Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America

The focus of Spanish conquest in Mexico, Central America, and northern South America quickly discovered large deposits of gold and silver. Even though the romanticized myths about Spanish discovery and conquest focuses on gold, it was silver that the Spaniards mined in truly vast quantities and then transported back to Europe. Furthermore, even though the Spanish established large sugar plantations in places like Cuba and Hispaniola, it was Brazil that dominated the sugar trade.

Chasteen briefly discusses two large silver mines in the Spanish colonies: mines in Zacatecas (Mexico), and Potosí (Bolivia). Of the two, Potosí was the largest and most enduring, though the mines in Zacatecas would eventually produce more silver than Potosí on the eve of revolution. Silver was discovered in Potosí (specifically the Cerro Rico Mountain elev. 13,200 feet) by Diego Gualpa in 1545. By 1549, the Spanish were extracting large quantities of silver. In 1573, it was recorded that over 10,000 forced laborers (mitas) were working the mines, most drafted from Indigenous populations in the Andes, and the village of Potosí boasted a population of over 100,000. The city became what appears to be inimical to mining boom towns: It became a city of vice so that by the year 1600 brothels, gambling dens, and taverns thrived. However, in opposition to the vice, or as a result thereof, there were also approximately 20 Catholic churches. Potosí was a crown jewel in the Spanish colonial empire for nearly 200 years. Potosí was even used by Miguel de Cervantes in his magnum opus Don Quixote de la Mancha to mean something worth a grand fortune.

However, by 1750 the mines of Zacatecas were producing more silver, and Potosí was in decline both economically and in importance to the Spanish. Unlike Potosí, where the silver predominantly came from a single area, the Cerro Rico, the mines of Zacatecas were scattered over a broader area. The largest and most important city in the region was the city of Zacatecas, which became the second most important city in Mexico after Mexico City. The development of the mines in Zacatecas was also more gradual than in Potosí, which may explain why they eventually came to produce more silver. Of course, all of this production was done by scores of forced labor in the form of mitas or African enslaved people. This was a rule throughout the colonies rather than an exception of the mines. In fact, the sugar plantations in Brazil would not have functioned without enslaved people. Portugal had been dealing in sugar, predominantly in the northeast (Pernambuco and Bahia), before widespread expansion in Brazil. The island of São Tomé off the coast of Central Africa was a precursor of the plantations that would develop in Brazil, meaning the Portuguese were experienced in manufacturing sugar with slave labor. The center of all sugar production was centered in the engenhos, the engines. While the word engenho referred to the equipment that milled the sugarcane, it came to signify everything that surrounded it as well. Oftentimes a sugarcane plantation was also an engenho, so a typical engenho had land to grow the sugarcane, a place for milling it, a distillery, a large house for the owner, living quarters for enslaved people, and other support buildings.

Chasteen provides the term hegemony, the sociopolitical means by which the Spanish and Portuguese were able to maintain three centuries of control over their colonies in the Americas. In essence, hegemony is the way the ruling class made their domination appear justified and inevitable to the masses. That definition of hegemony provides the what but not the why and how of hegemony, which is quite complex. To begin to comprehend how hegemony worked, one needs an overview of the basic political, social, and cultural sentiments on all sides of the paradigm. In this case, one needs to possess a basic understanding of the zeitgeist of the Europeans, the Africans, and the Indigenous Americans. Unfortunately, a basic understanding would require several book-length treatises covering each group’s history and culture. Suffice it to say that the zeitgeist for the Spanish and Portuguese centered on the history of the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula and the notion of divine right. All moral judgments aside, the Portuguese, and particularly the Spanish, saw themselves as the bastion of Christianity. The proof that they were special and ordained by God to protect the faith and expand it was viewed by their ultimate defeat of the Moors. Not only that, but King Ferdinand of Aragon, who ruled Spain with Isabella, had claim (from a medieval point of view) to Jerusalem. Some viewed in him the chance to acquire Jerusalem again for Christianity (which never happened).

However, the religious fervor brought about by the expulsion of Islam from Iberia cannot be overlooked. Not to mention Ferdinand and Isabella ruled under a notion of divine right of kinds, an idea that predates medieval Europe. Thus, when Columbus brought back news of the Americas, the idea of divine right and expansion was nothing new. The African slave trade brought millions of Africans to the Americas, and, like the idea of divine right, slavery predates colonialism. Chasteen points out that slavery was a common social practice in Africa (as it was in the Americas too before the arrival of Europeans.) In the beginning, most enslaved people in Africa were taken as war captives. However, in African society, similar to slavery during the Roman Republic and Empire, enslaved people would not necessarily remain enslaved their entire lives, and their children were not born enslaved. These developments occurred later. Unfortunately, African slave culture combined with a long history of contact with Europeans placed African peoples in a position to be exploited by European colonizers needing manual laborers. The Indigenous peoples fared even worse. Even among the most advanced Indigenous civilizations, they lacked many of the technological and politico-religious advantages held by the Europeans. Many had more in common with the Germanic and Gallic peoples, for example, whom the Romans fought and conquered over 1,000 years ago, than with the Europeans of the 16th century.

Chasteen discusses another important concept: transculturation. The blend of two or more cultures to form a distinctively different, new culture. European, African, and Indigenous cultures mixed to form several Latin American cultures, which shared much in common with one another. The Portuguese were the first to dominate the slave trade in Europe and supplied enslaved people for not only their colonies abroad but also for the Spanish, French, and English. While slavery is a concept that is as old as man, the massive slave trade and exportation (i.e., forced emigration) of Africans changed global demographics—specifically in places like Cuba, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic with large populations of people with African descent. Brazil alone has approximately 54 million people who identify thusly. African enslaved people were never allowed to fully integrate into colonial society, always remaining the lowest tier of a strict caste system.

Despite their many hardships, Africans maintained a vibrant native culture that, over time, influenced other ethnicities. African culture was a driving force, if not the main catalyst, that eventually gave birth to distinct Latin American culture. Some of the most notable influences come from their music, which is vibrant, percussive, and rhythmic. Of course, the people affected most by colonization were the Indigenous peoples. Many Indigenous groups disappeared from history altogether because they all died out from disease or war. It was inevitable that Indigenous people would play a decisive role in forming the rising Latin American cultures despite the large-scale destruction of their populations since they were, in the beginning, the most populous ethnicity in the Americas. Countries like Paraguay, Bolivia, and Peru list Indigenous languages as co-official languages with Spanish while many others recognize Indigenous languages regionally. Indigenous cuisine also completely altered European diets. The potato, a staple for German, Irish, and other nations, was imported from Peru and cultivated in Europe. Ditto the tomato. What we think of as typical Italian food did not exist before the tomato was brought over from the Americas. Other native plants and spices fused with European and African influences to create the distinctive cuisines of Latin America.

Much of this transculturation fomented in the areas called “fringes of colonization” by Chasteen. These areas were less influenced and controlled by the European colonizers, who preferred to remain in the urban areas along the coasts. Therefore, many of the fringe areas were located inland and away from areas of vast resources. Fringe areas may not have played much of a role in colonial times, but some of those areas would become of greater importance later during and after independence, such as Argentina and its gauchos, for example. However, there was an interesting group who served as a precursor to the type of transculturation that would fuel independence movements in the 19th century. These were the bandeirantes in Brazil. These men were something like the mountain men in North America, except while many were of strictly European ancestry more were of a mix of European and Indigenous ancestry. They were adventurers who mostly went in search of enslaved people but also increasingly searched for gold, silver, and other riches. Other than their mameluco (mestizo) origins, one of the most telling characteristics these men possessed was their usage of the Língua Geral, a trade language based on Tupi, a language spoken by many Indigenous peoples in the Amazon region and elsewhere. Furthermore, the bandeirantes were responsible for much of the exploration of the Brazilian interior, furthering Portuguese expansion in Brazil.