Panama - Colonial Slavery
The regulations for colonial administration set forth by the Spanish king's Council of the Indies decreed that the Indians were to be protected and converted to Christianity. The colonies, however, were far from the seat of ultimate responsibility, and few administrators were guided by the humane spirit of those regulations. The Roman Catholic Church, and particularly the Franciscan order, showed some concern for the welfare of the Indians, but on the whole, church efforts were inadequate to the situation.
The Indians, nevertheless, found one effective benefactor among their Spanish oppressors. Bartolome de las Casas, the first priest ordained in the West Indies, was outraged by the persecution of the Indians. He freed his own slaves, returned to Spain, and persuaded the council to adopt stronger measures against enslaving the Indians. He made one suggestion that he later regretted — that Africans, whom the Spaniards considered less than human, be imported to replace the Indians as slaves.
This was certainly borrowing from Peter on behalf of Paul. It is well to remember, as mitigating circumstances, that no voice had been raised against it. While Las Casas had with his own eyes seen the horrors of the enforced mine labors of the Indians, the brutality of their conquerors, their speedy death, most of the African slaves he had seen were body or house servants. The suggestion did not originate with him. His recommendation was rather to regulate the slave-trade, than, as is often asserted, to create it.
The surprising thing is not that he proposed this measure, which does not seem to have shocked any of his contempoaries, but that he repented of it. Years afterwards he wrote: "This advice, that license should be given to bring negro slaves to these lands, the Clerigo Casas first gave, not considering the injustice with which the Portuguese take them, and make them slaves; which advice, after he had apprehended the nature of the thing, he would not have given for all he had in the world. For he always held that they had been made slaves unjustly and tyrannically; for the same reason holds good of them as of the Indians."
In 1517 King Charles V (1516-56) granted a concession for exporting 4,000 African slaves to the Antilles. Thus the slave trade began and flourished for more than 200 years. Panama was a major distribution point for slaves headed elsewhere on the mainland. The supply of Indian labor had been depleted by the mid-sixteenth century, however, and Panama began to absorb many of the slaves.
A large number of slaves on the isthmus escaped into the jungle. They became known as cimarrones (sing., cimarron), meaning wild or unruly, because they attacked travelers along the Camino Real. An official census of Panama City in 1610 listed 548 citizens, 303 women, 156 children, 146 mulattoes, 148 Antillean blacks, and 3,500 African slaves.
Except for traffic in African slaves, foreign trade was forbidden unless the goods passed through Spain. Africans were brought to the colonies on contract (asiento) by Portuguese, English, Dutch, and French slavers, who were forbidden to trade in any other commodities.
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