Presentación: servidumbre, esclavitud y libertad

The dossier we published in this issue posed a question: Is it possible to draw a clear line between slavery and servitude? The significant historiography that has been developed since the 1980s to the present on these issues seems to suggest that it is not possible, that there is an enormous variety of forms of labor relations that have been addressed on the basis of these concepts, which sometimes include common or very similar aspects. In Americanist historiography, slavery and servitude have been suggestively related in some specific spaces, such as those of the border, particularly in the cases of the indigenous people enslaved in the so-called "just war". However, there was much less dialogue between studies on the labor relations of the Hispanic colonial indigenous heartland (which in South America refers to the Andes) and those on slavery in the demographic center of Lusitanian America. The dossier we proposed seeks to contribute to this debate, based on different case studies - coming from less explored geographical areas - that analyze labor relations involving coercion, forced labor or slavery. It seeks to put into dialogue studies conceived from the concrete practices of labor relations, the presence of aspects that denote the influence of customary law, the characterization of people that were enslaved or subject to servitude and its ambiguities, and the modalities of recruitment. El dossier que publicamos en este número propuso una pregunta: ¿Se puede trazar una línea clara que diferencie a la esclavitud de la servidumbre? La significativa historiografía que se ha ido desarrollando desde los años 1980s hasta la actualidad sobre estos temas sugiere que no, que hay una enorme variedad de formas de relaciones laborales que se han abordado a partir de estos conceptos, que a veces incluyen aspectos comunes o muy semejantes. En la historiografía americanista, esclavitud y servidumbre han dialogado en forma muy sugerente en algunos espacios específicos, como los de frontera, en particular en los casos de los indígenas esclavizados en la llamada “guerra justa”. Sin embargo, hubo mucho menos diálogo entre los estudios sobre el mundo del trabajo del corazón indígena colonial hispano (que en América del Sur refiere a los Andes) y los de esclavitud del centro demográfico de la América lusitana. El dossier que propusimos busca aportar a este debate, a partir de diferentes estudios de casos -provenientes de espacios geográficos menos explorados- que analic