High Mortality among Rural Slave Children, early nineteenth century
[In the following excerpts from a speech delivered before an assembly of Brazilian planters in 1871, Senator Cristiano Benedito Ottoni of Minas Gerais told his audience what many must already have known: that under conditions prevailing in Brazil before abolition of the slave trade only a tiny minority of the children born of slave women in Brazil lived long enough to grow into useful adulthood. Attempting to prove in his address that the liberation of the newborn children of slave women (then under debate in the General Assembly) would revive such awesome child mortality, Ottoni offered explanations for this high death rate based upon many years of personal observation. Source: C. B. Ottoni, A emancipacao dos escravos (Rio de Janeiro: Typographia Perseveranca, 1871), pp. 65-68.]
I know our rural districts, and I do not hesitate to affirm that at the present time, despite the better treatment of the slaves that began after workers grew scarce, not more than 25 or 30 percent of the children reach the age of eight. The scarcity of adolescent slaves is proof of great child mortality.
It is an incontestable fact that while the price of slaves was low few babies [crias] survived on the plantations. If you traveled through the counties of Pirai, Vassouras, Valenca, Paraiba do Sul, observing the groups in service, almost all were Africans. You noticed one exception (and there were not many others), a great plantation whose orphaned owner was receiving an education in a foreign country. This one was notably populated by creoles. Why? Because, according to a contract, some of those who survived belonged to the overseer. Always personal interest. In all the discussions among the planters this kind of calculation was heard: "Your buy a black for 300$000. In a year he harvests 100 arrobas [about 3,200 pounds] of coffee, which at least produces his cost clear. From then on everything is profit.
There is no advantage in tolerating the crias who will be capable of similar labor only after sixteen years." As a result, pregnant black women and those nursing their babies were not excused from hoeing. In some, hard labor prevented normal development of the fetus. In others it reduced the, flow of milk. In almost all, the children were neglected, and as a result sickness and death were the fate of the poor babies. How many grew up? There are no statistics to tell us, but if only 9 or 10 percent survived among those abandoned in the capital, as the Viscount Abaete once proved in the Senate, of those born into slavery certainly not more than' 5 'percent survived.
The rising prices and the havoc wrought by cholera caused a greater number to be saved, but even today I doubt that the proportion exceeds 30 percent. Eliminate personal interest, and we will return to 95 percent mortality among the children.
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