The Other Slavery

January 25, 2016
Reséndez (A Land So Strange), a professor of history at the University of California, Davis, details the ways in which Native Americans were subjected to enslavement throughout the Americas. When the U.S. gained California and other southwestern territories from Mexico in 1848, it also acquired a significant number of Indian slaves who were “entrapped by a distinct brand of bondage… perpetrated by colonial Spain and inherited by Mexico.” This form of enslavement ran parallel to that endured by people of African descent throughout colonial Latin America and, Reséndez argues, generated an even more disastrous population loss. He notes the ways in which the “other slavery” defies simple definitions, relating how it was so widespread and deeply rooted in the economy and society of the Americas that it lasted even longer than that of African slavery, persisting in the guise of debt peonage into the 20th century. Emphasizing the variety of experiences of unfree labor suffered over five centuries by individuals from communities as culturally diverse and geographically separate as the Maya, the Apache, and indigenous Caribbeans, Reséndez vividly recounts the harrowing story of a previously little-known aspect of the histories of American slavery and of encounters between indigenes and invaders. Agent: Susan Rabiner, Susan Rabiner Literary.