Women in the Americas in early modern North America. Throughout the Americas, bondage existed—in warmer climates, where plantation systems developed, or in the northern areas, where women were either transported as criminals or worked as indentured servants. As early as the 1530s, Portugal began using slave labor in Brazil to work sugarcane plantations. Initially, the Portuguese used indigenous people as slaves, but in 1574, the crown decreed that unless the native people were cannibals, already slaves, or were spoils of a "just war", they could not be enslaved. The Spanish also used native people as forced labor, but because under the "encomienda" system, neither
2nd Summit of the Americas 2nd Summit of the Americas The 2nd Summit of the Americas was held in Santiago, Chile, on April 18–19, 1998. This gathering of regional leaders was the first attempt in four years to negotiate conditions for the creation of a hemispheric free trade area. No final agreements were made, but the nations set up a Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) consisting of vice ministers from each country that would meet every few months. Negotiations began with the Summits of the Americas in Miami in 1994. The "Summit of the Americas" is the name for a continuing series of summits bringing together