62 Dornas, J. A Escravidao no Brasil, p. 228. 1939. Crisis Maga. Sept. 1913. p 245.
63 Ramos, A., The Negro in Brazil, pp. 107-186. 1939.
Chapter Four
URUGUAY, ARGENTINA, PARAGUAY, CHILE
UNMIXED Negroes are comparatively rare in Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, and especially Chile, today, but they once formed a large portion of their respective population. All four countries imported large numbers of Negro slaves. As in the lands to the north of them, the Spanish adventurers took no women with them and the first mothers of those of European ancestry born in the colonies were first Indian women and then Negro ones. In time there grew up a body of Indian, Negro and Caucasian mixed bloods so powerful that certain leaders used them again and again together with Negro slaves to set themselves up as dictators.
There is probably no record of the number of Negroes brought into this area of South America but it must have been large. “Considering the number of slaves that were directly imported into Uruguay,” says Koebel, “as well as those that filtered southwards through Brazil, it is, perhaps, somewhat a matter for astonishment that these blacks are not numerically stronger than is the case.”1 The explanation lies largely in the numerous wars of these lands. The black men were used as soldiers and were as usual sent into the most dangerous positions, where they were killed. The Negro women and children were left, however, and were later absorbed by the whites and the Indian mixed-bloods.
Garibaldi, famous Italian liberator, won his spurs by fighting in this River Plate region. In his autobiography he tells of commanding a regiment “composed entirely of slaves liberated by the Republic and chosen from the best horse-tamers in the province and all of them blacks, even to the superior officers. The enemy had never seen the backs of these true sons of liberty. Their lances, which were longer than the common measure, their ebony faces and robust limbs strengthened by perennial and laborious exercise, struck terror into the enemy.”2
Garibaldi showed his entire lack of color prejudice, and class prejudice, too, by marrying a colored Brazilian peasant, Annita, whom, just before landing he had seen working on or near the wharf. His groom, later his aide-de-camp, was also a Negro, an Uruguyan, Andrea Aguyar. Both served him very devotedly and both died fighting for Italian independence.
In Argentina, Negroes were also used as shock troops. They were the backbone of the army of General San Martin, a mestizo, and liberator of Chile, and partly so of Argentina and Peru. “The government of Buenos Aires,” says Dawson, “sent San Martin, a valuable addition in a corps of manumitted slaves. The crudest charges and the heaviest losses fell to their lot. Few of them ever returned alive over the Andes.”3 That is, Chile owes much of her victory for independence to Negroes. She has shown her gratitude by a recent law barring all Negroes from her soil.
GARIBALDI AND HIS NEGRO WIFE AND COMPANION.
XVIII. 1. Andrea Aquyar, Garibaldi’s groom and later his aide-de-camp, saving Garibaldi’s life during a navel battle off La Plata, 2. Andrea Aquyar. 3. Annita Garibaldi, devoted wife of the great general.
In Argentina, too, where the Negroes were used as shock troops, their numbers were frightfully decimated in the numerous revolutionary and civil wars of that country. Juan Manuel de Rosas, an unmixed white, and one of the fiercest dictators in history, was enabled to seize power by winning over the Negroes, mulattoes, and zambos. Speaking of the Negro’s part in making Rosas, The Encyclopedia of Latin America says, “The anarchical wars had reduced considerably the masculine part of the population which in 1810 numbered half a million, the fourth part of which were quadroons, descended from half-breeds, mulattoes, and Negroes. A leader, unbalanced and fierce, Juan Manuel de Rosas, Chief of the federals, now assumed command and pleased himself with collecting the savage Negroes of the population, some 40,000 recently emancipated slaves, nearly all in the province of Buenos Aires and bringing about the exile of the cultivated and industrious elements.”4
Rosas’ favorite was a mulatto, General Eusebio, to whom almost everyone, white and black, had to pay homage. Garibaldi who knew him, said, “Everyone in Buenos Aires knew Eusebio, the more so as at one holiday, Rosas had the idea of making Eusebio do what Madame DuBarry used to make her Negro, Zamore, do for her. Dressed as the governor, Eusebio received the homage of authority in place of Rosas.”5
W. H. Hudson, naturalist, who saw Eusebio, speaks of him as Rosas’ clown but this was probably due to the pranks that Rosas used to play on Eusebio. Once Rosas went so far in his jokes as to have Eusebio sentenced to death. Pretending that the faithful Eusebio had betrayed him, he had him arrested, duly tried, and sentenced. Eusebio was conducted to the place of execution, absolution was given by a priest, and the soldiers were lined up ready to shoot. Already they had taken aim when Rosas, himself, galloped up like a god from Greek tragedy, and ordered him to be freed, at the same time telling the thoroughly frightened Eusebio that his daughter, Manuelita, was in love with him, and wanted to marry Eusebio.
Hudson’s description of Eusebio hardly bears out the idea of clown. He says, “He marched along with tremendous dignity, his sword at his side, and twelve soldiers, also in scarlet, his bodyguard, walked six on each side of him with drawn swords.”6 Had anyone failed to remove his hat to Eusebio, he would have been immediately cut down by the guards, says Hudson.
Hudson reports seeing also many Negro washerwomen in Buenos Aires, and tells of the rich Don Evaristo, grand old man of the pampas, who had a wife with Negro strain, and of how it came out even more in her daughter.
One of the most spectacular figures of the Argentine wars was an unmixed Negro, Antonio Ruiz, “El Negro Falucho,” who on the night of February 3, 1810, was surprised by the rebels while on guard, and died rather than pull down the flag. A monument stands to his honor in Buenos Aires.
As late as 1838, Negroes still constituted an important part of the population of Buenos Aires. Robertson says that the 10,000 inhabitants of the city was composed “of a mixed breed of the natives of Old Spain, of the offspring of these so-called creoles, and a proportionately large mixture of blacks and mulattoes.”7
Paraguay
Much Negro strain was also absorbed in Paraguay. The second and the third rulers of this country after its independence, were both of Negro ancestry, namely, Carlos Antonio Lopez, and his son, Francisco Solano Lopez, commonly called Lopez I and Lopez II. The first dictator of Paraguay, the terrible Dr. Francia, was very likely of Negro descent, too. His father was a Brazilian mixed-blood, and was himself so dark that he was more than once taken for a mulatto.
Paraguay, thanks to Francia, had the strangest miscegenation law in history. It provided that certain aristocratic white families could marry only Negroes and mulattoes. These were the Spanish-born, the Spanish families of old stock, and other Europeans, who had set themselves up as gods over the native-born whites, and whose social prestige had grown so great that the rich white Paraguayan girls, would rather have one of them, however poor or worthless, than a native Paraguayan man, however rich, amiable, and cultured. Accordingly, Francia, whose racial pride had also been hurt, issued the above-mentioned decree, hoping to break up their power, and to wound them in their dearest conceits.
This singular law had a singular result. Because of it, Francia’s successor, but one, the bloodthirsty Lopez II, came into being.
C. A. Washburn, who was American Minister to Paraguay in the 1860’s, tells the story thus: A rich planter, Lazaro Rojas, who lived in a great mansion “with silver plate enough to set off a royal palace” in casting about for a suitable match for his white step-daughter “selected Carlos Antonio Lopez as the most eligible person inasmuch as he was a man of intelligence above the average and having some Negro blood to boast of the union would not be in violation of that law which Francia had promulgated forbid ling all marriages of those claiming Spanish blood except with Negroes.