Introduction
Child labour is a long-standing regional problem in Latin America and the Caribbean. The practice not only relates to financial difficulties seen in recent decades, but also to forms of labour relationships dating back several centuries. In these pages, I propose a view of the experience of minors at the intersection of guardianship, labour coercion, and punishment. I focus on children and adolescents in domestic service – understood in the broadest sense of the concept, in activities both inside and outside the home – and any kind of service position that operated under the jurisdiction of Charcas (Bolivia) (Figure 1) in colonial South America, from its administrative headquarters in the city of La Plata, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. I argue that some mechanisms of discipline and control, exercised by the masters and authorities over child labourers, within the logic of paternalistic guardianship, played a key role in ensuring the reproduction of labour of certain origins from a tender age.
Figure 1. Map of the Real Audiencia de Charcas (with changes during the sixteenth century) and location of the Cordillera Chiriguana. Based on the work of Joseph Barnadas (1973) and cartographer Federico García Blaya (2021).
First, I focus on workers who lived in or passed through the farm (chacra or chácara), the workshop, or the colonial settlement in the city, where there were hundreds of male and female children of different ethnic origin. I am interested in highlighting the multiplicity of work systems and situations that led to child labourers being employed under the service of master or lord at these worksites, whom they supported in various tasks. Second, I study the relationship between the application of the legal figure of guardianship and coercive work (free and unfree labour) in which minors, mainly indigenous and Afrodescendants, were compelled to participate. I focus specifically on minors who did not have patria potestad (parental authority) due to a lack of knowledge, orphanhood, illegitimacy, or kidnapping, among other reasons. Finally, I assess both physical and psychological forms of violence inherent in the nature of guardianship of minors and “rescued”, “deposited”, or “settled” minors who were placed under the protection of a guardian. For this purpose, I analyse how señores and señoras (lords and ladies) subjected child labourers to various forms of punishment and intimidation, but also how local authorities intervened on behalf of the Crown in certain situations.
The proposed methodology of a broad view and concrete cases enters into dialogue with recent studies on the history of socio-labour practices and power relations in America under the colonial regime. It stops at considerations of labour differentiation according to gender – formed, stereotyped, and practical – and does not disassociate the history of minors from that of the adults around them. Constructed in fuzzy boundary categories, the analysis is the result of an inter-ethereal relational approach, in the sense that is does not seek to artificially separate a history of “adults” from one of legal minors, but rather it aims to glimpse the complexity of the relationship between the two within certain historical phenomena.
Immersion in the Servile Experience
In Latin American colonial societies, having a populated house in the city and on the farm was synonymous with economic prosperity and status. This was clearly the case for the residents of La Plata (Figure 2).Footnote 1 Its status as the seat of the court (since 1560) and archbishop (since 1609), as well as the resources it administered from the nearby Potosí mines (87 km away) and from the more than 60,000 Indians who were tributaries in its twenty-nine divisions, led its inhabitants to consolidate the idea that they were residing in a privileged place within the group of “overseas provinces”.Footnote 2
Figure 2. Plan of the city of La Plata (Sucre or Chuquisaca) by Ildefonso de Luján (1777).
Archivo General de Indias MP, Buenos Aires, 244.
In the early seventeenth century, La Plata's population – some 14,000 inhabitants, originating from diverse cultures of different origins, together with temporary workers from the surrounding area and merchants and people passing through on their way to other regions – gave shape to a particularly pluralistic scenario of the daily life of tratos y contratos (dealings and contracts).Footnote 3 According to Antonio de Herrera y Toledo, “The Spanish neighbourhood had just over 650 reasonable dwelling houses and, together with those of the Indians, which were smaller, [the number of houses in Plata] amounted to 1300”.Footnote 4 Most of them had small and medium-sized farms in the surrounding areas, where they frequently came and went with their goods and dependents along roads that linked them with each other and the city.
Servitude was essential to demonstrating wealth. Whether slave, free, or belonging to the ambiguous categories of freedman or pacified, hundreds of people of different origins and life paths made up La Plata's households and resided or spent a large part of the day in them.Footnote 5 Although not all family nuclei achieved this form, the Catholic monarchy sought to consolidate an archetype that reflected its own relationship, with the figure of the king (and his delegated authorities) as the father of a large and hierarchical family. Some of the domestic servants in these spaces were children and young people under the age of twenty-five, minors within the legal parameters of the time.Footnote 6 The diversity of origins, experiences, and paths that led them to the homes of third parties make it necessary to exercise caution when historicizing their reality, and to avoid arbitrary homogenizations of this group of dependents.Footnote 7 First, there were the sons of service mitayos who came from the surrounding areas.Footnote 8 They entered the homes accompanying and helping their mothers to fulfil different tasks that they had been assigned, while their fathers complied with their own work schedule in the city or on the farms, performing agricultural labour, handicraft, general labour, and construction, among other forms of work. As prescribed, they were supposed to work for the public benefit but, in reality, they were regularly assigned to personal service, albeit this was presented as being voluntary.Footnote 9 The length of their stay varied and although it was stipulated that they could not stay indefinitely, on occasion they did. If a mitayo arranged with his cacique to stay longer than initially planned, he could then try to get his daughters work in domestic service or urban commerce and his sons a position in a workshop where they could learn a trade.Footnote 10
In these spaces they met other children of indigenous, mestizo, Afrodescendant, and European origin who had to work in manual trades to support themselves. Among them, children of urban yanaconas – whose parents were specialized in various arts and crafts – were trained as specialist workers like their parents.Footnote 11 Vázquez de Espinoza claimed that, by 1610, there were sixty-four tiendas (artisan workshops) in La Plata, most of them employing indios oficiales (official Indians) of all trades.Footnote 12 These workshops were both a place of work and a residence for the settled minors, to whom the artisan had to offer food, clothing, and sometimes a certain amount of pesos in exchange for their service and for the duration of their stay, which, according to the archives, could last from a few months to several years. Some children of yanaconas also served for an indefinite period in public institutions, together with their parents. Others worked with traders, in a fluid dynamic between the farms and the city, and even beyond La Plata's jurisdiction. Unlike the children of mitayos, the yanaconas did not have to return to the pueblos de indios (Indian villages) with their parents, so their immersion in activities and prolonged apprenticeships was more feasible.Footnote 13
We also find them with their parents on the farms around La Plata, in small houses near the lord's hacienda, cultivating the land on whose usufruct they lived for generations. Legally, minors under taxable age should not be compelled to work.Footnote 14 They could, however, voluntarily participate in domestic service and, with their parents’ authorization, they could be compelled to perform certain occupations for which they had to be paid. The law stated: “[I]f, of his own free will and with that of his parents, a boy wants to be a shepherd, he shall be given two and a half reales every week […] plus food and clothing.”Footnote 15 Nevertheless, minors participated in different agricultural activities on the farms.
The sons and daughters of Africans and Afrodescendants (whether of African descent, Bozales, or Creoles, slaves or manumitted) were also present in all of the aforementioned labour spaces. Enslaved children arrived in the markets of Charcas quite early during the conquest process and some were even born in the homes of their parents’ masters. We see them accompanying their enslaved parents in their daily chores. However, not all slaves resided in their masters’ house, nor can we say that all freedmen always resided in their own house. In fact, it is not surprising that many remained for a period or, indeed, indefinitely in their former masters’ homes due to a lack of resources, out of gratitude, or because of preconditions placed on the manumission and their children with them.
Both enslaved and freedmen sought to place their children in the domestic service of others, in agricultural and livestock activities on farms or as apprentices in artisan workshops.Footnote 16 Minors could achieve better living conditions and generate resources that, in some circumstances, would allow them to obtain the manumission of one of their relatives. The masters did not usually object. Having slaves with skills was beneficial, because it increased their price in the local market and the slaves themselves could benefit from a higher jornal (daily wage).Footnote 17 The freedmen proceeded in the same way with their children.Footnote 18 They usually stayed two to three years in the workshop, after which they took a “skill and ability” test and became journeymen, receiving tools. It is important to emphasize that this was not only a learning experience for the minors, but also a work experience and service to the artisan. The process mirrors that of the mozos para todo (boys for everything) in exchange for lodging, food, some clothes, and care in case of illness, as was performed in Spain.Footnote 19 The formal boundary between apprenticeship and domestic service is blurred. No less important is the presence of the children of indigenous Chiriguano captives from the lowlands of Charcas, who had been kidnapped from their place of origin and traded as service piezas (pieces) to work in domestic spaces, workshops, and farms in La Plata. They were devalued, barbarized, infantilized, and even demonized because of their ethnicity. Something similar happened with the inhabitants of southern Chile.Footnote 20 Even after their trade and enslavement was prohibited, its practice continued and was legitimized by custom. Their children grew up in the places where their parents worked, whose status as “pacified Gentiles” plunged them into an ambiguous limbo between slavery and legal freedom.
The differentiation of jobs by gender was assimilated and naturalized from a very early age.Footnote 21 The multiple tasks performed by girls and young women in the houses and streets of La Plata were usually described as “service” in reference to domestic work, which was not considered a trade.Footnote 22 Unlike their male counterparts, there are no data on girls with artisan or agricultural occupations, which certainly does not mean that they did not participate in work activities together with their relatives.
After performing temporary service, these children were placed in either the home, workshop, or farm of the lord their family served, before returning to their communities, in the case of service mitayos, under servitude but detached from yanaconazgo, captivity, or inherited slavery. Some were even born in these spaces, immersed from an early age in the mechanisms of servile labour, and can be linked to different labour systems. The more fortunate could pursue apprenticeships and develop skills that allowed them to live with a greater degree of autonomy within a strongly hierarchical and racialized setting. Most were of indigenous and African descent. Not all kept their inherited affiliations; on the contrary, frequently, they were hinges between systems. It is not surprising to find children of mitayos (pacified or freed Afroindigenous yanaconized) in the city and the farms, temporarily or indefinitely, both the lord and the worker profiting from the opportunity. Regardless of their place of residence, these children maintained links with their relatives and places of origin where, with the exception of Africans and first-generation captive Chiriguanos, they used to come and go, creating bridges that transcended the limits of the social separation order that Viceroy Francisco de Toledo tried, unsuccessfully, to impose on them. However, not all of them had parents or relatives to take care of them. This is a sensitive issue that deserves further study in relation to the work situations to which they were exposed.
Guardianship and the Labour Coercion of Minors
There were a number of reasons why working children may have had absent parents. If they were slaves, this could be due to the master's decision to sell the child to another family. Similarly, the descendants of captive Indians from the lowlands of Charcas had an ambiguous legal status, which meant that their lords acted as their de facto masters. The sons of yanaconas and mitayos were able to work in different spaces for the same lord, some in farms, others in the city house, depending on the delegated activity. Indigenous and Afrodescendant children, whether horros or free, settled in urban workshops while their relatives could live in the surrounding repartimientos, or they could work on the farms while their parents lived in the city.Footnote 23
These diverse situations of coerced or voluntary family distancing, for work-related reasons, led to increased dependence not only materially but also affectively on the figure of the master whom the minor served and from whom he learned his craft. The sociability of minors was thus moulded beyond their nucleus of origin in spaces where they coexisted with peers from other cultures with whom they had in common the occupation and the authority under which they were organized. Sharing a roof and daily life with a family was, in this sense, the privilege of some.
The family strategies that mediated these separations not only obeyed material imperatives, but were also influenced by the idea that by linking them to urban activities in the homes of neighbours in La Plata, the children could receive a better education, indoctrination, and protection. Thus, when thirteen-year-old Domingo went to serve in the house of Manuel de Orías for three years in 1579, it was requested that, in exchange for the work, he be taught to live en policía, that is to say, in accordance with good customs.Footnote 24 Parents of different origins placed their children in temporary depósito (deposit) in the house of others to whose authority they were obliged to submit. As Ramírez del Águila mentions: “The caciques give their children to Spaniards, to serve them, because they teach them to speak Spanish, read and write, which they are very fond of”, and he adds that one reason for establishing compadrazgo between Spaniards and Indians was precisely to have the possibility of leaving their godchildren with their godparents in the city to serve them in exchange for protection and education.Footnote 25 Some celebrated a written agreement before a notary as a guarantee for these minors mandados a criar (sent to be raised), but most were satisfied with a verbal arrangement. The Crown and the Church did not oppose this practice.Footnote 26 This “tutored servitude” of minors thus led to the coexistence of boys and girls of different origins within the same houses, satisfying the needs of families, the desire of others to become servants, and the dynamics of the colonial market.Footnote 27 It should be noted that in Charcas, as in Chile, when parents had debts or faced economic difficulty, the service of their children was sometimes ceded to third parties for a period.Footnote 28
There is also data relating to indigenous children forced to leave their repartimientos to work in the homes of neighbours in the city.Footnote 29 Something similar was happening in Quito, for which the Crown issued a document dated 1577, which states that “although it is understood that they take them so that they may learn and have policía and be better trained and taught, the purpose for which they do so is only to keep them as slaves and serve them and then leave them lost”.Footnote 30 Kidnappings of minors from the so-called unredeemed lowlands of Charcas occurred with particular frequency and crudeness throughout the colonial period under the legal formula of ventas a la usanza (sales in the style) and of rescate (ransom).Footnote 31 Once taken captive, they were (re)sold in the colonial cities and farms at prices two to three times lower than those of enslaved Africans.Footnote 32
Traces of such violent captivity and uprooting can be found in the documentary evidence.Footnote 33 These practices with minors, which had been expressly prohibited by the Crown, were not viewed widely with opprobrium; on the contrary, they were socially accepted.Footnote 34 These minors were often baptized by their captors, others by the men or women who bought or even ordered them. Thus, in 1593, Juan Bravo de Castro, a priest in Tomina, commissioned Miguel Gutiérrez Bonilla, an inhabitant of Lima passing through La Plata, and Antonio Gutiérrez Barreto, a resident of La Plata, to deliver two unbaptized boys of sixteen and eighteen years of age and a Chiriguana of eight years of age, whom he had “rescued” from the Cordillera Chiriguana region, to the edge of the tropical forest.Footnote 35 Sometimes, the kidnapping and its purpose were undisguised, and the priest who baptized the child registered the child as a servant, pointing out that the parents were “on their land”.Footnote 36
Local authorities did not contemplate the possibility of returning them. Despite having censured the captivity and notorious trade, they preferred to place the minor in temporary custody by assigning him a guardian who might instruct him in life en policía. This may have seemed more convenient in a scenario in which the encomienda system had entered into crisis and where obtaining labour grants was more complicated than gaining access to it by force.Footnote 37 Guardianship was thus a means of covering up the coercion and labour exploitation of minors who could hardly refuse to live this reality.
Those in a position to acquire slaves, regardless of their origin, did so, within or outside the norm, and there were certainly those who preferred to acquire them as children to educate them in servitude. In 1597, Don Juan de Aymoro, cacique of the Yampara, bought for 500 pesos a ten-year-old enslaved boy named Francisco Moreno, born in the house of Pedro Serrudo.Footnote 38 The freedman Agustín Mensia, a dance teacher, bought a Bozal child named Felipe in 1598, whom he would later sell to the freedwoman Gracia García.Footnote 39 Children were thus passed from house to house, and could be exchanged, mortgaged, or donated several times.Footnote 40 The prices paid for them by the inhabitants of La Plata were significant.Footnote 41
Among the most vulnerable minors under servitude were orphans. When, for various reasons, the children had no one to exercise parental authority over them, the competent authority placed them in custody and under the temporary guardianship of a neighbour, who was responsible for them, in exchange for their service. Given the strong patriarchal bias of colonial society, there were children who, even though they had a mother, were treated as orphans since legal parental authority rested with men.Footnote 42 Others were considered ignorant or “morally unfit” to be educated en policía because their parents were poor. By soliciting, kidnapping, and receiving “orphans” in their homes, colonial society guaranteed the reproduction of uprooted domestic servitude.Footnote 43
It could happen that the orphan minors themselves asked for a guardian in order to be able to gain a position in the service of third persons and secure a livelihood. Thus, Polo de Ondegardo, mayor of La Plata around 1593, appointed a tutor for the young Francisco, son of the deceased mulatto Francisco del Solar, who wanted to learn the carpenter's trade.Footnote 44
Among those considered orphans there may also have been some illegitimate children, whom a lord refused to publicly acknowledge because they were the product of a spurious, adulterous, incestuous, or sacrilegious encounter. Without recognizing their origin or indicating another, they kept them in their homes, under their authority.Footnote 45 Sometimes, the lords made a certain affective effort with them, treating them the same as their other children; other times they did not, with the illegitimate children growing up receiving very different treatment from their siblings and often working as servants.
In spite of the fact that Viceroy Toledo, adopting the determination of Carlos I of 1571, had ordered that “free black men and women or slaves should not serve Indians”, the assets detailed in the will of the freed black woman Esperanza de Robles, dated 1589, included an orphaned indigenous girl named Yulsita, left to her by her mother before her death.Footnote 46 Christian affection and charity may have mediated in this type of spontaneous depósitos in which the local royal authority did not intervene; this does not mean, however, that the weight of the servitude to which the minor was obliged was less.
In addition to the high degree of dependence all these minors had on their guardians, the vulnerability with which they lived the day-to-day life of imposed servitude exposed them to all kinds of abuses that were part of a certain legitimized logic of disciplining the dependents.
The Punitive Violence of Civilizing Paternalism
While it is true that minors who entered servitude under guardianship in scenarios like those described above could generate bonds of friendship with and deep affection for their masters, it is no less true that the exercise of tutelage could also prove to be very violent. This is despite the implicit agreement of protection that the guardian owed to all dependents in his household as paterfamilias. To understand this reality, we must consider that, in colonial society, the ideology of paternalism was mixed with notions of limpieza de sangre (blood cleansing), transferred from the European imaginary and recreated anew.Footnote 47 These notions nurtured strong discrimination and racialization in relations between subjects.Footnote 48 The exercise of patriarchal tutelar authority over minors, mostly indigenous and Afrodescendants in the service of houses, farms, and workshops in Charcas, reflected this civilizing paternalism.
In the already asymmetrical relationship of dependence between lords and minors at their service or in apprenticeship, it was believed that part of the educating, “civilizing” role of the former was the correction of the conduct of the latter. Physical and verbal violence and punishments were, in this sense, considered a sign of the proper exercise of authority, responsibility, and love towards the dependent in the execution of his tasks.Footnote 49 In this context, prejudice triggered actions that went far beyond what could be legally justified as corrective punishment, and which was nothing more than abuse, revealing the power of control and discipline over servitude.
Without seeking to generalize, and assuming the diversity of relationships between lords, ladies, and minors, we can imagine that the orphans were exposed to significant arbitrariness and (bad) treatment. This does not contradict another reality, which is that due to the prevailing power relations, the authority of the parents in servitude over their children was notably diminished compared to that of the lords in whose service and under whose tutelage they were, making it very difficult for them to avoid outrages against them.
From an early age, the enslaved had to suffer the intervention of the master's will on their bodies, who considered the gesture a property right. The skin of thousands of Africans, but also sometimes of lowland Indians, was burned with red-hot iron on different parts of the body.Footnote 50 However, it was not only a matter of making clear the ownership over their persons, but also of punishing behaviour. Another highly infamous (because of its link to slavery) punishment was whipping, used when the master considered it necessary to correct the behaviour of not only his enslaved but his free dependents.Footnote 51 It could be that the worker had not complied with an order, that he had performed a task badly, that he was suspected of having stolen or broken an object in the house, that he had tried to run away, or that he had disrespected his master; there were many reasons that “justified” corrective flagellation. It should not be believed that free workers were not subject to this type of punishment. In urban workshops it was usual for the craftsman in charge to use the whip when he considered it necessary, in a similar way to how the father used it at home with his children. Wives or widows who assumed the administration of the household and its dependents also took the reins of punishment.Footnote 52
Punishments could be given in different spaces, with varying degrees of intensity, by different people and levels of authority, according to the degree of the offence and the intention of the lords to make it public or not. Legal parameters were followed, but local customs and habits were also influenced by the imagination and temperament of those who deemed them necessary to inflict punishment. A case-by-case analysis of the exercise of punitive violence and its justification leads to the conclusion that the criteria for its application was manifold. Minor offences were usually corrected in the privacy of homes in the city and on the farms. Punishment was meted out by the lord or, failing that, by his delegated servants.Footnote 53 When it was supposed to be exemplary, it was given in front of other servants, in the common courtyards. Hair cutting – particularly in the case of women – and temporary confinement might complement the whipping. There was no lack of minors whose hands and feet were immobilized by stocks and punished with iron shackles. Some houses, workshops, and institutions had these instruments of torture permanently available, and they were not only used with adults. Depending on the fault and those affected, the punishment could be decided and defined by the local authority in agreement with the señor or señora, in open spaces that allowed punishment and humiliation to serve as a warning to other workers. Hence towns and cities like La Plata used to have a rollo in the main square, to act as a space of exemplary torment. In these cases, the punishment was inflicted by the delegates of the mayor, the corregidor, among other local secular and ecclesiastical authorities.
But how far did corrective punishment go and what justified its application in either private or public spaces? A lot depended on the specific relationship between master and servant, on their ways of being, on the situations in which they found themselves. There were, however, some punishments that masters and lords could not give without authorization from the local authorities. This was the case with the tearing of ankles and wrists, legitimized by Viceroy Toledo, when the enslaved tried to flee or steal.Footnote 54 By way of reference, the code of the Siete Partidas of Alfonzo X (1256–1265), the Ordenanzas of Viceroy Toledo (1575–1580), and multiple laws gathered in the Recopilación de Leyes de Indias (1681) prescribe specific punishments that lords and justice administrators should impose for certain offences and according to the condition, calidad (quality), gender, and age of the subjects – but these were far from being systematically applied. On the other hand, intensity was not always well measured. Sometimes, the force of punishment was such that it ended with mutilation. The enslaved twenty-year-old Juan, accused of stealing money, was condemned to such torment that he ended up losing an arm.Footnote 55 The number of floggings permitted had some age considerations but also fell into excess.Footnote 56 Since the enslaved were valuable assets to their masters, the punishments aimed, at least in theory, to avoid mortal wounds and bloodshed. Part of this ritual of physical punishment of subordinates, whether the local authorities intervened or not, involved the master paying for treatment at home or at the Santa Bárbara hospital.
In addition to the actual punishment carried out, the threat of punishment had an important effect on the relationship between master and dependent. Lucía, an enslaved woman born in Lima and living in the house of Francisca Bustos in La Plata, said, in 1666, before the court, that “every day she threatens me that she wants to sell them to me”, in reference to her mistress and her sons José and Francisco.Footnote 57 Hers is not an isolated case. Fearing that the threat of removing their children would be carried out, when they had the opportunity and were emboldened to confront the intimidation of their masters, the enslaved initiated processes whose outcome could prove vital for their descendants. Cases of unusual violence have been reported, against which the authorities acted. One such case was that of María, no more than seven years old, whose mother, Isabel Mansilla, asked justice administrators from the Royal Audiencia de La Plata, to remove the child from the power of Doña Antonia Delgadillo since, rather than the Christian education and good treatment the lady had promised to give her, she had instead prostituted her.Footnote 58 In addition, she had caused the little girl to lose an eye and had broken her arm with the blows she had given her.
The legal difference between punishment considered legitimate and sevicia prohibited as inhumane lay in the intensity of correction.Footnote 59 The señores and señoras knew this, and to avoid difficulties with the justice system, they made formal and explicit requests to the authorities to infer certain mistreatments and punishments that were not customary. These could be accepted or rejected as excessive, as was the case with Diego Verasmendi's request to brand his slave for being a maroon.Footnote 60 Archival records make it possible to identify situations in which, in addition to the intention to discipline, a violent lack of control and abuse of power by the master is evident. In 1665, the case of Francisco de Perález, who had cruelly whipped the son of his slave Inés, in addition to having carimbado both of them in their faces, a forbidden practice, was heard before the court of La Plata.Footnote 61 Such cases of excessive cruelty reveal the extremes to which the control and exercise of discipline over the bodies and lives of those in servitude, often from a very tender age, could reach.
The royal authorities intervened in notorious cases of excessively violent punishment or if someone (possibly the minor themselves via a concerned jurist) had filed a complaint. In 1697, the Audiencia de La Plata received the case of several minors between four and fifteen years old, free mulattoes, who had been placed under the guardianship of Lieutenant Juan Perafán, a neighbour of Córdoba in Tucumán, so that “they would not be idle”.Footnote 62 The eldest of them, Gabriel, accused his guardian of treating them as slaves of the encomienda where his father worked as a slave, without paying them wages and without taking care of their subsistence: “[W]henever he wants or has wanted to, he has given me enough [money to buy] underwear and an old ongarina to suppose that if it were not for my mother we would be walking around naked, me and my other siblings.” The court decided to place him in custody in the public jail, where he was assisted by the defence attorney José Menacho. Disgruntled, Perafán sought to intimidate him by preventing his mother from assisting him with food. To escape prison, the young man agreed to return to serve the ensign if the authorities ordered him to do so, “even if they recognize the bad treatment that he will give me and that he will not pay me for my service and personal work […]. [B]eing as I am imprisoned and locked up in this jail, I will not be able to go in search of the witnesses that I could give”. The Audiencia ordered his release, after which Gabriel fled. Perafán, enervated, asked that Gabriel be given an exemplary punishment once found, “for being so shameless […] with the justices and Spaniards”.Footnote 63 The ensign did not assume when making these statements that he was talking about a recognized free Indo-African minor, master of his own will and one who did not owe him gratuitous service.
There is further evidence of minors addressing the courts with the support of assigned lawyers. Another case is that of the enslaved eighteen-year-old Miguel Baluín. His deceased mistress had left him in the service of Don Martín Arroyo in Potosí. In 1696, Miguel went before the court of La Plata, stating that Arroyo had “treated him with such rigour in word and deed that it was not possible to tolerate him”.Footnote 64 He asked not to return under his roof because he knew he would be punished in retaliation and, as he was ill, feared it would cost him his life. When it was not possible to file a complaint as a minor, some did so later, demanding fairer treatment by the family with whom they had grown up and of which they were often blood relatives.Footnote 65 Thanks to testimonies such as those discussed here, we now know that violence against minors in the service of others, under the auspices of disciplining and teaching them to live en policía, poorly hid the desire to ensure control of their labour.
Conclusions
As we have seen, there is a direct relationship between the practice of guardianship of minors and the reproduction of servitude from an early age in colonial Charcas. This was due not only to a different view of childhood and early youth, but also to the prevailing model of socio-labour relations and the desire of some to be served by others, to take advantage of their efforts, and to achieve greater status in their “populated house”.
Minors, especially Afrodescendant and indigenous children, were immersed alongside their parents in a variety of coercive labour systems performing multiple assigned tasks. Some slaves, others recognized as free, found themselves in the homes, farms, and workshops of the señor or señora and thus grew up in servitude. What the masters wanted to pass off as activities in the public interest were, in fact, personal service, which, in theory, was forbidden for the king's free subjects.
Minors’ vulnerability increased in the absence of their parents due to death, temporary surrender, or kidnapping, and their age became a control mechanism. I have given special attention to the justification of guardianship for raising en policía, which revealed itself as a disguised form of reproduction of servitude of certain origins that were strongly racialized and discriminated against through the generations. Even in the artisan workshops where minors were settled as apprentices, the price of labour training was often exploitation.
This case analysis of the corrective and exemplary punishments documented by the archival records doesn't just reveal the abuses experienced by minors. The practical and symbolic mechanisms of punitive, physical, and psychological violence bring out the desire to remind the minor of his subordinate role as a worker and as an ethnic and racialized subject. Apart from considerations about the legal status of people when inflicting punishments, it is perceptible how violence deepens prejudices that recreate differentiations that are strongly anchored in colonial society and perpetuated at different levels. The exercise of abusive power did not occur without the reaction of the minors who, when they could, made themselves heard before the courts to defend their violated rights. Regrettably, however, the dynamics of the relationship to which we have referred would remain in force for a long time to come.
