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

52 Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America
to keep charging him the primicias or First Fruit's tax—usually one
in seven bushels or animals—proclaimed the chapel to be his own,
and bitterly denounced the changes in religious functions. While
there had been slaves, he stated, the costs of religion had reaped him
benefits, but now the Church no longer kept the blacks under control.
The parish priest replied in a tone unthinkable for the preabolition
epoch. He revealingly alleged that after 1833 the slave owners
had ceased to contribute to the costs of the sacraments and that up
until abolition the priests had been forced to give monthly mass. He
had continued as best he could, but it had become impossible because
of lack of worshipers. The slaves had had so little free time
to sustain their families that they had had to spend their Sundays
cultivating their provision grounds. He berated the owner for ensconcing
the chapel's ornaments in his house, so that the priest was
forever at his mercy in organizing services. It was totally false, he
said, that the chapel belonged to the Arboledas, that they had built it
and paid for the ornaments. Rather, these had come from the Jesuits
when they owned Japio. The very cemetery had been despoiled so
that Sergio Arboleda could enlarge the hacienda's patio. Finally,
contrary to what Arboleda had said, the feast days could not be
blamed for the fighting and general immorality of the blacks. The
owner was to blame, with his distillation of brandy, the chief product
of the hacienda, which he sold without scruple so long as he
made money.
Church and religion acquired a new significance when the masterslave
bond was ruptured. The landlords could no longer claim the
Godhead, and given the supremacy of theology as the force sanctioning
seignorial rule, all revolutionary doctrines and actions necessarily
became religious heresies. By the same token, the underclass
of society cast the landlords in the image of the antichrist and cast
the worst aspersions on their faith. The culture preserved its intensely
religious disposition; but now, inflamed by the social struggle
over land, work, and freedom, a Manichaean consciousness was
surfacing to buttress the fanatical division between the Liberal and
Conservative parties, a division which wracked Colombian society
from the mid-nineteenth century onward. The Liberals had dealt
slavery its final blow. The blacks gave their fervent support to their
most radical principles, just as the Arboledas remained devoted to
the Conservative cause. Even though party leadership was notoriously
fickle, here in the old heartland of slavery the social conditions
ensured that the tempestuous ideological cleavage would sink
deep roots.