This essay
contributes to the comparative study of slavery by challenging the tendency to
treat characteristics of Atlantic racial slavery as universal features of
slavery itself. It uses the testimonial observations of an early
twentieth-century captive among the hunter-gatherer, Amazonian Yanomami people
as a methodological lens through which to reconsider popular beliefs about
Black slavery in the Americas. The goal is to differentiate commonalities
across slave systems from practices that are contextually contingent,
especially those that emerged in association with eighteenth and
nineteenth-century European racial capitalism. Based on Helena Valero’s
captivity story, this current paper describes differences in a particular form
of Indigenous slavery against general Atlantic world patterns, in terms of
slavery’s purpose, methods of control, forms of interaction with local free
people, and means of accessing freedom. The comparison argues that while
slavery has existed in many forms across human history, several characteristics
commonly associated with Atlantic slavery—including hereditary status, legal
codification, and racialization—were historically contingent rather than
intrinsic features of enslavement itself.
