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.