The slave trade in America

The paradigms of European "democracy" that are cited as examples of political development were societies that depended on the slave labor force for almost all their products and services. It is noted that at the height of the boom in Athens, free citizens constituted less than 20,000 men. If we added their families to them, they did not exceed 90,000 people at any time. At that time there were 365,000 slaves and 45,000 meteques (immigrants and freedmen). As Engels points out "For every adult citizen there were at least eighteen slaves and more than two Metecs." Other figures commonly given to the cities of classical Greece include more than 460,000 slaves in Corinth and 470,000 in Aegina.
Slavery continued to be the basis of economies and societies in Europe and the Middle East after the geopolitical decline of Greek cities. The Roman Empire was built and maintained by the work of millions of slaves. In the so-called European Middle Ages, slavery and servitude (in many respects similar to slavery) were the fundamental institutions maintained by territorial and religious aristocracies. The slave trade from Africa was the basis of the "prosperity" of the Moorish kingdoms of the North African Maghreb. Later, a century before the arrival of the first Spanish ships to America, tens of thousands of Guanches, aboriginal inhabitants of the Canary Islands were taken prisoner to be sold as slaves to work in the cane plantations of the island (Portuguese) Of wood.
For that reason it seemed logical that since the first contacts of the Spanish and Portuguese with the communities of America have captured a certain number of slaves to be sold in the markets of the Iberian peninsula.
Nor is it any wonder that in establishing the first European colonies in America, markets for slaves have also been created. This fact, which in Europe would have been banal, in America, where slavery was practically unknown, gave rise to the unleashing of totally new processes for the continent. The dominant local groups made captives much more than before, but now in order to sell them or pay taxes to newcomers.
In this way, slave capture and commercialization systems appeared in several places in North America, among the Guarani of the Andean foothills (Chiriguanos Izoceños), near the present city of Santa Cruz, Bolivia, who enslaved the Chane, among the Kadijeu of Mato Grosso that enslaved the Terena, and others..
From Amerrique, los Huérfanos del Paraiso, D.Antón, Piriguazú Edicionmes, 1997