From Moko
In the nineteenth century, the colonial government introduced a series of regulations intended to improve the treatment of enslaved people on Aruba and Bonaire. Beginning with the 1824 regulations and strengthened by later reforms in 1841 and 1857, the rules addressed food rations, clothing, housing, medical care, and punishment. They also limited the corporal punishments owners could impose. Boys under the age of fourteen were not supposed to receive lashings. The story of Juan Cristoba also known as 'Juan' shows how difficult those regulations could be to enforce in practice.
Juan was a young enslaved boy living on the plantation Moko. One day, his owner Guillermo Ruiz gave him money to buy fish. When Juan returned home later that evening without either the fish or the money, Ruiz punished him by beating him with a folded rope.
The injuries were severe enough for Juan to be examined by physician Alexander de Hofmann. In his report, the doctor described both fresh wounds and older scars on the boy's body. His observations provide rare medical evidence of child abuse of an enslaved child on Aruba.
When questioned, Guillermo Ruiz did not deny punishing Juan. In a petition to the governor, he admitted giving the boy eleven blows with a rope after Juan returned home without the fish or money he had been sent to spend. Ruiz described Juan as disobedient and argued that he had acted as a father would toward a child. Yet physician Alexander de Hofmann's examination painted a different picture, documenting fresh wounds across the boy's body as well as scars from earlier abuse
Juan's case was particularly troubling because colonial regulations had specifically restricted the use of corporal punishment on young children. Yet the marks documented by De Hofmann suggest that punishment and violence continued despite the protections that existed on paper.
