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Rural Production and Labour in Late Colonial Buenos Aires*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Samuel Amaral
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The Old World had known of the fabulous riches of Mexican and Peruvian mines for well over a century when reports began to come in of the wealth of the Buenos Aires pampas. Acarete du Biscay and Antonio de Ulloa were among those astounded by the abundant herds of wild cattle to be found on those endless plains and the latter's writings provided Adam Smith with examples of a primitive economy.1 By the time The Wealth of Nations was published, however, that early primitiveness was changing. According to Cosme Bueno, the increasing demand for hides for export had brought about a decline in the number of cattle around Buenos Aires with the result that simple hunting had become cattle raising.2 The supply of meat to the city had always necessitated cattle raising, but the ever-erratic demand for export hides had to be met by hunting expeditions - the vaquerías. No new hunting licences were granted after 1720 and the first surprise attacks a few years later by Pampa indians looking for domestic cattle signalled the end of the wild herds.3 The intensification of foreign demand for hides led in the first place to the spread of the vaquerías into Entre Ríos and the Banda Oriental and, later on, particularly after the adoption of free-trade policies by post-revolutionary governments, to the proliferation of estancias on the Buenos Aires pampas.

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Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , November 1987 , pp. 235 - 278
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

1 Acarete du Biscay, Rélation des voyages du Sieur… dans la rivíere de la Plate, et de la par terre au Pérou, et des observations qu'il y a faites, p. 7, in Thévenot, Melchisedech, Rélation de divers voyages curieux (Paris: André Cramoisy, 1672)Google Scholar, IVe partie; de Ulloa, Antonio, Relación histórica del viage a la América meridional (4 vols, Madrid: Antonio Marín, 1748), vol. 3, pp. 243–244Google Scholar; Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Campbell, R. H., Skinner, A. S. and Todd, W. B. (2 vols, Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1984), vol. 1, pp. 164, 205 and 247.Google Scholar The use made by Smith of Ulloa's information on the Buenos Aires economy has been fully discussed by Carlos Newland and Waissbein, Daniel, ‘Una nota sobre Adam Smith, Ulloa y la economía de Buenos Aires’, Revista de Historia Económica, vol. 2, no. 1 (1984), pp. 161–167Google Scholar; and López, Manuel Fernández, ‘Valor, trabajo y capital. Ensayo sobre La Riqueza de las Naciones y el primer pensamiento económico argentino’, in Orayen, Raúl (ed.), Ensayos actuales sobre Adam Smith y David Hume (Buenos Aires: Instituto Torcuato Di Telia, 1976), pp. 81–116.Google Scholar On Ulloa see also Whitaker, Arthur P., ‘Antonio de Ulloa’, Hispanic American Historical Review (hereafter HAHR), vol. 15, no. 2 (May 1935), pp. 155–194CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Antonio de Ulloa, the Déliverance, and the Royal Society’, HAHR, vol. 45, no. 4 (November 1966), pp. 357–370.Google Scholar

2 Bueno, Cosme, Descriptión del Reyno del Perú y de el de Chile por Obispados y Provincias, y en igual conformidad de las del Río de la Plata y sus respectives dependencias (Lima, 1763–1778).Google Scholar On this writer see Macpheeters, D. W., ‘The Distinguished Peruvian Scholar Cosme Bueno, 1711–1798’, HAHR, vol. 35, no. 4 (November 1955), pp. 484–491.Google Scholar

3 Coni, Emilio A., Historia de las vaquerías de Río de la Plata, 1555–1750, 2nd ed. (Buenos Aires: Platero, 1979).Google Scholar

4 A review of the literature on the Latin American hacienda, including the profit issue, is to be found in Mörner, Magnus, ‘The Spanish American Hacienda: a Survey of Recent Research and Debate’, HAHR, vol. 53, no. 2 (May 1973), pp. 183–216.Google Scholar For Mexican haciendas, see Van Young, Eric, ‘Mexican Rural History since Chevalier: the Historiography of the Colonial Hacienda’, Latin American Research Review, vol. 18, no. 3 (1983), pp. 5–61.Google Scholar According to Jonathan Brown, the Buenos Aires estancias of the first half of the nineteenth century were exceptional in that they generated ‘wealth and investment capital’. He and other writers estimate profit as the percentage represented by the difference between income and expenditure over total expenditure. Brown, Jonathan, ‘A Nineteenth-Century Argentine Cattle Empire’, Agricultural History, vol. 52 (1978), pp. 161 and 176.Google Scholar The shortcomings of such a method will be demonstrated below.

5 For the second half of the seventeenth century see Moutoukias, Zacarías, ‘Le Río de la Plata et l'éspace péruvien au XVIIe siècle: commerce et contrebande par Buenos Aires, 1648–1702’, Thèse de Doctorat de Troisième Cycle (Paris, École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1983), p. 313.Google Scholar For 1721–38 see Coni, op cit., pp. 56–58.

6 The figures for 1779–84 in Garavaglia, Juan Carlos, ‘El Río de la Plata en sus relaciones atlanticas: una balanza comercial (1779–1784)’, Moneda y Crédito, no. 141 (1977), p. 97.Google Scholar Those for 1793–6, in Montoya, Alfredo, Cómo evolucionó la ganadería en el Río de la Plata (Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra, 1984), p. 301Google Scholar, were taken from Haenke, Tadeo, Viaje por el virreinato del Río de la Plata (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1943), p. 86.Google Scholar

7 González, Antonio García-Baquero, Cádiz y el Atlántico (1717–1778) (2 vols, Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos, 1976), vol. 2, pp. 228 ff.Google Scholar; and Fisher, John, ‘The Imperial Response to “Free Trade”: Spanish Imports from Spanish America, 1778–1796’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 17, no. 1 (05 1985), p. 74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Data for 1811–1823 were taken from Humphreys, R. A., British Consular Reports on the Trade and Politics of Latin America 1824–1826 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1940), insert between pp. 60–61Google Scholar; and those for 1825, 1829 and 1849–51, from Parish, Woodbine, Buenos Ayres and the Provinces of the Rio de la Plata, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1852), pp. 353–354.Google Scholar

8 Ruíz, Jorge Comadrán, Evolución demográfica argentina durante el período hispánico (1535–1810) (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1969), pp. 44–45, 59, 80–81, 84–87, 116Google Scholar; Johnson, Lyman L., ‘Estimaciones de la poblacion de Buenos Aires en 1744, 1778 y 1810’, Desarrollo Económico, vol. 19, no. 73 (04 1979), p. 110CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Belsunce, César García et al. , Buenos Aires. Su gente, 1800–1830 (Buenos Aires: Emecé distribuidora, 1976), p. 62.Google Scholar

9 Garavaglia, Juan Carlos, ‘Economic Growth and Regional Differentiations: The River Plate Region at the End of the Eighteenth Century’, HAHR, vol. 65, no. 1 (02 1985), p. 54.Google Scholar

10 Donghi, Tulio Halperín, ‘Una estancia en la campaña de Buenos Aires, Fontezuela, 1753–1809’ (hereafter ‘Fontezuela’), in Florescano, Enrique (ed.), Haciendas, Latifundios y Plantaciones en América Latina (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1975), pp. 447–463Google Scholar; and Cushner, Nicholas P., Jesuit Ranches and the Agrarian Development of Colonial Argentina, 1650–1767 (Albany: State University of New York, 1983).Google Scholar

11 Mexican inheritance records were used by Brading, David A. in his Haciendas and Ranchos in the Mexican Bajío, 1700–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

12 All the following data have been taken from (unless otherwise stated) the records of Clemente López Osornio's estate, in Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos Aires (hereafter AGN), Tribunales, Sucesiones, 6726, 6727 and 6728. Throughout the paper the word ‘estate’ will be used to refer to ‘the assets and liabilities left by a person at death’.

13 A league was 6,000 varas long and a square league was therefore equivalent to 36 million square varas. Each vara is 0.866 of a metre and a square vara about 0.75 of a square metre. A square league is therefore 27 million square metres or 2,700 hectares or (one hectare being equal to 2.47 acres) 6,669 acres.

14 Clemente López Osornio's claim to the lands at Rincón de la Reducción and Arroyo del Pozo, in Archivo Histórico de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Fscribanía Mayor de Gobierno, legajo 11, no. 384. The same file contains Agustina Teresa López Osornio's legal claim to the land at Rincón de la Reducción. The 1789 register of estancias, in AGN, IX–9–7–7. The measurements of the Arroyo del Pozo land, in Ministerio de Obras Púiblicas de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Directión de Geodesia, Departamento de Investigatión Histórica y Cartográfica, duplicados de mensuras antiguas, Magdalena, no. 14.

15 The purchase of the Arregui valley estancia by López Osornio, in AGN, Escribanias, Registro 2, 1752, fo. 425 v. The sixteenth-century inflation rate for Spain has been estimated from Hamilton's composite price index: Hamilton, Earl J., American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501–1650 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934), p. 403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The price index for Santiago de Chile, in de Ramón, Armando and Larraín, José Manuel, Orígenes de la vida económica chilena, 1659–1808 (Santiago de Chile: Centro de Estudios Públicos, 1982), p. 328.Google Scholar

16 AGN, Tribunales, Sucesiones, 6727, 5873 and 8146. Trapani's estimate, in Barba, Enrique M., ‘Notas sobre la situación económica de Buenos Aires en la década de 1820’, Trabajos y Comunicaciones, no. 17 (La Plata, 1970), pp. 66–67.Google Scholar The original is to be found in the Woodbine Parish papers, Public Record Office (London), Foreign Office 354/8, fos. 66 V.–67.

17 For example, the most widely read text: Giberti, Horacio C. E., Historia económica de la ganadería argentina, 2nd ed. (Buenos Aires: Solar-Hachette, 1970), pp. 45–70.Google Scholar

18 de Azara, Félix, ‘Memoria sobre el estado rural del Río de la Plata en 1801’, in Chiaramonte, José Carlos, Pensamiento de la Ilustración (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1979), pp. 115.Google Scholar

19 Donghi, Halperín, ‘Fontezuela’, pp. 459–460.Google Scholar

20 Throughout this article and the tables, 1785 refers to accounts from August 1785 to April 1786; 1786, from January 1786 to January 1787; and 1787, from February to December 1787. The accounts submitted by the estancia's foreman to the legal executor of López Osornio's estate are not sufficiently detailed for finer distinctions to be made. There is no overlapping in the accounts between January and April 1786 because the foreman's own accounts were not altered. We decided to use the accounts for August 1785 to April 1786 as if representing a full year because of their similarity to later years and because of the drastic changes in the estancia's operations brought about by the death of the landowner. For an exception to this rule see note 35 below.

21 The natural increase in sheep at the end of the nineteenth century was 25% (according to M. G., and Mulhall, E. T., Handbook of the River Plate (Buenos Aires, 1892), p. 22Google Scholar, quoted by Conde, Roberto Cortés, El progreso argentino 1880–1914 (Buenos Aires, 1979, p. 59)Google Scholar, therefore rates of growth of 20–22.7% for the 1790s do not seem too low. But if the 8.2% rate is accepted, such a modest growth in sheep stocks has to be accounted for. We must assume then that some sheep were killed to feed the foreman, peons and slaves. We have based our estimate of sheep consumption on a cattle–sheep ratio of 1:10.25, since sheep were listed in the inventory at i real per head and cattle at 10.25 reales. Next we come to the estimates of per capita cattle consumption. According to Azara, one head of cattle fed 60 people, or (to put it another way) fed one person for 60 days. Therefore if meat was eaten every day, the annual per capita consumption would have been 6.08 head of cattle. Multiplying this figure by 10.25, we should have an annual per capita sheep consumption of 62.3 animals, which, multiplied by the average number of mouths to feed (estimated at 7.7 per day: 1 foreman, 3 peons, 3.7 slaves, not including their families. For peons see Table 9; for slaves, see below) gives us a total annual sheep consumption of 479 head. A lower figure is arrived at if, instead of taking Azara's estimate, we take the ratio of meat consumption in Buenos Aires in 1792 (48,700 head) in proportion to the urban population for the same year (estimated at 31,200 inhabitants). This gives an annual per capita consumption of 1.6 head of cattle, or 16.4 sheep, which, multiplied by the average number of mouths to feed, gives a total annual sheep consumption of 126 animals. For Azara's estimate, see above, note 18; for urban meat consumption, see above, note 9; for population, see above, note 8 (the urban population for 1792 has been estimated from the intercensal growth-rate figures). On the consequences of sheep consumption for the estancia's total expenditure, see below, note 27.

22 Azara, op. cit., p. 115. According to the foreman's accounts, 5 reales were charged as the cost of grinding each fanega. This figure has been used to estimate the amount of wheat ground on the estancia.

23 See, for example, de Azara, Félix, Viajes por la América Meridional (Madrid, Espana-Calpe, 1969), pp. 286 ff.Google Scholar; Gillespie, Alexander, Buenos Aires y el Interior, trans. Aldao, Carlos (Buenos Aires: La Cultura Argentina, 1921), pp. 118 and 130Google Scholar; and Vidal, Emeric Essex, ‘Illustraciones pintorescas de Buenos Aires y Montevideo’, in Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, Colección de viajeros y memorias geográficas trans. Peña, Carlos Muzio Sáenz, vol. 1 (Buenos Aires, 1923), p. 201Google Scholar, quoted by Levene, Ricardo, Investigaciones acerca de la historia económica del virreinato del Plata, in Obras completas (vol. 2, Buenos Aires, Academia Nacional de la Historia, 1962), p. 307.Google Scholar An American observer reminded his readers, however, that ‘we also of the north are reproached by Europeans for our carelessness of time and our lazy habits’ – for him a consequence of colonial rule. See Brackenridge, H. M., A Voyage to South America (London: T. and J. Allman, 1820), vol. 1, p. 250, and vol. 2, pp. 29–30.Google Scholar Richard W. Slatta has drawn attention to the ethnocentric nature of foreign observers' accounts of rural labour in Buenos Aires, but systematic criticism of them is not his intention. See his Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. 24–26.Google Scholar

24 Halperín Donghi, ‘Fontezuela’, p. 454; Brown, op cit., p. 176.

25 Brown, Jonathan, A Socioeconomic History of Argentina, 1776–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 154–155Google Scholar; and Donghi, Tulio Halpenín, ‘La expansión ganadera en la campaña de Buenos Aires (1810–1852)’ (hereafter ‘Expansión’), Desarrollo Económico, vol. 3, no. 1–2 (1963), p. 69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the price of the gold ounce in paper money, see Broide, Julio, ‘La evolutión de los precios pecuarios argentinos en el período 1830–1950’, Revista de la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas (Buenos Aires), vol. 4, no. 32 (1952), pp. 166–171.Google Scholar For the evolution of other prices between 1826 and 1834 see our unpublished paper ‘El descubrimiento de la financiación inflacionaria: Buenos Aires, 1790–1830’, presented at the IXth International Economic History Congress, Bern, 1986.

26 Barba estimates the annual rate of profit at 31.41%, using the arithmetical mean rather than the cumulative rate (Barba, loc. cit.).

27 At a constant price of i real per head, the highest and lowest estimates of annual sheep consumption on the estancia (see above note 21) would have represented an annual average expenditure of 59 pesos 6¼ reales and 15 pesos 2½ reales respectively. These expenditures, added to the total expenditure for normal-operation years (1791–5), would have brought the profit rate down from 8.7% to 8.2 or 8.5%.

28 García, Juan Agustín, La ciudad indiana (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1966), pp. 179–180.Google Scholar

29 Donghi, Halperín, ‘Fontezuela’, pp. 457–459Google Scholar; Mayo, Carlos A., ‘Estancia y peonaje en la región pampeana en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII’, Desarrollo Económico, vol. 23, no. 92 (1984), pp. 614–615.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 We have excluded from Table 9 peons working for monthly wages of 2 and 3 pesos. In this category are Josef el Muchacho, who worked 429 days uninterruptedly for 3 pesos a month, and three peons working at the wintering station for 30, 120 and 214 days respectively at 2 pesos each per month. The reason for their exclusion, and why it was possible to hire peons long-term for 3 pesos a month, is explained below when we come to consider the present value of slaves (see note 47).

31 Grigera, Tomás, Manual de Agricultura (Buenos Aires, Imprenta de la Independencia, 1819).Google Scholar

32 There are numerous accounts of the abundance of thistles on the Buenos Aires plains, the problems caused by and the advantages derived from them. See, for example, Head, Francis Bond, Rough Notes Taken during some Rapid Journeys across the Pampas and among the Andes (London: John Murray, 1826), pp. 2–4Google Scholar, for the seasonal cycle. For the area covered by thistles, see Caldcleugh, Alexander, Travels in South America during the Years 1819–20–21; Containing an Account of the Present State of Brazil, Buenos Ayres, and Chile (2 vols, London: John Murray, 1825), vol. 1, pp. 241–243, 249Google Scholar; and Arnold, Samuel Greene, Viaje por America del Sur 1847–1848, trans, and prol. Busaniche, José Luis (Buenos Aires: Emece, 1951), pp. 172, 177 and 178.Google Scholar For the problems caused by thistles, see Andrews, Joseph, Journey from Buenos Aires, through the Provinces of Cordova, Tucuman, and Salta, to Potosí, Thence by the Desert of Caranja in Arica, and Subsequently, to Santiago de Chili and Coguimbo, Undertaken on Behalf of the Chilian and Perubian Mining Association, in the Years 1825–26 (London: John Murray, 1827), vol. 1, p. 25.Google Scholar For some advantages derived from thistles, such as preventing indian attacks, see Miers, John, Travels in Chile and La Plata, including Accounts Respecting the Geography, Geology, Statistics, Government, Finances, Agriculture, Manners and Customs, and the Mining Operations in Chile Collected during a Residence of Several Years in these Countries (2 vols, London: Baldwick, Cradock and Joy, 1826), vol. 1, pp. 238–239.Google Scholar Those who crossed the pampas in winter failed to mention thistles. See, for example, Hibbert, Edward, Narrative of a Journey from Santiago de Chile to Buenos Ayres in July and August, 1821 (London: John Murray, 1824), pp. 137–146.Google Scholar

33 On labour in pre-industrial economies, see Thomas, Keith, ‘Work and Leisure in Pre-industrial Society’, Past and Present, no. 29 (1964), pp. 50–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and E. P. Thompson, ‘Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism’, Ibid., no. 38 (1967), pp. 59–67. On the concept of time, see Le Goff, Jacques, ‘Le temps du travail dans la “crise” du XVIe siècle: du temps médiéval au temps moderne’, in Pour un autre moyen âge (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), pp. 66–79.Google Scholar Juan Alvarez, unlike García, mentioned the effects of the seasons on estancia work: periods of high employment were followed by high unemployment. See Alvarez, Juan, Las guerras civiles argentinas, 6th ed. (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1984), p. 70.Google Scholar

34 Data for these and the following estimates have been taken from Tables 3 (cattle), 5 (expenditure) and 10 (peons). In order to estimate the total number of man-days worked by labourers other than peons in 1785 and 1786 the amounts paid to them were divided by the average amount paid to a peon per day in each year. Consequently, if 135 pesos were paid in 1785 for 600 man-days (Table 5), 370 pesos would have paid for 1,644 days; and if 286 pesos were paid in 1786 for 1,196 man-days, 344 pesos would have paid for 1,439 days. By adding these figures to the 11,028 man-days worked by peons from August 1785 to December 1795 (Table 9), we should have a total of 14,111 man-days worked by all free labourers during this period. The skinner hired in 1791 is excluded from this estimate since he was paid for the hides, not for his services.

35 To estimate monthly averages in this paragraph the first cycle has been taken into account not for three full years (see note 20) but for the actual 29 months which ran from August 1785 to December 1787. In this way a distorting element in the pattern of free labour hiring has been avoided.

36 Ardissone, Romualdo, ‘Datos históricos acerca de las precipitaciones pluviales en la zona de Buenos Aires desde el siglo XVI hasta 1821’, Gaea, vol. 5 (1937), pp. 115–211, esp. pp. 170–175.Google Scholar

37 On the coercion of free labour, see Bauer, Arnold J., ‘Rural Workers in Spanish America: Problems of Peonage and Oppression’, HAHR, vol. 59, no. 1 (02 1979), pp. 53–58.Google Scholar On the question of inverted debt peonage see, for example, David A. Brading, ‘Estructura de la productión agrícola en el Bajío, 1700 a 1850’, in Florescano (ed.), op. cit., p. 112; and Van Young, Eric, Hacienda and Market in Eighteenth Century Mexico: the Rural Economy of the Guadalajara Region, 1675–1820 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), p. 249.Google Scholar

38 For how agregados were tolerated, see Frías, Susana and Levaggi, Abelardo, Buenos Aires, 1800–1830. Salud y delito (Buenos Aires: Emece Distribuidora, 1977), p. 193.Google Scholar

39 W. Arthur Lewis defines the subsistence sector as that part of the economy which does not use reproducible capital. See his ‘Economic Development with Unlimited Supply of Labour’, Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies, vol. 22, no. 2 (1954), p. 147.Google Scholar

40 Donghi, Halperín, ‘Expansion’, p. 84.Google Scholar

41 On the classification of vagrancy as an offence, see AGN, Biblioteca Nacional, leg. 290, doc. 4468. For the term vago being applied simply as a label rather than in its full legal sense, see Fanelli, Jorge and Viguera, Anibal, ‘Aproximación a los vagos y malentret-enidos de la campaña rioplatense a fines del siglo XVIII’, in Primeras Jornadas de Historia Argentino-Americana (Tandil: Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, 1983).Google Scholar Mario Góngora chose to concentrate on the sociological aspects of vagrancy without considering its relation to the rhythms of production in pre-industrial economies (‘Vagabondage et société pastorale en Amérique Latine, specialement au Chili central’, Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, vol. 21, no. 1 (1966), pp. 159–177Google Scholar). If the kind of activities denoted by the words gauderio and gaucho fall within the definition of vagrancy, then this phenomenon was much more prevalent in the Banda Oriental than in Buenos Aires. According to evidence on the use of these terms reproduced by Ricardo Rodríguez Molas, of over 59 cases reported between 1746 and 1808, 81.3% came from the Banda Oriental, 11.9% from Santa Fe and Entre Rios, and a mere 6.8% from Buenos Aires. For the word gaucho alone, of over 24 cases documented between 1771 and 1808, 22 were from the Banda Oriental (91.7%), 1 from Entre Rios and i from Buenos Aires (4.1% each). In this last case, furthermore, gaucho was used not to describe a particular social type but as a pseudonym for the authors of a pamphlet printed in 1808. See Molas, Ricardo Rodríguez, Historia social del gaucho (Buenos Aires: Maru, 1968), pp. 507–525.Google Scholar Some foreign travellers used the word gaucho when referring to rural workers in Buenos Aires: for example, Caldcleugh, op. cit., vol. i, p. 144, and Brackenridge, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 250, 267. Differences between the gauchos of the eastern and western shores of the Rio de la Plata (the former more civilised than the latter) were described by Brackenridge, op. cit., vol. i, p. 249.

42 There is ample evidence linking agregados with cattle stealing. See, for instance, the note from the Fiel Ejecutor to the Cabildo on 2 May 1783, in Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Documentos para la historia argentina. Abastos de la ciudad y campaña de Buenos Aires (1773–1809) (Buenos Aires: Compañía Sudamericana de Billetes de Banco, 1914), vol. 4, p. 49Google Scholar; José de la Rosa's appointment as Alcalde de la Santa Hermandad for the districts of Matanza and Conchas, 2 February 1788, in AGN, IX–30–4–1; Viceroy Arredondo's decree (bando) of 17 November 1792, in AGN, Biblioteca Nacional, leg. 303, doc. 4878; the letter from Juan Lorenzo Castro to Chascomus's Alcalde de la Hermandad, dated 19 January 1808, in AGN, IX–19–5–9, fo. 64 v., quoted by Frias and Levaggi, op. cit., 192; and Manuel Belgrano's contributions to the journal El Correo de Comercio, reprinted in Belgrano, Manuel, Escritos económicos, Introd. Weinberg, Gregorio (Buenos Aires: Raigal, 1954). pp. 180–182.Google Scholar

43 The average age of 16 slaves included in José Januario Fernández's estate was 42.5 years. Twelve of these slaves were adult men, with an average age of 48.7 years. Assuming that they were bought at the age of 15 years this would mean an average service of 33.7 years per slave. Four slaves were over 60 years old and still had inventory values of between 50 and 110 pesos (AGN, Tribunales, Sucesiones, 5873). From this evidence twenty years' average service does not seem too long.

44 The annual average expense on each slave's food has been calculated by dividing total expenditure on food (Table 5) by the number of years, and this figure by 7.7, the average number of people on the estancia (1 foreman, 3.7 slaves and 3 peons). Likewise, the average annual expenditure on a slave's clothes, by dividing total expenditure on this item by the number of years and then by 3.7 (the annual average number of slaves). The same method has been used to calculate expenditure on health care (from a total of 15 pesos 2 reales, included in ‘Others’ in Table 5). The annual expenditure on a slave's allowance for ‘soap and tobacco’ is based on weekly expenses of 1 real per slave, the actual amount given to each one as from 1787.

45 To estimate the present value a fixed interest rate has been substituted for the income expected from a slave or a peon in order to reduce uncertainty – interest rates were much more stable than future incomes.

46 A peon's food expenses have been estimated in the same way as a slave's. See note 44 above.

47 These peons on 2- and 3-peso monthly wages have been excluded from Table 9 and fig. 2 because their present value was similar to a slave's. See above, note 30.

48 The figure for amortisation was obtained by multiplying the number of slaves on the estancia in 1791–5 by a twentieth of the value of each slave for each year (see Table 12).

49 Donghi, Halperín, ‘Fontezuela’, pp. 462–463.Google Scholar