Slaves, Free Men, Citizens - CIFAS

8 The Slavesweighed down by the heat, fatigued with the weight of theirpicks and by the resistance of the clayey soil baked hardenough to break their implements, strained themselves toovercome every obstacle. A mournful silence reigned. Exhaustionwas stamped on every face, but the hour of resthad not yet come. The pitiless eye of the Manager patrolledthe gang and several foremen armed with long whips movedperiodically between them, giving stinging blows to all who,worn out by fatigue, were compelled to take a rest-menor women, young or old." This was no isolated picture. Thesugar plantations demanded an exacting and ceaseless labour.The tropical earth is baked hard by the sun. Roundevery "carry" of land intended for cane it was necessaryto dig a large ditch to ensure circulation of air. Young canesrequired attention for the first three or four months andgrew to maturity in 14 or 18 months. Cane could be plantedand would grow at any time of the year, and the reapingof one crop was the signal for the immediate digging ofditches and the planting of another. Once cut they bad tobe rushed to the mill lest the juice became acid by fermentation.The extraction of the juice and manufacture of theraw sugar went on for three weeks a month, 16 or 18 houra day, for seven or eight months in the year.Worked like animals, the slaves were housed like animals,in huts built around a square planted with provisionsand fruits. These huts were about 20 to 25 feet long, 12feet wide and about 15 feet in height, divided by partitionsinto two or three rooms. They were windowless and lightentered only by the door. The floor was beaten earth; thebed was of straw, hides or a rude contrivance of cordstied on posts. On these slept indiscriminately mother, fatherand children. Defenceless against their masters, they struggIedwith overwork and its usual complement-underfeeding.The Negro Code, Louis XIV's attempt to ensure themhumane treatment, ordered that they should be given, everyweek, two pots and a half of manioc, three cassavas, twopounds of salt beef or three pounds of salted fish-aboutfood enough to last a healthy man for three days. Insteadtheir masters gave them half-adozen pints of coarse flour,rice, or pease, and half-adozen herrings. Worn out by theirlabour all through the day and far into the night, manyneglected to cook and ate the food raw. The ration wa>so small and given to them so irregularly that often thelast half of the week found them with nothing.Even the two hours they were given in the middle ofthe day, and the holidays on Sundays and feast-days, werenot for rest, but in order that they might cultivate a smallpiece of land to supplement their regular rations. Hardworkingslaves cultivated vegetables and raised chickens to¥el in the towns to make a little in order to buy rum andtobacco; and here and there a Napoleon of finance, by luckand industry, could make enough to purchase his freedom.Their masters encouraged them in this practice of cultivation,for in years of scarcity the Negroes died in thousands,epidemics broke out, the slaves fled into the woods andplantations were ruined.The difficulty was that though one could trap them likeanimate, transport them in pens, work them alongside anass or a hone and beat both with the same stick, stablethem and starve them, they remained, despite their blackskins and curly hair, quite invincibly human beings; withthe intelligence and resentments of human beings. To cowthem into the necessary docility and acceptance necessitateda regime of calculated brutality and terrorism, and it is thisthat explains the unusual spectacle of property-owners apparentlycareless of preserving their property: they had firstto ensure their own safety.For the least fault the slaves received the harshest punishmentIn 1685 the Negro Code authorised whipping, andin 1702 one colonist, a Marquis, thought any punishmentwhich demanded more than 100 blows of the whip was seriousenough to be handed over to the authorities. Laterthe number was fixed at 39, then raised to 50. But the colonistspaid no attention to these regulations and slaves werenot unfrequently whipped to death. The whip was not alwaysan ordinary cane or woven cord, as the Code demanded.Sometimes it was replaced by the rigoise or thick