Slavery in the Spanish American viceroyalties included the enslavement, forced labor and peonage of indigenous peoples, Africans, and Asians from the late 15th to late 19th century, and its aftereffects in the 20th and 21st centuries. The economic and social institution of slavery existed throughout the Spanish Empire, including Spain itself. Initially, indigenous people were subjected to the encomienda system until the 1543 New Laws that prohibited it. This was replaced with the repartimiento system. Africans were also transported to the Americas for their labor under the race-based system of chattel slavery.O'Rourke, D.K., 2005. How America's first settlers invented chattel slavery: dehumanizing native Americans and Africans with language, laws, guns, and religion (Vol. 56). Peter Lang.Knight, F.W., 2008. Slavery in the Americas. A companion to Latin American History, pp.146-161. Later, Southeast Asian people were brought to the Americas under forms of indenture and peonage to provide cheap labor to replace enslaved Africans.Seijas, Tatiana.Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico: From Chinos to Indians. New York: Cambridge University Press 2014.

Indigenous societies in the Americas practiced slavery and other forms of coerced labor long before Europeans arrived. War captives, debtors, and raid victims were held in bondage in many regions. During the Spanish conquest, soldiers and Native allies seized prisoners as spoils. The crown later institutionalized Indigenous labor and tribute through the encomiendaEltis, David, and Stanley L. Engerman, editors. The Cambridge World History of Slavery. Vol. 3, AD 1420–AD 1804, Cambridge UP, 2011. (See especially Leland Donald, “Slavery in Indigenous North America,” and Neil L. Whitehead, “Indigenous Slavery in South America, 1492–1820.”).. Following the collapse of indigenous populations in the Americas, the Spanish restricted the forced labor of Native Americans with the Laws of Burgos of 1512 and the New Laws of 1542. Instead, the Spanish increasingly utilized enslaved people from West and Central Africa for labor on commercial plantations, as well as urban slavery in households, religious institutions, textile workshops (obrajes), and other venues.Sierra Silva, Pablo Miguel.Urban Slavery in Colonial Puebla de los Ángeles, 1531-1706. New York: Cambridge University Press 2018.Blackburn, Robin. The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800. New York: Verso 1997, 137-43 As the Crown barred Spaniards from directly participating in the Atlantic slave trade, the right to export slaves (the Asiento de Negros) was a major foreign policy objective of other European powers, sparking numerous European wars such as the War of Spanish Succession and the War of Jenkins' Ear. Spanish colonies ultimately received around 22% of all the Africans delivered to American shores. Towards the end of the Atlantic slave trade, Asian migrant workers (chinos and coolies) in colonial Mexico and Cuba were subjected to peonage and harsh labor under exploitative contracts of indenture.Ferrer, Ada. Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898. The University of North Carolina Press, 1999. p 18.

In the mid-nineteenth century, when most nations in the Americas abolished chattel slavery, Cuba and Puerto Rico – the last two remaining Spanish American colonies – were among the last in the region, followed only by Brazil. Enslaved people challenged their captivity in ways that ranged from introducing non-European elements into Christianity (syncretism) to mounting alternative societies outside the plantation system (Maroons). The first open Black rebellion occurred in Spanish labour camps (plantations) in 1521. Resistance, particularly to the forced labor of indigenous people, also came from Spanish religious and legal ranks. Resistance to indigenous captivity in the Spanish colonies produced the first modern debates over the legitimacy of slavery. The struggle against slavery in the Spanish American colonies left a notable tradition of opposition that set the stage for conversations about human rights. The first speech in the Americas for the universality of human rights and against the abuses of slavery was given on Hispaniola by Antonio de Montesinos, a mere nineteen years after the Columbus' first voyage.

Background

Slavery in Spain traces back to the times of the Greeks, Phoenicians and Romans. Slavery was cross-cultural and multi-ethnic, and had an important role in the development of European economies such as Spain. The Romans extensively utilized slaves according to the Code of Justinian. Following the rise of Christianity, Christians were in theory barred from enslaving their fellow Christians, but the practice persisted. With the rise of Islam, and the conquest of most of the Iberian peninsula in the eighth century, slavery declined in the remaining Christian kingdoms of Iberia.Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, pp.34-44.

At the formation of Al-Andalus, Muslims were prohibited from enslaving other Muslims, but non-Muslim Spanish and Eastern European slaves were traded by Muslims and local Jewish merchants. Mozarabs and Jews were allowed to remain and retain their slaves if they paid a head tax for themselves and half-value for the slaves, but non-Muslims were prohibited from holding Muslim slaves. If one of their slaves converted to Islam, they were required to sell the slave to a Muslim. Mozarabs were later, by the 9th and 10th centuries, permitted to purchase new non-Muslim slaves via the peninsula's established slave trade.

During the reconquista, Christian Spain sought to retake territory lost to Muslims, leading to changing norms regarding slavery. Though enslavement of Christians was originally permitted, the Christian kingdoms gradually ceased this practice between the 8th and 11th centuries, limiting their pool of slaves to Al-Andalusian Muslims. The enslavement of conquered Muslims was supposedly justified on the basis of conversion and acculturation, but Muslim captives were often offered back to their families and communities for cash payments (rescate). The thirteenth-century code of law, the Siete Partidas of Alfonso X of Castile (1252–1284), specified slaves' good treatment by their masters, and who could be enslaved: those who were captured in just war; offspring of an enslaved mother; those who voluntarily sold themselves into slavery. This was generally domestic slavery and was a temporary condition for members of outgroups.Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, pp. 50-51. The Siete Partidas described slavery as "the basest and most wretched condition into which anyone could fall because man, who is the freest noble of all God's creatures, becomes thereby in the power of another, who can do with him what he wishes as with any property, whether living or dead."quoted in Blackburn,The Making of New World Slavery, p. 51.

As the Spanish (Castilians) and Portuguese expanded overseas, they conquered and occupied Atlantic islands off the north coast of Africa—including the Canary Islands, São Tomé and Madeira—where they introduced sugar plantations.Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, pp. 62-63, 81-82. In the Canary Islands, the Spanish practised the encomienda system, a type of forced labor modelled on the reconquista practice of awarding Muslim laborers to Christian victors.Lockhart and Schwartz, Early Latin America, pp. 21-22. The Spanish treated the Canarian natives, known as the Guanches, as pagans, but several attempts were made by the Catholic Church to prevent their enslavement and defend the freedom of evangelized Canarians. Despite this, the Guanches' population precipitously declined as a result of encomienda.

Under Castilian control, in the period from 1498 (when the Catholic Kings ordered the freedom of the Guanches) until 1520 (when the last Guanches were freed), Guanche encomienda was replaced by African chattel slavery. Castilians traded a variety of European goods—including firearms and horses—for slaves from West Africa, where the existing slave trade had begun to shift to the coast to meet European demand. In these colonies off the coast of Africa, the Spanish engaged in sugar cane production following the model of Mediterranean production. The sugar complex consisted of slave labor for cultivation and processing, with the sugar mill (ingenio) and equipment established with significant investor capital. When plantation slavery was established in Spanish America and Brazil, they replicated the elements of the complex in the New World on a much larger scale.Lockhart and Schwartz, Early Latin America, pp. 26-28. In the Spanish colonies of the New World, the encomienda system would also be revived to enslave indigenous peoples. This system became much more widespread following the Spanish contact and conquests in Mexico and Peru, but the precedents had been set prior to 1492, in the Canary Islands.

Indigenous slavery

Following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492, European enslavement of Indigenous Americans began with the Spanish colonization of the Caribbean. Initially, slavery represented a means by which the conquistadors mobilized native labor, with disastrous effects on the population. A group of about 24 Taíno people were abducted and forced to accompany Columbus on his 1494 return voyage to Spain.Kirkpatrick Sale, "The Conquest of Paradise", p. 155, Unlike the Portuguese Crown's support for the slave trade in Africa, los Reyes Católicos () opposed the enslavement of the native peoples in the newly conquered lands on religious grounds, so when Columbus returned with indigenous slaves, they ordered the survivors to be returned to their homelands. By 1499, Spanish settlers on Hispaniola had discovered gold in the Cordillera Central. This created a demand for large amounts of cheap labor, and an estimated 400,000 Taíno people from across the island were soon enslaved to work in gold mines.

In 1500, the Catholic Monarchs issued a decree that specifically forbade the enslavement of indigenous people, but they allowed three exceptions which were freely abused by colonial Spanish authorities: slaves taken in "just wars"; those purchased from other indigenous people; or those from groups alleged to practice cannibalism (such as the Kalinago).Noble, David Cook. "Nicolás de Ovando" in Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, vol.4, p. 254. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1996. In 1503, 80 caciques (Taíno tribal leaders) were burned alive and the remaining adults and children were killed at the Jaragua massacre, purportedly to prevent a rebellion.Las Casas, Bartolomé. "History of the Indies". "Trans. Andrée M. Collard. New York, Evanston and London: Harper & Row, 1971. Book 2, Ch. 9, Pg 99 The escapees were later rounded up and enslaved.Las Casas, Bartolomé. "History of the Indies". "Trans. Andrée M. Collard. New York, Evanston and London: Harper & Row, 1971. Book 2, Ch. 9, Pg 99 and Book 3, Ch. 166, pg 287. In 1508, Juan Ponce de León and the Spaniards arrived on the island of Borikén (Puerto Rico), and enslaved Taíno tribes on the island, forcing them to work in the gold mines and in the construction of forts. In 1511, the Taíno in Puerto Rico allied with the Kalinago to resist the enslavement and abuse by Ponce de Léon, triggering the Spanish–Taíno War of San Juan–Borikén.