets of Lima. This time it was ordered that the district governors, neighborhood inspectors, guards, serenos , and other employees of the police come under the jurisdiction of the Tribunal de la Acordada. The Tribunal, for its part, would rely on a squadron of armed police to be distributed "as suited public security."^[20] A new reordering of the urban police was recorded in 1854, under a ruling by the ministry of government.^[21] This time the authorities wished to form a battalion of serenos , independent of the police, with its own chiefs and officials. It was to be composed of five companies, corresponding to the number of city districts, and under the control of the district inspectors and Lima's prefect. The guards became the executors of the inspectors' commands, and the serenos now fulfilled another daily function of ensuring public cleanliness and clearing the streets. A new figure emerged, that of district commissioner, to whom the inspectors were to lend their support if requested.

The image that remains with us is one of the weakness and lack of mechanisms of control to regulate urban life systematically and efficiently. Those mechanisms aimed at the subordination of specific groups were better organized, such as beaterios for nonslave women and panaderías for slaves. The panaderías , as we have seen throughout many of the personal histories, were a place to deposit slave men and women as punishment for some crime (such as robbery, homicide, maroonage), or for nonfulfillment of obligations (such as nonpayment of daily wages). And slaves themselves would use internment in a panadería in order to resolve familial conflicts. The beaterios were places of confinement for women in the process of divorce, within which whites, blacks, and Indians attempted to settle quite similar marital problems.

The most obvious places of punishment were the prisons, reputed to be unsafe; for this reason they were less and less used in the years following independence. In eighteenth-century Lima three jails ex-

isted: they belonged to the court, the city, and the Inquisition (which ceased functioning in the 1830s with the recess of the activities of the Holy Office). In 1790 the two remaining jails sheltered 194 delinquents, of which 103 were in the court facility (Flores Galindo 1984, 163). Even in 1796 the city's royal jail (or that of the court) housed 59 prisoners, of which 15 were white and 12 mestizo ;^[22] in 1854 the number of prisoners had fallen to 35 (Távara 1855). At both times, the number of slaves among the prisoners was insignificant. A slave's imprisonment deprived his or her owner of the slave's labor power but placement in a panadería allowed the panadería 's proprietor or mayordomo to pay the corresponding daily wages to the owner and benefit from the slave's labor.

Beyond institutionalized penal sites, many complaints, cries, and laments from slaves who had the misfortune to anger their owners never reached the ears of the authorities. It was not uncommon for an owner's whip to exceed the number of lashes permitted. Corporal punishment did not cease to be part of the daily experiences of slaves. A slave's cost made replacement difficult, and because the number of slaves rapidly decreased the slave's last weapon was blackmail, the threat to take his or her own life. Arguments based on blackmail might even obtain a favorable judgment in legal suit, for example, when a slave pressured the authorities to allow him or her to search for a new owner. In the words of Ana María Murga: "If the master wins the case, and Your Excellency orders that I return to his service, I am determined to commit suicide, and he will lose his money just as I lose my life."^[23]

Slaves were cognizant of what was taking place. Ana María Murga was returned to her owner and she did not commit suicide. Yet the possibility always existed and might take quite dramatic form. The punishments imposed on slaves, as well as actions carried out against their will, always had two faces. And reprisals were not just a means of retaliation. There was a possible margin of negotiation, even if in the ultimate extreme, negotiation or open confrontation accompanied suicide or self-exclusion, as was often the case with maroons.

Between both extremes of panaderías and prisons on the one hand and of suicide and banditry on the other, a possibility of additional punishment was relocation from the city to a hacienda, in other words, the conversion of a city slave into a hacienda slave. Transfer to a hacienda hung threateningly over the heads of slaves, even if it rarely

took place after oral or written promises of permanent residence "inside the gates" or of marriage. The gamut of these options in some way represented the universe that tightened the most immediate confines of the daily life of slaves.

The Continual Threat: Transfer to a Hacienda

As we explore the mechanisms owners devised to move slaves from city to countryside and those slaves used to avoid the transfer, we notice additional weak points of the slaveholding system. One point derived from the most central aspects of the system's control: the treatment of slaves as objects and their distribution, which varied according to the profitability of the slave labor force. Lima's slaves often evaded their owners' attempts to transfer them to the countryside, offering in practice a corollary to the argument that the survival of slaveholding relationships and an increase in slave profitability came from placing the slave labor force in those realms or sectors where there was no other labor force, and where the exploitation of the labor force could be maximized.^[24] Because the unrestrained geographic shifting of the slave labor force was not possible, one of the most pivotal elements of the slaveholding authority crumbled.

In 1809 Apolinaria Ontañón presented an appeal in her daughter's name that she be moved from her place of work. The reason for this petition was the mother's fear that her daughter might be relocated to a Chancay hacienda, owned by Doña Ventura Espinoza, "because they portray her as vicious and full of defects." Until that time the owner, the mother, and the daughter had lived in Lima. Accusing the slave of real or supposed defects before Lima's civil authorities was an argument used to alter one of the stipulations of the slave's conque , which stated that she could not be sold outside Lima's gates. In the cited case, the owner agreed to the slave's searching for a new owner, as long as she provided surety of her person, "because my intention is not to oppress her." The owner, after having deposited the slave in a panadería as punishment for committed misdeeds, placed her in the hands of a broker so that he could find her another owner. However, when a new owner was located, the slave fled. The reason for the slave's attitude was that she lived apart from her husband. She had switched owners three times in one year alone. The owner concluded, "Your Excellency will discover the perverse nature of these people of

servitude and will wisely agree to a judgment that ensures my rights." A few days later it was decreed that the mother should grant surety in two days. If this were not done, the mother would be placed in prison until she surrendered the daughter she had supposedly hidden.^[25]

Many owners attempted to transfer their slaves by contending that they were disobedient and rebellious. They had to prove such accusations. And a way to accumulate evidence against a slave was to deposit that slave again and again in a panadería . Owners knew that they were staking all that they had: if the judgment went against transfer to a hacienda, as we have seen it, later sale to another urban owner would be impossible. And even if an owner took on this risk, he or she would still have to face protests from the slave's relatives. Families had access to the panaderías and could verify what was taking place; some family members learned from personal experience what deposit in a panadería meant. In 1810 the mother of Julián, the slave of Don Francisco Riobo, the owner of the Nazarenas panadería , complained about the lashings inflicted upon her son "almost to the point of murdering him, tearing his buttocks to ribbons, with no attributable reason." The mother went to the judge ("as a loving mother turns to the source of Your Excellency's mercy") after Julián recovered from the beatings and managed to flee. The judge verified Julián's condition and ordered his placement in the hospital. If frequent deposits in the panadería could be used as evidence of the slave's disobedience and thus become an argument to transfer the slave to a hacienda, whippings (and thus, treatment within the panaderías that the owner entrusted to the administrator of this institution) were an argument to request a change of owner, as well as a way to find a new owner who had no intentions of relocating the slave to a hacienda. In this case the slave's mother immediately suspected that the owner wished to relocate her son to a hacienda and she intervened in order to prevent this. She requested that she be allowed to search for an owner for him in Lima. The judge ruled that no relocation of the slave should take place until the circumstances surrounding the abuse were clarified.^[26] In this case the dual argument, brutality and transgression of the stipulations of the slave's conque , gave the slave's relatives means to paralyze the owner's pretensions. The abuse received was in this context an action that worked for the slave, as it allowed the family to keep him in the city. The law supported and recommended lenient, paternal, and Christian treatment; and society punished transgressing owners, sometimes with the forfeiture of a slave.

If the slave was married, ecclesiastical authorities intervened when they witnessed the breakup of a marriage: they wished to see slaves married and united in order to avoid sinful cohabitation and misbehavior. Apparently owners internalized this moral exigency to such a degree that when they managed to demonstrate that the best alternative was to relocate the slave to a hacienda owing to his or her unruliness, vices, or idleness, they went to the trouble of notifying ecclesiastical authorities about the impending transfer. And even then the Church would make sure that a slave spouse would be given the chance to follow his or her mate.^[27]

But slave women were not obligated to follow their husbands; only if they so desired—whatever the owner might think about the other spouse—would they work together on the hacienda. As we noted earlier from the vantage point of the haciendas, women were the first to leave, which meant a tacit separation. For the same reason they were not likely to follow their husbands to a hacienda. I found no case in which slaves chose this course, men or women. Therefore, there were open channels for relocation to haciendas but few ways to prove that this course was necessary. Only in two cases were owners' measures successful. In all the other attempts, there was resistance by the slave or, even more frequently, the assistance of a loved one or spouse and the Church's support.

Complaints by parents who wished to avoid the relocation of their children were less effective. Generally, the conques of slaves born into the hands of a master did not specify the conditions of sale, which were established when the slave was sold for the first time. Moreover, the slave matured, and using the argument of investment in his or her maintenance and clothing, the owner usually raised the purchase price when the slave reached working age. José Llanos was the slave parent of María del Carmen Marín, who at the age of two or three was sold to another owner, Doña Juana Daga, for 130 pesos. When the girl reached thirteen years of age, Doña Juana wanted to sell her outside the capital. Confronted with the parent's insistence, the new owner gave her mother permission to find another owner for her daughter in the city. However, the owner now asked 450 pesos for the slave girl. In the appeal for a court decision, the argument to keep the girl in the city revolved around the price. The mother asked for an appraisal of the girl, alleging that 450 pesos was a price that would not allow her to find a new owner and that owners were not free to randomly assign prices to their slaves. Precisely, she stated, because the slaves "acquire

an important right in order to attain the sad consolation of moving from the yoke of slavery, which would be imaginary if owners were to retain the power to impose capriciously the price they wish." In other words, only respect of the conque and moreover, of the slave's stipulated price, assured the slave's free mobility and consequently the possibility of loosening the ties to one's owner. The owner in this case very clearly felt the obstacles that such an interpretation placed on her pretensions of property. Her response was emphatic: "An owner is free to assign a price to his slave, without any previous appraisal being required of the former, unless the slave is found defective or if the stated price is exorbitant. The price of 400 pesos is common in this city."^[28]

Reappraisal of the price, therefore, was a way to make residence in the city difficult even if the owner formally agreed to the slave's request to search for another owner. This appeal was tested particularly with children who had not been born with their conques in their hands and whose first sale took place before their adulthood. Given these situations, the legal appeal was usually to request that the slave's appraisal be performed by experts and in a context in which former and prospective owners could reach an agreement. Thus, appraisal in order to avoid relocation outside Lima's gates could also turn into a mechanism through which slaves—with the mediation of the judicial courts—renegotiated their purchase prices. As we have seen, the likelihood of lowering one's price was even better if defects or illness existed.

Even if only rarely urban slaves went to the countryside, the possibility hung permanently over their heads. The mechanisms of resistance not only reaffirmed slaves' determination to stay in the city or return but also fit into the privileges granted by legislation and the Church: marriage in the case of married slaves; the conque and price in the case of children. Transfer to the hacienda was not an effective threat. Neither the fear of urban rebellions nor the varied profitable rural jobs for slaves were forces great enough to resolve the pressing problems of the labor force with urban-rural slave migration.

Despite the determination of slaves to defend the occupational and social spaces earned in the city, it appears significant that there were slaves who voluntarily went to the countryside and, moreover, were content. Given the previously described patterns of behavior, this happiness had only one basis: the enormous fluidity between countryside and city. The mobility of slaves between rural sites adjoining the city and the city proper must have been quite great, en-

abling a slave from the Aucallama hacienda (200 kilometers from the city of Lima) to walk through the streets of Lima often enough to win the heart and favors of Bernardina, the slave of Doña Fermina Garcia, and bring her back to the hacienda.^[29] For this couple, the hacienda served as a refuge until the abolition of slavery succeeded in finally rescuing Bernardina from the persecutions of her owner in Lima. In other words, only love and not a criterion of profitability can explain the inverse road from the city to the countryside. But far more often marriage—or rather, love—was the weapon of choice. The simple suspicion that an owner was contemplating the relocation of a slave to a hacienda was enough to bring the slave's immediate protest. Almost without exception, the argument of marriage secured a judgment in favor of the slave.

Panaderías: Prisons and Meeting Places

Placement in a panaderí a, the use of shackles, and the length of stay depended on the crime a slave had committed. As we have seen, owners put slaves there for several reasons, typically when they did not know what to do with their slaves or wished to prevent slaves from having their way. Then with the aid of a sereno they brought slaves to a panadería . Some owners put slaves under the control of a panadero and collected the daily wages directly. Given conduct such as that of José Gregorio, the combination of daily wages and imprisonment was a preferred way to control the slave population. This "practice grew so extensive that the many panaderías could hold no more slaves or keep them under irons."^[30] On occasion the parents of a black, pardo , or zambo attempted to educate the child through internment in a panadería because they found the child too frivolous or wayward.

In 1803 various complaints of excessive abuse caused a thorough inspection of all Lima's panaderías . A fragment of this inspection, written by Dr. Baquíjano, remains with us. It referred to the nine panaderías of the fourth district and noted if the persons who worked there were from "outside" (deposited by outside owners) or "local" (owned by the panadero or panadería administrators).^[31]

Panaderías had almost as many people from outside as from local sources. Outsiders represented a highly unstable component. They came and left according to the inclinations of their owners (or family

members). Since this inspection also recorded the length of stay of those convicted, we can see that at the time of the inspection the average length did not exceed two or three months. There were two obvious reasons for this: owners did not want to be without their slaves' services for a long time, and the arduous panadería labor wore slaves out and might destroy their value. Local residents had longer internments and were typically maroons; some, such as the slave Esteban, had a long criminal history. In 1853 the owner of the Siete Hormigas panadería , Don Francisco Ramírez, recounted the slave's misdemeanors:

A year and a half ago Esteban almost stabbed a woman, a servant of the pulpero on the corner, and because of the complaint she made to me I placed him in prison: after three days in prison he hurt two of his cell mates, and he tried to do the same to me, for which reason I restrained him and called the police. He hurt the warder.... Reported as corrected, he was returned and I had him again at my service and on the day cited he purposefully caused me to lose a batch of bread, and with the permission of the commissioner I flogged him three times.^[32]

Esteban's deeds were crimes—as opposed to José Gregorio's petty thefts—and there was no way to control him other than send him to a panadería . Thus, slaves from outside with extended stays in a panadería tended to be individuals with a long criminal record, even representing a menace to the owners. Other reasons for imprisonment existed (Table 14). Clearly the most serious offenders in panaderías were maroons, followed by robbers. Imprisonment for not delivering day wages was trivial, even though, as we saw, it was a perennial complaint of owners. The number of women deposited was much below that of men: a ratio of approximately 1:10 because alternative sites to deposit women were hospitals and, in exceptional cases, beaterios or convents.

Not everyone in a panadería was a slave. There were also free mulatos, pardos , and zambos who had been accused of being maroons but might not actually be slaves. Sometimes the term maroon was synonymous with vagrant. The inspection explicitly documented the person's status as a slave (Table 15); in others only ethnicity and perhaps the type of crime was noted.

We can see that most of the panadería population was free, a ratio of approximately 2:1. Local slaves were few; slaves who came from outside numbered twenty-five and there were ten free outsiders, who

were usually the ones assigned to bake bread. The explanation for this distribution is twofold: owners attempted to avoid depositing their slaves in panaderías regardless of the disturbance they caused and panaderos were reluctant to accept slaves because they knew that those who ended up in their hands were the worst of the lot, the most difficult to control and the most contumacious.

Owing as much to the composition of the panaderías ' labor force (free persons and slaves, and many ethnic hierarchies within black society) as to the fact that in the panaderías the least submissive members of society existed in the worst imaginable work conditions, rather violent episodes took place. Excesses ranged from mistreatment that merited a hospital bed in San Bartolomé, to the rape of slave women by some mayordomo or bread distributor.^[33] Revolts were not uncommon since panaderos often had trouble keeping their slaves in order. They could not achieve greater control through harsher corporal punishment. Civil suits initiated by the state against unscrupulous panaderos revealed the shrewd eye of owners determined to defend their interests and of free family members concerned about deposited slaves. In cases that depicted mistreatment and execrable working conditions, judicial action tended to defend slaves, penalizing panaderos with fines.

In 1818 the criminal prosecutor and count of Vallehermoso filed a suit against Don Francisco Gómez, the proprietor of the Sauce panadería (in the fourth district), for excessive punishment inflicted on two slaves for the crime of leaving the panadería to go shopping. The criminal defender stated his opinion regarding the happenings:

The punishment given to two blacks who were moved to the San Bartolomé hospital has been excessive and since the governmental edicts ... impose a fine of 200 pesos on panaderos the first time that more than twelve lashes are given to a slave in their homes, and the court has barely fined him the fourth part, the panadero should not be allowed any appeal.^[34]

The law was categorical. The only danger of a very high fine was that the panadero could choose to let the slave die, a less expensive solution than payment of the penalty resulting from a complaint. State authorities intervened on behalf of slaves even when the charge was neglect or sabotage of their assigned duties (for example, putting too much or too little flour in the bread dough, ruining the containers, or perhaps attacking the work foreman).^[35] In these cases the

judge's ruling was limited to stating that the slave should quickly be transferred to another owner or if the slave was local that the panadero should give the slave his or her carta de libertad . Slaves from outside often belonged to hacendados known for their readiness to transfer unruly workers to other owners. Slaves with urban experience could be a headache for owners, particularly since the correction of a stay in a panadería usually strengthened stubborn and rebellious natures.

Authorities took complaints against abusive owners and administrators seriously, not only because the property of owners was in jeopardy, but also because urban residents knew well what happened within the walls of the panaderías and depended on the daily production of bread. Those with loved ones deposited there were doubly alert. In an episode that took place in one of Santa Ana's panaderías , a slave from outside, Antonio Lara, was whipped. A free black, Juan Daga, a cobbler who lived on the corner of Cocharcas street and worked in a shop alongside his cousin, Antonio's brother, heard screams and ran to the mayor (the marqués of Torre Tagle) to warn him. When the mayor's emissary reached the establishment, the slave had already been transferred to the Serrano panadería , probably to hide the evidence of the lashes. The panadería 's administrator described the slave's offenses, which the bookkeeper confirmed and accused the slave of possessing a knife that he used to escape. In fact only the intervention of the other slaves in the panadería forestalled a "fatal outcome" because—so they said—Antonio had tried to hang the administrator.^[36] Those outside were completely clear about what took place inside; those inside kept Antonio's frenzy from ending the administrator's life. And this was the same mistreated slave who initiated a suit against the administrator for cruelty.

As the inspection showed, persons from varying social backgrounds met in panaderías . For some, the place became a "hidden dungeon," "the whole of all misery," or "the representative symbol of all pain."^[37] Yet for others life seemed quite tolerable. They enjoyed privileges, such as the right to tips or permission to leave the panadería in order to purchase articles (in this case, tobacco) for personal consumption. Conditions and complaints varied even within a single panadería .

In the inquiry after a riot that took place in the Santa Clara panadería in 1809, several inmates complained that "the administrator gave workers small tips when he wished and not when he should,"

that they slept underneath mats, and that the ration of food they received every twenty-four hours was very meager. Others said that they had nothing to complain about because the treatment and maintenance received were reasonable, that they even ate from the administrator's table and could come and go as they pleased. Those with privileges were aware of the different treatment and stated that "those who should complain are those who are imprisoned in the kneading room and are fed from the frying pan." The conditions in which this disturbance took place were significant: it was Sunday and the mayordomo was celebrating his birthday. Everyone participated, and the mayordomo "gave aguardiente [an alcoholic beverage made from sugarcane] to those free and shackled in the kneading room as well as those in the cold-storage room, so that everyone got drunk."^[38]

In light of the severe measures that authorities took against any signs of indigenous rebellion, their attitude toward the black population might seem surprising. In this situation, as in earlier disorders, the public prosecutor believed that the rioting grew from abuse and noncompliance with ordinances; therefore, the suit did not "call for further support." Officials preferred to forget the incident and the admission by one of the instigators, the slave Domingo Larreguerro, that the whole affair had been planned and that its timing "seemed fitting to them, given the inebriated state of the mayordomo who was alone because the administrator of the Paceo [panadería ] was in the town of Chorrillos."

Contemporaries understood that panaderías were places where conflicts were likely to ignite over differences in treatment and background—but authorities did not consider that such outbursts threatened the social order. Fights broke out not only between proprietors (represented by the panaderos or their administrators) and slaves, but also between members of black society. Their rough conditions and the frequent interference of alcohol often led inmates to turn their aggression against other workers in the panadería .^[39]

The years immediately after the inspection saw no change in the conditions or opportunities within the panaderías . Two decades later, in the 2 November 1822 session of congress, a report of the commission in charge of inspecting the panaderías was read, which showed concern about "the abuses that have been observed in the stated houses, with regard to the treatment that is given to some

slaves who are placed in these houses as a means of punishment." In 1821 the congress had decreed an amnesty—intended to include the slaves imprisoned in the panaderías —and had made proposals to correct abuses. The commission noted that the decree had not been posted in any of the city's panaderías . In other words, there was official concern but no translation of concern into slaves' and owners' behavior.

We have witnessed the presence of panaderías in the histories of several slave families, including the Lasmanuelos. Everyone in Lima knew about conditions there but beyond nonenforceable good intentions said or did nothing. In spite of their potentially explosive character panaderías continued to exist and fulfill their functions during the abolition of slavery. Many of them hid an owner's arbitrariness or fit the distinct objective of securing a surety, bending the will of a slave woman who felt the right to be treated as a wife, or preventing a slave's marriage. However, we have also seen that slaves increasingly objected to the reasons for their deposit. Still the mechanisms of control within the panaderías were very loose.

Given this panorama, we easily understand how and why slaves defined the fields of negotiation in terms of interpersonal relations. The state, along with other sources of control, interfered little in matters between owners and slaves. Legal channels gave both groups means to appeal those situations that personal relationships could not resolve. Trials allowed intermediation that eased social confrontation and perhaps muffled voices of dissent against oppression. Yet some figures and rumors provide accounts of uprising attempts. Labarthe (1955, 18) believes that Lima's slaves were well treated, even spoiled, and mentions that in the epoch of Gamarra's government (around 1835) some conspiracies and intentions to seize power were uncovered. Contemporaries talked of conspiracies to overthrow the government and assassinate whites in Lima. The leader of this plot was Juan de Dios Algorta. In 1827 the black candidate to replace the president was Bernardo Ordóñez, the bankrupt owner of a small shop in Guayaquil. When the plot was unveiled "meeting records, orders, appointments, and so forth were found," which according to Labarthe "demonstrated either enormous stupidity or an absolute security on the part of the conspirators."^[40] Such adjectives could easily fit many nonblack and nonslave conspirators. It was an era in which many caudillos dreamed of becoming president. Given the entirety of day-to-day experiences,

who would wonder at slaves who also held such dreams? Weren't the dreams attached to the price of freedom?

It is difficult to know what was behind such plots and conspiracies or what their magnitude and objectives were. Yet given the patterns of behavior we have recorded, and the interpretation proposed by Blanchard (1990) of an uprising by blacks in Chicama in 1851 organized by outsiders, we must posit only limited effects and propagation for these "presidential conspiracies." The panic of urban whites over the anticipated arrival of a tribal chief on a slave ship to spark a potential revolt of urban slaves never had any real foundation, but it signaled their collective urgency and despairm—or certainly showed their imagination. And slaves had a decisive part in it.