This impressive book, not a large one, is essentially a comparative study of abolition movements in Latin American countries, and their relation to independence movements and emergent nationalism. After introductory chapters on black slavery and the slave trade in the Spanish and Portuguese empires, and suppression of the traffic under British influence during the independence period, the author devotes brief chapters to emancipation movements and measures in Gran Colombia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Peru, Mexico, Central America, and Puerto Rico, but with more extended treatments of Argentina, Brazil, and Cuba. There is also a revealing outline history of racial attitudes among Latin American political leaders.
Professor Clementi, associated with the universities of Rosario and Buenos Aires, does not attempt a rounded treatment of the abolitionist experience in each country but rather an interpretation of the more salient facts or profiles. However, in some cases this is done unevenly. The chapter on Brazil, for example, considers the post-abolition problem of the Negro in national society up to the present, but in an equally important chapter on Cuba this phase is given much less attention; and in a chapter on Mexico’s abolitionist experience the focus is on the plight of the landless peons up to the present time, and this on the grounds that exploitation, or liberation of the rural peasantry, black, brown, or white, merges in with the history of servile institutions. (Here one might note that some of the post-abolitionist problems raised by dementi’s study have recently been considered by several researchers in Robert B. Topiin, ed., Slavery and Race Relations in Latin America, Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press, 1974.)
From her analysis Clementi draws nine general conclusions about the nature of slavery, abolition, the socioeconomic structure, and the persistence of servile labor that would apply to nearly all of Latin America. Perhaps some of these conclusions would be controversial, for example, that in no Latin American country did slavery constitute a highly productive economic system, except in Brazil; that in no country, except Brazil, did slavery represent more than ten percent of the population (on both these points one would probably want to consider certain regions or sectors within a country); that in the history of abolitionism in Latin America one does not find a real and persistent concern for improving the social condition of the freed-men; and that one finds a pattern of impenitent racism in socioeconomic structures that survived abolitionist measures in every case (the latter two points suggest that the book might have given some attention to the ideological foundations and expectations of nineteenth-century liberalism).
Throughout her concise treatment the author cites fundamental documents on Latin American slavery and abolition, as well as basic studies by David B. Davis, Philip Curtin, Eric Wilhams, John Lombardi, Herbert Klein, Leslie Bethel, Franklin Knight, Rolando Mellafe, and others, and suggests where the reader might find more detailed treatment of certain topics. Appended is a bibliographical listing of most of the relevant works on slavery in Latin American countries, except Haiti and Puerto Rico; and usually at the end of each chapter one finds selections from relevant documents, such as the Spanish slave code of 1789, or the Anglo-Argentine treaty of 1839 for the suppression of the slave trade.
In this objective, scholarly account the facts speak for themselves. However, in the final chapter a Third World interpretation is placed on Latin America’s heritage of servile labor, racial sensitivities, and neo-colonial institutions. According to the author, slavery, like the colonial system itself, was based on a hierarchy of social classes and property control in which the color line—or “racism”—served like the keystone in the arch; that this system in various forms survived abolition; and that if Latin American revolutionary movements are to succeed in establishing an egalitarian social order they must undertake structural reforms. The socialist revolution in Cuba is seen as the only integral effort thus far to abolish distinctions of race and class; and in this same perspective Peronismo is regarded as essentially an egalitarian movement. There is agreement with Sarmiento’s observation that the violent political history of Latin America since independence can generally be summed up as “un alzamiento de razas conquistadas” (p. 203). Professor Clementi expresses the hope that her comparative study of abolition movements will contribute to an understanding of Latin America’s revolutionary background. That it does.
