Chile
Country of South America, bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean, on the north by Peru and Bolivian, and on the east by Argentina.Chilean society prides itself on its racially mixed past as expressed in the mythic belief in
la raza chilena, a special race produced by noble Spaniards and the region's original inhabitants, the Araucanian indigenous people. What this myth omits is the contribution that Africans brought to the racial mix. Not only are blacks ignored in the standard contemporary vision of Chilean society, but their role in the country's history is generally overlooked as well. While a fleeting look at the population of modern Chile might suggest only a marginal presence by people of African descent, a closer look reveals the significance of the Afro-Chilean contribution. Blacks made their greatest impact in colonial Chile as exploited slave labor and honored soldiers, helping to forge a nation on the frontier. Once the new republic was established in 1818, Afro-Chileans seem to have all but vanished. Various reasons have been suggested to explain this alleged disappearance, but the most likely explanation seems to be insufficient national research, reflecting a disinterest in this group by Chilean society as a whole.
Before and After Conquest
Before the Spanish conquest of Chile, the region was home to various indigenous populations, including the Diaguita, Pehunche, Cunco, and Araucanian. The Araucanian comprised the Picunche in the north, the Mapuche in the middle valleys, and the Huilliche in the south. Spanish invaders overwhelmed the Picunche and the Huilliche and assimilated these groups into their own peasant population. Only the Mapuche were able to resist domination by the conquistadores as Pedro de Valdivia's forces trekked southward after founding the city of Santiago de Chile in 1541. Between 1553 and 1558 the Mapuche organized an uprising that marked the beginning of ongoing intermittent warfare, which continued into the nineteenth century. The resistance of the Mapuche, combined with the death of most of the remaining indigenous forced laborers, led the Spaniards to import African slaves as a means of strengthening the labor supply.
Originally part of the viceroyalty of
Peru, Chile gained greater governmental autonomy in the late 1700s. In 1810 it declared its independence from
Spain and joined the rest of Spanish America in the war against royalist troops. With the establishment of the new republic (1818) came periods of instability as conservatives and liberals vied for power. Boundary disputes with
Bolivia and Peru culminated in the War of the Pacific (1879–1883). Chile won territory from both Bolivia and Peru, in the process incurring strained relations that continued throughout the twentieth century.
Between the 1970s and 1989 Chile endured great social, economic, and political turmoil, first under the rule of Socialist Salvador Allende, then under the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet adopted extreme measures to stabilize the economy and to repress opposition to his rule. Democratic government was reinstated in December of 1989, when Patricio Aylwin was elected during the first Chilean presidential election in nineteen years. In 1993 Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle was elected president. He continued the country's movement toward civilian-controlled politics. Since then, Chile's economy and political system have significantly improved with the help of governmental reforms. In January 2000 Ricardo Lagos Escobar became the first Socialist to be elected president since Salvador Allende.
Pinochet was detained in October 1998 while seeking medical treatment in Britain after a Spanish judge charged him with human rights violations and requested his extradition to Spain. In March 2000 Britain released Pinochet to Chile after a British medical team found him unfit to stand trial due to brain damage from a series of strokes suffered in 1999.
Slavery
An undetermined number of blacks first entered Chile as both slaves and soldiers with the Spaniard explorer Diego de Almagro in 1536. Among them was Juan
Valiente, a slave from
Mexico who was allowed to join Almagro's expeditionary forces as a soldier and went on to distinguish himself as captain of the infantry. Blacks brought as slaves to Chile were used primarily to supplement the labor of the region's limited indigenous population, many of whom succumbed to the harshness of the work. Spanish administrators, who were working to establish and maintain the new colony, used slave labor in agriculture, gold mining, and construction. As a poor and remote colony, Chile could not afford to import large numbers of African slaves. Without significant exploitable resources, Chilean requests for additional slave labor were sometimes denied by the Crown.
Most of the African slaves brought to Chile and the Rio de la Plata region were from
Angola origin, taken from the Upper Guinea and
Congo River stations. Slaves were initially imported to Chile through overland passages from Buenos Aires and Montevideo. When the Buenos Aires port was temporarily closed to traffic in the early seventeenth century, all legal goods for the southern region of South America were rerouted to
Cartagena, Colombia. The alternate Pacific route, by which slaves were transported from
Colombia to Panama City, shipped to Callao in Peru, and finally walked overland into Chile, increased the cost of Chilean slaves and gave rise to an illegal trade. As in other Latin American countries, Chilean records of slave importation are incomplete because an unknown number of slaves were smuggled into the country. Scholars have estimated that approximately 0.01 percent of the entire
Transatlantic Slave Trade was Chilean.
The Afro-Chilean population grew from about 7,000 in 1570 (among a total population of 624,000) to 20,000 by 1590 (among a total population of 586,000). Both free and enslaved blacks found a niche in urban as well as rural settings. Slaves worked as cowboys, sheepherders, and miners in rural areas and as domestic servants in the cities. Free laborers worked as saddle makers, coachmen, and reportedly even as executioners. On occasion Afro-Chileans became apprentices by exchanging labor for training in carpentry, shoemaking, and blacksmithing. Blacks in the cities were essential to the local economy and held positions in the mechanical trades alongside Spaniards, while Indians and mestizos (of indigenous and European descent) worked in agriculture.
The status of Afro-Chilean slaves in colonial society was unique, since they gained notice as both subjugated laborers and valued soldiers. Legally all blacks held the lowest positions in the Spanish colonial hierarchy, yet Chilean administrators made exceptions that went against colonial law. Most likely it was Chile's great distance from the viceroyal seat of power in Lima, Peru, that enabled local authorities to ignore decrees of the Spanish Crown. Decisions to award some Afro-Chilean slaves supervisory positions over Indian labor gangs were legally disallowed but socially acceptable. A few blacks reportedly gained enough prestige as soldiers to receive encomiendas (land grants) with Indian tribute laborers. Juan Valiente was one such soldier who in the year 1550, according to historian Leslie Rout, became the first known black in the Americas to receive an encomienda. A few other blacks—including Juan Beltrán, Leonor Galiano, Gomez de Leon, and Cristóbal Varela—were honored with land grants, but these infrequent awards left the legal and social status of Afro-Chileans fundamentally unchanged. They were still considered slaves regardless of their awards.
Afro-Chileans' dual status as overseers and allies of the Indians affected relations between them. Colonial administrators in Spanish America, aware of this duality, constantly feared the exploitation of indigenous populations by blacks as well as alliances between the two groups. Their fears were justified. As early as the 1550s, escaped slaves had formed fugitive communities that raided towns and Indian villages. At the same time, cimarrones, as escaped slaves were called, did not act alone. Indian groups joined in raids on Spanish settlements; in 1631, Indian hostility erupted in a large-scale attack on Santiago. Certain
cimarrón groups were even reputed to have mulattoes (of African and European descent) and Spaniards, in addition to Indians, among their members.
Measures to avert a combined Indian-black revolt ranged from laws to separate the two groups to executions to curfews. Following an earthquake that devastated Santiago in 1647, and fearing an Indian-black uprising at the height of the city's vulnerability, Spanish officials executed an Afro-Chilean slave who had rallied support among approximately 400 slaves. When fugitive raids continued mainly undiminished in the face of such punishment, the Santiago municipal council passed laws prohibiting blacks, Indians, and mulattoes from being out at night.
Independence
The first well-known proposal to abolish slavery in Chile coincided with the declaration of Chilean independence in 1810. In October 1811 philanthropist-economist Manuel de Salas proposed a law that would not only ban the slave trade in Chile, but would also improve conditions for those already enslaved and would free their children. Salas further proposed that any slaves transported through Chile who stayed for more than six months would be declared free. The Salas proposal became law, and though it met with continued opposition from the country's conservatives, it remained in effect throughout the war of independence.
In August 1814 the rebel government, in need of soldiers, promised freedom to slaves in return for their joining the newly created all-black and mulatto military unit (although new recruits were required to compensate their former masters from their own salaries). Within a month the rebel government had discovered that owners were preventing their slaves from joining the military. Enlistment became obligatory, and punishment for slaves' failure to enlist was meted out to both owner and slave: a two-year exile and loss of half his estate for the former, and 100 lashes and a sentence of perpetual slavery for the latter. Although Chile won its independence in 1818, the promise of freedom was not immediately fulfilled. In 1823 an estimated 4000 Chilean slaves were freed, and Chile became the first Spanish American republic to enact total abolition.
Contemporary Times
As with other Latin American countries, such as
Argentina and
Uruguay, Chile's black population appears to have vanished from history records after emancipation in 1823. Unlike other African-descended populations in Latin America, Afro-Chileans have not resurfaced as a political force or as leaders in a cultural movement. According to a 1940 census—the most recent to report a national count of Afro-Chileans—there were 1,000 blacks and 3,000 mulattoes in Chile. Historian Leslie Rout cites a personal source that placed Afro-Chileans at .017 percent of the total Chilean population of 9,786,000 in 1971.
Some Chilean scholars, such as Francisco Encina, claim that blacks died out on account of alcoholism, disease, and climate, yet these factors had no significant effect on other populations within Chile. The only viable explanation is that
Miscegenation has thoroughly blended the country's racial groups, making Afro-Chileans highly indistinct. Rout and other scholars suggest that the government-supported influx of white European immigrants during the mid-1800s, combined with an unofficial policy of discrimination against black immigration, contributed to the decline of the Afro-Chilean population. Without significantly observable physical or cultural traits suggesting African descent, the Afro-Chilean population is no longer highly visible. Closer examination of Chilean culture may reveal African-influenced elements, but such research has not yet been undertaken.
See also
Colonial Latin America and the Caribbean;
Maroonage in the Americas;
Racial Mixing in Latin America and the Caribbean;
Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean.
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