Juan Francisco Manzano's Autobiography Of A Slave

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database estimates that Between 1501 and 1875 some 12.5 million Africans – kidnapped civilians, traded prisoners, and resold slaves – where shipped in deadly conditions from the West Coast of Africa to various ports on the Atlantic Ocean . Those that survived found themselves sold into lives of forced labor. Depending on where geographically and when chronologically they disembarked, the particular conditions of their servitude varied. In general terms, arrival in the British and United States colonies, bondage accompanied a loss in human status and a redefinition as chattel. In contrast, some historians have argued that in Latin America, slaves were permitted a different status that granted them a “legal and …show more content…
Owing to his lighter complexion, the lineage of domestic servitude inherited from his parents, and perhaps most importantly, the affections of his masters, much of Manzano’s childhood was spent in relative exclusion from the daily turmoil faced by other slaves in Cuba. Manzano was by no means a free person, not until he was nearly forty years old, but he did enjoy certain preferential treatment. He was able attend the theater and social outings, he ate well and wore fine clothes, learned to draw and how to write. However, these privileges cut both ways, and with the death of his first mistress and his entry in to adolescence, the “true story” of his life “began to unleash itself [upon him] with all its fury.” From the age of twelve, the relative freedom that he enjoyed in his youth began to deteriorate and stood in an unbearable contrast to the increasingly hostile treatment he received throughout his teenage …show more content…
In between two stints with the Marchioness de Prado Ameno, he spent three years with benevolent masters in Havana that were kind and treated him “not as a slave, but as a son” although they did discouraged his love of letters for it did not “correspond to his class.” With the Marchioness, he was her “lap dog,” shown affection when acting unison with her desires and gravely punished for even the slightest infractions. “Childish mischief” landed him in solitary confinement. For sharing poetry with fellow slaves he was beaten. Accused of stealing food – a charge from which he was later, silently, exonerated – Manzano came face to face with one of slavery’s deadliest establishments, the sugar mill. After nine nights of being tied and whipped for a crime he did not commit, he spent some time working in the mill until narrowly escaping a deadly accident and being sent home. By considering these details of Manzano’s autobiography, the actuality of violence and dehumanization in Latin American slavery becomes