Slavery and the Abolitionism Movement in Latin America

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1. What political events influenced the the Abolitionism Movement in Latin America?

In addition to the Caribbean island colonies of European nations and the United States, slavery existed throughout Latin America. Local circumstances varied widely in this vast region. Except in Brazil, formal abolitionist movements played a minor role in the emancipation of blacks. Instead, a variety of circumstances gradually pushed slavery toward extinction.

1. The Former Spanish Colonies

There were 1.5 million slaves in Brazil-a former Portuguese colony-in 1870, but otherwise slave populations in independent Latin American countries never approached the numbers of those in Caribbean colonies or in the United States. There were only 3,000 people to be freed in Mexico in 1823 when that country abolished slavery and only 13,000 in Venezuela when it abolished the institution in 1854. These small numbers reflected a gradual decline in the profitability of slave labor and a corresponding decline in the ...