Coahuila’s most wealthy and powerful family, the Sánchez Navarros, used thousands of peons to run their expansive haciendas that sprawled out around Monclova, which collectively made up one of the largest ranching operations in North America. These peons often suffered forms of physical abuse and coercion (such as chaining, beatings, and whipping) not much different from practices on American plantations, although most Coahuilans nonetheless saw meaningful differences between peonage and chattel slavery. Austin’s colonists, however, planned to blur those distinctions in order to provide legal
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