The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America - autonomous ...

Slave Religion and Rise of the Free Peasantry 49
intentioned agitators had infused in that ignorant and uncouth people
(Negroes and mulattoes) the idea that they should not work for
whites, and the lands of the latter ought to be divided amongst
them" (Gilmore, 1967:2,05).
Three months later Mosquera reported that his mines in the Caloto
area resembled a town destroyed by an earthquake. He spent two
weeks bargaining with the exslaves over the reorganization of the
mines, most of which he rented out at "vile prices" to local white
merchants and to blacks. The huts and plantain groves were divided
up among the exslaves by family and distributed free of charge; the
pastures were rented. The blacks, he wrote, "are now the owners of
my properties, leaving me only a kind of dominion, allowing me but
one-fifth of my previous income." And the same dilemma faced
landowners throughout the valley (Posada and Restrepo Canal, 1933;
Holton, 1857:381-82, 420, 511).
Returning to their estates in 1853, which had been temporarily
confiscated by the victorious Liberal party, the Arboledas refined the
concertaje system. They partitioned 330 hectares of virgin forest
among the blacks of Quintero and provided them with "bread, clothing,
and a roof." The blacks had to clear the forest, establish plantings
for the hacienda, and pay off rents (teirajes] with five to ten
days of labor each month. In a further effort to overcome the decline
in the labor supply, Sergio Arboleda began a more capital-intensive
production: brandy distilling, which became the main source of income
of the hacienda and accounted for much of its economic success
relative to other haciendas in the valley, then in steady decline.
The Arboledas tried to control their tenants tightly by restricting
public meetings and work on rented plots. They had considerable
success, but never consolidated the labor supply they so desperately
needed. Years later, in 1878, Sergio Arboleda described his problems.
While slavery had lasted, he had considered the woods along the
border of the hacienda La Bolsa and the Palo River, which had so
long been a refuge for runaway slaves, his own. But when the estates
were confiscated by the Liberals in 1851, the slaves set free, and he
and his brother forced to flee to Peru, "anarchy took over and when I
returned in 1853 the political upheaval continued till 1854 and so
great was the horror that infested those woods that nobody dared try
to reach an agreement with the terrajeros. I myself was too afraid to
enter in there." With the revolution of 1860, free blacks refused
wage work even when offered generous terms. In their resistance the
blacks took advantage of the national political turmoil, which rent
the Cauca Valley more than any other part of the republic. Under ei-