The Importance of the Agriculture for a Country wk10a

The agriculture is an important source of economy for a country; it gives a lot of money, especially in the XVI century where most of the people worked in farms cultivating food and other things.

People had ranches and there they worked like farmpeople. The ranches had of different sizes, that depended of the amount of things the people had, so if they had a cow he would have 10 hectares, if the person had 20.000 cows, he would have a million of hectares. “Es decir que la tierra era esencialmente un factor fundamental en la organización de una hacienda pero no era en si misma, un fin” Colombia imágenes de su diversidad (1492 a hoy) pg 102. The people that helped farming were slaves; they had to work a lot and all the profit would be for the owner of the ranch.

The ranches at first were distributed by taking neighbour and Pre-Colombia lands. The fight for the land was very common. The people that had more money use their influences to corrupt the people that were in charge of distributing the lands properly. “Es esta lucha jurídica lo que ha llamado la atención de algunos estudiosos mas que otros aspectos de la vida empresarial” Colombia imágenes de su diversidad (1492 a hoy) pg 103.

All the products of the ranch were sold, some of them to other countries. One of the most important products was the cocoa (it was the first product to get to Spain), the corn and the coffee. “En consecuencia el cacao no fue solo un producto de consumo y factor de riqueza sino que fundo sentimientos de vanidad y orgullo” Colombia imágenes de su diversidad (1492 a hoy) pg 112.

The agriculture gave a lot of money to the land owners, because the people that helped them were slaves so they didn’t have to pay them. The state began to make them pay a tax of 5% of their profit. With that tax they still earned a lot of money.

So being an agriculturer produced a lot of money if you were the land owner. But I think that the land owners took a lot of advantage of the slaves. They treated them very badly, and they didn’t pay them. The slaves had not rights, they were treated like animals. What do you think? Do you think that’s a good or a bad thing? How would you think that the slaves should have been treated?

The black slaves (wk 9a)

The slavery and especially related to the black slaves, in Latin-America was a big problem because they were treated very badly, and they had very few rights.

The slaves where changed from the Pre-Columbians to the black people and the mixed race (of Spaniard and Pre-Columbian). In “La Nueva Granada”, the slaves where organized in spaces next to the house of their master or far away from the ranch. They made their own houses and in each one lived more than one family. In each home there were hundreds of slaves.

The master had to give to his slaves wardrobe and food, but “en la practica una y otra necesidad basica fue resuelta por los mismos negros las cuales debían cultivarse en tiempos de descanso” Colombia imagines de su diversidad (1492 a hoy, pg 94). Thanks to this, the black people not only had to give food to their family, but also to find the clothes.

When the black people came from Africa they were very weak because the trip was hard. Because of this “la compra y venta de un esclavo incluía denuncias y regateos sobre su salud ya fuera enfermedades adquiridas, males congenitos, defectos fisicos o defectos morales” Colombia imagines de su diversidad (1492 a hoy, pg 94). The relationship with the slaves was determined by the violence: “ arrancados de sus comunidades en Africa eran trasladados a los puertos de embarque por las compañías portuguesas, francesas, españolas o inglesas para ser vendidos en las colonias americanas” Colombia imagines de su diversidad (1492 a hoy, pg 100).

When the slaves went to the doctor, they were treated like garbage. “ La calificacion de inhabil, invalido e inutil que se registra en los cansos o inventarios son conceptos muy ambiguous ya que no estan referidos solo a fenomenos de vejez sino a algun tipo de enfermedad que convirtio en inutiles a los esclavos para ejecutar determinado tipo de trabajo”. Colombia imagines de su diversidad (1492 a hoy, pg 99).

The masters prefered to have a family of slaves, because they could have kids, and those kids became slaves when they grew up. “De ahi que la esclavitud no fue solo un factor de trabajo sino un factor de capital” Colombia imagenes de su diversidad (1492 a hoy, pg 100).

In this week the most important thing I would like you to remember is that black people where treated very badly, and their life was not fair because of all their work, their trades, and their masters. I always wonder, why did the Spaniards have to bring from Africa the black people? Why couldn’t they do the things by themselves?