THE SLAVES (WEEK 9)

During the colonialism, an important fact happened: the Europeans took black people and the mixture of Spaniards with natives as slaves to satisfy their needs. The slaves` ways of living, of eating, and their habits are going to be our theme for this week. Their life conditions were really tough and exhausting, but unfortunately there was nothing they could do to avoid the slavery or even soften it. The slaves weren`t only men, but the women, children, and third age people had to suffer the same conditions.

The number of slaves was amazingly high, and this fact was for the Europeans to take advantage of a lot. The Spaniards mainly used the slaves to destroy the native architectural design, and change it into more interesting designs, so the slaves were useful to help build that. They also helped to search for gold in the mines, and to help in the houses in their masters. They built their homes in ranches, in places that gave homes to plenty of slaves and families, even though those were very small places for such a big amounts of slaves, including families and couples.

Their bad situations of living exposed them to bad situations of living exposed them to diseases: “Quienes sobrevivían quedaban expuestos a múltiples enfermedades”(Colombia, imágenes de su diversidad, pg 94). Their masters were supposed to take care of them, meaning to give them food, clothes, and supply them with needed medicines and health. The masters accomplished with all these tasks, but the help was minimum, because the needed care was not taken and the slaves did not have enough money or sources to satisfy their needs. Some were so crazy that even hit their masters.

The slaves had to work a lot, but they couldn`t complain about anything, because their punishment was severe, and it was the same conditions for women, men, and children.

The responsibility of the slaves` health and care was mainly of the masters, because traditionally they were supposed to assure all the needs of the slaves in exchange for work, but this didn`t last much, especially when the slaves were powerless, and, in contrast, the masters were very powerful. Some slaves managed to escape these places, others got caught triyng to escape, and others were scared of escaping.

The slaves lived in ranches, eating whatever they could find, and that affected their chances of living longer, because they died of diseases, of cold, hunger, and fatigue. The Spaniards took the black people as slaves because they were very resistant to everything. The economic situations of the slaves were also very bad so they had to take advantage of every little thing that the Europeans provided them, even though it was a very unfair situation, because they worked more than 12 hours and their pay was a little food and clothes.

The diseases were very common among the slaves, because they didn`t eat well, plus it was very hard work, with almost no rest, and they had no vaccination to anything, so their exposure to any kinds of diseases was very high. These facts could also apply to the prices of the slaves, because they might be useless with a serious disease or a defect. The young slaves (children) weren`t bought too often because in their growth they were more exposed to infectious disease than the adults, and they were also very weak and small.

As a conclusion, the slaves had to destroy their own things, cave in mines, and serve the houses in exchange for little food clothes, and health. Besides, they had to live in little ranches for plenty of slaves and very ill in all aspects. They were so ill that the Europeans had to isolate the slaves with viruses to keep them from spreading them, because there were already very few slaves.