Justifying Slavery

This week’s readings and discussion was centered around the Latin American slave economy, in particular, Kris Lane’s article titled, “Captivity and Redemption: Aspects of Slave Life in Early Colonial Quito and Popayan”. It was interesting comparing slavery in Latin America to slavery in North America, specifically the South, and finding how similar the two experiences were in two very different places. Also, the video shown in class depicting the transportation of slaves across the Atlantic was hard to watch. It is sickening to realize that human beings underwent that much torture and humiliation. I wondered if those white slave traders had consciences. Then, I read about the reasons in which they justify these enslavements in order to squash any amount of guilt they may possibly encounter. The slave traders and buyers (owners), justify slavery by claiming that they are doing a service to them by saving them from the barbarity and tyranny of Africa where they lived as Christ less savages who should feel it a privilege to be captured and be able to live in a world with order and religion. However, when you look at the way they are treated from capture until their deaths, there is anything but order and Christianity.

These female slaves were clearly viewed as humans because they were given the important jobs of nursing their master’s children, proving that they realized that these Africans shared the same physical bodies. It is so contradicting to me as to how they were viewed as sub-human-savages who were beaten or killed for misbehaving and used for the sole purpose of labor and reproduction for profit, yet was perfectly fine to feed their master’s children from their own “African” milk.
It is difficult to fathom how these slave traders and owners cold-heartedly viewed and treated their African slaves, and makes me wonder if they had any guilt for their treatment. Then, viewing the ways they justified slavery shows me that they did have some (even if very little) guilt because of the ways they justified their acts by claiming to be their saviors from a cruel and savage Africa.