SLAVE EMANCIPATION IN CUBA

REBECCA J. SCOTT

Slave
Emancipation
in Cuba
The Transition
to Free Labor,
1860-1899

University of Pittsburgh Press

 FOR e.G.

Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15261

Copyright © 1985 by Princeton University Press
Afterword copyright © 2000 by the University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 0-8229-5735-3
 Contents

List of Illustrations vi List of Tables vii

Preface ix Acknowledgment Xlll Abbreviations xvi

INTRODUCTION
I Sugar and Slavery 3

PART ONE
Conflict, Adaptation, and Challenge, 1868-1879
II Insurrection and Slavery 45
III Spain Responds: The Moret Law 63
IV Adaptation, 1870-1877 84
V Challenge III

PART TWO
The Limits of Gradualism, 1880-1886
VI The Patronato 127
VII Patrocinados: Obstacles and Initiative 141
VIII Masters: Strategies of Control 172

PART THREE
Postemancipation Responses, 1880-1899
IX Planters and the State 201
X Former Slaves 227
XI Land and Society 255
XII Conclusion and Epilogue 279

Afterword to the New Paperback Edition 295

Bibliography 303 Index 319
 Illustrations

MAPS
Cuba, showing provincial divisions of 1878 4
The Mapos Estate, 1890s following page 110
DIAGRAMS
1. Age pyramid of slaves on ingenios in Santa Isabel de las Lajas 94
2. Work force on the Ingenio San Fernando 204
ENGRAVINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHS following page 110
1. Boiling house of the Ingenio Flor de Cuba
2. Ingenio Uni6n
3. Ingenio Flor de Cuba
4. African workers on the Canal de Vento
5. Juana, recently imported from Africa
6. Lorenzo, a worker on the Ingenio Toledo
7. Maria Antonia, originally from the Congo
8. Two African emancipados
9. A veteran of the Cuban insurgency and his wife
10. A small farmer's tobacco patch
11. The noon rest in the cane fields
12. Mounted police guarding cane cutters
13. Three women returning from market, 1899

vi
 Tables

1. Population of Cuba, 1846 and 1862 7

2. Slaves Imported into Cuba, 1840-1867 10
3. Distribution of Slave Population by place of Residence, 1862 12
4. Cuban Sugar Production, 1860 Harvest 22
5. Plantation Income and Slaveholdings by Province, 1862 22
6. Chinese Workers' Contracts Sold in the Port of Havana, 1848-
1874 29
7. Estimated Costs of Indentured and Free Chinese Labor, 1874 31
8. Cuban Sugar Production, 1840-1870 36
9. Sources of Decline in the Slave Population, 1870-1877,
Government Estimates 72
10. Slave Population, 1862-1877 87
11. Slave Population, 1862-1877 (1862 = 100) 87
12. Sugar Production and Slave Population 88
13. Chinese Population, 1861-1877 90
14. Ages of Slaves on Ingenios in Santa Isabel de las Lajas, 1875 94
15. Populations on Specific Ingenios, Santa Isabel de las Lajas, 1875,
1877 96
16. Status of the Chinese Population, 1872 and 1877 101
17. Work Force on the Ingenio Angelita, June 1868 105
18. Work Force on the Ingenio Angelita, January 1877 105
19. Patrocinados Legally Achieving Full Freedom, by Province, May
1881-May 1886 148
20. Purchases of Freedom Recorded on Nueva Teresa, September 12,
1882-July I, 1886 153
21. Patrocinados Legally Achieving Full Freedom in Each Category,
May 1881-May 1886. Percentage from Each Province 162
22.. Patrocinados Legally Achieving Full Freedom, by Year, May
1881-May 1886 169
23. Patrocinados Legally Achieving Full Freedom in Each Province,
May 1881-May 1886. Percentage in Each Category 190
24. Slave and Patrocinado Population, 1877-1886 (1877 = 100) 193
25. Slave and Patrocinado Population, 1877-1886 194

vii
 TABLES

26. Cuban Sugar Production, 1870-1894 240

27. Distribution of the Population of Color by Province, 1862-1899 248
28. Landholding among Agriculturalists, by Province and by Race,
1899 257
29. Composition of the Agricultural Work Force, 1899 261

viii
 Preface

On the night of February 12, 1882, in the midst of the sugar harvest,
thirty-five "apprentices" of the Mapos estate in central Cuba fled
their owners. They proceeded to the nearby town of Sancti Spiritus,
where they presented appeals to the local Junta de Patronato, one
of the boards established to administer an 1880 Spanish law that
had nominally freed all Cuban slaves but also placed them under
the "patronage" of their former masters and obliged them to labor
for token wages. Twenty-two of the Mapos apprentices, or patro-
cinados, returned to the estate on February 13, and the other thirteen
returned the following day. Later in the week some were briefly
called back to the junta, and a sindico (legal protector of slaves)
visited the estate. The majority of the apprentices apparently re-
sumed work, while two, Lucas Cambaca and Filomena Conga, re-
mained at the junta by order of a local judge.
The full legal effects of the group's appeals did not emerge in the
estate records until almost a year later. In January 1883, the daybook
noted a sudden drop in the number of apprentices on the estate; the
junta had declared some 64 of the 265 Mapos apprentices exempt
from the patronato. Some were freed through self-purchase, some
because they were ruled to be over the age of sixty and thus free in
virtue of an 1870 law providing freedom for children and the elderly.
In subsequent months the estate saw a steady stream of departures
as patrocinados paid for their freedom, fled, sought aid from the
junta, or negotiated for the freedom of their children. By the harvest
of 1883-1884, the plantation was operating with only about 160
apprentices, and was hiring additional free workers in an effort to
maintain adequate labor. l
The events on this one estate highlight the complexities of the
1 See Libro que contiene documentos del estado general de la finca Mapos, Archivo
Provincial de Sancti Spiritus, Cuba, Fondo Valle-Iznaga Ihereinafter APSS, Valle-
Iznaga), leg. 24.

ix
 PREFACE

relationship between slaves and masters, and between each and the
power of the state. The patrocinados on Mapos showed their will-
ingness to challenge their master by appealing to the junta. Never-
theless they returned to, and remained on, his plantation while the
legal process they had initiated marched slowly forward. The colo-
nial government, even while enacting a law intended to maintain
masters' authority, had provided mechanisms with which patroci-
nados could seek to escape that authority. But the juntas through
which they had to appeal were constituted by members of the white
elite, including former slaveholders, and patrocinados' access to re-
sources was limited. Some patrocinados had enough money, often
from the sale of crops from provision grounds, to purchase their
freedom; but even money was not necessarily enough, for masters
could, for example, attempt to maintain control over children nom-
inally freed by the 1870 law, and thus block the departure of parents.
While masters often attempted to stall the acquisition of freedom
by their apprentices, they were also adapting to the decline in the
number of their bound laborers, taking on new free workers, and
altering the organization of production. Thus although most masters
opposed abolition up until almost the last minute, they did not adopt
a stance so intransigent as to provoke a break with the legal authority
of the state.
Emancipation in Cuba was prolonged, ambiguous, and complex,
unfolding over an eighteen-year period through a series of legal,
social, and economic transformations. Because of the extended and
halting nature of the process, the history of abolition provides an
unparalleled opportunity to examine the disintegration of chattel
bondage in a plantation society. The designers of "gradual eman-
cipation" sought to minimize certain kinds of social change. But the
intentions of planters and of government policy makers could not
entirely determine the course of change: slaves and, later, patroci-
nados had their own ideas about freedom, and through their actions
they altered and accelerated the transition. Different kinds of ini-
tiatives became important at different points in the process. In the
late 1860s and early 18 70s slaves joined in an anticolonial insurgency
that forced the issue of slavery; in the 1880s challenges within a
new legal framework reshaped relationships; in the end, even in-
dividual self-purchase hastened the elimination of slavery. As the

x
 PREFACE

planter monopoly of power within the plantation was undermined,

slaves found weak points where they might press their claims.
The course of abolition also affords insight into the structure of
Cuban slavery itself, for the institution was dismantled piece by
piece: young children and the elderly were legally freed and the use
of the whip banned in 1870; meager wages for patrocinados were
introduced in 1880; stocks and chains were outlawed in 1883. By
examining the effects of such changes, one can illuminate the ways
in which the social relations of slavery had depended upon various
elements of the legal system of slaveholding.
A study of the gradual shift to free labor in Cuba also provides
evidence for evaluating various explanations for the decline of slav-
ery. The pattern of decline varied across regions of the island, and
these regions differed in their social and economic characteristics.
Correlations between the rates of decline and the organization of
production, the degree of mechanization, and the surrounding social
and political environment may thus suggest which forces hastened
and which stalled emancipation.
The transition rested upon a variety of intermediate forms of labor
organization, and therefore provides a basis for comparing "racial"
slavery with other voluntary and involuntary labor systems. Cuban
planters employed slaves, Yucatecan and Chinese contract laborers,
convicts, rented slaves, free day laborers, salaried employees, work-
ers paid by the task, and sharecroppers. The coexistence of these
forms of labor, sometimes on a single plantation, provides a striking
example of flexibility within an economy still based primarily on
slave labor. At the same time, the problems that arose when diverse
forms of labor were combined illustrate some of the inflexibilities
of slave-based structures.
Emancipation involved not only a reordering of individual lives
but also a reordering of production itself. Cuba was in one sense a
postemancipation success story, for sugar output increased after ab-
olition. The gradual and constrained legal shift had made it possible
to avoid certain kinds of confrontation or collapse. Little drama or
anticipation was associated with the day of final abolition itself, for
the vast majority of slaves had already become free, and neither
former masters nor former slaves were unfamiliar with wage labor.
New mills and old could draw upon a free work force of former
slaves, smallholders, and new immigrants. Even so, the aftermath

xi
 PREFACE

of emancipation was in many ways problematic, as former slaves

found many of their aspirations blocked and numerous former mas-
ters lost control over sugar production to newly formed central mills.
While gradualism muted some expectations, the process of eman-
cipation raised others. Former slaves who had joined in the 1868-
1878 insurrection, had challenged their masters in the courts, had
fought for control over their children, had fled the plantations, or
had raised crops to purchase their freedom were not prepared simply
to accept whatever was offered them. Moreover, the transformation
of social relations in the countryside, particularly the rise of cane
farming and the opening up of the closed world of the plantation,
made certain sorts of political mobilization more feasible. The story
that begins with a legal process of abolition undertaken in response
to an anticolonial rebellion thus ends with the incorporation of
former slaves into another rebellion, one that would conclude with
Spain's loss of her last major colony in the New World.

xii
 Acknowledgments

A historian's first debt is to the institutions that have preserved and

made available the documents essential to historical research. I
would like to thank in particular the staffs of the Archivo Hist6rico
Nacional and the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, the Archivo Ge-
neral de Indias in Seville, the Biblioteca Nacional Jose Marti and the
Archivo Nacional de Cuba in Havana, the Archivo Provincial of
Sancti Spiritus, Cuba, and the u.S. National Archives in Washing-
ton. I am also very grateful to the staff of the Casa de Velazquez in
Madrid, and to its former director, Fran<;:ois Chevalier, for their kind
hospitality during my stay there in 1977-1978.
A further debt is to those who made such research possible through
financial assistance. Here thanks are due to the Latin American
Studies Program of Princeton University, the International Doctoral
Research Fellowships program of the Social Science Research Coun-
cil and the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright-
Hays program, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Schol-
ars, and the Michigan Society of Fellows. The final preparation of
this volume for publication was carried out during my tenure as a
Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
I am grateful for financial support for that fellowship provided by
the National Endowment for the Humanities (Grant FC-20029) and
by the Andrew Mellon Foundation. For computing facilities and data
processing, I am indebted to Princeton University, the University
of Michigan, and the Centro de Computaci6n del Poder Popular de
la Ciudad de La Habana.
I am grateful to Cambridge University Press for permission to
incorporate material that appeared in a somewhat different form in
my essay, "Explaining Abolition: Contradiction, Adaptation and
Challenge in Cuban Slave Society, 1860-1886," Comparative Studies
in Society and History 26 (January 1984), to Duke University Press
for material from my "Gradual Abolition and the Dynamics of Slave

xiii
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Emancipation in Cuba, 1868-1886," Hispanic American Historical

Review 63 (August 1983) and to the Center for Latin American
Studies, University of Pittsburgh, for material from my "Class Re-
lations in Sugar and Political Mobilization in Cuba, 1868-1899,"
Cuban StudieslEstudios Cubanos 15 (Winter 1985). The data in
Table 2 are taken from David R. Murray, Odious Commerce: Britain,
Spain and the Abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade (Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press, 1980), and are reprinted by
permission. Those in Table 7 are from Duvon C. Corbitt, A Study
of the Chinese in Cuba, 1847-1947 (Wilmore, Ky.: Asbury College,
1971), and are also used by permission.
Special acknowledgment is due to Oscar Lorenzo and Sara Millan,
who helped me find my way around during my research visits to
Cuba in 1977, 1978, and 1979, and to Julio Vargas, who brought me
endless bundles of documents on endless hot afternoons. Many Cu-
ban scholars were very generous with their time and with references
to sources, and I would like to thank in particular Olga Cabrera,
Pedro Deschamps Chapeaux, Tomas Fernandez Robaina, Araceli
Garcia Carranza, Gloria Garcia, Zoila Lapique, Maria Lastayo, Julio
LeRiverend, Jose Luciano Franco, Fe Iglesias, Rogelio Martinez-Fure,
Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Raul Rodriguez la 0, and Carlos Venegas.
Paul Estrade and Maria Poumier-Taquechel, both French scholars of
Cuba, were also kind and helpful.
Many other people have helped me develop this work through
their comments on papers or portions of the manuscript. Although
they are too numerous to mention here, I am very grateful to them
all. The members of my doctoral committee-Stanley Stein, Linda
Lewin, Franklin Knight, and James McPherson-deserve special
thanks. Ira Berlin, David Brion Davis, Peter Eisenberg, Stanley En-
german, Eugene Genovese, Charles Gibson, Thomas Holt, and Sid-
ney Mintz also provided helpful advice on various recent drafts of
the manuscript.
In the pages of this book I will have occasion to disagree on several
major points of interpretation with Manuel Moreno Fraginals. So it
is perhaps appropriate to say at the outset that I have benefited
greatly from his help and encouragement while I was conducting
research in Cuba, from his recent critical reading of this manuscript,
and, most important, from his own extraordinary study of Cuban
society, El ingenio.

xiv
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Still more difficult to describe are the debts owed to one's family.
To say that I thank Anne Firor Scott for reading drafts of the first
ten chapters, Andrew Scott for giving advice at several stages, and
Peter Railton for reading every page and tirelessly discussing his-
torical interpretation, is to express a small portion of my gratitude.
Finally, I dedicate this study, with great affection, to Charles Gib-
son. He does not work on Cuba, on slavery, or on emancipation. But
throughout this project he has been a model and an inspiration. He
tells me-and his own work shows-that writing history can be like
building a house: if one does the carpentry well, it will stand the
storms. I do not know whether I have met that standard; I will always
be grateful to him for having set it.

xv
 Abbreviations Used
in the Notes

AGI Archivo General de Indias, Seville

Diversos Secci6n de Diversos
AHN Archivo Hist6rico Nacional, Madrid
Ultramar Secci6n de Ultramar
ANC Archivo Nacional de Cuba, Havana
CA Fondo Consejo de Administraci6n
GG Fondo Gobierno General
ME Fondo Miscehinea de Expedientes
ML Fondo Miscelanea de Libros
APSS Archivo Provincial de Sancti Spiritus, Sancti Spiritus,
Cuba
Ayuntamiento Fondo Ayuntamiento
Valle-Iznaga Fondo Valle-Iznaga
BNC Biblioteca Nacional Jose Marti, Havana
CC Colecci6n Cubana
BNE Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid
Manuscritos Secci6n de Manuscritos
MAE-Paris Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Paris
CC Correspondance Commerciale
MAE-Madrid Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Madrid
Ultramar Secci6n de Ultramar
PRO Public Record Office, London
FO Foreign Office Papers
RAH Biblioteca de la Real Academia de Historia, Madrid
FD Colecci6n Fernandez Duro
CR Colecci6n Caballero de Rodas
USNA U.S. National Archives
RG 76 Record Group 76, Spanish Treaty Claims
leg. Jegajo (bundle)
expo expediente (file)

xvi
Introduction
 I

Sugar and Slavery

Notwithstanding all we hear and know of the enervating

influence of the climate, the white man, if not laborious
himself, is the cause that labor is in others. With all its
social and political discouragements ... this island is
still very productive and very rich.
-Richard Henry Dana, 18591

Chattel slavery, the holding of property in men and women, formed

the basis of a sophisticated and productive sugar industry in Cuba
well into the final third of the nineteenth century. In 1868 the island
produced 720,250 metric tons of sugar, more than 40 percent of the
cane sugar reaching the world market in that year. But just as Cuba
reached this level of production, the abolition of slavery began. Slav-
ery had been maintained in Cuba while it was being abolished else-
where, and emancipation, when it came, required almost two dec-
ades to complete. Like Brazil, Cuba was a holdout, finally
terminating slavery only in the 1880s. Subsequently, Cuban sugar
production grew still further, reaching the one-million-ton mark just
six years after final abolition. 2 This congruence of events raises ques-
tions about the relationship between slavery and the development
of sugar production in Cuba, and about why emancipation came
when and as it did.
There are several approaches to the problem of explaining the
ending of slavery in Cuba. One is to analyze abolition as a political
process, largely carried out by Spain in response to the domestic and
international pressures that arose from slavery's persistence in Cuba

1 Richard Henry Dana, Jr., To Cuba and Back: A Vacation Voyage IBoston: Hough-
ton Mifflin, 1859; reprint ed., Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press,
19661, p. 81.
2 Manuel Moreno Fraginals, El ingenio: Complejo econ6mico social cubano del
azucaI, 3 vols. IHavana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 19781 3: 37, 38, provides
production figures.

3
 Atlantic Ocean
Bahia Hond!!.-----------.
I
MATANZAS \

_/
---'I
•
-.... '-.... S"'' '1:'" O(.q
Santa 1;>",

oS\.
• ClaraSancti •
Cienlue9 "'- Spiritus "'&f:I;>7;
0",,, _
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ISLA DE PINOS • O/"'f:
Puerto
Principe

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•Bayamo DE: CUBA

Caribbean Sea
•
SantiagO de Cuba
~
Cuba, showing provincial divisions of 1878
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

long after its extinction in most of the New World. 3 Another ap-
proach is to view the ending of slavery primarily as an attempt to
resolve difficulties within the sugar economy, including, some
scholars have argued, a growing internal contradiction between the
rigidity of slave labor and the need for technological advancement. 4
A complementary interpretation sees the shift to free labor as largely
an economic question, and portrays enlightened planters as either
taking the initiative or posing little objection. s One might also com-
bine these approaches, portraying a politically expedient colonial
policy as serving the higher interests of the local elite, though this
would raise the further question of why abolition in fact took so
very long to accomplish.
Rather than choose among, or attempt to synthesize, these ap-
proaches, I shall embark on a somewhat different tack. In addition
to evaluating the pressures exerted on the Spanish government, I
shall examine the behavior of a wider range of actors-including
slaves, freedmen, and insurgents. While exploring the problems that
planters perceived and the ways they sought to resolve them, I shall
question the accuracy of the historical claim that they faced "in-
ternal contradictions" that could be resolved only through abolition.

3 The analysis by Arthur F. Corwin best exemplifies this approach: Spain and the
Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 1817-1886 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967).
4 The thesis of the incompatibility of slave labor and technology is argued in Mo-

reno's E1 ingenio 1: 220-21 and expressed succinctly in several articles by the same
author, including "El esclavo y la mecanizaci6n de los ingenios," Bohemia, June 13,
1969, pp. 98-99, and "Desgarramiento azucarero e integraci6n nacional," Casa de las
Americas 11 (September-October 1970): 6-22. More recently Moreno has cited the
importance of a variety of factors in determining the course of abolition, but he
continues to emphasize the key role of a structural "crisis" "provoked by the steadily
decreasing profitability of slave-based labor and by the difficulties resulting from the
adoption of new technologies." See his essay "Plantaciones en el Caribe: El caso
Cuba-Puerto Rico-Santo Domingo (1860-1940)," in his La historia como arma y
otros estudios sobre esc1avos, ingenios y p1antaciones (Barcelona: Editorial Critica,
1983), p. 75. Franklin W. Knight argues that "slave labor was woefully incompetent
to deal with the scientific advances of the industry," and refers to slavery in Cuba
as "partly the victim of the steam engine," though he does not see mechanization
itself as inclining planters toward abolitionism. See Franklin W. Knight, Slave Society
in Cuba during the Nineteenth Century (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1970), pp. 182, 178.
5 Eugene D. Genovese ascribes a leading role in Cuban abolition to "some of the
island's wealthiest planters" who, along with other reformists of the 1860s, are said
to have "understood the importance of general economic renovation and the extent
to which slavery inhibited it." He argues that in Cuba "the sugar planters had a
purely economic stake in slavery and ... when that stake waned, they could move
into a wage-labor system." The World the Slaveholders Made: Two Essays in Inter-
pretation (New York: Random House, Pantheon Books, 1969), pp. 69-70.

5
 INTRODUCTION

My emphasis throughout will be on the links among the different

kinds of pressures-social, economic, political, military-and on the
interactions among masters, slaves, rebels, and administrators. The
goal, then, is not simply to discover a series of factors that brought
about abolition, but rather to understand the dynamics of the process
of emancipation and the transition to free labor.
This analysis must begin with Cuban society itself. The compo-
sition of the population shaped both social relations and the labor
market. Regional differences in the island's economic and social
development helped to determine the geographical pattern of the
transition to free labor. Specific characteristics of plantation slavery
in Cuba-such as provision-ground cultivation and seasonal work
patterns in sugar-influenced the evolution of labor relations. Fi-
nally, slaveholders' perceptions of their relationship to their workers
and to the Spanish government conditioned their responses to the
prospect of abolition.
Cuba stood out among the Caribbean sugar islands for its large
and growing white population. When the government carried out a
census of the island's inhabitants in 1861-1862, it became clear that
the balance of the population had shifted markedly since 1846, the
date of the previous census. Whites, who had been a minority, were
now a majority, their numbers having multiplied through immigra-
tion and natural growth from about 426,000 to about 730,000. Within
the population of color, slaves still predominated, outnumbering the
free persons of color by a ratio of about 1.7 to 1, though this rep-
resented a decline from the ratio of about 2 to 1 that had prevailed
in 1846. The number of free persons of color had grown rapidly, but
they had merely maintained their share of the total population (16
percent) in the face of the even more rapid increase in the white
population. The 34,000 Asians (Chinese indentured laborers) and
740 Yucatecans (brought under contract from Mexico) represented
a tiny fraction of the total (see Table 1). 6
6 The 1846 census data are from Cuba, Comisi6n de Estadistica, Cuadra estadistica
de 1a siempre fie1 Isla de Cuba, carrespandiente a1 ana de 1846lHavana: Imprenta
del Gobiemo y Capitania General, 1847). Censuses were taken in Cuba in 1841 and
1846. Both were controversial, and there have been suspicions that the second un-
dercounted slaves. It nonetheless seems appropriate to use that of 1846, both because
it was more recent and because it probably reflected a real decrease in the slave
population as a result of the high mortality and decline in importation in the mid-
1840s. The census that I refer to as that of 1862 was taken between June 1861 and
June 1862, and its tables vary both in the dates to which the counts are attributed

6
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

TABLE 1
Population of Cuba, 1846 and 1862
1846 1862 Increase

White 425,767 (47.4%) 729,957 (53.7%) 71.4%

Free colored 149,226 (16.6%) 221,417 (16.3%) 48.4%
Emancipadoa 4,521 (.3%)
Slave 323,759 (36.0%) 368,550 (27.1%) 13.8%
Asian 34,050 (2.5%)
Yucatecan 743 (.1%)
Total 898,752 (100.0%) 1,359,238 (100.0%) 51.2%
SOURCE: 1846 figures are from Cuba, Cuadro estadfstico de la siempre fiel Isla de Cuba, corres-
pondiente al ano de 1846 (Havana: Imprenta del Gobiemo, 1847); and 1862 figures are from
Cuba, Centro de Estadistica, Noticias estadisticas de la Isla de Cuba en 1862 (Havana: Imprenta
del Gobierno, 1864), "Censo de pob1aci6n de la Isla de Cuba en e1 alio que termin6 en 10 de Junio
de 1862."
, Emancipados were Africans found on captured slave ships, legally freed, and contracted out
under government authority.

The white population was overwhelmingly Creole (that is, born

in the New World), though with a substantial and disproportionately
powerful minority of Spaniards (that is, those born in Spain), many
of them merchants, shopkeepers, or government employees. There
was frequent tension between Spaniards and Creoles over issues of
politics and commerce, and occasionally open separatism on the
part of Cubans. The Creole elite had developed in large measure
during the course of the sugar revolution of the nineteenth century,
leaving many eighteenth-century patriarchal traditions behind.
Spanish merchants had also profited from the island's economic
growth, both in their role as providers of slaves and credit and in
their role as sellers in the protected Cuban market. Though planters
were frequently indebted to, and resentful of, Spanish merchants,
the two groups generally closed ranks on the issue of the mainte-
nance of slavery. The sugar elite, both Spanish and Creole, also
cultivated and benefited from a close relationship with a long series
of colonial administrators, helping to block the implementation of
unfavorable metropolitan rulings. 7
and in the total population enumerated. For Table 1 I have used the figures listed in
the census as "Censo de poblaci6n de la Isla de Cuba en el ano que termin6 en 1.0
de Junio de 1862," in which the Chinese and Yucatecans are counted separately.
Elsewhere in this work I use the figures from later tables in the census that group
Chinese, Yucatecans, and whites together and divide the population into finer cat-
egories of residence. See Cuba, Centro de Estadistica, Noticias estadisticas de 1a Isla
de Cuba en 1862 (Havana: Imprenta del Gobiemo, 1864).
7 On the composition of the white population, see Fe Iglesias, "Caracteristicas de

7
 'INTRODUCTION

Sugar planters, however, constituted only a tiny minority within

white society, and a substantial part of the population was not di-
rectly part of the sugar economy. Almost 236,000 whites lived on
sitios de labor and estancias, small farms predominantly devoted
to the raising of food crops, with another 75,000 on tobacco farms
and 52,000 on potreros, stock-raising farms. Some 311,000 whites
lived in the cities and towns of the island, and fewer than 42,000
on the sugar estates. 8 While sugar planters' adherence to Spain had
helped maintain the island's loyalty in the decades since Spain's
mainland colonies had broken free, they alone could not indefinitely
insure the security of the Cuban countryside, given the large number
of small farmers, tenants, and laborers.
The island's free population of color included descendants of
slaves liberated generations earlier as well as those recently man-
umitted. The large proportion of women among those who obtained
freedom contributed to the group's relatively high rate of growth.
Most free persons of color lived in towns and cities, where they usu-
ally worked as day laborers, artisans, and domestics, though some
attained professional and semiprofessional positions. The rural free
population of color was concentrated in the eastern part of the island.
Some 23,700 of the 84,500 free persons of color in the eastern dis-
tricts lived on estancias, while another 15,500 lived on tobacco farms
and 7,400 on ranches and stock-raising farms. The eastern depart-
ment's free population of color thus had a distinctly rural charac-
ter, while that of the western department was 65 percent urban. 9
Though legally allowed to own property (even slavesl, free blacks
and mulattos suffered from widespread social discrimination, in-
cluding limited access to public gatherings and prohibitions on in-
la poblaci6n cubana en 1862,/1 Revista de la Biblioteca Nacional Jos~ Marti, 3rd
series, 22 (September-December 1980): 93. For a picture of Havana and its Spanish
merchants at mid-century, see Antonio de las Barras y Prado, La Habana a mediados
del siglo xix (Madrid: Imprenta de la Ciudad Lineal, 1925). On the development and
composition of the planter class; see Knight, Slave Society, pp. 21-22 and chap. 5,
and Moreno, El ingenio, vol. 1. For a discussion of the influence of the sugar elite on
the formulation of government policy concerning the slave trade, see David R. Mur-
ray, Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain and the Abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
8 Cuba, Centro de Estadfstica, Noticias estadisticas, "Distribuci6n de la poblaci6n
en los pueblos y fincas de la isla." In this context, the category "whites" includes
Chinese contract laborers.
9 On occupations, see Pedro Deschamps Chapeaux, El negro en la economfa ha-
banera del siglo xix (Havana: Uni6n de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, 1971). For
statistics, see Cuba, Centro de Estadfstica, Noticias estadisticas, "Distribuci6n./1

8
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

terracial marriage. Despite a generally more flexible system of ethnic

classification than that prevailing in the U.S. South, the concept of
an African "stain" continued to stigmatize the Cuban descendants
of slaves,l° One Spanish resident of Havana in the 1860s explained
candidly that all blacks were obliged to show respect to whites in
order for whites to maintain the "moral force" necessary to keep
the "black race" in submission, since it would be difficult to do so
on the basis of material force aloneY
Free persons of color constituted an uncertain element in the
colonial equation. The Spanish administration had long sought to
use them as a counterweight to the slave population, even to the
extent of arming batallions of free mulattos and blacks. 12 In the
1840s, however, authorities suspected free persons of color of col-
laboration in a rumored general slave uprising and arrested, tortured,
and executed members of Cuba's precarious free colored middle
sector. The colored small-scale farmers, tenants, and squatters in
the east, where in most districts they outnumbered slaves, were a
similar unknown in the balance of power. 13 As in virtually all slave
societies, mulatto free persons had often sought to distance them-
selves from blacks in an effort both to avoid the "stain" of shared
slave ancestry and to assert the importance of differences in social
status and gradations of skin color. At the same time, however, slaves
and free persons of color had often been joined by ties of kinship
and shared membership in the cabildos de naci6n, particularly
in the towns. To the extent that there was a continuous process
of manumission, absolute caste-like barriers were unlikely to
develop. 14
The island's slaves were both recognized by the white elite as the
10 See Verena Martinez-Alier, Marriage, Class and Colour in Nineteenth-Century
Cuba (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1974).
11 Barras y Prado, La Habana, pp. 111-12.
12 Deschamps Chapeaux, El negro en la economia, pp. 57-86.
13 On the 1844 uprising and its repression, see Murray, Odious Commerce, chap.
9, and references cited therein; and Robert Louis Paquette, "The Conspiracy of La
Escalera: Colonial Society and Politics in Cuba in the Age of Revolution." Ph.D.
thesis, University of Rochester, 1982. For population figures by district, see Cuba,
Centro de Estadistica, Noticias estadisticas, "Censo."
14 See Martinez-Alier, Marriage, especially pp. 96-99. On the U.S. South, see Ira
Berlin, Slaves Without Masters (New York: Random House, 1974). For a discussion
of cabildos, see Chap. XI, below, and Fernando Ortiz, "Los cabildos afro-cubanos,"
Revista Bimestre Cubana 16 (Jan.-Feb., 1921): 5-39. On the free persons of color, see
Deschamps, El negro, and Paquette, "Conspiracy."

9
 INTRODUCTION

TABLE 2
Slaves Imported into Cuba, 1840-1867'

Year Number Year Number Year Number

1840 14,470 1850 3,100 1860 24,895

1841 9,776 1851 5,000 1861 23,964
1842 3,000 1852 7,924 1862 11,254
1843 8,000 1853 12,500 1863 7,507
1844 10,000 1854 11,400 1864 6,807
1845 1,300 1855 6,408 1865 145
1846 1,500 1856 7,304 1866 1,443
1847 1,000 1857 10,436 1867
1848 1,500 1858 16,992
1849 8,700 1859 30,473 Total 246,798
SOURCE: David R. Murray, Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain and the Abolition of the Cuban
Slave Trade (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 244 .
• These totals are the estimates published by the British Foreign Office and are based on reports
of the British commissioners in Havana. (In 1841 no figure was published, and the figure here is
taken from the commissioner's reports.)

basis of Cuba's prosperity and perceived as a potential threat to its

security. The decade of the 1850s saw an upsurge in the contraband
transatlantic slave trade, partially offsetting the decline that would
otherwise have resulted from deaths and manumissions in a popu-
lation that did not have a positive natural rate of increase (see Table
2). By the end of the decade, however, the absolute number of slaves
appears to have begun to decline. Slave registration figures, though
distinctly unreliable, showed a total of around 373,000 in 1855-
1857. 15 By 1861-1862 the census counted just 368,550, and the 1867
slave registration showed 363,288. 16
The experience of slavery itself varied widely within Cuba, from
the cities and towns, where slaves filled a broad range of occupations,
to the rural settings, each with different characteristics and work
rhythms. Though slaves in towns were highly visible to travelers-
and are in some ways more visible to historians-most Cuban slaves
in the 1860s lived in the countryside, and the largest group (47
percent) lived on sugar estates. Indeed the proportion of the slave
labor force employed in sugar was even greater than 47 percent
15 Knight cites the figures from the 1855, 1856, and 1857 "capitations" in Slave
Society, p. 63.
16 Cuba, Centro de Estadistica, Noticias estadfsticas, "Censo," and AHN, Ultramar,
leg. 4884, tomo 8, expo 160.

10
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

because of the relatively small numbers of slave children on sugar

plantations, compared to the citiesY
Rural slaves who were not employed in sugar labored on various
kinds of plantations, farms, and ranches (see Table 3). The slaves on
sitias de labor and estancias, both small food-producing farms, num-
bered almost 32,000 and of necessity had closer relations with their
owners and performed a wider range of tasks than most plantation
slaves. Over 31,000 slaves lived on intensive stock-raising farms,
patreras, that were sometimes independent and sometimes tied to
ingenias, on occasion sharing their work force with a nearby estate.
About 26,000 slaves lived on the island's coffee plantations, where
conditions were traditionally viewed as less oppressive than those
on ingenias. 18 Cattle ranchers owned few slaves each, most of them
men. With greater open space, the ranches may have offered rela-
tively independent working conditions, but the sex ratio must have
made family life very difficult. Tobacco farms also held few slaves
per farm, with vegas in the district of Pinar del Rio averaging four
or five slaves each, and those in the Eastern Department averaging
less than one slave each. In the western Pinar del Rio and San Cris-
t6bal districts, most of the residents of tobacco farms were whites,
while in the eastern Santiago de Cuba district, most were free per-
sons of color. 19
The diversity of situations in which Cuban slaves lived and the
range of their activities suggest that one should exercise considerable
caution in attributing a general "character" to Cuban slavery. While
some earlier scholars saw Cuba as an instance of a mild New World
slavery, strongly influenced by the Catholic Church, recent research
has shown that the Church could not determine practices within
the plantation once large-scale capitalistic agriculture had devel-
oped. Thus the image of a paternalistic slavery characterized by
concern for the soul of the slave is out of keeping with the regime
17 Cuba, Centro de Estadistica, Noticias estadisticas, "Distribuci6n." It is thus
somewhat misleading to emphasize the urban experience, as Herbert S. Klein does,
and portray Cuba just prior to emancipation as a "rich world of economic opportu·
nity" for the slave, one that had provided him with a "rich industrial heritage." See
Slavery in the Americas (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967J, pp. 162-
63.
18 On the reputation of the coffee estates, see Knight, Slave Society, pp. 65-67.
19 All of the figures in this discussion are from Cuba, Centro de Estadistica, Noticias
estadfsticas, "Distribuci6n," and "Registro general de fincas rUsticas."

11
 TABLE 3
Distribution of Slave Population by Place of Residence, 1862
Percentage Slaves as Male Slaves
Residence of Slaves Percentage per 100
ICensus category) Males Females Total in Island of Residents Female Slaves

Ingenios
ISugar plantations) 109,709 62,962 172,671 47% 79% 174
Poblados
ITowns) 37,014 38,963 75,977 21% 15% 95
Potreros
IStock-raising farms) 20,414 11,100 31,514 9% 35% 184
Cafetales
ICoffee plantations) 14,344 11,598 25,942 7% 77% 124
Sitios de labor
ISmaIl farms) 14,253 10,597 24,850 7% 11% 135
Vegas
ITobacco farms) 11,622 6,053 17,675 5% 15% 192
Estancias
ISmaIl farms) 4,220 2,698 6,918 2% 8% 156
Haciendas
IRanches) 4,311 1,909 6,220 2% 18% 226
Other establishments 2,675 1,500 4,175 1% 19% 178
Other farms 1,655 769 2,424 1% 20% 215
Total Icalculated
from table)' 220,217 148,149 368,366 149
SOURCE: Cuba, Centro de Estadistica, Noticias estadisticas, "Distribuci6n de la Poblaci6n en los Pueblos y Fincas de la Isla."
• Because of apparent omissions in the original, these totals do not equal those cited elsewhere in the census.
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

of the developed ingenio. 20 Verena Martinez-Alier, studying the po-

sition of the Church on the delicate issue of intermarriage, has also
shown the reluctance of many Church leaders and parish priests to
press for the recognition of the spiritual equality of all men. As
Martinez-Alier has argued, the authorities were well aware of the
precepts of Catholic morality, but did not feel bound by them: "On
the contrary, they manipulate these values in accordance with the
circumstances and as a rule subordinate them to the interests of the
State."2l
One institution often cited as distinguishing the status of the
Cuban slave from that of slaves elsewhere was coartaci6n, or gradual
self-purchase. Under Spanish law, a slave who made a substantial
down payment on his or her purchase price-thus becoming coar-
tado--gained certain privileges. He or she could not be sold for a
price greater than the appraised value at the time of the coartaci6n
and was entitled to a portion of the rental if hired out. In theory,
coartaci6n provided an avenue for self-emancipation and created an
intermediate status between slave and free. 22 As slave prices rose,
however, the possibility that a slave would be able to accumulate
the purchase price receded. Herbert Klein cites the example of coar-
taci6n through a down payment of 50 pesos, one-quarter of a pur-
chase price of 200 pesos. 23 But by the 1860s slave prices were from
three to six times that much, putting self-purchase far beyond the
reach of almost all slaves. 24 The total number of freedom papers
20 The earlier thesis was associated particularly with Frank Tannenbaum and Her-
bert Klein. See Frank Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas
(New York: Random House, 19461, and Klein, Slavery. Major challenges to it are
contained in Knight, Slave Society, and Moreno, E1 ingenio. Cuba, particularly in the
eighteenth century, showed a greater diversity of economic activity, a smaller pro-
portion of slaves in the population, and a larger free population of color than many
other Caribbean sugar islands. These features did help to give Cuban slavery a special
character and created a heritage that would influence society in the nineteenth cen-
tury. But it does not follow that all aspects of this character persisted until abolition,
for the intervening decades saw a dramatic concentration of resources in sugar pro-
duction, massive importations of slaves, and a weakening of countervailing forces
that might offset the hegemony of the planter class.
21 Martinez-Alier, Marriage, p. 47.

22 Klein, Slavery, pp. 196-99. See also Hubert H. S. Aimes, "Coartaci6n: A Spanish
Institution for the Advancement of Slaves into Freedmen," The Yale Review 17 (Feb.
19091: 412-31.
23 Klein, Slavery, p. 197.
24 For estimates of slave prices in the 1860s see Hubert H. S. Aimes, A History of
Slavery in Cuba, 1511 to 1868 (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1907; reprint ed.,
New York: Octagon Books, 19671, pp. 267-68. For the valuations of slaves on specific
estates, see Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Herbert S. Klein, and Stanley L. Engerman,

13
 INTRODUCTION

issued between 1858 and 1862 averaged about 1,900 per year, and
this figure included manumissions as well as self-purchase by coar-
tados. 25 While in any given year there could be more slaves becoming
coartados than achieving full freedom, other evidence suggests that
the number actually in the status of coartado at anyone time was
small. When the slave population was counted in 1871, it included
only 890 male coartados and 1,247 female coartadas, less than one
percent of the total. Over 40 percent of the coartados lived in the
urban jurisdicci6n of Havana, while the sugar areas had very few. 26
The significance of these figures goes beyond their relevance to
the debate on the relative "severity" of Cuban slavery-a discussion
grown somewhat barren. More important, in conjunction with other
findings, they cast doubt on the notion that the nature of the in-
tegration of former slaves into Cuban society after abolition was
determined by extensive prior social mobility and by Church-in-
spired "mores and attitudes that permitted the Negro to be treated
as a coequal human being."2 ? Coartaci6n, combined with a generally
more positive attitude toward manumission than was found, for
example, in the United States, was clearly important in developing
Cuba's large free population of color. But on the eve of final eman-
cipation coartaci6n affected only a tiny fraction of Cuba's slaves.
Understanding the integration of the majority of freed men and
women into Cuban society requires both a closer examination of
Cuban sugar plantations and a direct look at the process of eman-
cipation itself and its aftermath.
It is clear that the exigencies of technology and profitability tended
to tum the semimechanized, capitalistic, export-oriented sugar plan-
tation of the mid-nineteenth century into a prison, the slaves into
mere factors of production. 28 On the other hand, to focus solely on

liThe Level and Structure of Slave Prices on Cuban Plantations in the Mid-Nineteenth
Century: Some Comparative Perspectives," American Historical Review 88 (Dec.
19831: 1201-18. See also note 83, below.
25 Cuba, Centro de Estadistica, Noticias estadisticas, "Cartas de libertad expedidas
a esclavos en la isla en el quinquenio de 1858 a 1862." The estimate of 6.2% of slaves
being freed through coartaci6n each year, cited by Klein, is based on a miscalculation
by Aimes. Klein, Slavery, p. 199.
26 Resumen general de los esclavos existentes en esta Provincia formado por Juris-
dicciones con arreglo al censo de Enero de 1871, Havana, November 15, 1872, AHN,
Ultramar, leg. 4882, tomo 3, expo 39.
27 Klein, Slavery, p. 105. See also Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen, p. 100.
28 The most emphatic and well-documented statement of this view is in Moreno,
E1 ingenio.

14
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

these characteristics may lead to new errors-to characterizations

that too rigidly reflect an ideal type. By concentrating on the logic
of the enterprise, one may overlook aspects of its reality.
Manuel Moreno Fraginals, for example, has written that planta-
tion slaves "did not know economic, personal, or family responsi-
bility because they lacked an economy of their own."29 Because of
radical "deculturation" under slavery, he argues, abolition was
"traumatic" for many of them. 3D "Deculturation" and the denial of
a personal economy to the slaves may indeed have been the aims
of planters, and may have conformed to the logic of capitalistic slave
plantations. But this does not mean that they were everywhere ac-
tually achieved. That the experiences of enslavement, transportation
to the New World, and forced labor were devastating, no one can
doubt. But that they left most slaves incapable of recreating a cul-
tural life is unlikely.31 In the Cuban case, patterns of provision
ground cultivation, lodging, and family life created experiences and
expectations that would later help to provide the basis for an active
involvement by many slaves in the process of emancipation.
Though slaveholders in Cuba and elsewhere in the Caribbean had
traditionally granted provision grounds or conucos to their slaves,
on which the slaves were to grow their own food, the economics of
the sugar boom made it profitable for masters to put land into cane
and to import food to feed the slaves.32 Nonetheless, conucos were
apparently revived and encouraged even on large estates in the mid-
nineteenth century by advocates of "better treatment" as a means
of tying slaves to the plantation, improving their health and lon-
gevity, and discouraging sabotage by fire. 33 The key to such changes
was not simply whether religion or custom granted a limited right
of private property to the slave, or even whether imported food was
cheaper than home-produced, but whether, all things considered, it
was convenient for the plantation to have a portion of its food pro-
duced relatively independently by slaves. "All things considered"
29 Ibid., 2: 45.
30 Manuel Moreno Fraginals, "Aportes culturales y deculturaci6n," in Manuel Mo-
reno Fraginals, ed. Africa en America Latina (Paris: UNESCO, and Mexico: Siglo
Veintiuno Editores, 1977), p. 22.
31 See Sidney W. Mintz and Richard Price, An Anthropological Approach to the
Afro-American Past: A Caribbean Perspective (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study
of Human Issues, 1976).
32 Knight, Slave Society, p. 68.
33 Moreno, E1 ingenio 2: 89.

15
 INTRODUCTION

would include the reactions of planters to the behavior of slaves-

their skills, their work habits under different situations, their re-
sistance-as well as slaves' responses to planters' behavior. The
analysis thus shifts away from the "rights" granted under Catholic
slavery and toward the circumstances under which, despite a rig-
orous plantation regime, slaves did obtain access to land and were
able to produce crops.
Records of purchases of animals and produce from slaves are com-
mon in surviving plantation account books of the second half of the
nineteenth century. Goods sold included maize, yucca, malanga,
bonia to, plantains, and pigs. 34 Contemporary observers also sug-
gested that the cultivation of provision grounds was a very general
phenomenon. 35 To be sure, the slaves' actual experience of selling
goods to the plantation was often a travesty of the free market for
the bargaining power of the two sides was hardly equal. James
O'Kelly witnessed one such sale in the 1870s and noted that "the
use of the word 'buy' in the transaction should be seen as a
euphemism."
One of the superintendents of the estate called out a woman's name. Almost
immediately a wretched-looking creature advanced to where the superin-
tendent was standing, and, taking up a position of absolute subservience,
with head bowed and eyes cast down, awaited in silence the further wishes
of the superior being before whom in spirit she was prostrated. She had not
long to wait. A pig was wanted; she had one ready to be killed; it was to
be delivered up, and, in return, she would receive two dollars. The poor
creature curtsied awkwardly, mumbled an assent, and the "purchase" was
completed. 36

O'Kelly, an abolitionist, minimized the autonomy allowed to the

slave. But his moral point about the humiliation of the woman
involved does not contradict an economic and social interpretation
of the significance of production for sale. Cultivation of provision
34 See the purchases recorded in the Libra Mayor del ingenio Nueva Teresa (Aiios
1872-86), ANC, ML, 11245; in the Libra que contiene documentos del estado general
de la Finca Mapos y del ingenio de elaborar aZllcar, Desde 1881-1884, APSS, Valle-
Iznaga, leg. 24; and in the Libra Diario del Ingenio Delicias, 1872-82, ANC, ML,
10802.
3S See, for example, Francisco Acosta y Albear, Memoria sobre el estado actual de
Cuba (Havana: A. Peg6, 1874), p. 14, and Jacobo de la Pezuela, Diccionario geogrdfico,
estadfstico, hist6rico de la Isla de Cuba (Madrid: Mellado, 1863) 1: 214.
36 James O'Kelly, The Mambi-Land or, Adventures of a Herald Correspondent in
Cuba (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1874), p. 59.

16
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

grounds represented opportunity for initiative, relatively unsuper-

vised labor, and a source of funds-a limited "personal economy."37
The point is made not to suggest special generosity on the part of
the master, but rather to emphasize that such exchanges required
masters to deal with slaves in terms of money rather than strictly
in terms of forced labor. The slave who grew vegetables for sale, or
who was given a piglet to raise on halves with the plantation, learned
something of the market economy, however miserably he or she
was compensated for the effort. And what slaves thus learned could
affect the way they would behave during and after emancipation.
A somewhat similar point could be made about the family. Mo-
reno correctly points out the vulnerability of any marriage among
slaves, the sexual imbalance in the slave population, and the prison-
like regimen of the plantation. But he goes on to argue that, because
of these, "a family unit within the ingenio was a foreign body, nat-
urally rejected," basing his argument on the objective conditions of
life for slaves and on his claim that slaves knew no economic, per-
sonal, or family responsibility.38 However, one should not confuse
the absence of legal marriage with an absence of perceived family
responsibility, nor assume that hostile conditions made the for-
mation of families impossible. Evidence from other societies chal-
lenges both of these views. 39 Moreover, there is direct evidence of
slave family ties, even on Cuban sugar estates.
A predominant symbol of the Cuban slave plantation at its height
was the barrac6n, a prison-like barracks, often described as segre-
gating males and females. Such an institution, quite obviously,
would strongly discourage family formation. But barracones, large
and expensive to construct, were principally confined to the devel-
oped mills of Havana and Matanzas. They were rarer in Santa Clara,
and absent in Santiago de Cuba and Puerto Principe. Even in the
advanced zone of Cardenas in Matanzas, of the 221 ingenios existing
in 1850, a slight majority retained the old bohio or hut system. 40
37 For a more general discussion of the importance of provision grounds, see Sidney
W. Mintz, Caribbean Transformations (Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 19741, chap. 7.
38 Moreno, El ingenio 2: 45.
39 See, for example, Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom,
1750·1925 (New York: Pantheon Books, 19761, and B. W. Higman, Slave Population
and Economy in Jamaica, 1807·1834 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University
Press, 19761.
40 See Juan Perez de la Riva, El barrac6n y atlas ensayos (Havana: Editorial de
Ciencias Sociales, 19751, particularly "El barrac6n de ingenio en la epoca esclavista,"

17
 INTRODUCTION

A slaveholder in 1840 portrayed one such group of bohfos. His

account was biased by an obvious self-interest in the matter and by
his romanticism. The details he invokes in his description of the
two-room huts that the slaves built for themselves are nonetheless
significant.
Where they live is in the parlor. There the blacks do almost everything,
there they have a fire burning constantly, there they cook, there they eat,
there they talk. The bedroom serves only to hold the clothes chest, to hang
straw baskets with God knows how many things inside, to put away the
baskets in which they rock their small children, and for the godchildren
and relatives to sleep in, because the masters of the hut stay in the parlor. 4l
In such circumstances, the institution of the family was clearly
not a "foreign body naturally rejected." Indeed, this description por-
trays relations of kinship and godparenthood beyond the units of
parents and children. None of these had to be legally sanctioned to
be recognized and valued by slaves, through in fact baptismal records
of slave children do sometimes list godparents. 42
Even within barracones, slaves found ways to make their cells
less prison-like, and the sexes were not invariably separated. They
were still frightful places to live-squalid, smoky, confining. But
contemporary descriptions of them reflect the existence of both fam-
ily relations and a private economy. Alvaro Reynoso, in 1861, noted
that "in these rooms the blacks establish divisions and subdivisions,
they construct lofts or granaries to store their harvests." 43 Another
pp. 15-74. Perez de la Riva points out the ambiguities in the usage of the words
barrac6n and bohio; in this discussion I have restricted the term barrac6n to barracks
and bohio to huts, and used only evidence in which the reference of the observer is
clear. On the geographical distribution of barracones see Moreno, El ingenio 2: 74-
75.
4l "Bohios" (1840), in BNC, CC, C.M. Suarez R., tomo 6, no. 3.
42 For instances of the presence of padrinos and grandparents at slave baptisms, see
Libro 16 de Bautismos de Pardos y Morenos, Archivo Parroquial de la Iglesia Mayor
del Espiritu Santo, Sancti Spiritus, Cuba. In many cases the father was listed as "no
conocido"; in others he was named and the child was legitimate. For a listing of
slaves' children from the ingenio Angelita along with their godparents, see Libro
Diario del ingenio "Angelita" de la propiedad de Sr. J. A. Argudin, fol. 199, ANC,
ML, 11536. Sixteen children baptized on June 13, 1870, are listed. All of the mothers
who are identifiable from other records were Creole; all were between ages twenty
and forty. Most padrinos and madrinos were also Creole, but a substantial number
(ten out of thirty-two) were African (Lucumi or Ganga). One set of godparents was
white, the man listed as French. It is not entirely clear what the status of the mother
was in that instance.
43 These observations by Reynoso are quoted by Francisco Perez de la Riva in La
habitaci6n rural en Cuba (Havana: Editorial Lex, 1952), p. 69.

18
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

observer in 1875, horrified by the dampness and filth of these bar-

racks, wrote, "In each of these pestiferous dungeons, a whole family
lived in a condition more foul and degraded than any beasts of the
field."44
It should by now be clear that the questions of mistreatment,
private economy, and family are in some ways separable. Slaves
could be cheated, yet participate in a money economy. They could
be ill-housed, yet struggle to maintain families. They could be
treated worse than beasts, yet not become like beasts.
These arguments are not meant to substitute a romantic image
of cozy families in thatch-roofed huts for the devastating picture of
deracinated individuals in squalid barracks. They are instead in-
tended to convey a sense of the range of slave adaptations to even
the worst circumstances. While a conscious policy of "good treat-
ment" might ameliorate some of these circumstances, such inten-
tions of planters were by no means a necessary precondition for
initiatives by slaves, though some measures, such as balancing the
sex ratio on an estate, would make family formation more likely.
By focusing on the dehumanizing conditions in the largest mills,
one may capture the essence of capitalist, slave-based sugar pro-
duction. If one portrays these conditions only in their starkest terms,
however, it is not possible to understand fully the initiatives taken
by slaves, their collective efforts, their creative use of small conces-
sions. If one insists that family life was impossible within the in-
genia, it is difficult to make sense of the efforts of slaves to purchase
the freedom of their spouses and children. If one insists that plan-
tation slaves lacked all economic responsibility and experience of
private economic activity, it is difficult to see how they gathered
the funds to make these purchases.
One should not fall into the error of making the exception seem
ordinary, or exaggerating the "space," the room for initiative, the
autonomy of slaves. The sex ratio was often unbalanced and families
were under continual threat of disruption; canuca production was
limited and vulnerable; acquiring capital was never easy; harsh phys-
44 Frederick Trench Townshend, Wild Life in Florida, with a Visit to Cuba ILondon:
Hurst and Blackett, 1875), p. 195. Fredrika Bremer, a Swedish visitor to Cuba in 1851,
also referred to the barrac6n of the ingenio Ariadna as having "one room for each
family." Fredrika Bremer, Cartas desde Cuba IHavana: Editorial Arte y Literatura,
1980), p. 79.

19
 INTRODUCTION

ical punishment damaged slaves as it damages all human beings.

There is no way to know whether a numerical majority of rural
slaves had provision grounds, or whether a majority established
some kinds of family ties. Even if these were minority patterns,
however, they were part of the cultural background that slaves drew
upon in gaining freedom and took into freedom. They provided goals
to be sought, even if such goals were not always achieved.
Despite the diverse situations in which slaves found themselves,
the character of labor in sugar shaped the lives of Cuban slaves more
than any other single factor. Even for urban slaves, knowledge of
conditions on sugar estates to which they might be sent served as
a form of discipline. 45 There was a kind of symmetry to the process
whereby such infamous working conditions arose: the particular
labor needs of sugar cultivation and processing were thought to
require slave labor, and then the presence of slave labor on the estates
reinforced the coercion to which all sugar workers were subject.

SUGAR. The process of sugar production varied widely in Cuba,

from huge enterprises employing hundreds of slaves and producing
thousands of tons of sugar per season to tiny mills with a few slaves
each, producing less than one hundred tons. In 1860 Cuban sugar
plantations (using the term to apply to the combination of land and
mill) included some 1,382 ingenios as well as several hundred very
small trapiches, the latter generally producing for local consump-
tion. Manuel Moreno Fraginals has categorized the ingenios of 1860
in three major groups: animal-powered, with an average production
capacity of 113 tons of sugar per grinding season, of which there
were 359 (excluding the very small ones); semimechanized, using
steam engines, with an average production capacity of 411 tons, of
which there were 889; and mechanized, using steam power and more
advanced processing technology (including vacuum pans), with an
average production capacity of 1,176 tons, of which there were 64.
Despite their enormous capacity, the mechanized mills were still
responsible for only about 15 percent of total production in the island
in 1860. The animal-powered mills produced only 8 percent. It was
45 Juan Francisco Manzano, an urban slave of the early nineteenth century, vividly
depicted in his autobiography the practice of punishing urban slaves by sending them
to an ingenio, and the terror this inspired. See Edward J. Mullen, ed., The Life and
Poems of a Cuban Slave: Juan Francisco Manzano, 1797-1854 (Hamden, Connecticut:
Archon Books, 1981), p. 93.

20
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

the semimechanized mills that yielded 77 percent of the marketed

sugar crop.46
The two departments of Cuba, the Eastern and the Western, dif-
fered radically in the level of development of their sugar plantations.
The most reliable compilation of data on Cuban sugar in 1860, that
of Carlos Rebello, vividly reflects this division. He listed 1,065 in-
genios located in the Western Department, of which 78 percent were
operated by steam power, and 300 in the Eastern Department, of
which only 40 percent were steam powered. The average product
per mill in the east was 158 tons, reflecting the predominance of
small, animal-powered mills. The average product in the west was
459 tons per mill, reflecting the predominance of semimechanized
mills, and the presence of some mechanized mills. 47
The regional differences in sugar production can be seen even more
clearly if one divides the island into smaller units. The six provinces
of Cuba-Pinar del RiO, Havana, Matanzas, Santa Clara, Puerto Prin-
cipe, and Santiago de Cuba-were not formed until 1878. In the
1860s, the island was divided instead into some twenty-nine juris-
dicciones. For the purposes of analysis, it is possible to regroup these
jurisdicciones into the later provinces. Tables 4 and 5 show several
of the key characteristics of the sugar industry in each of these
artificially formed "provinces."48
Matanzas, with the highest number of steam-powered mills and
46 Moreno, E1 ingenio 1: 170-73, tables 1 and 3. The tons are metric tons.
47 Carlos Rebello, Estados re1ativos a 1a producci6n azucarera de 1a isla de Cuba
(Havana, 1860). For a careful examination of this work and its origins, see Moreno,
E1 ingenio 1: 170n and 3: 252-53. Rebello includes the later province of Puerto Principe
in the Eastem Department, while the 1862 census does not.
48 The major adjustment that needs to be made in order to group the jurisdictions
into provinces is the division of the jurisdiction of Giiines into two parts, since it
was divided in 1878 between the provinces of Havana and Matanzas. (For the 1878
boundaries, see U.S. War Department, Report on the Census of Cuba. 1899 [Wash-
ington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1900], pp. 700-702.) This can be approx-
imated by separating the population of the partido of Alacranes and adding it to
Matanzas, while including the rest of Giiines in Havana. Although figures for the
slave population of Alacranes are recorded in the 1862 census, those living on ingenios
are not enumerated separately. The census lists 8,853 slaves in the partido, or 35
percent of the slave population of the jurisdiction of Giiines. However, Alacranes
contained 41 ingenios, or 46 percent of the ingenios of Giiines, so its proportion of
the plantation slave population would be expected to be higher than its proportion
of the total slave population. If one uses the figure of 46 as the likely percentage of
the slaves on ingenios in Giiines who were located in the district of Alacranes, one
arrives at an estimate of 6,751 such slaves in Alacranes. This, then, is the number I
have omitted from Havana and included in Matanzas to derive the 1862 provincial
estimates of slaves on ingenios.

21
 TABLE 4
Cuban Sugar Production, 1860 Harvest
No. of Percent
Total Steam- of Mills Average No. of Mills
Product Caballenas No. of Average Product Powered Steam- No. of Cabs. with Vacuum
Province (metric tonsl" in Caneb Ingenios Per Mill Per Cab. Mills Powered per Mill Apparatus
Matanzas 265,644 9,661 442 601 27.5 409 93% 21.9 44
Santa Clara 145,163 5,068 395 368 28.6 235 59% 12.8 10
Havana 38,999 2,537 126 310 15.4 97 77% 20.1 4
Pinar del Rio 38,644 1,986 102 379 19.5 88 86% 19.5 7
Santiago de Cuba 31,953 1,093 198 161 29.2 84 42% 5.5 0
Puerto Principe 15,434 414 102 151 37.3 36 35% 4.1 1
Total, Cuba 535,857 20,759 1,365 393 25.8 949 70% 15.2 66
SOURCE: Compiled from Carlos Rebello, Estados relativos a la producci6n azucarera de la Isla de Cuba . ... (Havana: n.p., 18601.
a Rebello's figures have been converted at a rate of one metric ton equals 2,204.6 lbs.
bOne caballena equals 33.3 acres.

TABLE 5
Plantation lncome and Slaveholdings by Province, 1862
Totallncome Average Income Average No.
No. of (thousands of (thousands of Slaves on of Slaves
Province Ingeniosa pesosl pesosl Ingenios per Ingenio
Matanzas 456 9,632 21 72,689 159
Santa Clara 492 6,384 13 44,106 90
Havana 130 2,120 16 19,404 149
Pinar del Rio 97 1,925 20 16,830 174
Santiago de Cuba 239 1,689 7 14,181 59
Puerto Principe ll7 453 4 5,461 47
Total, Cuba 1,531 22,203 15 172,671 ll3
SOURCE: Calculated from Cuba, Centro de Estadfstica, Noticias estadisticas, "Registro general de fincas rUsticas," and "Distribuci6n." See note 48 for the
method of compiling provincial totals from figures for ;urisdicciones.
a At least part of the difference in the number of ingenios recorded in 1860 (Table 41 and 1862 is due to a different method of counting, which made small
mills more likely to be included in 1862.
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

the largest number of mills with vacuum apparatus, had the largest
total output, the largest average output by far at 601 metric tons per
mill, the greatest area planted in cane, and the largest total number
of slaves on sugar plantations. Santa Clara was next in total output
and in number of mills in 1860, but its substantial number of animal-
powered mills lowered both the average output and the average
income of its mills. Santa Clara did have the second largest number
of slaves on sugar plantations, the second largest area planted in
cane, and the second highest total income from sugar.
Turning to the far-western province of Pinar del Rio, one finds a
sharp drop in total output, number of mills, area planted in cane,
and number of slaves in sugar. Pinar del Rio was in large measure
a tobacco region, and sugar did not command as high a portion of
its land or slaves. Those mills that were in Pinar del Rio, however,
tended to be large-they had an average of 174 slaves each and a
substantial average output. Havana shows a similar picture: sugar
did not loom so large in its economy (only 23 percent of the prov-
ince's slaves lived on plantations), nor was the total output anywhere
near as large as that of Santa Clara or Matanzas. 49
Moving east to the provinces of Santiago de Cuba and Puerto
Principe, one encounters an abrupt decline in average output per
mill, reflecting the predominance of smaller, animal-powered mills.
The number of slaves per mill was small, fifty-nine in Santiago de
Cuba and just forty-seven in Puerto Principe, as was the average
area planted in cane. The rich soil of the east could produce more
cane per unit of land, but the backwardness of the grinding apparatus
in eastern mills lowered overall productivity. so
The distribution of the island's fully mechanized mills also shows
a distinct regional pattern. Matanzas had forty-four, followed by
Santa Clara with ten, Pinar del Rio with seven, and Havana with
four. Just one mechanized mill, located in Puerto Principe, operated
in the eastern part of the island. sl
There was thus more than an east-west division of the sugar in-

49 For the proportion of the province's slaves who lived on ingenios, see Cuba,
Centro de Estadfstica, Noticias estadisticas, "Distribuci6n."
50 On the fertility of the soil in the east, see Ram6n de la Sagra, Cuba: 1860.
Selecci6n de articulos sobre agricultura cubana (n.p., 1860; reprint ed., Havana:
Comisi6n Nacional de la UNESCO, 1963), p. 139.
51 Rebello, Estados. My count of mechanized mills differs slightly from that of
Moreno, probably as a result of ambiguities in Rebello's text.

23
 INTRODUCTION

dustry in Cuba. Differentiations existed within the two regions as

well: the core province of Matanzas with big, steam-powered mills,
including the great majority of the mechanized mills on the island;
the less evenly developed province of Santa Clara, with a mixture
of types of plantation, from animal-powered trapiches to fully mech-
anized mills; the provinces of Havana and Pinar del Rio, with far
fewer mills but considerable average output due to the small pro-
portion of animal-powered mills and the presence of a few mecha-
nized mills. In the east, such semimechanized production as there
was tended to be heavily concentrated in the area around the city
of Santiago de Cuba, with most of the region dominated either by
estates using animal-powered trapiches or by other forms of
agriculture. 52
Virtually all Cuban mills at mid-century were integrated units,
combining the growing of cane and the manufacture of sugar from
its juice. Work on a sugar plantation involved elements of both field
and factory but differed from other forms of agricultural and indus-
trial work. The botanical characteristics of cane and the level of
technology employed in the mill largely determined the pace of
work. Cane had to be cut when the proportion of sucrose in the
juice was highest, and, above all, the juice had to be extracted within
24 to 48 hours to prevent spoilage. Thus planters needed to mobilize
large amounts of labor for a specific period of time-the zalra-and
to coordinate harvesting with the processing of cane. Interruptions
in the flow of labor available to cut and haul cane and to provide
fuel, or bottlenecks in processing caused by equipment failure,
would affect both the total amount of cane that could be cut and
the percentage of sucrose extracted. The harvest on Cuban planta-
tions lasted for several months during the winter and early spring
and was the period of peak labor demand. During the rest of the
year the laborers worked in planting, weeding, cultivation of food-
stuffs, and care of animals, as well as tasks of maintenance and
construction. 53
Given this organization of production, planters required a secure
supply of labor during the harvest, and needed to maintain and en-
force an extraordinarily intense pace of labor in the fields and mills
52Ibid., and Cuba, Centro de Estadfstica, Noticias estadisticas.
53The best description of both labor and technology in nineteenth-century Cuban
mills is in Moreno, EI ingenio, vols. 1 and 2.

24
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

simultaneously. Slavery facilitated meeting these requirements. By

tying workers to the workplace, slavery protected planters from the
potential competition for labor, wage demands, or even strikes that
might result from intense dependence on workers during the harvest.
By permitting physical coercion slavery further enabled masters to
force workers to perform the demanding tasks required, even at the
cost of exhaustion and injury. The intensity of that labor, and the
pain it caused, are captured by the words of an elderly slave on the
plantation of Anselmo Suarez Romero:
... sleep overcame them, that sleeping they loaded cane, that sleeping they
skimmed the cane juice in the evaporators, that sleeping they stopped the
cooking of the juice in the pan, that sleeping they beat the sugar in the
cooling troughs, that sleeping they carried the molds to the draining table,
that sleeping they spread out the bagasse in the mill yard. s4
The seasonality of sugar production, however, brought planters
other problems. Slaves represented an investment of capital and had
to be maintained year-round. For reasons of security, they also had
to be kept at some kind of work. Any innovation that increased the
amount of cane that could be processed per day in the mill, and thus
increased the number of cane cutters and loaders needed during the
grinding, potentially presented the problem of how to maintain those
slaves for the rest of the year. Economically, the addition of free
laborers would have offered the advantage that they could be fired
after the harvest, assuming that they could somehow provide for
their own maintenance during the dead season. But in the 1860s few
free laborers willingly worked in cane or submitted to the demands
of a slave plantation during the zafra. 55 Plantations did rent addi-
tional slaves during the harvest which provided a measure of flex-
ibility while leaving the task of maintaining them to their owners. 56
54 "Costumbres de Campo," BNC, CC, C.M. Suarez R., tomo 6, no. 3.
55 Arthur Corwin confidently asserts, as evidence of the growing importance of free
laborers in the sugar harvest, that "41,661 whites, most of them peasant Creoles,
were employed as cane workers" (Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery, p.
136). This claim, however, is based on a serious misreading of the evidence of the
1862 census. The figure 41,661 is the total number of whites-men, women, and
children-resident on estates classified in the census as ingenios. Included among
them were tens of thousands of Chinese contract laborers (classified by the census
as white), as well as planters, administrators, artisans, bookkeepers, doctors, tech-
nicians, tenants and their familes, and some wage workers. The figure thus in no
way represents the number of free wage laborers engaged in cutting cane. See Cuba,
Centro de Estadfstica, Noticias estadfsticas, IDistribuci6n."
56 In his description of the ingenio San Martin, Ram6n de la Sagra mentions that

25
 INTRODUCTION

A number of nineteenth-century writers, as well as several modern

scholars, have argued that slavery was incompatible with a further
characteristic of Cuban sugar production: the need to adopt more
advanced technology in the face of competition from beet sugarY
In its simplest form, the argument held that slaves were incapable
of dealing with complex machinery. The original expression of this
belief was distinctly tinged with racism; its modern counterpart is
based on the notion that only free labor is compatible with mech-
anization. Either this is taken as an a priori principle or it is justified
in terms of the low level of education, training, and motivation of
individuals held in bondage. The argument obviously has a certain
logic. Slaves might be expected to labor with indifference, or even
engage in sabotage, thus impeding advances in productivity.
The argument nonetheless has several weaknesses. There is abun-
dant evidence from other slave societies that slaves could work in
mills, factories, and mines, as well as fields, in both pre-industrial
and industrial settings. The possibility that slaves might sabotage
the means of production did not prevent masters from employing
them with expensive equipment. Indeed, one North American rail-
road promoter singled out as an advantage of slave labor the fact
that it was "not liable to strikes & riots & the consequent of tearing
up rail & burning depots & bridges./I In the Tredegar Iron Works in
Richmond, Virginia, slaves were employed along with expensive
technicians "in order to increase competitiveness./I The initial point
is not whether slaves were better or worse suited for such labor than
free workers; the point is that they were not, simply by virtue of
being slaves, strictly incompatible with it.58
The division of labor within sugar plantations also challenges the
rigid association of slave labor with unskilled labor. In early colonial
Brazil, slaves were used in preference to free Indian workers in the
skilled aspects of sugar working; they were permanent workers

the dotaci6n consisted of 435 slaves, 127 "blacks rented during the harvest," and
348 Chinese. See his Cuba: 1860, p. 117.
57 A strong exponent of this view was Ram6n de la Sagra. See his Cuba: 1860. The
argument was echoed by Francisco de Armas y Cespedes in his De la esclavitud en
Cuba (Madrid: Establecimiento tipognifico de T. Fortanet, 18661. Its most notable
modem proponent is Manuel Moreno Fraginals (see note 4 abovel. See also Knight,
Slave Society, p. 182.
58 Robert S. Starobin, Industrial Slavery in the Old South (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 19701, pp. 177-78. See also David Brion Davis, Slavery and Human
Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 19841, pp. 31-32, 326-27.

26
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

whose training was a worthwhile investment. 59 In Puerto Rico after

emancipation, former slaves apparently worked in the boiling-
houses and took the skilled job of ditching for irrigation, because
they had been trained to these under slavery.6o In Louisiana, as in
Cuba, vacuum pans for sugar processing were introduced under slav-
ery. One planter reported himself highly pleased with the Rillieux
double vacuum pan, noting that "the apparatus is very easily man-
aged" and that "my negroes became acquainted with it in a short
time." By the 1861 grinding season, seventy Louisiana plantations
were using vacuum pans. 61
There are, in effect, two doubtful elements to the claim of a "con-
tradiction" between slavery and technology. One is the notion that
slaves could not or would not acquire the skills necessary to handle
machinery. This is challenged by the evidence. The second is the
idea that all mechanization requires an overall increase in the skill
level of the work force, something thought possible only with a free
work force. This is neither theoretically convincing nor empirically
correct. Indeed, one development economist, Albert Hirschman,
though not directly addressing the question of slavery, has argued
persuasively that certain "process-centered" industries, which are
often capital-intensive, are particularly suited to a labor force lacking
in prior industrial experience. In such industries many of the op-
erations are machine-paced, thereby reducing variation in produc-
tivity, despite variations in experience and motivation. He cites
sugar as an example. 62 Keith Aufhauser has also argued that it is a
mistake to assume that technological advance necessarily requires
59 See Stuart B. Schwartz, "Indian Labor and New World Plantations: European
Demands and Indian Responses in Northeastern Brazil," American Historical Review,
83 (Feb. 1978): 43-79.
60 A British consular official in Puerto Rico in 1875 also observed that "in the
process of sugar-making, the more skilled 'liberto' (Le., freed slave) is generally em-
ployed within the boiling-house, while the free labourer does the regular tasks of
cutting and carrying the cane." Quoted by Sidney Mintz in Julian H. Steward et al.,
The People of Puerto Rico (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956), p. 344. On
libertos as ditchers, see Mintz, Caribbean Transformations, p. 114. The relative skill
requirements of ditching and cane cutting depended in part on the presence or absence
of complex drainage and irrigation systems, far more common in Puerto Rico. See
also Andres A. Ramos Mattei, ed., Azucar y esc1avitud (San Juan: Universidad de
Puerto Rieo, 1982).
61 J. Carlyle Sitterson, Sugar Country: The Cane Sugar Industry in the South, 1753-
1950 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1953), pp. 149, 154.
62 Albert O. Hirschman, The Strategy of Economic Development (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1958), chap. 8.

27
 INTRODUCTION

that workers be legally free or that the work force on balance be

more highly skilled. Under capitalist industrialization, the division
of labor may take the form of a separation of work processes into
simple, coordinated tasks. 63 Thus like the iron manufacturer who
combined a small number of free artisans with a large number of
slaves to reduce costs, a sugar planter could employ a few specialists
and many less-skilled workers, slave or free.
This was, in part, the pattern in the mechanized Cuban mills.
Fully free workers were a tiny fraction of the total labor force in
sugar, even on the most developed plantations, and were generally
isolated from the rest of the dotaci6n. The presence of salaried me-
chanics and technicians, along with the traditional administrators
and bookkeepers, hardly affected the overall demand for labor and
did not significantly undermine the slave plantation regime. It is
thus difficult to see how, in an industry such as sugar, the juxta-
position of advanced technology and a subjugated work force can be
seen as, in itself, contradictory and bound to lead to crisis, though
one might argue that slavery's effects on the larger society would
block economic development in a wider sense. 64
Acknowledging that free white sugar workers were scarce, even
on the most advanced plantations, several authors suggest that the
key to mechanization lay instead in the Chinese, legally free men
brought to Cuba under contract. Arguing that "the highly mecha-
nized plantations were filled with Chinese," Manuel Moreno Fra-
ginals asserts that the Chinese worker "permitted the initiation of
the process of industrialization in sugar."65
63 See R. Keith Aufhauser, "Slavery and Technological Change," The Journal of
Economic History 34 (March 1974): 34-50, and the comment by Heywood Fleisig in
the same issue, pp. 79-83.
64 There are numerous ways, both Marxist and non· Marxist, to construe the ar-
gument concerning "internal contradictions." Eugene Genovese and Keith Hart have
suggested, in personal communications, directions in which one might develop al-
ternate forms of an internal contradiction argument. Genovese points to problems
of entrepreneurship, capital accumulation, and market development under slavery;
Hart points to the effects of slavery on the rate of circulation of capital. While I am
not convinced that either of these formulations can save the internal contradiction
thesis, I will not attempt specifically to refute them, since they have not yet been
worked out in sufficient detail with reference to the Cuban case. Moreover, what is
at issue here is not whether one can show an incompatibility between slavery and
certain forms of capitalist economic development, but whether one can establish the
existence of mechanisms by which such an incompatibility actually produces a thrust
toward the abolition of slavery in a particular society.
65 Moreno, E1 ingenio 1: 308·309. On this point, Moreno echoes the nineteenth-
century observer Ram6n de la Sagra.

28
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

TABLE 6
Chinese Workers' Contracts Sold in the Port of Havana, 1848-1874
Year Number Year Number Year Number
1848 571 1860 6,193 1868 7,368
1853 4,307 1861 6,973 1869 5,660
1854 1,711 1862 344 1870 1,227
1855 2,985 1863 952 1871 1,448
1856 4,968 1864 2,153 1872 8,160
1857 8,547 1865 6,400 1873 5,093
1858 13,385 1866 12,391 1874 2,490
1859 7,204 1867 14,263 Total 124,813'

SOURCE: J. P~rez de la Riva, EI barrac6n y otros ensayos (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales,
19751, p. 47l.
• This is the total given in the P~rez de la Riva volume. It may reflect a minor typographical
error; the total of the annual figures given is actually 124,793.

The importance of Chinese labor in the survival and development

of the Cuban sugar industry is up.deniable, but the reasons for its
significance are complex. Some 125,000 Chinese workers were
brought to Cuba between 1847 and 1874, delaying the crisis in labor
supply that would otherwise have accompanied the attenuation of
the slave trade (see Table 6). Many were indentured by force or deceit
and shipped to an unanticipated fate in Cuba. Once landed, they
were offered for sale as though they were slaves, although technically
it was their contracts that were sold. The majority were taken to
sugar plantations where they were housed in huts or barracks, fed
on maize, plantains, and dried beef or fish, organized into gangs, and
sent to work under armed drivers in the fields and mills. Despite
an 1854 prohibition of corporal punishment, the Chinese were
whipped. Although their contracts were for eight years, they were
at times obliged to recontract upon expiration or leave the country
at their own expense. 66

66 See Juan P~rez de la Riva, "Demograffa de los culfes chinos en Cuba (1853-18741,"
and "La situaci6n legal del culf en Cuba," in his El barrac6n y ouos ensayos, pp.
469-507, 209-45. For information on treatment of the Chinese, see the remarkable
volume, China, Tsung li ko kuo shih wu ya men, Report of the Commission Sent
by China to Ascertain the Condition of Chinese Coolies in Cuba (Shanghai: Imperial
Maritime Customs Press, 1876; reprint ed., Taipei: C'eng Wen Publishing Company,
19701. A major recent study of the Chinese in Cuba is Denise Helly, Id~ologie et
ethniciU. Les Chinois Macao a Cuba: 1847-1886 (Montreal: Les Presses de l'Uni-
versit~ de Montr~al, 19791. The text of the 1849 regulations, which permitted whip-
ping, and that of the 1854 ruling, which did not, may be found in Juan Jim~nez

29
 INTRODUCTION

Held under guard and treated as cimarrones if they fled, the

Chinese can hardly be said to have been voluntarily selling their
labor power, even when they received the stipulated wage. In their
"contracts" they formally relinquished the right to bargain or to
protest their wages, acknowledged to be far lower than those of free
workers or rented slaves. They were allowed to own property and
to work on it on their own time, but were not to leave the master's
land without written permission. The 1854 regulations permitted
them to purchase back the remainder of their contract at any time-
though only if they also compensated the master for the original
purchase price, for any value added since purchase, for all lost time,
and for his inconvenience in finding a replacement. Furthermore,
no such redemption could be made during the time of the harvest. 67
The limited civil rights of the Chinese were thus compromised by
their obligation to labor on the estate. They were debt peons of a
sort, but debt peons always at risk of being reduced to the status of
those alongside whom they worked: slaves.
From the point of view of the plantation, such indentured workers
were similar to slaves in another respect as well: the purchase of
long-term contracts for several hundred pesos made their labor to a
large extent a form of fixed capital, not variable capital. The em-
ployer paid much of the cost of their work before that work was
performed. Indentured workers could not be laid off in dead seasonj
they had to be fed whether they worked or notj the investment in
their contracts had to be amortized over a number of years.
One former importer of indentured Chinese, transformed into a
promoter of free Chinese immigration when the trade came under
attack, calculated in 1874 the costs of different forms of Chinese
labor. Although his totals may have been faulty, the proportions of
different expenditures for an indentured worker are striking (see
Table 7). Only a small part of the cost of Chinese contract labor was
taken up in money wages. It was an odd form of "wage labor" indeed
in which the worker had almost the same effective legal status as
a slave, and in which twice as much was spent on the purchase of
Pastrana, Los chinos en las luchas porla liberaci6n cubana (1847-1930) IHavana:
Instituto de Historia, 1963), pp. 127-40.
67 See the 1854 rulings in Jimenez Pastrana, Los chinos, pp. 130-40, and Perez de
la Riva, "La situaci6n legal." Perez del la Riva sees the situation of the coolies as
virtually equivalent to that of slaves.

30
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

TABLE 7
Estimated Costs of Indentured and Free Chinese Labor, 1874

INDENTURE
Cost of one "coolie" under contract for 8 years $ 400
Interest on capital invested for 8 years at 12% 384
Wages for 8 years at $4 per month 384
Maintenance for 8 years at $15 per month 1,440
Total $2,608

FREE LABOR
Wages for 8 years at 35 cents per day $1,008
Maintenance for 8 years at $15 per month 1,440
Total $2,448
SOURCE: Duvon C. Corbitt, A Study of the Chinese in Cuba, 1847·1947 (Wilmore, Ky.: Asbury
College, 1971), p. 23.

his contract and on foregone interest on that investment as was paid

in wages. 68 Of course, maintenance and foregone interest were part
of the real wage cost. The point here is that, like slavery, the em-
ployment of Chinese indentured laborers involved fixed investment
and fixed maintenance costs.
Under the circumstances, it is difficult to see in what way the
economic motivations of planter and Chinese contract laborer, in
their work relations, would have been substantially different from
those of master and slave. If they were not substantially different,
this casts additional doubt on the idea that juridically "free" work-
ers-in this case the Chinese-were essential to mechanization. In-
deed, many of the Chinese were not employed with machinery at
all but were used as agricultural workers, performing precisely the
same tasks as slaves. The text of an 1868 letter from the agent of
an importer to a prospective buyer is revealing. The agent reported
the arrival of a "superior" group of Asians: "young, and above all
purely agricultural, which is precisely what is needed in the island,
to be able to dedicate them immediately to the common labor of
the ingenios."69
This is not to deny that indentured laborers stood, to some extent,
in an intermediate position in the labor hierarchy and were on oc-
68 Francisco Abella, Proyecto de emigraci6n libre china dirigido a los Sres Hacen·
dadas de 1a Isla de Cuba. Quoted in Duvon C. Corbitt, A Study af the Chinese in
Cuba, 1847·1947 (Wilmore, Kentucky: Asbury College, 1971), p. 23.
69 ANC, Fondo Valle, Esdavos, tomo II (tomo 2·n, leg. I, doc. 18a.

31
 INTRODUCTION

cas ion perceived as especially suited for work with machinery. Once
this perception existed-whether owing to racism or to belief that
they really were "free workers"-then masters might take steps to
change the circumstances of the Chinese in ways that made them
likely to behave differently. Some provided them with better food,
and then employed them in selected tasks'?o A few saw it as in their
interest to treat indentured Chinese as an entirely separate category
of workers. Juan Bautista Fernandez, who had taken over the Can-
delaria plantation when it had only a few slaves and free black
workers, decided to introduce entirely Chinese labor and arranged
to contract forty-seven coolies. By the time the plantation was vis-
ited by Ram6n de la Sagra in 1857, it was operating without a white
overseer or white sugar master. La Sagra was impressed by the ability
of the Chinese laborers who worked in the fields and in the batey
(mill yardl, and also did the masonry, carpentry, locksmithing, re-
pairing of the mill, building of the wagons, etc. According to La
Sagra, the master used no physical punishment, paid the Chinese
more than was stipulated in their contracts, and behaved toward
them with "strict justice." He also, however, took great pains to
prevent their communication with people outside the plantation, in
order not to undermine "discipline." Though the example encour-
aged Sagra's enthusiasm about Chinese labor, it can hardly be con-
sidered representative. Candelaria was a relatively small mill, pro-
ducing just seventy bocoyes of sugar, and was obviously run by an
unusual and experimental master. 71 The slaveholding owners of
huge, mechanized mills, like Julian Zulueta and Tomas Terry,
showed no inclination to operate this way. 72
In theory, planters could have treated the Chinese as free wage
workers operating under long-term contracts. Instead, most treated
them as virtual slaves. Nor was it only the most backward planters
70 Juan Perez de la Riva, "Duvergier de Hauranne: un joven frances visita el ingenio
Las Canas en 1865," Revista de 1a Biblioteca Naciona1 ToseMarti 56 (Oct.-Dec. 1965):
85-114.
71 Ram6n de la Sagra, Historia fisica, econ6mico-polftica, inte1ectua1 y moral de

1a isla de Cuba (Paris: Hachette, 1861), pp. 149-50.

72 When Tomas Terry had difficulties with runaway Chinese, his innovative re-
sponse was to photograph them all for easier identification and capture. See E1 Sagua
(June 9, 1872). Zulueta was involved both in the slave trade and in the importation
of coolies. Their plantations, as late as 1877, contained primarily slave laborers. See
Chapter IV, below.

32
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

who made this choice,73 When, in 1873, a Commission of Enquiry

was sent by China to determine the condition of the Chinese in
Cuba, it investigated, among others, some of the most technologi-
cally advanced mills in Cuba: Las Canas, Espana, Flor de Cuba. The
resulting report painted an unrelenting portrait of whippings, sui-
cides, labor in chains, withheld stipends, unpaid labor on public
works, and forced recontracting. Though the investigators had been
obliged to gather testimony under the eyes of overseers and admin-
istrators, they catalogued endless abuses. The picture was one of
forced labor, not free. 74
An examination of the treatment of Chinese contract laborers by
planters, however, does not tell the whole story of their situation.
Equally striking as the reports of abuses are the accounts of protests
and complaints by the Chinese workers themselves. It is clear from
the commission report that these indentured laborers were aware
of a distinction between slave labor and free, one which they felt
was not being observed. Many believed that they were being treated
as slaves by an incomparably barbarous group of foreigners who
refused to recognize them as free men. Incredulous and indignant,
some indentured Chinese took violent actions to try to end their
mistreatment:
We stabbed to death the administrator, on account of his cruelty. We, 24 in
all, proceeded to the jail and surrendered ourselves. Our master, by an outlay
of $680, induced the officials to order 12 of our number to return to the
plantation, and on our refusal, an officer of low rank discharged fire-arms,
wounding nine and killing two. There are 22 still in jail, and we consider
it preferable to the plantation.75
Others persistently appealed for their own rights under law:
My master owed me $108, and when I complained to the official I was
brought back and again forced to labor for five months, still receiving no
money. As he stated that, as a punishment for my bringing a charge against
him, he would sell me to a sugar plantation, I and two others proceeded to
Havana in order to renew the complaint, and were there placed in confine-
ment in the depot, where I have now worked without wages during seven
.'
73 Moreno argues that in the advanced mills the Chinese were effectively wage
workers and implies that only on estates still using the Jamaica train were they
treated as slaves. E1 ingenio 1: 308-309.
74 China, Report of the Commission.
75 Ibid., p. 58.

33
 INTRODUCTION

or eight years. My master has never been called upon to reply to my

accusation,76
First-hand accounts of the Chinese as plantation workers reveal
a complex process whereby angry, hungry, mistreated immigrants
were cowed into relative submission through physical violence and
forms of cultural violence such as the cutting of their queues. 77 One
contemporary observer, on whose plantation Chinese contract la-
borers were employed in the l860s, wrote of them:
They were orderly and cleanly; the poorest, lowest, coolie carried his con-
tract on his person, and never hesitated to assert his rights, but sometimes
had to be reminded that the planter also had rights; and it generally happened
that each new lot arriving on a plantation had to be interviewed by the
captain of the partido two or three times, to reduce them to a proper regard
for the discipline of a well-managed estate,78
She described one such "interview," which followed an uprising of
the Chinese on her estate. The captain preceded his public reading
of their contracts with blows from his sword and followed it by
ordering his soldiers to cut off all the queues of the Chinese. "How
quickly they wilted! How cowed they looked!fl 79
Once the relations of power were established, some of the Chinese
did become precise and methodical workers, thus gaining a repu-
tation for ability with machinery. Ram6n de la Sagra, a great en-
thusiast of Chinese labor, referred to the "identification of the in-
telligent labor of the Chinese with the constant regularity of the
industrial operations submitted to the incessant stroke of the pis-
ton," and waxed lyrical about the sight of double lines of Chinese
workers at La Ponina, "rapid in their movements as a transmission
belt, operating the filling of the molds with the mathematical reg-
ularity of a pendulum." so This behavior, however, seems to have
had as much to do with the cultural background of the Chinese and
their self-conception as with the fact that they were to be paid a
four-peso-a-month wage. That some of the Chinese became efficient
76 Ibid., p. 24.
77 See ibid., and Eliza McHatton Ripley, From Flag to Flag: A Woman's Adventures
and Experiences in the South during the War, in Mexico, and in Cuba (New York:
D. Appleton and Co., 1889). Eliza Ripley was the wife of a Louisiana planter who
moved to Cuba after the fall of the Confederacy. They bought and operated the
plantation Desengaiio in Matanzas.
78 Ripley, From Flag to Flag, p. 177.
79 Ibid., pp. 174-75.
80 Sagra, Cuba: 1860, p. 34.

34
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

workers is testimony to their own sense of order and hope for full
freedom, combined with the effects of coercion; it was not inherent
in their fictitious intermediate legal status, which often allowed
them to be systematically reduced to virtual slavery. It would thus
be misleading to place great weight on their formal status as wage
laborers in an explanation of how they could help plantations
mechanize.
It can be argued that slave labor was incompatible with techno-
logical development for reasons other than the motivational struc-
ture and behavior of slaves. Slavery required substantial fixed in-
vestment in labor, tying up resources that could otherwise have been
used to purchase necessary machinery and the land on which to
grow the cane to supply the new machinery. Thus, so the argument
would go, development was inhibited, competitiveness reduced, and
profitability decreased. Some support for this argument can be found
in evidence of the indebtedness of many planters. The issue, how-
ever, is a complex one. Certain forms of indebtedness might be
expected to rise during a period of expansion, without necessarily
signaling the unprofitability of the enterprises involved. Indeed, in-
vestment in slaves, while tying up capital, also created the basis on
which one could obtain credit for further investment. 81 However
large the mortgages of individual planters, total production did in-
crease from about 428,800 tons in 1860 to 718,700 tons by 1869. 82
(See Table 8.) Clearly capital was being invested to increase output,
despite the high cost of slaves. In fact, the high cost of slaves in
itself suggests that there was still money to be made in slave-based
sugar production, for demand for slaves might be expected to fall,
depressing prices, if there were not. 83
81 On planters' debts, see Knight, Slave Society, pp. 119-20. Moreno cites a figure
of 95 percent of all sugar plantations mortgaged in 1863, but adds that many of these
debts were paid off during and after the Ten Years' War. See Moreno, "Plantaciones
en el Caribe," pp. 75-76. The issue of mortgages is a difficult one, since some involved
short-term credit arrangements and should not be seen as evidence of unprofitability.
82 Moreno, E1 ingenio 3: 37.
83 Government estimates of the average cost of slaves in 1860, 1861, and 1862
yielded figures ranging from $510 to $836. The average for the 9,495 slaves whose
prices in voluntary sales were recorded over the period was $555; that of the 204
slaves sold at auction was $736. The compilers considered the second figure more
reliable. See Estado que demuestra el mimero de esclavos vendidos, May 8, 1863,
AHN, Ultramar, leg. 3547. The estimates of slave prices given by Hubert Aimes vary
widely-he cites figures for newly imported slaves of $1,000 in 1861, $600 in 1862,
and $700-$750 in 1864, and $1,000 for acculturated slaves in 1864. Aimes, History
of Slavery, p. 268. Roland Ely records average figures of $700 and $1,000 per slave

35
 INTRODUCTION

TABLE 8
Cuban Sugar Production, 1840-1870

Year Metric Tons Year Metric Tons Year Metric Tons

1840 161,248 1850 294,952 1861 533,800
1841 169,886 1851 365,843 1862 454,758
1842 192,769 1852 329,905 1863 445,693
1843 182,081 1853 391,247 1864 525,372
1844 208,506 1854 397,713 1865 547,364
1845 98,437 1855 462,968 1866 535,641
1846 205,608 1856 416,141 1867 585,814-
1847 267,474 1857 436,030 1868 720,250
1848 260,463 1858 426,274 1869 718,745
1849 239,128 1859 469,263 1870 702,974
1860 428,769
SOURCE: Manuel Moreno Fraginals, E1 ingenio: comp1eio econ6mico social cubano del azucar,
3 vols. (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1978),3: 36, 37.
a Typographical error in source corrected.

The question of the actual level of profitability of Cuban estates

is an exceptionally complex one. Surviving documents rarely permit
the direct calculation of rates of return. Furthermore, the notion of
an "average" profitability of Cuban estates is deceptive. The wide
range in size, output, and degree of capital investment carried with
it a similar range of profitability. Juan Poey, himself a modernizing
planter, estimated that 1200 of Cuba's 1500 plantations yielded
around 4 percent on their capital, including only the proceeds from
dry sugar, and excluding molasses and other byproducts. The re-
maining 300 yielded a return of 6 to 8.5 percent on capital, though
about half of those were so indebted and mortgaged that much of
the benefit went elsewhere. Those with the largest amount of cap-
ital, he believed, were getting the highest rate of return. 84 Poey's
precise figures may well have been underestimates, since he was
lobbying for changes in Spain's tariff policy to favor Cuban planters.
They nonetheless reflect the great gap between the economic situ-
ation of the larger estates and that of the small.
paid by Tomas Terry in 1859, and $1,200 in 1868. Roland T. Ely, Comerciantes
cubanos del siglo xix IBogota: Aedita Editores, 1961), pp. 121-22, n. 322. Moreno,
Klein, and Engerman find prices for prime-age Creole males rising sharply between
1856 and 1859, from 668 pesos to 1,271. Prices then drop somewhat to 914 pesos in
1863, a level still well above that of 1856. See Moreno, Klein, and Engerman, "The
Level and Structure of Slave Prices," p. 1207.
84 Poey is cited by A. Gallenga in The Pearl of the Antilles ILondon: Chapman and
Hall, 1873), p. 125.

36
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

It is not possible on the basis of Cuban evidence to make a direct

empirical comparison between the profitability of slave labor and
free. Some free smallholders and tenants cultivated cane and sold it
to ingenios for grinding; some Chinese worked in sugar-houses on
estates where slaves cut cane; but exclusively free labor was not
used on the island in the 1860s for the entire process of sugar pro-
duction, except in a few instances in the eastern region on such a
small scale as to be incomparable with the major slave plantations
of the western districts. The field was thus open to totally opposed
claims. Ram6n de la Sagra insisted that free labor would in the end
yield greater profits; the reformist Francisco de Armas agreed in
theory but opposed any substantive steps toward prompt abolition;
the planter Julian Zulueta argued for heavy mechanization using
both slave and Chinese labor; while the Conde de Pozos Dukes
argued for concentration on the agricultural sector. 85
Whatever the theoretical economic advantages and disadvantages
of slave labor for the planter, as a practical matter it had long seemed
the only option and had allowed for substantial growth. 86 That this
growth was unbalanced and dependent goes almost without saying.
Like many other plantation societies, Cuba was providing an agri-
cultural export commodity, largely for processing elsewhere. United
States tariff legislation aggravated this tendency by penalizing the
sugar with the highest sucrose content, which was ready for direct
consumption, and giving preference to that with the lowest, which
needed further refining in North American refineries. 8 ? Determining
the role of slavery as such in this "backwardness," however, remains
problematic. And planters actually willing to contemplate abolition
as an alternative were few and far between.
As the decade of the 1860s advanced, however, internal and ex-
ternal events posed direct challenges to the continued coexistence
in Cuba of sugar, slavery, and colonialism. The transatlantic slave
trade came under increasingly effective attack as Union policy dur-
85 Sagra, Cuba: 1860; Francisco de Armas y Cespedes, De 1a esclavitud en Cuba;
Zulueta's approach is described in Gallenga, Pearl, pp. 97-98; on the Conde de Pozos
Dulces see Moreno, E1 ingenio 2:201-204 and 3: 216-17.
86 The general trend of production is upward throughout the sixties and early sev-
enties. See Moreno, E1 ingenio 3: 37. (The one apparent exception in Moreno's table-
a total of 285,814 tons in 1867-appears to be a typographical error. The figure should
be 585,814 tons.J
87 Ibid., 2: 194-95.

37
 INTRODUCTION

ing the Civil War challenged the use of U.S. ships in the trade and
Britain adopted a more aggressive strategy of suppression by block-
ading areas of supply on the West African coast and stepping up
patrols around Cuba. Though tens of thousands of slaves were im-
ported each year in the late 1850s and in the early years of the 1860s,
the numbers rapidly fell in 1863 and 1864, and reached zero by 186788
(See Table 2).
The abolition of slavery in the United States affected not only the
slave trade to Cuba but also the long-range prospects of the insti-
tution within the island. Cuba's main trading partner had now abol-
ished slavery, eliminating the lingering hope of some planters that
Cuba might be annexed to the United States as a slave state. Fur-
thermore, both slaveholders and officials feared-with some justi-
fication-that the example of the United States might lead to a
disruption of the internal order of Cuban slavery. The refrain of a
song reported to have been sung in the fields of Cuba went:
Avanza, Lincoln, avanza.
Ttl eres nuestra esperanza. H9
Advance, Lincoln, advance.
You are our hope.
The captain general in 1866 expressed apprehension that the out-
come of the American Civil War could contribute to a "slackening
of the links of obedience and respect which the coloured race should
entertain for the white and on which the tranquillity of this territory
largely depends."90
One short-term response to these difficulties was to tighten dis-
cipline. Verena Martinez-Alier has documented the imposition of
an increasingly segregationist policy in the mid-1860s, including the
denial of permissions for interracial marriage between 1864 and the
mid-1870s. 91 Such repression of free persons of color might help to
avoid social disruption that could threaten slavery, but the only
possible long-run solution was to find additional sources of labor
and alternative forms of organization.
The issue of the future of slavery had long been inextricably tied
88 Murray, Odious Commerce, chap. 14 and figures on p. 244.
89 I would like to thank Rogelio Martinez-Furt'! for this reference, from his forth-
coming collection of Afro-Cuban music.
90 Quoted in Martinez-Alier, Marriage, p. 3l.
91 Ibid., p. 32.

38
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

to the question of the maintenance of Spanish power. For decades

the fear of loss of planter support and thus of domination over Cuba
had made Spain unwilling even to take steps against the slave trade.
But now some Cuban reformists were themselves looking to free
labor as the long-run hope of the island. This position was part,
however, of a broader criticism of Cuba's economic relationship with
Spain, and particularly of high duties and taxes. Such reformists
were generally committed to economic progress, primarily through
white immigration, but they were circumspect on the question of
slavery. Some agreed with Ram6n de la Sagra on the virtues of free
labor; some also viewed the abolition of slavery as linked to the
question of political reform, believing that "while slavery exists
there will be no government established here in which they can have
a voice; that the island will continue to be governed by a repressive,
censorious system, under pretext of preserving order."92
When in 1866 the Spanish government called together a meeting,
including delegates from the colonies, to discuss colonial political
and social reforms, the debate on slavery was moved into the open.
The delegation from Puerto Rico, where slaves were considerably
less numerous than in Cuba, forced the question onto the agenda
by calling for abolition in their province as a precondition for other
reforms. The response of the Cuban delegates revealed the ambi-
guities of their reformism. 93 In theory, they believed in the eventual
extinction of slavery, and in theory they also believed in the supe-
riority of free labor. But they insisted that, for the moment, slavery
had to be sustained in order to prevent the collapse of the sugar
industry. Cuban reformers did support-as Spain now did-repres-
sion of the slave trade, for the contraband trade appeared to them
as a weapon of Spanish merchants against Cuban planters, and the
influx of Africans seemed a threat to the racial balance of the island.
(Ironically, though, some of these same reformers continued to pur-
chase contraband slaves at the same time they called for an end to
92 For a discussion of reformist ideology, see Raul Cepero Bonilla, Azucar y abo·
lici6n IHavana: Editorial Cenit, 1948, reprint ed., Barcelona: Editorial Critica, 1976),
chap. 7. The quotation cited is from "a Cuban gentleman of conservative opinions,"
describing the views of "the more intelligent of the Cubans, including a small number
of slaveholders." It appears in Hall to Seward, Matanzas, November 18, 1868, in U.S.
Department of State, Correspondence between the Department of State and the
United States Minister at Madrid . ... IWashington, D.C.: Government Printing Of-
fice, 1870), p. 71.
93 See Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery, pp. 140-42.

39
 INTRODUCTION

the traffic.)94 On slavery itself, the furthest they could go was to

support a very "gradual" emancipation.
In pursuit of formulas for gradual abolition, delegates to the reform
commission made suggestions that would later turn up in Spanish
legislation: the freeing of all children born to slaves, the freeing of
slaves over age sixty, lotteries for the purchase of freedom, tutelage
for those freed, and so on. 95 All were efforts to move slowly and
symbolically toward the extinction of slavery without disrupting
the social order of the plantation or the supply of labor.
The concept of "gradual abolition" had special connotations. It
was seen not as an alternative to the indefinite preservation of the
by now beleaguered institution, but rather as a means of avoiding
immediate emancipation. Adherence to gradual abolition thus re-
flected both a strategic acceptance of an eventual transition to free
labor and a tactic to delay that transition. Like elimination of the
slave trade, it was a step intended to show that Cubans were "not
opposed to gradual extinction" of slavery, for "in this way we will
calm the execration and hate of the abolitionist centers of Europe."96
But even such modest proposals for the ending of slavery were
not to be accepted. Once the commission meetings were over, it
became apparent that there was extensive opposition within Cuba
to any steps toward emancipation. The majority of Cuban planters
shied away from drastic changes in the labor system and took a
position quite consistent with their immediate self-interest: the
maintenance of slavery and the social structure supporting it, con-
tinued protection of their "property" by Spain, and avoidance of the
"cuesti6n social." Most preferred not to see the issue raised at alP?
The Spanish government was reluctant to risk alienating such
planters, did not wish to face the loss of revenues from Cuba that
might result from disruption of the sugar industry, and could not
94 There is no way to explain the ethnic composition of the slave population on
Tomas Terry's plantation Caracas other than to assume that he acquired contraband
slaves in the 1850s, 1860s, and possibly 1870s. See Chap. IV, below.
95 See Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery, chap. 11.
96 Angulo de Heredia, speaking in 1866 on the suppression of the slave trade, quoted
in Corwin, ibid., pp. 196-97. For a more generous interpretation of reformist views
on slavery, see Elias Jose Entralgo, La liberaci6n etnica cubana (Havana: Universidad
de la Habana, 1953).
97 See Knight, Slave Society, chap. 7; Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery,
chap. 8; and Cepero Bonilla, Azucar y abolici6n, chaps. 7, 10, and 13, for further
discussion of planter attitudes.

40
 SUGAR AND SLAVERY

afford any scheme of compensation for slave property. The com-

mission proposals on slavery remained a dead letter.
The apparent failure of the Cuban delegates to the reform com-
mission to secure major reforms in the political and economic
spheres was even more resounding. The commission report had
asked for extensive tax and administrative reform, elimination of
customs duties on imports, representation in the Cortes, and appli-
cation of the rights of the Spanish Constitution to the residents of
Cuba and Puerto Rico. None of these was granted. While lifting
some customs and tax burdens placed on Cuba by coloniallegisla-
tion, the Spanish government imposed a new direct tax on income
in the Antilles. 98
The new taxes combined with long-standing feelings of nation-
alism to strengthen overt opposition to Spanish rule among certain
landholders, small-scale planters, and professionals in the eastern
part of the island. Though the continued maintenance of slavery
was not the major grievance of most of those opposing Spain, the
issue would soon become entangled with the struggle against colo-
nialism in the insurrection known as the Ten Years' War.
98 See Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery, chap. 11, and Knight, Slave
Society, chap. 8. Ramiro Guerra argues that the changes in taxation were on balance
favorable to Cuban producers, and he thus sees the charge of utter failure on the part
of the reformists as unwarranted. In his view, major blame for increasing tensions
rested on Spanish intransigence and on the financial crisis of 1867. See Ramiro Guerra
y Sanchez, Manual de Historia de Cuba. 2nd edition (Havana: Consejo Nacional de
Cultura, 19621, pp. 658-61.

41
 PART ONE

Conflict, Adaptation, and Challenge,

1868-1879
 II

Insurrection and Slavery

In reply to your letter of the 12th of this month we

must tell you that we believe you have misinterpreted
this Assembly's circular concerning the freedom of the
slaves, which you so erroneously characterized as null
and void. What this decree says is that all those citizens
who are slaves now cease to be such; that those fit for
armed service shall increase our ranks, and that those
who are not shall remain on the estates serving the
fatherland with planting, harvesting, and other labors.
-From the rebel Representative Assembly to Antonio Rodriguez,
Commander of the rebel 6th Battalion. April 18, 1869. 1

On October 10, 1868, on the ingenio Demajagua in Manzanillo in

eastern Cuba, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes and a group of conspirators
declared themselves in revolt against Spanish rule. Their rebellion
drew upon accumulated grievances against the economic and polit-
ical policies of the mother country, which were felt by different
sectors in different ways. Creole planters in the eastern region, op-
erating with limited capital resources, had been losing ground as the
sugar industry grew in the western end of the island. The new taxes
imposed by Spain in the 1860s, which may have been particularly
offensive because they were direct rather than indirect, weighed
heavily on small-scale sugar planters, farmers, and shopkeepers.
Eastern intellectuals and professionals had long been developing a
Creole identity, and some had been involved in earlier conspiracies.
Cespedes himself had been exposed to various kinds of liberalism
in Europe and resented the repression of liberties under Spanish
political domination. Black, white, and mulatto campesinos also
joined the struggle for reasons that are now difficult to reconstruct,

1 Papeles de Antonio Rodriguez, Colecci6n Fernandez Duro, Biblioteca de la Real

Academia de Historia, Madrid Ithis collection is referred to hereinafter as RAH, FD),
leg. 3.

45
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

but that undoubtedly included hostility to Spanish privileges and

taxation. 2
Shared opposition to Spanish colonialism, however, by no means
meant unanimity on the aims of the revolt. Some of the insurrec-
tionists favored annexation to the United States, others sought full
independence. Many were hostile to the institution of slavery, in
part because of their resentment of large-scale western slaveholding
planters, in part because aid in the maintenance of slavery was a
component of Spain's hold over the island. The leaders of the in-
surgency, however, initially drew back from full abolition. They
wished to avoid alienating potential supporters among slaveholders
and to obtain revenues and goods for the war effort from continued
agricultural production. At the same time, they sought to take a
stand on slavery that would promote the insurrection and increase
its popular and international appea1. The rebels thus took partial
steps toward formal abolition, while attempting to avoid disruption
of the social relations of slavery.
At the beginning of the rebellion, Cespedes called for gradual and
indemnified emancipation. His act of freeing his own slaves to fight
in the rebellion, though important symbolically, legally represented
nothing more radical than the exercise of the right of a master to
manumit his slaves. Though the major leaders of the revolt had less
of a direct economic investment in slavery than the planters of the
west, they nonetheless respected the basic principle of slaveholding,
and in November 1868 Cespedes decreed the death penalty for any-
one inciting slaves to rebellion. In December, the rebel leadership
spelled out their policy: abolition would follow the triumph of the
revolution. Slaves of planters who had joined the rebellion would
not be accepted into the army without their owners' permission.
This position was consistent with the old reformist aim of the even-
tual elimination of slavery, and with the eastern insurgents' desire
to court certain western slaveholders.3
2 The pioneering works on the Ten Years' War are Cepero Bonilla, Azucar y abo-
lici6n, and Ramiro Guerra y Sanchez, La guerra de los diez alios, 1868-1878,2 vols.
(Havana: Cultural, 1950-1952; reprint ed., Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales,
1972). See also Jorge Ibarra, Ideo10gfa Mambisa (Havana: Instituto Cubano del Libro,
1972); Knight, Slave Society; Hugh Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (New
York: Harper and Row, 1971), chaps. 20, 21; Benito Besada Ramos, "Antecedentes
econ6micos de la Guerra de los Diez MOS," Economfa y Desarrollo 13 (Sept.-Oct.
1972): 155-62; and Guerra, Manual de historia de Cuba, 2nd ed., chap. 22.
3 Cepero Bonilla, Azucar y abolici6n, chap. 11.

46
 INSURRECTION AND SLAVERY

As the rebellion spread, this hesitation on the issue of abolition

could not be maintained. The rebels of Camagiiey (Puerto Principe),
a cattle-raising area with only a small number of slaves, insisted on
stronger steps. In February 1869, the Revolutionary Assembly of the
Central Department, rejecting Cespedes's leadership, called for the
abolition of slavery, promising future indemnification. 4 Insurgent
leaders were becoming increasingly aware of the need for North
American support, which, following the ratification of the Thir-
teenth Amendment and the election of Ulysses S. Grant to the pres-
idency, seemed to be contingent upon an abolitionist stance. When
the different rebel groups joined at the Assembly of Guciimaro in
April 1869, they drew up a declaration proclaiming that "all inhab-
itants of the Republic are entirely free." Henceforth all slaves were
to be considered libertos, freed men and women. S
Although the decree was categorical, the subsequent Reglamento
de Libertos (regulations relating to freedmen) established the tute-
lage of patronos over their former slaves and thus mitigated its
impact. The Reglamento made labor obligatory for libertos, who
were to be remunerated with a nominal wage of three pesos per
month. If libertos left their masters, they had to report to a govern-
ment office that would then allocate them to a new master, whose
estate they could not leave without permission. Hours of work were
fixed, except in domestic labor. Patronos were to give libertos land
in usufruct to cultivate, on which libertos could build cabanas for
themselves and their families in a location set by the master. Masters
were allowed to discipline libertos, if necessary, by denying them
their days of rest. 6
This set of regulations stopped far short of converting libertos into
wage workers or free citizens. They were still under direct govern-
ment authority and were to be treated quite differently from other
inhabitants of the Republic. Cespedes, however, saw even this much
freedom as excessive. In May 1869 he approved the provisions of
the Reglamento, but wrote: "As long as the war of independence

4 I have based my discussion of insurgent policy and practice primarily on docu-

ments captured by the Spaniards and preserved in the Colecci6n Fernandez Duro.
The abolition decree from Camagiiey can be found in RAH, FD, leg. 6, doc. 79.
5 See Guerra, Guerra 1: 109.
6 The Reglamento can be found in RAH, FD, leg. 5, doc. 49. It is also reproduced
in Hortensia Pichardo, ed., Documentos para la historia de Cuba, 2 vols. IHavana:
Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1977, 1976) 1: 380-82.

47
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

continues, there should be no change in the situation of the 1ibertos./J

He noted that the previous policy had been to enroll some libertos
as soldiers, and employ the rest in agriculture, and he argued that
this was still the best policy. It was not yet time, he wrote, for
1ibertos to hire out their services to new masters, for this would
hurt production. He also doubted that the government could find
employment for all those 1ibertos who might abandon, or be aban-
doned by, their masters. He advised that the Reglamento be passed,
but not applied immediately.? The rebel government formally prom-
ulgated the Reglamento two months later, in July 1869, though it
is doubtful that it was systematically enforced. It remained in effect
until the end of December 1870, when it was revoked in favor of
full freedom. Thus, as Raul Cepero Bonilla argued thirty years ago,
the revolution can be said to have been unequivocally abolitionist
only from 1871 onward. 8
The ambivalence of insurgent leaders was deeply rooted in their
background and their situation. Though abolition was one of the
most stirring battle cries of the insurrection, and full use was even-
tually made of the issue in rebel propaganda, it was easier to fight
a war if freed slaves were simply distributed to the army and to the
plantations to do their appointed share, without reference to their
own wishes. 9 Upper- and middle-class whites raised in a slaveholding
society, when put in positions of authority, also had a strong tend-
ency to view blacks as manpower rather than as individuals. Groups
of 1ibertos, still referred to as 1a negrada, were sent back and forth,
allocated to agriculture or manufacturing, concentrated or dispersed
according to the desires of the leaders of the rebellion.1O Wartime
exigency and class and cultural prejudices caused insurgent leaders
to view 1ibertos as useful but potentially dangerous, and to restrict
their freedom accordingly. Further, the rebel system of provisioning
officers by providing them with ayudantes, generally former slaves,

7 Cespedes to the Camara de Representantes, May 21, 1869, RAH, FD, leg. 5, doc.
49.
8 Cepero Bonilla, AZllcar y abolici6n, chap. 12. For a skeptical view on the enforce-
ment of the Reglamento, see Guerra, Guerra 1: 109-10.
9 For examples of rebel propaganda on the theme of abolition, see the handbills" A
Nuestros Hermanos Ausiliares del Gobierno Espanol," RAH, FD, leg. 6, doc. 23, and
"A los Esclavos del Tirano," in RAH, FD, leg. 6, doc. 18.
10 The evidence that libertos were treated as labor gangs rather than as free indi-
viduals is abundant. See for example Quesada to C. Mayor General, Rio Seco, June
13, 1869, RAH, FD, leg. 3.

48
 INSURRECTION AND SLAVERY

to collect their food and serve them, tended to replicate within the
military the old social relationship of master and slave.!l
Insurgent leaders fell easily into habits of personal command-
particularly toward female former slaves-which virtually elimi-
nated any freedom of action a liberta might have hoped to acquire.
Black women were often perceived as unpaid domestic servants and
treated accordingly.12 General policy was ambiguous about this in-
formal exploitation of female labor. In July 1869 M. Quesada ordered
libertas to be dispersed among honorable families who would use
them in domestic service or "in labors proper to their sex in service
of the Republic." l3 The insurgent civil government of Camagiiey in
November of the same year ordered that alllibertas should be sent
to the civil government rather than being dealt with directly by
subprefects, though it did not specify what would be done with them
there. l4
Women posed a further problem, for some of them wished to
accompany their husbands, sons, and brothers into military service,
while the authorities preferred them to remain where they were. In
one case, a freedwoman and her mother insisted on following the
troops rather than returning to the plantation. The local official
wrote in exasperation that the women alleged "that the decree has
declared them free and they resist in virtue of their independence
returning to that estate." The logic of the women's position was as
apparent as the frustration of the administrator. He advised the es-
tate's owner to appeal to the military court in order to recover the
recalcitrant libertas. ls
By 1870 a general policy was spelled out: "All women who have
previously worked in agriculture will occupy themselves in agri-
cultural tasks without delay."l6 This ruling did not single out li-
bertas, but was clearly intended to apply to them. They were not
11 For a description of ayudantes, see O'Kelly, The Mambi-Land, p. 26l.
12 One subprefect explained that he needed the services of the liberta Pilar because
the other liberta he had did not know how to wash and iron. J. Agustin Bora to
C. Prefecto del partido Porcayo, November 25, 1869, RAH, FD, leg. 2, carpeta 11,
doc. 484.
13 Circular from M. Quesada, RAH, FD, leg. 3, carta no. 890.
14 Circular from Gob. Civil del Camagiiey, November, 1869, RAH, FD, leg. 2, car-
peta 11, doc. 462.
15 " ••• las morenas alegan que el decreto las ha declarado libre y se resisten en
virtud de su Independencia a volver a esa £inca." Libertos, March 12, 1868, RAH, FD,
leg. 2, carpeta 11, doc. 376.
16 Circular number 567, March I, 1870, RAH, FD, leg. 6, doc. 46.

49
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

to be allowed any choice; they were to serve the revolution by re-

maining in field work.
Former slaves, however, had ideas of their own on how best to
serve the revolution. While it is clear that many rebel officers in-
tended to keep treating libertos like slaves, it is equally clear that
many libertos had no intention of continuing to behave like slaves.
Some ended up in the hills, where they formed small communities.
James O'Kelly, a journalist who visited Cuba Libre in 1871, described
one settlement composed almost entirely of blacks, predominantly
women. Life in these communities involved both artisanal activities
and cultivation: women spun thread, made hammocks, shoes, san-
dals, and hats, while men and children hunted and harvested sugar
cane and sweet potatoes. O'Kelly was surprised to find that property
within the settlement was held privately: "each one is the absolute
master of what he gathers, and distributes as seems good to him the
result of his labor." The journalist had not expected former slaves
to have any concept of ownership, but given the tradition of conuco
cultivation and the raising of animals, it seems quite explicableY
These settlements, though officially administered by rebel prefects,
seem to have had a good deal in common with maroon communities,
societies of runaway slaves that had long existed in the hills of
eastern Cuba. is
Insurgent officials were sometimes unsure whether communities
of libertos should be viewed as necessary support for rebels in the
field or as dangerously independent groups of ex-slaves. As early as
1869 insurgent officers had expressed concern about the existence
of "encampments of freedwomen" which served as a "focus of
desertion for the troops." Quesada ordered commanders to dis-
perse these groups and assign the women to families in the area. i9
As O'Kelly's testimony shows, however, some such settlements
survived.
This uncertainty of rebel leaders went beyond a fear of semi-
autonomous groups of libertos and became a generalized double

17 O'Kelly, The Mambi·Land, p. 184 and chap. 12. These activities may also have
owed something to African traditions.
18 On Cuban pa1enques, see Jose Luciano Franco, Los pa1enques de los negros
cimarrones (Havana: Departamento de Orientaci6n Revolucionaria del Comite Cen-
tral del Partido Comunista de Cuba, 1973), chap. 4.
19 M. Quesada al Com te Militar de __ (apparently a circular letter), July 31, 1869,
RAH, FD, leg. 3, carta no. 890.

50
 INSURRECTION AND SLAVERY

standard. An order issued in July 1869 allocated the men of a par-

ticular unit: "send the whites to arms and the libertos with rare
exceptions to agriculture; and as a general rule all the ex-servant
citizens should dedicate themselves to this service." They were to
be made "to work with industriousness" in the sown fields. 20
When carried to an extreme, this invidious treatment of former
slaves could lead to difficulties. The Assembly, for example, felt
called upon to rebuke one officer in the field for provoking com-
plaints by referring to the abolition decree as "null and void" and
simply distributing the former slaves as he saw fit.21 There were
also certain drawbacks to moving libertos around on the basis of
demand for their labor, as Rafael Morales emphasized in a circular
issued in March 1870. He noted that many who owned land were
hoping to be granted libertos to cultivate it. They would have to be
told, he explained, that this was not always possible, in part because
many libertos were in the army, and in part because the only area
in Republican territory where they were abundant was Las Villas
(Santa Clara). It was inconvenient, impolitic, and unfair, he wrote,
to uproot those people from their homes except out of extreme
necessity.22 Libertos who were transferred against their will to es-
tates and workshops might be expected to flee if the opportunity
arose, as in some cases they did. The administrator of a rebel tannery
wrote wearily in January 1870 of the flight of libertos and an Asian
from his shop. He also expressed concern that the presence in the
area of seven libertos recently arrived from an ingenio would further
disrupt his operations. 23
Insurrectionist policy had been intended to avoid disruption, but
in fact it created a series of problems. If libertos were legally free,
even within the restrictions of the Reglamento de Libertos, they
might try to exercise their rights as free people. That is what the
free women who wished to accompany their families did; it is what
those who fled the estates and workshops did. Furthermore, the
effort to effect nominal abolition without any "change in the situ-
20Order dated Sta. Catalina, July 12, 1869, RAH, FD, leg. 4, no document number.
21Asamblea de Representantes to Antonio Rodriguez, April 18, 1869, Papeles de
Antonio Rodriguez, RAH, FD, leg. 3.
22 Circular de Rafael Morales, Secretario de Estado, Departamento del Interior, al
Gobemador de Estado, March I, 1870, RAH, FD, leg. 6, doc. 46.
23 Fuga de negros in RAH, FD, leg. 2, carpeta II, no document number.

51
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

ation of the libertos" quickly created new conflicts that the au-
thorities were obliged to mediate.
Some libertos chose to view revolutionary prefects as their po-
tential defenders and, when they were mistreated, appealed to the
prefects for justice. In doing so, they brought conflict with their
masters into the open. The prefect might be unsympathetic, but
raising the issue could be disruptive all the same. The action called
masters before a third party to answer for their behavior toward
libertos, something no former slave owner was likely to view with
equanimity.
The case of the liberta Rosa illustrates the dynamics of the sit-
uation. She fled her master, Francisco Socarras, and appealed to the
prefect and to the military court for protection. Her master protested
to the president of the Republic, who replied that if the master was
neither cruel nor corrupt then the liberta had no right to separate
herself from him. An investigation was ordered, and in the ensuing
inquiry Rosa testified that the master's son-in-law had whipped her
belly when she was pregnant, then sent her to the fields and provoked
a miscarriage. She claimed that, when the master was told by another
liberta that Rosa was miscarrying, he replied that that was what he
wanted. Furthermore, she claimed that on the day she fled, Socarras
had tried to "seduce her almost by force." When asked whether
Socarras had ever told the slaves on his plantation that they were
free, she replied that he had not. The slaves knew of abolition only
because they had overheard conversations in the house. 24
Socarras recounted a different version of events. He agreed that
Rosa had miscarried but denied knowing why. He admitted that he
had never read the decree of abolition to his slaves but denied mis-
treating them or attempting to seduce Rosa. He said that he had
failed to read the decree because he had not received it and claimed
that in any case he had told his male slaves that when the rains
came he would give them a potrero (livestock-raising area) to work
on halves, and that he had offered Rosa calves to raise as her own.2S
While it is not possible from surviving records to resolve this case,
the conflict does reveal certain aspects of the effect of the insurrec-
tion on master-slave relationships. First, Rosa viewed the prefect as

24 See the case of Rosa VS. Francisco Socarras in Sumarios, RAH, FD, leg. 3, doc.
1.
25 Ibid.

52
 INSURRECTION AND SLAVERY

someone to whom she could bring her complaints, while the master
viewed the president of the Republic as someone who would uphold
his claim to his former slaves. Conflict between master and slave
thus became a problem for the insurgents themselves. Second, even
though the decree of abolition was not read to all slaves, it could be
communicated to them through the slaves' own network of com-
munication. Third, although one cannot tell whether Socarras had
actually made the offer to raise livestock on halves with his slaves,
it is interesting that he chose such an offer as a plausible one to
claim to have made. Shares rather than wages appeared to him the
logical form of free labor under his circumstances, a way of ensuring
continuity on his estate without acknowledging the libertos' full
freedom.
If the revolution created ambivalence for insurgent leaders, it also
made for uncertainty on the part of libertos. They were abruptly
shown new alternatives but at the same time told not to act on
them. The role of the insurrectionist prefects must have been par-
ticularly puzzling to former slaves, for the prefect's office seemed
both a potential refuge and a potential source of punishment. In
1869, for example, the liberta Felipa was interrogated about her flight
from her master's home. She had initially been on the ingenio Santa
Rosa and had been moved to the potrero Candelaria, under orders
to serve there until the war ended. During the move, she noticed
the small house in which the subprefect lived, though she refused
to say how she knew who he was. She made an initial attempt to
flee Candelaria, but repented part way down the road and returned.
Then, according to her testimony, she had a confrontation with her
mistress, who sent her away telling her that she deserved to be shot.
That night Felipa put her clothes together in a bundle, took her
daughter in her arms, and set out for the house she had seen by the
side of the road two months earlier. Though she denied it, witnesses
claimed that she had arranged to meet another liberto on the way.
Two witnesses who were themselves libertos said they had tried to
discourage her departure. 26
Libertos had to calculate the risks associated with flight under
these new circumstances, and masters tried to ensure that the risks
would remain greater than the benefits. One man wrote to the As-
26 Various documents relating to this case are grouped in RAH, FD, leg. 3, doc. 7.

53
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

sembly to complain that a liberto named Dionisio had fled his estate,
after committing "excesses" and propounding to the other libertos
the idea that any crime would be forgiven if they went into the
army. The estate was raising food for the rebel troops, and the man
wrote that he could in fact do without Dionisio but that he wished
to have him returned for eight to ten days, in order to make an
impression on the other libertos, who were awaiting the outcome
of the case. 27 At stake here was the authority of the estate admin-
istrator and the conflict between the need for soldiers and the need
for provisions, as well as the question of the autonomy of libertos.
The increased possibility of flight could make situations that had
long been humiliating now seem unbearable. The liberta Angelina
Sanchez was a nursemaid in the house of Clara Mola. By her own
account she was well-fed and clothed. One day she left one of the
children in order to get her own daughter. Senora Mola angrily
warned Angelina not to take her daughter from the room she was
in. The liberta in turn "made some observations" that caused the
mistress to reprimand her, to which the liberta answered that black
children should not be left in a room alone. That night when the
family had gone to bed, Angelina Sanchez, like Felipa, left with her
belongings on her head and her child in her arms. She, too, had seen
the house by the side of the road while she was being transferred
from the ingenio Santa Rosa, and another "citizen of color," Virginia,
had told her that the subprefect was there. In her case, as in that of
Felipa, there was a suggestion that other libertos from the potrero
Candelaria had helped to arrange the flight. 28
Domestic servants like Felipa and Angelina were in a particularly
ambiguous situation, still under the direct personal authority of
masters but with claims to some new rights. For other libertos, the
amount of freedom they gained depended to a large extent on where
they were located with respect to the economy and the war effort.
Those on estates were particularly likely to be obliged to remain at
work.
The eastern end of the island, where the insurrection broke out
and then took hold, had not been a primary sugar-producing area,
though there were enclaves in Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo
with substantial mills. The insurgents, however, wished to maintain
27 Petition dated March 23, 1869, RAH, FD, leg. 5, doc. 12.
28 RAH, FD, leg. 3, doc. 7.

54
 INSURRECTION AND SLAVERY

estate production, both of sugar and of foodstuffs, and expected to

continue to employ those who had always worked on the estates.
In their attempts to keep the plantations in production despite
changes in the legal status of the slaves, managers of these estates
adopted a mixture of coercion and paternalism. One administrator,
for example, reported that he usually allowed the libertos to engage
in atabales (drumming) the nights before fiestas, but that on a recent
occasion he had ordered them to stop at 8:00 P.M. because he and
his wife were ill. Half an hour after issuing the order he heard the
sound of drumming coming from the estancia of Joaquin Betancourt,
a man of color, and he sent his son with an armed escort to bring
the libertos back. The libertos were then made to spend the night
sleeping under armed guard. 29 The case illustrates the alternation
between tolerance and repression on the part of the administrator
and the continued assumption that the lives of libertos should be
organized to suit the convenience of their superiors.
The disrupted conditions of the countryside and the changes in
expectations brought about by the insurrection often led to a break-
down of the old mechanisms of control within plantations. Some
administrators responded by adapting to the desires of the libertos
and running estates on terms more acceptable to them. The descrip-
tion by an African liberto of conditions on the ingenio Fernandina
certainly implied a reduction in compulsion since the days of slav-
ery. Asked whether the estate was guarded at night to avoid "dis-
orders," he replied that there was no vigilance of any kind and that
he and the others went to bed at whatever time they pleased to rest
from the toil of the day. Another liberto confirmed the lack of
supervision. 30
There was a limit to the adaptation that would be undertaken,
however. One commander observed of a specific group of libertos:
"It is not appropriate that they should work on the ingenio Sabanilla
dividing profits with the owner." There were, he noted, many estates
on which they could instead work "for the exclusive profit of the
patria. "31 The libertos, it seems, found sharecropping a more ap-
29 Deserci6n de libertos; tratamiento de estos, RAH, FD, leg. 2, carpeta II, no
document number.
30 Sobre averiguar el autor 0 autores del incendio en una cas a del Ingenio "La
Fernandina" de Jose Miguel Montejo, RAH, FD, leg. I, doc. 18.
31 Com,e Miltt de Sibanicu, July 25, 1869, RAH, FD, leg. 4, doc. 496.

55
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

pealing arrangement than working for the "exclusive profit of the

patria" i the commandant did not.
Plantations outside insurrectionist control but near enough to
insurgent lines to make flight to the rebels possible were also af-
fected. Insurgent propaganda by late 1869 asserted that the Spaniards
were fighting to keep blacks enslaved and openly called on slaves
to bum their masters' fields and flee to the monte, where blacks
and whites would fight side by side as equals. 32 Fear of turning slaves
into open enemies seems to have restrained some overseers. Others
converted their estates into virtual armed camps, drawing on the
Spanish military forces for added security.33
Perhaps the greatest transformation in social relations in the east-
ern and central areas came from the presence and character of the
insurgent army itself. O'Kelly remarked on what he perceived as a
preponderance of blacks and mulattos in the fighting force and
claimed that lithe most perfect equality exists between the white
and colored races, the officers taking precedence by rank, and al-
though the majority of the officers are white, a very large proportion
are colored."34 O'Kelly's perception of "perfect equality" was ex-
aggerated, but this was nonetheless a remarkable fighting force to
have emerged from a slaveholding society.
The rebellion drew much of its strength from the white and free
colored nonplantation sector, both urban and rural. These were the
sharecroppers, squatters, tenants, farmers, ranchers, and artisans
who gave the region its distinctive character. 3s The overall popu-
lation of the Eastern Department in 1862 was 47 percent white, 33
percent free colored, and only 20 percent slave. The census of 1862
counted thousands of free persons of color living on estancias, to-
32 See document from La Junta Libertadora de Color, Havana, October I, 1869,
RAH, FD, leg. 6, doc. 79. The text reads, in part, "Los negros son los mismos que los
blancos/ ... Los negros que tienen vergiienza deben ir a pelear juntos con los cubanos.l
Los espanoles quieren matar a los cubanos para que los negros nunca sean libresl
... Cuando los cubanos que estan peleando pasan pOI donde estan los negros, entonces
los negros van con ellos para ser libres I Cuando los cubanos que estan peleando,
estan lejos de los negros; entonces los negros se huyen y se van con los cubanos; pero
antes queman los ingeniosl Si en los ingenios no hubiera esclavos y se les diera a los
negros su dinero pOI su trabajo, los ingenios sedan buenos porque darfan de comer
a la gente pobre."
33 O'Kelly, The Mambi-Land, pp. 63-64.
34 Ibid., pp. 26, 221.
35 Ramiro Guerra describes the majority of black and mulatto campesinos as "apar-
ceros y precaristas"-sharecroppers and squatters. Guerra, Guerra 1: 2.

56
 INSURRECTION AND SLAVERY

bacco farms, and sitios de labor in the east. 36 O'Kelly estimated that,
within the army, one-third of the fighting men were white, "and
the majority of the other two thirds are of color other than black,
all shades of brown predominating." Thomas Jordan, a former Con-
federate officer who became chief of staff of the rebels, was unhappy
about the composition of the troops, reporting that he was surprised
to find "much more than half of them negroes (including many
Africans) and Chinese."37
The question of the precise social and ethnic composition of the
insurgency remains open, for we have neither a comprehensive rec-
ord of participants nor a clear idea of the rates of participation of
different groups. North American observers like O'Kelly and Jordan
may have defined color categories somewhat differently from Cu-
bans and thus overestimated the proportion of blacks and mulattos.
Other sources, however, clearly underestimate this proportion. One
modern scholar has argued that the revolutionary forces were not
in fact composed principally of Afro-Cubans and Chinese, basing
his assertion on the Spanish records of trials, executions, and exiles
of rebels. But according to a Spanish soldier interviewed by O'Kelly,
" ... we do not take many black prisoners; they are generally killed
if found with arms; but if they present themselves, they are sent
back to their masters." This suggests that a disproportionate number
of black insurgents would never be brought to formal trial, executed,
or exiled. 38 Whatever the exact proportions of different groups within
it, however, the multiethnic insurgent force was a remarkable legacy
of the complex society of eastern Cuba, a testimony to the increas-
ingly broad appeal of anticolonial struggle, and a source of impetus
for more egalitarian policies.
Those Chinese workers who joined the insurrection presumably
came primarily from the central districts, since there were very few
in the east. One insurgent officer in 1869 was delighted to enlist a
group of fifty-four Asians, one of whom had led a labor gang and
would, he predicted, make an excellent sergeant. 39 Officially, the

36 Cuba, Centro de Estadistica, Noticias estadfsticas, "Distribuci6n." The 1862

census does not include Puerto Principe in the Eastern Department.
37 O'Kelly, The Mambi-Land, p. 221; Thomas Jordan to Eduardo Agramonte, De-
cember 16, 1869 (original in English), RAH, FD, leg. l.
38 The argument about the proportion of Afro-Cubans is made in Knight, Slave
Society, p. 168. The quotation is in O'Kelly, The Mambi-Land, p. 79.
39 Al C. Comandante Anto Rodriguez, July 7, 1869, RAH, FD, leg. 3, carta no. 294.

57
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

Chinese in Cuba had a special status and might be expected to be

more loyal to Spain than were slaves. Furthermore, tensions between
Asians and slaves on plantations were common, recognized, and in
some instances encouraged in order to prevent alliance against their
masters. Under the circumstances of war, however, status and ethnic
differences could apparently be overcome to an extent by shared
grievances. The English consul in the late 1870s attributed the pres-
ence of Asians in the insurrection to the colonial government's pol-
icy of requiring them to recontract at the end of their terms or leave
the country. "Neither the exigencies of war nor the want of labour
can justify so gross a breach of faith; no one will more regret it than
those who are the best friends of the Spanish government, for it is
probably the chief, if not the only cause, why Chinese are found in
the rebel ranks." 4o While this was an oversimplification, one can
argue more generally that the tendency to reduce indentured
Chinese to a status akin to slavery, thwarting expectations founded
upon a contractual relationship, encouraged their alliance with anti-
Spanish forces.
An unknown percentage of the insurgents were former slaves,
drawn into the insurrection either by deserting their owners, being
captured during raids, or being freed by rebel masters. Spanish of-
ficers privately estimated former slaves to be "numerous" among
the insurgents by the end of the war.41 These confidential estimates
are more revealing than public statements, since the Spanish pub-
licly emphasized the number of blacks and runaway slaves among
the rebels as part of an attempt to portray the rebellion as a racial
rather than a political struggle and thus dissuade whites from
joining.
Slaves incorporated into the rebel army could not, however, count
on full equality with white and free colored troops. Libertos in the
army were commonly not armed, but were consigned instead to
support roles. O'Kelly attributed this to the insurgent belief that
lithe most ignorant of the slaves II were "so broken in spirit by the
flogging system that they have no self-respect, and are therefore very
unreliable as fighting material," though he himself conceded that
40 Great Britain. Parliament. Parliamentary Papers (Commons I, 1878, vol. 67 (Slave
Trade No. 11, "Report on the Labour Question in Cuba."
41 Telegram from the Comandante General, Villas, to the Captain general, Santa
Clara, October 2, 1877, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4883, tomo 6.

58
 INSURRECTION AND SLAVERY

there were "a great many exceptions" to this rule. 42 Racial prejudice
as well as objective considerations influenced military policy.
Thomas Jordan was opposed on principle to a predominantly Afro-
Cuban army and advised systematic substitution of men of color for
whites in noncombat postS. 43 Other officials followed a similar pol-
icy, with little regard for the abilities of the individuals involved,
as in the order previously cited, which allocated the men of a par-
ticular unit on the basis of their status, the whites to arms and the
libertos "with rare exceptions" to agriculture. 44
Within the category of libertos, a further distinction was some-
times made between Creoles and Africans. O'Kelly noted that most
of the ex-slaves who achieved high rank were Creoles. 45 Rebel of-
ficials generally viewed Africans as a special group, fit primarily for
agriculture and service as ayudantes. In March 1870 the insurgent
Department of the Interior issued a circular calling for those former
field slaves, "especially the natives of Africa," who were in the army
but who were superfluous or had not proved their valor and intel-
ligence to be sent to agriculture. 46 The cultural gaps between whites,
Creole free persons of color, and Africans exacerbated this stereo-
typing. When during a celebration in a rebel camp, for example, the
Africans danced by themselves, mulatto soldiers hastened to de-
scribe them to a foreign visitor as "barbaros."47
These ethnic and cultural differentiations were related to a larger
distinction, generally not made explicit, concerning who was to be
considered truly Cuban. White leaders within the rebellion often
did not see Africans as Cubans, and some did not even see Creole
blacks as Cubans. Though most rebel propagandists prided them-
selves on the interracial unity manifested within the fighting force,
they portrayed this as an alliance of Cubans and blacks, not simply
an alliance of different groups of Cubans. The line must have been
difficult to draw, since the families of many eastern blacks and
mulattos had lived in Cuba for generations, and many of the small
farmers and urban free persons of color came from families that had

42 O'Kelly, The Mambi-Land, p. 261.

43 Thomas Jordan to Eduardo Agramonte, December 16, 1869, RAH, FD, leg. 1.
44 Sta. Catalina, July 12, 1869, RAH, FD, leg. 4, no document number.
45 O'Kelly, The Mambi-Land, p. 261.
46 Circular, Secretarfa de Estado, Departamento del Interior, No. 567, RAH, FD,
leg. 6, doc. 46.
47 O'Kelly, The Mambi-Land, p. 223.

59
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

been free since the eighteenth century and earlier. Such divisions
nonetheless contributed to the weakening of rebel forces, as Span-
iards outside and conservatives inside the insurgency accused lead-
ers like Antonio Maceo of aiming at a "black republic" rather than
at Cuban independence. 48
However he came to be in the army, and however he was treated,
the liberto soldier became a potentially disruptive element to es-
tablished society. He could represent freedom and a degree of au-
tonomy, a walking challenge to the old social relations of slavery.
Take, for example, the case of the liberto Florentino Zaldivar. He
asked to be freed in order to fight, and his master willingly turned
him over to the regional commandant, adding that he never wanted
to see him again. When, some time later, Florentino wished to take
a week's leave and return to work on the plantation, the master told
him that he had no work to offer, and furthermore that if he did he
would not offer it to him, and ordered him off the plantation. The
liberto, however, returned once again to see his compaiieros, pro-
voking a confrontation with the master. 49
The nature of the confrontation suggests the ways in which the
new mobility and the increased self-confidence of libertos who
joined the army introduced tensions into society. Florentino (he is
referred to by his first name in the records of the case) had stopped
by his former master's estate on a mission to collect viandas at
another plantation. He went straight to the kitchen, speaking to
none of the white people on the estate. There, according to his former
master's wife, he created a clamor among the other servants. When
the master returned to the house from the fields and was told that
Florentino was on the premises, he went to the kitchen and told
him to be on his way. The master later reported that the liberto had
come "bragging of a misunderstood liberty" to "entice" the rest of
his servants in his absence. Florentino was indignant at the dismissal
and asked the master what reason he had for sending him away.
According to the master's account, he replied that he was not obliged
to give any explanation at all and that if Florentino continued with
48 See the text cited in note 32, above. For prejudice against Maceo, see Guerra,
Guerra 2: 247, and the text of the letter from Maceo reproduced in Thomas, Cuba,
p.265.
49 This discussion of the case of Florentino is based on evidence from RAH, FD,
leg. 1, doc. 5, which contains a summary of the testimony.

60
 INSURRECTION AND SLAVERY

his insolent words and insulting manner he would be thrown off in

another way. According to the liberto's account, the master replied
that he should get out and that he "didn't want a black who had
been his to serve anyone except him./I The master claimed, and
Florentino denied, that Florentino reached for his knife, whereupon
the master hit him on the side of the head with the butt of his
machete.
In their accounts, the master and the liberto portrayed the incident
differently. The master described the liberto as contentious and in-
solent. The liberto denied that he had been told to stay off the
plantation (pointing out that on his previous visit the master had
given him lunch) and claimed that he had stopped merely to have
some water and to see his compaiieros. All witnesses agreed, how-
ever, that the visit created a tense encounter between the two men.
The case reflects both the master's desire to keep the liberto from
visiting his compaiieros who were still servants and the dramatic
effect of Florentino's appearance in the kitchen of his old plantation.
The master had been willing to free the troublesome slave and con-
tribute him to the rebel cause, but he had no intention of allowing
him to come back to the plantation to exercise his rights as a free
man. That Florentino would nonetheless insist upon returning and
visiting old friends reflected his own changed conception of his rights
and in turn contributed to the further breakdown of the master's
authority over his former slaves. The master reported plaintively to
the authorities that the servants of his house were not very attached
to him since Florentino had persuaded them that he was their
protector.
Despite the limited intentions of the insurgent leaders with re-
spect to slavery, the first years of the war had transformed social
relations in areas under insurrectionist control. Nominal abolition
encouraged those now called libertos to resist mistreatment and
press for further rights. Pressure from blacks, mulattos, and anti-
slavery whites within the rebel army pushed insurgent policy toward
more freedom for libertos. The war made it easier for slaves near
the fighting to escape direct control by their masters and for libertos
to flee conditions they found intolerable. Libertos who actually
joined the army acquired a new conception of themselves and of
their relation to those who had been their masters and social su-
periors. Though the leaders might debate the precise extent of the

61
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

freedom to be granted, maintenance of the coercion on which slavery

rested became increasingly difficult as the war in various forms
penetrated families and estates.
The insurrection did not, however, reach deeply into the rich west-
ern sugar areas. The insurgents themselves were divided on tactics,
and western planters sympathetic to the insurrection were unwilling
to call for slave uprisings. 50 In most of the western part of the island,
the coercive discipline of a slave plantation regime combined with
Spanish military force to create an environment inhospitable to ef-
fective insurgency. When the Cuban Junta in New York called for
the dotaciones of sugar plantations to burn cane fields during the
Christmas holidays of 1869, according to the French consul, the
only districts reporting fires were Cienfuegos, Trinidad, Sancti Spi-
ritus, and Villaclara. 51 The harvest of that year was one of the largest
ever. 52 The destruction of mills in the insurrection had been confined
largely to the less developed regions, and the major western mills
held their slaves and continued grinding. But although the war did
not directly touch the majority of Cuba's slaves, the insurrection
eventually affected them as it became increasingly clear to Spain
that pacification of the island would require coming to terms with
the general issue of slavery. The insurrection had raised the issue
and given it life through the freeing of slaves and the incorporation
of libertos into the army. To undermine the insurgent appeal, Spain
would have to find some way to respond.
50 See Cepero Bonilla, Azucar y abolici6n, and Guerra, Guerra.
51 Report of January 7, 1870, Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Paris, Correspon-
dance Commerciale Ihereinafter MAE-Paris, CC), La Havane, 1861-1871, tome 20.
52 Moreno, E1 ingenio 3: 37.

62
 III

Spain Responds:
The Moret Law

"What could cause us real troubles would be to fail to

carry [to Cuba] the word 'liberty,' a word pronounced by the
Cuban insurgents, and woe to us if we do not repeat it!"
-Sr. Gallego Dfaz in the Spanish Cortes, Tune 10, 18701

Despite the ambiguity of the initial insurgent commitment to eman-

cipation, the reality of war had put Spain on the defensive with
regard to slavery. As long as the rebellion represented abolition,
however nominal and compromised, those slaves who could do so
had reason to flee their masters to the insurrectionist lines, free
blacks had reason to prefer the rebels to the Spaniards, and the
United States government-if it should choose to invoke antislavery
principles-had a rationale for recognizing or even aiding the rebels.
The pressures on Madrid were contradictory. On the one hand, Spain
needed to reduce the appeal of the insurrection to blacks and to
those whites who favored the elimination of slavery. On the other
hand, the government had no desire to damage sugar production and
diminish its own revenues from Cuba, or to alienate still-loyal
planters.
Calculations of the most prudent colonial policy were made more
complex by the growing influence of antislavery sentiment in Spain.
The Spanish Abolitionist Society, founded in 1865, had developed
a considerable network of support within the Peninsula. Begun out-
side the political parties, appealing to young people, to free-traders,
and to individual politicians, the Society achieved a striking degree
of success in linking antislavery with developing liberal principles.
An effective association of the two had long been lacking in Spanish
political thought, largely because the issue of slavery was so closely
1 Spain, Cortes, 1869-1871, Diario de Sesiones de las Cortes Constituyentes 13
IMadrid: J. A. Garcia, 1870): 8765.

63
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

tied to the maintenance of the colonial status of Cuba. The shift in

the late 1860s doubtless owed a great deal to the outcome of the
U.S. Civil War, as well as to the ideological campaign waged by
abolitionists. When, in 1868, a liberal revolution triumphed in Spain,
the abolition of slavery was one of its stated principles. 2
Many Spaniards were prepared to forget this commitment once
they were faced with the threat and the apparent "ingratitude" em-
bodied in the Cuban insurrection. Furthermore, there was also a
vigorous opposition to abolition within Spain, particularly from Ca-
talan merchants who saw the issue as closely tied to the mainte-
nance of their protected markets in Cuba. 3 But strategic and inter-
national considerations required the new government to take some
steps toward a repudiation of slavery, however partial. The solution
that emerged was that of a "preparatory bill for the gradual abolition
of slavery," introduced into the Cortes by Segismundo Moret, the
minister of Ultramar and himself an abolitionist, on May 28, 1870,
and amended during debate in June. All children born of slaves since
September 1868 were to be free, as were all slaves upon reaching
the age of sixty. A proposal for indemnified emancipation of the
remaining slaves was to be submitted once Cuban delegates were
seated in the Cortes-something to be expected only with the end
of the war. The bill outlawed the use of the whip and provided that
any slave proven the victim of "excessive cruelty" was to be freed.
"Juntas Protectoras" were established to oversee enforcement. 4
The debates in the Cortes reflected both the formal liberalism of
the new regime and the defensiveness of those with threatened in-
terests in Cuba or a strongly "integralist" vision of the island's
relation to Spain. Most of the delegates agreed in one form or another
2 On Spanish liberals and the issue of Cuban slavery see Gabriel Rodriguez, "La
idea y el movimiento antiesclavista en Espana durante el siglo xix," in Centro de
Investigaciones Hist6ricas, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena, El proceso aboli-
cionista en Puerto Rico: Documentos para su estudio 1 (San Juan, 1974): 455-73;
Murray, Odious Commerce, especially chaps. 10 and 14; and Corwin, Spain and the
Abolition of Slavery in Cuba.
3 On Catalan interests, trade with Cuba, Spanish colonial policy, and antiaboli-
tionism in Spain, see Miguel Izard, Manufactureros, industriales, y revolucionarios
(Barcelona: Editorial Critica, 1979), pp. 151-78; Jordi Maluquer de Motes, "La burgesia
catalana i l'esclavitud colonial: modes de producci6 i practica politica," Recerques,
Historia, Economia, Cultura 3 (Barcelona, 1979): 83-136; and Raymond Carr, Spain,
)808-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), chaps. 8, 9.
4 For the final text of the Moret Law, see Fernando Ortiz, Los negros esc1avos
(Havana: Revista Bimestre Cubana, 1916; reprint ed., Havana: Editorial de Ciencias
Sociales, 1975), pp. 452-55.

64
 THE MORET LAW

that slavery was an institution "rejected by public sentiment," but

they were concerned to end slavery in such a way as to avoid "dis-
turbances," preserve the colonial tie, and protect production. Even
Romero Robledo, the most intransigent opponent of abolition, in-
cluded in his discourse a ritual condemnation of slavery, though he
followed it with conventional proslavery arguments and warnings
of race war and "Africanization" if abolition were actually under-
taken. Emilio Castelar, a strong abolitionist, criticized the Moret
proposal from the other side, calling it too timid and introducing a
resolution in favor of immediate emancipation. 5
Segismundo Moret's replies to his opponents were an effective
blend of rhetoric about justice and highly pragmatic appeals to na-
tional self-interest. He emphasized the importance of denying to the
insurgent Cubans the propaganda advantage of portraying their fight
as one of abolitionism against proslavery Spanish domination. He
spoke respectfully of the interests of proprietors and defended his
own cautious strategy as a necessary yet principled deference to
those interests. Finally, he projected an extraordinarily romantic
picture of a postemancipation society in which grateful, prayerful
former slaves in modest cabins exchanged warm greetings with the
generous planters who had been their masters. The proposed law,
he argued, was based on faith in an "understanding" between master
and slave, which he felt to be appropriate, given the present "hu-
manitarian" character of slavery in Cuba. On July 4, 1870, the Cortes
voted to pass the law. 6
The Moret Law was in a sense an effort by Spain to capture the
apparent moral high ground from the insurgents and to win gratitude
from freed slaves and free people of color, while stalling abolition
itself. From the first weeks of the rebellion, Spanish authorities had
recognized that the threat of the insurrection was more than mili-
tary. On the 24th of October, 1868, the captain general wrote to the
minister of war that, although the uprising was in itself of little
importance, the announcement by the rebels of abolition and general
suffrage "has already made the people of color somewhat arrogant."l
5 See the speech of Romero Robledo on June 9, 1870, in Spain, Cortes, Diario 13:
8728·32, and that of Castelar on June 20, 1870, in ibid. 14: 8981-92.
6 See the speech of Moret on June 10, 1870, ibid., 13: 8768-73, and that of June 20,
ibid. 14: 8992-99.
7 Captain general to the minister of war, Oct. 24, 1868, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4881.

65
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

That "arrogance"-which consisted of an appreciation of the poten-

tial for obtaining civil rights-threatened Spanish colonial interests
as well as the Cuban social order.
While the main purpose was to meet the strategic needs of the
moment, part of the attraction of gradual abolition had to do with
long-run cultural and political considerations. It was the fond hope
of the proponents of the Moret Law that a period of "tutelage" during
which free-born children would remain under the authority of their
former masters would enable them to "assimilate themselves to the
culture and civilization of Spain."8 This was not mere paternalism;
it also reflected a basic concern of Spanish administrators. "Spanish
culture" and "civilization" were more than euphemisms for proper
behavior; they were values in themselves, in opposition to the con-
cept of Cuban nationality. The Moret Law was conceived of both
as a nondisruptive form of very gradual abolition, and as a charitable
act that would place Spain-instead of the insurgents-in the po-
sition of benefactor of Afro-Cubans.
Once tentative steps had been taken toward regarding slaves as
potential citizens, the issue of their loyalty increased in importance,
and throughout the 1870s a struggle took place for the cultural and
political allegiance of former slaves and free persons of color. Spanish
colonial officials acted as patrons to black and mulatto voluntary
associations and supported loyal Afro-Cuban leaders in an attempt
to capture that allegiance. The struggle sometimes became a com-
plex, three-sided one, for the alternatives included not only seeing
oneself as Spanish or Cuban but also identifying oneself as African.
The proportion of Cuban slaves who were African-born remained
high, and the cabildos de naci6n, mutual societies organized around
African ethnic groups, remained a source of identity. African lan-
guages continued to be spoken. Indeed, some freed slaves retained
their African ethnonym as a surname, rather than adopting a Spanish
one, and took their Creole children to activities of the African
cabildos. 9
While seeking to win a measure of Afro-Cuban loyalty with the
8Cited by Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery, p. 258.
9On the cabildos and societies of free persons of color, see Chap. XI, below. On
African languages, see Ibarra, Ideologfa, pp. 18-20. For an example of a former slave
using his African ethnonym as a surname, see Juan Lucumi al Exmo Sor Gobemador
General, October 20, 1879, in AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4181.

66
 THE MORET LAW

Moret Law, Spanish officials also portrayed it as a law that even

slave owners could accept. Moret noted in debate that he had copied
one article directly from a proposal submitted by Cuban slavehold-
ers.lO In practice, however, Cuban planters criticized the law and
attempted to block its enforcement.
In 1870, in the areas under Spanish control, most proprietors
viewed abolition with suspicion or outright hostility. Slavery re-
mained crucial to their economic activities and to their way of life.
True, they had feared worse than Moret's bill and had some reason
to be relieved at its conservatism. But when they gathered together
with the governor in the summer of 1870, Cuba's leading planters
were divided on the best way to resolve the "cuesti6n social." Some
objected even to the "free womb," or liberation of children at birth,
suggesting that moral instruction, the expansion of provision
grounds, and the encouragement of coartaci6n would be the best
way to end slavery. Others favored a long apprenticeship and in-
demnification. Jose Suarez Argudin, owner of ingenios in Cienfuegos
and Bahia Honda, saw the issue of slavery as one of "life or death"
for Cuba, both because it was a weapon used by the enemies of
Spain, and because he anticipated a collapse of Cuban sugar pro-
duction after abolition. Julian Zulueta, one of Cuba's major slave-
holders, added that abolition should be linked with immigration and
with an approach to the organization of labor that would maintain
the basis of Cuba's prosperity-presumably strict regulation. There
was consensus, however, that any change should be slow.!l
Once the Moret Law had passed, planters in Cuba, with the co-
operation of colonial officials, managed to stall its publication for
several months. They then turned to the task of designing regula-
tions for enforcement that would minimize its effects. The governor
was blunt about the considerations involved in drawing up the reg-
10 See the speech by Moret in the Cortes on June 17, 1870, in Spain, Cortes, Diario
14: 8920, and the Proyecto de ley, presentado por el Sr. Ministro de Ultramar, sobre
abolici6n de la esclavitud, ibid., vol. 14, appendix to the session of May 28, 1870.
11 A telegram of June 11, 1870, from Manuel Calvo to Julian Zulueta is revealing:
"Proyecto vientre. Nada mas. Estar tranquilos." The prospect of a bill declaring "free
womb" (i.e. the emancipation of newborns I and little more was obviously cause for
relief. Copias de telegramas particulares de C. Manuel Calvo y de D. Zulueta. AHN,
Ultramar, leg. 4815. For meetings of proprietors see Acta de la Junta de hacendados,
propietarios y comerciantes para tratar de la cuesti6n social, June 17, 1870, AHN,
Ultramar, leg. 4881, tomo 1. For a further discussion of these meetings and of the
behavior of the governor, see Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery, chap. 14.

67
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

ulations. He had taken care to avoid any radical change in the order
and established customs of the country, particularly in rural estates,
he wrote, because to do otherwise would risk "imminent disturb-
ance of agricultural labor.//12 Planters obtained substantially what
they wanted, including retention of some forms of corporal punish-
ment, but even so postponed publication of the Reglamento until
November 1872. The Juntas Protectoras thus got a late start, and by
the terms of the regulations half their members were slaveholders.
Zulueta was appointed vice-president of the Junta Central,l3
As a result of this opposition, the Moret Law turned out to be
both less and more than it seemed. Less in that the freedom it
afforded was limited, compromised, and in many cases quite illu-
sory. More in that in practice its provisions led to institutional and
attitudinal changes that-to a limited extent-disrupted the social
order of slavery.
Because the Moret Law freed the newborn and the elderly, its
author proclaimed, incorrectly but dramatically: "De hoy mas ...
no naceran ni moriran esclavos en Espana.// (From now on ... there
will neither be born nor die any slaves in Spain. )14 Although the
freeing of all children born since 1868 meant that ultimately slavery
would be extinguished, it had no immediate consequences for those
children who were to have benefited from it. The epithet attached
to their names in slave lists changed from parvula to liberto, but
there is no indication that any alteration in their treatment followed.
They continued to be raised with their slave parents; they drew
rations and in return owed unpaid labor until age 18; they were
subject to the master's authority.
Nominal freedom for infants, however insubstantial, may none-
theless have changed certain expectations of the natural order of
things. One visitor sympathetic to planters claimed that the birth
rate on estates had increased since the Moret Law, as a result of
slave mothers' perception of their children as free. liThe mere word
'liberty,' it is true, has already acted as a talisman among the blacks.
I have seen the Gria, or negro nursery, in many of the estates, and
it is touching to see with what pride the slave mother lifts up in
12 AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4883, tomo 5.
13 See Gaceta de la Habana, Jan. 29, 1873, and Corwin, Spain and the Abolition
of Slavery, chap. 15.
14 Proyecto de ley ... sobre abolici6n de la esclavitud, Spain, Cortes, Diario, vol.
14.

68
 THE MORET LAW

her arms the little naked picanniny who is some day to become a
free man." But when a parent achieved his or her freedom and wished
to take a child from the plantation, he or she discovered that there
were debts incurred that had to be paid for the upbringing of the
child. In essence, the freedom of the child had to be purchased like
the freedom of the parent. IS
For older slaves, there were other obstacles to the achievement of
the promised freedom at the age of sixty. First, many slaves had no
proof of age other than the records kept by masters. If a master filed
fraudulent records, the slave had little recourse. Technically, he or
she could appeal to the Junta Protectora, but this was a laborious
and potentially corrupt procedure requiring estimates of age by a
doctor. Some masters did not even bother to falsify ages-one slave
list from 1875 contains slaves with ages sixty, sixty-one, sixty-three,
and sixty-five, with no apparent acknowledgment that such indi-
viduals were legally free. 16 A former U.S. consul wrote, "Though the
law declares that every slave who has attained the age of sixty is
free, and every child born is free, there is no plantation-master who
would not smile at your suggestion that he did not own every 'hand'
on his place."I?
Older slaves who actually obtained legal freedom might find their
lives very little changed. On the ingenio Angelita in 1877, a census
of the dotaci6n listed-in addition to 247 slaves-twenty men and
seventeen women over the age of sixty. But the daybook for the
same period contains no indication that these individuals were re-
ceiving regular wages or salaries, and indeed the law, while obliging
the master to maintain them if they remained on the plantation,
ruled such wages "optional." The ages given for the workers also
suggest that there was considerable improvisation in the record
keeping, and that the occasion of drawing up the list may itself have
been the first time that some of them were acknowledged as being
"free."ls

15 The quotation is from Gallenga, Pearl, p. 123. See also the discussion of parental
efforts to free children and masters' efforts to block them in Chaps. VII and VIII,
below.
16 Capitania Pedanea de Santa Isabel de las Lajas, Num o 3, Padr6n general de es-
clavos, 1875, ANC, ME, leg. 3748, num. B.
17 James W. Steele, Cuban Sketches INew York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 18811, p. 93.
18 Ten men were listed as being exactly sixty years old, one as sixty-five, one as
sixty-nine. The rest of the men, and the majority of the older women, were in their

69
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

The Moret Law also provided that all those held as slaves but not
registered in the slave census were to be considered free. As part of
the effort to suppress the slave trade by reducing the incentive to
purchase contraband slaves, the Spanish government had already in
1866 called for a census of slaves and declared that henceforth all
those not included in the census would be free. The census was
drawn up in 1867 but was hardly complete. Some masters, to evade
taxes, apparently did not register their slaves, confident that there
would be no intrusion into the plantations to verify the lists. With
the passage of the Moret Law, another census was ordered, actually
compounding the problem by further delaying the freeing of the
unregistered. Citing inaccuracies in the various counts of slaves, and
protesting the injustice of freeing legally acquired slaves simply be-
cause of errors in the lists, planters stalled application of the law. l9
Throughout the 1870s individual slaveowners appealed for the in-
clusion of unregistered slaves in the lists, and as the decade drew
to a close the rules about censuses and registers were still being
refined and reiterated. 20
Another group affected by the Moret Law were emancipados,
those Africans who had been found on captured slave ships and
"emancipated." They had remained a special category, their labor
contracted out by the government. Because employers had so little
interest in their long-term well-being, emancipados were in some
cases treated worse than slaves. The Moret Law freed these ten
thousand or so men and women a second time. An English observer
wrote in 1873 that the "meaning of the so-called 'liberation' is nei-
ther more nor less than that the government gets rid of them." He
believed that shifting responsibility for the emancipados to the Jun-
tas Protectoras de Libertos meant "some chance of correction of the
many abuses to which this very unfortunate class has been sub-
jected." But, he added, "I doubt it very much indeed."2l

seventies, eighties, or nineties. Libro diario del Ingenio Angelita Argudfn, 1877, ANC,
ML,10789.
19 On the failure to register slaves, see Sociedad Abolicionista Espanola, Madrid,
La violaci6n de las leyes en Cuba (Madrid: A. J. Alaria, 1882). For a detailed discussion
of masters' stalling tactics, see Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery, chap.
14.
20 For appeals for the inclusion of slaves in the registers, see ANC, ME, legs. 3814-
3820, and AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4759.
21 Actirig Commissary-Judge Crawford to Earl Granville, Havana, May 28, 1873, in
Great Britain, Parliament, Parliamentary Papers (Lords) 1875, vol. 23 (Slave Trade

70
 THE MORET LAW

The governor reported in 1870 that he had freed emancipados

captured from slaving expeditions of 1853 and 1854 and those la-
boring on the public works of the Canal de Vento who merited this
prize. He noted that they were recontracting with their former mas-
ters or others for periods of two to six years "under mutually ad-
vantageous conditions." This he saw as a precedent for the way that
a transition to freedom could be made without disturbing the supply
of labor. 22 The practice of contracting and recontracting was already
familiar to Cuban employers, less as a form of free labor than as one
of legal coercion. Contracts had been used with the Chinese and
with the emancipados, and were usually characterized by restric-
tions on behavior, wages below competitive levels, and long terms
of service. In the case of the emancipados, the result had been a
condition little different from slavery. Now that the emancipados
had additional legal rights, new terms appeared in their contracts,
specifically the retention of their certificates of freedom by the em-
ployer. This coercive measure was later revoked on order from
Madrid, but it showed the intent of both the Havana government
and employers to limit mobility and strengthen control over
emancipados. 23
Because the Moret Law shifted many individuals-children, the
elderly, emancipados-from one category to another, its effects
seemed considerable on paper. Between 1870 and 1877, 61,766 chil-
dren of slaves became or were born legally free by virtue of the
provision of the law freeing those born after 1868. Over 32,000 slaves
were technically free under other provisions of the law. The gov-
ernment's calculations-which were distinctly flawed-recorded a
decline in the slave population of about 52,000 between 1871 and
1877. Recalculating these figures to reduce the effect of double-
counting, one finds that the major sources of recorded decline were
the freeing of the elderly (45 percent), the freeing of unregistered
slaves (21 percent), deaths (19 percent), and "causes outside the law"
(12 percent)24 (see Table 9).
No.2), "Correspondence Respecting Slavery in Cuba and Puerto Rico, and the State
of the Slave Population and Chinese Coolies in those Islands."
22 Revista politica, Aug. 30, 1870, RAH, FD, leg. 7, doc. 24.
23 See the correspondence between the minister of Ultramar and the government
of Cuba, October 1870, in RAH, FD, doc. 39.
24 Expediente promovido por haber solicitado el Ministerio de Ultramar un estado
general y resumen de los esclavos existentes, de los que han adquirido la libertad por

71
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

TABLE 9
Sources of Decline in the Slave Population, 1870-1877,
Government Estimates

1. Slaves listed in the census of January IS, 1871 287,653

2. Freed for serving the Spanish flag 658
3. Freed because over the age of sixty 21,032
4. Freed because owned by the state 1,046
5. Freed because unregistered- 9,611
6. Freed for reasons outside the lawb 5,423
7. Slave deaths 8,917
8. Liberto deaths c 5,256
9. Slaves calculated as remaining in 1877d 235,710
10. Slaves actually on tax registers, 1878· 184,030
SOURCE: ANC, ME, leg. 3816, expo Ai. Expediente promovido ... , March 1878.
- This appears to refer to slaves not in the index to the 1871 census. It may therefore be
misleading to subtract category 5 from category 1 as the junta officials preparing this report did.
b This presumably included some recorded self·purchase and manumission.
c This inclusion of liberto deaths also suggests double·counting.
d Since some of those in 3, 5, and 8 should not have been in the 1871 census, this total is
unreliable .
• Includes only slaves over the age of eleven.

When the Junta Central Protectora in 1878 calculated the number

who had been freed or died since 1870, and subtracted that from the
census totals of 1871, they arrived at a figure of 235,710 still in
bondage at the end of 1877. The census of that year, however, re-
corded only 199,094, and the tax records 184,030. The junta's math-
ematics were clearly faulty, and they had evidently lost track of
many people (see notes to Table 9). The problem was partly due to
the late start of the juntas. They had only begun operation in 1873,
and thus their records did not include deaths and cases of freedom
from causes beyond the law between 1870 and 1873. Furthermore,
the war in the eastern end of the island made government statistics
for that region unreliable. Many slaves had died or been freed in
the insurrection, or were freed during pacification, without being
recorded. 2s

virtud de la Ley de 4 de Julio de 70 y del mlmero total de libertos, March 1878, ANC,
ME, leg. 3816, expo Af. In calculating the percentages, I have subtracted liberto deaths
from the total, sinceliberto children were not included in the 1871 census and liberto
adults were already calculated as a decline when they were freed. This leaves a total
decline of 46,687.
25 For a discussion of the problems the juntas had in trying to keep track of statistics,
see the letter to the governor general from the vice president of the Junta Central
Protectora de Libertos, March 11, 1878, in ibid. For somewhat different figures, see

72
 THE MORET LAW

Despite conflicting statistics, a central point remains clear: for

the greater part of the decade during which it was in force, the Moret
Law reduced the total number of slaves but freed relatively few
slaves of working age. Although the slave population fell dramati-
cally-from over 300,000 to under 200,OOO-most of those freed were
children and the elderly, some of the decline was due to deaths, and
fewer lives were changed as a direct result of the law than the number
of legal freeings would suggest.
To emphasize the ineffectiveness of the Moret Law in ending
slavery directly, however, would be to interpret its significance too
narrowly. While those freed were primarily the very young and the
very old, the operation of the law tended to accelerate the process
of overall emancipation. As a formal measure, it was deliberately
very limited, but its indirect consequences were considerable and
often unforeseen. It provided a lever-a weak, fragile, awkward le-
ver-that enabled some slaves to exert influence on their condition
or that of their relatives. It made certain underlying conflicts of
interest more apparent and changed the ways in which they were
resolved.
Slaveholders had sensed this potential in the Moret Law from the
very beginning. In June 1870, when the law was being discussed,
Francisco Ibanez, a leading planter, expressed his support in principle
of the idea of "free womb" and freedom for the elderly. But he
recommended that the law avoid "the intervention of Agents of
Authority" to carry it out, for this could cause "abuses" and partic-
ularly could "discredit" (desprestigiar) masters on their estates. 26
The Moret Law did not directly threaten the immediate economic
interests of slaveholders, since the very young and the very old could
be a burden to the plantation, and changing their legal status caused
no loss of labor in the short run. But for slaveholders to accept their
slaves' freedom on order from the government was indirectly threat-
ening, because it implied that on each plantation there existed an
authority greater than the master's, an external authority to whom
the slave might appeal.
The dangers perceived by slaveholders were similar to those which
had disturbed them during the mid-nineteenth-century debates over
Estado demostrativo de los esclavos ... , Havana, March 15, 1878, AHN, Ultramar,
leg. 4882.
26 Acta de la Junta, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4881, tomo 1.

73
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

the proper role of ecclesiastics in a slave society. While granting in

part the wisdom of evangelization among slaves, masters were often
hostile to the actual presence of priests on the plantation. With the
support of the government in Havana, planters had successfully ar-
gued that such outsiders undermined the essential authority of mas-
ter over slave.27
In the 1870s, planters criticized local officials on the same grounds.
The government in Havana again sided with the planters, rebuking
officials who entered plantations "on the pretext of enquiring of the
slaves some purely administrative fact or other, which they could
and should request from the masters or the administrators." Invok-
ing the necessity for prudence to avoid "disturbances" of the slaves,
the government in 1872 called on the capitanes de partido to respect
the inviolability of the plantation and assist masters in maintaining
the "subordination and discipline" that were "so necessary for labor
and for the development of agriculture." Authorities should enter
the plantations only in cases of criminality or on occasions specified
by the Reglamento. 28
This defensiveness arose from multiple sources. One was simple
unease at the "intervention of agents of authority," which could be
disruptive of the plantation even if their tasks were bureaucratic
and their motives unsubversive. Another was the fear that a slave
rebellion might be sparked by insurrectionist propaganda or agita-
tion. A third was the pressure of increasing initiatives by slaves.
The environment of the 1870s, with the legal provision for the even-
tual end of slavery and the outbreak of rebellion in the east, en-
couraged some slaves to press for whatever concessions they could
obtain. In doing so they made use of old techniques as well as new.
Several provisions in Cuban law had long recognized certain lim-
ited slave rights, particularly the right to coartaci6n, or gradual self-
purchase. There were 2,137 esclavos coartados in 1871, heavily con~
centrated in Havana, where the practice of hiring-out meant that
slaves were more likely to accumulate money, and where officials
to oversee the process were more accessible. 29 Coartaci6n was gen-
27 See Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Social Control in Slave Plantation Societies: A
Comparison of St. Domingue and Cuba IBaltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1971), pp. 43-51.
28 Bienvenido Cano y Federico Zalba, E11ibro de los Sfndicos de Ayuntamiento y
de las Juntas Protectoras de Libertos IHavana: Imprenta del Gobierno, 1875), p. 244.
29 See the discussion of coartaci6n in Chap. I, above, and Resumen general de los

74
 THE MORET LAW

erally supervised by the sfndico, a local functionary appointed to

represent slaves in legal proceedings, later made an ex officio mem-
ber of the Juntas Protectoras. Before 1870 such legal provisions did
little to mitigate the situation of most slaves. But as the climate in
which slavery existed changed, they took on greater significance.
By the 1870s some of the sfndicos, who tended to be Cuban rather
than Spanish, were apparently interpreting their obligations fairly
broadly, a tendency that alarmed both slaveholders and the govern-
ment. In 1872 the government in Havana called them to order. It
had reached the government's attention, the new ruling stated, that
some sfndicos outside of Havana were taking it upon themselves to
resolve issues concerning slaves, exceeding their function of media-
tion and conciliation with masters and representation of slaves in
court. Since according to law these sfndicos were nothing more than
parties charged "honorifically" with the defense of slaves, they
should in the future abstain from exceeding their authority.3D How-
ever, at the same time that the colonial government in Havana was
cautioning the sfndicos not to overstep their mandate, the metro-
politan government in Madrid called on them to protect faithfully
the rights of slaves in order to prevent complaints, citing the large
number of complaints that were reaching Madrid. 31 The government
in Havana seems to have been concerned primarily with control,
the government in Madrid with placating Spanish abolitionists
through an appearance of fairness.
The actual behavior of sfndicos varied, and they provided nothing
like an absolute guarantee of slave rights. Sfndicos were, however,
a resource of sorts. When slaves or their relatives managed to acquire
some money, or were willing to risk greater assertiveness, they could
under certain circumstances turn to the sindicatura in hope of ob-
taining partial concessions.
A few examples illustrate the point. Juan Lucumi was a thirty-
four-year-old free African-born field worker. His wife, Gonzala Lu-
cumi, was a slave on the ingenio Felicia. In June 1874 Juan deposited

esclavos existentes ... , AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4882, tomo 3, expo 39. For an early
discussion of self-purchase by slaves in the United States, see the essay "Buying
Freedom," in Herbert Aptheker, To be Free: Studies in American Negro History (New
York: International Publishers, 1948; second edition, 1968), pp. 31-40.
30 Cano y Zalba, Ellibro, p. 67.
31 Ibid., p. 71. Spanish abolitionists were instrumental in bringing complaints to
the attention of the authorities in Madrid.

75
 CONFLICT, APAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

five hundred pesos in bills with the sindico of Santa Maria del Ro-
sario to obtain Gonzala's freedom. Four months later, having heard
nothing, he appealed to the governor general. It turned out that the
case was stalled while the wife's price was being estimated. The
existence of the sindico did not make it easy for Juan Lucumi to
free his wife, but it provided a first step toward that end. 32
Sheer persistence was often the only weapon available to a slave
faced with an ineffective sindico. Maria de la Merced Montalvo,
born in Africa, considered herself free by virtue of age, since she had
a baptismal record showing that she had been twenty years old in
1830. She obtained a letter of support and appealed to the sindico.
While the case was pending, the sindico wrote to his superiors asking
for a resolution because this woman "never ceased coming to the
sindicatura" to remind him that she had been appealing for her
freedom for over a year.33
In 1878 one authority remarked on the enormous sums of money
that were being taken in by the sindicaturas and described this as
reflecting "the effort of the slave to improve his condition." Between
1873 and 1877 the sindicaturas accepted 3,359 requests for coar-
taci6n, 1,068 requests for reduction in price, and 5,697 requests for
permission to change masters, as well as giving 2,127 grants of free-
dom. The total number of coartados grew accordingly. In 1871 there
had been approximately 2,137; in 1877 there were some 3,531, an
increase of about 65 percent in a period when the slave population
itself had fallen by about 25 percent. Much of this activity, of course,
continued to be concentrated in cities. Forty-two percent of the new
coartaciones were granted in the four districts of the city of Havana,
though that area had contained only about 8 percent of Cuba's slaves
in 1871.34 The greater mobility and resources of slaves in urban areas
were undoubtedly the major determinants of this pattern, but the
attitudes of masters may also have been significant. Hubert Aimes
suggests that, in the last years of slavery, some masters were in-
32 Juan Lucumi al Exmo. Sor. Gobernador General, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 418l.
33 Expediente promovido por la morena Merced Montalvo, esclava de Da. Magdalena
Caravino, ANC, ME, leg. 3814, expo Ak.
34 Expediente promovido por este Gob o Gral para conocer las operaciones practi-
cadas en todas las Sindicaturas de la Isla durante el quinquenio de 1873 a 1877, ANC,
ME, leg. 3814, expo A. For the 1871 slave population see Resumen general de los
esclavos existentes ... , AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4882, tomo 3, expo 39. For 1877 figures
see Fe Iglesias Garcia, "El censo cubano de 1877 y sus diferentes versiones," Santiago
34 (Santiago de Cuba, June 1979): 167-214.

76
 THE MORET LAW

creasingly interested in the steady income coartaci6n could provide

from slaves who worked on their own account and remitted a portion
of their wages. 35 This was likely to characterize urban rather than
rural masters, since the latter tended to be more fearful of the con-
sequences of increased slave autonomy.
The Juntas Protectoras de Libertos, specifically charged with en-
forcing the Moret Law, represented a similar limited commitment
to the "protection" of slaves and libertos. They bore little resem-
blance to parallel institutions such as the Freedmen's Bureau in the
United States or the Stipendiary Magistrates in the British West
Indies. Such institutions characteristically had the double mission
of guarding ex-slaves' interests and insuring a smooth transition by
minimizing disruption in labor. They were therefore ill-equipped to
deal with outright conflicts, and often compromised the interests
of freedmen while at the same time infuriating masters. 36 For the
Juntas Protectoras the second goal so clearly took priority that there
was no real possibility that they would serve as the champions of
slaves. They ruled in favor of individual slaves in some cases in-
volving nonregistration or claims to freedom based on age. But their
aim was not to end the institution of slavery, and they were reluctant
even to undermine it. In contrast to the Freedmen's Bureau or the
Stipendiary Magistrates, half of the vocales appointed to the Cuban
juntas were to be slaveholders. The original vice-president of the
Junta Central was Julian Zulueta, owner of hundreds of slaves and
several major plantations; his successor in 1874 was Francisco Iba-

35 Aimes, "Coartaci6n," p. 423.

36 On the Freedmen's Bureau, see William S. McFeely, Yankee Stepfather. General
O. O. Howard and the Freedmen (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 19681; James
M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality. Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil
War and Reconstruction (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 19641, chap. 8; Louis
S. Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman: Federal Policy toward Southern Blacks,
1861-1865 (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 19731; and Donald Nieman, To
Set the Law in Motion: The Freedmen's Bureau and the Legal Rights of Blacks, 1865-
1868 (Millwood, N.Y.: KTO Press, 19791, as well as numerous articles cited in Nie-
man's bibliography. For my own analysis of some ambiguities of the role of U.S.
Freedmen's Bureau, see Rebecca J. Scott, "The Battle over the Child: Child Appren-
ticeship and the Freedmen's Bureau in North Carolina," Prologue: The Journal of the
National Archives 10 (Summer 19781: 100-13. On the British West Indies, see William
A. Green, British Slave Emancipation. The Sugar Colonies and the Great Experiment,
1830-1865 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 19761; William Law Mathieson, British
Slave Emancipation, 1838-1849 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1932; reprint
ed., New York: Octagon Books, 19671; and Thomas Holt, "The Problem of Freedom:
The Political Economy of Jamaica after Slavery," unpublished.

77
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

nez, the same planter who had expressed concern about the poten-
tially disruptive effects of the Moret Law. 37
Even so, to some slaves the very existence of the juntas suggested
that they might, on their own initiative, raise complaints against their
masters. A representative case suggests both aspects of the situation.
An urban slave named Luisa appealed for her freedom on the grounds
that she was not properly registered. The junta agreed, but her master
intervened to stall the case, and meanwhile sent her to the coun-
tryside, presumably to punish her and to block her access to out-
siders. Her brother, the literate slave of another master, forwarded
an appeal to Madrid on her behalf and won the case. Only with
access to someone literate, urban; and probably quite daring, was
Luisa able to counter her master's obstructionism. 38
The case also illustrates the way in which the existence of a
hierarchy of colonial officials sometimes made it possible for a slave
to challenge an unfavorable junta ruling by addressing an appeal
directly to the ministry of Ultramar. When such appeals did reach
Madrid, the standard procedure was for the minister to query the
governor in Cuba about the particulars of the case. A similar pro-
cedure was followed when a case attained notoriety in the press and
thus came to the attention of the minister through a protest in the
Cortes. This could provoke an inquiry that might reverse a mani-
festly unfair decision or end a series of delays. Since stalling and
noncompliance on the part of masters were major obstacles faced
by those declared free by provisions of the Moret Law, such an
inquiry from above could resolve the issue and produce the long-
sought carta de libertad. 39 The strategy of appealing to higher levels
had its limits, of course, since in the final analysis the ministry's
decision would depend on the information presented by officials in
Cuba. Thus a complaint of mistreatment could reach Madrid, be
referred back to Havana, be sent to the local junta for clarification,
in the end to be simply ruled "groundless" by the junta. Moreover,
on issues connected in a secondary way with freedom, such as the
payment of back wages in cases where freedom had been illegally
37 See Gaceta de 1a Habana (January 29, 1873), for the composition of the Junta
Central and November 28, 1872, for the composition of the Juntas Jurisdiccionales.
Cano y Zalba, E1libro, p. 142, refers to Ibanez.
38 El pardo Faustino, esclavo de Dn. Pedro Prado, solicita la libertad de su hermana
Luisa, esclava de D. Elias Nunez, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4759, expo 74.
39 For cases of appeals by slaves that reached Madrid, see AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4759.

78
 THE MORET LAW

withheld, the petitioner would likely be told to take his or her case
to the regular courts, for it was a judicial matter. 40
The dynamic of raised and frustrated expectations emerges in a
different form in the case of Lazaro, an African slave working on
the potrero San Jose in Havana province. He appealed for his freedom
in the early 1870s on the grounds that he was sixty-six years old.
However, he appeared in the register of 1871 as only forty-six years
of age. Since he was African and had no baptismal record, his age
remained in dispute. The appeal and queries went back and forth
between Madrid and Havana from 1874 to 1880. Meanwhile, in 1875,
Lazaro simply fled from the household of his owner and was never
heard from again.41
The changes of the 1870s encouraged some slaves to pursue old
cases. Jose Le6n appealed for freedom because he had been in Spain
with his master back in 1850, and by law any slave who entered
Spain was free. For his efforts he was kept in the dep6sito judicial
de esclavos for seven years while his case was discussed. A woman
named Catalina Antolines cited a visit to Malaga in 1844. She was
freed, money for her coartaci6n was returned to her, and her masters
were indemnified. Many of those making such appeals were in a
sense an elite among slaves, either because they were domestic ser-
vants or because their own histories had been exceptional. The most
extreme case may be that of D. Adolfo Perez Ferrer. He had been a
slave in Cuba, fled to Mexico, studied medicine there, sent his sav-
ings back to his mother, and now wished to return to Cuba as a free
man to care for her during the insurrection. His remarkable request
was granted on order from Madrid. 42
The establishment of some juntas in rural areas did increase
slightly the chances that field slaves would be able to gain access
to these new means for obtaining freedom. In addressing the juntas,
however, slaves would find themselves in front of a group of local
notables, approximately half of whom were slaveholders.43 It is dif-
40 Morena esclava Felipa Galuzo. Pide su libertad y abono de jomales, AHN, UI-
tramar, leg. 4759, expo 7l.
41 Lazaro, Congo, esclavo en solicitud de carta de libertad, AHN, Ultramar, leg.
4759, expo 98.
42 All three cases were forwarded to Madrid and are in AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4759.
See Libertad del moreno Jose Le6n por haber estado en Espana, expo 97; Sobre libertad
de la morena Catalina Antolines, expo 86; and D. Adolfo Perez Ferrer, esclavo, solicita
un documento para regresar a la isla como libre, expo 99.
43 The juntas were chaired by local colonial officials and included the sindico as
an ex officio member, as well as the vocales, half of whom were slaveholders.

79
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

ficult to generalize about the behavior of the juntas because most

surviving records are of cases appealed from them to Madrid or
Havana. Since these represent the efforts of the dissatisfied party-
slave or master-to obtain a reversal, they reflect less the incidence
of different kinds of treatment than the resources of the different
kinds of losers. It seems generally true, however, that while slaves
who brought complaints before local juntas did on occasion obtain
favorable rulings in cases of exceptionally arbitrary or unfair treat-
ment, they were unlikely to be able to extend their rights beyond a
very literal reading of the law. Yet the very experience of making a
complaint might embolden a slave to take further action, including
an appeal to Havana. 44
The Consejo de Administraci6n, an advisory body composed of
merchants, planters, and professionals, heard such appeals. Its ap-
proach tended to be legalistic, and appellants often became entangled
in regulations and procedures. When the consejo did come to a con-
clusion about a particular case, it usually applied existing rules cau-
tiously, minimizing demands on masters while defending certain
narrow rights of slaves. For example, the consejo in 1876 heard the
case of a slave child named Placida. The child's mother, who lived
in Giiines, had obtained her own freedom, and was now requesting
that her daughter not be sold to a new master in Guanabacoa. She
based her case on the article of the Moret Law that forbade the selling
of slave children younger than age fourteen separately from their
mothers. The consejo, however, ruled that the law applied to the
slave children of slave mothers, and that since the mother had ob-
tained her freedom it did not apply. The child could be sold. 45 Fam-
ilies attempting to obtain freedom with such limited means thus
often faced insurmountable obstacles, but the fact that they made
the attempt reflected the changing situation.
Conflict involving the Spanish government, officials in Cuba, and
slaves themselves also arose from the issue of slave registration. A
new set of registers, drawn up when owners already knew of the

44 These generalizations about the role of the junta are based on an examination
of cases that reached Havana or Madrid. Examples are to be found in AHN, Uitramar,
leg. 4759, and, in greater numbers, scattered through the Miscelanea de Expedientes
in the ANC. In the latter, see in particular legs. 3813, 3814, 3817, 3818, and 3819.
45 Informe del expediente instruido a consulta del Caballero Sfndico 3° de esta

Capital relativa a que si los esclavos menores de 14 arros hijos de madres libres pueden
venderse separados de ell as, ANC, CA, leg. 44, expo 4927.

80
 THE MORET LAW

law freeing slaves over the age of sixty and thus had reason to falsify
ages, was put together in 1871. It vitiated the aim of the original
registration law to deter the acquisition of contraband slaves, which
would have required that only slaves who had been registered in
1866-1867, at the time of the passage of the law, be recognized as
legitimately held. But the 1871 registers for a time supplanted the
earlier lists, much to the satisfaction of owners, who petitioned for
the inclusion of still more slaves. 46
In January 1876, however, a royal order ruled that only those slaves
inscribed in both the 1867 and the 1871 registers were legally en-
slaved and that the rest should be freed. A subsequent order required
that lists be drawn up and displayed publicly, showing which slaves
were in both registers and which were not. Proprietors complained
that this was unfair and disruptive. The lieutenant governor of Pinar
del Rio argued that slaveowners were vulnerable to extortion by
those in a position to "arrange" the registers. Though the legal issue
was clear, and officials were ordered to proceed with the formation
and publication of the registers, the definitive administrative list of
those freed on grounds of nonregistration was not drawn up until
1883, seventeen years after the passage of the law. 47 Years of unpaid
labor had been extracted from those who were to have been freed
at the time of the 1867 census.
Unregistered slaves obviously had not been freed automatically
by the passage of the law, nor was there any guarantee that they
would now obtain their rights. But the mere raising of the issue was
disruptive, and some slaves moved to take advantage of a situation
in which masters were losing their monopoly of authority. What
masters feared was not just the loss of individual slaves, but the
impact of making the evidence so public. Suddenly slaves could be
part of the process of determining who was slave and who was free.
Witness, for example, the case of Carlos, an unusually assertive slave
belonging to D. Julian Ramos, of Cardenas. When Carlos learned of
the law that said that all unregistered slaves were free, he hastened
to see whether he was registered and discovered that he was not. So
46 For requests from masters for the inclusion of new slaves in the registers, see
ANC, ME, legs. 3814-20.
47 Expediente promovido por el T. Gob' de Pinar del Rio, 1878, ANC, ME, leg. 3814,
expo Bj. For a list of those freed in 1883 see Anejo a la carta oficial de fecha 5 de
diciembre de 1883, Relaci6n de los individuos a quienes ... se ha espedido documento
de libertad, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4815, expo 289.

81
 CONFLICT, AQAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

he submitted a petition to the minister of Ultramar, expressing his

delight at being unregistered and asking for his carta de libertad.
As it turned out, he had been registered under the name of his
previous owner, so his request was denied. 48 But it was precisely
this kind of initiative that worried slaveowners. They might be able
to hold the line in disputed cases, but they were not sure how to
deal with changed attitudes and expectations.
The issue of registration illustrates the ambiguous significance of
the Moret Law and its associated regulations. The law provided legal
freedom for the very young and the old and created openings for the
pursuit of freedom by some of working age. But in the context of
highly unequal power relations, when the juntas, the consejo, and
the governor were virtually unanimous on the necessity for main-
taining social peace by minimizing change, it was very difficult for
slaves to give substance to their freedom or their new rights. More-
over, planters holding fast to a system of forced labor took both
formal and informal measures to prevent the rights of slaves from
interfering with the owners' own freedom of action.
For example, two of the traditional rights of slaves who had ob-
tained coartaci6n were the right to work on their own account,
keeping a portion of the wage earned, and the right to change mas-
ters. The civil government reiterated the right to earn wages in a
resolution issued March 8, 1870. But on March 12, the resolution
was suspended "in view of a petition from several planters of this
capital." Then, on May I, 1871, the governor declared that rural
slaves who were coartados did not have the right to change masters.
This was extended in August 1875 to include denial of permission
to seek a new master to rural slaves about to be sold. Finally, in
April 1875, the government ruled that coartados had no right to
receive pay for Sunday and holiday work. 49 These official counter-
measures suggest that slave attempts to make use of coartaci6n may
have been expanding in the countryside, and that both rural masters
and the colonial government were eager to limit their spread. The
measures were also an expression of hostility on the part of some
planters to even such freedom of labor as partial wages or limited
mobility brought.
48 See the letter of "El pardo Carlos 0 Calisto, siervo de Dn. Fabian Barroso," in
AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4759, expo 59.
49 Cano y Zalba, Ellibro, pp. 56-57, 59,304-305.

82
 THE MORET LAW

Masters had multiple concerns about loosening the bonds of slav-

ery. One proprietor argued before the consejo that allowing slaves
to change masters would lead to "corruption," since a competitor
might pay the slave the price of coartaci6n in order to obtain his or
her labor. This would undermine both the sacred right of property
and the "moral force" that he saw as the basis of the "discipline
and subordination" of African slavery in the island. He claimed that
this was all the more dangerous in view of the "politico-social prop-
aganda" and the other tendencies of "revolutionary vertigo" that
afflicted the island. 50
Most Cuban planters acknowledged, at least in theory, that slavery
could not continue indefinitely and that free labor would eventually
become the appropriate basis for the organization of production in
the island. In this they were less rigid than their counterparts in the
u.s. SouthY The outcome of the U.s. Civil War had sobered slave-
holders elsewhere in the New World, and the idea that free labor
would bring development and modernization appealed to Cuban
estate-owners who saw themselves as sugar manufacturers as well
as planters. But their behavior during the period of the Moret Law
reveals their concern not to lose non-economic "moral force" and
their reluctance to accept the competition that would accompany a
genuinely free market in labor.
Thus throughout the 1870s most Cuban slaves remained unequiv-
ocally enslaved. Moreover, planters held the children of slaves on
plantations working without pay, attempted to deny unregistered
slaves access to the lists that would enable them to verify their
status, disputed the ages of the elderly, and lobbied for limitations
even on the traditional entitlements granted to coartados. But slaves
continued to seek their freedom, and the war in the east continued
to create uncertainty and disruption. Furthermore, while the Moret
Law did not immediately alter the structure of the slave labor force
available to planters, the suppression of the slave trade threatened
to do so. Willingly or not, Cuba's planters would have to adapt to a
changing labor force and to changing attitudes and expectations.
50 See the discussion in the case of Maria Jesus Hernandez, parda, esclava, solicita
libertad, AHN, Ultrarnar, leg. 4759, expo 95.
51 On attitudes of U.S. slaveholders toward the prospect of free labor, see James L.
Roark, Masters Without Slaves: Southern Planters in the Civil War and Reconstruc-
tion (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 19771.

83
 IV

Adaptation, 1870-1877

The Cuban planters quite recognise now the probability,

almost certainty, of a coming abolition of slavery. They make
here no organised public objection to its eventual arrivalj
but they demand time, and an immigration of labour
hands under Government sanction and aid, and also a
series of years of preparation of a very gradual description.
"How not to do it!" is their mot d'ordre ...
-British Consul·General Dunlop, Havana, 1871 1

The l870s in Cuba were a period of political and social conflict. The
civil war in the east drained Spanish resources and polarized Cuban
politics. The struggle over the enforcement of the Moret Law-
carried out almost unnoticed in small confrontations between
slaves, masters, juntas, and government officials-helped to under-
mine the established social relations upon which slavery rested. In
the economic realm, however, the decade appears at first to have
been one of relative prosperity. The average annual output of sugar
was up almost 25 percent from the previous ten years, despite a
decline in production in the east. 2
Cuba shipped this sugar to several major markets, the United
States absorbing in 1875 approximately 65 percent, England 16 per-
cent, France 8 percent, and Spain 3 percent. The role of the United
States as importer would continue to grow through the decade. Beet
sugar was becoming a more formidable competitor, with 36 percent
of the world market in 1870, but cane would remain predominant
for the rest of the decade. Most important, sugar prices remained
relatively steady. Average quotations for fair refining sugar in New
York City were 5.36 cents per pound in 1870, and 5.08 cents in 1880.

1 Consul-General Dunlop to Earl Granville, Havana, Jan. 16, 1871. Extract printed
in Anti-Slavery Reporter 18 (Jan. 1, 18731: 95.
2 Moreno, El ingenio 3: 36-37.

84
 ADAPTATION, 1870-1877

Slave prices for the 1870s are difficult to determine, but seem to
have remained relatively high. 3
It can be argued that the mid-1870s represented a turning point,
as the pressures for technical modernization, consolidation, and
heavy investment pushed the industry into crisis. Manuel Moreno
Fraginals asserts that by 1875 Cuban slave plantations "which for
some time had been showing clear signs of crisis, started on the
path to their definite disintegration." He carries the argument a step
further and locates the source of emancipation in this process: "The
'industrial revolution' in the sugar industry also made it necessary
to transform labor relations ... having finally triggered the crisis of
the slave system on which the old ingenio had been based."4
"Crisis" is an elusive concept. Moreover, a crisis of the sugar
industry was not necessarily the same thing as a crisis of slavery,
and would not necessarily bring about abolition. To determine the
links between the economic state of the sugar industry and the
actual process of slave emancipation, one must look directly at the
structure of the slave population and the behavior of planters, slaves,
and other workers. The evidence suggests that, despite the many
pressures on sugar planters and on slavery, within the sugar estates
of the central and western regions the institution of slavery proved
remarkably resilient and adaptable. It appears that the numbers of
slaves in the most productive age groups did not decline dramati-
cally, at least on the larger plantations, and thus the more prosperous
planters were not faced with an immediate crisis of labor supply.
Furthermore, the introduction of technology had by no means au-
tomatically made slavery undesirable to planters, and they did not
behave as if they had given up their attachment to servile labor.
When they needed additional or replacement workers, they made

3 On Cuban exports, see Moreno, El ingenio 3: 76. On beet sugar, see Noel Deerr,
The History of Sugar, 2 vols. (London: Chapman and Hall, 1949·19501 2: 490. On
sugar prices, see Willett and Gray, Weekly Statistical Sugar Trade Journal, Jan. 3,
1896, and "The World's Sugar Production and Consumption," U.S. Congress, 57th
Congress, 1st Sess. (19021, Doc. no. IS, part 7, serial set 4314, p. 2691. On slave prices,
see notes 21·23, below.
4 See Moreno, "Plantaciones," pp. 73, 59. (I have used the English translation of
these quotations from the version of the essay that will appear in Manuel Moreno
Fraginals, Frank Moya Pons, and Stanley L. Engerman, eds., Between Slavery and
Free Labor: The Spanish-Speaking Caribbean in the Nineteenth Century [Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.11 In this essay, Moreno also argues that
the 1880 law of abolition was "merely the de jure recognition ot a situation char-
acterized by the de facto disintegration of the slave system" (p. 801.

85
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

use of a variety of labor forms alongside slavery without repudiating

slavery itself.
This evolution of labor patterns in the 1870s can be understood
only within the framework of Cuba's changing population. The total
slave population fell between 1862 and 1877 by about 46 percent,
leaving somewhat fewer than 200,000 slaves in the island in 1877. 5
The rate of decline varied widely from province to province. Ma-
tanzas and Santa Clara, the major sugar producers and the provinces
with the largest numbers of fully mechanized mills, stand out for
their high rates of persistence of slavery. Along with Pinar del Rio,
a province with one-third of its slaves in sugar and one-third in
tobacco, they show an 1877 slave population of over 60 percent of
that in 1862, despite the decline due to the legal reclassification of
children and the elderly. Havana, the province that contained the
island's major urban area, showed a substantially more rapid decline.
Its slave population in 1877 was less than half that of 1862. Incom-
plete figures on the numbers of slaves on sugar plantations in 1877
suggest that the great bulk of the decline in Havana's slave popu-
lation took place in the city, with much greater persistence on the
plantations. 6 Both Puerto Principe, a cattle-raising area, and Santiago
5 The figures cited in this paragraph and in Tables 10 and 11 are based on several
official tabulations. Those from 1862 are from Cuba, Centro de Estadfstica, Noticias
estadfsticas. They have been compiled into provinces by aggregating jurisdictions,
as described in Chap. I, note 48. To reflect the redistricting done at the time of the
establishment of the six provinces I have reduced the slave population of Havana
province by 8,853, the slave population given for Alacranes district in 1862, and added
that many to Matanzas. I have also added 394 to the slave population of Puerto
Principe and subtracted the same from Santa Clara to adjust for the division of the
jurisdiction of Sancti Spiritus.
Returns from the 1867 slave count are neither reliable nor consistent and are
included here only for the purpose of comparison. They can be found in Resumen
general de los esclavos que segun el censo de 1867 ... existian a la terminaci6n de
ese censo en las jurisdicciones que componian el territorio de la Isla, AHN, Ultramar,
leg. 4884, expo 160. I have moved 9,760 slaves from the province of Havana to the
province of Matanzas, based on the assumption that in 1867 Alacranes held the same
proportion of the slave population of Guines that it had in 1862. In the case of the
Sancti Spiritus redistricting, Mor6n, part of the area transferred, appears as a juris·
diction in the 1867 figures, and can be incorporated directly into Puerto Principe.
The 1871 figures are from Resumen de los esclavos comprendidos en el padr6n de
1871, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4882, tomo 4. They have not been adjusted because the
totals for GUines in 1871 and for the adjacent jurisdiction of Matanzas suggest that
the later formal redistricting is already reflected in the 1871 figures.
The 1877 census has often been considered unreliable, but the article by Fe Iglesias,
"El censo cubano," presents new evidence on the compilation of results and suggests
that in its final revision it was more accurate than previously imagined. I have used
her totals for 1877.
6 For the 1862 figures, see Cuba, Centro de Estadistica, Noticias estadisticas, "Dis·

86
 ADAPTATION, 1870-1877

TABLE 10
Slave Population, 1862-1877

Province 1862 1867 1871 1877

Pinar del Rio 46,027 44,879 36,031 29,129

Havana 86,241 84,769 63,312 41,716
Matanzas 98,496 102,661 87,858 70,849
Santa Clara 72,116 68,680 56,535 42,049
Puerto Principe 14,807 14,889 7,167 2,290
Santiago de Cuba 50,863 47,410 36,717 13,061
Total 368,550 363,288 287,620 199,094
SOURCE: 1862-Cuba, Centro de Estadfstica, Noticias estadfsticas, "Distribuci6n"; 1867-AHN,
Ultramar, leg. 4884, tomo 8, expo 160; 1871-AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4882, tomo 4, "Resumen de
los esclavos ... , 1871"; 1877-Fe Iglesias Garcia, "El censo cubano de 1877 y sus diferentes
versiones," Santiago 34 (June 1979): 167-211.

TABLE 11
Slave Population, 1862-1877
(1862 = 100)
Province 1862 1867 1871 1877

Pinar del Rio 100 98 78 63

Havana 100 98 73 48
Matanzas 100 104 89 72
Santa Clara 100 95 78 58
Puerto Principe 100 101 48 15
Santiago de Cuba 100 93 72 26
Total 100 99 78 54
SOURCES: See Table 10.

de Cuba, an area of backward sugar mills and much small-scale

farming, lost slave population rapidly after 1867. These were the
two provinces most involved in the Ten Years' War, which brought
about the destruction, both direct and indirect, of numerous plan-
tations, the freeing of many slaves in smaller holdings, and the death
or migration of many others (see Tables 10 and 11).
It is apparent that where sugar prospered, slavery persisted. Table
12 ranks the provinces in descending order of their significance and
degree of development as sugar producers (though the positions of
Havana and Pinar del Rio could be reversed, depending on which
tribuci6n." For approximate figures on the population on sugar plantations in Havana
province in 1877, see the summary of the agricultural census in Revista de Agri-
cultura 3 (March 31, 1879): 75.

87
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

TABLE 12
Sugar Production and Slave Population

1860 1860 1862 1877

Total Average Slaves on Slaves as
Sugar Production 1862 Ingenios as Percentage
Production Per Mill Number of Percentage of 1862
(metric (metric Slaves on of Total Slave
Province tonsl tonsl Ingenios Population Population'
Matanzas 265,664 601 72,689 34% 72%
Santa Clara 145,163 368 44,106 15% 58%
Pinar del Rio 38,644 379 16,830 11% 63%
Havana 38,999 310 19,404 5% 48%
Santiago
de Cuba 31,953 161 14,181 6% 26%
Puerto
Principe 15,434 151 5,461 8% 15%
SOURCES: Same as Tables 4, 5, and 10; Cuba, Centro de Estadistica, Noticias estadisticas,
"Distribuci6n."
• Children and the elderly, roughly 20 percent of the earlier slave population, are excluded from
the 1877 count.

measures take priority). Slavery can be seen to have declined most

sharply in the three provinces where sugar was proportionately less
important, and to have persisted in the three provinces with the
highest average product per mill, and where slaves on ingenios had
been between 11 and 34 percent of the 1862 provincial population.
As a result, slavery became increasingly concentrated in the major
sugar zones. Matanzas and Santa Clara had 46 percent of Cuba's
slave population in 1862; by 1877 they had 57 percent. Similarly,
an increasing proportion of Cuba's slaves resided in the countryside.
The 1871 slave lists divided slaves into those on rural estates and
those in domestic service-an imperfect dichotomy, since some ur-
ban slaves did not do domestic work and some domestic slaves did
not live in cities-but one which gives a rough idea of the rural-
urban division. In 1871, 55,830 slaves were counted in domestic
service, and they constituted about 20 percent of the total slave
population of 287,620. By the end of 1879, the governor general,
basing his calculations on 1877 figures, gave the number in domestic
service as 29,992, down to 15 percent of the 200,440 slaves he be-
lieved to exist at the time. 7 Both of these tendencies strongly suggest
7 For the 1862 and 1871 figures, see note 5, above. For 1877, see Telegrama al
Ministro de Ultramar, Nov. 27, 1879, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4882, tomo 5. The revised
total for 1877 was somewhat lower.

88
 ADAPTATION,1870-1877

that the causes of emancipation cannot be found solely within the

sugar plantations, for as emancipation proceeded, these plantations
held proportionately more, not fewer, of Cuba's slaves.
Thus during the 1860s and 1870s, when the "contradictions"
within Cuban slavery were in theory becoming most apparent, the
major sugar areas were nonetheless holding on to most of their
slaves, or acquiring new ones to replace those lost. In Matanzas in
1862 the slave population was around 98,500. About 20 percent of
these slaves would have been either under the age of ten or over the
age of sixty, leaving approximately 78,800 of working age. s In 1877,
as a result of the Moret Law, all slaves were by definition between
the ages of nine and fifty-nine, but there were still about 70,850
slaves in Matanzas. The slave population of working age had fallen
in the intervening fifteen years, but only by around 8,000, or 10
percent, an amount plausibly attributable to deaths and a shift in
the age structure, partially counteracted by some in-migration.
Planters in Cuba's most productive province were not abandoning
slaves or slavery.
The persistence of high levels of slave population in the major
areas of sugar production did not, however, mean that sugar in those
areas was produced entirely with slave labor. Cuba recorded a prod-
uct of 533,800 metric tons of sugar in 1861 and increased output to
over 700,000 tons per year during the late 1860s and early 1870s. 9
Despite a diminishing total slave population, sugar production had
expanded, either through the addition of nonslave workers or
through increases in productivity, or both.
There is abundant evidence of the addition of new workers. Al-
though the island's total population had grown only slightly between
1861 and 1877, the Chinese population had increased 35 percent.
For example, in Santa Clara, whose portion of the island's total sugar
crop continued to increase, the 1877 census listed 13,301 Asians,
twice as many as there had been in 1861; in Matanzas, the total was
8 The figure of 20 percent was arrived at from the age distribution of slaves reported
in 1862, in which 22 percent of slaves were listed as over age sixty or under age 10.
r have assumed that the proportion would be somewhat smaller in a plantation area,
which would have a higher concentration of imported Africans. See Cuba, Centro de
Estadistica, Noticias estadfsticas, "Clasificaci6n por sexos y edades." This estimate
also coincides with the age pyramids derived by Moreno from plantation accounts.
See Moreno, E1 ingenio, 2: 90.
9 Moreno, E1 ingenio 3: 36, 37.

89
 CONFLICT, AD1\PTATION, AND CHALLENGE

TABLE 13
Chinese Population, 1861-1877
Province 1861 1872 1877

Pinar del Rio 2,221 3,396 3,137

Havana 9,456 11,365 10,108
Matanzas 15,782 27,002 20,054
Santa Clara 6,274 15,878 13,301
Puerto Principe 341 297 94
Santiago de Cuba 754 462 422
Total 34,828 58,400 47,116
SOURCE: 186l-Cuba, Centro de Estadfstica, Noticias estadfsticas, "Censo de poblaci6n segun
el cuadro general de la Comisi6n Ejecutiva de 1861"; 1872---Expediente General Colonizaci6n
Asilitica, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 87; 1877-Iglesias, "El censo cubano."

20,054, up from 15,782. For the island as a whole, the figures were
47,116 Asians in 1877 (the majority still under indentures) versus
34,828 in 1861 (see Table 13). The ratio of slave workers to Chinese
in sugar production, however, was still over six to one in 1877. Total
white population had increased by around 22 percent between 1862
and 1877 (more than offsetting a decline of 22 percent in the black
population) and some discharged Spanish soldiers and other immi-
grants could be found working on the plantations. Evidence from
account books and from the 1877 agricultural census nonetheless
suggests that the numbers of whites doing field work on plantations
continued to be relatively small. lO
The question of productivity is more difficult to answer, since
average product per worker is impossible to calculate with confi-
dence on the basis of surviving evidence. However, planters did
introduce new equipment for the boiling-houses of the larger plan-
tations, and were able to increase the total output of sugar without
increasing substantially the acreage planted in caneY Clearly the
10 The 1877 agricultural census, whose figures are only approximate, listed 90,516
slaves, 20,726 "alquilados y libres," and 14,597 Chinese in the dotaciones of sugar
plantations filing reports. The category "alquilados y libres" would seem to indicate
rented slaves and free workers. However, some owners who filed returns apparently
interpreted it to include freed and sometimes nonworking slaves. The category still
only totals 16 percent of the total in the dotaciones. Revista de Agricultura 3 IMarch
31, 1879): 75. Population figures are from the 1862 census and from Iglesias, "EI
censo cubano." For evidence from account books, see below.
11 There were 1,190 ingenios listed in the 1877 agricultural census, claiming 17,701
caballerfas of land under cultivation, as opposed to 1,365 with 20,758 caballerfas in
cane in 1860. It is clear from the detailed returns, however, that some plantations
did not return figures on area planted, so the 1877 total of 17,701 understates the

90
 ADAPTATION,1870-1877

existence of slavery was not incompatible, at least in the short run,

with technological improvements and with the addition of supple-
mentary forms of labor.
The strategy of large planters appears to have been to maintain
control over their slaves, while expanding their labor force in other
ways. Thus the contradictions of Cuban slavery (of which the failure
of the slave population to maintain its numbers was the most urgent)
did not have to impel abolition as such. An observer sympathetic
to Cuban planters noted drily in 1873: "The slave-owners in Cuba
are convinced of the necessity of manumitting their slavesj but
readily as they acknowledge the evils of the slave system, they are
not persuaded of the wisdom of any measure by which it may be
brought to an end." He saw them pursuing a policy of substitution
of free labor for slave, as such became necessary, rather than actual
suppression of the institution of slavery.12
The most distinctive characteristic of the plantation labor force
in the mid-1870s, then, was its diversity. Plantation slaves, rented
slaves, indentured Asians, and black, white, and mulatto wage work-
ers all labored on the estates. Plantation employers did not face a
homogeneous supply of labor, but rather a segmented labor force,
with different forms and quantities of payment due different types
of workers. Wages were paid by the day, the task, the month, the
trimester, or the yearj the amount paid varied widelyj workers some-
times did and sometimes did not receive maintenancej compensa-
tion occurred in coin, bills, credit, goods, or shares. 13
This is the situation that has been interpreted as chaotic, symp-
tomatic of the internal collapse of slavery,I4 But one must look
carefully at the argument that the diversity of forms of labor in the
1870s was indicative of a disintegration of Cuban slavery in the face
of unavoidable contradictions. The argument has at least two parts.
The first part has to do with planters' response to the decline in the

total. For 1860, see Rebello, Estados. For 1877, see "Noticia de las fincas azucareras
en producci6n que existian ... al comenzar el presupuesto de 1877-78 ... ," Revista
econ6mica 2 (June 7, 1878): 7-24, and Revista de Agricultura 3 (March 31, 1879): 75.
12 A. Gallenga, The Pearl of the Antilles, pp. 96, 105.
13 This picture emerges from censuses, account books, and observers' reports. See
the 1877 agricultural census, the plantation records cited below, and the essay, "Es-
tudios de Agricultura: II. El Trabajador, El Jomal," Revista de Agricultura 1 (April
30, 1879): 83.
14 See Moreno, "iAbolici6n 0 desintegraci6n?" and "Plantadones en el Caribe," in
his La historia como arma, pp. 50-117.

91
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

slave trade. Aware that their supply of new slaves was being cut off,
some Cuban planters were taking better care of their existing slaves
and were encouraging reproduction. But, it has been argued, this
policy of IIgood treatment" inevitably led to a decline in the pro-
ductivity of the slave work force as the proportion of the very young
and the very old increased, eventually making the enterprise un-
profitable. Moreno's study of plantation records shows convincingly
that the proportion of slaves of working age did decline on some
Cuban estates through the first half of the nineteenth century.IS (A
parallel process was occurring in some areas of Brazil.l 16 But even if
one accepts the argument that maintaining a self-reproducing slave
labor force was bound eventually to be unprofitable for Cuban plant-
ers-in a way that it was not, for example, for those in the American
South-the question remains: Given the very late cessation of the
contraband slave trade to Cuba, how far had this process actually
proceeded on Cuban plantations by the time of abolition?
We do not have enough surviving plantation slave lists for the
1870s to put together a truly representative sample for the entire
island. For one district, however, there is a very comprehensive
source: the manuscript returns of an 1875 slave count. The district
is Santa Isabel de las Lajas in Santa Clara province. It was a pros-
perous area in the jurisdiction of Cienfuegos, one which contained
both old and new plantations. In 1862 the partido of Lajas had a
slave population of 1,930 and contained seventeen ingenios. In 1875,
when the manuscript listing was drawn up, there were fifteen in-
genios and a slave population of 1,852,17
The strong rate of persistence of slavery in Lajas-a drop of only
about 4 percent in thirteen years-may have been due in part to the
15 Moreno, El ingenio 2: 83-90. He states that the conscious policy of "good treat-
ment," aimed at creating a self-reproducing slave force, was the "most visible symp-
tom of the dissolution of slavery" (p. 901.
16 Stanley J. Stein found in his analysis of the coffee-producing municipality of
Vassouras that the fifteen- to forty-year-old sector of the plantation population
"dropped from a high of 62 per cent of the total labor force in 1830-1849 to 51 per
cent in the succeeding decade, and finally to 35 per cent in the last eight years of
slavery." Vassouras. A Brazilian Coffee County, 1850·1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
vard University Press, 1957; reprint ed., New York: Atheneum, 19741, p. 78.
17 For 1862 figures see Cuba, Centro de Estadistica, Noticias estadisticas, "Censo
de poblaci6n ... por partidos pedlineos," and Enrique Edo y Llop, Memoria hist6rica
de Cienfuegos y su jurisdicci6n 2nd ed. (Cienfuegos: J. Andreu, 18881, appendix, pp.
5, 6. The manuscript slave list for Lajas is in Capitania Pedanea de Santa Isabel de
las Lajas, Numa 3, Padr6n general de esclavos, 1875, ANC, ME, leg. 3748, expo B.

92
 ADAPTATlON,1870-1877

presence there of slaveholders who were also slave traders, and sug-
gests that the district was not typical, even for a sugar area. It does
represent a significant part of a significant region, however, and the
major plantations in the area were owned by such proprietors as
Agustin Goytisolo, an innovator in plantation transportation, Tomas
Terry, a reformist sugar magnate, and the Spanish-owned company
of La Gran Azucarera. Analysis of the slave population of this district
can thus show the kind of labor situation faced by large and small
planters in an important sugar area in the mid-1870s. ls
Of the slaves on ingenios in Lajas in 1875, 58 percent had been
born in Cuba and 42 percent in Africa; 61 percent were male and
39 percent female. It was a population that plainly had relied recently
and heavily on imports, probably during the boom in the contraband
trade in the 1850s. The age structure of the plantation population
is also quite striking, considering the date-just five years before
legal abolition. It was not an aged population: while 28 percent were
between ages thirty-one and forty, only 6 percent were between ages
fifty-one and sixty, even though one might have expected this latter
group to include some slaves over age sixty whose ages had been
falsified by their masters to evade the Moret Law. Nor was there a
high proportion of young slave children. Those born since September
1868 were technically free, and those between ages six and ten con-
stituted only 7.5 percent of the population. Even though those born
since 1868 were still the responsibility of the plantation, the total
burden was probably relatively small, for in some instances slave
parents maintained their liberto children directly, or later reim-
bursed the master for their maintenance. What is most significant
is that the sixteen-to-forty age group, of prime working age, consti-
tuted fully 63 percent of the plantation slave population, and 66
percent of the males (see Table 14 and the accompanying figure).
It is clear that this was potentially a quite productive population.
One hundred percent of the legally enslaved population was between
ages six and sixty-the Moret Law had streamlined it that much.
And between those limits, the population was further weighted to-
ward those of working age. The largest single group consisted of
males thirty-one through thirty-five, followed closely by males
thirty-six through forty and twenty-six through thirty. Lajas plan-
18 Names of owners are given in the slave list. Further information on Terry can
be obtained from Ely, Comerciantes cubanos, chap. 5.

93
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

TABLE 14
Ages of Slaves on Ingenios in Santa Isabel de las Lajas, 1875

Age Male Slaves Female Slaves All Slaves Percentage of Total

6-10 49 51 100 7.5%

11-15 56 61 117 8.8%
16-20 51 58 109 8.2%
21-25 108 69 177 13.3%
26-30 120 64 184 13.8%
31-35 132 72 204 15.3%
36-40 124 46 170 12.8%
41-45 69 44 113 8.5%
46-50 45 24 69 5.2%
51-55 31 15 46 3.5%
56-60 29 10 39 2.9%
61-65" 2 1 3 .2%
Total 816 515 1,331 100.0%
SOURCE: ANC, ME, leg. 3748, expo B. Capitanfa Pedanea de Santa Isabel de las Lajas, Nl1m. 3,
Padr6n general de esdavos, 1875.
"All of those under 6 or over 60 should legally have been free under the Moret Law. Some of
those age 6 were free.

tations were not carrying a terrible burden of young and old slaves.
Masters were not sustaining the full cost of reproduction of their
work force. They were still operating with a carefully selected labor
force built up primarily through purchase. The difficult future of
slavery now that the trade had ended was apparent in the small

65
60
55
~ "'1 I
I
50
45
I I
40
I I
35
I I
ID

!i 30
I I
25
I I
20
I I
15
I I
10
I I
5
I I
0
I I
10 -0 - 5 10
Males Percentage Females

Age pyramid of slaves on ingenios

in Santa Isabel de las Lajas, 1875
In = 1,331).

94
 ADAPTATION,1870-1877

number coming up through the ranks-there were less than half as

many males aged eleven through twenty as aged twenty-one through
thirty-but the full effects of this would not be felt for a number of
years. "Good treatment," if such there were in Lajas, had not had
time to create either a self-reproducing slave population or one filled
with young and old slaves.
The Lajas plantations did vary among themselves. The small in-
genio of Destino, for example, with just twenty-eight slaves, was
primarily Creole, and over half of its population was under age
twenty-five. San Agustin, by contrast, with 110 slaves, was predom-
inantly African, and only about a quarter of its population was under
age twenty-five. To understand better the differences among plan-
tations, one can rank by size the Lajas ingenios for which there are
complete age data (see Table 151. One finds that all four of the
predominantly African plantations were among the largest, although
there were also two large plantations with majority Creole popu-
lations. All of the smaller plantations were predominantly Creole,
probably, though not necessarily, reflecting fewer recent purchases
of slaves. The percentage of the slave population that was between
ages sixteen and forty also correlates slightly with size: on the six
larger plantations, an average of 66 percent were between those ages;
on the seven smaller, 56 percent. The large Caracas plantation stands
out in the census, with fully 64 percent of its slave population con-
centrated between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five, and 82
percent of those slaves African.
Although they were also using some Chinese laborers, free work-
ers, and rented slaves, sugar plantations in Lajas remained heavily
committed to slavery into the mid-1870s. Indeed, if one can trust
the ambiguous figures from the 1877 agricultural census, it appears
that the large Lajas plantations may have relied more heavily on
slave labor than the small ones. Five of the six larger estates had a
total of 701 slaves, 161 alquilados y libres (which could include
rented slaves and libertos as well as free workers I, and 89 Asians in
their dotaciones in 1877, while six of the seven smaller estates held
235 slaves and 105 alquilados y libres. Further, all of the large plan-
tations appear to have maintained or increased their slave holdings
between 1875 and 1877, while on all of the smaller estates the
number of slaves declined 19 (see Table 151.
19 See Table 15 and "Noticia de las fincas," p. 13. Armantina and Manaca, excluded

95
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

TABLE 15
Populations on Specific Ingenios, Santa Isabel de las Lajas, 1875, 1877

1875 1877
Age Free &
[ngenio Slaves African Male 16-40 Slaves Rented' Chinese
Santa Susana 283 43% 59% 56% n.d. n.d. n.d.
Santa Catalina 181 51% 59% 66% 204
Caracas 154 66% 64% 71% 198 97
San Agustin 110 54% 61% 65% 113 19
Amalia 94 19% 48% 70% 102 29
San Isidro 84 60% 71% 89% 84 45 60
Sacramento 78 13% 68% 60% 70 20
Dos Hermanos 77 47% 77% 48% 68 30
California 62 2% 44% 47% n.d. n.d. n.d.
Adelaida 38 40% 68% 63% 35 16
Santa Elena 32 31% 63% 53% 30 10
Maguaraya 30 43% 63% 57% 23 17
Destino 28 29% 79% 79% 9 12
SOURCE: Columns 1 through 4, same as Table 14; columns 5 through 7, "Noticia de las fincas,"
Revista econ6mica, June 7, 1878, p. 13 .
• This column must be considered only an estimate. In some cases, due to an apparent mis-
understanding by those filling out the returns, some young and elderly libertos were included in
the category "alquilados y libres," though they may not have been actual workers on the estate.

Clearly, then, large planters in Lajas were not yet facing an internal
collapse of slavery. Though the demographic structure of their slave
populations indicated trouble ahead, meaning that free laborers
would have to be attracted sooner or later, this implied a theoretical
acceptance of an eventual transition, not a willingness to give up
control over the existing work force. In fact, hacendados in Cien-
fuegos, the jurisdiction in which Lajas was located, held meetings
during the 1870s to oppose the immediate abolition of slavery.:w
The evidence available concerning Cuban slave prices also gives
grounds for caution against too quick an assumption of internal
collapse. Though there do not yet exist sufficiently complete series
of slave prices to permit confident generalization about the trends
of the market, it is clear that prices remained relatively high in the
1870s. An American journalist visiting Santa Clara in 1873 reported
the price of an able-bodied slave at $1,500 and "becoming dearer
from the comparison because their 1875 slave data are incomplete, had 122 slaves,
17 "alquilados y libres." Data are missing for Santa Susana and California in 1877.
20 Edo y Llop, Memoria, p. 629.

96
 ADAPTATION,1870-1877

every day."2l The British consul estimated slave prices at the begin-
ning of the decade at 500 to 650 pounds. 22 Hubert Aimes cites figures
of $2,000 in 1872, $1,500 to $2,000 in 1873, and $1,600 in 1875 for
Ladino slaves. 23 Similarly, slave rental prices seem to have remained
constant and even risen at times. 24 These high labor costs presented
a serious problem for planters, in the face of stagnant sugar prices,
but they hardly signal a decay of slavery, if by that one means in-
ternal collapse and the rejection by planters of slave labor. 25
A second part of the argument for the internal dissolution of slav-
ery rests on the concept of slaves as instruments of production whose
productivity depended on brute strength and coercion alone and who
were therefore unsuited to certain kinds of skilled labor and became
rapidly less valuable once they became physically less capable. 26 But
is this indeed how slaves behaved-or even how they were viewed
by planters?
In a pamphlet addressed to the Spanish minister of Ultramar in
1868, an owner of 300 slaves in Cuba estimated the average value
of male slaves thirty-one to fifty years old as higher than that of
slaves sixteen to thirty, remarking that in the older group were those
with skills, such as machinists, carpenters, masons, blacksmiths,
paileros (those who worked with open boiling pans in sugar proc-
essingL etc.27 To corroborate this portrait would require the analysis
of a large sample of sale prices and tasaciones (legal appraisals of
price) in order to determine the influence of various factors on the

21 O'Kelly, The Mambi-Land, p. 64.

22 See Thomas, Cuba, p. 256. See also John V. Crawford to A. H. Layard, May 15,
1873, in B. M. Ms. Layard Papers, Add. ms. 39000, fol. 139v. Crawford writes from
Havana: "The prices of negro slaves are very high."
23 Aimes, A History, p. 268.
24 On the ingenio Delicias, for example, prices paid for slave rental remained rel-
atively constant at 11 pesos per month through the 1870s, though they rose for short-
term rentals in 1878. Libro Diario del Ingenio Delicias, Aiios 1872-1882, ANC, ML,
10802. Monthly rental for slaves on the ingenio Santa Rosa in 1876 was 17 pesos, as
it was on the ingenio Concepci6n in Matanzas in 1878-1879. ANC, Bienes Embar-
gados, leg. 201, expo 5 and leg. 206, expo 7.
25 A good example of the use of slave prices to analyze the decline of slavery is
Jaime Reis, "The Impact of Abolitionism in Northeast Brazil: A Quantitative Ap-
proach," in Vera Rubin and Arthur Tuden, eds., Comparative Perspectives on Slavery
in New World Plantation Societies (New York: New York Academy of Sciences,
1977), pp. 107-22. See also Moreno, Klein, Engerman, "The Level and Structure."
26 See the earlier discussion of the assumption of a contradiction between slavery
and technology in Chap. I, above.
27 Exposici6n del Exmo. Senor Conde de Vega Mar . .. (Madrid: T. Fortanet, 1868),
in AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4759.

97
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

market value of slaves. But even taken by itself the statement sug-
gests that a slave work force with an age structure similar to that
found in Lajas was not necessarily experiencing sharply declining
productivity, and that planters did not invariably view slave labor
as "brute II labor.
More important is the direct evidence that slaves were used ex-
tensively in the large, advanced mills. The ingenio Espana, for ex-
ample, was one of the most advanced plantations in Cuba in the
1870s. Its work force in 1873 was composed of 530 slaves, 86 Asians,
and just 19 whites. That is, the work force was over 80 percent slave,
and 97 percent unfree labor, if the Chinese were, as is likely, inden-
tured. 28 The ingenio Alava, whose technological apparatus Moreno
has used to illustrate the industrial revolution on Cuban plantations,
reported in 1877 a dotaci6n of 550 slaves and 71 Asians. Though it
undoubtedly employed some salaried workers, slaves clearly re-
mained the basis of its operations. 29 The Las Canas plantation has
been described as "Cuba's most modern mill in 1850" which "up
to 1880 ... kept adding new machinery in a continuous process of
renovation. Its work force in 1873 numbered 450 slaves, 230 Asians,
II

and 27 whites. Again, the number of free white workers was very
small, and they held the same jobs they had always held on Cuban
plantations: administrator, mayordomo, machinist, and so forth. On
Las Canas, the Asians do seem to have been treated differently from
slaves, and they were concentrated in the processing sector. 30 These
examples do not really test the claim that technological advance-
ment encouraged a shift to free labor-for that, one would need
reliable statistics on the work forces of a cross-section of Cuban
plantations and detailed information on the internal division of la-
bor, data that do not appear to have survived. But the examples do
suggest that technological advancement did not require the exten-
sive use of fully free labor. One could go further and argue that the
only substantial concession to the supposed !lecessity of a shift to
28 Fermin Rosillo y Alquier, Noticias de dos ingenios y datos sabre 1a producci6n
azucarera de 1a isla de Cuba (Havana: El Iris, 1873).
29 See "Noticia de las £incas," p. 11. Espana, Alava, and Las Canas were all located
in Matanzas province.
30 Moreno's description of Las Canas as "Cuba's most modem mill" can be found
in The Sugarmill, pp. 124-25. Figures on the work force are from Rosillo, Noticias.
Observations on the treatment of the Chinese are from Juan Perez de la Riva, "Du·
vergier de Hauranne," p. 107.

98
 ADAPTATION, 1870-1877

free labor made on many major Cuban plantations in the 1870s

involved the employment of a relatively small number of Chinese
workers, many of whom were still held under indentures. The rea-
sons for the use of Chinese indentured workers in mechanized mills
were complex, and need not be seen as inherent to their status as
juridically free labor nor as evidence of a contradiction between slave
labor and mechanization.
There is no question, however, but that planters were adapting.
They did need new workers to make up for the decline in the slave
work force, and if these workers could be hired for specific tasks,
including technical ones, rather than bought, all the better. However,
this was not the same thing as wanting fully free wage laborers to
perform these tasks, and it was a long way from wanting a fully free
wage labor force or abandoning already purchased slaves. Through-
out the period one sees a conflict between the search for new forms
of labor and an allegiance to the old methods of dealing with labor-
an allegiance stemming not from mere traditionalism, but from a
need and a desire to maintain certain kinds of social and economic
control.
An outstanding example of this conflict was the institution of the
Chinese cu a drill a, or gang. Chinese workers who had served out
their terms, or had escaped from their masters, were often grouped
together into cuadrillas by entrepreneurs, themselves Chinese, and
hired out. Duvon Corbitt describes these cuadrillas, which first ap-
peared in 1870:
Under this arrangement the chief of the gang ... would enter into a contract
with the owner of a sugar mill or other establishment for a certain piece of
work. The chief not only supervised the work of his fellow countrymen,
but he also arranged for their food and lodging. The Chinese cuadrilla proved
to be especially useful in the hot and difficult work of the evaporating rooms
of the sugar mills. 31
This, finally, was a form of wage labor, economically very distinct
from the coercive individual "contracts" under which the Chinese
first worked. The flexibility it provided planters is suggested by a
classified advertisement in a Matanzas paper in 1870: "A gang of
Asians seeks work in the countryside, either by month or for the
harvestj able to provide the number of workers requested."32
31 Corbitt, A Study of the Chinese, p. 91, citing Antonio Chuffat Latour.
32 Aurora del Yumurf, Matanzas, Oct. 18, 1870.

99
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

However well suited to certain requirements of sugar production,

though, this arrangement was not entirely compatible with the
maintenance of forced labor elsewhere in the system. Contractors
were accused of accepting runaway coolies into their gangs, and thus
undermining planters' control over their indentured workers. One
Chinese witness before the Commission of Enquiry described the
response of the authorities in his case:
holding a cedula, I procured for the owner of a plantation 20 laborers, all
of whom possessed a similar document. Nevertheless the police accused
me of hiring men whose terms of contract service had not been completed,
seized me, deprived me of $ 70 in silver and $200 in paper, demanded another
$200 as the price of my release, and, as I was unable to pay it, placed me
in prison. 33
The interests of control took precedence over those of economic
flexibility, and at the end of 1871 the captain general forbade the
use of such gangs. 34 The approach of the government and of planters
continued to be one of compulsion, not one of free labor and mo-
bility. Chinese not under contract to a specific master were often
confined in municipal dep6sitos centrales in an effort to prevent
them from behaving like free workers. These depots, similar to those
in which runaway slaves were held, also became contracting agen-
cies, hiring out Chinese workers to individual employers and to
government projects under a prison-like discipline. 35
During most of the 1870s, the majority of Chinese laborers were
still serving out their original contracts or second contracts into
which they had been lured or coerced. A padr6n drawn up by the
Comisi6n Central de Colonizaci6n in 1872 counted 58,400 Chinese
in Cuba, of whom about 34,400 were serving out their contracts.
Some 7,000 had fled their masters, about 1,300 had fled and were
held in dep6sitos, and 900 were in dep6sitos pending recontracting.
Only about 14,000 were free, either naturalized or as foreign subjects.
By 1877, though, the proportion had become more equal: there were
about 25,200 "Asiaticos colonos" and 21,900 "Asiaticos cumplidos,"
corresponding roughly to indentured and free (see Table 16). In the
same year, Spain signed the Treaty of Peking with China, halting
the further emigration of Chinese workers to Cuba under contract. 36
33 China, Report of the Commission, p. 56.
34 Corbitt, A Study of the Chinese, p. 9l.
35 See China, Report of the Commission.
36 On the treaty, see Corbitt, A Study of the Chinese, p. 72.

100
 ADAPTATION,1870-1877

TABLE 16
Status of the Chinese Population, 1872 and 1877
Status 1872 1877

Under contract 34,408 (59%) 25,226 (54%)

Free" 14,064 (24%) 21,890 (46%)
Runaways 7,036 (12%)
Runaways held in depOsitos 1,344 (2%)
Cumplidos in depOsitos, pending recontracting 864 (1%)
In jails or prisons, or pending trial 684 (1%)
Total 58,400 47,116
SOURCES: Same as Table 13.
"In 1877 the category used is "cumplidos," meaning those who had fulfilled their
contracts.

Both slavery and the use of indentured Chinese workers made

labor costs to a large extent a form of fixed capital, maintained year-
round regardless of seasonal variation in the need for labor. The use
of contracted gangs of free workers provided greater flexibility but
risked undermining control over those in whom an investment had
already been made-as in the case of the cuadrillas and runaways.
One way to modify the structure of labor costs, without threatening
existing arrangements, was to make a more flexible lise of existing
slaves by renting slaves from other owners. This was a common
recourse for planters in the 1870s.
The records of the ingenio Delicias reflect this pattern. In the
1870s a few free persons of color were employed on Delicias, and
were paid about seventeen pesos a month. But there were far more
rented slaves, whose masters were usually paid eleven pesos a month
for them.37 The rental of field slaves-in contrast to hiring-out by
coartados who kept part of their earnings-permitted the shifting
of labor to areas of greatest profitability but did not weaken slavery
as an institution nor loosen the constraints on slaves, though it did
undermine claims to a paternalistic bond between master and slave.
Immigrant labor-white, black, Asian, or Mexican Indian-was
another alternative. Throughout the 1870s, different sources of for-
eign labor were discussed, and individual entrepreneurs undertook
various efforts at importation. But a notable feature of the immi-
gration and colonization schemes proposed and carried out in Cuba
in this decade was their similarity to slavery. Francisco Diaz Tor-

37 Libra Diario del Ingenio Delicias, ANC, ML, 10802.

101
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

riente requested and was granted permission by the colonial gov-

ernment in 1871 to import Mexican workers on six-year contracts.
Their contracts included an agreement by the worker to go anywhere
he was sent and to submit to the prevailing system of punishment.
He was to be paid just four pesos a month plus maintenance and
was required to acknowledge that he accepted this wage, even if it
were below those prevailing in Cuba, because of the advantages of
the contract. The scarcity of slaves, particularly following a recent
cholera epidemic, was cited in government discussions as a reason
for approving the immigration of Mexicans. The "pacific" nature of
Yucatecans, in contrast to Asians, was also invoked. 38
Recruiters expected Spanish workers to accept similar conditions.
The Sociedad Colonizadora in Sagua la Grande sought workers be-
tween the ages of twenty-two and forty in Spain, but offered them
contracts that obliged them to submit to the "regimen correctivo"
obtaining on plantations and to allow the holding back of fifty pesos
from their wages to insure compliance with the four years of the
contract. Wages were to be ten pesos monthly, and workers would
be granted small plots to work on their own time and fifteen pesos
toward return passage at the end of the term of service. 39 Daunting
as these conditions were, some Spaniards did respond, as can be seen
in the substantial volume of Spanish immigration and in individual
appeals to the government in Madrid for passage to Cuba. 40
Military colonization was another alternative, recommended for
its political virtues as well as its discipline. An article in the Se-
manario Militar of 1873-1874 argued that combatting the insurrec-
tion had essentially become a war of "reconquest" and that military
colonization was one way to guarantee loyalty.41 But only in a mod-
ified form, in the release of some soldiers for work on plantations,
was it adopted in the 1870s.
Another way to combine the economic flexibility of free labor
38 Expediente general de colonizaci6n mejicana, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 90, expo 39.
39 Request for authorization from D. Joaquin Espin6s y Julian, Valencia, April 25,
1874, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 91.
40 See, for example, Solicitud de Man! Aguado Martinez pidiendo pasar a Ultramar
en clase de colono, Jan. 11, 1873, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 91. There are also lists of
immigrants in the same 1egaio. On the overall volume of Spanish immigration, see
Carlos Trelles, Bib1ioteca hist6rica cubana, 3 vols., 2 IMatanzas: Andres Estrada,
1924): 360-61, and Duvon Corbitt, "Immigration in Cuba," Hispanic American His-
torical Review 221May 1942): 280-308.
4! "Colonizaci6n de la Trocha del Este," E1 Semanario Militar, 1873, 1874. Found
in BNE, Manuscritos, 13228, fol. 225, Papeles relativos a las Provincias de Ultramar
coleccionados por D. Eugenio Alonso y Sanjurjo.

102
 ADAPTATION, 1870-1877

with the coercion of slavery was to lease convicts from the govern-
ment. Evidence of the use of convicts on plantations is abundant.
In the personal histories of prisoners of the 1870s and early 1880s,
plantations appear as places to which one is condemned, from which
one escapes, or in which one dies. The mulatto Jose Barrera, for
example, convicted for robbery, was condemned to three years in
prison, part of which he served on the ingenio Josefita. But convict
labor presented many of the same problems of control as slave labor.
Barrera tried to flee not only from Josefita but also from the ingenio
El Banco, from a quarry, and from road work. 42 The convicts' hos-
tility toward plantation work was reflected in their repeated at-
tempts at flight and also in the vivid example of Lino Portilla of
Matanzas, who attempted in 1878 to commit suicide rather than be
transferred to an ingenio. 43
To the government and to employers eager for labor, these were
disadvantages that could be overlooked. When Jorge Desage appealed
to the government for permission to employ eighteen convicts on
the ingenia Majana, the lieutenant governor of Jarnco thought this
a good arrangement and reported that convicts had been substituted
for slaves on that plantation for some time without any apparent
disorder.44
Plantation records further reveal the range of adaptations under-
taken on Cuban ingenias in the 1870s, and convey a sense of the
nature and tempo of change. The work force of the ingenio Angelita,
for example, owned by J. A. Suarez Argudin and located in the ju-
risdiction of Cienfuegos, was enumerated several times between
1868 and 1877. On June 10, 1868 the plantation had 414 slaves, 20
"empleados e operarios de la finca" (employees and operatives of the
estate), most of them white, and 35 colon as, meaning in this case
indentured Chinese laborers. Additional Chinese workers arrived
later that month. In 1870 cholera caused many deaths, and by Sep-
tember of that year the dotaci6n consisted of 397 slaves and 58
Asians. Children and the elderly legally freed by the Moret Law do
not appear to have been excluded from the totals 45 (see Table 17).
Another document lists the work force in 1877, and an accom-
42 Carlos de Urrutia y Blanco, Los criminales de Cuba y D. !os~ Trujillo (Barcelona:
Fidel Gir6, 1882), p. 169.
43 Ibid., p. 23l.
44 Expediente promovido por D. Jorge Desage ... , 1874, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4179.
45 Libro Diario del Ingenio Angelita de la propiedad de Sr. J. A. Argudin, ANC, ML,
11536.

103
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

panying inventory confirms the impression that it was a well-mech-

anized plantation, complete with steam-powered grinding apparatus
and vacuum pans, centrifuges, and montajugos as well as the older
Jamaica trains for processing. By this date the number of slaves had
fallen to 247, and because of the Moret Law, 37 libertos over the
age of sixty and 29 children under eight years of age were not
counted, though they were clearly still part of the plantation pop-
ulation. The total comparable to the 1871 figure of 397 would thus
be 313, a drop of 84, or 21 percent, in six years.46
The 1877 work force also included eight free negros acomodados,
all apparently former slaves of Suarez Argudin, earning between 8.50
and 34 pesos per month, and six rented slaves, for whom the estate
paid 16 pesos a month. There were now 44 empleados, including
the usual 20 or so white employees (administrators, overseers, ar-
tisans) and also about 20 movilizados, soldiers presumably stationed
on the plantation or released for employment there. Their numbers,
however, fell sharply thereafter, and there were only three movili-
zados left in December of the same year. A new category, partidario
(sharecropper), had appeared by 1877, and included 11 heads of fam-
ily. There were 45 colonos asiaticos employed at the time of the
count, and at harvest time additional gangs of Asians were hired to
cut cane47 (see Table 18).
Despite the increased complexity and variety of the work force
on Angelita by 1877, the importance of the nucleus of 247 slaves
between nine and sixty years of age remains apparent. The share-
croppers, though included in the plantation population, seem pri-
marily to have been engaged in supplying food to the plantation
rather than working in cane, though the evidence is not unequivocal.
The increase in the number of free workers suggests that they were
making inroads into some areas previously dominated by slaves, but
it seems unlikely that either the temporary movilizados or the share-
croppers were performing any of the more technical tasks. Nor does
it seem likely that all of the Asians were in the more mechanized
sectors, since this too was a fluctuating population, often rented out
from the dep6sito and prone to flight. In short, it seems that at
Angelita it was not the introduction of technology but the death of

46 Libro Diario del Ingenio Angelita Argudin, 1877, ANC, ML, 10789.
47 Ibid.

104
 ADAPTATION, 1870-1877

TABLE 17
Work Force on the Ingenio Angelita, June 1868

EMPLOYEES SLAVES
Administrator Tachero (works the tacho, 212 males
Doctor or boiling pan) 202 females
Overseer Sugarmasters (2)
Mayordomos (2) Mason Total = 414 (all ages)
Machinist Montero COLONOS (Chinese laborers)
Cattle handlers (2) Asian, job unspecified 35
Carpenters (3)
Distiller Total = 20 GRAND TOTAL = 469
(2 illegible)
SOURCE: ANC, ML, 11536, Libro Diario del ingenio "Angelita" de la propiedad de Sr. J. A. Argudfn,
1868-71, pp. 1-13.

TABLE 18
Work Force on the Ingenio Angelita, January 1877

EMPLOYEES SLAVES
Administrator Montero 126 males
Mayordomo Messenger 121 females
Accountant Head of the Total = 247 (excludes 29
Overseer volunteers children and 37 elderly)
Cattle-handler Movilizados (23)
Overseer of the Sugarmaster COLONOS (Chinese laborers)
batey Tachero 45
Person in charge Plowmen (2)
of colonos Total = 44 OTHERS
Nurse (male) Free blacks, jobs unspecified (8)
Machinist Rented slaves, owned by
Carpenter administrator (6)
Mason Sharecroppers (ll, plus 93
Barrel-makers (2) family members)
Overseer of the
potrero GRAND TOTAL = 361 (or 454 including sharecropper families)
SOURCE: ANC, ML, 10789, Libro Diario del Ingenio Angelita Argudfn, 1877, pp. 2, 3, 17, 18.

slaves-and the necessity of replacing them-that initially brought

the increased use of free labor.
After 1877, the decline in forced labor at Angelita accelerated.
Asians persisted in fleeing, and replacements were not always avail-
able. Slaves became more likely to buy their freedom. While in the
late 1860s such purchases were infrequent (just one man and his
daughter obtained their freedom between June 1868 and September
1870), by the late 1870s they had become more common. In February

105
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

1878 four women and two children freed themselves, apparently

after having visited the sindico (protector of slaves) to have their
prices set. In April, Secundina, a thirty-year-old Creole, paid 750
pesos for herself and another 187 to free her liberto children. That
same month the slave Gervasia went to Cienfuegos to have her price
set at 700 pesos, and in August her mother, Jacoba Lucumi, aged
fifty, made a down payment of 500 pesos on that amount. As this
was going on, the plantation also began to increase the rewards given
to slaves. At the beginning of the 1878 grinding season tobacco,
token amounts of money, and bread were distributed. 48
Reading through the daybook, one gets the sense that relations
within the plantation were shifting; slaves, particularly women,
found ways to buy their freedom, and the plantation increased its
use of monetary incentives. Raising crops and pigs to sell to the
plantation was a major source of money, and pigs were particularly
significant. Sometimes raised on halves with the estate, sometimes
independently, they brought in substantial sums when sold-from
the twelve pesos paid to Silvestre in February 1877 to the forty-seven
pesos paid to Juan de Mata some months later. Both women and
men were involved in this business, as noted in November 1878,
when piglets were given to be raised on halves to "Margarita lucumi,
Martin prieto, y Carlota la lavandera."49 When the plantation ac-
cepted 700 pesos from a slave as payment for freedom, it was thus
recouping some of what had been paid to that slave for goods pro-
duced, as well as amortizing part of the investment in the slave.
The master might well come out ahead. But a circuit of money
exchanges had now been introduced to replace a relation of direct
control-and not necessarily entirely at the planter's initiative.
Some money for the purchase of freedom may well have come
from wages paid to other members of the estate's population. The
daybook of Angelita records the births of at least two children de-
scribed as Asiatic" to women slaves-one of whom purchased her
1/

freedom shortly thereafter. It seems possible that in such cases

money for self-purchase, or for purchase of the children's full free-
dom, came from the father as well as the mother. 50 As the estate
came to employ more free male workers, these men provided visible
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid. See pp. 34, 162, 182, and 252, among others, for references to pigs.
50 Ibid., pp. 130, 136.

106
 ADAPTATION, 1870-1877

evidence of the possibility of freedom, as well as contributing funds

for their partners' and children's freedom_
The records of other plantations in the 1870s show many of the
same characteristics. There were multiple forms of labor around a
diminishing core of slave workers; "gratuities" were increasingly
paid to slaves; the rental of slaves and the contracting of Asians
provided additional flexibility. But none of these adaptations sug-
gests a forthright repudiation of slavery, only a step-by-step adap-
tation as masters were forced to seek supplementary forms of labor
and some modifications of the slave regime. The moves toward
monetary compensation, moreover, do not appear to be closely cor-
related with work on machinery-money was as likely to be used
simply as a bonus for Sunday work, or a general incentive at the
beginning of the harvest. 51 Indeed, the repudiation of forced labor in
this period comes not from planters but from the slaves and Chinese
indentured laborers themselves, through self-purchase and through
flight.
Cuban slaveholders by the late 1870s demonstrated a diminishing
emotional attachment to the formal institution of slavery, and the
possibility of abolition no longer put them up in arms. The Moret
Law and demographic patterns were pushing in the same direction.
There were not enough future slave workers to replenish the system;
new sources and forms of labor had to be found.
This decay of slavery in the 1870s must, however, be interpreted
with great care. Young and elderly slaves were freed by decree;
others, particularly in the cities and in the east, obtained their free-
dom through litigation or self-purchase; and many slaves died or
became free as a result of war. The gaps thus created were often
filled with free workers. But although mixed work forces were com-
mon, it does not seem to be true that plantations were generally
driven to repudiate unfree labor because of a decline in the quality
of their slave labor force resulting from an excess of the young and
the aged, as has sometimes been argued. 52 Plantations with available
capital had often purchased Africans in the last years of the slave
51 Other daybooks and slave lists for the 1870s include: Libro con la dotaci6n de
esclavos del ingenio La Crisis, APSS, Valle-Iznaga, leg. 27; Libro Diario del Ingenio
Delicias, ANC, ML, 10802; Libro Diario al parecer de un ingenio, ANC, lVlL, 10806;
and Libro Mayor del ingenio Nueva Teresa, 1872-1886, ANC, ML, 11245.
52 For an example of this argument see Moreno, Abolici6n 0 desintegraci6n./1
/I

107
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

trade, and still had substantial dotaciones of young and middle-aged

African and Creole slaves, not due for freedom under the Moret Law
for years. Thus a core of slaves of working age continued to be held
in bondage in the major sugar areas, helping to maintain high levels
of production despite the sharp drop in the total number of slaves.
In the light of the regional pattern of the decline of slavery, and
of the continued reliance of highly mechanized and highly capital-
ized plantations on slave labor, it also seems appropriate to view
with some skepticism the notion of a rigid technological contradic-
tion that impelled abolition. Indeed, perhaps the greatest danger in
the idea of such a contradiction is the false image it may create of
a force that mechanically brings about the destruction of a social
system. For as striking as the contradictions within the slave system
are, it is also clear that the process of emancipation took place at
several removes from them, and played itself out in a complex dy-
namic of human initiative and response. Moreover, the improvisa-
tions developed to deal in the short run with the contradictions
often succeeded in prolonging the slave system's life.
Chinese indentured laborers, contract workers, convict labor,
rented slaves-these are the elements often cited as proof of the
dissolution of the slave system in the 1870s. But they are just as
much proof of its resilience. That such mixtures of labor forms could
be brought together without the abandonment of slavery is remark-
able. And that the men who ran these mixed plantations in many
cases continued to be opposed to emancipation is further evidence
of the difference between perceiving "contradictions" within slavery
and identifying the forces actually driving abolition forward.
All of this is not meant to imply that Cuban slave society per-
mitted, or would have permitted, economic development in its
broadest sense. Both the class structure of the society and its links
to specific international export markets tended to inhibit the kind
of broad-based diversification and industrialization associated with
such development. But Cuban slavery did permit a significant
amount of technological innovation, and the specific role of slavery
in blocking further development remains unproven. 53
The arguments by Moreno Fraginals and others by no means ex-
53 For an important discussion of these issues, see "The Debate over Time on the
Cross" in Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese, Fruits of Merchant Cap-
ital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism (New

108
 ADAPTATION, 1870-1877

haust the possible variants on the theme of "internal contradictions"

leading to abolition. One can envision forms of the argument that
might focus on factors other than demography and technology, such
as class structure or ideology. What I have tried to demonstrate here
are the limitations of the most familiar form of the argument, while
acknowledging some of its merits. There remains in the internal
contradiction hypothesis a key insight about the difficulty of achiev-
ing capital-intensive development with forced labor, purchased at
high price and maintained year round. But even this contradiction,
perceived by some Cuban planters, did not compel them to abandon
slavery. They sought instead to add flexibility through slave rentals,
to add workers through immigration, and to maintain as much con-
trol as possible over their existing slaves.
It may have come as something of a surprise to them that this
strategy could not work forever. But there is a sense in which these
continued improvisations and innovations did undermine slavery.
It is a social one, a kind of second-order contradiction. Free labor
and indentured labor were economically complementary to slavery:
indentured Chinese workers often dealt with the centrifuges while
slaves handled other tasks; white woodcutters on contract would
relieve the plantation of direct responsibility for providing fuel; the
employment of free workers during the harvest diminished the prob-
lem of year-round maintenance of all workers. But the use of these
complementary forms of labor had indirect effects on the social
structure necessary to sustain forced labor. 54
The importation of Chinese contract laborers, for instance, re-
quired the invention of a third category between slave and free. This
often led to tensions in the work force by creating an invidious
distinction between slaves and Chinese workers. The Chinese in-
York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 136-71. They argue that the class structure
and ideology accompanying slavery were key to the absence of development. One
difficulty with applying their formulation to Cuba is that the "seigneurial" aspects
of the slaveholding elite-such as they were-seem to have been less important
obstacles to development than the continuing dependence of the Cuban economy,
both before and after slavery, on a single export crop facing an uncertain world market.
For an examination of these questions in a somewhat different context, see Richard
Graham, "Slavery and Economic Development: Brazil and the United States South
in the Nineteenth Century," Comparative Studies in Society and History 23(October
1981): 620-55.
54 For a discussion of some of the ways in which resolutions of one contradiction
within slavery can create another, see Sidney Mintz, "Slavery and the Rise of Peas-
antries," in Michael Craton, ed., Roots and Branches: Current Directions in Slave
Studies (Toronto: Pergamon Press, 1979), pp. 213-42.

109
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

sis ted on being treated differently from slaves, and the law-at least
in theory-upheld this distinction. But the pattern of labor on the
plantation could place the Chinese in situations that they felt ob-
scured this distinction, and violence, flight, and conflict with slaves
were frequent results. Similariy, the existence of cuadrillas of free
Chinese, while providing needed flexibility, tended to weaken the
bonds holding indentured Chinese to the plantation, since if they
could escape the plantation they might be able to join a gang and
be free of the direct supervision of plantation overseers and masters.
Planters found ways to adapt to the inflexibilities of slavery, but
the ways they found had unintended social consequences. Much as
they might have liked simply to add on free workers as needed to
compensate for the decline in the slave population, this tactic carried
its own risks. Plantation slavery as a social system depended to a
large degree on isolation-as planters themselves acknowledged, for
example, when they set up and explicitly defended plantation stores
as instruments of social control.S s The incorporation of free workers,
beyond those supervisors and artisans rigidly and traditionally sep-
arated from the dotaci6n, broke some of that isolation. It made
obvious to slaves the existence of alternatives, created new sources
of information, and made new alliances-both of individuals and of
groups-possible. Such alliances could involve a union between a
slave woman and a Chinese man, both interested in freedom for
their children; communication between free black workers and
those who remained enslaved; assistance from a newly freed slave
to other members of his or her family. These alliances and examples
aided slaves in their efforts at challenge and self-purchase and, in
extreme cases (as in the east during the Ten Years' War), encouraged
flight and rebellion.
One need not conclude from this that slavery in Cuba was always
inherently socially brittle. But in this specific political context,
when abolition was already on the agenda, when insurgency was a
reality, and when there was division within the white population,
innovations and adaptations carried serious risks.
55 For the debate on plantation stores, see Sobre pago de contribuciones de las
tiendas de los Ingenios, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4818, expo 84. For more general discussion
of plantation stores, see Chap. VIII, below, and the essay by Manuel Moreno Fraginals,
E1 token azucarero cubano (Havana: Museo Numismatico de Cuba, n.d.) reprinted
in his La historia como arma, pp. 145-61.

110
Ingenio Flor de Cuba, Casa de Calderas (Boiling House). At mid-century the boiling of cane juice on the more advanced
plantations was done with the aid of imported vacuum pans. Cane continued to be hauled to the mill by oxcart. (Source: Cantero,
Los ingenios.)
Ingenio Union. This engraving from the 1850s shows a large ingenio in the Cardenas region. The estate's machinery included
steam-powered grinding apparatus, vacuum pans, and centrifuges; its work force consisted of 498 slaves. (Source: Cantero, Los
ingenios.)
Ingenio Flor de Cuba. The large, rectangular barrac6n, which housed the estate's 409 slaves and 170 indentured Chinese workers,
is visible at the far end of the estate. (Source: Cantero, Los ingenios.)
A group of workers on the Canal de Vento, photographed by Henri Dumont, a French doctor, in the
l860s. They were in all likelihood emancipados, Africans found on captured slave ships, nominally freed
by the Spanish government, and put to labor on public works. (Source: Dumont, "Antropologia.")
Juana, twenty-five years old, listed as rnacuQ in Lorenzo, forty years old. He had worked for
origin. Recently imported from Africa, she twelve years on the Ingenio Toledo at the time
worked on the Ingenio Toledo in the 1860s. of his examination by Dumont. (Source:
(Source: Dumont, "Antropologfa.") Dumont, "Antropologfa.")
Maria Antonia, thirty years old. Originally from the Congo, Two emancipados who labored on the excavations of the
she lived in the city of Havana. (Source: Dumont, Canal de Vento. The man was identified as mandinga in
"Antropologia.") origin, the woman as lucumf. (Source: Dumont,
"Antropologia.")
Map of the Mapos estate in Sancti Spiritus in the l890s, showing cane fields, woods, and the rail
line linking the three plantations owned by the Valle-Iznaga family: Mapos, San Fernando, and
Natividad. (Source: U.S. National Archives, RG 76, Entry 352, Claim no. 121.)
A veteran of the Cuban insurgency of 1895 and his wife. (Source: Olivares, Our
Islands and Their People, 1:91.)
A small farmer's tobacco patch, Havana Province, 1899. Some former slaves
became renters or owners of small plots of land on which they grew crops for
subsistence and for the market. (Source: Library of Congress.)
The noon rest in the sugar cane field, 1899. Women worked alongside men in the cane fields both during and after slavery,
though after emancipation women increasingly engaged in paid field work only at harvest time. (Source: Olivares, Our Islands and
Their People, 1: 181.)
Mounted special police guarding cane cutters on the Soledad Estate, 1896. During the War for Independence, sugar centrales
were vulnerable to attack from without and sabotage from within. (Source: Library of Congress.)
Three women returning from market, 1899. (Source: Olivares, Our Islands and
Their People, 1:106.)
 v
Challenge

Though Cuban planters hoped to avoid disruption through the grad-

ual process of replacing slaves with free workers as the slave pop-
ulation declined, several converging and closely related pressures
were building to force a more immediate resolution of the issue of
slavery. One was the growth of antislavery sentiment in Spain and
the prospect that the metropolitan government might take unilateral
steps toward immediate abolition. Another was the Ten Years' War
and its indirect effects, including the destruction of plantations and
the liberation of many slaves in the eastern end of the island. A
third arose from the actions of slaves and indentured Chinese work-
ers themselves, as they pushed for concessions and challenged their
masters, disrupting the normal order of things.
The antislavery movement in Spain achieved a major triumph
with the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico in 1873, and Cuban
planters feared that Cuban slavery might be next. l Some prudent
slaveholders hoped to fend this off with alternate forms of very
gradual emancipation. In 1873 a group of hacendados drew up a
proposed bill of emancipation that incorporated a ten-year appren-
ticeship or patronato in place of any indemnity for slaveholders, a
small stipend for the apprentices, work regulations based on those
in force for Chinese laborers, and state-supervised labor contracting
after the expiration of the patronato. The law, it was suggested,
should go into effect only after the end of the insurrection, at which
time the island's economy could better stand the shock, and troops
would be available to repress possible "outbreaks of joy" or the
"desire for revenge."2 One observer in Havana reported on the
schemes for shifting slaves to the status of the indentured Chinese
1 Crucial to this 1873 triumph was the activity of Puerto Rican abolitionists. See
Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery, chap. 15.
2 Great Britain, Parliament, Parliamentary Papers (Lords!, 1875, vol. 23 (Slave Trade
no. 2), "Correspondence Respecting Slavery in Cuba and Puerto Rico, and the State
of the Slave Population and Chinese Coolies in those Islands."

111
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

and commented that the expressed aim of several Matanzas planters

was that "the word abolition should be only a myth, dust to throw
in the eyes of those English and American rogues who want to force
themselves into our affairs; with this plan, with the problem re-
solved on paper, things might go on without greater novelty." 3 Ac-
cording to a British government representative in Cuba, however,
planter delegates from Santa Clara, Cienfuegos, and other parts of
the interior objected even to such a limited proposal and opposed
all discussion of further emancipation, preferring to rest with the
Moret Law. 4 The proposal was thus apparently not forwarded to
Madrid, though the governor did communicate the idea of a set of
regulations parallel to those designed for the Chinese. 5
The threat of further action from Madrid abated somewhat in the
mid-1870s. A military coup in Spain in 1874, the suspension of the
Cortes, and restrictions on the right of assembly narrowed the field
of action of antislavery activists in the metropolis. Between 1875
and 1879 the government denied the Spanish Abolitionist Society
permission for public meetings, and during much of the decade the
society was obliged to act primarily through its executive commit-
tee. Though its newspaper and pamphlets influenced public opinion,
the society could not hope for immediate legislative action. 6
The existence of the Cuban insurrection was invoked in Spain by
those opposed to reform, and served as the all-purpose counterar-
gument to abolitionist claims. At the same time, however, the real-
ity of the war within Cuba increased the practical pressures on the
institution of slavery.
Colonial officials saw blacks and Asians in the insurrection as a
substantial threat to social order, even after they had been defeated
in battle or had surrendered. In 1876 Arsenio Martinez Campos,
chief of the Spanish forces, reported that a large portion-perhaps
the majority-of the insurrectionists were slaves and that attempt-
ing to return them immediately to their masters and their planta-
tions would only disturb the dotaciones and introduce more "seeds

3 Letter signed Tricanga, Feb. 13, 1873, in Correspondencia de Wenceslao de ViI·

larutia, ANC.
4 Great Britain, Parliament, Parliamentary Papers (Lordsl, 1875, (Slave Trade no.

21·
5 Extract of telegram from the governor general of Cuba, Aug. 7, 1873, AHN, UI-
tramar, leg. 4881, tomo 2.
6 Rodriguez, "La idea y el movimiento antiesclavista."

112
 CHALLENGE

of discord and more desire for emancipation."7 Slaves' desire for

emancipation had become, through the events of the war, a force
that had to be reckoned with.
The Spanish government was unlikely to take any major steps to
deal with this problem as long as the war continued, for to do so
might disrupt order in areas still at peace, and risk alienating white
loyalists. Spanish officials in the field, however, had to contend with
the fact that slaves had a will of their own. An order to field com-
manders in 1876 outlined a procedure for dealing with slaves who
came into Spanish hands from the insurrection. Commanders were
to determine, as discreetly as possible, whether a slave was willing
to return to his estate, the optimum solution. If he was not willing,
if his "horror of slavery" was too great, then he was to be incor-
porated into the Spanish guerrilla. He was not to be led to believe
that this would automatically mean freedom at the end of the war-
for that would depend on his conduct-but he was to be given a hint
of the possibility.s
The problem with such a policy was that, if officially acknowl-
edged, it could produce precisely the opposite effect from the one
desired, for it implied that slaves in the insurrection, even if captured
by the Spaniards, might be more likely to gain their freedom than
those remaining on the plantations. And when in November 1877
a commander in the field circulated a message to the effect that
slaves coming from the insurrection would be freed, he was rebuked
and relieved of his command by Martinez Campos. Public an-
nouncement of such measures, Martinez Campos wrote, would
alarm private property in the island and have counterproductive
effects on the plantations still in operation. The general question of
slavery was, in his opinion, "the most difficult political and military
problem" that the Spanish government had to resolve in Cuba. 9
Though the issue of slavery grew increasingly difficult to resolve,
the military threat from the insurgents was diminishing. By 1876
the insurrectionist forces were isolated, divided, and exhausted. The
United States had never recognized the rebels' belligerant status.
7 Capitania General, Estado Mayor, Campaiias, Circular, M. Campos, reservado,
Nov. 7, 1876, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4883, tomo 6.
8 Esclavos fugados que sean aprehendidos por las columnas, Jan. 27, 1877, AHN,
Ultramar, leg. 4759, expo 9l.
9 Martinez Campos to Cortijo, Dec. 17, 1877, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4883, tomo 6.

113
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

Conservatives within the rebellion had stalled the invasion of the

west and undermined it when it finally took place. Radical leader-
ship by Antonio Maceo and Maximo G6mez had been thwarted by
campaigns against them by other insurgents, the first because he
was a mulatto and was accused of wanting a "black republic," the
second ostensibly because he was Dominican. lO
A new Spanish offensive under Martinez Campos in 1877 further
weakened the rebels militarily, while his offers of pardon and land
affected morale. l l At the same time, conservatives within the in-
surgent ranks were attempting to unseat the president of the rebel
republic, Tomas Estrada Palma. Though the insurrectionists, par-
ticularly those under Maceo, continued to fight on, the situation
had become extremely difficult. In Ramiro Guerra's words: "there
was a general breakdown of organization, which undermined the
force, discipline, and military morale of men who were fatigued and
despairing in a terrible and endless war against a more and more
aggressive enemy."12 Vast areas of land had been laid waste, many
of the best leaders had been killed, the Spaniards had marshaled yet
more force, and the divisions among the rebels had reached the point
where they interfered with military mobilization. In late 1877 the
president of the republic was captured by the Spaniards, and in early
1878 his successor began to negotiate the terms of an armistice.13
On February 10 representatives of both sides signed the Pact of
Zanj6n, which granted Cuba the same political conditions that ob-
tained in Puerto Rico (a concession falling far short of independence)
as well as a general "forgetting of the past" concerning political
crimes, freedom to those slaves and Chinese who were in the in-
surrectionist lines, and permission to leave Cuba for all those who
so desired. The general question of slavery was left to be settled
once Cuban delegates were seated in the Cortes. 14 The freeing of the
slaves in insurrectionist lines did not constitute abolition-it was
a partial emancipation made necessary by the fact that it would
10 For a summary of these problems, see Thomas, Cuba, pp. 264-65.
II The strategy and character of Martinez Campos are discussed in Earl R. Beck,
"The Martinez Campos Government of 1879: Spain's Last Chance in Cuba," Hispanic
American Historical Review 56 (May 19761: 268-89.
12 For a detailed discussion of the conflicts within the rebel ranks, see Guerra,
Guerra 2: chap. 19. The quotation cited is from p. 343.
13 Ibid., pp. 342-52.
14 See ibid., p. 362, for the full text.

114
 CHALLENGE

probably have been impossible to persuade rebel slaves to lay down

arms otherwise. In gratitude and to secure their loyalty, the govern-
ment also granted freedom to slaves who had served with the Spanish
military. The total freed by the pact was estimated at 16,000. 15
Though it was in some ways a conciliatory document, the treaty
contained elements that provoked opposition. Insurgent leader An-
tonio Maceo, who took a principled stand in favor of full abolition,
rejected it and attempted to reignite the war. Slaveholders loyal to
Spain were indignant that slaves who had deserted their masters to
fight against Spain should now receive freedom. To abolitionists and
to slaves it seemed as though emancipation was being thwarted; to
slaveowners it seemed that property rights were being ignored.
The ineffectiveness of the treaty in securing social peace quickly
became clear in the eastern end of the island. In August 1878 the
Spanish commandant of the region, Dahan, telegraphed the captain
general that slaves were engaging in "passive resistance to work"
and refusing to obey their masters and overseers. "They want their
liberty like the convenidos," those who had come from the insur-
rection. Daban asked for permission to intervene directly to punish
them. 16 Permission was forthcoming: military forces were to be dis-
tributed among the ingenios, and, if any black rebelled, an immediate
council of war was to be formed and he was to be shot. I?
The maintenance of order on the plantations in the east had be-
come a question of security. Slaves were a weak point in the paci-
fication of the region, a frightening potential source of arms and men
for further insurgency. Even the internal affairs of the plantation
were a matter for concern, and the military promulgated orders reg-
ulating the issue of machetes to field workers.18 The protection of
slave property through the pursuit of fugitives and the maintenance
of discipline on the plantation had become an active, worrisome,
and time-consuming responsibility for the military. Armed force had
long been the ultimate guarantor of order on plantations, and had
thus conveyed a sense of Spain's indispensability to Cuban planters.
The insurrection, in effect, changed that role from an indirect to a
15 Trelles, Biblioteca hist6rica cubana 3: 553.
16 Situaci6n politica del departamento oriental . .. 1878 ... 1879 ... ISantiago de
Cuba: Secci6n Tipografica del Estado Mayor, 1881), p. 6. The term convenidos seems
to come from the title of the peace treaty that freed them, the Convenio de Zanj6n.
17 Ibid., p. 9.
18 Ibid.

llS
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

direct one. When warning a local officer of an anticipated slave

uprising on a plantation, the commandant told the officer to advise
his men to carry out their orders as though they were facing the
enemy. 19
On the 24th of August, 1879, the Spanish military indeed found
themselves again face to face with the enemy, as groups of rebels
from the previous insurrection rose in rebellion, in what would later
be called the Guerra Chiquita, the "small war.// The Pact of Zanj6n
had ended hostilities, but it had solved few of the problems that had
led to war. There were still innumerable grievances among many
Cubans, ranging from burdensome taxes to unemployment for ar-
tisans to a sense of betrayal on the part of slaves who had thought
that the end of the war would mean freedom. The new rebellion
was led by veterans of the Ten Years' War, Calixto Garcia and An-
tonio Maceo, and fought by an army drawn primarily from the lower
classes. 2o The Spanish tried to turn this characteristic to their ad-
vantage by charging that it was a race war, a plot to institute black
rule. The rebels bitterly defended themselves against this charge,
declaring that their defense of individual rights was made not on
the basis of race, but of principle. 21
At least one historian has claimed that the rebels did not in fact
recruit among the slaves. 22 The issues of race and class, however,
were inextricably bound together. To declare abolition and recruit
among the lower classes was to mobilize blacks; to attack planta-
tions was to threaten slavery. The war was not, however, as the
Spanish charged, one of black against white. The list of rebels from
a single locality reveals a varied cast: white and mulatto profes-
sionals and artisans, the overseer of a sugar plantation, the admin-
istrator of a coffee plantation, along with numerous blacks with no
occupation listed. Some slaves did join the fight: the list included
one Juan Bautista Chac6n, who apparently gave himself up and then
returned to the insurrection, taking with him the slaves of the in-
genio San Miguel,23
19 Ibid., p. 23.
20 Rebeca Rosell Planas, Factores econ6micos, politicos, y sociales de la Guerra
Chiquita (Havana: Academia de la Historia de Cuba, 1953). See also Thomas, Cuba,
p.269.
21 See the handbill "Los negros y mulatos cubanos residentes en Jamaica ... ," Oct.
26, 1879, in AGI, Diversos, leg. 7, Polavieja. .
22 Rosell, Factores, p. 49.
23 Antecedentes de personas que han tornado parte en las insurrecciones de la Isla

116
 CHALLENGE

The uprising was eventually suppressed by the urgent deployment

of 19,000 extra soldiers, and pitiless repression of rebel and civilian
alike. 24 Even after the Spaniards forced individual rebels and their
followers to surrender, however, the question of the fate of the slaves
among them remained. At stake was not just the disposition of the
slaves under arms, but the tranquillity of the area. Slaves in the east
had taken the step that the Spanish authorities had been dreading
since the beginning of the Ten Years' War: mass desertions. 25 The
threat of a rebel movement that would successfully use the battle
cry of abolition to incorporate all slaves into a rebellion thus became
more plausible. Something had to be done to undercut this appeal,
while tying slaves to their plantations in order to maintain produc-
tion. Planters and policy makers proceeded along different lines to
attempt to solve the problem.
Planters in the east feared that they would never again be able to
control their slave work force. Many slaves had either fought in or
seen the insurrections at first hand and had been exposed for years
to the abolitionism of the insurrectionists. The chance of their being
passively reincorporated into the slave system was slight. Moreover,
the idea of freedom for all, as for the convenidos, seems to have
provided a focus for disappointment and resistance among plantation
slaves who had not joined the insurgents. Neither group would be
easy to deal with.
The hacendados of Santiago de Cuba province responded with a
bargain: they promised that slavery would continue only four more
years and that during those years the slaves would receive a wage-
five pesos monthly for men from age sixteen to fifty, four for women,
three for the old and the young. The exact mechanisms whereby
this concession was communicated are unclear, but the seriousness
of the agreement was reflected in the advice of the senator from
Santiago de Cuba in his report to the Reform Commission of 1879.
If these guidelines were ignored, he predicted, it would be extremely
de Cuba durante mi mando en el Departmento Oriental ... , AGI, Diversos, leg. 7,
Polavieja.
24 Rosell, Factores, pp. 56-58.
25 Telegram from the governor general to the minister of Ultramar, Sept. ll, 1879,
AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4882, tomo 3, expo 76. Polavieja believed that part of the problem
arose from the Spaniards' policy of leading slaves to believe that full emancipation
would take place once Cuban delegates had been seated in the Cortes. See his letter
of July 4, 1879, in Camilo Polavieja, Relaci6n documentada de mi politica en Cuba
IMadrid: Emilio Minuesa, 18981, p. 43.

117
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

difficult to impose any solution on that province. These were the

terms under which slaves had remained on the plantations, or re-
turned to them after fleeing, he reported, and the majority of ha-
cendados had agreed to them. 26
This confrontation between masters and slaves represented some-
thing between marronage (flight of slaves) and a strike, given added
urgency by the presence of rebellion. Those slaves in the hills, in
conjunction with those on the plantations, extracted terms from a
frightened slaveowning class. Furthermore, the terms were substan-
tially better than those the government was prepared to grant. For
a second time, the actions of a group of eastern planters-in this
case, their concession of wages and freedom in a few years-broke
the solidarity of Cuban slaveholders.
The governor general recognized the urgency of the situation. It
was not clear which course of action concerning slavery was least
dangerous, he wrote to Madrid in September 1879, given that the
slaves of Santiago de Cuba province were deserting in large numbers.
It had become necessary to guard them with troops, and masters
had been obliged to offer them wages and the promise of freedom.27
According to other reports, there were fires in the fields of cane,
some set by slaves who vowed: "Libertad no viene, caiia no hay."
No freedom, no cane. 28
The minister in Madrid acknowledged that the situation required
immediate and extreme solutions and asked the governor's advice
on how to resolve the problem "10 menos mal posible" and with
the least disturbance of production. The governor believed that ab-
olition should be delayed until the first of the year, accompanied by
a three-year period of apprenticeship, work regulations, and a law
against vagrancy. 29
If it were to undertake abolition, the Spanish government had to
determine how slaveholders elsewhere in the island would react to
such a move. In August 1879 the Spanish government convened a
commission in Madrid, including Cuban planters, to report on pro-

26 See the opinion of Jose Bueno y Blanco in Documentos de la Comisi6n creada

par Real decreta de 15 de Agosto de 1879 ... , AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4883, tomo 5.
27 AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4882, tomo 3, expo 76.
28 Rosell, Factores, p. 18. See also Jose Marti, Lectura en la reuni6n de emigrados
cubanos, en Steck Hall, New York, Jan. 24, 1880, in Pichardo, Documentos 1: 438-
40.
29 See the telegrams in AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4882, tomo 3, expo 83 and expo 87.

118
 CHALLENGE

posed reforms for Cuba. The delegates discussed a variety of issues.

On commercial relations, duties, and taxes, the commission issued
unanimous reports. But about slavery there was dispute. Four sep-
arate proposals emerged from a subcommission with five members.3D
All agreed that the institution would eventually have to be extin-
guished; most agreed that this should be done gradually. The aim
was to avoid emancipation en masse, in favor of individual freeings.
Some proposed following the lines of the 1870 law, and freeing slaves
by age, working downward from age sixty, until all were free by
1890. Others suggested expanding the institution of self-purchase.
The representative from Santiago de Cuba advised following the offer
already made by planters in that province: freedom in four years,
wages in the meantime. A minority of the delegates proposed im-
mediate abolition, to be followed by the free contracting of libertos. 31
The willingness of planters to consider some form of abolition
seems to have been based in large measure on their perception of
the social and political risks of maintaining slavery, rather than on
any immediate collapse of slave-based production. According to the
Revista de Agricultura, 1879 was a good year, thanks to high prices. 32
Total production of sugar that year was 775,368 metric tons, a peak
for the decade. 33 In an article published in April 1879, F. de Zayas
estimated the costs of different kinds of labor available to planters.
Slaves, he believed, cost six or seven pesos a month to feed, clothe,
and maintain. Chinese indentured laborers cost twelve pesos in
wages, plus five pesos for food. Free Chinese, maintained by their
contractors, cost twenty-one or twenty-two pesos. Free black or
white workers were paid twenty-one or twenty-two pesos, plus five
for food. Rented slaves were the most expensive workers of all,
costing twenty-two pesos plus five for food, or twenty-seven pesos
plus five for food if hired during the harvest. That employers were
willing to pay premium prices for rented slave labor suggests that
as late as 1879 slaves were still seen as the most appropriate form
of labor for many tasks on plantations. 34
However, while the estimated 170,000 rural slaves remained the
30 See Documentos de la Comisi6n, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4883, tomo 5.
3! Ibid.
32 F. de Zayas, "Economia rural," Revista de Agricultura 1 (Oct. 31, 18791: 249-53.
33 Moreno, El ingenio 3: 37.
34 F. Zayas, "Estudios de Agricultura, II. El Trabajador, El Jornal," Revista de Agri-
cultura 1 (April 30, 18791: 83-87.

119
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

core of the agricultural labor force, planters had moved a consider-

able distance toward the acceptance of free labor.35 This is clear not
only in the increasing use of free white workers, particularly Spanish
soldiers who remained in Cuba after the close of the Ten Years' War,
but also in the changing status of the Chinese. The commission sent
by China to investigate the condition of indentured Chinese laborers
in Cuba in 1873-1874 had documented extensive abuses, and China
had halted the immigration of contract laborers to Cuba. The last
of the 125,000 Chinese indentured laborers landed in 1874. When
the Ten Years' War ended, the Cuban government lifted the previous
ban on the use of Chinese cuadrillas, gangs of free workers. The
recontracting of indentured Chinese workers was now banned,
though existing contracts and second contracts were allowed to
stand. 36 Once again, a balance was being struck between the use of
direct coercion and the use of market mechanisms. This time the
balance was shifting toward free labor, both because there would be
no further entry of indentured workers and because the cuadrilla
was one of the few ways to keep the Chinese employed in agriculture
once their contracts had expired.
Cuban planters, however great their continued reliance on slavery,
were thus in quite a different frame of mind about free labor from
that of their opposite numbers in the U.S. South prior to and during
abolition. 37 Slaveholders in Cuba had seen sugar produced with, in
part, free laborj they had seen former slaves working for wageSj they
had adapted to intermediate forms of labor like the indentured
Chinese and, subsequently, the cuadrillas. Despite the destruction
occasioned in the east by the war, they did not face the general
economic devastation that had befallen southern planters in the
United States. Though some slaveowners might persist in the belief
that those who were now their slaves would not labor except under
35 The figure of 170,448 was given by the governor general in a telegram to the
minister of Ultramar, Nov. 27, 1879, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4882, tomo 5.
36 Corbitt, A Study of the Chinese, pp. 72, 91. Helly, Id~ologie et ethnicit~, p. 330.
37 For a perceptive analysis of U.S. slaveholders' responses to emancipation, see
Roark, Masters Without Slaves. For a comparative discussion, see Genovese, The
World the Slaveholders Made, Part I. In discussing the Cuban case Genovese tends
to overstate the eagerness of Creole planters to shift to free labor, mistaking the
position of the insurgents for the desires of Creole planters as a group. The contrasts
he draws among the levels of commitment of different slaveholding classes to the
maintenance of slavery are, however, very important. See also Robert Brent Toplin,
"The Specter of Crisis: Slaveholder Reactions to Abolitionism in the United States
and Brazil," Civil War History 18 (June 1972): 128-38.

120
 CHALLENGE

compulsion, there was ample evidence that some kind of transition

was possible and even, under certain circumstances, desirable.
The prospects for the survival of slavery as a stable institution
had also changed over the decade. Slowly, some of the provisions of
the Moret Law and other legislation had taken effect. The govern-
ment was finally obliging local authorities to undertake the long-
delayed posting of slave registers. When the registers were made
public, a cry of protest arose from masters and from public officials.
The members of the Ayuntamiento of Guane in the western province
of Pinar del Rio wrote in August 1879 that since the lists had gone
up they had observed "manifest tendencies" among blacks to "alter
the public order." For the moment, this was expressed in "passive
resistance," but there was fear that shortly they would rebel, "de-
manding their liberty which they believe decreed already by the
simple fact of the publication of the lists." The same month the
mayor of Sagua la Grande in Santa Clara province wrote that the
names of some of those who had been considered slaves had appeared
on the lists as free, and this was producing "great excitation" among
proprietors. They feared a reaction among the other slaves upon
hearing that "half their compafieros are now acquiring freedom with-
out apparent justification." Proprietors were also apparently worried
that credit would be cut ofhn view of the existing uncertainty.38
In several provinces, the number of slaves who were not properly
registered was greater than the number who were. In Pinar del Rio
20,000 slaves appeared on both the 1867 and 1871 lists, but 29,000
more appeared only on one or the other. When, in the late 1870s,
the lists were posted, it became apparent that none of the latter
could legally be held as slaves. Some of them were elderly, or very
young, or deceased, but there were able-bodied adults among them
as well. A similar situation existed in Santa Clara and Havana. Only
in Santiago de Cuba and Matanzas had the records been filled out-
or faked-in such a way as to avoid such discrepancies. 39
The issue of registers illustrates both the impact of legal change
and the ways in which that impact had been blocked. For years it
had been law that anyone not registered as a slave was to be con-
sidered free. As a practical matter, though, the registration rules
were not enforced, in part because everyone recognized the inac-
38 See the petitions in AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4882, tomo 3, expo 75.
39 Ibid.

121
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

curateness of the lists, in part because of planter opposition. Con-

traband slaves had been slipped into the registers to replace those
who had died, and had thus become legalized. At the same time,
some legally acquired slaves were unregistered because their masters
had been careless or had attempted to avoid paying the capitation
tax, or because lists had been destroyed or misplaced. Estimates of
the number of individuals held in bondage without registration
reached 70,000. 40 The effort in the late 1870s to verify holdings
against slave censuses was not a legal innovation, only a belated
effort at compliance with an old law. Making such lists effectively
public was nonetheless an important act. The law had been on the
books without causing serious disruption because, although occa-
sional individuals might sue for freedom on the basis of their absence
from the lists, slaves had little access to those lists. Now matters
of individual servitude and freedom, previously handled discreetly
by masters and the Juntas de Libertos, as much as possible over the
heads of those whose freedom was involved, could be thrown open
to scrutiny. Posting the lists meant that both parties in a dispute
could refer to them, that slaves had greater access to evidence on
the basis of which they could claim their freedom.
There is little indication that the colonial officials who unleashed
this furor were trying to strengthen the hand of slaves at the expense
of masters. They were merely trying to enforce a rule that had been
blatantly ignored for ten years, to the increasing embarrassment of
the government. Both foreigners and abolitionists had protested that
the law was being flouted, and Spanish officials were trying to
strengthen the case for gradual abolition, not weaken it, when they
sought to ensure that the laws were observed. But attempting to
enforce the registration rules made it clear that it had long been the
masters, not the government, who determined who should be held
as a slave. Altering this would be disruptive-not only because it
freed some slaves but because it would provide an example of gov-
ernment-sanctioned emancipation to others.
By 1879 the Spanish government was in a very difficult situation
concerning slavery in Cuba. Within Spain, pressure from abolition-
ists was again increasing. 41 Within Cuba, desertions, passive resist-
ance, cane burning, and the omnipresent threat of a new insurrection
made the cost of retaining slavery look ever higher. In substance and
40 Lionel Carden to Salisbury, April 29, 1880, PRO, FO 84/1568.
41 Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery, chap. 16.

122
 CHALLENGE

as a symbol slavery provided a continuing focus for antigovernment

agitation and disruption of production; the half-hearted provisions
of the Moret Law had not diminished that hostility. Because of the
uncertainty about the future, lenders denied credit to planters, and
the value of the Cuban currency against gold fell. 42 This had not
turned most planters into abolitionists, for they feared the cost of
abolition would be higher still, but it made them eager for some
"resoluci6n de la cuesti6n social."
At the same time, both the governor general and slaveholders
emphasized the terrible disruption that might follow immediate
abolition. The governor thought that freed slaves would head for the
woods, languish, and die. 43 One observer predicted that abolition
would alienate trom Spain those who depended on the revenues of
slave hiring-out, or who had a large proportion of their capital tied
up in slaves. 44
In such a situation, an apparently logical solution for Spain was
to abolish the name of slavery without abolishing its substance,
which is precisely what the parliament did. In November 1879 the
minister of Ultramar announced the introduction of a bill of abo-
lition, arguing that no one any longer defended slavery, that the only
disagreement was on the method by which it should be ended. He
proposed the establishment of a patronato, a kind of patronage or
wardship, an intermediate relationship between master and former
slave that would provide the master with indemnification in the
form of labor, and provide the slave with "tutelage."45
The tone of the 1879-1880 parliamentary debates on the patronato
was distinct from those of 1870 on the Moret Law. While there was
now great unanimity on the inevitability of abolition, there was far
less abolitionist zeal or liberal language. In keeping with the tenor
of Spanish politics of the period, this was a conservative gathering
to discuss problems of labor and social control, not an occasion for
principled antislavery pronouncements. Barons, counts, and mar-
quises loomed large in the advisory committee on the bill; Cuban
42 See the opinion of Jose Bueno y Blanco in Documentos de la Comisi6n ... , and
the speech by Portuondo in Spain, Cortes, Diorio de las sesiones de las Cortes,
Congreso, 1879-1880, tomo 2, mlm. 95, Feb. 4, 1880, p. 1666.
43 Letter of Oct. 15, 1879, to the minister of Ultramar, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4883,
tomo 5.
44 Dispatch, Consulat General de France, March 13, 1878, in MAE-Paris, e.e., La
Havane, vol. 22.
45 Statement by the minister of Ultramar, Nov. 7, 1879, in AHN, Ultramar, leg.
4883, tomo 5.

123
 CONFLICT, ADAPTATION, AND CHALLENGE

slaveholders argued for indemnification and for regulation of labor;

even the proponents of the law invoked the dangers of a return to
"barbarism" if abolition were not carried out gradually. Obvious
racism emerged in the interventions of Cuban delegate Fernandez
de Castro, who claimed that "anthropological science" had shown
the differences between whites and blacks and that, in times of great
turmoil, blacks historically reverted to barbarism and human
sacrifice. 46
Both the Constitutional Union party and the Liberal party of Cuba
had accepted in principle the familiar idea of a patronato, however,
and insistence on indemnification or on an even more gradualist
solution abated. It was replaced by concern with the overall eco-
nomic relation between Cuba and Spain, and much of the debate
revolved around possible economic concessions to Cuba. Though
these were not forthcoming from the government, the law estab-
lishing an eight-year period of patronato passed in the Cortes on
January 30, 1880.47
This formal acquiescence to legal abolition did not necessarily
reflect a widespread desire by the powerful in Cuba to loosen the
bonds that held slaves under control. On the eve of the passage of
the bill creating the patronato, municipalities were constructing
new dep6sitos in which to hold runaways in order to use them on
public works. 48 And months after passage of the bill, court edicts
continued to refer to "slaves" and to call for individual runaways
to surrender themselves or be declared rebellious and contuma-
cious. 49 The creation of a new peculiar institution, the patronato,
something between slavery and freedom, nonetheless accelerated
the rate of change and affected the lives of masters and of slaves in
unanticipated ways.
46 For the debates, see Spain, Cortes, 1879-1880, Discursos de la ley de abolici6n
de la esclavitud en Cuba (Madrid, 1879-18801. The reference to barbarism appears
in the Dictamen de la Comisi6n, Appendix to the Senate session number 46. The
statement of Fernandez de Castro is from the Senate session of Dec. 15, 1880, p. 595.
47 Spain, Cortes, Discursos. For additional discussion of these issues, see Corwin,
Spain and the Abolition of Slavery, chap. 16. For an analysis of the Spanish political
situation at the time of the debates, see Beck, "The Martinez Campos Government.
"
48 Consulta del expediente promovido en el ayto. de Guamacaro para la creaci6n
de un dep6sito de cimarrones, Oct. 20, 1879, ANC, CA, leg. 58, expo 602.
49 Gaceta de la Habana (April 18, 18801, Edictos, Quinta Secci6n.

124
 PART TWO

The Limits of Gradualism,

1880-1886
 VI

The Patronato

The concept of the patronato, of an intermediate status between

slave and free, bespoke a belief in gradual change. Fearful planters
raised specters of Haiti, of Radical Reconstruction in the United
States, and of barbarism in general to gain support for the idea that
only a prolonged transition could avoid such evil consequences of
abolition. Proponents of the patronato elevated gradualism to the
status of a major virtue, the only way for slaves to become respon-
sible free men and women and for society to withstand the shock
of transformation. l
Underlying the patronato was a denial that interests were fun-
damentally in conflict; the needs of former slaves and those of former
masters would be mediated and compromised to the benefit of both.
The minister of Ultramar expressed this hope when he introduced
the bill to establish the patronato:
Thus the present owners of slaves can organize the transformation of labor
without flinging into the risks of a hazardous life as proletarians those who
form a kind of large family of tenants (calanas) in intimate community of
interests with the proprietor and manufacturer. He will continue to obtain
their cooperation, but it will be rewarded, both through the stipend and
through help, protection, defense-in short, guardianship.2
The fond imagery of family and tutelage was rarely echoed by
masters themselves, except when they spoke for public consump-
tion. They were far more concerned with maintaining authority and
securing labor. But the notion of an institution that would mute
conflicts and thereby ultimately serve the interests of those in power
helps explain the appeal of the patronato.
Enacting such a law, of course, neither eliminated conflict nor
fundamentally transformed social attitudes. But in the specific con-
1 See, for example, the opinion of Coppinger, in AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4926, expo
144. Gradualism was also a fundamental political principle of many of the reformists.
2 Introduction to the Proyecto de Ley, in AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4883, tomo 5.

127
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

text of Cuba in the 1880s, the law nonetheless had a substantial

impact. This impact is revealed in the rapidly evolving government
interpretation and enforcement of the law, in the changed interac-
tions of masters and slaves, and in the unanticipated early termi-
nation of the patronato in 1886.
The law that was promulgated in Madrid on February 13, 1880,
left in place the fundamental legal relations of slavery. Although
lawmakers renamed the owner patrono and the slave patrocinado,
the master still had a right to the labor of the former slave, and was
to represent him in all civil and judicial acts. He could transfer these
rights to another patrono, subject to certain qualifications, by the
usual legal means, including sale and bequest. He could mete out
corporal punishment for misbehavior or failure to work. Runaways
were to be returned to him, and in cases of severe resistance to his
authority on the estate he could call in outside forces to restore
order. These were the standard rights that had been exercised by
slaveholders for centuries. The duties of masters toward patroci-
nados, however, were slightly greater than those that had been owed
to slaves. Masters were obligated not only to feed and clothe patro-
cinados and their children but also to educate the young. They could
not separate families or send domestic servants to the countryside
against their will, and they had to pay each patrocinado aged eight-
een and over a monthly stipend. 3
The relationship was by no means a strictly contractual one. In
the first place, slaves did not voluntarily contract into their "guard-
ianships." Moreover, patrocinados had few of the rights of a free
worker. They could not leave a master's estate without permission,
refuse to labor, or seek another master of their own free will. At the
same time, they suffered some of the disadvantages of free workers,
since their pay could be docked for the time that they were ill or
being punished. With the exception of minors, the aged, and the
infirm, patrocinados were always vulnerable to being legally ejected
from their residences if the patrono "renounced" his rights over
them.
In some respects, the law establishing the patronato resembled a
3 This discussion of the law establishing the patronato is based on the text of the
1880 law and its Reglamento and the text of the slave code of 1842 and subsequent
regulations. These can be found in the appendix to Ortiz, Los negros esc1avos, pp.
439-87.

128
 THE PATRONATO

liberal slave code, prescribing hours of rest and amounts of food,

safeguarding the integrity of the family, and favoring domestic ser-
vants over field workers. It was also reminiscent of the insurgents'
Reglamento de Libertos. In crucial respects, however, it departed
from the standard provisions of a slave code.
First, it established an expiration date for legal servitude. One
quarter of the patrocinados held by each master in 1884 were to be
freed at the end of each succeeding year in descending order of age.
(When several patrocinados of a single master were of the same age,
a lottery would be held.) Each owner would thus lose one in four,
then one in three, then one in two of his remaining patrocinados
in 1885, 1886, and 1887. By 1888 slavery would end altogether,
though each former slave would have the obligation to certify that
he or she was gainfully employed for four years from the date of his
or her freedom.
Second, the law and the Reglamento that followed it established
a set of local and regional boards to oversee the operation of the
patronato, to rule on disputes, and to act as an intermediary for self-
purchase. The provincial governor was to preside over the provincial
Junta de Patronato, composed of a provincial deputy, a judge of the
district court, the district attorney, the sindico, and two taxpayers,
one of whom had to be a patrono. The local juntas, organized in the
appropriate municipalities, were to be presided over by the mayor,
and to consist of the sindico, a principal taxpayer, and two reputable
citizens. Primary authority rested with the local juntas, but cases
could be appealed from there to the provincial juntas, and thence to
the Consejo de Administraci6n, an advisory body in Havana. As a
last resort, cases could be referred to the ministry of Ultramar in
Madrid.
Third, the law extended the right to self-purchase, establishing
procedures and fixing amounts to be paid. Formal self-purchase, to
be called "indemnification of services," was accomplished by paying
a decreasing price for freedom, calculated as thirty to fifty pesos for
each remaining year of the first five years of the patronato, plus half
that much for each of the last three. This provision was not unlike
the highly touted older institution of coartaci6n, under which Cuban
slaves had long had the right to buy their freedom by installments.
But even during the period of the Moret Law few field slaves had
ever succeeded in making use of coartaci6n. Under the new law the

129
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

price was fixed by regulation rather than by the market, and would
diminish each year. Moreover, a patrocinado could deposit his or
her funds directly with the junta rather than with the master.
Fourth, the law specified that infractions of Article 4, which spec-
ified masters' obligations, would be punishable by freeing of the
patrocinado. While the penal code in force under slavery had called
for a transfer of ownership as a penalty for abuse of a slave, and
required manumission only in extreme cases, the law of the pa-
tronato would in theory grant full freedom for simple violation of
the regulations. 4 One of the most important of these regulations was
the required payment of a monthly stipend to the patrocinados. The
Reglamento specified that stipend to be one peso to those who were
eighteen years of age, two to those between nineteen and twenty,
and three to those over twenty. The stipend was to be paid in gold
or silver, or bills, and not in goods of any kind.
For these legal changes to have an effect, of course, they had to
be enforced. The struggles between patrocinados and patronos over
their rights under the law took place within the domain of several
administrative systems, and in a climate of political debate on the
wisdom of maintaining the patronato. Authorities at different levels
had somewhat different goals and loyalties, leading to conflicts and
reversals, and outside pressures increasingly impinged on the process
of enforcement.
For the colonial government in Madrid, the maintenance of order
appeared to require both the abolition of an institution called slavery,
and its replacement by one designed to appear paternal and transi-
tional. In order to disarm abolitionists and political opposition
within Cuba, it was important for Spain to create a distinction be-
tween slavery and the patronato and to enforce, or appear to enforce,
those parts of the 1880 law that expressed a departure from slavery.
But at the same time officials in Madrid wished to avoid social
upheaval or disruption of production and to prevent the alienation
of powerful economic interests in the island, interests to which they,
in some cases, had personal as well as politicallinks. 5 The ministry
4 On earlier penalties, see C6digo penal vigente en las Islas de Cuba y Puerto Rico
mandado observar por Real Decreta de 23 de Mayo de 1879 (Madrid: Pedro Nunez,
1886).
5 See Miguel Martinez Cuadrado, La burguesfa conservadora (1874·1931) (Madrid:
Alianza Editorial, 1973), p. 55. For a discussion of Spanish domestic politics and the
issue of slavery see Izard, Manufactureros, industriales, y revoiucionarios, chap. 5.

130
 THE PATRONATO

of Ultramar was thus verbally emphatic that the laws be obeyed and
that disputes be handled with dispatch and a semblance of fairness.
Actual enforcement, however, was largely left to the officials in
residence in Cuba. Although the ministry frequently resolved those
rare appeals that reached Madrid in favor of patrocinados, on ques-
tions of general policy the government sought and heeded the opin-
ions of planters.
Spanish officials within Cuba were also ambivalent. As repre-
sentatives of the authority of Madrid and at the same time guardians
of order within the colony, their position was delicate on any issue
where the interests of their clients in Cuba and those of their su-
periors in Spain were at odds. Egregious abuses of patrocinados, if
given publicity, reflected on Spanish administrators and could be
used to discredit Spanish rule; rigorous enforcement of the protective
provisions of the law, on the other hand, risked infuriatingpatronos.
These conflicts were further complicated by calculations of the
strategy most likely to keep the social peace. In any decision, the
possibility of popular discontent as well as elite anger had to be
taken into account. The governor general in his report to Madrid in
mid-September 1880 analyzed the situation in the following way.
The attitude of the people of color, particularly the patrocinados,
was for the moment satisfactory, he reported, and he believed that
it would remain so if masters complied with all of the obligations
that the law of abolition imposed on them. He therefore urged mas-
ters to cooperate with the law. Obviously he was keenly aware of
the urgency of avoiding serious disaffection and possible cane burn-
ings or uprisings by former slaves passing through the process of
transition. For the governor of an island only recently pacified, the
responsibility for preventing disorder was primary. But the interests
of order could cut the other way as well. The ultimate sanction
against masters who did not observe the regulations was the freeing
of their patrocinados, and the use of this sanction could, in the
governor's opinion, create far more trouble than the offense itself.
The freeing of some patrocinados because of offenses committed by
their patronos might provoke a "scandal" that could "alter the tran-
quillity" in which the other patrocinados lived. 6 This the governor
wished very much to avoid. An obvious way to do so was to place
6 Letter from the governor general, Sept. 15, 1880, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4884, tomo
7, expo 86.

131
 THE qMITS OF GRADUALISM

planter interests above patrocinado claims. Thus even though one

of the aims of gradual abolition was the reduction of tension and
the elimination of a motive for insurrection, in moments of crisis
the enforcement of the law of gradual abolition could stand in direct
conflict with the perceived requirements for keeping the peace.
Even routine enforcement of some provisions of the 1880 law
could on occasion lead to abrupt large-scale freeing of patrocinados,
as in areas where nonregistration of slaves had been widespread or
where registers had been destroyed, making patronos' claims to the
services of patrocinados legally void. But when mass freeings of
patrocinados seemed a possibility, governors tended to back off from
or stall enforcement. 7 They were as apprehensive as planters about
the consequences of rapid change in the status of former slaves.
The Consejo de Administraci6n in Havana handled appeals from
the provincial juntas, and was particularly concerned to minimize
disruption of the economy. Some members were former slaveholders
hostile to any initiatives by patrocinados; only a few believed that
a smooth transition required rigid adherence to the protective pro-
visions of the laws. When they had been consulted about the Re-
glamento governing the patronato at the time of its drafting, a ma-
jority of the members of the consejo had opposed it, which suggests
that their zeal in enforcement may have been wanting. 8 As a body,
they were generally willing to rule in favor of patrocinados' claims
in those cases where it was clear that, by denial of wages or by
physical abuse, masters had violated the basic notion of a transition
away from slavery. But they were more likely to excuse infractions
of the more demanding requirements of the law-such as the edu-
cation of children or the payment of stipends precisely on time. The
consejo's procedures were such, in any case, that winning an appeal
was nearly impossible. Endless notarized depositions were neces-
sary, and few appellants could keep up with the requirements and
carry a case through to a ruling. The most frequent resolution seems
to have been simply "caducada"-the case had lapsed because one
or another deadline had passed. This had two effects. One was to
7 A long debate over the legitimacy of various additional registers helped to prolong
the process of verifying the old slave lists and to stall the freeing of unregistered
patrocinados. See AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4814, expo 270 for conflict over the delay, and
leg. 4815, expo 289 for the final resolution.
S Trelles, Biblioteca hist6rica cubana 2: 423.

132
 THEPATRONATO

stall the freeing of patrocinados, for they would not be issued free-
dom papers during the slow process of appeal. The other was to
uphold rulings of the local and provincial juntas by default. 9
The local and provincial Juntas de Patronato, of which there were
over a hundred, were responsible for the day-to-day enforcement of
the law. Though not required to have a membership that was one-
half slaveholder, as the Juntas Protectoras de Libertos had been, they
were intended to protect former masters as well as former slaves.
The government called on them to follow careful procedures and to
avoid precipitate action. In practice, they showed no strong pre-
sumption in favor of the rights of patrocinados. For example, former
slaves who turned up in a district and claimed to be free were often
placed in the municipal dep6sito while the junta publicized their
descriptions in the local press for a month, in order to determine
whether anyone had legal rights over them. The former slave might
be freed after thirty days, but if the junta did not believe that the
individual had a right to freedom, despite the nonappearance of a
master, he or she might be sent to labor on public works. lO
The most controversial and disruptive aspect of the juntas' activ-
ities was their responsibility for handling complaints from patro-
cinados. Legally, a patrocinado could leave his or her master's dom-
icile in order to bring a complaint before the junta. It was then the
responsibility of the junta to examine the evidence and rule on the
case.
It is difficult to generalize confidently about the behavior of juntas
when faced with complaints, for no complete set of their proceedings
has been found. Several general lines of evidence about their conduct
and sympathies do emerge, however. First, the possibility of con-
scious and unconscious bias against patrocinados was great. The
members of the juntas had been men of power and distinction in a
slave society, and they appear generally to have shared the dominant
beliefs of that society. Furthermore, there was considerable potential
for conflict of interest within an organization composed of officials
and citizens already enmeshed in local affairs. Abolitionists went
so far as to charge that the majority of juntas were composed of
9 See ANC, CA, legs. 60, 64, 65, 69, 70, and 71 for numerous appeals to the Consejo
de Administraci6n.
10 See, for example, the Boletfn Oficial de la Provincia de Santa Clara, April 9,
1881, and February 13, 1881.

133
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

recognized pros lavery men, and that masters could simply arrange
matters to their convenience with the juntas. l l
Graft and collusion also occurred. The juntas were inadequately
funded, and the temptation to mishandle funds deposited by patro-
cinados must have been great. Occasionally scandals would erupt,
and there would be a flurry of dismissals of officials. Nor was this
the only form of corruption. Unscrupulous members of the juntas
were able to put patrocinados in their debt and thus obtain a claim
to the patrocinados' labor for themselves or their friends. 12
In the course of an investigation of corruption in the Junta of
Rancho Veloz, in Santa Clara province, one member of the local
junta complained that aside from himself all the members of the
junta were linked by ties of family, and that this was prejudicial to
the interests of both patronos and patrocinados. He charged that
this junta rarely met, that it never carried out plantation visits, and
that members assigned to themselves the services of patrocinados.
In a case in the same district, a young woman who purchased her
freedom in 1882 did not receive her cedula, or freedom papers, from
the junta. Moreover, the junta's secretary called her in to demand
two ounces of gold for himself, since he had helped her obtain her
freedom. She did not have the money, and he threatened that if she
did not find it, he would send the Guardia Civil to collect her and
send her to an ingenio. She still had not received her cedula when
the investigation began, and without it obviously was vulnerable to
the demands of the corrupt official. 13
Corruption, ironically, did not always work entirely against the
interests of patrocinados, despite their vulnerability. During the
investigation of the Junta of Rancho Veloz, for instance, there were
accusations from patronos and administrators of estates as well as
from patrocinados. They charged that junta members were inciting
11 Exposici6n que al Excelentisimo Senor Ministro de Ultramar hace la Junta Di-
rectiva de la Sociedad Abolicionista Espanola, May 30, 1883, AHN, Ultramar, leg.
4814, expo 279.
12 Telegram from the governor general to the minister of Ultramar, Jan. 18, 1882,
AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4813, expo 235. For a case of corruption, see Don Juan Rius eleva
recurso de alzada, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4831, expo 57.
13 See Copia del expediente instruido en averiguaci6n de los abusos cometidos por
la Junta Local de Patronato de Rancho Veloz, and Copia del expediente instruido por
la Junta de Patronato para averiguar los abusos cometidos por el Ayuntamiento de
Rancho Veloz, in Don Juan Rius eleva recurso de alzada, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4831,
exp.57.

134
 THE PATRONATO

patrocinados to file complaints against their masters, and that the

junta failed to pay patronos the money due them when patrocinados
purchased their freedom. Though justice was not being done for the
patrocinados, the disorderly behavior of the junta in this case was
worrying to planters, for they deeply resented the intrusion of the
junta into their affairs. Two examples will illustrate the pattern. In
one case, a mother offered her plantation's administrator a certain
sum to free her daughter, and when he refused she made a separate
agreement with the junta, and left the plantation along with her
child. The administrator later complained bitterly that he had never
received the money she had deposited, but a deeper grievance was
perhaps the circumvention of his will. In another case, a woman
deposited 200 pesos with the junta for her freedom, and the head of
the junta urged her to file a claim for her daughter's freedom as well.
It was probably this kind of initiative, rather than their exploitation
of the labor of patrocinados, which brought a scandal down on the
heads of the officials of Rancho VeloZ. 14
Even a corrupt and prejudiced junta would on occasion find it in
its interest to rule in favor of patrocinados. A planter competing for
labor could try to arrange for another patrono's patrocinados to be
freed in order to work for him. One proprietor expressed fury at a
local junta because his patrocinados kept being freed and then turn-
ing up on a neighbor's plantation. IS Though such competition could
yield freedom for some patrocinados, as the least powerful parties
they doubtless suffered in the long run from the corruption of the
legal process.
There seem to have been two general patterns of variation in the
behavior of juntas. First, there was a rural/urban difference that
tended to mean better treatment for patrocinados in the city. Juntas
in large towns were more likely to be staffed with officials less
directly tied to the interests of former slave owners and were there-
fore somewhat less subject to patrono influence. They also func-
tioned within view of the press and of opposition politicians eager
to charge mistreatment of patrocinados.1 6
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Great Britain, Parliament, Parliamentary Papers (Lordsl, 1882, vol. 24 (Slave
Trade No.3), "Report by Acting Consul-General Carden on the Number and Con-
dition of the Slaves in Cuba."

135
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

This activism by politicians was one manifestation of a larger

shift in Cuban politics that influenced policy on slavery at several
levels. In the late 1870s and early 1880s, after the end of the Ten
Years' War, electoral politics opened up considerably in the island.
Martinez Campos, the new captain general, began a period of relative
conciliation aimed at consolidating Spanish rule. Elections to mu-
nicipal office and to the Spanish Cortes were finally permitted,
though sharply limited by a property qualification. (Mayors, who
were also the heads of the local Juntas de Patronato, were still ap-
pointed by the Spanish civil governors.) Reformism, eclipsed during
the war, reemerged in the form of the Liberal or Autonomist party,
pro-Spanish but also in favor of civil rights for Cubans. On the other
side were the conservatives, the Constitutional Unionists, who
wanted closer ties with SpainY
Although the press law of Cuba specifically forbade writers to
((defend or expound doctrines contrary to the organization of the
family and property" or to excite the animosity of one class against
another, the question of slavery remained alive, even after the es-
tablishment of the patronato. 18 Given the virtually unchallenged
predominance of the planter and merchant elite, and the legal repres-
sion of public discussion of the issue of slavery, colonial Cuba never
developed an above-ground abolitionist movement comparable to
that of Brazil. Abolitionism was stronger underground, first among
the anticolonial insurgents and later among certain veterans of the
first struggle for independence. Nonetheless, some white politicians,
professionals, and journalists, and some free persons of color, com-
posed a small group openly in favor of abolition. Their critique of
slavery was not only moral but also economic, social, and political.
They differed on the appropriate mechanisms for ending slavery, but
generally perceived it as a backward institution, due for replacement
by a modern regime of free labor. Some viewed the freedom of black
Cubans as essential to that of white Cubans, a prerequisite for social
harmony and economic progress. 19
17 Thomas, Cuba, pp. 267-68, discusses the Liberals and the Constitutional
Unionists.
18 The text of Title II, Art. 16, of the Ley de Imprenta may be found in the Boletfn
Oflcial de Santa Clara, May 7, 188l.
19 On Cuban abolitionists, see Entralgo, La liberaci6n etnica, pp. 84-101, and Cepero
Bonilla, AZzlcar y abolici6n, chap. 19. On Brazil, by way of contrast, see Robert
Conrad, The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1972), and Robert Brent Toplin, The Abolition of Slavery in Brazil (New York:
Atheneum, 1972).

136
 THE PATRONATO

The island's Liberal party, formed in 1878, began by calling for

indemnified abolition, a cautious step indeed. But in 1879 the party
adopted a position of more explicit abolitionism and in the 1880s
opposed the imposition of the patronato. The small Partido De-
mocratico, with a liberal, anticlerical platform, supported abolition
of the patronato and aimed their publicity at, among others, ar-
tisans and free persons of color.20 In July 1882, the Autonomist
deputies followed suit and proposed, unsuccessfully, the abolition
of the patronato. 21 Issues concerning the enforcement of the laws
of the patronato thus became part of the political conflict between
the colonial government and its critics. A few patronos freed their
patrocinados publicly and were hailed as "benefactors of humanity"
in the Liberal press. Abolitionists also tried, unsuccessfully, to es-
tablish an abolitionist society in Havana. 22
Although these politicians and publicists remained a small mi-
nority without full freedom of expression, they nonetheless helped
to keep the issue of slavery alive, to put pressure on juntas, and,
intentionally and unintentionally, to communicate information to
patrocinados. Even in the absence of a strong or widespread anti-
slavery movement, the question of endorsement of or opposition to
the patronato became involved in party struggles, as each party
sought support from free persons of color and charged the others
with hypocrisy or opportunism.
Juntas in Havana thus operated under the watchful eyes of party
propagandists and occasional abolitionists reporting back to Spain,
and with the knowledge that appeals of disputed cases could be more
easily relayed to the ministry in Madrid. In the province of Havana,
over 3,000 patrocinados obtained their freedom by proving that their
masters had violated the law or the regulations of the 1880 bill. By
contrast, in Santa Clara, a more isolated sugar region whose pro-
vincial junta was reputed among abolitionists to be of proslavery
sympathies, fewer than 500 patrocinados were able to obtain their
freedom by proving their masters to be at fault. Unfortunately, fig-
20 For the platform of the short-lived Partido Democratico, see La Raz6n: Semanario
Politico Dedicado a los Artesanos, June 26, 1881, in AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4807.
21 On the evolution of the position of the Liberal party, see Trelles, Biblioteca
hist6rica cubana 2: 426 and 3: 553, and Rafael Maria de Labra, Mi campana en las
Cortes Espanolas (Madrid: Aurelio J. Alaria, 18851.
22 For references to the freeing of patrocinados see La Propaganda (May 4, 18821,
and Trelles, Biblioteca hist6rica cubana 2: 426. On attempts to establish an aboli-
tionist society, see La Discusi6n (June 19, 18821.

137
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

ures on the total number of cases initiated-as opposed to requests

granted-do not exist. Still, though the number of freeings was a
function of the number of complaints and their accuracy, as well as
of the inclinations of different juntas, such disparities almost cer-
tainly reflected the presence in regions like Santa Clara of juntas
determined to hold the line against patrocinado appeals. 23
Junta behavior also tended to reflect the level of tension in the
surrounding region. In Santiago de Cuba, for example, where ten-
sions were extremely high, the provincial junta functioned to some
extent as a peace-keeping arm of the government. Its members
worked with General Polavieja to draft repressive antivagrancy plans
and to establish as much control as possible over patrocinados. 24 In
fact, the junta in Santiago de Cuba behaved with such disregard for
the rights of patrocinados that a royal order in December 1881 rep-
rimanded it for violations of the regulations. The junta was charged
with excessively high assessment of the price of self-purchase, with
recalling a cedula of freedom already issued, and with approving a
master's illegal discounting of stipends owed a patrocinada. 25
It is clear that the juntas' dedication to the task of ensuring ful-
fillment of the law was compromised by other concerns. They tended
to make their own interpretations of the "spirit" rather than the
letter of the legislation on gradual abolition, in response to the pre-
vailing views on the danger of rapidly altering the status quo.
In sum, the commitment to enforcement of the law of 1880 varied
among the different levels of administration. Madrid was both ab-
stractly sympathetic to the rights of patrocinados and deeply con-
cerned about social stability, but in any event saw few cases. The
governors of the provinces were sensitive to the needs of agriculture
in their areas and extremely fearful of disruption of production or
of social peace. The governor general of the island and the Consejo
de Administraci6n tended to be sympathetic to the interests of pa-
tronos and hacendados, and supported the enforcement of some
23 For statistics on the number of patrocinados freed each year, see AHN, Ultramar,
leg. 4926, expo 144, and leg. 4814, expo 273. For abolitionist denunciations of the
biases of the juntas, see Exposici6n ... de la Sociedad Abolicionista, AHN, Ultramar,
leg. 4814, expo 279.
24 See Conspiraci6n de la raza de color descubierta en Santiago de Cuba ellO de
diciembre de 1880 ... (Santiago de Cuba: Secci6n Tipografica del Estado Mayor,
1880), pp. 145-55.
25 Reales Ordenes, Dec. 2, 1881, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4884, tomo 7, expo 110.

138
 THE PATRONATO

provisions more than others. Local juntas were entangled in local

affairs, providing an audience and a target for complaints, but no
guarantee of justice.
The crucial questions about the patronato, however, cannot be
answered by reference to its legal provisions and their enforcement
alone. By simply examining the text of the law one could make
either of two quite different cases. Judging by the protective clauses
concerning patrocinados, one could argue that the law granted
money, education, legal recourse, and eventual freedom to individ-
uals who previously had rights to none of these things, and thus it
fundamentally altered slavery. But judging by the provisions for the
maintenance of authority through coercion and corporal punish-
ment, and the absence of the civil rights of free workers, one could
argue that there had been little change indeed, at least in the short
run. The second argument could be strengthened further by an ex-
amination of the thinly veiled slaveowner mentality of the docu-
ment, where the polite terms of "patronage" and "tutelage" are
embedded in a language of punishment and authority that reflects
an unremitting concern for domination. Indeed, contemporary ab-
olitionists portrayed the patronato as simply another form of slav-
ery: an institution that denied freedom to the patrocinado, kept him
or her under highly personal control, and alienated the product of
his or her labor in return for maintenance and a small stipend rather
than a competitive wage.
To understand what actually took place between former slaves
and former masters during the years of the patronato, however, one
must recognize that, while the patronato was in some respects an-
other form of slavery, it was not just another form of slavery. It was
an ambiguous institution, one which attempted to eliminate, but
could not, the tensions and contradictions involved in gradual ab-
olition. To the extent that the law tried to resolve these contradic-
tions, it either denied legal freedom, thus undermining the distinc-
tion between slave and patrocinado, or granted new rights, thus
giving patrocinados potential leverage in determining the course of
emancipation. The ambiguity of the institution meant that neither
patronos nor patrocinados saw it as functioning fully in their in-
terests, yet both attempted to use it to defend or advance their
positions.
The patronato was designed to ensure a slow, smooth transition

139
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

ending in 1888. The administrators charged with enforcing the law

had no interest in freeing large numbers of patrocinados and were
not particularly sympathetic to patrocinado efforts to free them-
selves. One would expect, then, that the number of patrocinados
would remain relatively steady from 1880 to 1885, when the planned
freeings began, and then drop at a regular rate to zero by 1888. The
actual pace of emancipation, however, was quite different.
Within the first year after the establishment of the patronato, over
6,000 patrocinados had obtained full legal freedom. Then during the
second year, lO,OOO obtained their freedom, and 17,000 during the
third year. In the fourth year over 26,000 patrocinados-almost 9,000
of them in the sugar province of Matanzas alone-became free. There
had been almost 200,000 slaves in Cuba in 1877, but by 1883 there
were just 99,566 patrocinados remaining in the registers, and by
1885 just 53,38l,26 Rather than spending five to eight years as pa-
trocinados, slaves were rapidly exiting from their intermediate sta-
tus. "Gradual" abolition seemed to be proceeding at an alarmingly
fast pace as, in the words of a distressed observer, "every day they
know their rights better and turn up at the juntas to exercise them."27
Any evaluation of the patronato must, then, capture this para-
doxical combination of change and absence of change that marked
the 1880s. On the one hand, any new room for maneuver for former
slaves was significant. On the other, the prolonging of the promised
emancipation was in itself a triumph of stalling and resistance by
masters. It is to this interaction of patronos and patrocinados that
we now turn.
26 See the records titled "Est ado numerico" in AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4926, expo 144,
and leg. 4814, expo 273.
27 Letter to the governor general from F. Ardenin, Nov. 12, 1882, AHN, Ultramar,
leg. 4814.

140
 VII

Patrocinados: Obstacles
and Initiatives

In the daybooks of plantations, the eighth of May 1880, the date of

the Reglamento putting into effect the law that abolished slavery
and established the patronato, passed without notice. The work
force did not decline, labor did not stop, the rhythm of life appeared
unaltered. Although stipends began to be paid, at first irregularly,
they seem often to have been used as a special incentive rather than
as wages, in much the same way that rewards or feasts had been
used under slavery. Laborers still worked at 4:00 A.M. in the mill.
There was still work on Sundays during good weather in harvest
season. There was, on the surface, little change.!
If one simply asks whether the 1880 law actually brought eman-
cipation or protected patrocinados against abuse, the answer is quite
clear: it did not. As the Moret Law had not freed those whom it
declared free, the 1880 law did not protect those whom it declared
protected. But it provided, in part unintentionally, a set of weapons
with which those patrocinados willing and able to press their claims
could attack their masters. The cases brought before the juntas thus
offer not proof that the law was good and benevolent, but rare insight
into the tactics and values of those patrocinados actually able to
lodge complaints. More important, they show the inadequacy of
conceptualizing slave and patrocinado behavior in terms of "accom-
modation" or "resistance," and the necessity of analyzing that be-
havior in terms that reflect the complexity of patrocinados' goals
and strategies.
Patrocinados quickly learned to use their new weapons. In Santa
Clara province, for example, the first notice of the establishment of
the provincial junta came in May 1880. By the end of the month, a
1 See, for example, Libro Diario del Ingenio Nueva Teresa, 1880-1886, ANC, ML,
10830, and Libra Diario del Ingenio Delicias, 1872-1882, ANC, ML, 10802.

141
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

variety of claims had already been made. Two men sought to legit-
imate their de facto freedom, one having been in the insurrection,
the other having fled an estate on the day of his master's death three
years before. Another patrocinado came to assert rights over some
livestock and to demand ten years' worth of Sunday pay for the time
he had been hired out. A woman claimed the wages of her free
children; another complained of ill treatment. Though the number
of patrocinados granted full freedom in response to complaints
against their masters was never large in Santa Clara, the number of
claims of one sort and another appears to have been substantial,2
Patrocinados were probably the most powerless individuals in
Cuban society, highly vulnerable to retaliation and exploitation. But
some of them clearly had a sense that the moment of formal abo-
lition was a moment in which to assert rights, and thus took risks
they might not otherwise have taken. It was a gamble, for example,
to appeal for legal freedom if one already had de facto freedom, since
the supplicant would be held in a dep6sito and an announcement
run in the local paper calling for anyone believing he or she had
the right of patronato to come forward. Many made the appeal,
nonetheless.
The goal of those who brought complaints was not always im-
mediate freedom. Sometimes the patrocinado sought initially to
protect himself against abuse. The case of Crecencio, a slave and
later patrocinado in the ingenio San Rafael, is an example. He had
been a cimarr6n, a runaway, and as punishment had been forced to
wear leg irons for two years. He went to the authorities in Giiines
to protest this treatment and won an order to have the irons removed.
The plantation overseer, however, did not want to remove the irons
immediately, and the alcalde (presumably also head of the local
Junta de Patronato) agreed to let the overseer keep them on for two
or three more days to prevent any "bad effect" the example of a
successful appeal might have on the other patrocinados. Crecencio
flatly refused to work unless the irons were removed. Sent to the
fields to plant sweet potatoes, he stopped and demanded that the
irons be taken off. His aim, according to the driver of the work gang,
was to get those who had previously protected him to come to the

2 Boletin O{icial de la Provincia de Santa Clara, May 28, May 29, May 21, 1880.
For additional claims, and lists of those freed, see the regular reports of junta activity
in the Boletin.

142
 PATROCINADOS

estate. Instead, the plantation overseer was called to the field where
Crecencio stood, hoe in hand. According to the testimony of the
other patrocinados, the overseer kicked Crecencio, had him
whipped, put him in stocks, and then hit him on the head. When
this evidence emerged during an official visit to the plantation
(prompted by other problemsl, the overseer was fined twenty-five
pesos and Crecencio was ordered transferred to another patrono. He
eventually won his legal freedom because the patrocinados on the
estate were found to have been denied food, clothing, and stipends. 3
The case is interesting in part because of the way a patrocinado
was trying to use the local authorities. Crecencio was clearly a re-
sister of long standing. The establishment of new laws and of the
juntas did not create his resistance, it simply increased the number
of strategies at his disposal and the likelihood that one of them might
succeed.
The outcome of such a complaint depended a great deal on the
particular officials with whom patrocinados dealt. A local judge
granted Crecencio's request to have the leg irons removed, but the
alcalde modified the ruling when faced with the overseer's desire
to keep order. And in the larger dispute on San Rafael, visits to the
plantation by the judge and the sfndico yielded patrocinado testi-
mony highly unfavorable to the master, while visits from the alcalde
and the celador yielded patrocinado denials that they had received
corporal punishment. Only the very unusual conditions on the es-
tate-lack of food and near bankruptcy that had led to riots among
the patrocinados-created a situation in which the junta was pre-
pared to free a large number. Even then, the master contested the
ruling and brought armed forces into the estate to repress those who
had been freed. 4
It was by no means merely the young, the urban, or the Creole
among patrocinados who took legal initiatives. In fact, the simplest,
most straightforward grounds for appeal was advanced age. Since
the promulgation of the Moret Law, it had been illegal to hold as a

3 Copia certificada del expediente instruido en la Junta Provincial de Patronato de

la Habana sobre mal trato dado a la dotaci6n del ingenio Armenteritos, de D. Nicolas
de Cardenas, 1883, ANC, CA, leg. 99, expo 8864. This ingenio is also referred to as
San Rafael.
4 Rafael Marfa de Labra, an abolitionist, refers to a "rebellion" on Armenteritos
and the calling in of the army lito maintain in servitude blacks declared free by the
appropriate authorities." Labra, Mi campana, p. 301.

143
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

slave anyone over the age of sixty. An African-born patrocinado, a

native of Guinea and a field laborer in the province of Santa Clara,
showed his sense of his own rights when he "absented himself"
from his masters and went to the junta, asking for liberty on the
grounds of old age and compensation for twenty-six pigs that his
masters had slaughtered for consumption on the estate. His initia-
tive did obtain his freedom, though in the process he was swindled
by a corrupt official of a local junta. s
The age limit already established by the Moret Law was unam-
biguous, but the disputes that arose about the actual ages of slaves
could turn these appeals into slow procedures, filled with claims
and counterclaims. Often there was no written record of age, and
masters could argue that the man or woman was actually younger
than sixty, whereupon a doctor might be called in to estimate age.
In some cases the very identity of the patrocinado was called into
question. A man who called himself Jose Julian Pizarro appeared
before a local junta to claim his freedom, bringing as evidence his
baptismal certificate. It listed his mother's name (Maria de RegIa,
de Naci6n Ganga), his godmother's name (Maria Ignacia Conga Pi-
zarro), and the name he was given at birth: Jose Julian. But the junta
refused to accept the evidence, claiming that his real name was
Timoteo, that he was called Timoteo on the estate, and that he waa
only in his fifties. They declined to give him his freedom unless he
could prove he was the person listed in the certificate. He did not
produce anyone who had known his godmother or his first master,
but he protested in a handwritten letter from Havana to the ministry
in Madrid that he had been named Jose Julian at birth, though as
was the custom he had been called by a nickname, in this case
Timoteo. The apparent discrepancy between formal naming prac-
tices and plantation custom led to a two-year delay in the settling
of the case. In 1883 he petitioned the ministry for a second time,
noting with discouragement that although he trusted in justice from
Madrid, "since the distance is great, Sir, each one here does as he
pleases and everything has remained as before." He finally won his
battle when the ministry, with some impatience, ruled that in such
ambiguous cases the decision should favor liberty. 6
Don Juan Rius y Font eleva recurso de alzada, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4831, expo 57.
5
El patrocinado Jose Julian Pizarro suplica se ordene su libertad, como sexagenario,
6
AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4809, expo 55. The letter seems to be his own work: " ... po

144
 PATROCINADOS

Nonregistration was also a clear grounds for appeal. Anyone who

had not been registered as a slave was legally free and had the right,
in theory, to receive a certificate of freedom. This seemingly straight-
forward procedure, however, was made more complex by the fact
that not all slave registers had been published as ordered in 1877,
and masters continued to appeal for the inclusion of additional slaves
in the lists. This stalling tactic, which had worked through the 18 70s
to prevent the granting of freedom en masse to unregistered slaves,
also worked to delay appeals by individualpatrocinados in the 1880s,
as officials consulted back and forth on the appropriate principles
to apply. Finally in 1883 the ministry ruled all additional lists invalid
and ordered certificates of freedom issued to those patrocinados held
without proper registration. When the list was drawn up in Decem-
ber 1883, 11,408 patrocinados were formally declared free, though
without any compensation for the fact that they had been held il-
legally for years.7
Sevicia, or excessive cruelty, had long been grounds for obtaining
freedom, but it was not an easy charge to prove. Technically, the
charge of sevicia was a matter for the courts, not the juntas, though
one could interpret the 1880 law as giving juntas authority to rule
in any case of illegal punishment. In practice, a patrocinado was
likely to appeal to his local junta. The junta would then call upon
a doctor to examine the complainant and testify concerning the
nature of his or her injuries. Processes of this kind involved consid-
erable subjectivity, and the political, social, and economic influence
of the master might well block a fair judgment. In some cases, the
junta simply ruled the injuries to be trivial and sent the patrocinado
back to the master. The possibility of such a ruling could easily
inhibit a patrocinado who feared further retaliation and who realized
the complaints of mistreatment were especially liable to be "fixed"
by the master. The tendency of juntas to dismiss injuries as trivial
may have been increased by the circulation of stories of patrocinados
who faked bruises and successfully gained their freedom. Although
it seems unlikely that such deception was widespread, given the
difficulty of proving even legitimate charges, the prevalence of the
como la distancia es mucha ES cada cual ase aqui 10 que Ie parece asi es que todo ha
quedado en esta anterior.... "
7 Relaci6n de los individuos, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4815, expo 289.

145
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

idea of successful fakery reflected masters' apprehensions about

dealing with both their patrocinados and with the juntas. s
It seems clear that the law did not protect the patrocinados against
physical mistreatment. What it did instead was to give some patro-
cinados a way to increase the cost of that mistreatment. By marching
to the junta and displaying their injuries, they could create problems
for those who inflicted them, whether or not freedom was obtained
in the particular case. A free black man, for example, appealed the
case of a patrocinado named Juan all the way to the colonial office
in Madrid, despite the refusal of the junta to treat the wounds as
serious or to believe that they were inflicted by the master. The
remarks of the governor general when the case was referred back to
him are revealing. He complained that patrocinados and "those who
advise them" erroneously believed that the existence of injuries
would get them freedom. Although the governor thought the case
should be sent back to the regular courts, his reference to such a
widespread belief among patrocinados suggests the way in which
information, or even misinformation, about the 1880 law could in-
crease the initiatives taken by patrocinados to obtain their freedom. 9
The extraordinary number of obstacles to be overcome makes the
number of patrocinado appeals impressive. Long-standing assump-
tions and structures characteristic of a slave society, however,
sharply limited the likelihood of their success. In Jose Julian Pizarro's
case, for example, the proof of age the patrocinado supplied, a slave
baptismal record, was challenged by the master, who had no written
evidence beyond the registration records he had himself made. But
the junta excused this lack on the master's part, noting that the
purchase and transfer of slaves before 1867 had been "irregular" and
that therefore it was understandable that the master should have no
records. The ministry in Madrid later rebuked the junta for such an
unquestioning acceptance of slaveholders' omissions. But the pre-
disposition of this junta to rule in favor of a master, despite the
evidence, doubtless reflects the attitude encountered by many whose
cases were never seen in Madrid. 10
8 El consul general Crowe al Conde Granville, April 20, 1883, AHN, Ultramar, leg.
4815.
9 Francisco de P. Rico, moreno libre, suplica la libertad de Juan, por malos trata-
mientos, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4809, expo 57. '
10 El patrocinado Jose Julian Pizarro suplica se ordene su libertad, AHN, Ultramar,
leg. 4809, expo 55.

146
 PATROCINADOS

Similarly, when a patrocinado filed a complaint, he or she was

dependent upon the courts and juntas to weigh ex-slave testimony
against ex-slaveholder testimony. In the right place at the right time,
such as Havana during a period of abolitionist pressure, the patro-
cinado might receive the benefit of the doubt. In other times and
places, the white neighbors of a patrono may have been hesitant to
portray him as a brute. Again, expectations and standards of conduct
formed under slavery were not likely to be radically altered by a law
that permitted some corporal punishment and continued to rely on
subjective judgments about the degree of cruelty ruled excessive.
Appeals based on age or cruelty, as well as those based upon non-
registration, were founded on principles recognized by laws long in
force. The "abolition" laws of 1880 made it easier to pursue freedom
on these grounds by establishing juntas to which patrocinados could
appeal and before which they could testify. The grounds for achiev-
ing freedom that were actually introduced, rather than simply rein-
forced, by the 1880 law, however, turned out to be more useful to
patrocinados. These fell into three categories: "mutual accord" be-
tween patrono and patrocinado, "indemnification of services" or
self-purchase, and challenges to the patrono charging him with fail-
ure to fulfill his obligations under the law.
Freedom through mutual accord covered any arrangement made
without the intervention of a junta. In some instances mutual accord
meant buying one's freedom for an informally agreed-upon price
rather than through official indemnification. For example, in one
case, a patrocinada named Petra gave 11.5 ounces of gold to obtain
exemption from the patronato by mutuo convenio.l1 It is not pos-
sible to determine the actual content of most of the agreements for
freedom by mutual accord precisely because, in the absence of junta
supervision, no permanent record was created. In many cases, there
was probably a contract of some sort signed or agreed to, similar to
those masters had long made with manumitted slaves. Such agree-
ments might incorporate whatever concessions a patrocinado could
gain by making life difficult for the master or threatening to take
him to the junta, or whatever concessions on future wages the mas-
ter could gain with the tempting offer of legal freedom. "Mutual
accord" was particularly common in the sugar provinces of Matanzas
11 Don Juan Rius y Font eleva recurso de alzada, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4831, expo
57.

147
 TABLE 19
Patrocinados Legally Achieving Full Freedom, by Province,
May 1881-May 1886

Pinar Santa Puerto Santiago

Terms of Freedom del Rio Havana Matanzas Clara Principe de Cuba Total
Mutual Accord 3,013 3,620 14,997 11,342 60 2,070 35,102
(31%)
Renunciation by Master 2,739 6,785 3,639 3,613 167 1,883 18,826
(17%)
Indemnification by Patrocinado 2,141 2,113 3,446 3,115 24 2,164 13,003
(11%)
Failure of Master to Fulfill 1,022 3,398 2,097 429 103 374 7,423
Article 4' (7%)
Other Causes 1,831 2,952 4,452 3,249 189 1,551 14,224
(12%)
Article 8 (1885 and 1886 only)b 4,190 3,642 10,468 6,286 32 691 25,309
(22%)
Total 14,936 22,510 39,099 28,034 575 8,733 113,887
(100%)
SOURCE: AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4814, expo 273 and expo 289; AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4926, expo 144; Manuel Villanova, Estadistica de la abolici6n de la esclavitud
(Havana, 1885).
'Article 4 of the 1880 law listed the obligations of the patrono: to maintain his patrocinados, clothe them, assist them when ill, pay the specified monthly
stipend, educate minors, and feed, clothe, and assist in illness the children of his patrocinados.
bArticle 8 called for one in four of the patrocinados of each master to be freed in 1885, and one in three in 1886, in descending order of age. In the event
that several patrocinados were of the same age, a lottery was to be held.
 PATROCINADOS

and Santa Clara, where in each case it accounted for about 40 percent
of the provincial grants of freedom (see Table 19).
Although Cuban slaves had long had the legal right to buy their
freedom, the provisions for "indemnification of services" under the
1880 law, by specifying new procedures and reducing the cost of
freedom, seemed to bring self-purchase within closer reach. The key,
however, was the accumulation of funds. One source of cash was
the stipend, the token payment in lieu of wages that amounted to
one to three pesos a month. This alone would be an impossibly slow
means of accumulating enough to purchase freedom during the first
years of the patronato, though if a patrocinado saved all of his or
her stipend, he or she might by 1884 be able to indemnify a master.
To do so, however, a patrocinado would have to spend virtually
nothing in the interim, never be sick, and avoid the loss of work
time through punishment. It was also possible for the master to pay
the patrocinados in bills and then require indemnification in gold.
Abolitionists charged that the junta of Santa Clara accepted deposits
only in Spanish gold, while patrocinados there were paid in Mexican
gold. 12
Like slaves in the 1870s, patrocinados in the 1880s often sought
to raise money through the sale of goods from their conucos. Though
the conuco lands did not legally belong to them, their rights to
usufruct were sometimes respected even under unusual circum-
stances, either as an incentive or to prevent discontent. There is an
intriguing entry in the account book of an unidentified plantation
near Cardenas in 1880: "Gratuity to the blacks of Dn. H. Gonzalez
for the conucos they left at the Ingo Recurso ... $227." A group of
about two hundred patrocinados had been brought from another
plantation to work during the month of July, and apparently were
being compensated for the loss of crops on their provision grounds
during that month. 13
One problem with attempting to raise funds through the sale of
provision ground products was the limited market. The plantation
itself was the most likely purchaser, and the power relations on the
plantation meant that the price could ordinarily be dictated by the
buyer. The extensive tradition of independent slave marketing found
in Haiti and Jamaica seems not to have characterized the sugar areas
12 Exposici6n, May 30, 1883, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4814.
13 Libro Diario al parecer de un ingenio, ANC, ML, 10806.

149
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

of Cuba. Slaves and patrocinados could sell to transient buyers,

although given masters' efforts to keep rural plantation workers out
of contact with outsiders this may have been difficult in isolated
areas. In some regions, however, it was apparently common. One
observer, writing in 1885, described such sales:
During the hours which the slaves are allowed to themselves, they are
oftenest seen working on their own allotted piece of ground, where they
raise favorite fruits and vegetables, besides corn for fattening the pig penned
up near by, and for which the drover who regularly visits the plantations
will pay them in good hard money.l4

Owners of stores on the plantations also carried out transactions

with the patrocinados.
Even without full access to outside markets, the quantities of
money that could come into the hands of patrocinados were sub-
stantial. In the account book of the ingenio Nueva Teresa, for ex-
ample, it is striking how much of both the income and the expenses
involved the blacks of the plantation. The estate frequently paid its
patrocinados for pork, corn, and viandas as well as stipends; they
in turn deposited funds for their freedom and that of their family
members. IS
As in earlier years, the key to self-purchase was often a pig. Since
patrocinados were allowed to raise pigs on the plantation, and could
feed those pigs with their own crops, with part of their ration of
corn, or on plantation refuse and forage, the animal was in effect a
form of savings and investment. Combined with money saved from
stipends, the liquidation of this investment could yield the necessary
sum for self-purchase. As time went on and the price of a pig became
a larger and larger fraction of the "indemnity" owed the master,
freedom became more accessible. One observer remarked that, when
the two became equal, hardly anyone would be left in bondage. That
time never arrived, nor did every man, woman, and child raise a pig,
but the connection was a significant one. 16

14 On slave marketing systems elsewhere in the Caribbean, see Sidney Mintz, Car-
ibbean Transformations, chaps. 5, 7. The 1885 observation on Cuba is from Maturin
M. Ballou, Due South or Cuba Past and Present (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1885;
reprint ed., New York: Young People's Missionary Movement of the United States
and Canada, 1910), p. 30l.
15 Libro Mayor del Ingenio Nueva Teresa, ANC, ML, 11245.
16 Vice-consul Harris al consul general Crowe, Sagua la Grande, April 2, 1883, AHN,
Ultramar, leg. 4815.

150
 PATROCINADOS

Although many self-purchases were carried out by private agree-

ment, the role of the junta as a potential intermediary was an im-
portant innovation. Trinidad, a slave in the province of Santa Clara,
worked on the Caridad estate in the district of Rancho Veloz. The
plantation was a large one that produced over 142,000 pesos worth
of sugar in 1877 with a work force which included 222 slaves and
62 AsiansY In February 1880, with the promulgation of the law of
abolition, the slave Trinidad legally became a patrocinada. In March
of the same year, before the law had been officially published in
Havana, she gave 210 pesos to the estate's administrator, who agreed
thereafter to pay her the wages of a free woman, withholding them
until the full sum for her freedom was reached. She paid the addi-
tional138 pesos in February 1882, when she left the estate with her
"beloved Asian Eleuterio" and offered the administrator three
ounces of gold for the freedom of her daughter, Rita. He refused the
money and wanted to keep the child. At this point, Trinidad took
the matter into her own hands, depositing seventy pesos with the
junta to buy Rita's freedom and refusing to return her to the estate. IS
The case suggests some of the goals that patrocinados sought.
Trinidad was not avoiding labor or seeking to escape from the plan-
tation above all else. She seems instead to have been attempting to
constitute her family, perhaps to establish a separate household with
her partner and child. This may have been a particularly important
goal in Trinidad and Eleuterio's case, since blacks and Chinese were
normally housed separately on large estates. She continued to work
on the plantation until she had earned the sum necessary to purchase
her child's full freedom (Rita, though legally a liberta, would have
owed her mother's master unpaid labor until the age of majority),
but when the administrator refused she would not be deterred. The
option of depositing indemnification with the junta made it possible
for her to comply with legal forms and achieve her purpose despite
the administrator's opposition. The fragmentation of authority in-
troduced by the law of 1880 had created mechanisms with which
patrocinados could partially circumvent the will of their patron as,
17 These figures are from the 1877 agricultural census, as reported in "Noticia de
las fincas," p. 22.
18 For the case of Trinidad, see the evidence in Don Juan Rius y Font eleva recurso
de alzada, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4831, expo 57, and in Demanda de Dn. Jose Carreras,
ANC, CA, leg. 95, expo 8613.

151
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

enabling them to apply their labor and accumulated funds directly

to the task of obtaining their freedom.
The case also reflects several of the ambiguities involved in dealing
with masters and juntas after the proclamation of the 1880 law. The
price Trinidad had agreed to pay for her freedom was considerably
larger than that prescribed by law. She apparently learned enough
about the new regulations to appeal to the junta and to win the
freedom of her daughter for less than the administrator demanded.
But it was far more difficult to renegotiate her own purchase price.
The master insisted that the agreement to pay over 300 pesos was
based on her value as a slave, prior to the publication of the law in
Cuba, and that she had made the agreement when she was already
free (i.e., after she had paid the first installment and they had granted
her wages of a free person). The agreement was thus an inviolable
contract, he argued. The Consejo de Administraci6n did not agree,
and ordered seventy pesos refunded to her from the junta. But to
recover the overpayment already made to the estate she would have
to go through ordinary courtS.19
Individual cases are eloquent testimony to the importance of self-
purchase, but it is not easy to determine how many patrocinados
were able to take advantage of the provisions for buying their free-
dom. The official records are incomplete, counting only those re-
corded as freed through formal indemnification of services between
May 1881 and May 1886, a total of about 13,000, or around 11 percent
of those who received their freedom during those years (see Table
19). This is probably an underestimate. It covers only five of the six
years of the patronato and seems to include only arrangements for
self-purchase supervised by the juntas. 20
A clearer idea of the importance of self-purchase to both patro-
cinados and patronos comes from plantation records. Records from
the ingenio Nueva Teresa, in Bahia Honda, Pinar del Rio, from Sep-
tember 1882 to July 1886 show self-purchase to have been a signif-
icant part of the life of the plantation in those years. Individual
deposits reflected the variety of circumstances of "indemnification
of services," from the 196 pesos in gold deposited by the patrocinado
19Demanda de Dn. Jose Carreras, ANC, CA, leg. 95, expo 8613.
20This inference is based on the sharp discrepancy between the relative importance
of self-purchase and mutual accord in government records, where the second pre-
dominates, and in estate records, where the first is very much in evidence.

152
 PATROCINADOS

TABLE 20
Purchases of Freedom Recorded on Nueva Teresa,
September 12, 1882-July 1, 1886

Average
Amount Paid
Number Freed
Amount Paid For Each Adult
Dates Adults Children Pesos (gold)' Pesos (gold)

1882 Sept.-Dec. b 7 7 1,303 178 d

1883 Jan.-April 5 0 901 180
May-Aug. 13 2 1,635 117
Sept.-Dec. 3 0 '1-21 140
1884 Jan.-April 6 1 754 123
May-Aug. 10 0 789 79
Sept.-Dec. 0 0 0
1885 Jan.-April 4 0 305 76
May-Aug. 2 0 105 52
Sept.-Dec. 8 0 496 c 62
1886 Jan.-April 0 0 0
May-July 11 0 654 59
Total 69 10 7,363
SOURCE: Libra Mayor del Ingenio Nueva Teresa, foIs. 431-535, ANC, ML, 11245, and Libra Diario,
Nueva Teresa, fol. 229, ANC, ML, 10831.
, Some of the purchases were made in gold, others in bills, others in a combination of the two.
I have converted the bills to gold equivalent at a ratio of two to one.
b Although eleven of these purchases are recorded in the Libra Mayor for September, when the
lists began to be kept, some were actually made in March, June, and August.
e The amount paid for one of the purchases is unrecorded; I have estimated it at 60 pesos and

added it to the total.

d Excludes a case in which payment is recorded for five adults and six children together.

Bernardino for his manumission; to the 117 pesos in gold and 134
in banknotes deposited by Clementina Argudfn for the freedom of
her husband Lino criollo; to the 50 pesos gold deposited by Mamerta
criolla for her son Mamerto, and so on. 2! Seventy-nine purchases of
freedom in four years on a plantation that had approximately 175
patrocinados in 1882 challenge the suggestion by one author that
"The slaves, even when they had the money, appeared to be unen-
thusiastic about purchasing their freedom.Jl22 Interest in self-pur-
chase at Nueva Teresa was strong, from the early years when it
could cost 100 to 200 pesos, to the end, when it cost 50 or 60 pesos
(see Table 20).
The unusual effort made by patrocinados to achieve their freedom
21 Libra Mayor del Ingenio Nueva Teresa, ANC, ML, 11245.
22 Knight, Slave Society, p. 177.

153
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

through indemnification of services suggests that the act of self-

purchase had a particular importance for the man or woman who
could achieve it. It had practical consequences, as in the case of
Panfilo Criollo, who in 1882 had the misfortune to have to deal with
the corrupt Junta de Patronato of Rancho Veloz. He was part of the
dotaci6n of the plantation San Vicente, owned by Sres. Calvo and
Co. Apparently his age was in doubt, and he hoped to achieve free-
dom as a sexagenarian. But he was also prepared to deposit 120 pesos
for his freedom, in case the ruling should go against him. The junta
gave him a receipt for the money in August 1882, and he began to
work "por su cuenta," on his own account. Almost four months
later he had still not been informed of any final decision and did
not know whether he was legally free. When called to testify before
the judge who was investigating the conduct of the junta, Panfilo,
who was illiterate, described his case but explained that he could
not leave the receipt for his deposit with the judge as evidence, for
it was the only document that established his claim to the freedom
he now enjoyed. Panfilo had managed to acquire a measure of mo-
bility through his deposit of money, and on the possession of that
receipt hinged his new identity. Without it, he could be picked up
as a runaway and placed in a dep6sito. 23
Self-purchase seems to have had a symbolic as well as a practical
meaning for patrocinados. Practically, it gave mobility and the right
to work on one's own account. Symbolically, it may also have
yielded a sense of accomplishment and heightened worth. It is dif-
ficult otherwise to explain cases like that of Magin Congo, from the
Mapos plantation in Sancti Spiritus, who in January 1884 paid 30
pesos for his freedom, just three months before reaching the age of
sixty when freedom would legally have been his in any case, or the
patrocinado Fernando of Nueva Teresa, who at age fifty-nine turned
over 66 pesos for his.24 Just before beginning a new life in which
cash would be increasingly important, they were relinquishing a
part of their savings to their former masters.
Sidney Mintz, analyzing the importance of the marketing of goods
23 Don Juan Rius y Font eleva recurso de alzada, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4831, expo
57.
24 Libra que contiene documentos del estado general de la finca Mapos, Num. 29,
Jan. 21-27, 1884, APSS, Valle-Iznaga, leg. 24, and Libra Mayor del Ingenio Nueva
Teresa, July 8, 1884, ANC, ML, 11245.

154
 PATROCINADOS

from provision grounds, has suggested that "slaves saw liquid capital
as a means to attach their paternity-and hence, their identity as
persons-to something even their masters would have to respect."2S
This observation that money carries power, even in the hands of the
weak, may help to explain why some patrocinados who would
shortly be freed by law in any case struggled to put together the
substantial sums of money necessary to buy their freedom.
The act involved several kinds of self-assertion. First, it was the
giving of money in exchange for freedom, breaking with the system
under which manumission would have been granted in return for
deferential behavior. Second, self-purchase was not passive. In the
same way that convenidos, those freed because they had fought in
the insurrection, distinguished themselves from libertos, those freed
by abolition, patrocinados could, through "indemnification of serv-
ices," claim for themselves responsibility for their own freedom.
Self-purchase was an intermediate kind of act, not as radical as
fighting, but more assertive than waiting out the eight-year appren-
ticeship envisioned by the law. This may help explain the self-pur-
chases of 1885 and 1886, when the date for full freedom for all was
approaching, and exertions to raise money would buy fewer and
fewer extra months of freedom. Patrocinados also had no way of
knowing, of course, that final abolition would arrive prematurely-
and no guarantee that it would arrive at all, for that matter-and
may have preferred to rely on their own efforts.
These efforts were probably regarded with mixed feelings by mas-
ters and administrators. Self-purchase by the aged and unproductive
meant additional profit from an investment that otherwise had little
left to yield and thus was a net gain to the estate. Even self-purchase
by able-bodied workers could have the effect of subsidizing the wage
bill. On the ingenio Nueva Teresa this phenomenon is particularly
striking. From January 1883 to August 1884 the plantation paid an
average of 334 pesos a month in stipends to its patrocinados. During
the same period, the plantation received an average of 225 pesos a
month from patrocinados purchasing their freedom or that of mem-
bers of their families. In other words, deposits from patrocinados
covered about 67 percent of the amount paid on Nueva Teresa in
25 Mintz, Caribbean Transformations, p. 155.

155
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

stipends in those years.26 Though essential freed workers had to be

replaced or paid wages, indemnities represented an aid in meeting
the cash demands following upon the 1880 law and a substantial
reallocation of money from slaves to masters, particularly given the
small incomes of patrocinados. Self-purchase was a quite literal
expression of the fact that slaves were paying for abolition, rein-
forcing the general character of gradual emancipation as "philan-
thropy at bargain prices."27
As long as the number of patrocinados seeking freedom on a given
plantation was not high enough to deplete the work force seriously
if they left, and particularly if those who sought freedom included
the very old and the very young, the master stood to gain from self-
purchase in the short run. Money thus deposited could smooth the
transition from unpaid labor to stipends to wages. But if the move-
ment accelerated and spread extensively among the more productive
workers, the estate stood to lose a great deal.
The experience of the ingenio Mapos, in Sancti Spiritus, reflects
the uneven pace of emancipation on a single estate. The plantation
had 277 patrocinados in September 1881, along with 49 elderly, 21
minors, and 6 patrocinados listed as runaways. The plantation em-
ployed eight braceros, or day workers, many of whom seem to have
been women former slaves. The total dotaci6n was thus 361, similar
to the plantation's slaveholding of 323 in 1877. The number of work-
ing patrocinados fell very little from September 1881 to September
1882, at which time the patrocinados numbered 269 and the do-
taci6n 351. Most of the decline came from deaths, though one pa-
trocinada, Caridad Criolla, had purchased her freedom for 55 pesos
through the junta in Sancti Spiritus. But on the night of February
12, 1882, during the harvest, came the first challenge. Thirty-five
patrocinados fled the estate and presented themselves to the Junta
de Patronato in Sancti Spiritus. 28
We have only the administrator's account of the incident, which
does not state the charges, only that twenty-two of the patrocinados

26 Libro Mayor del Ingenio Nueva Teresa, ANC, ML, 11245, and Libro Diario del
Ingenio Nueva Teresa, ibid., 10831.
27 See Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, "Philanthropy at Bargain
Prices: Notes on the Economics of Gradual Emancipation," The Journal of Legal
Studies 3 (June 1974): 377-401.
28 The evidence on Mapos comes from Libro que contiene document os del est ado
general de la £inca Mapos, APSS, Valle-Iznaga, leg. 24.

156
 PATROCINADOS

returned to work the next day, and the other thirteen the following
day. Several were then called back to the junta, and the sindico came
to the plantation to review the work force. The results, however,
did not appear until a year later in January 1883, again during the
harvest, when suddenly the number of patrocinados dropped from
265 to 20 1. The plantation record notes that the difference represents
the number freed by the junta, some through indemnification in
cash, others because medical examination showed them to be over
age sixty, even though they appeared in the records as much younger.
Though the evidence is incomplete, it suggests a possible dynamic
to the process: a group of patrocinados, after a Sunday's rest and
conversation, but during the peak period of the harvest, decided to
challenge their master and go to the junta. Their challenge was a
limited one, however, and they returned to the plantation once they
had stated their cases. The junta moved with customary slowness,
delivering a result only a year later.
The success of these initiatives led to a further series of self-
purchases on Mapos after the harvest of 1883. Some cases were
individual and others were group, like the nine patrocinados who
bought their freedom on one day in April 1884. Some went through
the junta and others did not, and it seems likely that those who paid
the plantation directly were never recorded in official government
statistics as freed through self-purchase. The number of patrocina-
dos at Mapos fell by 40 from the end of January 1882 to the end of
January 1883, and by another 25 by the end of the record in August
1884, leaving only 135 patrocinados, less than half the number of
three years earlier. The harvest of 1884 had to be carried out with
a much reduced work force, since many had apparently left the
plantation. 29
The most daring-and most difficult-form of legal initiative by
patrocinados was to charge their masters with a violation of the
regulations of the 1880 law in hopes of winning their freedom as a
result. This strategy broke with the basic social order of a slave
society and often met with resistance from masters and juntas. It
was attempted, nonetheless.
The regulations accompanying the 1880 law specified in detail
those obligations of the master whose default would give the patro-
29 Ibid.

157
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

cinado the right to freedom. Masters were required to: (1) provide
food daily; (2) provide two changes of clothing per year; (3) pay the
monthly stipend; (4) educate freed children; and (5) feed, clothe, and
care for the children of patrocinados, in return for which masters
could use their services without pay.3D These provisions were similar
to those of a reformist slave code, with the addition of a fixed "sti-
pend" as part of the obligation of maintenance. But the penalty to
masters of granting freedom, and the establishment of a board
charged with enforcement, meant that there was one group, the
patrocinados, highly interested in the rigorous application of the
sanctions, and another, the juntas, obliged to listen to their appeals.
The charge of nonpayment of stipends could have been a frequent
one, since payment was a new obligation for masters, and one which
they were on occasion unwilling or unable to meet,3l Abolitionists
claimed in 1883, however, that in practice patrocinados rarely re-
ceived their freedom on the grounds of nonpayment. They charged
that masters were able to produce testimony from their friends or
documents to prove that stipends had been paid, testimony the pa-
trocinado often had no effective means of challenging. The junta of
Santa Clara, in particular, was accused of refusing to hear challenges
from patrocinados to masters' evidence. 32 This fits with the statis-
tical evidence that very few patrocinados in that province obtained
freedom by proving the master to have defaulted on his obligations
(see Table 19).
The evidence on cases of nonpayment can be viewed in two ways.
On the one hand, it illuminates the obstacles encountered by pa-
trocinados who faced hostile juntas. Masters' falsification of docu-
ments and perjury could and did make it much harder for patroci-
nados to pursue a charge of nonpayment. On the other hand, if one
is assessing the impact of the 1880 law, it is not simply the contin-
uing injustices done to unfree labor that are important, but also the
unintended opening up of new forms of conflict and challenge in
labor relations. In some cases, for example, patrocinados seem to
have manipulated the situation in an attempt to provoke a technical
30 C6digo penal, 1886, pp. 248-49.
31 For rulings on payment see AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4884, tomo 7, expo 85, expo 99,
and expo 110. For a claim of nonpayment, as part of a suit on other grounds, see La
morena Encarnaci6n Rodriguez suplica se ordene su libertad, AHN, Ultramar, leg.
4809, expo 56.
32 Exposici6n, May 30, 1883, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4814.

158
 PATROCINADOS

violation of the rules. Antonio Brocal, an African-born field worker,

who was convinced that he deserved freedom on several grounds,
refused to accept stipends from his master and challenged the au-
thenticity of receipts for past stipends. It may have been that he was
illiterate, and, rather than authorize signatures to receipts he could
not read, he preferred to refuse his stipends altogether while his case
was pending. Or it may have been that, like some patrocinados on
other estates, he refused the stipend in order to deny the legitimacy
of his master's claim over him. His claim was rejected by the junta
as being groundless. He appealed the ruling but did not complete all
the required formalities, so the case was dropped. 33 Such instances
nonetheless reinforce the impression that patrocinados, sometimes
in alliance with others, attempted to develop their own tactics for
dealing with masters.
In 1881 twenty-nine patrocinados of the ingenio Uni6n, many of
them quite young, presented themselves to a local junta to claim
freedom on the grounds that they had not been paid for two months.
The lawyer for the plantation's owner protested that the owner of
the plantation store was responsible for payment and that, if the
patrocinados had not received the money they expected, it was be-
cause they had run up bills at the store. He claimed that they had
initiated the credit arrangement, and he was indignant that they
should now complain. Although acknowledging that paying stipends
in goods or credit was against the law, he argued that it was within
the spirit of the law. 34
The patrocinados had quite a different view of the matter. They
denied that the storekeeper was responsible for paying their stipends
and claimed that they should have received them from the ma-
yordomo. They did indeed take goods from the store on credit, they
said, but paid for them "with the product of the pigs." The store-
keeper confirmed that it was the responsibility of the mayoral or
the mayordomo to pay stipends, and that his extension of credit to
the patrocinados was not against the stipends. The mayordomo
admitted that some patrocinados had not been paid on time, claim-
33 Demanda del moreno Antonio Brocal, ANC, CA, leg. 69, expo 7020. For a case
of ten plantation patrocinados who refused stipends see Demanda de Dn. Francisco
Revilla y Carrillo, ANC, CA, leg. 69, expo 7033.
34 Evidence on this case appears in Demanda de D. Esteban Suarez, ANC, CA, leg.
71, expo 7066.

159
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

ing that the delays had arisen from their service on another plan-
tation. The local junta upheld the master, but the provincial junta
in Havana freed the twenty-nine patrocinados. 35
The incident reflects several aspects of developing relationships
within the plantation. First, the plantation store was emerging as
an important source of credit, both for the master and for the pa-
trocinados. While denying that he was personally responsible for
paying stipends, the storekeeper noted that he did advance funds to
the administrator for their payment. The patrocinados had individ-
ual accounts with the storekeeper, who mentioned that some were
in debt to him and some were not. Second, although the case cen-
tered on the issue of stipends because that was the basis of their
legal claim to freedom, the patrocinados in their testimony pointed
out a second source of income, their pigs. Indeed, it was probably
this second source of income that gave them room to maneuver in
dealing with the administrator. Several, in fact, had refused cash
advances when they were sent to another plantation. That they could
pay their bills at the store without such an advance may have enabled
them to take this position. Finally, it appears that the precision of
the rules on stipends could be an obstacle to the planter's autonomy.
Both before and after slavery, free workers could be forced to accept
credit at the store in lieu of wages, and wages could be delayed or
withheld. But for a brief period such abuses of patrocinados were
illegal, and the penalty was the loss of legal rights over the victim.
Ironically, once a patrocinado had gained freedom by proving such
an abuse on the part of his or her master, the only way to recover
pay was through the regular courts, a lengthy and expensive pro-
cedure.
Tactical maneuvering to catch masters in a violation was seen as
"bad faith," in the words of one lawyer, or as the result of "bad
counsel," in the words of innumerable patronos. What these ma-
neuvers indicate is that patrocinados had their own sources of in-
formation about their rights under the law. At the beginning of 1882
La Propaganda, a Liberal paper published in Sancti Spiritus, an-
nounced new rules on the prompt payment of stipends, the violation
of which would incur the loss of the right of patronato. The article
35 Ibid.

160
 PATROCINADOS

noted: "Ya 10 saben los patrocinados"-the patrocinados already

know it. 36
Usually illiterate, often living on estates distant from the nearest
abolitionist center, patrocinados were somehow finding out about
the laws affecting them. No government effort was made to get this
information to patrocinados j on the contrary, the provisions of the
law printed on their identity cards emphasized their duties far more
than their rights. Free persons of color were probably a major source
of information, but there were undoubtedly others, including local
abolitionists and possibly some local shopkeepers. Lawyers with an
interest in pursuing cases may also have been involved, though there
can have been relatively little incentive for them unless they had a
particular interest in abolitionism. Whatever their initial source of
information, patrocinados developed an effective network, leading
to challenges and complaints. Literacy was no prerequisite for such
complaints, and the great majority of those who brought cases to
the juntas could not sign their own names.
Rural slaves seem to have been more likely than urban slaves to
make oral appeals en masse, presumably seeking safety in numbers.
While urban patrocinados made more successful use of the juntas,
the volume of activity in the rural juntas is striking. Over two thou-
sand patrocinados in the sugar province of Matanzas obtained free-
dom through proving their masters to have failed to fulfill their
obligations, representing 28 percent of the cases of freedom in the
island through this charge. Furthermore, 51 percent of the self-pur-
chases through the juntas took place in Matanzas and Santa Clara
(see Table 21). This volume of activity stands in sharp contrast to
the opportunities previously available to slaves in those areas. In
1877 they had held 36 and 21 percent, respectively, of the island's
slaves, but only 13 and 5 percent of the slaves who were coartados,
engaged in gradual self-purchaseY
To pursue a case on any grounds with the juntas, or even to obtain
information about their legal rights, patrocinados needed allies.
While literate urban patrocinados might successfully carry their
cases through the steps of complaint, hearing, and appeal, illiterate
36 La Propaganda (Jan. 15, 1882). For a master's charge that a complaining patro-
cinada had surely been "counseled by some malintentioned person," see Demanda
de Dn. Tuan Sands, ANC, CA, leg. 71, expo 7076.
37 For 1877 figures, see Iglesias, "El censo cubano."

161
 TABLE 21
Patrocinados Legally Achieving Full Freedom in Each Category,
May 1881-May 1886. Percentage from Each Province
Number Puerto Santiago
Terms of Freedom Freed Pinar del Rio Havana Matanzas Santa Clara Principe de Cuba Total

Mutual Accord 35,102 9% 10% 43% 32% 0% 6% 100%

Renunciation 18,826 15% 36% 19% 19% 1% 10% 100%
Indemnification of
Services 13,003 16% 16% 27% 24% 0% 17% 100%
Failure of Master to
Fulfill Article 4' 7,423 14% 46% 28% 6% 1% 5% 100%
Other Causes 14,224 13% 21% 31% 23% 1% 11% 100%
Article 8 (1885 and
1886 only)' 25,309 17% 14% 41% 25% 0% 3% 100%
Total 113,887 13% 20% 34% 25% 1% 8% 100%
SOURCES: Same as Table 19. Some rows do not add to 100% because of rounding.
, See notes to Table 19.
 PATROCINADOS

field workers faced substantial barriers when they confronted the

local junta. In the countryside, juntas were made up of local notables,
likely to have social and family ties to at least some of the patronos
in the district. A field worker might, on first try, simply be turned
away on the grounds that his or her complaint was of no con-
sequence.
Relatives were the patrocinados' most obvious potential allies.
Each time a patrocinado was successful in gaining freedom, he or
she could in turn help other family members. Husbands would ap-
peal for the freedom of their wives, wives for that of their husbands,
parents and grandparents for that of their children and grandchildren.
In fact, nowhere is the persistence of family ties under slavery more
apparent than in such series of initiatives. The greater mobility the
first relative gained from full freedom could enable him or her to
press a case with the junta more vigorously, to evade retaliation by
masters, or even to go to Havana to pursue an appeal.3 8
An example is the case of Juana Dominguez, living in Matanzas,
who appealed in 1883 for the freedom of her brothers Panfilo, Pedro,
Nicolas, and others, on the grounds that they were not registered in
the 1867 or the 1871 censuses. She pleaded that she was too poor
to name a lawyer to represent her in Havana, and in the end she
won her case. 39 In such instances emancipation was experienced as
a familial, rather than simply an individual, phenomenon, perhaps
strengthening the bonds among family members while increasing
hostility between the family and its former owners.
A patrocinado who had no free relatives could turn to other free
blacks, people with whom he or she might have links through the
cabildos de naci6n or ties of compadrazgo (ritual kinship). Some
free persons of color, at times organized into mutual aid societies,
felt a responsibility for those still in bondage. They wrote petitions
in individual cases, raised money to purchase freedom, and pressured

38 For a mother appealing for her son's freedom, see Demanda de la morena Francisca
Garcia, ANC, CA, leg. 71, expo 7062. For a mother appealing for her daughter's
freedom, see the case of the morena libre Paulina Sarria of Cienfuegos, described in
the Boletin O{icial de la Provincia de Santa Clara, May 12, 1881. For the case of the
moreno libre Joaquin Martinez pursuing the freedom of his consort the mulata pa-
trocinada Clara, see Demanda de Dn. Jose Ma. Perez Vizcaina, ANC, CA, leg. 69,
expo 7032. For two mothers appealing together for the freedom of their children who
were still on an ingenio, see Demanda de la morena Engracia Hernandez, ANC, CA,
leg. 71, expo 7073.
39 Demanda de la morena Juana Dominguez, ANC, CA, leg. 82, expo 7793.

163
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

the government for full abolition. In some cases the petitioners were
urban as well as free, thus giving them greater access to the appeal
process. While cabildos and mutual-aid societies were generally lo-
cated in towns, these included provincial towns such as Santa Clara,
where they might well be in contact with rural patrocinados. 40
Abolitionists, white as well as black, were also potential allies.
Though the government tried to limit their activities, in Havana
abolitionists opened offices where they provided a kind of legal aid
to patrocinados, a service that was apparently much used. 41 In some,
though by no means all, of the petitions that reached Madrid, one
suspects an abolitionist amanuensis. The abolitionist rhetoric in-
corporated into such appeals mayor may not have helped the case,
but certainly the tactic of going to the ministry was an intelligent
one. The case would usually be referred back to the governor in
Cuba with a stern query, and the result might be victory. Carrying
cases to Madrid through individual petitions, abolitionist manifes-
tos, and the press also contributed to the campaign for full abolition.
Within Cuba, the major contribution of abolitionists seems to
have been their ability to break the monopoly on public information
held by planters and the government. The impact of legal aid offices
could be multiplied through the cooperation of the liberal press. In
Havana, at least, direct pressure was sometimes placed on the juntas.
The paper El Dem6crata, for example, announced on the day of a
junta hearing in August 1882 that it was watching a particular case
carefully and proclaimed: "We call the attention of the tribunals of
justice to this scandalous incident so that it will not go unpun-
ished."42 How much such publicity influenced the junta is impos-
sible to determine, but the newspaper's act of holding the case up
for public scrutiny may have been of assistance to the patrocinado.
Since the paper would be read in Havana, and perhaps sent to Madrid,
the junta had an incentive to rule in favor of the patrocinado simply
to avoid future inquiries. Circulation of local liberal papers might
40 See, for example, Francisco de P. Rico, moreno libre, suplica la libertad de Juan,
por malos tratamientos, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4809, expo 57. For a complex case in
which several children appear to have been supported, while still legally under the
patronato, by their free grandmother and their godmother, see Demanda de Dn.
Antonio Norma y Lamas, ANC, CA, leg. 69, expo 7017. On mutual aid societies, see
Chap. XI, below.
41 La Discusi6n (June 19, 1882).
42 E1 Dem6crata (Aug. 2, 1882).

164
 PATROCINADOS

similarly influence local juntas, while communicating information

directly to patrocinados.
Despite the fact that relatively few field workers were actually
within direct reach of abolitionists, a fear of collaboration between
abolitionists and patrocinados plagued some planters. They saw ene-
mies everywhere intriguing to set their patrocinados against them.
Wrote one group of planters in 1882: "It seems as though there were
a hidden power which like the evil spirit has been in incessant
persecution to predispose all minds against these proprietors.//43
Their plea was for the government to resist any further changes in
the Reglamento; their fear was that the tide was turning against
them. Patronos realized that the law was at times being used to
challenge them and that any further concessions would result in its
being used even more effectively. What they were expressing was
not an accurate description, for there was no hidden power, but the
anxiety of a class watching the decay of an institution they relied
on, and experiencing the loss of unquestioned authority.
In one revealing case, the owner of a group of rural patrocinados
in the province of Santiago de Cuba faced a challenge from one of
his patrocinadas, who successfully charged that she had not received
her stipend. The master lashed out in anger, charging that the juntas
were biased and that their rulings encouraged a group of "exploiters,
the majority of them of the proletarian class, to dedicate their time
to and concentrate on demoralizing a class which before had not
needed much, and which, with its ruin, will doubtless drag down
the country that unfortunately produced them.// His tirade suggests
that he, at least, believed that communication between unfree and
free members of the lower class accelerated the process of patroci-
nado appeals. 44
The patronos who expressed these fears were also responding to
a breakdown in white solidarity, to the realization that they might
become isolated within society. The breakdown was not just polit-
ical, as in the emergence of the abolitionists, but also economic. In
the effort to find allies to assist them in their pursuit of legal freedom,
patrocinados sometimes took the risky course of appealing to a
potential employer for help, someone eager enough for labor that he

43 Exposici6n de varios hacendados, March 2, 1882, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4884, tomo
8, expo 134.
44 Demanda de Dn. Luis Garz6n, ANC, CA, leg. 69, expo 7016.

165
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

would support the patrocinado's claim before the junta. This could
be a shrewd maneuver by a patrocinado to take advantage of a local
labor shortage to become a free worker or a shrewd maneuver by an
employer to place a former slave in his debt. It carried with it the
risks inherent in replacing a legal patrono with an informal patron
and creditor. Patronos were fearful of this kind of undermining com-
petition between employers and sought reaffirmation of the rules
barring individuals from having any patrocinado not their own under
their power without authorization. They obtained the order, but the
problem did not go away, for as more and more patrocinados
achieved freedom, and thus more labor entered the realm of market
relations rather than involuntary legal obligations, this kind of deal
became more attractive. Bitter complaints appeared, for example,
from rural proprietors in Rancho Veloz, in Santa Clara province,
whose corrupt local junta was apparently open to such
arrangements. 45
Some masters tried to slow the momentum of freeings, particu-
larly the efforts of relatives to free other members of their families.
A paradoxical conflict arising from the 1870 and 1880 laws assisted
masters in this attempt. By the Moret Lawall children born of slaves
after 1868 were free, though the mothers' masters were obliged to
support them. Despite the children's legal freedom, the fact that
these masters were legally required to feed and clothe them created
an obligation for them to work without pay. Between 1870 and 1880,
as long as the parents remained slaves, this obligation tended to be
fulfilled as those libertos old enough to work labored with their
parents. But when, in the 1880s, these children had grown older and
their parents had become patrocinados with greater opportunities
to gain full freedom, conflict arose. Masters claimed that the children
still owed labor, and so a freed parent was not allowed to remove
"free" children from the plantation unless he or she indemnified the
master.
The presumption that masters had maintained the children of
patrocinados, and therefore deserved remuneration from parents
who obtained their freedom and wished to retrieve their children,
was based on the 1880 law and on the old models of slavery in which
45 The text of the order is in AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4814, expo 270. For specific
complaints, see Don Juan Rius y Font eleva recurso de alzada, AHN, Ultramar, leg.
4831, expo 57.

166
 PATROCINADOS

children were raised collectively at the masters' expense. In reality,

some parents were supporting their own children even while the
master had legal rights over them. The case of Gabriela Arenciba is
illustrative: her quarrel with her former master arose when he de-
ducted from her stipends the costs of maintenance of her two daugh-
ters when in fact, she claimed, she had borne these costs herself.
She and the children's godparents had paid for baptism, clothing,
medical care, and the bed in which the girls slept, she charged, while
the master did not even provide the education required by law. 46
Planters and administrators used the ambiguous status of children
not only to obtain remuneration for their previous expenditures but
also to tie both free child and freed parent to the plantation through
the logic of slavery in which labor was in theory given in exchange
for maintenance. But both parents and sympathetic observers were
indignant at the de facto requirement that parents ransom their free
children from former slave masters. Governmental authorities were
divided on the question and initially proposed a sliding scale of
indemnities, based on the age of the child. Under this provision the
full freedom of children might cost as much as it would have had
they been slaves all along. Only in October 1883 did the government
finally rule that parents who had obtained their freedom could take
their children with them without indemnity.47
The difficulty of freeing children was important, in addition to
the drama and pain it involved, because of the way it influenced the
experience of emancipation. Emancipation was gradual not only in
the sense of involving an intermediate stage between slave and free
person but also in the sense that each family was likely to experience
full freedom as a slow and cumulative process. The first member of
the family to achieve legal freedom might well continue working
under identical conditions, for a wage, in order to free the next
member. Alternatively he or she might use the measure of autonomy
gained to challenge the master and fight for the freedom of children.
The process, which in the case of the patrocinada Trinidad, for
example, took three years, could influence future relations between
the former slave and the plantation. For Trinidad, the laborious ac-
cumulation of money in order to comply with the legal requirements

46 Gabriela Arenciba, morena, solicita el abono del salario que se Ie adeuda, AHN,
Ultramar, leg. 4786, expo 288.
47 See the discussions of policy in AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4814, expo 267 and expo 294.

167
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

for freeing herself and her child eventually led to confrontation with
the estate when the administrator refused to relinquish legal control
over her daughter. Such confrontations may have increased the like-
lihood that a patrocinado would choose to leave the plantation once
freed.
Despite masters' efforts, the pace of emancipation accelerated.
Initiatives increased, information spread, patrocinados accumulated
more funds, and the process of achieving freedom took on a mo-
mentum of its own. The absolute number of patrocinados freed
increased each year through 1885, representing a larger and larger
proportion of those still in bondage. The number of patrocinados
freed each year through self-purchase grew from 1882 to 1884, de-
clining in 1884 as the total number of patrocinados fell and Article
8 (gradual freeings by age) went into effect. The number freed
through conviction of the master increased through 1885. Mutual
accord, which reflected either self-purchase or a desire on the part
of master and slave to reach some kind of agreement, peaked in
1883-1884. Renunciations of the patronato by the master, which
tended to be concentrated in Havana, remained somewhat steadier,
though there was a small peak in 1884-1885, the year of a major
commercial crisis. While these trends in part reflect changing junta
policies on patrocinado appeals, they also strongly suggest an ac-
celerating rate of effort by patrocinados (see Table 22).
The statistical pattern of emancipation reflects both the successes
and the failures of patrocinado efforts during the 1880s, as well as
masters' responses. As one would expect, given the power of masters
and the lack of commitment to enforcement at different levels of
authority, patrocinados had no assurance that they would receive
even a modicum of legal justice. Abolitionists' complaints and the
apparent low rate of success of patrocinado appeals in areas like
Santa Clara strengthen the impression of a stalled change. Outright
pressures and corruption could block challenges entirely; simple
appeal and delay could halt the granting of freedom papers for years.
At the same time, the vigor of the new initiatives taken by pa-
trocinados emerges from the records of individual plantations and
of junta proceedings. Efforts to collect back pay, prevent physical
abuse, and achieve full freedom were not confined to privileged
slaves, as they had tended to be under the Moret Law. Complainants
in the 1880s included elderly African-born field laborers like Antonio

168
 PATROCINADOS

TABLE 22
Patrocinados Legally Achieving Full Freedom, by Year,
May 1881-May 1886
Terms of Freedom 1881-82 1882-83 1883-84 1884-85 1885-86 Total

Mutual Accord 3,476 6,954 9,453 7,360 7,859 35,102

Renunciation by
Master 3,229 3,714 3,925 4,405 3,553 18,826
Indemnification
by Patrocinado 2,001 3,341 3,452 2,459 1,750 13,003
Failure of Master to
Fulfill Article 4a 406 1,596 1,764 2,431 1,226 7,423
Other Causes 1,137 1,813 7,923 2,514 837 14,224
Article 8 (1885
and 1886 onlYla 15,119 10,190 25,309
Total 10,249 17,418 26,517 34,288 25,415 113,887
SOURCE: Same as Table 19_
a See notes to Table 19_

Brocal and groups of young Creoles like those on the ingenio Uni6n,
as well as domestic workers and urban artisans_ Though being in or
near an urban area clearly made emancipation through one's own
efforts easier, many rural patrocinados took the additional risk and
made the additional effort, as revealed by the self-purchases on
Nueva Teresa and Mapos, the challenges at San Rafael, and the
overall statistics on freedom in the island.
Networks of family and community were mobilized in order to
pursue appeals, with links to free persons of color being particularly
important. Throughout the process, there was a dynamic that went
beyond the limited protections intended by the law, a dynamic of
family emancipation and in some cases collective action, of indi-
viduals investing their energy or their new earnings in the freedom
of their spouses, their companions, and their children.
These initiatives challenge the notion that slave behavior can be
fitted neatly into categories such as accommodation and resistance.
It has become increasingly clear that slaves throughout the New
World showed a complex range of responses to the fact of bondage. 48
48 See particularly Sidney W. Mintz and Richard Price, An Anthropological Ap-
proach to the Afro-American Past: A Caribbean Perspective (Philadelphia: Institute
for the Study of Human Issues, 19761. For a recent examination of similar ambiguities
in maroon societies, see Thomas Flory, "Fugitive Slaves and Free Society: The Case
of Brazil," The Journal of Negro History 64 (Spring 19791: 116-30. On slavery in the

169
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

Examination of the patronato suggests that the ambiguities went

even further when an intermediate status between slavery and free-
dom was created.
On the one hand, challenge to the master, resistance of a sort,
became safer and more likely to yield results. The slave who resisted
being whipped in the 1860s risked even greater punishment and
stood little chance of permanently affecting his situation; the pa-
trocinado who took a charge of cruelty to the juntas in the 1880s
had some chance of winning freedom, and this possibility could help
to counterbalance the threat of retaliation. On a day-to-day basis,
patrocinados were still obliged to work for their former masters, but
the means of compulsion had been restricted, thus making recal-
citrance somewhat safer and potentially more rewarding. Hacen-
dados in Sagua la Grande complained to a British consul that their
former slaves "laughed in their faces" when threatened with pun-
ishment because if struck they could denounce the master to the
authorities. They may well have been exaggerating, but they were
expressing their own realization of the reduced risks of petty chal-
lenges and the changed bargaining positions. 49
Access to third parties, such as free black mutual aid societies or
abolitionist organizers, and access to courts of appeal, the juntas,
enabled some patrocinados to test more safely the limits of resist-
ance to their masters. Indeed, the very nature of resistance was
altered as it came to incorporate completely legal activities in sup-
port of the radical goal of defeating the masters' authority. The
thirty-five patrocinados who marched off the Mapos plantation one
night, and then returned to await the outcome of their complaints
to the junta, are a case in point.
The safety of such testing should not be exaggerated, however.
Collective resistance to labor was still viewed as virtual mutiny and
repressed with force. A North American visitor reported a case in
Giiines in 1880 where the army was called in to discipline patro-
cinados who refused to work on a customary holiday. Nine of the
resisters were shot dead. 50
U.S. South, see especially Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the
Slaves Made (New York: Random House, 1974).
49 Vice-consul Harris al consul general Crowe, Sagua la Grande, April 2, 1883, AHN,
Ultramar, leg. 4815.
50 Ballou, Due South, p. 63.

170
 PATROCINADOS

At the same time, activities of a traditionally accommodating sort

took on a new edge. Working dutifully to collect one's stipend and
growing crops for sale to the plantation were perfectly appropriate
behavior in the eyes of masters. The rewards to laborers for such
accommodation, however, were now potentially greater. Accom-
modation under slavery could yield privileges and favors, but it was
more likely merely to stave off suffering. Under the patronato, ac-
commodation that led to the saving of a few years' stipends and the
sale of a pig might mean legal freedom. Those who put their money
down at the juntas were acknowledging that the master had legal
control, but they were challenging his right to keep it. The initiatives
of patrocinados thus emerge as a hybrid activity, neither wholly
accommodating nor wholly resistant.
In a general discussion of personal motivations for undertaking
public actions, a modern economist has pointed out the value of the
striving itself, as opposed to a mere calculus of costs and benefits. 51
Following this lead, one might see legal initiatives and self-purchase
by patrocinados as having a similar quality. Such efforts were di-
rected toward the significant, explicit goal of legal freedom, but they
were also substantive and symbolic actions in themselves, even
when the chances of achieving the goal were slight or unpredictable.
Striving, challenging, and asserting responsibility were, in a sense,
as much the essence of freedom as the uncertain legal victories. To
the extent that the 1880 law inadvertantly increased this striving,
it thus accelerated the achievement of freedom in both a direct and
an indirect fashion.
The behavior of patrocinados not only refutes the implication that
they were passive or "unenthusiastic" about accelerating their own
emancipation through such means as self-purchasei it also calls into
question the assumption that gradual emancipation guaranteed com-
plete continuity of authority. Slaveholding proprietors had intended
that it should, but maintaining that authority under changing cir-
cumstances proved more difficult than they had anticipated. Mas-
ters, too, were obliged to respond with a mixture of accommodation
and resistance, though their strategies would reflect a far greater
range of options and a close relationship with those who formed
government policy.
51 Albert O. Hirschman, Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 19821, chap. 5.

171
 VIn

Masters: Strategies
of Control

A gradual transition from slave to free labor was consistent, at least

in theory, with what many planters in Cuba saw as the future of
their economic activities and of Cuban society. But to say that plant-
ers supported some form of abolition is to say very little indeed. The
key question was: What would replace slavery? The ways in which
former slaveholders, now patronos, behaved during the period of
transition reflect their conceptions of how society and labor should
be ordered; also revealed are the means they were willing to use in
an effort to ensure control over those aspects of the labor system
that they saw as crucial.
In fact, it is in part because some planters were vocal and influ-
ential in the design and the enforcement of the law that it is possible
to study their attitudes. Planters expressed their opinions concerning
the provisions of the patronato in 1879 when the law of abolition
was being drafted, in 1880 when the Reglamento for its implemen-
tation was being written, and throughout the period 1880-1886
whenever its enforcement created conflicts.
By 1879 most masters had abandoned hope of maintaining intact
the institution called slavery, but as a group they wished to see no
interruption in the supply of labor on their own terms. Continuity
of labor had special meaning for former slaveholders: it presupposed
continuity of "order, subordination, and discipline."l As they saw
it, the key to the maintenance of these was what they referred to
as "fuerza moral," moral force. "Fuerza moral" had many dimen-
sions, but perhaps most fundamentally it was thought to depend on
the masters' ability to employ corporal punishment.
Immediately after the passage of the law of abolition, a group of
hacendados headed by the leader of the Conservative party in Cuba,
1 AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4884, tomo 8, expo 135.

172
 MASTERS

the Count of Casa More, submitted a detailed petition criticizing

features of the draft of the Reglamento that would govern enforce-
ment of the law. More and his fellow planters were alarmed by the
suggestion that the prohibition on whipping be printed on the cer-
tificate given each slave as he was freed. First, they argued, everyone
knew that whipping had long been outlawed, so there was no need,
and indeed it would be "highly impolitic" to inform each patroci-
nado of this fact. Second, slaves were already well aware of their
rights in this sphere, and, indeed, many of them had gained freedom
under the 1870 law by charging their masters with excessive cruelty.
The logic of the planters' position was peculiar. If the whip was
outlawed and not used, it could hardly do any harm to state that
fact. If it was outlawed and still used, it was correct and necessary
to remind freedmen of their rights. Indeed, the hacendados' com-
plaint strengthened the case for notification, suggesting as it did
what may have been common practice: masters taking a calculated
risk when they used the whip, considering its efficacy worth the
remote chance that an individual might gain his or her freedom by
pressing charges. 2
It is impossible to know how extensive the use of the whip was
because no master would willingly record the commission of such
a prohibited act. In an 1886 lawsuit in Havana it emerged that a
young patrocinada on the ingenio Espana had died in stocks after
being whipped by an employee and a slave contramayoral. The ex-
tremity of the case-a "weak and rachitic" child dying of an epileptic
fit apparently provoked by whipping on one of Cuba's most impor-
tant plantations-brought it into the courts. Doubtless, many cases
of simple illegal whipping went entirely unrecorded. 3
On the question of punishment generally, these hacendados
wanted to have the right to free use of stocks and chains for up to
thirty days at a time. They insisted on the use of these relics of
slavery because they were openly afraid of the consequences of treat-
ing former slaves like free workers. Order could not be maintained,
they predicted, if patrocinados believed from the beginning that they
2 For planters' claims, see Observaciones que al proyecto de reglamento para el
cumplimiento de la ley de abolici6n presentan varios hacendados, n.d., AHN, Ultra·
mar, leg. 4883, tomo 5, expo 69.
3 Denunciando el hecho de haber muerto en cepo una joven patrocinada del ingenio
"Espana," AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4831, expo 46.

173
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

enjoyed numerous rights, that their duties did not go beyond a cer-
tain number of hours of work, and that the punishment for infrac-
tions would not be corporal.
Hacendados seem to have desired greater powers of coercion for
two reasons. First, they implicitly recognized the need for extra-
economic means of compulsion where the economic stimulus was
slight. The stipend paid the patrocinado was only a fraction of the
wage due a free worker. Second, and perhaps more important, there
was a fear peculiar to men who had been slaveholders all their lives:
the fear that there would be resentment, resistance, and perhaps
even vengeance once the threat of physical coercion was removed.
Another group of hacendados petitioning the government expressed
it quite plainly: there is a necessity for "material force" when one
is dealing with "abject men/' they claimed. They hinted at the pos-
sible "spirit of independence" among those who had felt all of their
lives "la prisi6n de la esclavitud/' the bonds of slavery. Implicit in
all this was a fear that the threat of forced labor on public works
and incarceration within the plantation would have little deterrent
effect on men and women subjected to forced labor and incarceration
all their lives. 4
Planters won the first round of the battle, and the use of stocks
and chains was permitted by the Reglamento issued on May 8, 1880.
Minor offenses could be punished with stocks for periods from one
to four days, more serious offenses with stocks from one to eight
days, and grave offenses with stocks and chains from one to twelve
days. Masters had the right to repeat these penalties if the patIO-
cinado's behavior did not improve. The definition of the gravity of
offenses reflected the concern with continuity of the supply of labor,
and the faults ranged from solitary passive resistance (light) to dis-
turbance of the order of work (more serious) to incitement of others
to refuse work (grave).5
Within Spain, however, abolitionists denounced the keeping of
"free" men and women in stocks and chains in Cuba, and the colo-
nial office in Madrid tentatively suggested that such measures might
be eliminated. In February 1882, planters met with the governor
general in Havana to discuss possible changes in the regulations
regarding punishment. It was clear that ex-slaveowners, having lost
4 Instancia presentada, April 25, 1880, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4883, tomo 5, expo 65.
5 C6digo penal, 1886, pp. 248·49.

174
 MASTERS

the legal right to use the whip, were going to put up a vigorous
defense of stocks and chains. 6
Echoing the group that had initially and successfully argued for
the inclusion of these punishments in the Reglamento, the planters
argued that stocks and irons were absolutely essential for the main-
tenance of order. These, they believed, were punishments that the
patrocinados "respected"; incarceration would be an inadequate
substitute. What they meant, evidently, was that stocks and irons
were something that patrocinados sought to avoid. They suspected
that incarceration, by contrast, might even be welcomed as a way
to avoid work. While this line of argument was an admission of the
repugnance planters believed workers felt for labor on the planta-
tions, it also reflected a deep, long-standing social fear. Planters
alluded to the very special situation of the "solitude of the coun-
tryside" where "thousands of men of color" were governed by "a
few of the white race."7 The implication was that something rather
more like terror and less like justice was needed to keep order.
Masters wanted the freedom to punish with impunity when faced
with recalcitrance.
The loss of the right to use the whip had already reduced this
freedom. The planters who remarked to a British consul that slavery
without the whip was a "farce" and complained that patrocinados
laughed in their faces were probably not giving a description of
circumstances on the plantations that was literally accurate; instead
it should be seen as the way the world looked to masters whose
relationship to their social inferiors had been changed. 8 Although as
a practical matter they retained much of the power they were ac-
customed to, they had lost part of their authority and now had to
face the possibility of being called to account by their former slaves.
Because the dominance of masters over patrocinados was closely
linked in the minds of governmental authorities with racial domi-
nance and with the maintenance of the social order, planters could
successfully defend the provisions of the 1880 law that permitted
them to continue acting like slave masters. Whatever the qualms
of the Spanish government about violence against patrocinados, so-
6 AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4884, tomo 8, expo 135; Labra, Mi campana, p. V.
7 AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4884, tomo 8, expo 135.
8 Vice-consul Harris al consul general Crowe, Sagua la Grande, April 2, 1883, AHN,
Ultramar, leg. 4815.

175
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

cial disorder was a worse threat, and masters managed to stave off
modification of the rules. Only in November 1883 did abolitionist
pressure in Madrid finally yield a ban on stocks and chains. 9
The maintenance of "moral force" required more than the legal
right to punish, however. It also required that masters and their
administrators be the sole authorities within their plantations in
dealing with matters that they considered strictly internal. The new
law, however, logically required some procedures for enforcement,
and a royal order of December 1881 called for visits to plantations
by members of the juntas to see if patrocinados were receiving their
stipends. Claiming that such visits would be highly disruptive dur-
ing the harvest, planters immediately put pressure on the governor,
and by February 1882 they had obtained a suspension of the order
until further notice. However, the ministry in Madrid rejected the
claims of the planters and ordered the visits reinstated. Still, this
order was not obeyed by the governor general until May, and the
circular informing officials of the reinstatement was not sent out
until August, so planters in the end were able to harvest free from
"interference."l0 Even after the reinstatement, inspection visits to
the estates appear to have been infrequent.
Masters were sensitive about these visits for several reasons. First,
to judge from the tone of their complaints and their own records,
many planters were violating the rules regarding stipendsY Exam-
ination of estate account books confirms the impression that in the
early years of the patronato stipends were not always paid on time. 12
Masters had also found other ways to use pay as a weapon. Patronos
were authorized to deny pay to a patrocinado who was ill or being
punished, and some carried this further. One master deducted from
a patrocinada's account the amount she had earned when, while
she was still a slave, she had run away and he had been unable to
find her. Although in this case the master was caught, and a min-
isterial order prohibited the practice, he had for some time been able
9 C6digo penal, 1886, pp. 267-68.
10 AHN, Uitramar, leg. 4884, tomo 8, exps. 152 and 170. Also ibid., leg. 4926, expo
144.
11 Exposici6n de varios hacendados, March 2, 1882, AHN, Uitramar, leg. 4884, tomo
8, expo 134.
12 See, for example, Libro Diario del Ingenio Nueva Teresa, fols. 44, 57, 100, ANC,
ML, 10831.

176
 MASTERS

to persuade the Junta de Patronato that such a settling of old scores

was legitimate.t 3
Masters, even those who were paying stipends on time, had a more
general reason to fear inspection visits to the estates. They sensed
that it was dangerous to introduce a third party into relations be-
tween patronos and patrocinados. In their petitions, planters re-
ferred to the interruptions of work and the "demoralization" that
might result from estate visits. Behind these complaints was a feared
loss of the monopoly of authority. For an investigator to enter an
estate and speak directly to the patrocinados undermined the social
relationships upon which slavery had been based. One master's com-
ments reveal his own lack of illusion about the patrocinados' sat-
isfaction with their lot: it is practically impossible that the patro-
cinados will declare themselves resigned and content on the estates,
he wrote, when they hope that after their declarations they may be
given complete freedom. This master, D. Nicolas de Cardenas, who
had just lost his claim to 185 patrocinados, was pleading a particular
case and trying to argue that the testimony against him (that the
patrocinados had received insufficient food) was false. But the sense
of loss of control that he expressed was not confined to those who
had lost their entire work force. 14
His plaint reflected the corrosive effect on slave structures of two
features of the patronato: the possibility of taking testimony from
patrocinados, and the fact that the ultimate sanction for the master
was loss of his legal rights over his former slaves, and full freedom
for them. Manumission had existed as a sanction under the old slave
codes, but only for abuses so drastic that no slave would seek them
out or be in much condition to enjoy freedom afterward (e.g., blind-
ing, crippling, etc.). Now a mere violation of regulations regarding
payday could in theory bring freedom, if the juntas were able to
"interfere" sufficiently to find out that one had taken place.
The actual outcome of visits to the plantations depended in large
measure on the attitude of the officials making the inquiry. In some
cases, the patrocinados were simply brought out en masse and, in
the presence of the master, asked if they had any complaints. One
13 Real Orden del Ministerio de Ultramar, Dec. 2, 1881, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4884,
tomo 7, expo 110.
14 Dn. Nicolas de Cardenas y Ortega al Gobernador General, Oct. 1, 1880, AHN,
Ultramar, leg. 4884, tomo 7, expo 101.

177
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

such exercise yielded testimony so deferential that one marvels that

the judge taking the deposition did not question its accuracy. The
patrocinados were reported to have said that they had nothing to
complain about in matters of food, wages, or anything else. They
received their pay annually rather than monthly because they
wanted the master to keep it so that they would not waste it. Fur-
thermore, they gave the master the cash from the sale of goods from
the food plots that he generously allowed them to till because they
had so much confidence in him. Those patrocinados from the plan-
tation who had gone to the junta with complaints had been acting
on "bad advice," for all was well on the plantation. IS One suspects
that in such cases the visit was a pure formality, in which master
and investigators agreed to go through the motions.
In other cases, the visits were indeed disruptive, for they uncov-
ered abuses and interfered with the autonomy of plantation au-
thorities. On the ingenio San Rafael owned by D. Nicolas de Car-
denas, for example, things were going very badly in 1880. There was
a shortage of food, and not only did the patrocinados complain, but
the plantation administrator himself reported that he did not know
whether he could control the plantation unless he had more food.
Under these circumstances, a visit to the plantation turned up angry
and detailed testimony from the patrocinados about the small ra-
tions and the absence of wages. They complained that they were
always hungry and that no clothes had been given them in two years.
Furthermore, some reported that, contrary to law, they were being
whipped. Interestingly, they testified that the mayoral, but not the
slave contramayorales, whipped them. One contramayoral said that
he was ordered to whip the other slaves, but refused "por ser estos
sus compaiieros" (because they were his companions).16
In addition to challenging the right of juntas to visit plantations,
masters could create risks for those patrocinados who complained
to the juntas. Most instances of retaliation undoubtedly went un-
recorded, but the antipathy of masters and plantation administrators
to these challenges occasionally emerges in the record. The admin-
istrator of the ingenio San Rafael, for example, had beaten the pa-
Expediente promovido par D. Joaquin Quiles, ANC, ME, leg. 3813, expo Cg.
15
Copia certificada del expediente ... sobre mal trato dado a la dotaci6n del ingenio
16
Armenteritos, de D. Nicolas de Cardenas, ANC, CA, leg. 99, expo 8864. See also
Demanda de D. Nicolas de Cardenas, ibid., leg. 59, expo 6143.

178
 MASTERS

trocinado Crecencio when he had the temerity to invoke the pro-

tection of outside authorities. I? Another master used a patrocinado's
complaint as evidence of "insubordination" and asked that he be
sent to the municipal dep6sito. 18
Juntas could be equally unsympathetic. In 1886 a newspaper report
charged that a patrocinado who claimed to have been denied his
stipend was sent by the junta in Havana to labor on the public
works. 19 Though the right to complain was in theory guaranteed by
the 1880 law, civil authorities and plantation administrators had no
desire to see complaints become frequent, and they often worked
together to maintain the basic framework of authority despite dif-
ferences over procedures or particular actions.
Masters clung to authority not simply because of psychological
needs or social fears, but because they wished to maintain specific
rhythms of labor that they feared could not be sustained without
force. When it appeared that the Reglamento might restrict the hours
that patrocinados could be made to work, planters filed petitions
using arguments similar to those on corporal punishment. On the
one hand, the petitioners claimed to be doing everything up to the
highest standards already, and on the other, they did not want their
behavior regulated to compel them to meet those standards. Some
argued that developments in processing had diminished the hours
of work and that very few plantations engaged in night work. On
those that did have night work, they claimed, the work was done
in shifts renewed at specified hours. Rather than conclude that this
made regulation unthreatening, they argued that the need for reg-
ulation was thus obviated. Another group of hacendados offered up
a paean to the joys of labor in sugar, evoking the bustle of the mill
yard during the harvest, the song of the African, the steam of the
boiling guarapo (sugar syrup), and, interestingly, the happiness Of
the slave who worked at night and thus could rest during the day
in the silence of his hut and in the "bosom of his family." This they
contrasted with the rigid and invariable limits that would be im-
posed by a Reglamento. 2o These were transparently self-serving ar-
17 Ibid.
18 Remitiendo al Gobr. Gral. para un informe recortes del peri6dico liLa Tribuna
... ," AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4528 1°, expo 176.
19 El Popular: Diario Radical (Jan. 25, 18861.

2°Observaciones, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4883, tomo 5, expo 69, and Instancia pre-
sentada, ibid., expo 65.

179
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

guments, but planters won their point, and the Reglamento per-
mitted masters to require of patrocinados "the necessary hours of
work, according to custom" during the harvest. 21
To understand why this was a critical demand of masters, one
need not reject all of the considerations they adduced (paeans aside).
The extreme hours of night work characteristic of the boom period
of mid-century, which had resulted in exhaustion, inefficiency, and
even death, had indeed been reduced on some plantations by the
1880s, though grinding remained an around-the-clock operation. But
what masters were defending above all was their authority over the
labor process. The 1880 law gave patronos the right to demand labor
from their former slaves; masters wanted the Reglamento to inter-
pret this as entitling them to demand however much labor they
might need from each individual patrocinado. To codify the amount,
even if the hours granted were generous to the employer, would be
to restrict that freedom of action. Any formulation of limits would
mean that violation would be grounds for complaint and appeal, and
this was precisely what masters did not want. A free laborer might
refuse to work long hours; patronos wanted to make sure that no
patrocinado could do so.
As a result of the latitude allowed masters, a considerable degree
of continuity initially seemed possible. For example, while in the
British West Indies masters had often withdrawn traditional "in-
dulgences" from slaves when apprenticeship was established, on at
least some Cuban plantations the old rhythm of holidays and re-
wards was maintained. On the ingenio Nueva Teresa, the New Year
arrived just as the 1881-1882 harvest was about to begin. On the
thirtieth of December an ox was slaughtered, and the dotaci6n was
given the day off. The following day fresh meat, bread (a luxury),
and salt were distributed, and "criollitos" were baptized in the cas a
de vivienda (plantation house). The first days of January were also
given as holidays; on the fourth and fifth the workers began to cut
and haul cane; and at 6:00 on the morning of the sixth day the
grinding began. 22
Patronos may have felt it appropriate to observe these customs in
order to maintain their own sense of legitimacy or to encourage
21 C6digo penal, 1886, p. 247.
22 Libro Diario del Ingenio Nueva Teresa, ANC, ML, 10831. Not all masters, how-
ever, continued to observe holidays. See Ballou, Due South, p. 63.

180
 MASTERS

productivity among the patrocinados. Since government regulations

were not being strictly enforced in any case, masters may also have
been less seized by a spirit of vengeance than their British West
Indian counterparts. The usual rewards of the harvest could be main-
tained because the usual level and forms of exploitation were being
maintained. Indeed, when one examines the rhythm of work during
a sugar harvest, even as it is reflected in the terse account of a
plantation daybook, it is not difficult to understand why masters
clung to their right to set hours and to their forms of extra-economic
compulsion. During the months of the harvest, there was work at
all hours of the night, the principle of Sunday rest was abandoned,
and patrocinados labored days on end without a free day of rest.
During the zafra of 1880-1881 on Nueva Teresa, for instance, pa-
trocinados received only one day of respite between March 17 and
April 15. At the end of May, the harvest ended, and a cow was killed
for the dotaci6n along with a calf for the operarios. Stipends for the
patrocinados, due weeks earlier, were finally paid. The withholding
of stipends in this case seems clearly to have been a means for
maintaining work discipline, not a problem of available cash, for the
man who regularly brought the money for stipends out from Havana
had arrived at the estate three weeks earlier.23
On the general issue of pay, masters framed their complaints in
terms of the practical exigencies of running a plantation and the
inappropriateness of government interference. Although paying
wages in return for labor is generally conceived of as the very an-
tithesis of slavery, Cuban patronos seem not to have viewed the
idea of payment with much alarm, though they grumbled about the
difficulties of getting cash to the plantations. A nominal wage did
not seem to alter the old relations of slavery radically: it was ac-
ceptable to most masters as long as it remained nominal and as long
as they controlled disbursement. Their concern was often not
whether the patrocinados would receive a stipend, but who would
determine when they received it.
Late pay was an offense for which masters could, in theory, lose
their rights over a patrocinado. But by pleading the unreasonableness
of so drastic a punishment for what they portrayed as a bookkeeping
problem, masters sought to gain greater freedom of action. The Re-
23 Libro Diario del Ingenio Nueva Teresa, ANC, ML, 10831. See folios 108-16 for
the beginning of the zalra, folios 128-29 for the end.

181
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

glamento of 1880 had said that pay was due on the eighth of each
month, but before the next harvest masters had obtained the conces-
sion of a fifteen-day grace period after the eighth of each month.
Shortly afterward, the regulation was loosened still further with an
order ruling that the fifteen days of grace were to be counted not
from when the pay was due, but from the time the patrocinados
claimed their late pay.24 This reduced to nil the master's risk of
inadvertent loss of the patronato because of postponement of the
payment of the stipend, for now he would have fifteen days from
the time his crime was discovered in which to make restitution and
escape punishment. The requirement that he pay interest on the
delayed stipends was a small price for the flexibility thus gained.
All threat had been taken out of the requirement of punctuality, a
fact that the government in Madrid belatedly recognized, and at the
end of 1881 a royal order reinstated the original provisions for pay-
ment on time or loss of the patronato. 25
Masters did not accede willingly to the change, and in March 1882
one group sent yet another petition to the minister, claiming that
while they had no malice in the matter, it simply was logistically
difficult to get the money out to the plantations each month. 26 Since
many estates were in debt already, the problem of ready cash could
be a real one. The British consul suggested that even such a small
amount of money was difficult for former slaveowners to raise.27
Some masters attempted to substitute other forms of payment for
the stipend-in a few cases, by trying to take formal credit for conces-
sions that might have been granted informally during slavery. Since
the 1880 law made masters' obligations overtly reciprocal-main-
tenance and stipend in exchange for labor-one strategy was to claim
that the patrocinados were in fact compensated for their labor by
other generous acts of the master. D. Jose Beltran of Santiago de
Cuba allowed one of his patrocinadas to keep the money she earned
from washing and ironing, and allowed her mother the money she
earned for selling du1ces (sweets). When challenged for his failure
to pay stipends, he claimed that these were more than adequate
24 AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4884, tomo 7, exps. 85 and 99.
2S AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4884, tomo 7, expo 1l0.
26 AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4884, tomo 8, expo 134.
27 Carden to Granville, Oct. 16, 1880, PRO, FO 84/1568.

182
 MASTERS

recompense. 28 In a more complex case, a bankrupt master asked for

exemption from the obligation to pay stipends, because he was al-
lowing his patrocinados to devote the majority of their time to their
food plots and animals, while he searched for someone to whom he
could rent them out. 29 In a sense, he was saying that the traditional
right to cultivate conucos should be seen as a payment for labor.
But in letting them devote even more time to their conucos he was
also moving toward a kind of semi-peasant adaptation, where work-
ers would be allowed to support themselves on the employer's land
in order to be available when their labor was needed. In neither of
these cases were the arrangements in lieu of stipends judged legal
by the authorities, once challenged. Similar patterns may nonethe-
less have persisted in areas where juntas were not within reach or
where masters could persuade patrocinados that it was in their best
interests for the enterprise not to go bankrupt.
Though stipends were part of the justification for the patronato,
patrocinados under the age of eighteen were owed no money. This
provided patronos with a continuing supply of unpaid labor, includ-
ing the libertos "freed" by the Moret Law but who remained with
their parents. Technically, patronos were supposed to be educating
the libertos and young patrocinados, but cases brought before the
juntas indicate that the conception of education could be limited
indeed. One master interpreted this obligation to apply only to those
between ages six and ten, the ages he thought appropriate for school-
ing. His description of the consequences that would follow upon too
exigent an enforcement of the education requirement suggests the
importance of unpaid child labor. If all young patrocinados had to
be educated, he wrote, it would mean withdrawing from agricultural
labor a large and select group of workers, thus interrupting the tasks
of agriculture and turning the patronato into a burden. 3D
The value of child labor was also acknowledged by a junta in
Matanzas in the case of a liberta appealing for freedom. The girl had
deposited funds with the local junta to compensate her master for
the cost of her upbringing, funds he rejected as too little. The pro-
vincial junta ruled that the master had no right to indemnification
28 Demanda de D. Jose Beltran, ANC, CA, leg. 70, expo 7043.
29 Demanda de D. Luis Garz6n, ANC, CA, leg. 69, expo 7016.
30 Demanda de D. Jose Romay, ANC, CA, leg. 70, expo 705l.

183
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

because the labor that this girl had provided him from age six to
eleven compensated him for his expenses. 31
To avoid challenges to the established order, masters struggled
not only to maintain a monopoly of authority and control over wages
and hours but also to close the plantation to outside information.
One characteristic of a smoothly functioning slave society was that
disputes, in theory, were handled over the heads of the slaves, with-
out involving them in the process. The initiation of abolition and
the installation of the Juntas de Patronato broke this pattern. Ab-
olition, however gradual, recognized the illegitimacy of slavery and
suggested the possibility of more rapid emancipation. The juntas,
however biased, altered relations by admitting claims of right from
patrocinados through which they might win their freedom. Main-
tenance of a master's autonomy, thus, could come to depend on the
denial of information to patrocinados.
The government in Havana cooperated in this campaign to keep
patrocinados in ignorance, following a policy identical in spirit to
that of a slave society. The old laws had often barred discussion of
slavery as an institution, and when slavery was replaced by the
patronato the governor general tried to bar discussion of total abo-
lition. His logic was simple: the knowledge that abolitionists were
proposing an early end to the patronato would doubtless "delude
the unfortunate blacks and "produce excitement in them."32 The
II

governor's perception that information had to be kept from the pa-

trocinados was astute, for the evidence of experience was that with
information those "unfortunate blacks II would attempt to defend
their own interests.
A more direct strategy for blocking the access of patrocinados to
authorities who might compete with the master in his jurisdiction
over the work force was to make the world of the plantation as
nearly as possible a physically closed unit and prevent patrocinados
from leaving it. The law required patrocinados to obtain written
permission from their master if they wished to leave the estate, and
the owners of large plantations quickly developed additional means
for lessening mobility. They established or expanded plantation
stores, called tiendas mixtas in this period, and encouraged the pa-
trocinados to spend their money within the plantation. The plan-
31 Demanda de D. Jacobo Perez, ANC, CA, leg. 65, expo 6595.
32 Denuncia del peri6dico "Discusi6n," AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4810, expo 101.

184
 MASTERS

tation store was thus not only a tool of economic control, but also
of control of information. The aim was to enclose the patrocinados,
and if possible other workers as well, within the plantation, dis-
couraging them from setting foot off the property to learn of their
rights, of other jobs, of other wages, of other options.
This system of company stores, however, could not function en-
tirely without notice from the outside world. As long as the rigid
institution of slavery existed, no outsider had the right to intrude
into the provision of rations and goods to slaves. But once the pa-
tronato was introduced, owners of stores in adjacent towns began
to raise questions about the master's exclusive right to provision
his workers. Town shopkeepers, well aware that they were being
denied a potential market, complained bitterly of the masters' mo-
nopoly. In several municipalities in Santa Clara, Matanzas, and Ha-
vana, they tried to break that monopoly by challenging the tax-
exempt status of the plantation stores. Local merchants knew that
one benefit of a shift to wage labor ought to be a stimulus to the
surrounding economy. Whenpatrocinados began to receive stipends,
shopkeepers had reason to expect business to improve correspond-
ingly. But the effect of the introduction of cash would be dampened
if the master transformed his mayordomia (dispensary) into a store,
either owned by himself or rented to an entrepreneur. In either case,
less money would circulate beyond the plantation. Shopkeepers
charged that this was not only illegal, since the stores were neither
licensed nor taxed, but also immoral, since employees were coerced
into buying there. 33
Despite the exchange of charges and countercharges, both sides
were essentially agreed that the function of the stores was control;
they simply disagreed on whether abolition of slavery implied that
such control should be relinquished. Planters regarded the stores as
elementary good business practice. The stores helped to keep the
patrocinados and others from leaving the property of the estates and
kept away itinerant vendors who might disturb the good order of
the plantation. To a planter like D. Agustin Ariosa of Remedios, in
the province of Santa Clara, who had two plantations with a work
force totaling about 800 patrocinados and 400 free workers, these
stores were self-evidently a continuation of slave mayordomias.
33 Sabre pago de contribuciones de las tiendas de los Ingenios, AHN, Ultramar, leg.
4818, expo 84.

185
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

Ironically, he himself argued the continuity most emphatically, in

order to support his claim to tax exemption. They were open only
during the hours that workers were given leisure, they were located
next to the barracones, and they sold no bread or drinks, only the
necessities of the work force. He noted ominously in his petition to
the government that any disequilibrium of this order would bring
"deep disturbances in the public tranquillity in which you are so
interested."34
The president of the municipality of Nueva Paz saw the same
phenomenon differently; he charged that the principal object of the
tiendas was to make the law of abolition a dead letter by actually
issuing the patrocinados' stipends in goods rather than money. He
argued that everyone knew that workers who did not buy in the
stores ran the risk of losing their jobs and that patrocinados similarly
feared punishment. Shopkeepers added that the goods sold in such
stores were actually more expensive than those sold in the towns,
emphasizing that plantation owners were thus profiting from, not
aiding, their patrocinados. 35 Whatever their position on slavery, the
tone of the shopkeepers' denunciations suggests a deep hostility to
patronos, perhaps a reflection of tensions between merchants and
planters in the countryside, perhaps a simple and immediate conflict
of interests. This hostility may have led such shopkeepers to aid
patrocinados indirectly, by passing on information that broke the
barriers surrounding the plantation.
It is not surprising that during this transitional period the gov-
ernment took a compromising attitude toward the conflict, finally
ruling that planters who owned their own stores owed no tax, but
that those who rented out their plantation stores would have to pay.
The institution could thus survive, stalling some of the potential
transformations in slavery contained in the 1880 law by limiting
the mobility of patrocinados, as well as laying the groundwork for
decades of payment in vales (scrip) for purchases at company stores. 36
For masters, a central problem of the pa trona to was its ambiguity.
Slavery was a system based on coercion and on a monopoly of au-
thority, yet the law of 1880 and its subsequent interpretations di-
luted that coercion and fragmented that authority. Masters re-
34 Copia del expediente relativo a la reclamaci6n de D. Agustin Ariosa, in ibid.
35 Copia del expediente instruido por el Ayuntamiento de Nueva Paz, in ibid.
36 On later use of plantation stores, see Moreno, "El token," in La historia.

186
 MASTERS

sponded to these contradictions in various ways. Some leading

planters struggled in rear-guard actions, tirelessly lobbying for the
maintenance or re-introduction of as many elements of slavery as
possible. Conservative Spanish and pro-Spanish planters like the
Conde de Casa More and Francisco Feliciano Ibanez were conspic-
uous in this group, though no simple Peninsular/Creole division can
. account for the differences in attitudes among various groups of
hacendados. Some owners, like Agustin Ariosa, simply tried to take
full advantage of the patronato, locking the patrocinados into a
closed plantation world in which as little changed as possible. Those
whose estates were at some distance from Havana may have found
this somewhat easier. Others, however, were willing to accelerate
emancipation, and relinquish the idea of holding all former slaves
in an intermediate status. This could be either a political gesture or
an economic expedient, or both.
"Renunciation" of the patronato over individual slaves was one
way to accomplish this, and was almost identical to manumission
under slavery, carried out as a benevolent act reflecting the gener-
osity of the master, while relieving him of the responsibility of
maintenance. This seems to have been relatively more common
among the masters and mistresses of domestic servants in towns,
but it also took place on plantations. There were some 18,800 official
renunciations between 1881 and 1886.37 It was sometimes simply a
face-saving device, a gesture of largesse to avoid a prosecution for
holding a patrocinado illegally, as in the case of the master who
"renounced" his rights to a patrocinado over the age of sixty, over
whom he had no legal rights in any case. 38 But renunciation could
also be a way to shift rapidly to wage labor or to divest oneself of
unproductive patrocinados.
More important than such manumissions were the agreements of
"mutual accord" under which patrono and patrocinado established
the terms of freedom independent of the juntas. Over 35,000 such
accords were registered between 1881 and 1886. These could involve
payment by the patrocinado and/or agreement on the terms of future
labor. 39
37 See Table 19.
38 Documento referente a reclamaci6n de su libertad del moreno Angel, ANC, GG,
leg. 366, expo 17525.
39 See Table 19 and the discussion of mutual accord in Chap. VII.

187
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

Arrangements of mutual accord were a way for the master to

provide a stimulus for the patrocinado to work steadily. In the case
of Trinidad, discussed earlier, Jose Carreras had agreed to free his
patrocinada from the time she made a large down payment on her
purchase price, and to pay her wages until she made up the rest of
the price. Such an arrangement provided a greater incentive for the
patrocinada than the tiny stipends called for under the law, and thus
was essentially a shift to wage labor, though it derived some of its
effectiveness as a motivation for work from the desire of the patro-
cinada to escape a particular legal status. By placing her in debt, it
also reduced her mobility and decreased the likelihood that she
would choose leisure, household duties, or subsistence cultivation
over wage labor.40
From the point of view of masters, one advantage of such arrange-
ments may have been that the conceding of legal freedom generally
removed disputes from the jurisdiction of the juntas. For all of their
flaws, the juntas, because of their special mandate, had certain ad-
vantages for patrocinados. Their services were available without
charge, and they were formally responsible for enforcing prompt
payment of stipends. Once a patrocinado had gained full legal free-
dom, however, appeals had to be taken to the regular courts. Al-
though litigation in front of the juntas was a weapon with which a
patrocinado could obtain freedom, litigation in the courts to recover
withheld wages could be a terrible burden. Court procedures were
daunting and expensive. One woman reacted angrily when the sin-
dico informed her that she would have to go to court to settle her
account with her former master. This litigation would "embroil"
her and cause her to make expenditures she could ill afford, she
wrote, in addition to forcing her to leave her work, which she could
not do because she was supporting herself and two children and
paying their teacher. 41 Such deterrents can only have worked to the
advantage of masters.
A master could also sell the rights over patrocinados to another
employer, thus directly recouping some of his investment in slaves
rather than waiting to be compensated by the use of their underpaid
labor. In one somewhat devious case, the master sold his rights, then
40Demanda de On. Jose Carreras, ANC, CA, leg. 95, expo 8613.
41Gariela Arenciba, morena, solicita el abono del salario que se Ie adeuda, AHN,
Ultramar, leg. 4786, expo 288.

188
 MASTERS

illegally lured the patrocinados back to his plantation to work for

wages. In effect, he liquidated the labor rights he had over them
without losing access to their labor. 42
An employer who needed workers could also offer to represent a
patrocinado before a junta in return for the patrocinado's promise
to work for him, a strategy which seems to have become more
common as the rate of emancipation increased. 43 This tendency
illustrates the ambiguity of the patronato as an economic institu-
tion. As employers moved away from reliance on slave labor, it was
logical for them to attempt to attract individual workers, but former
slaves still under the patronato legally had to be bought or hired
from their masters. Promising to represent patrocinados before the
junta was a way to circumvent this rigidity by encouraging them to
take the risk of abandoning their masters. Within a city with an
increasingly large free population of color, the practice was difficult
to halt, and even in the countryside successful appeals to the junta
could shift patrocinados from one plantation to another.
These different patterns of response by masters indicate a fun-
damental uncertainty about the nature of labor. Was labor now fully
a commodity, to be bid for or lured into employment; or was work
still a legal obligation owed by one class of individuals to another?
Put another way: was it the labor or the laborer that should be seen
as the commodity? The patronato retained strict obligations be-
tween former slaves and former masters, transferable by sale. But
as the maintenance of that system of obligations became more dif-
ficult, the incentive to hire and fire rather than buy and sell in-
creased, and the shift to wage labor accelerated.
Some masters lost their patrocinados through unofficial mecha-
nisms. One was flight, which became easier as the balance of slaves
and free persons of color shifted increasingly toward free. The de-
tection of runaways had become more difficult, at the same time
that the movement toward free labor made it more likely that run-
aways would find employment. The other mechanism was aban-
donment, often following death of a master or the bankruptcy of an
ingenio. The juntas, despite their official role as supervisors of the
42 Informe del Consejo de Administraci6n, Aug. 8,1884, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4926,
expo 144.
43 For an 1883 ruling of the junta of the province of Havana that attempted to halt
this, see AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4814, expo 270.

189
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

TABLE 23
Patrocinados Legally Achieving Full Freedom
in Each Province, May 1881-May 1886.
Percentage in Each Category

Pinar Santa Puerto Santiago

Terms of Freedom del Rio Havana Matanzas Clara Principe de Cuba Total
Mutual Accord 20% 16% 38% 40% 10% 24% 31%
Renunciation
by Master 18% 30% 9% 13% 29% 21% 17%
Indemnification
by Patrocinado 14% 9% 9% 11% 4% 25% 11%
Failure of Master
to Fulfill
Article 4a 7% 15% 5% 2% 18% 4% 7%
Other Causes 12% 13% 11% 12% 33% 18% 12%
Article 8 (1885
and 1886 only)a 28% 16% 27% 22% 6% 8% 22%
Total 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
SOURCE: Same as Table 19. Some columns do not add to 100% because of rounding.
'See notes to Table 19.

transition, were thus ignorant of the fate or location of some patro-

cinados. Officially published lists of patrocinados who were due
their freedom but could not be found by the juntas testify to this
ignorance. 44
The juntas' statistics on patrocinados who were freed are none-
theless a good rough guide to the pattern of emancipation. Formal
procedures for acquiring freedom were supervised by the juntas, and
some of the informal procedures might eventually be incorporated
into junta statistics as cases of flight and abandonment came to the
attention of local authorities. Junta records, therefore, permit a com-
parison of the patterns in the six provinces of Cuba (see Tables 19
and 23).
In the major sugar provinces of Santa Clara and Matanzas, the
most frequent means of achieving freedom was "mutual accord"
between patrono and patrocinado. (This procedure should be dis-
tinguished from renunciation, where the patrono unilaterally gave
up his rights, and which occurred in only about 10 percent of the
cases of freedom in the two provinces.) Freedom through formal
"indemnification of services" was relatively less frequent in these

44 Sociedad Abolicionista Espanola, Exposici6n que al Exmo. Sr. Ministro de UI-

tramar dirige la Junta Directiva en 10 de Mayo de 1884 (Madrid, 1884).

190
 MASTERS

provinces, and conviction of the master for a violation of the laws

was less common still. The absolute number of workers who suc-
cessfully challenged their masters' authority or purchased their free-
dom was large-over eight thousand-but small as a percentage of
total freeings in the two provinces. This pattern suggests that the
majority of the patrocinados achieving freedom in the major sugar
areas did so by agreeing with their masters on the terms of freedom
("mutual accord") or waiting until the gradual freeings by age under
Article 8 began in 1885, though a significant number found other
ways out.
The province of Havana provides a contrast to this pattern. There,
the single most important source of legal freedom was renunciation
of the pa tron a to, followed by mutal accord, Article 8, and conviction
of the master for violating the regulations. The prominence of re-
nunciation is noteworthy. Some masters clearly thought that it was
in their interests to free themselves from both the obligations and
the privileges of continued legal authority over their former slaves.
Although the provincial totals do not indicate how much of the
renunciation was taking place in the city itself, the contrast between
Havana province, with 30 percent of freed patrocinados obtaining
freedom through renunciation, and more rural Matanzas, with only
9 percent, is striking. Conviction of masters for violating the reg-
ulations also accounts for proportionately more emancipations in
Havana than in Matanzas or Santa Clara.
The process of emancipation in Havana was apparently one of
abandonment and attack-masters giving up or negotiating away
their legal rights over patrocinados, patrocinados successfully pros-
ecuting many of those masters who did not. Such abolitionist agi-
tation as was possible under the circumstances undoubtedly accel-
erated these processes, both directly and indirectly. Those who
favored abolition could free their own patrocinados and contribute
funds toward self-purchase by other patrocinados. The significance
of organized abolitionism should not be exaggerated, however. The
movement labored under the disabilities of government obstruc-
tionism and press censorship, and some members of the Liberal
party, which favored abolition in principle, continued to hold pa-
trocinados. 45 But the actions of patrocinados, patronos, juntas, and
abolitionists contributed to the undermining of the institution of
45 For Conservative charges that Liberals held patrocinados while espousing abo-
litionism, see E1 Par1amento (Jan. 15, 1886).

191
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

the patronato in Havana, leaving in bondage in 1883 just 21 percent

of the number of slaves that had existed in the province in 1862.
The province of Santiago de Cuba provides a sharp contrast in the
means used by patrocinados to achieve freedom. There the single
most important source of legal emancipation between 1881 and 1886
was indemnification of services. A quarter of those achieving free-
dom did so by depositing money with the junta to purchase their
freedom from their masters. The other ~ajor sources of freedom
were mutal accord, renunciation, and fl other,/1 almost certainly non-
registration. Many of the slaves in Santiago de Cuba had already
won their freedom by 1878, so the patronato was important to a
smaller fraction of the population. But the high number of self-
purchases is significant, perhaps reflecting the particular access of
slaves (and later, patrocinados) in the east to land on which to grow
their own crops, and perhaps reflecting as well the close links be-
tween patrocinados and free persons of color, many of whom were
smallholders themselves.
Pinar del Rio followed its own pattern, with the sources of legal
freedom divided between the post-1885 freeings by age, mutual ac-
cord, renunciation, indemnification of services, and flother./1 The
significance of Article 8 in Pinar del Rio-as in Matanzas and Santa
Clara-reflects the fact that other forms of emancipation did not
develop as rapidly there as they did in Havana and Santiago de Cuba,
leaving a proportionately larger number to be freed by the manu-
missions beginning in 1885, and finally by general abolition in 1886.
In this respect Pinar del Rio, a substantial producer of sugar with a
significant number of advanced mills, followed the two major sugar
producers.
As it had in the 1870s, the degree of persistence of bondage in the
early 1880s closely paralleled the significance of sugar production
in each province. In 1883 masters in the most important sugar re-
gion, Matanzas, held 55 percent of their 1877 slave population as
patrocinados; those in Havana held 44 percent of theirs; those in
Puerto Principe held a tiny 11 percent. After 1883, the pattern be-
came more uniform, as emancipation picked up speed across the
island. (See Table 24, which ranks the provinces in approximate
descending order of their importance as sugar producers.)
Within the world of the plantation, masters could to some extent
insulate their operations from the corrosive effects of the new law,

192
 MASTERS

TABLE 24
Slave and Patrocinado Population, 1877-1886
11877 = 1001
Province 1877 1883 1885 1886

Matanzas 100 55 28 13
Santa Clara 100 55 31 13
Pinar del Rio 100 48 28 14
Havana 100 44 25 14
Santiago de Cuba 100 39 13 6
Puerto Principe 100 11 7 4
SOURCES: 1877-Fe Iglesias Garcia, "EI censo cubano de 1877 y sus diferentes versiones," Santiago
34 (June 19791: 167-214; 1883-AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4814, expo 289; 1885 and 1886-AHN,
Ultramar, leg. 4926, expo 144.

at least initially. As a class, they had the power to influence pro-

vincial governors and local juntas, as well as the government in
Havana, thus delaying the intrusion of actual enforcement. When
pressures for emancipation became unavoidable, "mutual accord"
allowed for new contractual relationships and some continuity of
authority. Masters could not, however, entirely control the process.
In those areas where there was serious political fragmentation, or
where patrocinados had access to funds and to outside authority,
the nature of emancipation was different, with more self-purchase
and more legal challenging of masters. In those same areas, such as
Santiago de Cuba and Havana, masters then drew back from the
patronato and renunciation became a significant source of freedom.
There was a dynamic to the process of emancipation that tran-
scended the will of the individual participants, a dynamic whereby
loss of authority led to further loss of authority, patrocinado initia-
tives created their own momentum, the approaching end of the
patronato made self-purchase cheaper, and the decreasing impor-
tance of slavery made government enforcement of patrocinado
rights less difficult. The changing population of slaves and patro-
cinados reflected this trend: according to official statistics, which
can be viewed as first approximations, the number of slaves on the
island was almost halved in the fifteen years between 1862 and 1877,
halved again to leave 100,000 patrocinados in 1883, halved once
more in the next two years, and then halved one last time in what
was to be the final year of the patronato, leaving just 25,000 patro-
cinados to be freed in 1886 (see Table 25).

193
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

TABLE 25
Slave and Patrocinado Population, 1877-1886
Province 1877 1883 1885 1886
Pinar del Rio 29,129 13,885 8,110 3,937
Havana 41,716 18,427 10,419 5,693
Matanzas 70,849 38,620 19,997 9,264
Santa Clara 42,049 23,260 12,987 5,648
Puerto Principe 2,290 246 153 101
Santiago de Cuba 13,061 5,128 1,715 738
Total 199,094 99,566 53,381 25,381
SOURCES: Same as Table 24.

The year 1880 can be seen as a kind of pivot point in the process
of emancipation and the decay of slavery. This is not because "ab-
olition" in 1880 in and of itself changed the lives of those whose
legal status it altered from slave to patrocinado, but rather because
it set in motion forces that would help to break slavery down. Nor
was the process slow and smooth as the planners had hoped, but
instead rapid and uneven. Some of these forces were mechanical:
the enforcement of the registration laws would, sooner or later, give
legal freedom to thousands of patrocinados, as it did for 11,000 in
1883. Article 8, with its gradual freeings by age, would decrease the
number of patrocinados by a substantial fraction each year beginning
in 1885. But the more important forces set in motion were social.
From the point of view of masters, the law of 1880 contained in-
novations that could corrode the accustomed relations between mas-
ter and slave. The law eventually limited punishment, thus remov-
ing a stimulus for forced labor, just as wage labor was becoming
more important and creating an invidious contrast between the pa-
trocinado and his wage-earning co-worker. The law provided local
boards of appeal for patrocinados, to which they could take their
complaints and their funds. However biased the juntas might be,
they were a disruptive third party. These legal provisions could be
fought and evaded; patrocinados could be threatened and cowed;
but the terms of the relationship had been altered.
The initiatives of patrocinados gave meaning to this altered re-
lationship as thousands in the early 1880s obtained freedom through
one means or another. At the same time, pressure from abolitionists
and autonomists repeatedly raised the question of abolition in

194
 MASTERS

Madrid and Havana. 46 By 1884, discussion concerning the ending of

the patronato had become widespread. A commercial depression
coupled with a worldwide drop in sugar prices racked the island,
and the suggestion of abolition brought forth contradictory re-
sponsesY The Consejo de Administraci6n, frightened by the crisis
buffeting the economy, was divided. The majority insisted that the
patronato had to be maintained, and even regretted the "imprudent
concessions" that had followed the Ten Years' War and the "noto-
rious damage" thus done to "legitimate property. II To give up the
patronato would be to "shatter the last, scant remains of the pro-
ductive forces of the country. II The chief of the Secci6n de Fomento
was more tactful, reiterating the wisdom of gradualism and arguing
that to abolish the patronato would be to neglect the interests that
legislators must defend. 48
A minority within the Consejo de Administraci6n, however, ex-
pressed a quite different position. They argued that, as long as this
intermediate condition between freedom and slavery existed, the
disadvantages of both systems would persist, without the advantages
of either. Forced labor could not exist without physical coercion,
which had been abolished by 1884, while free labor would work only
with the stimulus that came from the fear of being fired, which
patrocinados did not fee1. 49
By 1885, resistance to the idea of final abolition had diminished
still further. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, a number of
Cuban ingenios were going out of business. The English consul re-
ported that there was "neither Capital, credit, nor confidence any-
where." sa In July 1886, the Spanish Cortes authorized the govern-
ment to abolish the patronato, after consultation with Cuban
planters. sl In August 1886, the Havana Junta of Agriculture, Indus-
try, and Commerce called for an end to the patronato in order to
"normalize the condition of workers and make possible the regu-
46 See Labra, Mi campana, far a chronology of abolitionist pressures.
47 For a discussion of the positions of the various political parties in Cuba on the
question of abolition of the patronato, see Tuan Gualberto G6mez, La cuesti6n de
r.
Cuba en 1884: Historia y soluciones de los partidos cubanos, IMadrid: A. Alaria,
1885).
48 See the various informes in AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4926, expo 144, no. 300.
49 Ibid.

50 Crowe to Granville, Tan. 3, 1885, PRO, Fa 8411719.

51 Entralgo, La liberaci6n etnica, pp. 101-12.

195
 THE LIMITS OF GRADUALISM

larization of wages." 52 The members apparently had in mind the

creation of a larger supply of wage laborers through emancipation
and the attraction of white workers into sugar. At least one contem-
porary economic thinker had already predicted a fall in wages as a
result of free competition between former patrocinados and wage
workers following emancipation. 53 The Sociedad Econ6mica de Ami-
gos del Pais concurred with the junta and called for abolition. 54 Even
the planters' Association agreed to the end of the patronato if there
were also a law on labor and immigration. The planters wanted large-
scale, possibly subsidized, immigration to increase the labor supply,
as well as the institution of some controls on labor. 55
Eager to dispense with the issue once and for all and assured that
the measure would no longer be disruptive, the Spanish government
declared an end to the patronato by royal decree on October 7, 1886.
By this time, the great majority of patrocin ados had already obtained
their freedom, and special control over the labor of the remaining
25,000 was not deemed worth the continued uncertainty and
improvisation.
Just as the behavior of former slaves reflected their complex re-
sponses to the ambiguous status of patrocinado, so the behavior of
masters reflected the wide range of their responses to that of patrono.
Some fought, some stalled, some conceded ground. Though the no-
tion of a reciprocal relationship between former slave and former
master, embodied in the patronato, was initially appealing, as a
practical matter masters tended to refuse any new obligations that
seemed too threatening, too demanding, or simply too costly. At the
same time, planters in particular were very reluctant to relinquish
the traditional privileges of imposing corporal punishment and con-
trolling work routines. Patrocinados lacked economic power or real
civil rights, making it exceptionally difficult for them to enforce
compliance, though on occasion their masters' negligence provided
the needed grounds for a suit for freedom.
Whatever the strategy of the individual master, planters as a group

52 Informe de la Junta Provincial de Agricultura, Industria, y Comercio de la Habana,

Aug. 7, 1886, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 280, expo 610.
53 Jose Quintin Suzarte, Estudias sabre la cuesti6n econ6mica de la isla de Cuba
(Havana: Miguel de Villa, 1881), p. 66.
54 AHN, Ultramar, leg. 280, expo 610.
55 Telegram from the governor general to the minister of Ultramar, Aug. 12, 1886,
AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4926, expo 144.

196
 MASTERS

were obliged to adapt. They had used the patronato to ensure a degree
of continuity, but when that was no longer practicable, they were,
finally, willing to relinquish it. Once the patronato had been defin-
itively suppressed in 1886, planters turned their attention to new
modes of increasing the labor supply and asserting control over la-
borers. In this process, they drew upon mechanisms developed dur-
ing the pa tron a to, and they also pioneered new forms of organ-
ization.

197
 PART THREE

Postemancipation Responses,
1880-1899
 IX

Planters and the State

The abolition of slavery ... forced many changes in

methods of business and manufacture. The old planters
were slow to adapt themselves to changing economic
conditions, but new blood and new capital were found;
new processes and new machinery were introduced to
offset the loss of slave labor; manufacturing and
agricultural departments were gradually separated, and
country people leased small pieces of land from the
estates and delivered cane to the mills or centrals.
-Edwin F. Atkins l

During the process of emancipation, Cuban planters had tried-often

successfully-to use the power of the state to reinforce their au-
thority over their workers. At the same time, legal provisions en-
acted by that state had been used by patrocinados to undermine
masters' authority. This dialectic did not end with final abolition.
Planters, old and new, retained or obtained preponderant power
within Cuban society and continued to seek and receive state aid
in the task of reorganizing and disciplining labor. In their efforts to
restructure labor and social relations, however, planters had to face
divisions and competition among themselves, divisions that could
provide some room for choice on the part of former slaves. Fur-
thermore, Spain's highest priority continued to be the maintenance
of the colonial tie, a consideration that did not always coincide with
the planters' interest in direct and immediate control of labor. With
the completion of abolition, the Spanish government lost whatever
legal interest in the welfare of former slaves it had manifested during
the patronatoj it nonetheless continued to be highly concerned with
the avoidance of discontent and unrest among key sectors, including
the free population of color. The organization of production that
1 Sixty Years in Cuba: Reminiscences of Edwin F. Atkins (Cambridge, Mass.: The
Riverside Press, 19261, p. 39.

201
 POSTEMANCIPA TION RESPONSES

eventually emerged thus followed the lead of those sugar planters

prepared to embark on a restructuring of class relations in the coun-
tryside, but it was constrained both by the overriding political in-
terests of the colonial state and by the responses to emancipation
of former slaves and other workers.
In this final section I shall examine postemancipation interactions
and adaptations from several vantage points. The present chapter
addresses the changing organization of plantation production and
certain broad strategies of planters and the government for dealing
with the problem of ensuring an adequate supply of labor, particu-
larly the encouragement of immigration and the implementation of
restrictions on "vagrancy." The following chapter focuses on former
slaves, their options and behavior after achieving legal freedom. It
thus deals with specific strategies by which individual planters tried
to control their labor force-such as the use of plantation stores and
the manipulation of wages-in terms of their direct effect on work-
ers. The final chapter of this section analyzes the consequences of
these different interactions, describing the island as it stood at the
end of the century.
The records of specific ingenios offer insight into the transfor-
mation of sugar production during and after the period of final ab-
olition. The inventories, daybooks, and work records of estates re-
veal several important trends: (1) an increase in the seasonality of
labor, (2) a multiplication and greater specificity of different forms
of labor, (3) an instability in the work force from day to day and
week to week, and (4) the emergence of increasing numbers of cane
farmers or colon os.
The plantations of Mapos and San Fernando, owned by the Valle-
Iznaga family and located near Sancti Spiritus in Santa Clara prov-
ince, provide a useful example. In 1877, Mapos operated with 323
slaves and 88 Asians and produced about 157,500 pesos worth of
sugar; San Fernando operated with 205 slaves and 35 Asians and
produced lO9,OOO pesos worth of sugar.2 The process of emancipa-
tion on Mapos (discussed in Chapter VII) involved a gradual decline
in the patrocinado population up to 1883, followed by a much more
rapid decline-in large part due to self-purchase and legal chal-
lenge-thereafter. The process of emancipation on San Fernando is
2 "Noticia de las fincas," p. 21.

202
 PLANTERS AND THE STATE

unrecorded, though it was probably in these respects similar, since

the two groups of patrocinados had direct contact with each other
and dealt with the same junta and the same masters.
By the 1890s, when the surviving records for San Fernando begin,
the estate showed a very different organization of work from the
one reflected in the 1877 agricultural census. Instead of a relatively
homogeneous work force tied to the estate, there was a constantly
fluctuating use of labor, recorded daily in terms of specific tasks.
Altas and baias-hiring and dismissal or departure-were frequent,
sometimes affecting over half the work force in a given week. The
estate showed a dotaci6n ranging from 51 to 213 workers in the
period between May 1891 and April 1892. These were divided into
braceros (laborersL operarios (operatives) of various kinds (machin-
ery, masonry, carpentryL a very few operarios dependientes, and
several empleados. Many of the braceros worked in gangs, led by a
specific individual and issued separate rations. A distinction be-
tween directly hired day laborers and contract laborers is confirmed
by an entry in January 1892 noting that some of the sugar centrifuged
was made with "jornales de la finca" (wages of the estate) and the
rest (three quarters of the total) by the contractor Cecilio Acosta.
There were also some colonos on the estate, presumably supplying
cane, but mention of them is infrequent. (In 1888 the colonos of the
ingenios Natividad and San Fernando were listed together, and
totaled thirty-one.)3
Labor on San Fernando had become intensely seasonal and vari-
able. The chart on p. 204 shows the number of workers listed in the
work force at the end of each week between May 1891 and April
1892. Interestingly, the number of laborers did not divide into a
uniformly low "dead season" and a consistently high period of zafra,
though differences between these seasons are quite apparent. There
were three periods of high labor use. One came in August, when
workers were "cleaning" the cane (limpiando canal. Some of this
cleaning appears to have been done on a contract basis: the cuadrilla
de Pomares (Pomares labor gang) was hired and assigned to work on
specific cane fields; their accounts were kept separate. The second
3 Libra del Estado General del Ingenio San Fernando (hereinafter San Fernandol,
1890-1892, APSS, Valle-Iznaga, leg. 24. For a list of colon as see Igualas de D. Francisco
L. del Valle y de los colonos de Natividad y San Fernando, APSS, Ayuntamiento, leg.
3, num. 64.

203
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

peak came in November, when the workers were cutting and loading
wood. The highest period was in January through April when they
were cutting and loading cane and working in the mill. Several new
cuadrillas made their appearance for these last two tasks. 4 San Fer-
nando had shifted from slavery to seasonal wage labor, though it
was not yet relying heavily on colonos to supply it with cane, con-
tinuing instead to produce most of its cane under direct supervision.
A broader view of the shift in the pattern of production reflected
in estate records may be gained by examining the evolution of an
entire district. The jurisdiction of Santa Isabel de las Lajas, also
located in the province of Santa Clara, may serve as an example. In
1862 Lajas contained seventeen ingenios and 1,930 slaves. s In 1875
it held 1,852 slaves, qf whom 1,428 were living on the district's

225

200

175

150

Number
125
of
workers
100
employed

75

50

May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb March April

Work force on the Ingenio San Fernando, May 1891-AprilI892. The figures are from
the column "total" in the estate records at the end of each week. They include the
categories empleados, operarios de maquina, operarios varios, operarios de carpin-
teria, operarios de albaiiil, braceros, and potrero. They exclude five workers listed
as operarios dependientes between September and April, a category that included a
cook and assistants. (Source: APSS, Valle-Iznaga, leg. 24, Ingenios, Libro del Estado
General del Ingenio San Fernando, 1890-92.)
4 San Fernando, APSS, Valle-Iznaga, leg. 24.
5 Cuba, Centro de Estadistica, Noticias estadfsticas.

204
 PLANTERS AND THE STATE

fifteen sugar plantations. 6 In the early years of the patronato the

planters of Lajas had held on to most of their former slaves, and in
1883 there were still 1,137 patrocinados.7 But after 1883 the bound
population fell sharply, from 1,137 to 299 in just two years.s This
drop corresponded to a period of accelerating self-purchase and man-
umission in the island as a whole and to the economic crisis of 1884.
The subsequent evolution of Lajas is striking. In 1884, the district
reported that it contained eleven ingenios "of importance."9 By the
beginning of 1888 it had only seven, about half the number thirteen
years before. Of these seven, five had held over eighty slaves in 1875.
One large plantation had been redistricted out of the area, and the
remaining estates had been divided or converted into colonias, grow-
ing but not processing cane. The structure of the population had
also changed. In 1862 Lajas held 5,564 inhabitants, including 3,252
whites and Asians, and 2,312 persons of color. 10 In 1883 it reported
7,548 inhabitantsY By 1887 there were 8,014 inhabitants: 5,186
whites, 2,554 persons of color, and 274 Asians. 12 In twenty-five years
the population of color had increased somewhat (10 percent) while
the white and Asian population had gone up dramatically (68 per-
cent), strongly suggesting that immigration had taken place.
The transformation of Lajas reflects, compressed in time and
space, the changes that many other sugar districts were undergoing
as well. What is most remarkable about Lajas is the rapid transfor-
mation of its structures, in contrast to the prolonged legal process
of emancipation. Legally, slave emancipation lasted sixteen years,
but in Lajas the real shifts took place in a very few years at the end
of that period. Lajas in 1875 strongly resembled Lajas in 1862, in
terms of the number of plantations and their slave work force. Even
in 1883, the number of patrocinados was still over 60 percent of the
number of slaves in 1875. But by 1888 the district had ceased to be
recognizable, both in the status of its workers and in the organization

6 Padr6n general de esclavos, ANC, ME, leg. 3748, expo B.

7 Edo y Llop, Memoria, p. 92l.
8 Ibid., appendix, p. 9. The figure of 299 is for 1885.
9 Gobierno Civil de la Provincia de Santa Clara, Expediente sobre supresi6n de
terminos municipales en esta Provincia, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4957.
10 For names of plantations, see Edo y Llop, Memoria, appendix, pp. 11-12. For 1862
population, see Cuba, Centro de Estadistica, Noticias estadfsticas.
11 Gobierno Civil ... Santa Clara, Expediente sobre supresi6n, AHN, Ultramar, leg.
4957.
12 Edo y Llop, Memoria, appendix, p. 14.

205
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

of production. Half of the 1875 mills were gone; cane was now grown
on units that did not process it; all field workers were legally free;
the population included twice as many whites as blacks.
The forces behind these changes on San Fernando and in Santa
Isabel de las Lajas had as much to do with the international market
for sugar as they did with the abolition of slavery in Cuba. Two
developments were combining to force down prices of sugar in the
last decades of the nineteenth century. First, the competition from
beet sugar, long a threat, was gaining intensity. In the 1870s to-
tal world production of beet sugar had hovered around one to one
and a half million tons. By the end of the eighties it was three and
a half million, and by the end of the century it would be almost five
and a half million. Not only did this mean an increase in the total
world supply, it also meant direct competition by cane sugar pro-
ducers with more highly technically developed European beet sugar
producers. 13
Of most immediate relevance to Cuba, however, was the North
American market, which by 1880 absorbed over 80 percent of Cuba's
sugar exports. 14 As U.S. consumption of sugar rose, the fate of the
Cuban sugar industry came to be increasingly tied to markets and
tariffs in the United States. Per capita U.S. consumption of sugar
went from 52.55 pounds in 1886 to 66.04 pounds in 1894, while
total consumption rose from 1,355,809 tons in 1886 to 2,012,714
tons in 1894.15 During the Civil War the U.S. Congress had estab-
lished a strongly prejudicial tariff that penalized sugars with a high
proportion of sucrose, those that could be consumed directly. After
the war, the power of North American refiners grew still further,
and they finally united in the 1880s into a single trust producing a
large volume for small marginal profit. Together these factors re-
duced the price margin between raw and refined sugar, exerted a
downward pressure on the prices for raw sugar, and virtually de-
stroyed the market for directly consumable sugar.16 Average quo-

13 Moreno, E1 ingenio 3: 37-38, and Leland H. Jenks, Our Cuban Colony: A Study
in Sugar (New York: Vanguard Press, 1928), pp. 26-33.
14 Moreno, E1 ingenio 3: 77.
15 For figures on U.S. sugar consumption see Willett and Gray, Weekly Statistical
Sugar Trade Tourna1, Jan. 3, 1896.
16 See Jenks, Cuban Colony, pp. 28-29; Moreno, E1 ingenio 2: 186-209; and Alfred
S. Eichner, The Emergence of Oligopoly: Sugar Refining as a Case Study (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969).

206
 PLANTERS AND THE STATE

tations for fair refining sugar on the New York market fell from 5.08
cents per pound in 1880 to 3.05 cents in 1890.17
The impact on Cuba was twofold. First, mills that could not pro-
duce sugar cheaply could not survive, and the number of mills ac-
tually grinding dropped from over a thousand in 1877 to perhaps
four hundred by 1894. 18 Second, for those who could produce sugar
cheaply, the American market was vast, and in 1892 Cuban sugar
production broke the one-million-ton mark. 19
Cuban exports, however, were triply vulnerable: to U.S. tariff pol-
icy, to Spanish colonial policy, and to world prices. Though Cuba
had long since ceased to be a classic colony in its trading patterns,
it remained dependent on Spain for the negotiation of treaties with
the United States. The Foster-Canovas treaty of 1891 encouraged
expansion of Cuban production for American refineries, but it was
due to expire in 1894.
American control of the market for Cuban sugar was far more
significant at the time than direct American ownership of sugar
properties in Cuba. Edwin Atkins, whose family had long traded in
Cuba, acquired the Soledad estate by foreclosure in 1883, and other
American investors purchased land and developed a few centrales
in the provinces of Santa Clara and Santiago de Cuba in the 1890s.
Though this foreshadowed much more extensive foreign investment
in the twentieth century, it had not as yet brought about substantial
control over production, nor were American planters a sizable frac-
tion of employers. Some Cuban planters-like the owners of Mapos
in Sancti Spiritus-did, however, take out loans from North Amer-
ican firms to finance purchases of new processing equipment and
thus increased the involvement of U.S. brokers and shareholders.20
Planters responded to this increased dependence in several ways.

17 For year by year prices, see Willett and Gray, Weekly Statistical Sugar Trade
Journal.
18 Jenks, Cuban Colony, p. 31. There is, unfortunately, no reliable census for that
date. H. E. Friedlander, in Historia econ6mica de Cuba (Havana: Jesus Montero,
1944), p. 431, cites a figure of 900 mills in 1890 and 450 mills in 1894. The actual
numbers may have been even smaller.
19 Moreno, E1 ingenio 3: 38.
20 See Jenks, Cuban Colony, pp. 36-37, and Atkins, Sixty Years. For testimony by
U.S. investors, see Robert P. Porter, Appendix to the Report on the Commercial and
Industrial Conditions of the Island of Cuba (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 1899). For investments at Mapos, see the claims made after the Spanish-Cuban-
American War, found in USNA, RG 76 (Spanish Treaty Claims), Entry 352, Claim
no. 121.

207
 POSTEMANCIPA TION RESPONSES

Some increased their personal links to the United States, even to

the extent of investing in the United States and taking out U.S.
citizenship in an effort to tie their fortunes to the dominant eco-
nomic power of the region. Groups of planters also lobbied the Span-
ish government for favorable policies, emphasizing the importance
of extending "reciprocity" to the United States in order to guarantee
the entry of Cuban sugar into the U.S. market. 21 Finally, major plant-
ers sought to deal with low prices by increasing productivity in
processing and shifting part of the responsibility of cane growing
onto smaller farmers through the colonato.

THE COLONA TO. The concept of the colonia-an estate that would
grow cane to supply to a central mill-was not a new one. Calonias
had long existed in Brazil, and modern centrales and colonias de-
veloped in the French West Indies after slavery. Projects for the
separation of the industrial from the agricultural side of sugar pro-
duction had frequently been propounded as the solution to the high
capital requirements of processing. 22 Some Cuban colonias did begin
to develop toward the end of the Ten Years' War, in the late 1870s.
They remained limited in scope, however, and distinct in form. The
colonas included both owners and renters who generally contracted
directly with a central mill for processing and received a proportion
of the sugar in return. 23 The extent of development of colonias in
the 1870s is difficult to trace, for some estates continued to call
themselves ingenios even when they no longer ground cane. 24 prob-
lems of transportation, however, limited the spread of colanias, and
in 1880 Francisco Ibanez argued that the existing ingenios centrales
did not merit the name because their scale was so small.25
21 See Louis A. Perez, Jr., Cuba between Empires, 1878-1902 IPittsburgh: University
of Pittsburgh Press, 1983), chap. 1, and Revista de Agricu1tura, IAugust 5, 1894).
22 See Ramiro Guerra y Sanchez, Azucar y pob1aci6n en las Antillas IHavana:
Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976), pp. 73-79. On co1onias in Brazil, see Stuart B.
Schwartz, "Free Labor in a Slave Economy: The Lavradores de Cana of Colonial
Bahia," in Dauril Alden, ed., Colonial Roots of Modern BrazillBerkeley: University
of California Press, 1973), pp. 147-97. On centra1es in the French West Indies, see
Christian Schnakenbourg, "From Sugar Estate to Central Factory: The Industrial
Revolution in the Caribbean 11840-1905)," in Bill Albert and Adrian Graves, eds.,
Crisis and Change in the International Sugar Economy 1860-1914 INorwich: ISC
Press, 1984), pp. 82-93.
23 See Guerra, Azucar y pob1aci6n.
24 Gloria Garcia suggests that some of the 1,190 estates listed as ingenios in 1877
may already have been co1onias. Personal communication, June 1979.
25 See Francisco Feliciano Ibanez, Observaciones sobre 1a utilidad y conveniencia

208
 PLANTERS AND THE STATE

The destruction resulting from the Ten Years' War added impetus
to the development of the colonias. In the area of Sancti Spiritus,
which was among the most seriously hurt by the war, the local press
reported with approval in 1882 that Sr. D. Angel Ortiz, owner of the
ruined ingenio S. Antonio Polo, had undertaken to reconstruct it in
the form of a central, dividing its lands up among colonos for them
to plant cane. The newspaper saw this as an excellent precedent for
the recovery of the area. 26
In areas where war damage was less severe, the colonia also be-
came important, for by using colon as a mill could enlarge its supply
of cane without the direct planting of additional fields. This devel-
opment, which spurred the expansion of mills in a period of scarce
capital, is revealed by several kinds of evidenceY First, a few colonos
appear in the account books of individual plantations, even while
these plantations were functioning primarily with their own unfree
labor force. In 1883-1884 on the ingenio Nueva Teresa, which still
had perhaps one hundred patrocinados, there were about a dozen
colon os-one Asian, one moreno who was evidently a former slave,
two whose race was not specified but who were not given the title
"Don," and the remainder listed with "Don," indicating that they
were white. The whites took responsibility for one, two, or three
caballerias each; the blacks and the Asian had just one each.28
Second, references to colonias begin to appear in the general de-
scriptions of specific localities. Rancho Veloz, in the province of
Santa Clara, for example, had sixteen ingenios in i877. 29 In 1884, it
still had fifteen ingenios, but also boasted fifty-five colonias de cana,
whose crop was ground in different mills. 3D The district of Santa
Ana in Matanzas illustrates the process even more clearly. In 1881
the district reported eleven sugar plantations, with a total cultivated
area of 172 caballerias, producing 580,000 pesos worth of sugar. In
1884-1885 the district reported twelve sugar plantations, with a cul-
tivated area of 240 caballerias, and an additional 114 "colonias en
del establecimiento en esta isla de grandes ingenios centrales (Havana: Imprenta y
Litografia Obispo 27, 1880).
26 La Propaganda (Feb. 9, 1882).
27 Guerra, Azucar y poblaci6n, p. 76.
28 ANC, ML, 10831 and ML, 10879.
29 "Noticia de las fincas," pp. 22-23.
30 Gobiemo Civil de la Provincia de Santa Clara, Expediente sabre supresi6n, AHN,
Ultramar, leg. 4957.

209
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

terrenos de Ingenios," with a cultivated area of 98 caballerias. To-

gether they produced 530,400 pesos worth of sugar-the lower
amount presumably reflecting the low sugar prices of that year.
There were another 50 colonias located on potrero land. The com-
pilers of the report commented on the development in a very short
period of time of over one hundred and fifty colonias devoted ex-
clusively to the growing of cane.31
At the same time, contemporary analysts began to recognize the
growing importance of the colonia. In 1888 an article in the Revista
de Agricultura argued that the division of labor was saving Cuban
agriculture, and cited the example of the zone of Alfonso XII, where
the centrales of Las Canas and Conchita were maintaining the area's
sugar production, which had threatened to decline under the impact
of abolition and the economic difficulties of the period. 32 Edwin
Atkins linked the development of the colonato to abolition, noting
that, after emancipation, "country people leased small pieces of land
from the estates and delivered cane to the mills or centrals."33
While the need to expand and modernize production by separating
cane growing from cane processing seems not to have been a major
factor directly causing the end of slavery, such a separation certainly
accelerated after abolition. The colonia was an apt solution to some
of the problems of the postemancipation period, precisely because
it made possible the mobilization of new sources of labor and capital.
Campesinos, especially whites, who would not have worked for
wages alongside slaves were willing to undertake the cultivation
and cutting of cane on their own. In 1888 one observer wrote that
colonias were growing "in the shadow of the centrals that buy and
pay well for cane," and that mills did not have to advance funds to
the colon os, because town shopkeepers were willing to invest in the
small farms. 34
Edwin Atkins's comment that the "old planters were slow to adapt
themselves to changing economic conditions, but new blood and
31 The 1881 figures are from Provincia de Matanzas, Exma. Diputaci6n Provincial,
Censo agricola. Fincas azucareras. Ano de 1881 (Matanzas: Aurora del Yumuri, 18831.
Those for 1884-1885 are from Provincia de Matanzas, fol. 60, AHN, Ultramar, leg.
4957.
32 See the selection from Juan B. Jimenez, La Colonia, printed in Revista de Agri-
cultura 8 (July IS, 18881.
33 Atkins, Sixty Years, p. 39.
34 Revista de Agricultura 8 (May 6, 18881.

210
 PLANTERS AND THE STATE

new capital were found" suggests one reason for the apparent dis-
parity between the causes of abolition and its results. The modern-
ization accelerated by an increasing separation of growing and proc-
essing displaced many hacendados, who found their estates
swallowed up in the new central mills and either lost their land
entirely or became growers of cane rather than producers of sugar.
It is not surprising that those who foresaw that abolition might be
followed by such a change in their own status would have opposed
emancipation. But even those who stood to benefit from the devel-
opment of central mills apparently saw little reason to relinquish
any control over their workers along the way. Indeed, some of the
planters who had stalled and evaded the actual steps taken toward
slave emancipation-such as Ibanez-paradoxically benefited from
the growth of centrales that followed abolition.
Factors having little to do with abolition also spurred the devel-
opment of the colonato in the 1880s. A drop in the prices of steel
for rails, the construction of narrow-gauge railways to take cane
directly from the fields to the mills, and the opening of public rail-
roads to cane transport in 1881 increased the radius within which
colonias could supply a given mill. This led not only to expansion
but also to competition among mills. A newspaper article in Ma-
tanzas in 1881 noted that planters with modern processing apparatus
were bidding for the cane of neighboring growers. 3S
Ramiro Guerra's classic account of the development of the colo-
nato notes that this competition, ironically, doomed the colono. At
first, of course, competition increased the amount the colona could
ask for as payment from the mill. In the long run, however, expansion
made the central more eager to control its sources of cane in order
to ensure predictability of supply-something it could accomplish
only by reducing the independence of the colona and tying him to
the mill. Indeed, this process seems to have begun earlier than
Guerra realized. 36 Contracts between colonos and mills from the
1890s show the efforts of estates to extend control over the colona

35 Guerra, AzIicar y poblaci6n, p. 78. On railroads, see Thomas, Cuba, p. 273, and
Patria Cok Marquez, "La introducci6n de los ferrocarriles porta tiles en 1a industria
azucarera. 1870-1880," Santiago 41 (March 1981): 137-47. The observation on com-
petition is from Las Noticias (Matanzas) quoted in La America Latina (November 9,
1881).
36 Guerra's view, expressed in AzIicar y poblaci6n, p. 75, is that the early colonos
were relatively independent.

211
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

and guarantee that he would sell only to a single mill.3 7 Such de-
pendency, in turn, made possible abuses at all stages of the process-
from the advancing of goods against a promise of cane in the future,
to the weighing of the cane produced, to the settling of accounts. 38
Some colon os responded by joining together to insist on minimum
rates for cane or to refuse payment in tokens and scrip.39
Colonos were, however, by no means a homogeneous group. They
included former slaves who had been granted or leased small plots
of land in order to keep them from leaving the estate, smallholders
who turned to cane growing as the expansion of railways improved
access to the mills, tenants and entrepreneurs who rented land and
contracted to supply a specific mill, and former planters for whom
new investments in modern processing machinery were not possible
or prudent. The term "colono," therefore, does not imply a specific
class status or a particular relationship to the means of production.
Colon os ranged from persons who were in effect working piece-rate
on land owned by vast estates to investors who owned land and
employed large numbers of workers.40
The transformation of some former slaves, peasants, and land-
owners into colon os, however, would not necessarily provide all of
the labor needed to permit expansion in the sugar industry. Nor did
the development of the colonato, in and of itself, ensure that wage
workers would be available as needed. In analyzing the development
of postemancipation societies in the Caribbean, Sidney Mintz iden-
tifies the "two jaws of Caribbean plantation discipline." One was
the increase in the total labor supply; the other was the "reduction
of economic alternatives available to the already existing labor sup-
ply."41 In the Cuban case, there was an obvious means of bring-
37 For examples of contracts, see Central Natividad, July 1, 1887-May 31, 1888,
Libra de Cuenta 39, APSS, Valle-Iznaga, leg. 23. This volume shows indebtedness of
colonos to the mill and to the store, and one case of a colona putting up an ox as
security against an advance. For other examples of contracts, see USNA, RG 76, Entry
352, especially claims no. 121 (Mapos Sugar Co.) and 387 (Atkins).
38 For a statement of colona grievances, see Juan Bautista Jimenez, Los esclavos
blancos, par un colona de Las Villas (Havana: A. Alvarez y Camp., 1893).
39 On colona strategies, see the testimony of Jose Badia in USNA, RG 76, Entry
352, Claim no. 97 (Central Teresa), Pt. 2. On colonos' refusal to accept scrip, see
Moreno, "El token."
40 A sense of the range of colona activities may be gained from examination of the
contracts in the claims of millowners in USNA, RG 76, Entry 352.
41 Mintz, "Slavery and the Rise of Peasantries," p. 215.

212
 PLANTERS AND THE STATE

ing about the first-immigration; the second posed more serious

difficulties.

IMMIGRATION. Immigration had long been propounded as the way

for Cuba to develop, diversify, and prosper. Those who attempted
to implement immigration schemes in the mid-nineteenth century,
however, quickly discovered that as long as slavery persisted, free
immigrants were unlikely to want to labor in sugar. As abolition
neared, planters' hopes for free immigration increased, and they un-
dertook various projects to encourage it.42
One of the most ambitious of these projects was proposed in 1879
by the Count of Casa More, a slaveholder and member of the Consejo
de Administraci6n, and signed by 1,500 planters, merchants, and
manufacturers. They argued that the government should underwrite
the immigration to Cuba of 10,000 Spaniards and Canary Islanders,
and 30,000 Asians. The obvious purpose was to keep wages low and
to provide substitutes for slave laborers-some of whom, More's
backers believed, would cease working once slavery was ended. 43
Responses to the proposal reflected the range of opinion on the
subject of immigration. The Consejo de Administraci6n, which in-
cluded powerful planters, supported the proposal, though they
thought it somewhat expensive for an experiment. They approved
of Asian immigration because they believed white immigration
would be inadequate; Spaniards had shown . little inclination to
choose Cuba over the republics of Argentina or Uruguay. They also
argued-in a classic statement of "divide and rule"-that the society
would be more secure against racial conflicts if there were three
rather than two "races" on the island. Other interest groups, such
as the Junta of Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce, and the So-
ciedad Econ6mica de Amigos del Pais, opposed Asian immigration.
The Sociedad Econ6mica also challenged the idea of subsidized im-
42 See Trelles, Biblioteca hist6rica cubana 2: 353-69, for an annotated list of im-
migration proposals. For a description of different party positions on immigration,
see Juan Gualberto G6mez, La cuesti6n de Cuba en 1884. He associated the Con-
stitutional Union party with free immigration, protected by the state, to fulfill the
need for braceros; the Liberal party with exclusively white immigration, preferably
by families; and the Democrats with free immigration.
43 Expediente promovido por El Conde de Casa More, 1879, AHN, Ultramar, leg.
278, expo 606.

213
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

migration, citing the principle that all that affected the private in-
terest of individuals should be left to private initiative. 44
The colonial office in Madrid, expressing its opinion in 1884, was
puzzled by the desperate search for immigrants, and wondered why
the former slaves would not be available for work after abolition. If
slaves had been granted conucos, why could not former slaves be
rented land or granted usufruct and persuaded to grow cane? Beyond
that, if the planters wanted immigrants, they would have to put
together the capital themselves. 45
The firmest statement of the primacy of the free market, and its
adequacy for solving the labor problem, came from Rafael Cowley,
of the Sociedad Econ6mica. The important element in attracting
workers was freedom: "In the time of slavery, the degradation of
work distanced whites from the cane fields; no one worked; with
the patronato there were already 50,000; with freedom the number
who will irrigate the fields of cane with the sweat of their brow is
incalculable."46
The reactions to More's proposal reflected deep disagreements on
several issues: (1) To what extent might the former slaves be ex-
pected to work in sugar after abolition? (2) What would happen to
wages after the end of slavery? (3) How much direct coercion and
discipline were necessary to ensure regular labor? (4) What kind of
immigration was most socially desirable-white or nonwhite, single
or family, contract or free? (5) Whose responsibility was the cost of
such immigration-that of the planter, the government, or the im-
migrants themselves? The answers offered to these questions re-
flected the interests and the ideologies of the relevant parties. The
Spanish government shied away from heavily subsidized immigra-
tion as expensive and divisive (smallholders would have to be taxed
to support immigration for the benefit of large planters). Those con-
cerned with white racial predominance on the island-or, alterna-
tively, liberals fearful of a de facto reopening of the slave trade-
opposed nonwhite immigration. Groups committed to development
through free labor, like Cowley, did not want to see interference
with the labor market. And most planters, eager to hold down wages,
increase the supply of labor, and avoid dependence on their former
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 AHN, Ultramar, leg. 280, expo 610.

214
 PLANTERS AND THE STATE

slaves, wanted to flood the labor market, if possible at someone

else's expense.
Neither extreme triumphed. More could not get his huge subsidy;
Cowley could not get planters to think in terms of the advantages
of a fully free labor market. Instead, various intermediate tactics,
some governmental, some individual, were attempted.
One such intermediate solution was the colonia militar, or mil-
itary settlement. Francisco Ibanez, the same Spanish planter inter-
ested in ingenios centrales, attempted in 1881 to establish colonias
militares employing Spanish soldiers. This effort reflected the as-
sumption that Spanish workers could best be persuaded to labor in
cane under the discipline of a military colony.47 Ibanez's efforts did
not succeed, but the idea was taken up again by the Spanish general
Camilo Polavieja in the 1890s. His goals were more explicitly po-
litical: Spanish soldiers, settled in Cuba, would acquaint themselves
with the terrain, make use of uncultivated land, diversify agricul-
ture, and increase the ties between Cuba and Spain. These settle-
ments would be, in a sense, counterinsurgent enclaves as well as
economic enterprises. 48 The implementation of such projects, how-
ever, always ran up against competing military needs, and more
urgent efforts at direct counterinsurgency. This was particularly true
in the eastern end of the island, where 1880 saw another "conspir-
acy"-real or imagined-whose repression Polavieja took upon him-
self.49 These schemes also faced the problem that land alone, without
capital investment, was seldom sufficient for prosperity. Some mil-
itary colonies were established, but they never became an important
factor in the development of the Cuban labor force, though individ-
ual Spanish soldiers did settle in Cuba. 50
An alternative form of immigration was colonization by entire
families from Spain and the Canaries. The image of family immi-
gration appealed to those who for racial and social reasons opposed
the immigration of Asians, Africans, or unattached workers in gen-
eral. One of the most successful of these efforts was the settlement
of families from the Canaries on tobacco lands in the province of
47 See EI Eco de las Villas (Aug. 9, 1881), and Colonias militares, AHN, Ultramar,
leg. 4802, expo 272.
48 Cuba, Colonias militares, AGI, Diversos, leg. 10, Polavieja, mim. 11.
49 See Conspiraci6n de la raza de color.
50 See AHN, Ultramar, leg. 34, expo 20.

215
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

Santa Clara; Canary Islanders were also among the first calanas on
some sugar plantations. 51 Among the proponents of this kind of
immigration were avowed white-supremacists, who called for the
immigration of Spaniards, Canary Islanders, Italians, Greeks,
Maltese, and Corsicans, so that the future of Cuba would be saved
by "the predominance thus assured to the descendants of aryans."52
Successive Spanish administrators, more directly interested in so-
cial stability, also advocated family immigration. Governor general
Salamanca, in 1889, expressed the hope that day laborers from Spain,
the Canaries, and possibly Puerto Rico, might become smallholders
in Cuba, where there was vacant land and the possibility of profit
in sugar farming. Salamanca organized the sending to Cuba of Span-
ish families to establish colonies in the provinces of Puerto Principe
and Santiago de Cuba. His project stood in opposition to the im-
mediate interests of planters, for he saw family immigration as pref-
erable precisely because "in the face of the abundant need for work
of individuals obligated by necessity comes the abuse of proprietors
who convert into slaves those unfortunate ones who come seeking
a day's work." This presented, he believed, a problem for public
order. He saw himself as serving the long-term interests of the colony
because family settlements would provide a flexible source of labor,
avoiding both the coercion by employers that came from extreme
labor surplus and the high wages and irregularity of work that came
from shortage, when braceros could earn enough in one week to live
for two. His project was plagued by difficulties, however, including
bad weather and a decline in private support for the colonists. 53
These schemes, which did not serve the immediate needs of planters,
and which depended on grants of land and investments of capital,
were not destined to become the predominant form of immigration.
In the end, the direct importation of able, single, male fieldworkers
was the solution around which the greatest support could be mo-
bilized. Those who had wanted nonwhite and coerced labor were
thwarted both by political opposition to such immigration and by
the closing off of sources of supply. While the British planters of
51 See Jose A. Martinez-Fortun y Foyo, Anales y efemerides de San Juan de los
Remedios y su jurisdicci6n (Havana: Perez Sierra y Camp., 1930-31)3: 281-82, 286.
52 See Jose R. Montalvo, "El problema de la inmigraci6n en Cuba," Revista Cubana
8 (December 1888): 524-38.
53 See Envfo de 250 familias a Cuba, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 173, expo 131.

216
 PLANTERS AND THE STATE

Guiana and Trinidad had adapted to the transition to free labor by

importing indentured Asians, Spain could provide no such expedient
from elsewhere in its diminished empire. After an investigation of
abuses, the Chinese had ended contract labor for Cuba, and the
British were hostile to the idea of anyone's engaging Indians for labor
in the island. 54 There was insuperable domestic opposition in Cuba
to free African labor, both from those who feared the creation of a
new slave trade and from those who wished to ensure white su-
premacy in Cuba. Even the luring of workers from other Caribbean
islands was for the moment blocked by their respective colonial
powers. 55
Spain and the Canaries were thus the logical source, and planters
mobilized capital and initiative in the form of various Sociedades
Protectoras to import workers. The government provided partial
subsidies to private contractors. 56 Thousands of men, particularly
from Galicia, embarked for Cuba. Though some importers brought
families, the lists of passengers reveal the preponderance of male
day laborers. In one such list, every passenger is male, and all are
listed as "braceros."5?
The total volume of the immigration was substantial. In 1861
there had been around 116,000 Spaniards in Cuba; in 1887 there
were 140,000. Thereafter tens of thousands of Spaniards entered each
year. Although many also returned to Spain, an average of about
6,900 remained each year between 1882 and 1894 (omitting 1888
for lack of data). This immigration accelerated fairly steadily
throughout the period prior to the outbreak of the War of Independ-
ence. In the five years from 1889 to 1894 there was a net influx of
about 58,700 Spaniards. 58
Spanish immigration served several functions. It provided new
workers, helping to counteract the supposed "labor shortage" and
to hold down wages. It introduced more whites into field work, both
as calanas and as day laborers, breaking down the old ethnic ster-
54 Sobre la introd n de trabajadores libres de la India Oriental, MAE-Madrid, Cuba,
Ultramar, leg. 2941, 1880.
55 Letter from the consul to the minister of foreign affairs, Dec. 19, 1883, fols. 317
and 317v, MAE-Paris, CC, La Havane, Vol. 22.
56 Sobre conducci6n de emigrantes a la isla de Cuba por las Sociedades de inmi-
graci6n, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 175-6, expo 155. See also Corbitt, "Immigration."
57 Instancias presentadas en 22 de Marzo y 19 de Julio del mismo ano, AHN, Ul-
tramar, leg. 175-6, expo 156. .
58 Trelles, Biblioteca hist6rica cubana 2: 348, 361.

217
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

eotypes about labor in sugar. As Edwin Atkins wrote approvingly:

"Spanish immigration was encouraged, and constantly increasing
numbers of native whites, following the example of these immi-
grants, worked with the negroes in the cane fields."59 Finally, it
introduced what was thought to be a politically more reliable ele-
ment into the plantation population-reliable both in its adherence
to Spain and in the inhibition it provided to plantation-based black
conspiracies.

VAGRANCY. Mass immigration was not, however, the only way to

deal with the problem of labor; direct coercion was another. Cuban
planters, during the period of the patronato, had generally not re-
linquished the extra-economic control the law gave them over their
former slaves. It was an open question whether they were prepared
to let it go once emancipation was complete, and accept the rules
of the game of a fully free labor market. The history of the debate
over "vagrancy" illustrates their ambivalence.
Discussion of the issue of vagrancy, like discussion of white im-
migration, had a long history in Cuba. It was, however, a notably
vague subject, and one about which opinion varied widely. The no-
tion of vagrancy itself was not well defined, and the term was used
to refer to the existence of unemployment or underemployment
within certain sectors of the population, or to the refusal of workers
to labor at the wages offered, or to their choice of subsistence over
wage labor. The discussion of vagrancy was rarely characterized by
clarity as to which of these phenomena was at issue, and it often
involved the expression of general social fears and racial prejudices,
as well as an equation of vagrancy with a predilection for criminality.
Prior to the final abolition of slavery, there had been several in-
hibitions to the enactment of laws specifically suppressing vagrancy.
First, there seemed a danger that such laws would reduce white
workers to something very like the status of slaves. While employers
might not have minded that, the tactic could inhibit immigration,
vitiating one of the hoped-for consequences of the move toward
abolition, an increased supply of white labor. Outlawing vagrancy
in an economy with a highly seasonal demand for labor was also in
a sense contradictory, since some workers were bound to be un-

59 Atkins, Sixty Years, p. 39.

218
 PLANTERS AND THE STATE

employed in the dead season. As an astute member of the Reform

Commission in 1879 observed: "to establish by law or by regulation
the obligation to work under such conditions, carries with it inev-
itably the right to work, a socialist principle which this commission
rejects absolutely.//6o
However, the law in the 1870s did authorize government officials
to fix the residence of "vagos y gente de mal vivir// (vagrants and
disreputable persons) under certain circumstances. This practice was
expanded to include fixing their residence in the Isle of Pines, in a
Protectorado de Trabajo where they were put to work alongside
convicts. In the Protectorado, which operated in the 1870s and 1880s,
the inmates apparently processed tobacco and made bricks, as well
as performing field work. 61
The issue of vagrancy took on new importance in the early 1880s.
Slave emancipation was widely expected to lead to vagrancy, in the
sense of a floating population that did not work, as well as to prob-
lems of labor supply. There was also a judicial reason for the new
concern. Spain had recently decriminalized vagrancy, making it only
an aggravating circumstance in the commission of another crime,
and extended this reform to the island of Cuba. Among other things,
the legality of the Protectorado de Trabajo on the Isle of Pines was
now in doubt. Thus at the same time that social factors seemed to
increase the risk of widespread vagrancy, metropolitan policy had
reduced the basis for legal repression of it. This problem did not go
unnoticed by authorities in Spain and they, in two royal orders, one
of June 5, 1881, and the other of May 3, 1884, directed the governor
of Cuba to draw together materials on the question. In 1889 an
informe was finally completed and forwarded to Madrid. In it, dif-
ferent groups expressed their opinions on vagrancy and, in the proc-
ess, revealed a good deal about their conception of the transition
from slavery to free labor.62
Some of the commentators proposed the idea of an expanded in-
stitutionalization of vagrants. The fiscal (prosecutor) of the Audien-
cia of Puerto Principe suggested the construction of casas de cor-
60 Statement by Julio 1. Apezteguia, Documentos de la Comisi6n, 1879, AHN,
Ultramar, leg. 4883, tomo 5.
61 For information on the Protectorado, see Minuta a los Comandantes de Presidio,
April 17, 1884, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 1833, expo 451. See also Fondo de utilidades de
1877 a 1883 in ibid., expo 466.
62 Medios de estirpar la vagancia, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4952, expo 345.

219
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

recci6n (houses of correction) in every provincial capital. As a lawyer,

he had some initial qualms about the denial of liberty without proof
of commission of a crime, but he rationalized the procedure by
pointing to the institutionalization of beggars and orphans as a pre-
cedent. The inmates of these casas de correcci6n would be confined
for two years, during which time they would work under contract
in the fields, in factories, or in individual homes, with half of their
pay going for the maintenance of the casa and the other half to them.
Those who after release were again vagrant would be confined for
increasing lengths of time, up to lifetime incarceration for
incorrigibles. 63
The intendancy of Hacienda (Treasury), by contrast, was doubtful
of the wisdom of such institutional solutions. Confinement of va-
grants on the Isle of Pines, their report suggested, might pose a threat
to security. Instead, it emphasized preventive measures: increases
in public works, education, and religion. The intendancy also sug-
gested an idea that others were to take up: an effort to "create
necessities in these social groups, and even require them, obliging
them among other things to wear clothes that cause less offense to
public morals." The problem, the report argued, was that in warm
climates people had few needs, and thus less impulse to work. If
their needs could be increased, so then would their desire to work. 64
The Consejo de Administraci6n recognized an essential fact about
vagrancy: that severe laws did not eliminate it. The councillors
argued for the creation of new wants and needs among the freed
slaves and against the idea of forced labor. They clearly had in mind
political considerations when they wrote that not only would forced
labor not work but it might create severe disturbances. The people
of color of Cuba should not be alienated: lilt is important to the
nation to maintain them tranquil, loyal, and submissive to the
laws."65
Rafael Cowley, writing for the Sociedad Econ6mica de Amigos del
Pals, took a liberal tone. He argued that the whole problem was
much exaggerated and challenged the notion that abolition had led
to vagrancy. He denied that there had been any substantial dimi-
nution of work performed and cited production statistics to support
63 Informe del fiscal de la Audiencia de Puerto Principe, 1885, in ibid.
64 Informe de la Intendencia General de Hacienda de la Isla de Cuba, Oct. 28, 1885,
in ibid.
65 lnforme del Consejo de Administraci6n, Sept. 13, 1888, in ibid.

220
 PLANTERS AND THE STATE

his case. He went through a careful examination of the legal prob-

lems involved in the direct repression of vagrancy and concluded
that "every direct measure against vagrancy is ineffective and vain
or unjust and oppressive."66
Finally, some local officials displayed an intense racial hostility
and suggested draconian solutions. Nicolas Serrano wrote an in-
forme for the municipality of Havana in which he declared that the
causes of vagrancy were born above all in the "bosom of the colored
race" and that abrupt abolition had created an alarming crisis in
Cuba. The remedies he suggested included drafting all blacks be-
tween eighteen and twenty-eight years of age into an army that
would be used on public works and on plantations "under the severe
regime of military rules."67
In the end, no comprehensive plan for the repression of vagrancy
was developed. Casas de correcci6n were not installed in every prov-
ince; nor was a workbook or libreta system for rural workers estab-
lished. 68 Instead, the government used existing laws selectively
through the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s to prosecute individuals who
were, among other things, perceived as vagrant. Although vagrancy
had been discussed largely in terms of the problem of making former
slaves work and saving agriculture from crisis, in practice authorities
seem to have been concerned to attack more specific ills. Examining
the investigations of cases of vagrancy prosecuted in 1881-1882, after
formal abolition of slavery but while a Junta for the Repression of
Vagrancy was still active, one gets a picture of who the targets for
repressive action were.
First, the majority of those charged were white. Second, of the
persons of color charged, most were mulatto rather than black, and
thus less likely to have been field slaves. Finally, the actual operation
of the prosecution was highly subjective, primarily preoccupied with
the accused's "antecedents" and standing in the community.69

66Informe de la Sociedad Econ6mica de Amigos del Pais, Feb. 1886, in ibid.

67 Statement by Nicolas Serrano, May 24, 1888, in ibid. .
68 Puerto Rico had a libreta system that coexisted with slavery and was abolished
with it. See Jose A. Curet, "De la esclavitud a la abolici6n: Transiciones econ6micas
en las haciendas azucareras de Ponce, 1845-1873," in Andres A. Ramos Mattei, ed.,
Azucar y esc1avitud (San Juan: Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1982), pp. 59-86, and
Mintz, Caribbean Transformations, pp. 82-94. There were attempts in the city of
Havana in the late 1880s to repress vagrancy more vigorously. See Perez, Cuba
between Empires, p. 25.
69 Examples of such cases can be found in Negociado de O. P. y Policia, AHN,

221
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

The case of Maximo Gamboa is an example. He was a mulatto

and testified that since the end of the insurrection he had worked
to support his wife, son, and an "agregado" (who was his nephew)
by growing coffee on a small finca, owned with his brother. But his
neighbors said that he was of "mala conducta" and fond of drink,
and that they knew of no goods that he owned. The fact that he had
been in the insurrection was mentioned. While this case might be
viewed as an effort to force smallholders into wage labor, the cir-
cumstances make that interpretation unlikely: Gamboa claimed to
be in his sixties and "imitil" because of having broken his arms and
legs. He would hardly be the most logical candidate for field work.
He was nonetheless convicted of vagrancy, despite the newly re-
formed law. One suspects that, in the tense atmosphere of the east-
ern end of the island in 1880, his political background was a major
factor. 7o
The case of Tomas Rodriguez y Bernal illustrates another typical
sort of prosecution. He was white, twenty-one years old, from Ha-
vana, a tabaquero, without permanent home or family. By his own
account, he had spent March and April 1882 cutting cane in the
ingenio San Carlos, where he claimed to have earned forty-eight
pesos gold a month. He then worked part of May and June as a cook's
assistant in a restaurant, and July in another ingenio, earning thirty
pesos a month. At the end of the summer he had come to Havana,
where he had not found work. He had a police record of "malos
antecedentes," assaults, and threats, and the administrators of the
two plantations cited denied that he had worked there. The Junta
for the Repression of Vagrancy concluded that he was lying, that he
had worked only one month out of the past six, and so should be
sent off to the Isle of Pines. 71
Many of those prosecuted for vagrancy in the early 1880s were
like Tomas Rodriguez-white, young, urban, single males, often
with police records. Few seem to have been former field slaves who
Ultramar, leg. 3859. A minority report of the Consejo de Administraci6n in 1884
called attention to the very low rate of prosecution of persons of color for vagrancy
and banditry. Voto particular de Mendoza y Azcarate, Informe del Consejo de Ad-
ministraci6n, Aug. 8, 1884, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4926, expo 144.
70 Negociado de O. P. y Policfa, 1881, mim. 7511, Expediente promovido ... contra
el pardo libre Maximo Gamboa, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 3859.
71 Ano de 1882, num. 22810, Expediente promovido ... contra D. Tomas Rodriguez

y Bernal, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 3860.

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 PLANTERS AND THE STATE

had migrated to the cities; few were laborers in the countryside who
declined to work for wages.72
In the 1890s, when banditry had become a problem that aroused
considerable concern, officials once again consigned selected "va-
grants" to the Isle of Pines. Camilo Polavieja, the governor general,
sent the wife of the famous bandit Manuel Garcia there, among
others. One analyst of the campaign suggests that those incarcerated
by Polavieja were not vagrants at all, merely individuals living in
the area frequented by Garcia. There were also charges that people
were being denounced and deported to the island simply for refusing
to do business with local "caciquillos" (bosses)J3
This range of cases suggests a mixed function for the campaign
against what was referred to as vagrancy. It was related to mobilizing
the work force: the driving of smallholders into wage labor or the
forcing of young men to settle down were part of forming and ex-
panding the working class. But the campaign was even more closely
connected to direct forms of social control, and the charge of va-
grancy was widely used to round up suspected criminals without
having to convict them of any specific crime, to detain former in-
surgents, and to undercut the basis for banditry.
Much as the idea of a generalized repression of all vagrancy might
have appealed to officials and employers when they were in a law-
and-order mood, it posed numerous problems. First, any wholesale
effort to regulate labor would require an immense amount of admin-
istration. As the economy was shifting toward ever more seasonal,
flexible work, and thus to a necessarily mobile labor force, any pass-
book scheme for field laborers would become increasingly unwork-
able. To keep track of workers, many of whom were hired and fired
each week, would require a great deal of effort on the part of em-
ployers, and vast record-keeping schemes by local officials. It was
one thing to compel a few thousand emancipados to contract to
work in the 1860s-they were non-Spanish-speaking Africans, under
direct control of the government, treated almost exactly like slaves
and employed in a limited number of enterprises. It would be quite
another to keep track of several hundred thousand field workers all
72See cases in AHN, Ultramar, legs. 3859 and 3860.
73See Marfa Poumier, "Bandolerismo y colonialismo. Manuel Garcia: iRey de los
campos de Cuba?" The charge concerning caciquillos is from La Lucha (Oct. 6, 18921,
and is cited in Poumier.

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 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

over Cuba. Even the requirement that former patrocinados attest to

their gainful employment for four years after their emancipation had
been loosely interpreted and even more loosely enforced. 74 And what
was one to do with them if they were indeed vagrant and unem-
ployed? The government could hardly take responsibility for putting
them all to work without entering into massive state intervention
in the economy, nor could it easily keep them all at work on private
plantations if they chose to leave. It was far more difficult to dis-
tinguish a runaway worker than a runaway slave.
This is not to say that the state remained aloof from the enforce-
ment of work discipline. Sending a few hundred men to the Isle of
Pines, for whatever real reason, was doubtless thought to help dis-
cipline the rest. The law banned any "combination" to alter the
price of labor, and the government intervened to try to suppress
strikes of urban workers and of coopers throughout the island in
1886. The coopers' strike, which involved Spaniards, white Cubans,
and mulattos, was nonetheless successful in bringing about wage
increases. It was followed by a strike of lightermen and weighmen,
also successful. In view of these events, the U.S. consul in Matanzas
expected strikes on the plantations the following year, but they do
not seem to have occurred. 75
Rural guards, both public and private, provided an extra measure
of security in the countryside. D. Manuel Calvo, in a letter to the
government requesting permission to employ guards on his estate,
stated his purpose as "vigilance in the fields" and "better order
among the employees and workers of the estate." The official order
in 1881 authorizing the formation of such groups of guards men-
tioned only the first purpose-presumably out of discretion, not out
of reluctance to aid in the pursuit of such "good order."76 Esteban
74 For the interpretation of the work requirement, see Ministerio de Ultramar,
Subsecretarfa, Secci6n de Polftica, Expediente que se pone al despacho del Exmo. Sor.
Ministro, n.d., AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4815.
75 Title XIII, Chap. VI, Art. 567 of the Penal Code prescribed the penalty of arresto
mayor for those who "wrongfully combine to enhance or lower the price of labor or
regulate its conditions wrongfully." See U.S. War Department, Division of Customs
and Insular Affairs, Translation of the Penal Code in Force in Cuba and Porto Rico
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1900), p. 115. For information on
the 1886 strikes, see Report of Frank H. Pierce, Consul at Matanzas, March 5, 1886,
in U.S. Congress, House, Reports from the Consuls of the United States, April-
December, 1886, 49th Cong., 2nd Sess., 1886-1887, House Misc. Docs., vol. 4, pp.
265-67.
76 Creaci6n de guardas de campos, municipales y particulares, AHN, Ultramar, leg.
154, expo 44.

224
 PLANTERS AND THE STATE

Montejo, a former slave, also recalled that workers who failed to

carry their identification documents with them were on occasion
subjected to physical punishment during Polavieja's tenure as gov-
ernor general in the 1890s. 77
In general, however, the state had moved away from the business
of directly guaranteeing masters' powers of coercion over labor on
specific estates. Under slavery, the power of the state was available,
if necessary, to repress resistance to work on plantations, for any
such resistance directly threatened the social order. As emancipation
was taking place, the state shifted its role in labor relations toward
that of an arbiter: a biased arbiter, to be sure, far more concerned
with order than with justice, but no longer an unqualified supporter
of every slaveholder.
This shift represented, in part, a response to the changing character
of the work force. Prior to abolition, planters had dealt with a sharply
segmented labor force, composed of different categories of workers,
the distinctions among which were maintained through the legal
system and through the direct power of the state. Employers had,
in effect, faced several distinct sources of supply of labor-one that
responded (roughly) to the level of wages offered free workers; one
that was determined by the cost and number of available Chinese
contract laborers; one that reflected the supply of slaves for rent;
and one shaped by the market value of slaves. Total expenditures
on labor resulted from a complex combination of these different
elements. With final abolition, the labor supply was consolidated.
Wage rates varied depending on the region, the task, the season, and
the individual, but they were not rigidly divided by ethnic or juridical
categories. Thus the labor system was no longer directly dependent
on the maintenance of such distinctions. At the same time, the
development of the colona system opened up new sources of labor
and new forms of organization, forms that required a very different
kind of support by the state: the enforcement of contracts rather
than of discipline, the provision of subsidies to immigration rather
than connivance at the illegal slave trade.
These shifts carried profound implications. First, with the reduc-
tion of employers' reliance on direct state support, the basis for
Spanish colonial rule was altered. Throughout the period of the sugar

77 Miguel Barnet, Biograffa de un cimarr6n (Havana: Instituto de Etnologia y Folk-

lore, Academia de Ciencias de Cuba, 1966), p. 89.

225
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

boom, slaveholders had perceived Spain as the ultimate guarantor

of slavery on their estates. Once the need for such a guarantee was
eliminated, the question could arise with greater urgency: now that
the United States was by a wide margin Cuba's major maJ;ket, and
trade with Spain was much reduced, was there any need for Spanish
rule at all? It benefited Spanish exporters, but did it serve the in-
terests of Cuban producers and consumers? Slavery and colonialism
had so long been linked that the removal of the one was bound to
affect the other.
Second, once slavery had ended entirely, the task of creating labor
discipline shifted further toward the employer. In this task employ-
ers were aided, paradoxically, by the fact that the last years of the
patronato had coincided with a period of low sugar prices, lack of
credit, and widespread economic difficulty. There was thus less total
demand for labor than had been anticipated, and therefore somewhat
less need systematically to coerce former slaves.
To understand fully the labor supply that employers faced, and
the mechanisms they developed to control and shape that supply,
one must look more directly at former slaves themselves. After
emancipation, planters and workers stood, as masters and slaves had
during slavery, in a reciprocal-though by no means symmetrical-
relationship. Former slaves were constrained by the limited eco-
nomic opportunities presented by planters and by the planters' direct
political dominance. Planters in turn had to adapt their strategies
of production and labor control to various aspects of the behavior
of their workers.

226
 x
Former Slaves

The locks had been taken off the barracones and the
workers themselves had cut windows in the walls for
ventilation. There was no longer any effort to prevent
people from escaping, none of that. By this time all the
blacks were free. They called it freedom, but I am
witness to the fact that the horrors continued.
-Esteban Monte;ol

Cuban plantation slaves achieved legal freedom through a variety

of mechanisms including war, self-purchase, individual manumis-
sion, litigation, and government decree. Their responses to that free-
dom also varied widely, ranging from a decision to leave the plan-
tation world entirely to a persistence in dependence on the old
estates. Their different efforts to make something of their new free-
dom, however, did not simply fall along a continuum from passivity
to activity, or from peacefulness to violence, or from plantation to
peasantry. Rather they involved a mixture of such features, within
the limitations imposed by the economic and political system, as
well as by direct coercion.
Examination of the fate of former slaves is made difficult by a
change in the nature of surviving sources. It is an irony of nineteenth-
century social history that slave societies, while legally denying the
slave's individuality, left written traces of that individuality in law-
suits, complaints, registers, and account books; while the nominally
free societies that followed, in which employer and worker were
tied primarily by the exchange of a wage, often left sparser records
of the lives of individual workers. This is not surprising, for master
and slave were entangled in each other's lives in multiple ways and
committed to each other over long periods of time, while employer
and worker were often linked only by anonymous and ephemeral
ties. The lack of records, however explicable, poses a problem for
1 Barnet, Biograffa, p. 62.

227
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

the construction of a portait of postemancipation society, and one

must rely disproportionately heavily on inference from statistical
sources and on the inevitably subjective observations of contem-
poraries. (While the records of the Juntas de Patronato are in some
ways comparable to those of the United States Freedmen's Bureau
in their reflection of the process of emancipation, they cannot pro-
vide a similar portrait of the free labor system, for they end with
full emancipation.)
With these limitations in mind, it is possible to sketch out the
options that former plantation slaves faced, dividing them into rough
categories. A freedman or freedwoman might: (1) remain on the
plantation, move to another plantation, or join a labor gang to work
in sugar by the day or by the task; (2) undertake the growing of sugar
as a colona; (3) seek to achieve a certain distance from the plantation
through a family division of labor or through part-time wage labor
and part-time cultivation; or (4) migrate out of the sugar regions,
either to the city, the hills, or the more open land of the east. Of
course, not all of these options were available to every slave, and
the degree of access to different alternatives varied both geograph-
ically and across time.

WAGE LABOR. Returning to, or remaining on, the plantation as an

agricultural worker often meant continuing the same kind of labor,
under the same direction, that one had experienced as a slave. It
might also mean living in the same dwelling. Esteban Montejo, the
idiosyncratic and individualistic former slave whose oral "auto-
biography" was compiled in the mid-twentieth century, looked back
upon this with a certain disdain:
The blacks who worked at Purio had almost all been slaves. They were used
to life in the barrac6n, so they did not even go out to eat. When lunch-time
came they went into their rooms with their women to eat, and the same
with dinner. They did not go out at night. They were afraid of people, and
said they would get 10st. 2

For such freedmen and freedwomen, the major changes in their

work lives would be the receipt of wages and some shifts in living
2 Ibid., p. 64. The reliability of the Montejo memoir as a historical source is open
to some question, given its format and its very recent compilation. It seems best to
view it as reflective of individual attitudes and recollections, rather than as a source
for evidence on matters requiring strict chronology or precision.

228
 FORMER SLAVES

conditions. Young children could be withdrawn from field work and

women might choose when to offer their labor for a wage and when
to work at domestic tasks. Family life could be constituted or re-
constituted, though under the stress of heavy and often insecure
labor for the parents. Many of the male laborers on estates none-
theless remained at least legally unmarried, continuing the pattern
of a community of single males living in barracks within the plan-
tation. This pattern now incorporated white immigrants as well as
former slaves, however, and differed in its intensity from the prison-
like concentrations of male slaves that had existed during the earlier
booms in the sugar industry.3
Rather than remain on their old estates, some former slaves joined
cuadrillas or work gangs. Planters had become familiar with contract
labor gangs through their experience with Chinese laborers and seem
readily to have adopted cuadrillas of other workmen after slavery.
Some observers criticized this trend, pointing out that employers
had to pay an intermediary, the contractor, and might also find
workers abandoning one gang for another that paid higher wages.
Records of payments to cuadrillas are nonetheless frequent in the
account books of the immediate postemancipation period. 4
It is virtually impossible in retrospect to penetrate these gangs
and determine their internal organization. They may have been un-
der the strict control of the contractor, or they may have exhibited
some of the internal democracy that has been attributed to com-
parable work squads in parts of the United States in the years im-
mediately after emancipation. s The most that can be said is that
they moved the former slave one step away from the estate's own
overseer and tied his fate in part to the other members of the gang.
Whether hired individually or as part of a cuadrilla, workers re-
ceived rations similar to those issued under slavery: rice, beans or
3 On the shift in female participation in the labor force, see "Report by Consul
Pierce, Cienfuegos," in U.S. Cong., House, Labor in America. Asia, Africa, Austra-
lasia, and Polynesia, 48th Cong., 2nd Sess., 1884-1885, House Exec. Doc. no. 54, vol.
26, pp. 255-56; and "Statement by P. M. Beal, manager of Colonia Guabairo," in
Porter, Appendix to the Report, p. 252. On the marital status of laborers, see, for
example, "Statement of L. F. Hughes, assistant manager of Ingenio Soledad," in ibid.,
p.268.
4 See "La cuesti6n de brazos," in E1 Espano1: Diario Politico de la Tarde, Jan. 5,
1886. For payments to cuadrillas in the 1890s, see, for example, Cuadernos con
relaci6n de los contratos de tiro de carra y otros, APSS, Valle-Iznaga, leg. 7, expo 19.
5 For observations on work squads in the U.S., I am grateful to Gerald Jaynes,
personal communication, 1984.

229
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

chickpeas, and tasajo (jerked beef), with occasional fresh meat when
an old ox was slaughtered, supplemented by viandas (starchy veg-
etables and edible roots such as bonia to, malanga, name, etc.) and
cornmeal. Some estates apparently also issued bread, pork, aguar-
diente (sugar cane brandy), codfish, olive oil, and lard to their em-
ployees. One colonia manager asserted that he provided coffee, oil,
bacon, and spices in addition to basic rations, and cabbage, tomatoes,
and turnips during the winter. 6 The food a worker actually received
seems to have depended in part on the category of work being per-
formed and sometimes on race as well. The American consul in
Cienfuegos wrote in 1884:
The owner of one of the largest plantations in the island, which during the
crop season employs about five hundred persons, tells me that by cooking
for them, which he does by steam, he is enabled to feed the skilled laborers
at 33 cents a day, the unskilled white laborers at 22 cents a day, and to feed
the unskilled negro laborers at 16 cents a day. A distinction is usually though
not always drawn between white and negro laborers of the same class.?

There was no guarantee that the food supplied would even con-
sistently conform to the familiar description of tasajo and rice. In
the records of the ingenio San Fernando toward the end of 1890, one
finds that the rations, which had consisted primarily of tasajo and
rice, suddenly contained less tasajo, and on November 17 the tasajo
disappeared altogether. From then until January 11, 1891, the ra-
ciones para braceros consisted only of rice, lard, and coffee. While
it is possible that during this period fresh meat may have been
substituted for dried, it is unlikely, as there is no record of any
substitution, nor had the zafra, the traditional occasion for slaugh-
tering an animal, begun. 8
On some estates workers could now exercise a degree of freedom
in food preparation, obtaining permission from their overseer to
collect their food uncooked and prepare it in their rooms. Receiving
one's rations uncooked could also be a burden, however. An article
in El Productor in 1889 reported that in Trinidad cutters and loaders
of cane were paid eighteen pesos monthly and food, but that they
had to pay three pesos to whoever cooked it for them; they had no

6 On food, see Barnet, Biografia, pp. 63-64; "Report by Consul Pierce," p. 254; and
U.S. War Dept., Report on the Census, p. 53l.
7 "Report by Consul Pierce," p. 254.
8 San Fernando, APSS, Valle-Iznaga, leg. 24.

230
 FORMER SLAVES

time to cook it for themselves since they worked from 4:00 A.M. to
11:00 A.M., and from 12:00 noon to 7:00 P.M. 9
The work itself continued much as before. "One passed the hours
in the fields and it seemed as though the time never ended. It went
on and on until it left one exhausted," reported Montejo.I o That the
rhythm of work had changed little was also attested to by planters.
An article in the official publication of the Cuban Planters' Asso-
ciation in 1888 described a worker's day on a plantation or cane
farm (colonia) as beginning with a 2:00 A.M. rising, followed by work
until 11 :00 A.M., a break for lunch, and then work from 1:00 to 6:00
P.M. ll The manager of a large American-owned colonia, founded in
1889, gave much the same picture of conditions for his work force
of 350 during the zalra and 150 during the "dead time," though he
cited 4:00 A.M. as the rising time.l2
Within a plantation, work fell into different categories. Both em-
ployers and employees had opinions about the desirability of various
jobs and the appropriate kind of worker for them. P. M. Beal, the
colonia manager cited earlier, expressed a preference for Canary Is-
landers and Spaniards for "stowing cane on the cars, plowing, ditch-
ing, road repairing, and railroad work." But he argued that, for "cane
cutting, carting, planting, and cultivating, native labor-in particular
negro labor-is preferable, because, being experts, the work pro-
gresses more rapidly, the cane plant suffers less injury, resulting in
more remunerative returns, and its life is prolonged, which is a big
item to the farmer./I Another employer concurred: "One negro in
cutting cane can do as much as two of any other class./l 13 Freedmen
themselves preferred some types of work over others. An observer
in the Sancti Spiritus region reported in 1882 that when libertos
returned to work on the ingenios, they chose the task of machetero
(cane-cutter) over that of alzador (loader).14
Interestingly, specific tasks had different overtones in Cuba and
in Puerto Rico, where emancipation had taken place some years
before. In Cuba, ditching, for example, was not a highly skilled job

9 See Barnet, Biografia, p. 64, and E1 Productor (Feb. 7, 18891.

10 Barnet, Biografia, p. 63.
11 Cited in Tulia Le Riverend, "Rakes del 24 de Febrero: La economia y la sociedad

cubanas de 1878 a 1895," Cuba Socialista 5 (Feb. 19651: 8.

12 U.S. War Dept., Report on the Census, pp. 531-32.
13 Porter, Appendix to the Report, pp. 253, 267.
14 "Macheteros y alzadores," La Propaganda (Tan. 8, 18821.

231
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

and was likely to be given to new immigrants. In Puerto Rico, be-

cause of the importance of irrigation, ditching was a skilled and
relatively prestigious job within field labor. Many ditchers there are
reported to have been libertos, trained under slavery, and their de-
scendants. Indeed, in the case of Puerto Rico, libertos were appar-
ently crucial in a variety of skilled sectors within the sugar industry
in the years immediately following emancipation, and employers
sought them for both field and factory labor. IS
Prior to abolition, some Cuban planters had imagined that an
apartheid-like distinction between black agricultural workers and
white factory workers would emerge after slavery. Indeed, they had
seen this as part of a strategy for rapid development of the sugar
industry.16 One modern historian has asserted that such a division
did exist and that the industrial work in the new centrales was
performed exclusively by whites. Those who had been slaves on
estates absorbed into centrales, he argues, ceased working in the
processing of sugar and were employed exclusively in the agricul-
tural tasks of cane growing and harvestingY
The evidence on this point, however, seems inconclusive. If a
sharp ethnic distinction between the agricultural and the manufac-
turing sectors were emerging in the 1890s, one would expect to find
evidence of it on estates like Soledad, the modern central owned by
Edwin Atkins. In a set of comments on the estate workers, the
manager of Soledad, 1. F. Hughes, did not address the question di-
rectly' but he did describe his work force as it stood in March 1898,
the last month of crop time. Of the 1,600 men employed, there were
"from 150 to 200 Chinamen [sic]; of the balance of the laborers
probably there were more negroes than Spanish, with the white
Cubans in a distinct minority./I He went on to generalize about the
different categories of workers: the Chinese he saw as steady but
weak, the blacks and the Canary Islanders as the best labor, and so
on. But particularly revealing is his comment that "The white men
are mainly employed as stevedores in the batey, though they are

15 On ditchers, see Mintz, Caribbean Transformations, p. 114. On the role of Ji-

bertos in the Puerto Rican sugar industry, see Andres Ramos Mattei, "Elliberto en
el regimen de trabajo azucarero de Puerto Rico, 1870-1880," in Ramos Mattei, Azucar
y esc1avitud, pp. 91-124.
16 See Ibanez, Observaciones. He argued that whites would prefer the "industrial"
work of the batey, and that fieldwork could be left to persons of color.
17 Moreno, "El token," p. 151.

232
 FORMER SLAVES

also good laborers in the field." He did not single them out as mill
workers.18
There may well have been a concentration of blacks in fieldwork
and whites in mill work, but several factors militated against ab-
solute segregation. First, many Spanish immigrants were rural work-
ers, some specifically imported for the harvest. One would expect
most of them to be assigned to the field or the millyard where
demand for seasonal unskilled and semiskilled labor was high. Sec-
ond, some former slaves undoubtedly possessed skills that were of
value in the mill, particularly if they remained in residence on the
estate and could be expected to be available year after year. 19
The differentiation that the American consul had noted in 1884
between black and white "unskilled" workers seems to have di-
minished in importance, while others grew. In the same way that
there had been distinctions under slavery between indentured and
free Chinese, and between owned and rented slaves, a distinction
was now made between the categories of permanent and temporary
worker. Esteban Montejo described the options for individual agri-
cultural wage laborers in Santa Clara: one could sign on as a fixed
laborer, contracted for several months, or one could work free-lance,
agreeing on a price for weeding or clearing a specific area of land.
Montejo viewed the free-lancers as having more autonomy because
they were able to pace their own work, subject only to approval of
the final job, and he described them as "muy vivos" (very sharp).
But they also were transient, lodged in the smallest rooms of the
barrac6n (to which they did not bring women, Montejo noted), and
obliged to move on if they ran out of money before there was more
task work to be done. 20
Even among those who worked regularly for wages on a single
estate, there were further distinctions. On one plantation cited by
Montejo, in order to receive one's pay in cash one had to go to the

18 Porter, Appendix to the Report, p. 267.

19 Walter Rodney singles out the category of "pan-boilers" as a group of Creole
Africans in the Guianese sugar industry whose skills were essential to the factory,
and argues that they were able to gain some autonomy as a result. It is difficult to
determine whether former slaves in Cuba held a comparable position prior to the
introduction of fully mechanized controls on the vacuum pans. If they did, their
importance would have been an inhibition to segregation within the factory. See
Walter Rodney, A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905 (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), p. 161.
20 Barnet, Biograffa, pp. 65-66.

233
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

office and collect it from the mayordomo. Montejo preferred to col-

lect his pay half in cash, half in credit from the storekeeper, in order
to avoid going to the office to be "looked up and down./J Others had
no choice about dealing with the plantation store. The Revista de
Agricultura in 1889 reported that one group of workers in the Trin-
idad area of Santa Clara province planned to emigrate because their
wages were low and because they were obliged to buy in the stores
established by the plantation owners.21
During the early stages of the ending of slavery wages had gen-
erally been calculated to include maintenance, and rations were
issued to most workers. On the ingenio Nueva Teresa in the late
1870s and early 1880s, for example, many wage workers signed on
agreeing to take their meals with the appropriate group on the plan-
tation: slaves, Asians, or white employees. 22 As the transition to
wage labor advanced, workers (such as those in the cuadrillas of
Chinese) took on more of the responsibility for their own mainte-
nance, or transferred it to contractors, and the role of the plantation
store changed. Instead of merely issuing rations, it sold goods. Pur-
chases there on credit could thus take the place of some of the cash
wage. Once emancipation was complete, the role of the store
changed again. In place of cash payments, many planters issued vales
or tokens good only at the store. 23 Others simply maintained an
account for each worker and subtracted his or her purchases from
the final payroll. Their motives seem to have included concern to
limit mobility, desire to confine expenditures to the estate, and
response to a lack of coinage.
The records of the plantation store at the ingenio Natividad in
Sancti Spiritus reveal a wide variation in the degree to which its
workers contracted debts with the store. Some never bought any-
thing at the store; indeed eighteen out of thirty-two workers on one
such list kept the amount they purchased below one peso. Others
bought considerably more, though the only ones actually to exceed
their cash wages were a capataz (foreman) and one temporary
worker.24 Rather than revealing an entire work force held by debt
21 Ibid., pp. 67-68. The Revista article is cited in LeRiverend, "Raices," p. 10. For
a general discussion of plantation stores, see Moreno, "El token."
22 See the account books of the ingenio Nueva Teresa, ANC, ML, 11245, 10879.
23 Moreno, "El token."
24 Negocios 1857-1896, APSS, Valle-Iznaga, leg. 7, expo 19.

234
 FORMER SLAVES

and credit, the ingenio Natividad presents a more complex picture.

Those workers who grew enough for their own subsistence or who
dealt with outside markets might avoid becoming indebted to their
employers. Those who lacked resources or mobility or who preferred
to avoid the mayordomo might deal extensively with company
stores.
Factors beyond individual idiosyncrasy determined these differ-
ences. For some-perhaps particularly those who had struggled to
purchase their freedom-refusing to deal with the company store
could be an assertion of self-respect. 25 Temporary workers without
either family or provision plots would probably be more likely to
deal with the stores. On estates where payment was given in scrip,
however, workers had little choice. An investigation carried out in
1883 in the sugar zone of Guanajayabo apparently revealed that
within five days after the payment of monthly wages, 90 percent of
the money paid out had returned to the estate through the tienda
mixta. 26 This pattern of keeping wages almost entirely within the
plantation may well have been uncharacteristic, but government
authorities estimated in 1888 that hundreds of Cuban ingenios were
issuing wages in fichas. They also cited reports of workers trying to
use the plantation scrip at town stores. 27
In areas where the demand for labor exceeded the supply, workers
sometimes turned credit to their own advantage, extracting an initial
payment prior to signing on. This obviously was a risky business,
since it could lead to lasting debt. For temporary workers who left
before their term was up, however, it meant an effective increase in
wages. Thus employers were likely to be hostile to the extension of
credit when they could not be sure of continued control over the
workers. Articles in the Liberal press of Sancti Spiritus inveighed
against workers who asked for advances to purchase goods to give
to their families and then did not work or return the advance. 28 The
Junta de Agricultura of Santa Clara in 1881 went so far as to claim
25 For such sentiments expressed by a Puerto Rican sugar cane worker in the twen-
tieth century, see Sidney W. Mintz, Worker in the Cane: A Puerto Rican Life History
INew Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), p. 142.
26 Moreno, "El token," pp. 154-55.
27 See the letter from the alcalde of Guara to the governor of Havana, Sept. 18,
1888, in Expediente ... sobre el pago de jornales a braceros en forma de fichas que
representan valor estimativo, ANC, ME, leg. 4330, expo AH.
28 "Trabajadores," La Propaganda IFeb. 26, 1882), and "Hacendados y trabajadores,"
ibid. IDee. 1, 1884).

235
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

that one could not find workers unless one extended advances, which
were often not repaid. However, a newspaper article reporting this
complaint expressed some skepticism about the claim and denied
that the phenomenon was extensive. 29
The problem of credit was, from the point of view of masters, part
of the more general one of ensuring the continuity of labor. Another
article written in Sancti Spiritus complained of workers who left
the plantations to go to town and participate in the parrandas, put-
ting music and sociability above labor. 3D (The parranda was a party
or gathering of singers and musicians for improvisations, and in
Sancti Spiritus it was apparently likely to be an interracial gather-
ing. )31 The Revista de Agricultura in 1888 echoed this plaint, saying
that there were too many holidays during the harvest and that work-
ers left at crucial times in order to go to town for the festivities. 32
The editors of La Propaganda in Sancti Spiritus and of the Revista
in Havana professed to believe in freedom of movement. In an om-
inous passage, however, an author for La Propaganda wrote that
while it would be regrettable if the government were forced to in-
troduce a system of cartillas (workbooks) for rural workers, as had
been done for domestic servants, if this happened it would be the
fault of the workers themselves, who had made ill use of their in-
dividual guarantees. The author called on workers to fulfill their
obligations and forsake their immoderate desire for entertainment
in order to aid the reconstruction of the country. "Entertainment as
a habit degrades; work always ennobles," he intoned. 33 The Revista
de Agricultura was more cautious, calling only for a limit on the
number of fiestas permitted and for restrictions on cockfighting. 34
For one colona quoted in a newspaper article, musical instruments
themselves came to symbolize workers' unwillingness to labor
steadily. Significantly, the instruments he cited were the drum and
the accordion-one African, one European.35

29 E1 Eco de Cuba (Tan. IS, 1881). For a general discussion of debt and peonage see
Arnold J. Bauer, "Rural Workers in Spanish America: Problems of Peonage and Oppres-
sion," Hispanic American Historical Review 59 IFeb. 1979): 34-63.
30 La Propaganda IFeb. 26, 1882).
31 Personal communication from Edelmiro Bonachea Jimenez, Director Provincial
de Cultura, Sancti Spiritus, May 1979.
32 "Las fiestas en los campos," Revista de Agricuitura 8 ISept. 2, 1888): 385.
33 "Trabajadores," La Propaganda IFeb. 26, 1882).
34 "Las fiestas en los campos."
35 La Propaganda IMay 17, 1885).

236
 FORMER SLAVES

For more conservative observers, what was at issue was the social
order itself. An article in the journal of a local "artistic and literary
society" criticized workers' belief that they did not have to tolerate
instructions when they were performing their tasks, and attributed
this flaw to "an exaggerated concept of one's own personality."
Workers, the author argued, had to understand that they were part
of one class in society, and that because of their position they were
dependent on another. Their spirit of independence would have to
be "harmonized" with their subordination. Though the article did
not mention freedmen specifically, some of the perceived "exagger-
ated concept of one's own personality" may have been an expression
of autonomy by former slaves reacting to orders from their former
masters. At the same time, the author's critique of this autonomy
reflected a more generalized concept of hierarchy, applicable to
whites as well as blacks. 36
In addition to exhorting the rural working class to be deferential
and work harder, employers tried to exercise control directly through
the wage system. One ingenio, for example, advertised a "good wage"
for fieldworkers-sixty cents per one hundred arrobas cut and
loaded, thirty cents per day charged for food-but noted that pay
would be given only after a month's work and that no advances
would be issuedP Both the amount and the manner of payment on
plantations varied widely according to the relationship of supply and
demand across geographical areas and between seasons, the nature
of production in each region, and the strategies of employers and
workers.
In Trinidad, a severely depressed region in the province of Santa
Clara that contained ingenios producing mascabado sugar but no
centrales, monthly wages for day laborers did not go above nine or
ten pesos during the summer of 1888; they had been ten to fourteen
a few months earlier.38 In Cienfuegos, which was undergoing de-
velopment, a worker in 1888 might expect fourteen to seventeen
36 La Fraternidad, Sancti Spiritus (Aug. 17, 1890). One could go a step further and
argue that employers' attitudes were in part a legacy of Iberian seigneurialism, rein-
forced by the institution of slavery. To demonstrate this convincingly, however,
would require a tracing of elite ideology and its roots that is well beyond the scope
of this study. For a discussion of Cuban slavery that employs the concept of sei-
gneurialism, see Paquette, "Conspiracy."
37 La Propaganda (March 26, 1882).
38 Revista de Agricultura 8 (Sept. 16, 1888): 142, and 8 (July 8, 1888): 279.

237
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

pesos in gold, including maintenance, and some fresh meat. In Sagua,

wages were twelve to fourteen pesos, with worse food. In Matanzas,
where there were numerous former slaves, pay was thirty-five to
forty pesos a month in depreciated bills (around half the value of
gold) and maintenance was not included. 39
An informe from the Sociedad Econ6mica de Amigos del Pais,
issued just before the abolition of the patronato, had estimated wages
at from forty to seventy cents a day, or ten to eighteen pesos per
month. The Circulo de Hacendados at the same time estimated a
range of fifteen to twenty pesos per month without maintenance in
"dead time," twenty-five to forty during the zafra. This latter esti-
mate probably included some specialized workers.4o In practice, pay
varied widely, even on the same plantation. In July 1889, monthly
pay to the over two hundred braceros working on the ingenio Na-
tividad in Sancti Spiritus ranged roughly from nine pesos for some
cane haulers to thirty for some cane cutters. Most tasks earned
around fifteen to twenty pesos. 41
Wages were at roughly similar levels in the 1890s. One manager
cited an average for field laborers during the summer months of
seventeen pesos, although higher amounts (twenty-one pesos) were
paid to cane cutters and cane loaders during crop time. 42 The ingenio
Natividad recorded wage rates of twelve to twenty-six pesos to bra-
ceros during the zafra of 1895-1896. 43 The American-owned Soledad
central in Santa Clara province reported paying from fourteen to
twenty pesos Spanish gold in 1895. 44
This cataloguing of general wage levels in different regions is not
intended as a precise statement of the wages earned by former slaves
who remained on plantations. If tied to a plantation store, they could
find their real purchasing power as well as their freedom much
reduced; if hired only part of the year, or part of each month, their
income was correspondingly lower. The point is that the wages paid
the freedmen and freedwomen were certainly higher than the wages
paid to Chinese and other contract laborers in the 1870s, but they

39 Revista de Agricultura 8 (July 8, 18881: 279.

40 Informe, Sociedad Econ6mica de Amigos del Pais, Aug. 22, 1886, and Informe,
Circulo de Hacendados, Aug. 7, 1886, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 280, expo 610.
41 Relaci6n de pagos, Natividad, July 31, 1889, APSS, Valle-Iznaga, leg. 7, expo 13.
42 U.S. War Dept., Report on the Census, p. 53l.
43 APSS, Valle-Iznaga, leg. 7, expo 19.
44 Porter, Appendix to the Report, p. 268.

238
 FORMER SLAVES

were not markedly higher than wages paid to free workers in the
1870s. Planters' total expenditures on wages had risen sharply with
the shift of workers into the wage-earning sector, but the wages paid
to individual workers had not.
Planters seeking subsidized immigration or laws restricting work-
ers' rights tended to speak in terms of a "scarcity" of workers, but
other observers noticed that in absolute numbers there was not a
general "labor shortage." Jose Quintin Suzarte wrote in 1881 that
there was in fact an abundance of braceros, and that they would
have to reduce their "pretenciones" when faced with competition
from the work forces of those plantations that had gone out of busi-
ness, from released soldiers, from urban workers displaced by re-
leased soldiers, and from freed patrocinados. 45
Nonetheless, as in virtually all postemancipation societies, plant-
ers in Cuba complained that former slaves spent too much time in
leisure. Indeed, former slaves did at times choose to place domestic
labor, the cultivation of food crops, and companionship with friends
and family above the endless hoeing, cutting, and lifting of cane.
But observers also noted that workers migrated in search of higher
pay, and shifted from one estate or gang to another in pursuit of
better wages. In such cases, there was no denying former slaves'
responsiveness to monetary incentives. The "labor shortage" be-
moaned by planters should thus be seen in the context of employers'
desire for an expansion of the total work force to drive down the
cost of labor and their unwillingness or inability to offer higher
wages. One planter, recalling the nineties, wrote simply that "plant-
ers, who were very poor, due to the low price of sugar and the
excessive taxation, could not afford to employ all the laborers that
presented themselves."46 Under these circumstances, the leisure of
some former slaves was an enforced one.
Whatever the fears of employers, it is clear that abolition did not
trigger a catastrophic flight of former slaves from plantation labor,
thus crippling production. Although levels of sugar production in
the 1880s were below those of the peak years of the 1870s (when
prices were higher), they did not plummet, but remained comparable
to earlier figures, averaging just 8 percent below the amounts for
the previous decade. In the 1890s they began to climb again, and
4S Suzarte, Estudios, p. 66.
46 Porter, Appendix to the Report, p. 263.

239
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

TABLE 26
Cuban Sugar Production, 1870-1894
Year Metric Tons Year Metric Tons Year Metric Tons

1870 702,974 1878 553,364 1887 707,442

1871 609,660 1879 775,368 1888 662,758
1872 772,068 1880 618,654 1889 569,367
1873 742,843 1881 580,894 1890 636,239
1874 768,672 1882 620,565 1891 807,742
1875 750,062 1883 601,426 1892 1,000,797
1876 626,082 1884 626,477 1893 945,035
1877 516,268 1885 628,990 1894 1,110,991
1886 657,290
SOURCE: Manuel Moreno Fraginals, El ingenio: comple;o econ6mico social cubano del azllcar,
3 vols. (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 197813: 37-38.

reached the unprecedented one million ton mark by 1892 (see Table
26). While technical innovations and the attraction of new workers
accounted for some of the recovery, former slaves of necessity pro-
vided much of the labor.

THE COLONA TO. This expansion of production relied not only on

continued growing of cane on the ingenios but also on the extension
of the colonato. Former slaves could, in theory, have participated
both .as workers and as colonos. Indeed, the colonato had on some
estates arisen in part as a mechanism to keep freedmen on the plan-
tation. A Cuban planter recalled the development of the colonato
on the Hormiguero estate after abolition:
We adopted the system of giving out grounds to some of our slaves, building
houses for them, and starting them raising sugar cane. Then we got their
families, some Canary Islanders, and some of the people of the country, and
commenced in that way. They went very nicely for a while, and then com-
menced to abandon the thing, and we had to take up the cultivation of cane
ourselves again. Their work was intermittent, and we could not rely on
themY
It is impossible to know, from the employer's account, just why the
arrangement ceased to work in this instance. But low prices for sugar
in the mid-1880s-and thus low prices to the colona for cane-may
have been a major factor. The need of the central for strict control
over the supply of cane could also make coexistence with semi-
47 Ibid., p. 129.

240
 FORMER SLAVES

independent farmers difficult. Other plantations had much better

luck with the colona system, though it always contained the po-
tential for conflict over prices and how the cane was being grown.
As time went on, however, it became clear that cane farming
would be a predominantly white occupation. By 1899, the census
counted 4,541 sugar "plantations" (including cane farms) in the is-
land with white owners, and just 520 with "colored" owners. There
were 6,730 plantations in the hands of white renters, 2,645 in the
hands of colored renters. Together the farms with colored owners
or renters comprised less than 4.5 percent of the total land of plan-
tations devoted to the growing and/or processing of cane. 48
When in the early 1890s a colona in the province of Santa Clara
composed an angry tract criticizing the exploitation of colonos by
millowners, he chose as his title Los esc1avos blancos (The White
Slaves}.49 He was acknowledging, in effect, that the colonato was
now perceived as a largely white institution. There were in his prov-
ince in 18994,350 white owners and renters of sugar farms and just
1,003 colored owners and renters, though 30 percent of the provincial
population of agriculturalists was classified as "colored." The only
other province with a substantial number of colored owners and
renters of sugar farms was Santiago de Cuba, with 1,708. 50 In both
cases many of the colored colonos may have been the descendants
of free persons of color rather than recently emancipated slaves, for
these were provinces that throughout the late nineteenth century
had counted noticeable populations of black and mulatto small-
holders. For smallholders of all groups, the expansion of the colonato
was, however, a mixed blessing. It provided a new mechanism for
producing a cash crop, but at the same time put pressure on the
supply of land.
The concentration of colona lands in the hands of white owners
and tenants may have resulted in part from overt ethnic favoritism
by planters, as occurred in some coffee regions of Brazil, but it was
undoubtedly also exacerbated by a lack of capital and of access to
credit on the part of freedmen. 51 Indeed, the two factors were inter-
48 U.S. War Dept., Report on the Census, p. 560.
49 Jimenez, Los esc1avos blancos.
50 U.S. War Dept., Report on the Census, pp. 560, 448-49.
51 On discrimination by planters in Brazil, see Warren Dean, Rio Claro: A Brazilian
Plantation System, 1820-1920 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 19761; and Flor-
estan Fernandes, The Negro in Brazilian Society (trans. Jacqueline D. Skiles,

241
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

twined, since planters were both major grantors of rented colonias

and a major source of initial credit. Whatever the mix of reasons for
the relative exclusion of freedmen from the colonato, it meant that
most of them would participate in the sugar boom of the 1890s only
as sellers of their labor. Selling one's labor to white colonos, often
immigrants, may have been preferable to selling it to former slave-
holders, but at least one freedman remembered those colona em-
ployers with bitterness: "What they were was sons of bitches,
meaner and stingier (mas bravos y tacanos) than the hacendados
themselves. They were very tight with wages." 52 Rather than being
an inherent trait of personality, this stinginess probably reflected
the pressure on colonos as they shared with mill owners and passed
on to their workers the burden of falling sugar prices in the nineties.

FAMILY STRATEGIES. Both wage labor in sugar and tenantry on a

colonia meant remaining to a large extent within the orbit of the
plantation, though not necessarily the one on which one had been
a slave. Some freedmen and freedwomen took still further steps to
lessen their commitment to the plantations. This was sometimes
involuntary: if laid off during the dead season, they had no choice
but to look for other work or cultivate a provision ground. It could
also be a conscious strategy, however, aimed at increasing one's
opportunities and reducing one's dependence on a former master.
In 1886 Rafael Cowley, a member of the Sociedad Econ6mica de
Amigos del Pais, reported that many freedmen had gone to the towns
to find the "social life" that had previously been denied them. Cow-
ley then described the evolution of a familial division of labor:
women would live in the town, occupied in domestic work and their
own household duties, while their partners continued to work in
agriculture. Logically, then, men preferred to work on plantations
that were close to towns, and they were even willing to work for
less than they would have obtained on more distant plantations. 53
This account suggests a new kind of stratification in the supply of
labor after emancipation. First, some women withdrew from year-
A. Brunel, and Arthur Rothwelll (New York: Columbia University Press, 19691, esp.
pp. 17-18. On early efforts to attract European immigrants to Brazil, see also Emilia
Viotti da Costa, Da Senzala a Colonia (Sao Paulo: Difusao Europeia do Livro, 19661,
pp.65-123.
52 Barnet, Biograffa, p. 105.
53 AHN, Ultramar, leg. 280, expo 610.

242
 FORMER SLAVES

round labor in agriculture, following a pattern observed in one slave

society after another, and could be attracted back into field work
only when wages were relatively high. 54 Second, by moving to the
towns, these women affected the supply of male labor as well, since
male workers whose partners were in town would avoid work on
isolated plantations.
Descriptions of plantation life after slavery often noted a separa-
tion of men from their families. The assistant manager of the Amer-
ican-owned ingenio Soledad believed that most of his male workers
were not married, and reported that the families of those who were
married lived in the nearby villages. "Most of the laboring men, if
they have families, when they are paid off, go away for a day or a
day and a half and take their money to their families, and then come
back to work." This family division of labor thus appears as a con-
sequence of the orientation of the employers on large plantations
toward bachelor laborers, and the resulting provision of barracks-
like living arrangements for workers, as well as the preference of
some families for residence in towns. Another observer of Soledad
and neighboring estates wrote simply that "the families prefer to
live in the towns and the planters do not care to have the families
on the estates."55
Women did, however, often return to field work at harvest time,
when demand was up and wages were higher. P. M. Beal, manager
of the Guabairo colonia, reported in 1899 that "During the harvest
I give the negro women preference, and pay them the same salaries
as the best male labor. They are the most constant, their work is
usually well done, and each one keeps her man straight, which is
an appreciable item."56 A description of labor on sugar estates in
Cienfuegos in 1884 described the drying of bagazo (cane stalks) spe-
cifically as women's workY Montejo noted that women's domestic
work was not seasonal, that "there was no such thing as a dead time
for them." He cited washing, mending, sewing, and raising pigs and
chickens among their responsibilities. 58

54 For evidence on the change in female participation in agricultural labor, see note
3, above. On Brazil, see Stein, Vassouras, p. 262.
55 The assistant manager is quoted in Porter, Appendix to the Report, p. 268; the
other observations are from Pedro Rodriguez, in Porter, p. 195.
56 U.S. War Dept., Report on the Census, p. 530.
57 "Report by Consul Pierce," p. 25l.
58 Barnet, Biografia, p. 94.

243
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

Despite the predictions of fearful whites that former slaves would

wander, languish, and die, or the claims by some scholars that plan-
tation slaves knew nothing of family or economy and that many
were therefore traumatized by abolition,59 it is evident that some
former slaves did organize and perpetuate family economies, in-
volving shared and complementary wage and household labor. The
ties may not always have been legal or permanent, but neither were
they all aimless Or ephemeral. The strength of these ties should not
be surprising; they were already apparent in the efforts of large num-
bers of parents and others to purchase the freedom of children or
spouses during the period of gradual emancipation.

SMALLHOLDING. Throughout the Caribbean, the plantation and

nonplantation sectors had long competed for many of the same re-
sources. Owners of plantations in some instances sought to block
the development of possibilities that would allow former slaves to
become self-sufficient away from the plantation. But the two sectors
could also, under certain circumstances, be complementary, ex-
changing goods and sharing labor, however uneasily. This was par-
ticularly likely if the seasonal labor needs of the crops cultivated
did not overlap directly, as in the case of maize and sugar. In Cuba
after emancipation a classic Caribbean "reconstituted peasantry,"
in which former slaves became small-scale cultivators, did not
emerge, but smallholding of one kind or another was apparently
sought by many former slaves. 6o
The major precedent for the growing of crops other than sugar by
former slaves was the canuca or provision ground. During slavery,
masters found that some labor could profitably be dedicated to food
crops, reducing the estate's dependence on imported foodstuffs, and
slaves found that canuca cultivation provided access to capital. The
59 Moreno, "Aportes culturales y deculturaci6n," p. 22.
60 The phrase "reconstituted peasantry" is Sidney Mintz's. For a recent discussion
of some of these issues, see Sidney W. Mintz, "Reflections on Caribbean Peasantries,"
Nieuwe West-Indische Gids/ New West Indian Guide 57 (19831: 1-17. See also Frank-
lin W. Knight, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (New York:
Oxford University Press, 19781. For a clear instance of explicit planter efforts to stymie
the development of a peasantry, see Alan H. Adamson, Sugar Without Slaves: The
Political Economy of British Guiana, 1838-1904 (New Haven: Yale University Press,
19721. esp. chaps. 2, 3. For a contemporary instance of conflicts between plantations
and smallholding in Cuba, see Brian H. Pollitt, "Agrarian Reform and the' Agricultural
Proletariat' in Cuba, 1958-66: Some Notes," University of Glasgow, Institute of Latin
American Studies, Occasional Paper no. 27, 1979.

244
 FORMER SLAVES

canuca had thus persisted despite adversity, and provided a basis for
the survival of a kind of family economy. Some who turned to wage
work after emancipation may have abandoned their canucas, as the
existence of overtime pay competed with subsistence cultivation
and changing patterns of mobility drew freedmen away from their
plots. The canuca nevertheless remained a model for subsequent
agricultural activity, even for those who continued to work at least
part of the time for the plantation. As the employer lost his ability
to enforce all of the terms of labor, freedmen could shift the balance
between time spent on their own crops and time spent on the plan-
tation's. An American observer wrote in 1899:
The Cuban negro has a marked trait in the instinct of landownership. It is
one of the standard complaints of the sugar planters that he clings to his
cabin and his patch of ground to the detriment of successful cane-raising.
He does not care to be swallowed up in the big plantation, and usually his
wish for a bohfo or palm-hut of his own in preference to quarters in the
plantation barracks has to be gratified. 61
This account appears to depict a situation in which the cultivation
of cane and the cultivation of food crops coexisted, despite the em-
ployer's greater interest in cane, because of the employee's insistence
on access to a small amount of land as a condition of employment.
Concession of this right could have multiple consequences. On the
one hand, the worker was attached to land close to the plantation
and therefore was more accessible at harvest time. On the other
hand, with the possibility of applying his energies to a provision
plot, he might well not offer his labor for as many days per week,
or as many weeks per month, as the employer would wish.
The transition from a slave canuca to a freedman's plot sometimes
involved an intermediate stage. A slave who had grown crops on his
canuca might obtain freedom by self-purchase, based on the product
of that plot, during the 1880s. If he remained on the same plantation
he might, instead of hiring on as a day worker, plant on estate land
and receive the value of a portion of the crop each year. Justo Ar-
gudfn, for example, a former slave on the ingenia Nueva Teresa,
obtained his freedom and began to grow corn on halves with the
plantation. His account was kept in the plantation books and he
61 Charles M. Pepper, To-Morrow in Cuba (New York: Harper and Bros., 1899;
reprint ed., New York: Young People's Missionary Movement of the United States
and Canada, 1910), p. 151.

245
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

apparently collected no cash for years on end, but he had made a

half-step from slave toward peasant. 62
It is difficult to reconstruct the precise mixture of motivations
that lay behind these choices. The cultivation of food crops provided
a more reliable guarantee of the family's subsistence and was a form
of work not directly controlled by the plantation. As such, it may
have had an appeal beyond its yield in strictly economic terms. An
American visitor wrote at the end of the century that Cubans in the
countryside "seem to prefer the cultivation of small patches of
ground for themselves, rather than working for wages, although the
net result to them may not be so favorable." He suggested that "the
colored Cubans, at least, seem to consider that the course which
they follow in this respect especially demonstrates their personal
independence, which they have been anxious to establish since they
have been freed from slavery."63
The shift into some form of smallholding also often reflected a
specific decision to apply one's energies to cultivos menores, "lesser
crops." In his 1886 report, Rafael Cowley wrote that there had been
a move by libertos to small farms, reflecting the freedmen's pref-
erence for other crops over cane growing and sugar production. He
claimed the shift had been significant enough to be reflected in
overall production figures for grain, pineapples, and potatoes. This
increased production could eventually satisfy the demand both
for internal consumption and for export to the United States, he
predicted. 64
Cowley's report points up the complexity of interpreting freed-
men's attraction to smallholding. Small plots could yield subsis-
tence crops for family consumption or for sale, but they could also
yield cane or crops intended for export. Observers alarmed by the
withdrawal of some black workers from wage labor in cane tended
to blur the two, and to perceive a total retreat from the market
economy. Enrique Jose Varona wrote in distress in 1888: "The black
country person, who lives with very little, is slowly drawing away
from the {incas, to form a great mass of inert population, which
62 For the account of Tusto Argudfn, see fol. 226 of Libro Mayor del Ingenio Nueva
Teresa, ANC, ML, 11245.
63 William T. Clark, Commercial Cuba (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1898),
p.39.
64 AHN, Ultramar, leg. 280, expo 610.

246
 FORMER SLAVES

consumes strictly what it produces."65 From the point of view of

those concerned with the island's exports and productivity for the
market, a retreat into subsistence by former slaves was unacceptable.
But the evidence of crops actually planted on smallholdings owned
or rented by persons of color suggests that Varona's portrait was
overdrawn.
The majority of the holdings rented or owned by persons of color
were located in the provinces of Santiago de Cuba, Santa Clara, and
Pinar del Rio. In Santiago de Cuba in 1899, "colored" owners and
renters planted their lands primarily in bananas, Indian corn, sweet
potatoes, cacao, coffee, and sugar cane. In Santa Clara, colored own-
ers and renters planted most of their land in sugar cane, while also
growing sweet potatoes and corn. In Pinar del Rio, both owners and
renters concentrated on tobacco, while planting sweet potatoes and
malangas as well. Some squatters occupying tiny plots undoubtedly
escaped the census reports, but the overall picture is one of a com-
mitment to the market as well as to subsistence. 66
To employers seeking laborers on estates, the withdrawal of freed-
men from the plantation might appear a stubborn refusal to coop-
erate, a retreat into leisure and inertia. But for freedmen who man-
aged to find land, such withdrawal could actually multiply their
possible activities, for they could combine subsistence cultivation,
market gardening, and the growth of export crops with periodic wage
labor. The returns on these activities might be exiguous indeed, but
the multiplication of activities could mean an important increase
in autonomy.
Land was hard to find, however, and the growth of centrales made
the task harder still. To escape from the orbit of the estates, some
former slaves found that they had to flee the sugar regions entirely.
A growing problem, however, was the difficulty of staying more than
one step ahead of the expanding centrales.

MIGRATION. The eastern region seems to have held the greatest

attraction for potential migrants. Indeed, a major shift eastward in
the population of color can be discerned in the pattern of population
distribution at different census dates between 1862 and 1899. The
65 Enrique Jose Varona, "E1 bando1erismo," Revista Cubana 8iJune 18881: 481-50l.
66U.S. War Dept., Report on the Census, pp. 558-59. Landholding and crop patterns
will be discussed further in Chap. XI, below.

247
 TABLE 27
Distribution of the Population of Color
by Province, 1862-1899

Province 1862 1877 1887 1899

Pinar del Rio 64,063 (10.8%1 59,496 (12.6%1 59,213 (11.2% 1 46,836 (9.3%1
Havana 143,805 (24.2%1 111,096 (23.6%1 116,146 (22.0%1 108,328 (21.4%1
Matanzas 110,450 (18.6%1 108,750 (23.1%1 117,538 (22.2%1 80,321 (15.9%1
Santa Clara 114,442 (19.2%1 96,959 (20.6%1 109,025 (20.6%1 106,574 (21.1%1
Puerto Principe 26,158 (4.4%1 8,472 (1.8%1 13,208 (2.5%1 17,375 (3.4%1
Santiago de Cuba 135,570 (22.8%1 86,799 (18.4%1 113,668 (21.5%1 146,109 (28.9%1
Total 594,488 (100%1 471,572 (100%1 528,798 (100%1 505,543 (100%1
SOURCES: 1862-Cuba, Centro de Estadistica, Noticias estadfsticas, "Distribuci6n"; I 877-Iglesias, "El censo cubano," Appendix; 1887-Spain, Instituto
Geografico y Estadistico, Censo de poblaci6n de Espana segun el empadronamiento hecho en 31 de diciembre de 1887lMadrid: 1891-92); 1899-U.S. War
Department, Report on the Census of Cuba, 1899lWashington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1900), p. 195 lincludes figures from census categories
IINegro" and "Mixed").
 FORMER SLAVES

number of blacks and mulattos in the island had dropped sharply

following the closing of the slave trade and before full emancipation.
This decline was particularly marked in the two eastern provinces
where the Ten Years' War hit hard, causing many deaths and en-
couraging slaveholders to move their slaves out of the area. This
population recovered somewhat after 1877, especially in the east,
where emancipation was completed first and where it is likely that
wartime losses were in part recouped through new births. After full
emancipation, there was a striking increase in the portion of the
population of color located in the east. Much of this change seems
to have been due to migration of population out of sugar areas.
Matanzas, for example, lost some 17 percent of its white population
and 32 percent of its population of color between 1887 and 1899.
The province of Santiago de Cuba, by contrast, increased its white
population by fourteen percent, and its population of color by 29
percent67 (see Table 271.
The east offered greater access to land for a variety of reasons. Its
hilly and mountainous interior had long been inhospitable to sugar
production, leaving room for the development of a nonplantation
sector removed from the region's sugar-producing areas of Guanta-
namo and the district around the city of Santiago de Cuba. Moreover,
in some of the territory devastated by the Ten Years' War, the gov-
ernment had undertaken the distribution of state-owned land to aid
in reconstruction. Among those applying for land were blacks and
mulattos, though it is not possible to determine whether they were
former slaves. 68 In 1885 the government reported that over 1,000
hectares had been distributed in the area of Manzanillo, part of the
old {inca Monte. 69 The scale of the operation, however, was far too
small to provide land to substantial numbers of individuals or to

67 Juan Perez de la Riva argues that an analysis at the level of municipalities also
shows migration out of sugar regions and into nonsugar regions, though he does not
elaborate on the method used to establish this. See his "Los recursos humanos de
Cuba al comenzar el siglo: inmigraci6n, economia, y nacionalidad (1899-1906),"
Anuario de Estudios Cubanas, Torno 1: La republica neocolonial (Havana: Editorial
de Ciencias Sociales, 1975), pp. 7-44. Figures on white population may be found in
the sources listed in Table 27.
68 For a decree authorizing the distribution of land to soldiers, to those who re-
mained faithful to Spain and suffered damages, and to insurrectionists who surren-
dered and were pardoned, see Memorias de 1a Sociedad Econ6mica de Amigos del
Pais, Series 8,1 (Dec. 1877): 119-22. For applications for land, see ANC, GG, leg. 48.
69 See Libra de Aetas, prayectos de Decreto de Ley, y demas documentos, AHN,
Ultramar, leg. 280.

249
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

bring about the recovery of areas damaged by the war. Indeed, it is

unclear how many of the anticipated titles were ever distributedJo
At the same time, private North American investment was at-
tracted to parts of the east damaged by the war, and several large
American-owned centrales began to develop in the 1880s. As proc-
essing was centralized, ruinate ingenios became colonias. These
promised a very different kind of future for the region that the small
farms growing tobacco and viandas envisioned by those who peti-
tioned for individual plots from the government. 71
Thus the east, while offering an internal frontier in which some
elements of a "reconstituted peasantry" might develop, was itself
already under the pressure of change. It would not offer a refuge to
all freedmen, and increasingly its own inhabitants would find them-
selves drawn or pushed into closer ties with plantation society.
In addition to expressing concern that freedmen might withdraw
into subsistence cultivation, some policy makers had, prior to eman-
cipation, raised the specter of a mass flight of freedmen to the cities
and an accompanying increase in vagrancy and criminality. Some
former slaves did migrate to the cities and towns, but the magnitude
of the phenomenon appears to have been limited. The proportion of
the island's population of color resident in the province of Havana,
for example, did not increase dramatically during the period of eman-
cipation. The city of Havana itself held an estimated 47,000 residents
of color in 1877, 54,400 in 1887, and 64,800 in 1899. The increase
between 1887 and 1899 was a substantial 19 percent, but it was less
than the increase in the province of Santiago de Cuba (29 percent).
The city contained 10 percent of the island's population of color in
1877 and again in 1887, 13 percent in 1899. The percentage of the
island's total population of color living in the five largest cities had
been around 19 percent in 1877, and was around 23 percent in 1899.
(The proportion of the white population living in these cities in 1899

70 Robert Hoernel argues that many of the titles were never distributed. See "Sugar
and Social Change in Oriente, Cuba, 1898-1946," Journal of Latin American Studies
8 (Nov. 1976): 225.
71 Hoernel points out that the destruction, in effect, assisted in the modernization
of the sugar industry in the east, since large centrales could directly supersede the
ruined estates. Ibid., p. 225. For testimony by several operators of the new North
American centrales, see Porter, Appendix to the Report.

250
 FORMER SLAVES

was comparable: around 24 percent.)72 Of course, these figures are

difficult to interpret because of the intervening years of war and the
Spanish policy of "reconcentration." Nonetheless, they do not seem
to reflect a mass flight to the cities.
Indeed, most Afro-Cuban city-dwellers of 1899 are likely to have
been descendants of the pre-abolition urban population of color
rather than themselves post-abolition migrants. The free population
of color had already been strongly concentrated in the cities prior
to abolition, and its relatively high rate of growth was regularly
commented upon by observers. In 1877, in the city of Matanzas, for
example, there were 7,013 free persons of color and another 2,321
urban slaves. Twenty-two years later the city's population of color
was 11,456, and primarily female. Again, it is difficult to make direct
inferences because of the turmoil of the intervening years, but it
seems that relatively few of the province's tens of thousands of field
slaves would have had to migrate to the city in order to make up
the 2,122 person increase in the interim.73
Migration to the cities and towns did not invariably indicate a
total departure from agriculture. As we have seen, it was sometimes
part of a familial arrangement combining female urban labor and
male rural labor, and sometimes a seasonal movement in response
to shifting demand for workers. As such, urban migration did not
necessarily carry with it the connotations of rootlessness and po-
tential criminality that fearful observers had anticipated. Indeed, an
examination of the biographies of a group of Havana criminals in
the 1880s does not support the idea that a large proportion of them
were former field slaves, at least judging by their places of origin. 74
Occasionally former slaves attempted an even more drastic mi-
gration away from plantation society. In 1883 one group apparently
72 Figures on the 1877 population are from the Boletin Oficial de la Hacienda de
la Isla de Cuba l!Sept. 15, 1881 and Oct. 15, 1881), and Boletin Oficial de Hacienda
y de Estadistica de la Isla de Cuba 2!Aug. 30, 1882). Figures for 1887 are from Spain,
Instituto Geografico y Estadistico, Censo de la poblaci6n de Espana, segun el em-
padronamiento hecho en 31 de diciembre de 18872 vols. !Madrid: Impr. de la Di-
recci6n General del Instituto Geografico y Estadistico, 1891, 1892). Those for 1899
are from U.S. War Dept., Report on the Census, pp. 194·99.
73 The 1877 figures are from Boletin Oficial de la Hacienda de la Isla de Cuba 1

!Oct. 15, 1881). The 1899 figures are from U.S. War Dept., Report on the Census, p.
196.
74 Urrutia, Los criminales.

251
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

embarked for "Angoue" (probably in coastal equatorial Africa), and

oral tradition holds that as late as 1897, during the war, an important
group of lucumfes also left for Africa.7 5 A somewhat better docu-
mented case is that of Francisco Cuevas, who proposed to the queen
of Spain in 1887 that the Spanish government support a group of
Cubans in their effort to establish a colony on the west coast of
Africa. He asked the government to pay their transportation and
first four months' maintenance. Their avowed aim was to save their
"brothers" from "the ignorance and savagery in which they live
submerged, bringing them the Light of progress and the consolation
of our Holy Roman Catholic Religion." They intended to work col-
lectively and share their wealth, but they wanted government pro-
tection from the "savages." Five of the ten signers of the proposal
were named Terri. One suspects that they had been slaves of Tomas
Terry, a planter whose estates received African slaves until very late,
but whether they were African or Creole is impossible to determine.
The actual aim of their project and degree of their aversion to the
"savagery" of Africa remain a mystery. In any case, the proposal was
evidently ignored by the government.76
Though the possibility of a voluntary "return to Africa" had been
envisioned by the 1870 legislation on gradual abolition, there is no
evidence that it was ever systematically undertaken. The colonial
government would have had little interest in funding such ventures
unless it sought to drastically "whiten" the population, and plant-
ers expressed no interest in facilitating the departure of potential
workers.
A few former slaves seem to have opted for a kind of internal exile,
setting up independent communities comparable to the palenques
that had long existed in the eastern part of the island. A local news-
paper referred in 1882 to a palenque in the hills near Sagua, in the
province of Santa Clara. One is initially tempted to suggest that
75 Juan Perez de la Riva, "Antiguos esclavos cubanos que regresan a Lagos," in Juan
Perez de la Riva and Pedro Deschamps Chapeaux, Contribuci6n a la historia de la
gente sin historia (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1974), pp. 165-67. Fernando
Ortiz expressed skepticism about reports of former Cuban slaves returning to Africa,
but noted one case in 1895, which is possibly the same one that was preserved in
oral tradition, and repeated to me by Pedro Deschamps Chapeaux. Ortiz, Los negros
esclavos, pp. 302-303.
76 AHN, Ultramar, leg. 146, expo 35.

252
 FORMER SLAVES

some freed slaves were following a model from slavery and estab-
lishing settlements along the lines of maroon communities. The
context of the report, however, suggests that the term may have
been used somewhat loosely. A conservative newspaper was be-
moaning the "vicious, vagrant habits" of recently freed slaves, and
cited the capture of some of the inhabitants of this "palenque," who
were accused of supporting themselves by marauding nearby estates.
So there is little way to determine whether a real palenque had been
established, or whether the word-evocative of fugitive slaves and
illegality-was used to add to the vividness of the argument for more
law and order.77 In any event, the growth of autonomous villages
comparable to the "free villages" of Jamaica was thwarted both by
the absence of groups like the Protestant churches who might aid
in the amassing of capital, and by the lack of available land. While
former slaves in Jamaica could establish new farms in areas of mar-
ginal or declining sugar estates, those in Cuba were faced with an
aggressive and expanding plantation agriculture.l 8 They might for a
time incorporate themselves into existing, predominantly Afro-Cu-
ban communities in the east, but eventually the plantations would
threaten much of that world as well.
Like former slaves throughout the Caribbean, Cuban freedmen
and freedwomen sought in various ways to increase their autonomy,
either rural or urban. Those who had been slaves were not mere
elements in an abstract transition to "free labor," but individuals
and families who tried to make something of their new juridical
status, however constrained they might be by the policies of the
state and of planters or by their own lack of capital.
In analyzing these work patterns, one must seek the actual cir-
cumstances that gave rise to different outcomes, and question the
implications hidden within the terminology adopted by employers.
Thus the "unreliability" of former slaves as agricultural workers in
one region could reflect their access to land and preference for work

77 For information on palenques and the Ten Years' War, see Franco, Palenques,

pp. 115-16. For the 1882 reference see Resumen del espiritu de la prensa, Dec. 25,
1882, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4807.
78 On the development of the postemancipation peasantry in Jamaica, see Douglas

Hall, Free Jamaica, 1838-1865: An Economic History (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1959), especially chap. 1; Mintz, Caribbean Transformations, chap. 6; and
Thomas C. Holt, "The Problem of Freedom."

253
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

in crops other than sugar, while their much-appreciated "constancy"

in another might be achieved by forcing them into virtual landless-
ness.l 9 The patterns of landholding and social relations that char-
acterized Cuba in the final decade of the nineteenth century were
thus both cause and effect in this dialectic of striving and constraint,
and it is to these that we now turn.
79 For an example of this kind of distinction, made by a contemporary, see the
statement of Pedro Rodriguez of Caibarien: "Our blacks at Las Villas and Matanzas
are better than those in the eastern part of the island. They are more in the habit of
working." Porter, Appendix to the Report, p. 195.

254
 XI

Land and Society

En el aria '44 In the year '44

yo 'taba en el ingenio I was on the plantation
En el aria '44, negra, In the year '44, negra,
yo 'taba en el ingenio I was on the plantation
Ahara, ahara Now, now,
negro can blanco black with white
chapea cariavera weeding in the canefields
Lyrics of a slow rumba sung in Matanzas after emancipation.
(1844 was the year of the repression of a reputed
slave uprising.JI

The transition to free labor in Cuba meant a fundamental reorgan-

ization of labor, landholding, and social relations. Owners of slaves
and ingenios became employers on centrales and colonias. Slaves
became legally free workers, in sugar and elsewhere. The interaction
of employers and laborers, and of available land and available capital,
however, was by no means geographically uniform. The result was
a regional diversity in patterns of land use and landholding at least
as striking as that which had existed under slavery.
At the same time, emancipation altered several aspects of the
social and political environment of the island. Abolition transformed
the Afro-Cuban community in ways that affected Afro-Cuban at-
titudes toward political activity and toward Spanish rule. It also
changed the political equation for the Spanish colonial government,
leading it to court Afro-Cuban support as part of its larger strategy
for the maintenance of colonial rule.
Together these changes shaped Cuban society on the eve of the
outbreak of a new anticolonial struggle. This chapter will examine
the changes in landholding and in social relations affecting the Afro-
Cuban community, while the conclusion' and epilogue will trace
some of the consequences for the growing political conflict.
1 I am grateful to Rogelio Martinez Fure for providing the text of this song.

255
 POSTEMA-NCIPA TION RESPONSES

LANDHOLDING AND LAND USE. By the end of the century, access

to land varied dramatically from province to province, particularly
for persons of color. The 1899 census is a somewhat anachronistic
source, since it was compiled after the War for Independence, but
its figures are nonetheless revealing of provincial patterns: land-
owners and renters varied as a percentage of the white population
in agriculture from 11 percent in the cattle-raising area of Puerto
Principe to 29 percent in Santiago de Cuba, while for persons of color
the range was from 2 percent in Matanzas to 30 percent in Santiago
de Cuba2 (see Table 28). A brief examination of landholding in each
province reveals the complex situation that had yielded these ratios.
The eastern province of Santiago de Cuba represented an extreme
case, a special variation in the pattern of black and mulatto occu-
pancy of land. Some 30 percent of both white and "colored" agri-
culturalists apparently rented or owned land in the province. With
their family members, they comprised a group with a remarkably
high degree of access to small plots of land. This pattern of land-
holding was later to influence the development of the rural prole-
tariat and peasantry in eastern Cuba, for native workers with access
to land were less willing to work for the developing centrales, and
planters responded both by importing immigrant workers and by
expanding their landholdings at the expense of renters, owners, and
squatters. The three major crops, in terms of area planted, of the
colored owners and renters in the province in 1899 were bananas,
Indian corn, and sweet potatoes, suggesting that they were in part
engaged in subsistence farming. Their fourth crop, however, was
2 U.S. War Dept., Report on the Census. I have used two major kinds of evidence
from the census in this chapter. First, pages 403-506 of the census contain information
on occupations, divided by "race," and incorporating into one major category agri-
culture, fisheries, and mining. Since in most areas of Cuba the latter two activities
were only of slight significance, I have used these aggregate figures to stand for
agriculturalists alone.
Second, pages 553-64 contain information on landholding and crops cultivated.
Again, there is some imprecision. I have used the figures for rented and owned
holdings to stand for individual landholders, though it is likely that there was some
multiple rental and ownership. I have not included the figures on tenure other than
rental or ownership because these are not broken down by race. Such tenure appears
most significant in Puerto Principe and Santiago, and may well represent precaristas
or squatters. These represent some 4.5 percent of holdings.
In my discussion of these data I have used the term "colored" as it is used in the
census, to refer to those perceived by the census takers (who were Cuban, not North
American) as black, mulatto, or Asian. In the island as a whole, the "colored" pop-
ulation included 234,738 persons listed as Negro, 270,805 listed as Mixed, and only
14,857 listed as Chinese (p. 195).

256
 LAND AND SOCIETY

TABLE 28
Landholding among Agriculturalists, by Province
and by Race, 1899

Whites Blacks, Mulattos, and Asians

Holdings Holdings
Holdings as Percen- Holdings as Percen-
Agricul- Rented or tage of Agri- Agricul- Rented or tage of Agri-
Province turalists Owned culturalists turalists Owned culturalists

Pinar
del Rio 37,163 8,527 23% 11,534 1,775 15%
Havana 25,200 5,533 22% 6,788 336 5%
Matanzas 24,912 3,470 14% 25,892 537 2%
Santa
Clara 57,188 13,015 23% 24,763 2,737 11%
Puerto
Principe 13,951 1,602 11% 3,107 171 6%
Santiago
de Cuba 39,816 11,488 29% 28,883 8,783 30%
Total 198,230 43,635 22% 100,967 14,339 14%
SOURCE: U.S. War Dept., Report on the Census of Cuba, 1899, pp. 403-405, 555-56.

cacao, and they also cultivated a disproportionately large amount of

coffee. Working 26 percent of the land in the province, they planted
59 percent of the total coffee acreage. 3
The colored owners in Santiago de Cuba had quite different pat-
terns of planting from those of the renters. They focused on cash
crops, planting approximately 40,000 cardeles in cacao, 33,000 in
coffee, 28,000 in bananas, 18,000 in coconuts, and 14,000 in corn.
(One cardel equals approximately 400 square meters or about one
tenth of an acre.) Colored renters, by contrast, planted their land in
sweet potatoes, corn, bananas, yucca, and sugar cane, in that order.4
These figures suggest quite different resources and priorities across
the two groups, presumably reflecting, among other things, the way
that planting decisions-particularly for tree crops-depended on the
degree of security of tenure. Land owned by persons of color was
perhaps also more likely to be poor, hilly terrain, suited to coffee
and unsuited to cane, while rented land was likely to be closer to
mills and thus could be used for cane in conjunction with provision
3 See Victor Clark, "Labor Conditions in Cuba," Bulletin of the Department of
Labor 41 (July 1902): 663-793. For crop areas, see U.S. War Dept., Report on the
Census, pp. 558-59.
4 U.S. War Dept., Report on the Census, p. 559.

257
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

crops.S Whatever the mix of factors influencing crop choice, there

had evidently developed in the east a pattern of agriculture with
a distinct peasant character and a considerable degree of market
orientation.
Many of these owners and renters, however, would also have
worked as wage laborers. Theirs were generally very small holdings,
often too small to support a family. Eighty-two percent of the plots
of colored owners and renters in the province measured less than
one quarter of a caballeria, or less than 8.3 acres, and in 1899 had
under cultivation an average of just .11 caballerias, or about 3.6
acres, each. 6
Several interrelated characteristics distinguished the province of
Santiago de Cuba from the rest of the island, and in different degrees
gave rise to this pattern of landholding. First, the province was char-
acterized by a relatively large free population of color before eman-
cipation. Thirty-three percent of the provincial population in 1862
were free blacks and mulattos, many of them working on small
holdings. 7 Second, the agricultural organization of the east before
the Ten Years' War had been distinctive: much of the economic
activity of the province was not devoted to sugar, and within sugar,
small-scale, technologically backward planters found themselves at
a disadvantage in competition with more advanced western plant-
ers. 8 Third, as the Ten Years' War progressed, the province's dis-
tinctiveness increased. Many slaves achieved their freedom, sugar
declined in importance, and blacks, mulattos, and whites fought
together in the ranks of the insurgent army. By the end of the war,
the rigid patterns of a slaveholding society were to a large extent
broken.
5 I would like to thank Brian Pollitt for suggesting the ecological dimension to the
owner/renter differences in crop choice. The ownerlrenter distinction may also in
part have reflected the different opportunities of former free persons of color and
postemancipation migrants.
6 For acreage, see U.S. War Dept., Report on the Census, pp. 556-57. In his essay,
"A Note on the Definition of Peasantries," Sidney Mintz argues that one must ex-
amine Caribbean peasantries in relation to agricultural wage laborers, and calls at-
tention to the interpenetration of the two categories. Brian Pollitt further argues that
in many cases in prerevolutionary Cuba the distinction barely existed. See Sidney
Mintz, "A Note on the Definition of Peasantries," Tournal of Peasant Studies IOctober
1973): 91-106, and Brian Pollitt, "Agrarian Reform."
7 Cuba, Centro de Estadfstica, Noticias estadisticas, "Censo."
8 For more detailed discussion see Chap. I, above, and chap. 2 of Guerra, Guerra,
1.

258
 LAND AND SOCIETY

The actual interaction of the process of emancipation and the

development of access to land in Santiago de Cuba was a complex
one. It was not simply a question of former slaves fleeing to the
hills, though the tradition of rebellion and flight was strong. On the
one hand, nons lave agriculture and the prevalence of smallholdings
helped create the classes that backed the insurgency during the Ten
Years' War, and that more directly supplied the material base to
sustain that effort, including manpower and food. On the other hand,
the war itself had shaped the pattern of emancipation in the eastern
end of the island, and after the end of the war, in 1879, former
insurgents and those who remained in slavery joined to confront
planters using, among other tactics, passive resistance to labor. Be-
cause of the political climate (an unpacified rebel province) and the
geography (hilly and mountainous areas adjacent to sugar lands)
flight from slavery remained a plausible threat, strengthening the
1879 challenge, which further accelerated abolition in the province
and in the rest of the island. The relationship between the towns,
the estates, and the monte (hills) became increasingly fluid. General
Polavieja, commander of the region, complained bitterly in 1879
that "separatist committees" in the towns were responsible daily
for sending both slaves and free men into the monte. 9 During the
1880s, patrocinados' access to conuco lands within the estates and
to the products of additional lands through free relatives who were
owners or renters may well have accelerated the rate of self-purchase.
It is thus not surprising that this province, which was also geo-
graphically difficult to control and in which large-scale plantations
did not yet have a monopoly of the land, was the one in which slaves
and their descendants had the greatest opportunity to obtain access
to small plots of land by ownership, rental, or de facto occupation.
The eastern province of Puerto Principe, though also the scene of
a rapid decline of slavery, showed a different pattern of landholding.
In 1899 there were only 3,104 male agriculturalists of color in the
province, compared to 12,473 native white males, reflecting in part
the small preemancipation population of color, and in part their
occupational distribution. (By 1899 over 10 percent of the province's
colored males were engaged in "manufacturing and mechanical in-
9 On the events of 1879, see Chap. V. For Polavieja's view see his Relaci6n docu-
mentada, p. 50.

259
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

dustries" in the city of Puerto Principe itself.)!o Just 30 farms were

operated by colored owners, 141 by colored renters. Together they
occupied 42 caballerias of land. Thus perhaps 6 percent of the prov-
ince's colored agriculturalists were renters and owners of land. They
grew little sugar, concentrating on bananas, sweet potatoes, and
corn. As before abolition, the major activity of the province was
cattle raising, but the colored owners and renters had few of the
calves, steers, or bulls, owning instead pigs and chickens. l l
In central Santa Clara province almost 25,000, or some 30 percent,
of the agriculturalists were persons of color, but only about 11 per-
cent of them were owners or renters of land. The approximately
2,700 colored owners and renters constituted about 17 percent of
the total number of owners and renters in the province and culti-
vated 7 percent of the land. They planted more of their land in sugar
cane than anything else, after which came sweet potatoes, corn, and
bananas. Clearly at least some of them had become colonos, growing
cane to be ground at nearby mills. Some 134 of what the census
referred to as sugar "plantations" (which included colonias) were
owned by persons of color, and another 869 were rented, though
these colored owners and renters planted only 5 percent of the prov-
ince's cane acreage. The average size of the sugar holdings owned
by persons of color was just 93 cordeles, and of those rented was 86
cordeles, compared to 481 cordeles and 307 cordeles for white own-
ers and renters. 12
The situation in Santa Clara province reflected, in part, its distinct
pattern of transition away from slavery. Free blacks and mulattos
had been a minority of the population of color before the 1870s, but
there had been a significant free, smallholding population of color.
Slavery had remained strong in Santa Clara up to the time of abo-
lition, and emancipation had proceeded relatively slowly. However,
the pressures for adaptation had been considerable, and plantations
in the province had early turned to demobilized Spanish soldiers,
Chinese contract laborers, and contracted Spanish workers. This
utilization of immigrants, begun to ease the transition, continued,
and by 1899 Santa Clara showed the highest proportion of foreign-
born in the agricultural labor force of any province (see Table 29).
tou.s. War Dept., Report on the Census, pp. 424-26.
11 Ibid., pp. 556-57, 563.
12 Ibid., pp. 556-60.

260
 LAND AND SOCIETY

TABLE 29
Composition of the Agricultural Work Force, 1899

Total Number
in Agriculture, Percent Percent "Colored" Population
Fishing, and Native Foreign Percent as a Percentage of
Province Mining White White "Colored'" Total Population

Pinar
del Rio 48,697 65% 11% 24% 27%
Havana 31,988 66% 13% 21% 26%
Matanzas 50,804 40% 9% 51% 42%
Santa Clara 81,951 56% 14% 30% 31%
Puerto
Principe 17,058 73% 9% 18% 20%
Santiago
de Cuba 68,699 52% 6% 42% 45%
Total 299,197 56% 10% 34% 33%
SOURCE: U.S. War Dept., Report on the Census of Cuba, 1899, pp. 403-405.
, "Colored," according to the definition of the 1899 census, included blacks, mulattos, and
Chinese.

By the 1880s, the province represented a kind of middle ground.

There was room for a small amount of black and mulatto landhold-
ing and some cultivation of crops other than sugar. But the great
majority of the former slave population remained in wage labor.
Foreign workers competed with native; North American and other
centrales bought up the land of ruined ingenios; and for some la-
borers migration seemed the only prospect for breaking out of the
old ways.
Matanzas, the archetypical province of large plantations, repre-
sented an extreme in the range of patterns of transition. Most of its
ingenios had already become steam-powered by the 1860s, and the
province contained the majority of the heavily capitalized planta-
tions of that period. It was, at the same time, the province that had
clung most persistently to slavery. The slave population still out-
numbered the free population of color in 1877, and plantations still
showed a heavy reliance on slave labor. Chinese indentured labor,
the most tentative step toward free labor, was used extensively. But
as late as 1883 Matanzas had the largest proportion of its 1862 slave
population remaining in the status of patrocinado of any province
(see Tables 10 and 25). The debate over the status of company stores
gives further evidence that many planters in Matanzas continued to
model their plantations along the lines of slavery into the 1880s,

261
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

restricting the mobility of workers and attempting to isolate them

from outside influences,13
The transition to free labor in Matanzas province had taken place
slowly, to a large extent under the control of planters. Emancipation,
when it finally arrived, depended heavily on mutual accord and the
gradual freeings by age mandated under the law. Even those patro-
cinados who successfully challenged their masters or purchased
their freedom had few choices once that freedom was obtained, given
the domination of plantations over the land.
Not surprisingly, this was the province that by the end of the
1890s showed the smallest proportion of landowners and renters
among the population of agriculturalists of color-just 537 holdings
occupied by colored owners and renters, in a province with a colored
agricultural population of 25,892. Colored owners and renters were
thus only 2 percent of the total colored agriculturalists, and they
occupied just 189 caballerias, less than 4 percent of the province's
agricultural land.l4
The few colored renters and owners in Matanzas planted most of
their land in sugar cane, followed at a distance by bananas, sweet
potatoes, and com. There were many fewer colonias owned or op-
erated by persons of color than in Santa Clara. The overwhelming
majority of the people of color of Matanzas were landless agricultural
workers and their families. Interestingly, Matanzas also shows the
largest number of women of any province listed as agriculturalists-
some 4,160 women of color along with a very few white women.
This seems a clear survival from slavery; most of the women were
between ages thirty-five and sixty-four, born before emancipation. IS
The situation in Matanzas reflected in part the oligopolistic struc-
ture of land ownership in that province. There were 96 estates of
10 caballerias or larger (66 of them owned and operated by whites,
27 rented by whites, one rented by a person of color) representing
just 2 percent of the total number of farms and controlling over 40
percent of the farmland in the province. By contrast, 1,603 farms in
the province were of less than one fourth of a caballeria and com-
prised just 3 percent of the total farmland. 16
[3 See Chap. VIII, above, and Sobre pago de contribuciones de las tiendas de los
Ingenios, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4818, expo 84.
[4 U.S. War Dept., Report on the Census, pp. 556-57, 443.
[5 Ibid., pp. 560, 404-405, 443.
[6 Ibid., pp. 556-57.

262
 LAND AND SOCIETY

Matanzas had become the home of a true rural proletariat,

hemmed in by extremely limited opportunity. Many Afro-Cubans
were quick to show their dismay with this development, migrating
out of the province in substantial numbers. By 1887 the proportion
of the island's population of color resident in the province had fallen
to 22 percent, and by 1899 to 16 percent, representing a drop of
almost one third in the provincial population of color in just twelve
years (see Table 27).
The rural areas of Havana province also offered little opportunity
for land ownership or rental by Afro-Cubans. There, colored owners
and renters numbered only 336 out of a total of 6,788 colored ag-
riculturalists, and they cultivated just 98 caballerias, 3 percent of
the farmland. They planted mainly sweet potatoes, sugar cane, and
corn.17 The city itself seemed to hold greater promise, q.nd its pop-
ulation of color increased. This situation in part resulted from the
province's dichotomous transition from slavery to free labor: slow
and controlled in the countryside, relatively rapid in the city in
response to pressures from slaves and their allies. As in Santiago de
Cuba, the relationship between emancipation and economic oppor-
tunity went both ways: greater economic opportunity sped the tran-
sition, and the demise of slavery further increased opportunities-
in this case for urban employment rather than access to land.
In Pinar del Rio, at the western end of the island, the 1,775 colored
owners and renters constituted 17 percent of all renters and owners
and held 11 percent of the land. They grew mainly tobacco, sweet
potatoes, and malangas. The renters and owners had roughly similar
priorities in planting, except that again the few owners, as contrasted
with renters, grew a disproportionately large amount of coffee and
no sugar. Pinar del Rio had been primarily a tobacco-producing area,
and most of the colored renters and owners seem to have come from
that background. There were 1,260 tobacco "plantations" rented by
persons of color in 1899, equivalent to over three-quarters of the
total holdings rented by persons of color. Thousands of former slaves
in Pinar del Rio, however, ended up without land-there were 11,534
colored agriculturalists and only 121 owners and 1,654 renters of
land among them. 18
In sum, the province most committed to sugar and to slave labor-
17 Ibid., pp. 405, 555-58.
18 Ibid., pp. 405, 556-60.

263
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

Matanzas-became the area most characterized by wage labor. The

region least committed to slavery and sugar-the east-became the
one least committed to wage labor; there peasant and semipeasant
adaptations developed to the greatest extent. When, in the twentieth
century, sugar plantations penetrated extensively into Oriente, they
had to create and import much of their work force; they could not
simply rely on continuity from the days of slavery. Santa Clara, the
middle ground, showed a mix of different patterns, containing both
an ethnically mixed working class and substantial numbers of co-
lonas, smallholders, and subsistence farmers, often in relatively
close contact with each other.
These new employment patterns of rural workers were the most
obvious consequence of the shift from slavery to juridically free
labor. The patterns of work, in turn, however, helped to shape the
evolution of the wider Afro-Cuban community, in ways that re-
flected both the specific historical experience of gradual emanci-
pation and the rapidly evolving political situation of colonial Cuba.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE AFRO-CUBAN COMMUNITY.

During slavery, the rural and urban sectors of Afro-Cuban society
had been quite distinct. In rural areas, particularly sugar regions,
plantation slaves lived in relative isolation and were subjected to
extreme exploitation and extreme control. Very few free persons of
color lived on the sugar estates, though rural free persons of color
were numerous in the small farming sector in the east and, to a
lesser extent, in tobacco cultivation elsewhere. In urban areas slaves
worked at a broader range of occupations, under a broader range of
conditions, than their rural counterparts. Urban free persons of color
suffered sharp social and economic discrimination, but they also
constituted an important social group, crucial to the functioning of
the economy.
With emancipation, the sharp lines dividing these groups became
blurred. Free Afro-Cubans were now to be found laboring in sugar;
previously free and previously bound urban workers now held the
same legal status. Moreover, the links between urban and rural sec-
tors were tightened with the advent of greater mobility for rural
laborers, increasingly seasonal demand for cane workers, and a fam-
ily division of labor that often saw wife and husband residing sep-
arately in town and country for part of the year.

264
 LAND AND SOCIETY

These changes occurred within a rapidly shifting economic and

political environment. The sugar industry's increasing orientation
toward the U.S. market, combined with the growth of discontent
and nationalist sentiment in several sectors of the Cuban population,
threatened Spain's colonial hold over the island. The evolution of
the Afro-Cuban community figured into this process both as cause
and effect. Afro-Cubans provided a substantial pool of potential sup-
port for, or hostility to, Spanish rule, thus obliging Spain to calculate
its policy on social and racial issues with an eye to the political
consequences. At the same time, members of the Afro-Cuban com-
munity could take advantage of concessions made by the metro-
politan government and push for further incorporation into the is-
land's political, educational, and social life.
The transformation of the Afro-Cuban community may usefully
be examined from several different perspectives. First, substantial
changes occurred in the institutional basis of Afro-Cuban public life,
most noticeably in the decline of the cabildos de naci6n and the
growth of new forms of association. Second, social relationships,
both those between the existing free population of color and the
newly freed slaves and those between Afro-Cubans and whites,
shifted noticeably. Third, a full-fledged political struggle for civil
and political rights, carried out primarily in the towns but with
echoes in the countryside as well, unfolded during the last decades
of the century.
The major institutions into which Afro-Cubans could incorporate
themselves during slavery were the cabildos de naci6n, semireli-
gious organizations that grouped the African-born by their place of
origin. Although part of the ideological justification for slavery had
long been the Christianization and "civilization" of Africans, in
practice the efforts to fully Hispanize African slaves in Cuba had
been limited. Planters generally viewed serious missionary activities
as expensive and possibly dangerous and blocked efforts to undertake
them on plantations. 19 Moreover, for the purposes of social control
the government permitted the development of cabildos' de naci6n,
nominally Christian groups with strong African content. Organized
along "tribal" lines, composed of slaves and free blacks, these groups
owned property, engaged in rituals, festivities, and activities of mu-
19 See Hall, Social Control, and Martinez-Alier, Marriage.

265
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

tual aid, and received patronage from colonial officials. 20 Both slave-
holders and the government apparently viewed the cabildos as func-
tional under slavery because they could provide an outlet for energy
and a means of self-expression that might undercut potential re-
sistance; at the same time they isolated Africans from other sectors
of society.
From the point of view of the authorities concerned with social
order, however, once emancipation had begun the significance of
the cabildo changed. The identification of former slaves with their
African origins was now a threat, a countervailing loyalty that might
prevent freedmen from feeling themselves to be Spaniards. Further-
more, both liberals and conservatives saw the extinction of African
culture as necessary if freedmen were to be incorporated into society
and become "worthy" of the rights that had recently been granted
them. 2 !
Cabildos now appeared to be potentially separatist organizations
in which free blacks could rule themselves, isolated from the dom-
inant culture. With their structures of leadership and their owner-
ship of property, they might become threateningly autonomous
class, ethnic, or political institutions. The police inspector of Sagua
la Grande, for example, denounced the form of organization of the
local cabildo Congo, whose constitution, he charged, resembled that
of a state. 22
The connection between emancipation and this shift in perception
is quite clear. The issue that brought it into relief was the question
of whether Creole children should be allowed to join African ca-
bildos. In an attempt to prevent Creoles from being influenced by
Africans, the government had ruled in 1868 and again in 1877 that
they could not. In 1879, however, members of the cabildo Arriero,
"de Naci6n Ganga Mongoba," petitioned to allow members of their
cabildo to bring their children, who were Creoles, to participate in
the activities of the group. They cited the cabildo's need to raise
funds, the civilized nature of their activities (which included dances
with an orchestra rather than drums), the Christian precepts of the
20 See Rogelio Martinez Furc, Didlogos imaginarios (Havana: Editorial Arte y Li-
teratura, 19791, pp. 118-31; Ortiz, "Los cabildos"; and Paquette, "Conspiracy."
21 Consulta del expediente relativo a regularizar la situaci6n de los cabildos de
negros de Africa, 1879-1881, ANC, CA, leg. 58, expo 6105.
22 See his statement, March 11, 1881, in AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4787, expo 309, del.
3.

266
 LAND AND SOCIETY

cabildo, and the desire of parents that their Creole children be in-
corporated into cabildo activities rather than associate with "gentes
de mala conducta."23
Officials initially viewed the request as reasonable because of the
respectability of the organization, and the mayor and civil govern-
ment recommended approval. Allowing Creoles into the cabildos
was thought preferable to risking their joining the iidiiigos, secret
societies widely perceived as violent and criminal.24 Discussion of
the request, however, continued through 1880 and formal abolition,
whereupon the tone of government comment shifted markedly. In-
stead of simply keeping the negros de naci6n (the African-born)
separate from Creoles, the aim was now suppression of the cabildos.
The cabildos and their dances had been allowed as a form of "com-
pensatory" relaxation and as such were appropriate during slavery
but should disappear after abolition, wrote a member of the Consejo
de Administraci6n. 25 The majority of the consejo, which still sup-
ported the patronato, agreed in principle that the cabildos should
disappear, but were fearful of causing "excitation" among the negros
de naci6n by forcing the rapid extinction of their organizations.
Maintenance of the cabildos, they pointed out, had come to be seen
by Africans as a right. Therefore the government should only aim
at a gradual elimination through the prohibition of new members
who would prolong the life of the institution. 26
There was basic consensus within the government in Havana that
the cabildos should cease to exist, to eliminate the memory of Africa
and of slavery, and thus to ensure loyalty to Spain. Interestingly, it
was Nicolas Azcarate, who believed that the patronato was merely
a disguised form of slavery and should be abolished, who was most
emphatic about the necessity for a cultural offensive against the
cabildos and the extinction of the African heritage. His more cau-
tious colleagues defended both the continued coercion of the pa-

23 For the rationale given in the 1860s, see ANC, CA, leg. 8, expo 562. For the
subsequent petitions, see the request from Liborio Molinet and others, fune 3, 1876,
and Oct. 22, 1879, ANC, CA, leg. 58, expo 6105.
24 Opinion of the Consejo de Administraci6n, fan. 25, 1880, AHN, Ultramar, leg.
4787, expo 309. For a brief description of the society of iiaiiigos, see Moreno, E1 ingenio,
2: 38.
2S See statement by Nicolas Azcarate, fuly 14, 1881, in AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4787,
expo 309, and discussion in ANC, CA, leg. 58, expo 6105.
26 Opinion of the majority of the Consejo de Administraci6n, fuly 14, 1881, AHN,
Ultramar, leg. 4787, expo 309. See also ANC, CA, leg. 58, expo 6105.

267
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

tronato and the continued availability of the relaxation offered by

the cabildos and their celebrations. They did advise, however, that
provincial authorities encourage the foundation of new associations
with "higher" goals than those of the cabildos.27
The government in Madrid, to whom the matter was finally re-
ferred, was less sympathetic to the idea of repressing the cabildos.
First, the ministry viewed the question of entry of Creoles as moot,
since the Creole children of Africans had long taken part in cabildo
activities without incident. Second, it was reluctant to violate the
recognized rights of association of Afro-Cubans. Therefore it ruled
that there should be no resolution on the request of the members
of the cabildo Arriero, since no special permission was necessary.
Laws already existed to repress any serious problems or dangers that
might arise, the ministry noted, and it was to be expected that the
cabildos would naturally evolve into different forms of association. 28
As a result, the cabildos faced hostility but no legal ban and per-
sisted in their special role as patronized Afro-Cuban organizations,
subject to government supervision of their elections and meetings.
One newspaper report of a cabildo celebration in 1882 noted that
the fiesta was celebrated "with less animation than in previous
years." The description of the fiesta revealed its double function,
first as a form of expression, of "expansi6n" as the article put it, for
those of African origin, and second as an occasion of ritual submis-
sion. At midday the cabildos appeared before the governor general,
"swearing submission to the government of His Majesty in the per-
son of its representative" and receiving gifts of money and tobacco
in return. 29 The close supervision of the cabildos by the government,
and the advanced age of their members, doubtless contributed to
their conservatism and decline, as younger Afro-Cubans sought
other forms of association.
Although the cabildos left their mark on Cuban life and culture,
and some survived into the twentieth century, the predominant form
of association increasingly became the mutual aid society. These

27 Opinion of the Consejo de Administraci6n, June 21, 1881, and opinion of Az-
carate, July 7, 1881, ANC, CA, leg. 58, expo 6105.
28 Discussion and ruling of Feb. 13, 1883, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4787, expo 309.
29 On supervision of leadership, see Expediente sobre solicitud del moreno Victor
Dilemo para nombrar nuevos capataces y matronas del Cabildo Santo Rey Melchor,
1884, ANC, GG, leg. 584, expo 28864. On the 1882 celebration, see E1 Eco de Cuba
(Jan. 15, 1882).

268
 LAND AND SOCIETY

societies were organized along various lines, sometimes still tied to

particular African origin; sometimes divided by occupational status,
such as artisan; sometimes founded for a particular charitable pur-
pose, such as the aiding of children. They were by no means confined
to Havana or to the cities generally: in the province of Santa Clara
alone there were thirty-two Sociedades de la Raza de Color in 1889,
including many in predominantly rural areas. Their names suggest
both the philosophy and the purpose of such groups: EI Trabajo, EI
Amparo, Socorros Mutuos, La Fraternidad, EI Progreso, La Amistad,
La Igualdad, La Luz, Las Hijas del Progreso, and so on.30 This trend
was acco~panied by the proliferation of newspapers and journals
written by and for members of the black and mulatto communities.31
The main focus of both the organizations and the new periodicals
tended to be education, recreation, and social welfare, though some
also had strong political overtones. Associations with an explicit
political identity ranged from groups closely allied to those who
would subsequently become revolutionaries (such as Juan Gualberto
G6mez and the periodical La Fraternidad) to associations that
sought approval from the Spanish government both in the old form
of patronage and in the newer form of explicit political alliance.
Distinctive among the latter were the various Casinos Espaiioles de
Hombres de Color, supported by the government and the Conser-
vative party, and led by such men as the Afro-Cuban Rodolfo de
Lagardere. 32
In addition to political divisions, there were also divisions between
pardos and morenos (mulattos and blacks). Although the mulatto/
black distinction did not necessarily correspond to a free person of
color/freedman distinction, the two often overlapped, aggravating
the social differences between those who had long been free and
those who had recently been freed. Mutual aid societies could either
join or separate the two groups. Jose Martfnez-Fortun, for example,
cites 1878 as the date of founding of a specifically mulatto Sociedad
30 On the lasting effects of the cabi1dos, see Martinez Fur~, Did1ogos, pp. 126-27,
and Odilio UrU, "La musica y danza en Cuba," in Moreno, Africa en Am~rica Latina,
pp. 215-37. On the mutual aid societies in Santa Clara, see La An torch a (Feb. 24,
1889).
31 Pedro Deschamps Chapeaux, E1 negro en e1 periodisrrio cubano en e1 sig10 xix
(Havana: Ediciones R., 1963).
32 See AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4884, tomo 8, expo 140, and leg. 4884, tomo 7, expo 131.
See also Deschamps, E1 negro en e1 periodismo.

269
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

de Instrucci6n y Recreo in Remedios, with the aim of arranging

education for children of color.33
The experience of the society for persons of color that was founded
in the city of Santiago de Cuba in 1879 reflects the range of tensions
and manipulations to which such groups were subject. A year after
its founding the group split into two societies, one for blacks and
one for mulattos. The incident that provoked the conflict was a
dance to which blacks were not initially invited. The colonial gov-
ernment, concerned that a unified organization of persons of color
might become a locus of agitation for independence, became deeply
involved in the affair, as did conservative politicians who "coun-
seled" the seceding black members of the society.34 The govern-
ment's reason for wishing to see such organizations remain weak
can easily be inferred from commandant Camilo Polavieja's report
from Santiago de Cuba that "the societies of recreation, instituted
by persons of color" were "conspiring day and night." 35 Polavieja's
own role in the split within the society is obscure. His barber was
one of the main leaders of the mulattos, though Polavieja himself
was not in town the night of the divisive ball. The commandant
later arrested one of the leaders of the blacks as a participant in the
Conspiraci6n de la Liga Antillana, a "conspiracy" whose suppression
may simply have served as a pretext for deporting prominent black
and mulatto leaders.36
Many of the new Asociaciones de Instrucci6n y Recreo explicitly
rejected the pardo/moreno distinction, and viewed themselves as
representative of a larger "class of color." Nonetheless, their leaders
remained ambivalent about the behavior of some of their members.
Distressed organizers repeated the familiar refrain that young people
were too interested in dancing and not enough in studying. Further,
the absence of legal marriage among many Afro-Cubans troubled
the editors of journals such as Minerva: Revista Quincenal Dedi-
cada a la Mujer de Color, who entitled one article "Raza negra
elevate! La Familia" and urged marriage. La Antorcha of Trinidad
argued for a "noble crusade" to legalize black families through "in-
33 Jose Martinez-Fortun, Anales, 3: 176.
34 See Emilio Bacardi y Moreau, Cr6nicas de Santiago de Cuba 3 vols. (Barcelona:
Carbonell y Esteva, 1908-1913; reprint ed., 10 vols., Madrid: Breogan, 1972-197316:
253, 327-32, 340. See 7: 168 for identification of the Conservative party politicians.
35 Polavieja, Relaci6n documentada, p. 43.
36 Bacardi, Cr6nicas, 6: 340, 379-81.

270
 LAND AND SOCIETY

dissoluble unions of the sexes" and cited as areas where marriage

was strongest Santiago de Cuba and Camaguey (Puerto Principe). La
Fraternidad, led by Juan Gualberto G6mez, was also concerned with
"moralization" but noted with satisfaction in 1889 that the "nu-
merous marriages" that had been taking place between persons of
color over the last few years proved the "moralizing tendency" of
the "much slandered race."37
While the freeing of slaves provided a large new membership for
mutual aid organizations, it created at the same time a potentially
disruptive new element. La An torch a of Trinidad, which identified
itself as a weekly "for the defense of freedmen" and supported racial
unity, decried in 1889 the recent decline of many of the Centros de
Instrucci6n y Recreo, deploring the fact that
A multitude of men who barely if at all knew what it meant to join together
in societies, without knowing any other agreeable pastimes except "ban-
quets" and "dances," entered into the societies and there were received and
gratified with the same practices. What could one expect from such
individuals?38

Despite this patronizing attitude toward the new members, La An-

torcha continued to urge people of color to join such societies.
Postemancipation social relationships within the Afro-Cuban
community, and between Afro-Cubans and whites, reflected the
previous history of such relations in Cuba as well as the nature of
the process of emancipation. Cuba's social structure had long been
a complex mixture of class and caste, in many ways encouraging
free persons of color to minimize their ties with slaves, though the
division had never been fully effective or absolute. 39 The process of
gradual emancipation had probably, on balance, strengthened the
ties between slaves and free persons of color. Certainly in the eastern
end of the island, the shared experience of war helped to break down
distinctions, though tensions still persisted in the social hierarchy
of the city of Santiago de Cuba. Elsewhere, the processes of self-
purchase and litigation against masters encouraged cooperation and
37 Minerva INov. 30, 1888); La An torch a IApril14, 18891; La Fraternidad IMay 13,
18891·
38 La Antorcha Iran. 13, 18891.
39 See Chap. I, above; Martinez-Alier, Marriage; Knight, Slave Society; and Pa-
quette, "Conspiracy."

271
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

made for gradual incorporation of family members into the category

of free persons of color.
The choices of issues and activities by the new associations could
either exacerbate or minimize tensions between blacks and mulat-
tos, or between free men and freedmen. Two of the most distinctive
incidents of mulatto/black separation are illustrative. In the first
situation, the divisions within the society of persons of color in
Santiago de Cuba focused around an event, a ball, which quickly
raised the possibility of social exclusivity and resulting bitterness.
Furthermore, the conflict seems to have been much exacerbated by
the opportunistic behavior of white politicians seeking both a split
in the Afro-Cuban community and alliance with its fragments. The
second incident was the establishment of an exclusively mulatto
Cfrculo de Obreros in Santa Clara, which reflected the eagerness of
artisans to distinguish themselves as well as to assert social hier-
archy.40 When categories of occupation and ethnicity overlapped,
the possibility of exclusivism in trade groups was heightened.
Two powerful forces worked against disunity in the Afro-Cuban
community, however. The first was the existence of widespread
white prejudice against persons of color, both black and mulatto,
and the second was the possibility of benefits for all Afro-Cubans
through concerted political action, sometimes in partial alliance
with sectors of the white community. Both of these forces emerge
clearly in the struggle for civil rights that emerged in the very late
1870s and continued into the 1880s and 1890s.
Education was the initial focus of this struggle. In choosing to
work on the issue of education, the new Afro-Cuban associations
and societies expressed their own vision of mobility and uplift
through self-improvement and responded to the drastic inequality
of educational opportunity existing in Cuba. (Afro-Cubans were un-
derrepresented in primary education, even less numerous in sec-
ondary education, and virtually absent in the private schools to
which many white parents sent their children.)41 For both free per-

40See the discussion in El Horizonte (June 10, 1884).

41Black children attended public schools in disproportionately small numbers. In
the province of Matanzas in 1884 there were 4,993 white children enrolled in schools
and 1,118 children of color, though the provincial population of color was around 45
percent of the total. There were similar imbalances in other provinces. In Santa Clara
in 1881 the numbers were 5,858 white children, 1,296 of color; in Santiago de Cuba
in 1882, 2,952 versus 1,133. For enrollment figures, see Memoria semestral de la

272
 LAND AND SOCIETY

sons of color and former slaves, the struggle for education seemed
to promise an avenue to social and occupational mobility.42 For some
white liberals, asserting the importance of education for Afro-Cu-
bans was a means of arguing for the primacy of social over racial
factors in the existing disparities of status, opportunity, and "cul-
ture."43 And for conservative Spanish administrators, granting
concessions on this front might gain valued political support from
a significant portion of the population.
Social relations had not, however, evolved to the point that such
integration would be easily accomplished. In 1878 the Junta Superior
de Instrucci6n Publica had ruled that persons of color could be ad-
mitted into secondary schools, professional schools, and the uni-
versity, and in 1879 the society E1 Progreso of Guanabacoa won a
ruling to allow children of color into the local public schools. 44 In
Cienfuegos persons of color petitioned the provincial governor for
the founding of schools for children of color, and rather than convert
existing schools for whites, the governor ordered children of color
admitted into the municipal schools. 45 In 1888, however, La Fra-
ternidad attacked the government for failing to enforce the ruling
that allowed men of color to attend secondary schools and the uni-
versity.46 And in 1889 it was still news that the Junta Provincial of
Santiago de Cuba had ruled that children of color could attend mu-
nicipal schools. 47
A continued pattern of official concession followed by non-en-
forcement set the tone of the struggle over integration in Cuba. The
colonial government had every reason to seek the support of the
leadership of the very substantial population of color. Initially hos-
tile and fearful of moves toward integration, the government quickly
Diputaci6n Provincial de Matanzas, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4819, expo 142; Bo1etfn
Oficia1 de 1a Hacienda de 1a Isla de Cuba, Feb. 15, 1882, and April 30, 1882; Bo1etfn
Oficial de 1a Provincia de Santa Clara, June 5, 1881; and Bacardf, Cr6nicas 6: 35l.
42 On the importance of this goal for former slaves and their descendants elsewhere
in the Caribbean, see, for example, Rodney, A History, p. 116.
43 Enrique Jose Varona was an important proponent of this view. Manuel Moreno
Fraginals, personal communication, 1982.
44 For references to the 1878 ruling see "Las razas ante las leyes y las costumbres,"
Estudios Afrocubanos 1 (1937): 148. On the petition in Guanabacoa, see La Frater-
nidad IMay 18, 1879).
45 Edo y Llop, Memorias, p. 814.
46 La Fraternidad !July 9, 1888). This reference is from Tomas Fernandez Robaina's
forthcoming bibliography on Afro-Cuban history.
47 La Fraternidad IFeb. 21, 1889).

273
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

found that this was an issue on which virtually all of the organi-
zations of color felt strongly. Even the tame Casino Espanol de
Hombres de Color raised the question. 48 Formal agreement, it was
evidently hoped, might quiet this agitation. Real enforcement, how-
ever, was not to be expected.
The opportunism of the government's behavior, however, was
transparent and did not quiet the agitation of the Sociedades. As the
colonial government increasingly came to view maintenance of
Afro-Cuban loyalty as a key to avoiding the outbreak of revolution,
official pronouncements became more favorable to their petitions.
In 1893 men of color were legally empowered to use the title "Don,"
though white public opinion in some areas still scoffed at such a
pretention. The same year the governor general ruled that children
of color should be admitted to primary schools and called for general
school integration to reduce race prejudice. 49
Enforcement of these rules, too, was ineffectual. Conservative
sectors continued to support segregated education, drawing on the
U.S. example. Though liberal newspapers such as La Discusi6n up-
held integration, even some Afro-Cuban societies turned in despair
to segregated schools. One newspaper published in Cienfuegos la-
mented the fact that children of color were the targets of hostility
in the municipal schools, and called for the setting up of separate
schools. In 1889 they wrote that social preoccupation with race was
every day becoming more intense and that "it is not possible for us
to send our children to a place where if they are admitted by the
law, they are the target of foul old prejudices."so
On the question of the integration of public places, members of
the Sociedades and others were also quick to bring suit. Again, the
government attempted to concede the point while avoiding the is-
sue. The Consejo de Administraci6n wrote in 1881 that the govern-
ment should not force the owners of cafes and public establishments
to accept persons of color, because it should not attempt to impose
48 Consulta sobre 10 promovido por D. Casimiro Bernabeu, July 27, 1881, ANC,
CA, leg. 68, expo 6799.
49 Trelles, Biblioteca hist6rica cubana, 2: 428, and (Rafael Maria de Labral, La raza
de color en Cuba (Madrid: Fortanet, 18941, p. 34.
50 The citation from the Cienfuegos newspaper may be found in Deschamps, E1
negro en e1 periodismo, p. 14. Debate on integration and segregation may be found
in the Diario de 1a Marina of March I, 1879, and Discusi6n of March 4, 1879,
according to Manuel Moreno Fraginals. Personal communication, 1982.

274
 LAND AND SOCIETY

equality by force on existing customs. In a remarkable though in-

advertent commentary on Cuba's particular combination of class
and racial distinctions, they predicted that third- and second-class
cafes would thus continue to admit persons of color, and first-class
cafes would admit those persons of color distinguished in letters or
arts, "as we have seen many times." Thus, they claimed, cafe owners
could avoid "confusion" that would alienate their white clientele.
They advised free men of color to trust in time and the growing
culture of their class to bring about social equality.51 In 1885, how-
ever, the governor general ruled that, except in cases of scandal,
persons of color could not be prohibited from entering parks or es-
tablishments open to the public. And in 1887 the Consejo de Ad-
ministraci6n ruled that persons of color could not be excluded from
the first-class coaches of trains. 52
In the absence of concerted government efforts at enforcement,
blacks and mulattos had to attempt to carry out these rulings them-
selves. Hostility and confrontation sometimes resulted, giving the
lie to the notion of a perfectly peaceful incorporation of the descend-
ants of slaves into Cuban life. La Fraternidad in 1888 regretted the
hostility to school integration that had been encountered, a hostility
so substantial that it effectively blocked children from entering
schools to which they had a right of access. 53 The periodical La
Igualdad reported in 1892 that merchants were refusing to obey the
ruling that obliged them to do business with persons of color, and
that certain "agents of authority" had refused to enforce it. 54 There
were also echoes of the kind of violence associated with a search
for greater rights by former slaves in other societies: La Fraternidad
reported in 1888 that there had been an attack on men of color by
the "guardians of order" in Havana, with the result that the streets
of Havana were almost empty of blacks, "they being fearful that
such an event might be repeated with them."55
Though they were able to a limited extent to make some of their
views felt through their organizations and the press, Afro-Cubans
did not have full voting rights. In addition to other restrictions on
51 ANC, CA, leg. 68, expo 6799.
52lLabra), La raza, pp. 33-34. See also "Las razas" in Estudios Afrocubanos, pp.
146-47.
53 La Fraternidad !July 9, 1888), p. 2.
54 La Igualdad IDee. 3D, 1892), p. 2, cited in the Fernandez Robaina bibliography.
55 La Fraternidad IFeb. 20, 1888), cited in the Fernandez Robaina bibliography.

275
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

the franchise, the electoral law of 1882 held that those who had
been in slavery did not have the right to vote until after they had
been exempt from the patronato for three years. s6 By 1888, however,
this distinction was rapidly becoming moot, and political parties
were vying for the votes of those Afro-Cubans who could meet the
criteria for suffrage.
E1 Pais, the organ of the Liberal party, argued that it recognized
no distinction between black and white and supported the elimi-
nation of the distinctions that still remained in the legal code (such
as that making the commission of a crime by a black person against
a white an aggravating circumstance in determining punishment).
La Fraternidad, edited by an Afro-Cuban, however, was dubious of
the commitments of the Liberal! Autonomists, and charged them
with discrimination. E1 Pais, in a somewhat curious defense, re-
gretted that there had ever been black immigration to Cuba and
cited Montalvo's call for exclusively white immigration; it argued,
nevertheless, that given the fact that there were persons of color in
Cuba they should have the same civil and political rights. The Lib-
erals further tried to win Afro-Cuban support by calling on them to
remember who had fought battles for them in the pastY
An accurate recalling of the Liberals' past record might or might
not win them Afro-Cuban support. While their party had eventually
endorsed abolition and supported some patrocinados' efforts, they
had also maintained an attitude toward persons of color that was
both condescending and authoritarian. Believing in a civilizing mis-
sion for whites, and insisting that whites would have to exercise a
"benign and generous tutelage II over an "incapacitated" black race,
Cuban liberals showed considerable prejudice in the 1880s. Histo-
rian Raul Cepero Bonilla wrote bitterly: liThe autonomists contin-
ued thinking in the same racist terms as the ideologues of the class
of slaveholding hacendados. The black was either eliminated or
dominated." sB
Conservatives, on the other hand, carried a long legacy of reac-
tionary, pro-Spanish thought. Though occasionally effective at
56 See article 34 of the electoral law of 1882 in AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4928, expo 239.
57 EI Pais (Dec. 8, 1888).
58 See the quotations from EI Triunfo on pp. 216, 217 of Cepero Bonilla, Azucar y
abolici6n, and his own judgment on p. 217. For a more favorable view of the Liberals,
see Entralgo, La liberaci6n tUnica.

276
 LAND AND SOCIETY

pointing out liberal inconsistencies on racial issues, they had little

basis on which to argue that they had served the interests of Afro-
Cubans. Their hope for gaining votes lay in the efforts of the Spanish
government to ally with select groups of Afro-Cubans, and they
carried on a campaign through loyalist newspapers, a variety of
which were edited by Lagardere. 59 Persons of color thus found them-
selves courted politically, and had the opportunity to take advantage
of divisions among the white ruling groups, though always at the
risk of finding their support manipulated by new patrons.
The struggle for civil rights in Cuba in the latter part of the nine-
teenth century was a remarkable phenomenon that soon took on a
distressingly familiar pattern: multiple initiatives from Afro-Cubans
followed by nominal concessions by officials, all within a framework
of continued economic hardship and social discrimination. What is
perhaps most distinctive about the struggle is that it took place in
the context of a colonial society in which many civil rights were
not granted to white Cubans either. Instead of a society with a
tradition of popular participation or an ideology of democracy, this
was a society that placed strict limitations on political and civil
rights. 60 The particular political climate of the last decades of the
century gave to the Cuban civil rights movement some of its special
character, including the participation of otherwise highly reaction-
ary individuals, like Lagardere, who sought to guarantee colonial
domination through racial integration.
The evolution of social relations after emancipation in some ways
paralleled the dynamics of emancipation itself. One reason for the
government's willingness to abolish slavery had been a desire to
avoid the further development of support by Afro-Cubans for rev-
olutionary movements. Once abolition was granted, however, the
problem of order did not go away. Spain, in the closing years of the
nineteenth century, was in the process of conceding certain reforms
and a degree of autonomy to Cuba in hopes of staving off further
conflict. This trend toward increased formal rights created a situa-
tion in which some specific advances could be made toward the legal
59Deschamps, E1 negro en e1 periodismo.
60For some general observations on civil rights in postemancipation societies, see
Magnus Marner, "Igualdad legal, desigualdad social," in his Historia socia11atinoa-
mericana (Nuevos en!oques) (Caracas: Universidad Cat6lica Andres Bello, 1979), pp.
271-91. He emphasizes the importance of a prior democratic tradition.

277
 POSTEMANCIPATION RESPONSES

equality of the races. But concessions that were intended simply to

stave off conflict presented the same problems in the 1890s that
they had in the 1880s, when an astute governor had noted that
although persuading masters to treat their patrocinados well was
the best way to ensure peace, punishing masters for treating their
patrocinados badly was distinctly dangerous. 61 Conceding the rights
of Afro-Cubans to enter schools and restaurants seemed one way to
ensure their loyalty; enforcing such rights, however, might raise a
host of other problems that the Spanish government had no desire
to face.
By the end of the century, then, Afro-Cubans faced limited and
highly uneven opportunities for landholding and employment com-
bined with partial social advancement and continued social discrim-
ination. How they would interpret and respond to this situation
would help determine whether Spain could maintain control over
the island of Cuba itself.
61 Letter from the governor general, Sept. 15, 1880, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 4884, tomo
7, expo 86.

278
 XII

Conclusion and Epilogue

The gradual abolition of slavery in Cuba, involving an intermediate

status and a prolonged transition to free labor, resulted from the
special circumstances of Cuban slavery and its particular domestic
and international context. The Cuban sugar economy needed new
workers to compensate for the ending of the international slave
trade, while at the same time planters wished to maintain control
over their enslaved work force. Spain sought to safeguard the colonial
tie and to resolve the volatile issue of slavery in a way that was
minimally disruptive. Gradual abolition was designed to meet these
needs. The Moret Law and the patronato prevented mass freeings
and sudden changes in the number of available workers, while open-
ing the way for immigration and the reorganization of the labor force.
Moreover, by incorporating slaves into elaborate-if ad hoc-legal
processes, the government attempted to give gradualism a kind of
legitimacy in the eyes of slaves. Freedom was to remain something
one earned or achieved, not something to which one was simply
entitled.
To a degree, the gradualist strategy worked. Disruption in the
supply of labor was largely avoided, and many planters did not have
to face a labor supply that was primarily composed of free workers
until 1882 or 1883. The artificially low wages of patrocinados and
the unpaid labor of minors, in conjunction with the continued le-
gality of corporal punishment until 1883, meant that much of the
system of slavery was maintained until almost the last minute. The
gradual reincorporation of some freed patrocinados into the plan-
tation labor force, the replacement of others by Chinese workers,
convicts, demobilized Spanish soldiers, and colonos facilitated ad-
aptation on plantations. While the total wages paid by planters in-
creased as the free sector of their work force expanded, the amount
paid to individual workers did not increase as sharply as it might
have had emancipation led to a widespread labor shortage created

279
 CONCLUSION

by abrupt withdrawals of labor by former slaves in the absence of

adequate replacement workers. The more marked seasonality that
characterized the employment of free labor also operated to planters'
advantage, relieving them of the direct maintenance costs of their
workers during the dead season. At the same time, of course, it made
them vulnerable to a shortage of laborers during the crucial months
of the harvest-a vulnerability they were able to mitigate in part as
long as they could maintain the patronato.
Gradualism also partially achieved its goal of incorporating slaves
into legalistic processes for achieving freedom. Many patrocinados
were drawn into the "legal culture" through the mechanisms of
complaint, appeal, and self-purchase. l An episode involving worker
grievances after abolition reflects the lasting effects of this partial
incorporation: Following a disturbance on the ingenio Roque in Ma-
tanzas in 1889, the laborers went to the alcalde of the nearby mu-
nicipality to complain that they had been fired without receiving
the wages owed them. The event in some ways resembled an up-
rising on a slave plantation-the workers were reported as being
amotinados (rioting) and the Civil Guard was called in. Yet in other
ways it resembled an appeal to a Junta de Patronato---the workers
reported to the mayor that they had neither food nor lodging, and
they were then cared for at the municipal offices. 2
The importance and, ultimately, success of gradualism in achiev-
ing an incorporation of former slaves into the rules of the game
should not, however, be exaggerated. Patrocinados' alternatives
were few. Running away remained a difficult and dangerous option
under the patronato, and collective resistance to labor was treated
as virtual mutiny, as in the case of the plantation in Giiines in the
early 1880s where the army was called in to suppress patrocinados
who demanded the right to leisure on a customary holiday, with the
result that nine of the resisters were shot. 3 To the extent that grad-
ualism simply concealed or relied upon continued repression, it
fooled almost no one.
Cuban abolition thus left another conflictual legacy, for masters
had been allowed to determine much of the nature of the transition.
1 I am grateful to Thomas Flory for suggesting the term "legal culture" in this
context.
2 E1 Productor (April 11, 1889).
3 See Ballou, Due South, p. 63.

280
 CONCLUSION

By forestalling real change through the patronato, and maintaining

corporal punishment, gradual abolition did not require planters to
break their habits of direct coercion. Physical punishment of workers
persisted even after emancipation, as did economic coercion through
company stores. In some cases the coercive patterns were so severe
that workers emigrated rather than be subjected to them, with the
embarrassing result that employers were driving workers away in
the midst of an alleged "labor shortage."4
Even as the patronato drew many former slaves into legal pro-
cedures and self-purchase, perhaps in ways that discouraged overt
conflict, it also provided openings for challenge and contention.
When patrocinados took seriously the limited opportunities the pa-
tronato offered for extending their rights, they called into question
the legitimacy of their masters' rule and gained experience in con-
fronting it. To the extent that patrocinados' behavior involved ele-
ments of resistance as well as accommodation, the government strat-
egy of gradualism cannot be said to have fully accomplished its goal
of preserving authority intact.
This experience of challenging the established order shaped post-
emancipation political responses as well. Those Afro-Cubans who
pressed for full civil rights in the aftermath of final abolition were
not, in the main, recently freed field slaves. Yet among them were
undoubtedly some of the earlier free black and mulatto allies of
patrocinados, individuals who had learned in the juntas the tactics
of complaint, challenge, and appeal. The movement for civil rights
in turn drew some of its strength from the incorporation of former
slaves into the new mutual aid and educational societies. (One might
draw a parallel with Louisiana, where free persons of color in New
Orleans lobbied the federal government during the Civil War to
hasten the transition to free labor in the occupied zones of the state
and then subsequently emerged with new potential allies in the
campaign for fuller civil rights.)S
By providing a measure of autonomy and room for challenge on
the part of patrocinados, gradual emancipation also raised their ex-
pectations. Had abolition been accompanied by substantial improve-
4 For evidence of emigration from Cuba to work on the Panama Canal, see Edo y
Llop, Memoria, p. 976. He mentions the departure of 200 workers in December 1885.
5 See C. Peter Ripley, Slaves and Freedmen in Civil War Louisiana IBaton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1976), especially chaps. 4 and 9.

281
 CONCLUSION

ments in other areas of economic and political life, it might con-

ceivably have brought about a willing incorporation of former slaves
into the existing society. The conclusion that must be drawn from
the Afro-Cuban struggle for civil rights and from the pattern of
postemancipation adaptations and access to land, however, is that
such improvements were few. Certain choices could now be made
that were not previously available; some families were reconsti-
tuted; new modes of life took shape. But the vast majority of former
slaves remained landless and powerless.
To evaluate the full meaning of emancipation for former slaves
requires a careful attention to perspective. From the vantage point
of the study of slavery, emancipation is by definition a liberation.
Even if the freedom of former slaves is highly compromised, none-
theless there has been a crucial change in legal and social status.
The means by which their labor is commanded have also shifted in
ways that are important to their employers and to the larger eco-
nomic system. If, on the other hand, one approaches emancipation
from the vantage point of the study of labor systems in Latin Amer-
ica, where the succession of forms of slavery, disguised slavery,
peonage, contract labor, and so forth is depressingly familiar, it may
seem that the changes in the institutions under which labor is ex-
tracted are almost epiphenomenal, for the essential facts of coercion
and hardship remain.
Neither perspective is fully adequate, for slavery was at once a
labor system and a social system. Its weight was felt by its victims
both as a forced obligation to perform unpaid labor in tasks not freely
chosen and as a series of abuses and restraints on personal mobility,
autonomy, and dignity. Emancipation involved different degrees of
escape from different aspects of bondage, and no simple comparison
of "standards of living" before and after can capture the process. 6
Moreover, as we have seen, the range of postemancipation experi-
ences was wide, even among former field slaves, and was marked
by sharp regional variations.
It is thus by no means easy to attempt a comparison between
6 The claim by Louis Perez, Jr., for example, that "the decline of the standard of
living for former slaves after emancipation was as immediate as it was dramatic,"
thus misses part of the point: that many of the elements that a full definition of
"standard of living" comprises were incommensurate before and after slavery. See
Perez, Cuba between Empires, p. 23.

282
 CONCLUSION

emancipation in Cuba and emancipation elsewhere. One may com-

pare specific aspects of the process, but the variety of patterns within
Cuba and within other slave societies tempers any attempt at broad
generalization.? Ideally, one might narrow the field of comparison,
drawing out precise parallels and divergences between the experi-
ence of emancipation in different regions that shared the same major
crop as Cuba and experienced abolition in the second half of the
nineteenth century. But to do so effectively would require an entirely
separate empirical study of, for example, sugar-producing regions of
Brazil, Cuba, and the United States. In the absence of such a full-
scale comparative study, however, it is worth highlighting several
aspects of Cuban emancipation that emerge as distinctive when
compared with the transition to free labor elsewhere. I shall not
reiterate here the particular importance of gradualism itself or the
complex combination of intransigence and adaptability that char-
acterized the Cuban planter class, which have been discussed
throughout this study. I shall focus instead on the political context
of Cuban emancipation, the character of Spanish and Cuban aboli-
tionism, and the status of the Cuban sugar industry.
The political context of abolition in Cuba was distinctive in sev-
eral important ways. As Spain's major remaining New World colony,
and at the same time an island with an increasingly vigorous anti-
colonial movement, Cuba posed a political problem for its mother
country that often overshadowed the issue of slavery itself. Eman-
cipation legislation was thus designed and implemented with an eye
to its effect on rebels and potential rebels as well as on slaves and
masters. At the same time, because the island's sugar industry was
a major source of revenue to Spain, colonial policy on slavery was
very sensitive to the real or imagined effects of abolition on output.
One could contrast this with the situation of the British government
in Jamaica, which, while often deferential to the needs of planters,
was prepared to contemplate a degree of decline in the sugar indus-
try. Britain's role as a consumer of sugar grown elsewhere, and as
7 For a work on the U.S. that emphasizes both the daunting variety of experiences
and the existence of certain patterns within emancipation, see Ira Berlin, Joseph P.
Reidy, Leslie S. Rowland, eds., Freedom: A DocumentalY History of Emancipation,
1861-1867. Series II: The Black Military Experience (Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press, 1982). Further volumes forthcoming. See also Leon Litwack, Been
in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979).

283
 CONCLUSION

an ideological champion of the notion of free labor, could transcend

the specific claims of a particular colonial planter class. 8
The ideological atmosphere in Spain also contrasts with the sit-
uation in Britain. Spain's liberals had long been prepared to overlook
the apparent anomaly of the existence of slavery in Spain's colonies,
and only in the 1860s and 1870s did an abolitionist movement arise
in Spain itself. Even then, the movement's effectiveness was ham-
pered by the overwhelming importance of the colonial question. The
reasons for this reticence on the part of Spanish liberals are not
entirely clear, and one of the interesting questions that remains is
to trace the links between this reticence and the political and eco-
nomic situation of Spain. But "free labor" in the colonies was in
any event not an essential component of prevailing economic
thought in Spain, and the nature of discussion on the issue of slavery
was somewhat narrow: moral imperatives were counterposed to
colonial interests, and as such carried only limited weight.
Similarly, within Cuba the abolitionist movement was small and
late to develop. Here Brazil provides a contrast, for there both the
relative economic eclipse of some slaveholding regions and the
growth of important nonslave sectors combined to permit the de-
velopment of a domestic abolitionist movement. Although this
movement was strong only in the very last years of slavery, it none-
theless stands out as a far more vigorous and extensive domestic
phenomenon than the small-scale and informal Cuban abolitionist
movement. While some Cuban abolitionists were willing to provide
legal advice to some patrocinados, Brazilian abolitionists actively
encouraged slaves to flee from the plantations. 9 It is not that Cuba
lacked radicals, but rather that uncompromising opposition to slav-
ery tended to be found among anti-Spanish rebels, who expressed it
in conjunction with views entirely unacceptable to the colonial po-
litical system. Again, the links between colonialism and slavery
served to narrow the field of politically accepted debate.
The Cuban sugar industry may also be contrasted with the Bra-
zilian. While Cuba attempted with notable success to meet an ex-
8 My thinking on the question of Jamaica is much influenced by Thomas Holt,
"The Problem of Freedom," and by conversations with Thomas Holt and Sidney
Mintz.
9 See Conrad, Destruction; Toplin, Abolition, and Viotti da Costa, Da Senzala. I
am also grateful to Peter Eisenberg for various personal communications on the
Brazilian case.

284
 CONCLUSION

panding U.S. market, Brazilian sugar producers languished under the

difficulties of high transportation costs, limited markets, and lack
of capital. The effects were felt both during the process of abolition
and during postemancipation adaptations, when former slaves in the
sugar regions of Brazil tended to become personally dependent on
their former masters, in a situation already characterized by surplus
population. 10 While the move toward central mills faltered in Brazil,
it took hold with remarkable speed in Cuba, transforming the eco-
nomic landscape, though not necessarily for the better, for ex-slaves
and other workers.
The political outcomes of emancipation in the Cuban case are
difficult to disentangle from the larger political conflicts surround-
ing the island's colonial status. But it is apparent that the govern-
ment made no effort to influence and mediate the integration of
former slaves into the new society comparable to the efforts of the
Freedmen's Bureau or the legislation that accompanied Reconstruc-
tion in the United States. There did not exist within the Cuban and
Spanish elite a significant body of strongly abolitionist thinking that
might carry with it socially radical implications; nor was there a
sufficiently powerful competing fragment of the elite interested in
reordering society to diminish the role of planters; nor had Cuba's
slaveholders been defeated in war. While race relations immediately
after slavery in Cuba did not generally show the virulent racism for
which the United States became infamous, neither did Afro-Cubans
have major allies among local officials in their efforts to improve
their social and economic status.
As the island entered the final decade of the nineteenth century,
it was the colonial question that emerged as the major point of overt
conflict, linking as it did political, social, and economic grievances.
Planters were increasingly aware that high production did not in-
variably lead to prosperity and that prosperity when it came was
tenuous. Spain had negotiated the 1891 Foster-Cinovas treaty to
improve the access of Cuban sugar to U.S. markets, but upon ex-
piration of that treaty in 1894 the United States imposed heavy new
tariffs in the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act, and Spain reimposed its
own tariff barriers on Cuba. Spain was thus reactivating and inten-
10 See Peter 1. Eisenberg, The Sugar Industry in Pernambuco, 1840-1910: Modern-
ization without Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 19741, especially
chaps. 2, 3, 8.

285
 CONCLUSION

sifying the pacta colonial, increasing its protectionism and its ex-
actions from the island at an exceptionally sensitive moment. More-
over, the process of consolidation that had yielded the huge new
centrales also put pressure on smaller units, and hundreds of inge-
nios were going out of business. In a general report on the economy
in 1894, the Revista de Agricultura, organ of the Planters' Associ-
ation, expressed an increasing sense of desperation.t 1
The crisis, of course, threatened small-scale growers as well as
major planters. Falling prices meant lower returns to colon as, whose
contracts had usually been designed to shift to them some of the
risk associated with uncertain sugar prices. Some colonos had re-
sponded to their dependence on the centrales with efforts to organize
common bargaining units among themselves. Juan Bautista Jimenez,
a prosperous colona with inherited lands, was an early proponent
of such organizations. J2 Perhaps more representative was Jose Badia,
a former colona on the Central Teresa, in Santiago de Cuba. When
asked during court testimony about grievances on the estate in the
1890s, he explained that he had disagreed with the estate owner
about prices and that around 1895 the owner had bought him out
"to avoid misunderstanding." Under cross-examination he was que-
ried: "The disagreement about prices that you mention arose from
a Union of the Colonos on all the estates; did it not, and which
Union demanded an increase over the prices which had been thereto-
fore agreed upon, isn't that so?" "Yes," he replied, "that's it."l3
It would be wrong to assume that all colonos shared the conten-
tiousness of Jimenez and Badia. Colonos were a heterogeneous
group, some clearly identifying with other employers of labor, others
on the margin between the status of worker and that of farmer. But
continued conflicts over prices and contracts strained relations be-
tween estates and their tenants and suppliers, making it less likely
that colonos would close ranks behind the established order when
it faced attack from certain directions.
II See Revista de Agricu1tura, Special number (1894), particularly pp. 334-72, 442-
44. For an excellent discussion of the atmosphere of the 1890s, see Perez, Cuba
between Empires, chap. 1. On the reinvigoration of the pacto colonial, and its
consequences for Cuba, see Jordi Nadal, E1 jracaso de 1a revoluci6n industrial en
Espana, 1814-1913 (Barcelona: Ariel, 1975) pp. 215-17.
12 See Jimenez, Los esclavos b1ancos.
13 Deposition of Jose Badia, USNA, RG 76, Entry 352, Claim no. 97 (Central Teresa),

Pt. 2.

286
 CONCLUSION

The economic crisis affected others in Cuban society as well. A

decline in the sugar industry meant unemployment for a wide range
of workers. Increased tariffs meant higher prices for consumer goods.
Moreover, the sugar industry was so central to the Cuban economy
that other sectors inevitably suffered. Though planters could not
claim to speak for the whole society in their complaints, their dis-
tress was undoubtedly widely shared.
It is seldom easy to establish a simple chain of causation between
crisis and grievance, on the one hand, and social upheaval, on the
other. Most planters frustrated by Spanish economic and political
policy were in no mood to unleash revolution; many of those seeking
revolution had done so since long before the crisis. But it was into
this tense atmosphere that in 1895 insurgency erupted once again
in the eastern part of the island. It was led this time by the Cuban
Revolutionary Party, unified under the leadership of Jose Marti, Max-
imo G6mez, and Antonio Maceo. The eastern region, traditionally
an area of resistance to Spanish rule, responded to the insurgent call
to arms, and by February 1895 the insurrection had a stronghold on
the island. 14
It is far beyond the scope of this study to analyze in detail the
history of the Cuban War for Independence and its social base. There
are, however, at least two features of that conflict relevant to the
theme of emancipation and post emancipation society: first, the par-
ticipation of Afro-Cubans in the insurrection; and second, the effects
of the reorganization of production on the possibilities for popular
political mobilization.
It is hardly surprising that former slaves and other Afro-Cubans
were potential recruits for an insurrection in the 1890s. While it is
difficult from the limited evidence available to infer actual moti-
vations and grievances, the expectations of Afro-Cubans seem to
have been increasingly disappointed. Slaves in Cuba had often been
the agents of their own emancipation, and had reason to believe that
their lives would change significantly as a result. But while they
now had greater physical mobility, the opportunity to earn cash
wages, and greater access to urban centers, they had little oppor-
tunity to acquire land or increase their incomes. They found their
way blocked by the new forms of plantation production, by the influx
14 See Perez, Cuba between Empires, chap. 2.

287
 CONCLUSION

of immigrants, by frequent unemployment, and by the persistence

of racial and ethnic barriers. Political organizers willing to face the
issue of race, to repudiate continued Spanish domination and the
hierarchical distinctions such domination brought, and to challenge
the prevailing economic order, had strong arguments with which to
win Afro-Cubans over to participation in an anticolonial struggle.
At the same time, the experiences of former slaves and other Afro-
Cubans had increased their capacity to mobilize politically. The
family strategy whereby many couples divided their residence, with
the woman employed in town and the man working on an estate
during the week, helped to develop ties between the town and the
country and decreased the isolation that had characterized life on
the ingenios. The spread of mutual aid societies and Afro-Cuban
newspapers provided experience in cooperative action and exposure
to new ideas. Not surprisingly, some Afro-Cuban leaders from these
organizations moved into openly anti-Spanish positions in the last
years of the century.
The new insurgency was considerably less ambiguous on social
and racial issues than the Ten Years' War had been. The great ideo-
logue of the new struggle, Jose Marti, explicitly rejected annexation
to the United States, criticized the island's elite, and repudiated
racial divisions. The Manifesto of Montecristi, signed by Marti and
Maximo G6mez as the fight began, hailed the unity between those
who had been slaves and those who had not, and noted the progress
made away from the "hatred with which slavery was able to divide
them." Though the document also reflected some uneasiness about
the potential "censurable haste" of a small minority of "discon-
tented freedmen," its predominant tone was one of egalitarianism. IS
The charismatic Antonio Maceo, moreover, a leader of the earlier
struggle, brought to the leadership of the new one a long record of
uncompromising rejection of both slavery and racism.
The concept of "Cuba Libre" espoused by the insurgent leadership
appealed to Afro-Cubans through both nationalism and an ideology
of universal manhood suffrage and racial equality.I6 The insurgent
force itself was clearly multiracial and multiclass, with a very strong
popular character. Afro-Cubans often rose to positions of leadership
within the rebel forces and experienced an equality with white
IS For the text, see Hortensia Pichardo, ed., Documentos para la historia de Cuba
1: 483-9l.
16 See Perez, Cuba between Empires, chaps. 16-18.

288
 CONCLUSION

troops that transcended that which had been possible in the Ten
Years' War. Those who opposed the insurrection described the rebels
with a contempt that reveals both their own class prejudices and
the class divisions they perceived. Edwin Atkins, a North American
planter, recalled: " ... of the insurgents-I personally knew very
little. They were composed of men entirely outside my circle of
acquaintance, very many of them being negroes, and a very large
part of them being ignorant white Cubans."l? Indeed, one of the
leaders of a band raiding Atkins' Soledad estate was a former slave
on the estate, Claudio Sarria. 18
The earlier insurrection had also drawn in part on poor whites
and free persons of color for its support, but in crucial respects the
larger environment had now changed. Class relations on the new
centrales lacked the rigidity and isolation of those on the slave
ingenios of the 1860s and 1870s. In the normal course of events men
now came and went to the batey, the fields, and the outlying co-
lonias from both within and without the estate. Instead of control-
ling large numbers of bound workers who were locked in at night
and prohibited from setting foot off the estate during the day, estates
now relied on a fluctuating population of artisans and laborers. The
shift to seasonal wage labor, combined with the decentralization of
growing inherent in the system of colonias, had made the complex
of fields and mill penetrable and vulnerable.
Even when estate owners were hostile to the rebels, insurgents
were able to approach the plantations for recruits, for goods, for
horses and oxen, and for weapons. Once they had moved into the
sugar zones, insurgents could thus count upon estate populations
for various kinds of informal support-a crucial change since the
Ten Years' War. Some estate owners drew the contrast explicitly,
complaining that they had been able to grind without interruption
during the earlier conflict but now could not protect themselves
against cane fires, financial exactions, and the "demoralization II of
their work force. 19 Furthermore, the disruption of production freed
still more workers as potential recruits for the insurgents.
17 For a general discussion of the insurgent force, see Perez, Cuba between Empires,
pp. 106-108. The quotation from Atkins is in Deposition of Edwin F. Atkins, p. 7,
USNA, RG 76, Entry 352, Claim no. 387 (Atkins), Pt. 1.
18 See Deposition of Ydelfonso Cires, RG 76, Entry 352, Claim no. 387 (Atkins),
Pt. 2.
19 On the flow of goods and recruits, see the deposition of Maximo Cisneros, USNA,

289
 CONCLUSION

1. F. Hughes, manager of the Soledad estate in the province of

Santa Clara, described the situation in the early months of the war
as one in which small parties of insurgents "frequently entered the
batey, purchased supplies at the tienda and conversed freely with
the employes whom they knew. The administration of the estate
II

notified the Spanish authorities but was not able to prevent the
contacts, although they did try to assure that sympathizers with the
insurrection among their workmen remained unarmed. Later, Span-
ish troops were stationed on the estate and blocked the overt entry
of rebels into the heart of the batey, but much of the estate remained
vulnerable. 20 Emiliano Silva y Placeres, also a manager, described
the presence of insurgents on colonias serving the Hormiguero estate
in Cienfuegos: " . .. they used to be around there every day-some-
times to get clothes, sometimes to get saddles, and at other times
to get food." 21
In the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba, the situation was
even more extreme. A Spaniard testifying about conditions on the
Los Canos estate in the region of Guantanamo noted that after the
end of 1896 the estate had ceased grinding and virtually all of the
estate's workers had gone to the insurrection. 22 Central Teresa, lo-
cated near Manzanillo, actually employed insurgents as cane cutters
during the harvest.23 While during the Ten Years' War parts of the
east had been under rebel control and some estates had been burned
or raided, now even the region's most productive sugar districts were
highly vulnerable.
The sympathy of the employees on estates was crucial to the
insurgent strategy of burning cane to halt the harvest. In some cases,
workers actually set the fires. 24 In others, the desertion of workers
RG 76, Entry 352, Claim no. 240 (Central Tuinucu), Pt. 1. The owners of the Mapos
estate also contrasted their situation during the Ten Years' War with that of the War
of Independence. See the deposition of Jose M. del Valle Iznaga, p. 43, USNA, RG 76,
Entry 352, Claim no. 121 (Mapos Sugar Co.), Pt. l.
20 See Deposition of 1. F. Hughes, April 21-24, 1906, pp. 5-6, Entry 352, Claim no.
387 (Atkins), Pt. I, and other depositions in the same file.
21 Deposition of Emiliano Silva y Placeres, USNA, RG 76, Entry 352, Claim no.
293 (Hormiguero), Pt. 3.
22 Deposition of Marcos Margadas, p. 5. USNA, RG 76, Entry 352, Case no. 120
(Sheldon), Pt. 2.
23 Deposition of Alejandro Quesada, p. 7. USNA, RG 76, Entry 352, Claim no. 97
(Central Teresa), Pt. 2.
24 See the testimony concerning the colonia Dos Hermanos, in Deposition of Emi-
liano Silva y Placeres, p. 6. USNA, RG 76, Entry 352, Claim 293 (Hormiguero), Pt.
3.

290
 CONCLUSION

blocked defense against attack. In the case of the Central Teresa,

the link was made clear: "If the estate had not been raided, and
many employees had not joined the raiders, any ordinary fire, caused
accidentally or otherwise, could have been got under eontrol.//25
The reasons Spanish troops were unable to defeat the insurgency,
or even to protect property, were many, including weakness in their
preparedness and strategy. But the task they faced had also changed
qualitatively since the Ten Years' War: a larger and more unified
insurgent force now challenged the security not only of the open
countryside but also of sugar estates-estates that themselves had
relinquished a measure of social control when they made the tran-
sition to free labor. The owners of slave plantations in the 1860s
and 1870s had feared uprisings, and eastern estates during the first
war had on occasion faced passive resistance. But overt resistance
and rebellion had been largely blocked in the west. By the 1890s the
new centrales based on free labor did not need to fear that their
workers would rebel in search of their personal freedom, but those
workers now had far greater opportunity to use their own resources,
and in some cases those of the estate, to promote separatist goals.
The loosening of controls was not an inevitable concomitant of
the shift to juridically free labor. The government could have at-
tempted, during and immediately following emancipation in the
1880s, to institute measures that might have thwarted some of this
mobility. But, as we have seen, state-supervised controls on rural
labor were not forthcoming from Madrid or Havana, where they
were generally perceived as politically dangerous and economically
unnecessary.
Only after the new insurrection was well under way and had
extended across the island did the government institute direct labor
controls. Now, however, they were part of a brutal effort at rural
pacification through the forced movement of population into Span-
ish-controlled camps, or "reconcentration,// a strategy as disruptive
of normal work as it was terrifying to the populace. Though the
policy was directed in large measure at the dispersed rural population
of smallholders, it also brought some estate owners into conflict
with the Spanish government, as their estates were shorn of workers
and left open to insurgent attack. Requiring estate re~idents to move
25 Supplementary memorandum, USNA, RG 76, Entry 352, Claim no. 97 (Central
Teresa), Pt. 4.

291
 CONCLUSION

into concentration camps and leave for work only with daily gov-
ernment passes obstructed the normal functioning of cultivation,
harvesting, and grinding. The owners of the Mapos estate, for ex-
ample, found their work force evicted from the estate and driven
into camps in October 1896. 26
During the Ten Years' War the repressive structure of plantation
slavery, already in place, had reinforced Spanish military strategy
by facilitating the isolation and fortification of estates; at the same
time, this military strategy made possible the continuation of pro-
duction over most of the island. Now, by contrast, a major aspect
of the military strategy for securing territory and blocking insurgent
access to the population-reconcentration-was in potential con-
flict with the continuance of economic activity, even by planters
entirely sympathetic to the Spanish cause. The result was a weak-
ening of both the strategy and the economy. Sympathy for the in-
surgents grew and production shrank as rebellion and reconcentra-
tion combined to halt the working of the estates.
One way and another, emancipation had transformed Cuban so-
ciety, dismantling the most rigid of the barriers that had separated
whites and blacks: the institution of slavery. Racism was by no
means eliminated, but the caste-like labor system on which it had
initially rested was now gone, replaced by a pattern of tenantry and
wage labor within which racial distinctions were less significant.
Postemancipation adaptations had altered authority relations be-
tween former masters and former slaves, while the development of
the colonato had created an intermediate social group, a group shar-
ing some of the concerns of planters, but often more closely linked
socially to other smallholders and laborers than to large-scale proc-
essors and sellers of sugar. Thus while prejudice and inequality per-
sisted, new possibilities for alliance also came into being, possibil-
ities that began to be realized when the new movement for
independence emerged.
During the long process of transition from slavery to free labor,
and from ingenio to central, those planters and entrepreneurs pre-
pared to invest in new equipment and to restructure class relations
in the Cuban countryside achieved, within limits, their goal of cen-
26 For a description of the effects on Mapos of the policy of "reconcentration," see
the testimony of Rafael Meneses, USNA, RG 76, Entry 352, Claim no. 121 (Mapos
Sugar Co.), Pt. 1.

292
 CONCLUSION

tralization and increased production. Aided by government-assisted

immigration programs, they prevented most workers and small-scale
colonos from establishing economic autonomy or substantial bar-
gaining power over wages and rates of payment. In the process,
however, they permanently changed the social stucture of the island,
contributing to the growth of classes whose labor they might for the
time being employ as they chose, but whose political actions they
could not in the end fully control.

293
 Afterword to the New Paperback Edition

Marcelino Iznaga, who lives on the Pepito Tey sugar plantation,

recalls that his uncle Rafael Iznaga often spoke of having served in
the Cuban Liberation Army of 1895-1898, fighting for Cuba's inde-
pendence from Spain. Like his neighbor and rebel officer, Captain
Claudio Sarria, Rafael Iznaga had been born into slavery on a planta-
tion in the Cienfuegos district, on the southern coast of the island.
But Marcelino Iznaga is quick to point out that by the time of final
abolition in 1886 his uncle was no longer a slave: Rafael Iznaga's fa-
ther and mother had purchased their son's freedom some years ear-
lier. For this family, emancipation had come as the result of a collec-
tive effort, not thanks to a decree issued by the Spanish government. l
Marcelino Iznaga recalls these features of his uncle's life history
clearly and directly. I am somewhat chagrined to realize how oblique
a route I traveled in order to discern the role of slave initiatives and
anticolonial warfare in shaping the dynamics of slave emancipation
and the development of a post emancipation society in Cuba.
The problem of freedom, the puzzle of how it was achieved and
what it meant, was in the air in the 1970s, as I began graduate study.
My approach to sources was shaped by two years spent reading ac-
count books and local judicial records for a master's thesis on the role
of women in the seventeenth-century English economy, followed by
seminars on Latin American history with Stanley Stein, combined
with a stint as a research assistant for Ira Berlin and Herbert Gutman.
I envisioned a doctoral thesis aimed at determining the causes of the
end of slavery in Cuba, evaluating the competing hypotheses of tech-
nological change, metropolitan calculation, and nationalist accom-
plishment. Then I would go on to examine the process of proletarian-
ization, trace the rise of a postemancipation peasantry, and find out
what freedom meant to those who had been enslaved.
Though I did not realize the intellectual hubris of my proposal, I
did notice one obvious inconveniente: the island of Cuba itself was
largely off-limits to researchers from the United States. Local records
might well be out of reach. Never mind; the footnotes to Franklin

295
 AFTERWORD

Knight's Slave Society in Cuba during the Nineteenth Century sug-

gested that there was rich documentation from the late colonial pe-
riod in Madrid's Archivo Hist6rico Nacional.2 I could anchor the study
in Spanish archives, try to persuade the Cuban Ministry of Foreign
Affairs to allow me to do additional research on the island, and hope
that the u.S. State Department would ignore my travel to its" closest
of enemies./I
By a fortunate coincidence, President Jimmy Carter momentarily
ended restrictions on travel to Cuba for u.S. citizens. Senior Cubanists
generously introduced me to a member of the Cuban mission to the
United Nations, whom I proceeded to barrage with my seminar pa-
pers, my dissertation prospectus, and an altogether irrelevant critique
of u.S. foreign policy in Bolivia, written years earlier on the basis of
my undergraduate thesis. The Cuban delegate apparently concluded
that I really was an overeager graduate student wishing to read nine-
teenth-century documents in the Cuban archives, not an intelligence
agent. A two-week visa was issued and then extended; additional vi-
sas were subsequently granted.
The research on the island was an adventure in itself. Pedro
Deschamps Chapeaux, Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Fe Iglesias, John
Dumoulin, and other historians in Havana welcomed me as a col-
league, despite my inexperience. A succession of representatives of
the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations assigned responsibility for
scholarly visitors graciously left me more or less to my own devices.
After some weeks in Havana, I headed for the provinces, where the
director of the archives in Sancti Spiritus let me continue to read
documents each evening while he wrote reports.
The more archives I consulted in Spain and in Cuba, however, the
clearer it became that I was not getting very close to capturing the
"meanings of freedom./I The documentation on emancipation itself
was rich: parliamentary debates, petitions for freedom, voluminous
judicial appeals, plantation daybooks, captured insurgent records. The
documentation on previously bound laborers in the post-1886 period,
however, was alarmingly thin. Former slaves seemed to vanish into a
vast rural population and were almost never identified in the records
by previous condition of servitude. How was I to figure out where
they had gone and what their lives beyond slavery had involved? Had
emancipation truly erased the distinction between those formerly
enslaved and those long free, or was it merely the written record that
was opaque on this question?
When in the fall of 1978 I sat down at my desk in Ann Arbor to

296
 AFTERWORD

reread my note cards and begin to write, I had the queasy sensation
that I was about to fail of my goal. For several months I worked to
patch together a portrait of the postabolition period using the 1899
Cuban census, the daybooks I had found in Sancti Spiritus, and as-
sorted fragments from provincial records. But the results did not ring
with the voices of the freedpeople. To get any sense of the experi-
ences of individuals, I needed to move back well before the end of
slavery itself and examine the voluminous and detailed material on
the unfolding of the 1870 Moret Law and of the patronato, the period
of apprenticeship established in 1880. These laws, however manipu-
lative their intent, had unleashed numerous challenges and appeals,
thus generating records filled with names and stories.
As I shifted my focus to emancipation itself, the end of slavery
began to look less and less like a single event called abolition, to be
explained by one or another unified causal mechanism. It now ap-
peared as a long and intricate process involving dynamic interactions
among slaves, masters, anticolonial rebels, and agents of the state.
Moreover, self-purchase and challenges by slaves seemed to have be-
come widespread by the last years of bound labor, accelerating and
transforming the planned gradual transition. The relationship between
law, slave initiatives, and economic change was complex, and the
maintenance of the social relations of slavery distinctly precarious.
In the spring of 1979 I went back to the Archivo Nacional de Cuba to
review systematically the appeals files of the Consejo de Administraci6n
for the 1870s and 1880s. The evidence of challenge and contestation
by slaves that had first surfaced in the Spanish colonial archives was
now more than confirmed in the testimony by and about slaves and
patrocinados at the local level. As best I can recall, use of the term
"agency" had not yet become common among historians, but I was
certainly struck by the importance of all this activity by slaves, male
and female, young and old. Initiatives by slaves began to take center
stage in the chapters I was drafting.
As a result of his own work on Brazil in a similar period, however,
my advisor, Stanley Stein, was appropriately skeptical of any impli-
cation that slaves had managed to achieve meaningful freedom within
the context of grudging metropolitan reforms. He shocked me by re-
ferring to self-purchase by slaves as "a sucker's game," and he won-
dered aloud whether more slaves had actually achieved their freedom
than had died during the period of gradual emancipation. Maybe death,
not the slave, was the agent of abolition. Evidence of emancipation
by self-purchase, lawsuit, and negotiated agreement would have to be

297
 AFTERWORD

checked against broader demographic trends, and one would have to

look carefully at the paths to freedom taken by slaves on individual
plantations. I began final drafting of my thesis with this in mind.
Manuel Moreno Fraginals, after years of studying the technology
of sugar production, also remained skeptical, though for different rea-
sons. He was convinced that the end of slavery in Cuba could best be
understood in terms of the internal contradictions of the slave sys-
tem in a period of technological innovation and falling commodity
prices. After hours spent side by side coding manuscript censuses, we
agreed to disagree about causation while collaborating in the unearth-
ing of evidence and the elaboration of the debate.
While I was preoccupied with digging deeper into the historical
ground on Cuba, teachers and colleagues helped broaden my perspec-
tive and clarify my thinking. Sidney Mintz urged me to put Cuba into
the context of Caribbean peasantries-even if it seemed that I was
having a hard time finding the necessary details on those slaves who
had become peasants. Charles Gibson warned me not to take judicial
records at face value, however appealing their evidence of initiative,
and urged me to be alert to the role of the lawyers and notaries who
helped produce them. Frederick Cooper talked me out of using the
term "proletarianization" on the grounds that it was both infelici-
tous and teleological. Other words ending in "-ation" -so tempting
to a newly trained scholar-fell away as Thomas Holt and Ira Berlin
reminded me of the risks of writing about categories rather than about
people.
The final manuscript proposed a reciprocal relationship between
legal reforms and slave initiatives; it engaged-though it did not at-
tempt to resolve-the questions about causal mechanisms; and it
sketched a postslavery countryside neither peasant nor proletarian. I
had been able to trace the experiences of various men, women, and
children who had pushed the process of emancipation forward in one
way or another. But what of the ambitious idea of finding the mean-
ings of freedom, the goal that I had postponed in order to concentrate
on the dynamics of emancipation itself?
By 1984, when I handed the manuscript to the publisher, it had
finally dawned on me that the study of post emancipation society in
Cuba was going to require a longer-term collective effort. First, there
was an immense evidentiary challenge. Once the status of slaves as
property was ended, the quality of written records revealing the ac-
tivities of individuals and families changed. Lists of slaves, for ex-
ample, were easy to find; lists of former slaves were very rare. It would
take years of digging in local records to piece the picture together.

298
 AFTERWORD

Second, the question of how to understand the many meanings of

freedom had burst the bounds of slavery studies and of social history
as I had originally envisioned them. Thomas Holt put it bluntly: there
was no point in simply championing social history to the exclusion
of political. One could not hope to understand changes in the nature
of citizenship without plunging into politics, and often comparative
politics at that. Among other things, this would mean engaging the
1895-1898 Cuban War for Independence, a historiographical minefield
that I had heretofore studiously avoided.
Third, questions of meaning and social identity did not lend them-
selves particularly well to national-level, aggregate analysis. Select-
ing illustrative examples would not solve the problem, since any skep-
tic could legitimately ask just how representative Rafael Iznaga, for
instance, actually was. A microhistorical analysis, focusing in detail
not just on individual cases but on different life trajectories within a
particular social field also seemed to be called for.
Over the next fifteen years, I went in all three of these directions at
once-an exhilarating if somewhat reckless research strategy. As a
result, when I look back at Slave Emancipation in Cuba, I tend to
view it in light of this ongoing work and in light of the now quite
extensive new historiography on societies after slavery.3
The stunning documentary volumes produced by the Freedmen
and Southern Society Project at the University of Maryland, under
the directorships of Ira Berlin and Leslie Rowland, have transformed
the study of emancipation and postemancipation society in the United
States South. 4 The penetrating work of Brazilian historians, includ-
ing Sidney Chalhoub and Hebe Castro, has demonstrated that even in
societies that had no Freedmen's Bureau, and no institution compa-
rable to the Stipendiary Magistrates of the British West Indies, archi-
val sources nonetheless survive with which to reconstruct
post emancipation experiences. s The work of these and numerous other
scholars encourages optimism about the possible uses of the addi-
tional manuscript material that is emerging in Cuba. 6 Moreover, a
rich comparative discussion with a strong monographic foundation
has now become possible. 7
At the opposite end of the spectrum from transnational compari-
son lies microhistorical research, both the newest and perhaps the
oldest strategy for postemancipation studies. Stanley Stein's Vassouras,
published more than forty years ago, was a model of what is now often
referred to as microhistory, precisely because it posed major interpre-
tive questions within a tightly bounded region and layered different
kinds of local evidence. 8 Several Brazilian scholars have resumed this

299
 AFTERWORD

approach, producing gems of detailed research. 9 For Cuba, local his-

tory is abundant, but rigorously problem-oriented microhistory is un-
common.
Recently, however, it has begun to emerge. Several historians, for
example, have converged on the coastal city of Cienfuegos, where the
presence of an excellent provincial archive in a major sugar-producing
region creates ideal conditions for both archival and oral-historical
work, through which documents and memories can be juxtaposed
and brought into dialogue. lO The written request by Rafael Iznaga for
a veteran's pension rests in an archive only a few miles from the present
home of his nephew Marcelino Iznaga at Central Pepito Tey, formerly
Soledad PlantationY With a sturdy vehicle, one can even locate the
small farm on the banks of the Arimao River where Rafael Iznaga
settled after the 1895-1898 war. In this setting, the 1/ exceptional ordi-
nary" can become more than anecdotal, and the nature of memories
themselves can become part of the picture of freedom.12
One of the things that I learned in writing Slave Emancipation in
Cuba was that the question of the meanings of freedom has no easy
answers-or even reasonably difficult answers. There are only very
difficult ones. But that, of course, is part of what sustains the historian's
enterprise. It is also part of what makes reflecting on race, freedom,
and nationhood an engrossing challenge for citizens of Cuba and the
United States alike.

October 1999

NOTES

1. Rafael Iznaga's brother Victoriano was freed in the same way and later
became a messenger for the Cuban rebels during the 1895-1898 war. Marcelino
Iznaga Suarez Roman, Central Pepito Tey, interview with the author, June
1999. I would like to thank Ira Berlin, Ada Ferrer, Thomas Holt, Aims
McGuinness, Sidney Mintz, Peter Railton, and Anne Scott for their very help-
ful comments on an earlier draft of this afterword.
2. These were primarily located in the Secci6n de Ultramar. See Franklin
W. Knight, Slave Society in Cuba during the Nineteenth Century (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1970).
3. For a bibliographic overview, see Rebecca J. Scott, Thomas C. Holt,
Frederick Cooper, and Aims McGuinness, eds., Societies after Slavery: A Se-
lect Annotated Bibliography of Printed Sources on the British West Indies,
British Colonial Africa, South Africa, Cuba, and Brazil, forthcoming, 2001,
University of Michigan Press.

300
 AFTERWORD

4. The volumes of Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation,

1861-1867, are published by Cambridge University Press and include Ira Ber-
lin, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds., The Black Military Experi-
ence (1982); Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Thavolia Glymph, Joseph P. Reidy,
and Leslie S. Rowland, eds., The Destruction of Slavery (1985); Ira Berlin,
Thavolia Glymph, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, Leslie S. Rowland, and
Julie Saville, eds., The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Lower South (1990);
and Ira Berlin, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds.,
The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Upper South (1993).
5. See Sidney Chalhoub, Vis6es da liberdade: Uma hist6ria das ultimas
decadas da escravidiio na Corte (Sao Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1990),
and Hebe Maria Mattos de Castro, Das cores do silencio: Os significados da
liberdade no sudeste escravista-Brasil seculo XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo
Nacional, 1995).
6. The location and consultation of Cuban manuscript materials will be
facilitated by the guide to Cuban regional archives being prepared by a team
of Cuban and U.S. scholars, coordinated by Louis A. Perez Jr., Marel Garcia,
and myself. The guide is scheduled for publication in Spanish in Cuba and in
English by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
7. For one comparative discussion, see Frederick Cooper, Thomas Holt,
and Rebecca Scott, Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor and Citi-
zenship in Postemancipation Societies (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2000). Others have framed comparisons in other terms. See
Mary Turner, ed., From Chattel Slaves to Wage Slaves: The Dynamics of
Labour Bargaining in the Americas (London: James Currey, 1995); Frank
McGlynn and Seymour Drescher, eds., The Meaning of Freedom: Economics,
Politics, and Culture after Slavery (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
1992).
8. Stanley J. Stein, Vassouras: A Brazilian Coffee County, 1850-1900 (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957; reprint ed., Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1985).
9. See the secondary works on Brazil cited in Scott, Holt, Cooper,
McGuinness, Societies after Slavery.
10. The key initial figures in this collaboration were Orlando Garcia
Martinez, the director of the Provincial Archives of Cienfuegos, and Michael
Zeuske, a historian from Germany. I joined them around 1996, and we orga-
nized a scholarly conference there in 1998. A volume of papers from that
conference, titled Espacios, silencios y los sentidos dela libertad: Cuba, 1879-
1912, edited by Fernando Martinez Heredia, Orlando Garcia Martinez, and
Rebecca Scott, will be published in Havana by Ediciones UNION in late 2000.
Several doctoral students have recently developed research projects with a
significant Cienfuegos component, including Alejandra Bronfman of Princeton
University, David Sartorius of the University of North Carolina, and Frank
Guridy and Adrian Burgos of the University of Michigan. Aims McGuinness
of the University of Michigan has collaborated on oral historical interviews
in the region. A group of seventeen young researchers, Cuban- and U.S.-based,

301
 AFTERWORD

spent ten days in June of 1999 in the Cienfuegos archives, engaged in re-
search and debate on questions of race and nationality in Cuba.
11. This document is among the pension requests in the judicial holdings
of the Archivo Provincial de Cienfuegos, Cienfuegos, Cuba.
12. On the concept of the "exceptional ordinarY"-which might also be
rendered as the "ordinary exception"-see Jacques Revel, ed., feux d'echelles:
La micro-analyse a l'experience (Paris: Gallimard/Le Seuil, 1996), p. 31. The
phrase that Revel uses, drawing on the work of Edoardo Grendi, is exceptionnel
normal. Revel notes wryly that it exercises the fascination of a concept that
one would love to be able to use if only one knew how to define it. For my
own effort to revisit the question of freedom through a microhistorical study,
see "Reclaiming Gregoria's Mule: The Meanings of Freedom in the Arimao
and Caunao Valleys, Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1880-1899," Past and Present, forth-
coming. An earlier version appeared in Spanish as "Reclamando la Mula de
Gregoria Quesada: El Significado de la Libertad en los Valles del Arimao y del
Caunao, Cienfuegos, Cuba (1880-1899)," Illes i Imperis: Estudis d'historia
de les societats en el mon colonial i post-colonial (Barcelona) 2 (Spring 1999):
89-108.

302
 Select Bibliography

MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS

Cuba
ARCHIVO NACIONAL DE CUBA, HAVANA
This archive, as one would expect, is the best source of documentation on
nineteenth-century Cuban history. Many of its holdings are indexed and
catalogued.
Consejo de Administraci6n-This collection includes essential policy dis-
cussions and numerous legal appeals. Most useful for the study of eman-
cipation were the bundles containing lawsuits involving slaves or patro-
cinados and their masters (legs. 59, 60, 64, 65, 68, 69, 70, 71, 76, 82, 85,
92, 95, 99) and those containing discussions of the cabildos de naci6n
(legs. 8, 44, 58, 76).
Fonda Valle-This section contains materials complementary to those in
the Fondo Valle-Iznaga of the Archivo Provincial de Sancti Spiritus (see
below). A typed inventory of the Valle family papers in this fonda is
available at the ANC.
Gobierno General-This section duplicates some of the political material
in the Secci6n de Ultramar of the Archivo Hist6rico Nacional in Madrid
(see below). But it also includes detailed supporting data relevant to policy
discussions between Havana and Madrid. Particularly useful were legajos
containing information on the patronato (legs. 163, 271, 272, 273, 275,
366), those containing population lists (legs. 271, 275), and those con-
cerning Afro-Cuban organizations (leg. 100).
Misceltinea de Expedientes-This extraordinary "miscellany" contains le-
gal case files, manuscript returns of censuses, governmental papers, and
assorted other materials. A multivolume, typed inventory of its contents
is available at the archive. The most important legajos for this study were
those containing population statistics and censuses (including legs. 25,
3748, 3820, 4119), appeals of cases where slaves or patrocinados had
claimed freedom (including legs. 3813 and 3814), reports on activities of
the sindicaturas (leg. 3814), records of payment in scrip (leg. 4330), and
information on convict labor (leg. 3954).
Miscelanea de Libros-This section contains numerous bound manuscript
volumes. Most important for this study were the daybooks and account
books of sugar plantations, including numbers 10789, 10802, 10806,
10831, 10879, 11245, 11247, 11518, and 11536.

303
 , BIBLIOGRAPHY

ARCHIVO PARROQUIAL DE LA IGLESIA MAYOR DEL EspiRITU SANTO,

SANCTI SPiRITUS
The archive of the main church of the town of Sancti Spiritus contains the
registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials for the area in an excellent
state of preservation. See the volumes Matrimonios, Pardos y Morenos,
Libro num. 3, 1812-1891, and Bautismos de Pardos y Morenos, Libro 16,
1866-1880, for the Iglesia Mayor, and the volumes Defunciones de Color,
Libro 1°, 1875-1898, and Bautismos de Color, Libro I, 1875-1901, for San
Antonio Abad, Jibaro.
ARCHIVO PROVINCIAL DE SANCTI SpiRITUS, SANCTI SPiRITUS
This provincial archive contains, in addition to municipal records, many of
the papers of the Valle-Iznaga family, large landowners of the region. For
this study, the most important documents were the accounts, inventories,
arid payrolls of sugar plantations owned by the family. They are primarily
found in leg. 24 of the Fondo Valle-Iznaga, though there are relevant ma-
terials in other legajos of the same fondo. The Fondo Ayuntamiento also
contains information concerning the Valle-Iznaga sugar holdings, particU-
larly in legs. 3 and 4.
BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL JOSE MARTi, HAVANA
Colecci6n Cubana-The manuscript section of the Colecci6n Cubana con-
tains materials relevant to the study of slavery, particularly in the col-
lections titled Morales, Perez, and Suarez R. Their contents are indexed
in the card file of the Colecci6n Cubana.
Colecci6n Tulio Lobo-This as yet uncatalogued mass of documents con-
tains materials from various sugar plantations. Caja 7, for example, in-
cludes lists of patrocinados and employees on the Central Rosalia.

Spain
ARCHIVO HIST6RICO NACIONAL, MADRID
Secci6n de Ultramar-The documentation on slavery, emancipation, and
related issues in this rich collection of material from the old Ministerio
de Ultramar and from Cuba is widely scattered. The original Libros de
Registro are an important guide, for they help one to locate expedientes
on specific topics. The tyPed inventory available at the archive is also
essential for the identification of relevant legajos. In general, the following
groups of legajos proved most useful for this project:
Fomento: (information on colonization projects, agriculture, ingenios)
legs. 87, 88, 90, 91, 93, 107-110, 136, 153, 154, 173-176,226,278,280,
288.
Gracia YTusticia: (information on crime, taxes, property) legs. 816, 825,
1762, 1780, 1827, 1833, 1927, 1929, 1932.
Gobierno: (government correspondence on policy issues, appeals of de-
cisions concerning slaves, data on conditions in Cuba) legs. 3489, 3490,
3547-3553, 3555, 4438-4440, 4517, 4528 10, 4687, 4709, 4714, 4715, 4721,

304
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

4726,4727,4740,4759-4761,4780,4786,4787,4801,4802, 4805, 4807,

4809,4810,4813-4815,4818-4820,4831,4834, 4881-4885, 4896.
Gobierno. 1899: (miscellaneous government documentation, appar-
ently filed after the loss of Cuba, but generally dated earlier) legs. 4926-
4928, 4930-4932, 4939, 4940, 4942, 4943, 4957-4959.
Serie adicional: (contains some information on political prisoners and
banditry, as well as indices to various groups of documents) legs. 5531,
5818,5840,5844,5879.
ARCHIVO GENERAL DE INDIAS, SEVILLE
Most of the AGI's holdings on Cuba cover an earlier period. There is im-
portant material, however, in the Archivo Polavieja of the Secci6n de Di-
versos. Leg. 7 contains information from Camilo Polavieja's period of tenure
as governor of the province of Santiago de Cuba and later of the island, and
includes documents on banditry and rebellions. Leg. 8 contains a printed
volume on an alleged uprising of persons of color in Santiago de Cuba in
1880.
ARCHIVO DEL MINISTERIO DE ASUNTOS EXTERIORES, MADRID
Cuba. Ultramar-Of particular interest for the study of emancipation is
the correspondence on the importation of laborers from the colonies of
other European powers, located in leg. 294l.
BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL DE ESPANA, MADRID
Secci6n de Manuscritos-On nineteenth-century Cuba see the Papeles Re-
lativos a las Provincias de Ultramar Coleccionados por D. Eugenio Alonso
y Sanjurjo, sig. 13228.
REAL ACADEMIA DE HISTORIA, MADRID
Colecci6n Fernandez Duro-This rich collection is composed primarily of
insurgent documents from the early years of the Ten Years' War. Virtually
all of its lega;os were of use for Chapter II of this study.
Colecci6n Caballero de Rodas-Contains papers of General Caballero de
Rodas, briefly captain-general of Cuba during the Ten Years' War.

France
MINISTERE DES AFFAIRES ETRANGERES, PARIS
For scattered information on economic and political conditions, see the
dispatches found in Correspondance Commerciale, La Havane, Vol. 22,
1876-June 1885, and Depeches politiques des Consuls, Espagne, Vol. 92,
1878-1880 and Vol. 96, 1886-1887.

England
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
A classic source, though not without drawbacks, is the collection of consular
reports with particular reference to slavery and the slave trade to be found
in Foreign Office 84. See in particular pieces 1542, 1568, 1593, 1641, and
1719.

305
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

BRITISH MUSEUM
The Layard Papers in the British Museum Manuscript Collection provide
insight into conditions in Cuba and politics in Spain. See in particular Add.
mss. 39000-39011, and 39121-39122.

United States
U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES
The U.S. National Archives contain a range of materials useful for the study
of nineteenth-century Cuba. Those most relevant to this work were the
case files and briefs of the Spanish Treaty Claims Commission, found in
Record Group 76, Entries 352 and 353.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY CUBAN AND SPANISH

PERIODICALS
The Biblioteca del Instituto de Literatura y Lingiiistica de la Academia de
Ciencias and the Colecci6n Cubana de la Biblioteca Nacional Jose Marti,
both in Havana, are major sources for Cuban newspapers of this period.
Local periodicals can also be found in provincial archives, such as the Ar-
chivo Provincial de Sancti Spiritus, and in the library of the Universidad
Central de las Villas in Santa Clara. Single issues of a variety of publications
frequently appear with government documents concerning press censorship
in the Archivo Hist6rico Nacional, Madrid, and in the Archivo Nacional
de Cuba. The periodicals collection of the Biblioteca Nacional de Espana
in Madrid includes major Cuban and Spanish newspapers and journals.
The periodicals consulted for this study include the following. The re-
searcher should note that frequently only short runs or single issues of the
minor papers have survived.
E1 A.B.C. Peri6dico independiente de intereses generales. Cienfuegos.
La Antorcha. Trinidad.
Aurora del Yumuri. Matanzas.
Bo1etin Oficia1 de 1a Habana. Havana.
Bo1etin Oficia1 de 1a Hacienda de 1a Isla de Cuba. Havana.
Bo1etin Oficia1 de Hacienda y de Estadistica de 1a Isla de Cuba. Havana.
Bo1etin Oficia1 de 1a Provincia de Santa Clara. Santa Clara.
Bo1etin Oficia1 del Ministerio de Ultramar. Madrid.
E1 Dem6crata. Havana.
Diario de 1a Marina. Havana.
La Discusi6n. Havana.
E1 Eco de las Villas. Santa Clara.
E1 Espanol. Diario politico de 1a tarde. Havana.
La Fraternidad. Peri6dico politico independiente consagrado a 1a defensa
de los intereses generales de 1a raza de color. Havana.
La Fraternidad. Semanario de literatura, de intereses generales, y 6rgano
de 1a Sociedad Artistica y Literaria E1 Progreso. Sancti Spiritus.

306
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gaceta de la Habana. Havana.

Gaceta de Madrid. Madrid.
El Horizonte. Peri6dico literario y de intereses generales. Organo de la c1ase
de color. Esperanza.
La Lucha. Diario republicano. Havana.
Minerva. Revista quincenal dedicada a la mujer de color. Havana.
E10riente.
El Pais. Diario Autonomista. Organo de la Junta Central del Partido Li-
beral. Havana.
El Parlamento. Havana.
El Popular. Diario Radical. Havana.
El Productor. Havana.
La Propaganda. Peri6dico Liberal. Sancti Spiritus.
Revista de Agricultura del Circulo de Hacendados de la Isla de Cuba.
Havana.
Revista Econ6mica. Havana.
El Sagua. Sagua la Grande.

OTHER PERIODICALS
The Anti-Slavery Reporter. London.
Willett & Gray, Weekly Statistical Sugar Trade Journal. New York.

BOOKS, ARTICLES, AND PAMPHLETS

Acosta y Albear, Francisco. Memoria sobre el estado actual de Cuba. Ha-
vana: A. Peg6, 1874.
Adamson, Alan H. Sugar Without Slaves: The Political Economy of British
Guiana, 1838-1904. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972.
Aimes, Hubert H. S. "Coartaci6n: A Spanish Institution for the Advance-
ment of Slaves into Freedmen." The Yale Review 17 (February 1909): 412-
31.
- - . A History of Slavery in Cuba, 1511-1868. New York: G. P. Putnam's
Sons, 1907; reprint ed., New York: Octagon Books, 1967.
- - - . "The Transition from Slave to Free Labor in Cuba." The Yale Review
15 (May 1906): 68-84.
Albert, Bill and Adrian Graves. Crisis and Change in the International Sugar
Economy, 1860-1914. Norwich: ISC Press, 1984.
Alden, Dauril, ed. Colonial Roots of Modern Brazil. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1973.
Anuario de estudios cubanos. Torno 1. La republica neocolonial. Havana:
Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1975.
Aptheker, Herbert. To Be Free: Studies in American Negro History. New
York: International Publishers, 1948; second edition, 1968.
Armas y Cespedes, Francisco de. De la esc1avitud en Cuba. Madrid: Esta-
blecimiento Tipografico de T. Fortanet, 1866.

307
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aufhauser, R. Keith. "Slavery and Technological Change." The Journal of

Economic History 34 (March 19741: 36-50.
Atkins, Edwin F. Sixty Years in Cuba: Reminiscences of Edwin F. Atkins.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Private printing at the Riverside Press, 1926.
Bacardf y Moreau, Emilio. Cr6nicas de Santiago de Cuba. 3 vals. Barcelona:
Carbonell y Esteva, 1908-1913; reprint ed., 10 vols. ed. Amalia Bacardf
Cape. Madrid: Breogan, 1972-1973.
Ballou, Maturin M. Due South or Cuba Past and Present. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1885; reprint ed., New York: Young People's Missionary Move-
ment of the United States and Canada, 1910.
Barnet, Miguel. Biografia de un cimarr6n. Havana: Instituto de Etnologia
y Folklore, Academia de Ciencias de Cuba, 1966.
Barras y Prado, Antonio de las. La Habana a mediados del siglo xix. Madrid:
Imprenta de la Ciudad Lineal, 1925.
Bauer, Arnold J. "Rural Workers in Spanish America: Problems of Peonage
and Oppression." Hispanic American Historical Review 59 (February
19791: 34-63.
Beck, Earl R. "The Martinez Campos Government of 1879: Spain's Last
Chance in Cuba." Hispanic American Historical Review 56 (May 19761:
268-89.
Berlin, Ira. Slaves Without Masters. New York: Random House, 1974.
Berlin, Ira, Joseph P. Reidy, Leslie S. Rowland, eds. Freedom: A Documen-
tary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867. Series II: The Black Military
Experience. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Besada Ramos, Benito. "Antecedentes econ6micos de la Guerra de los Diez
Aiios." Economia y desarrollo 13 (September-October 19721: 155-62.
Bremer, Fredrika. Cartas desde Cuba. Havana: Editorial Arte y Literatura,
1980.
Burn, William Laurence. Emancipation and Apprenticeship in the British
West Indies. London: Jonathan Cape, 1937.
Cano, Bienvenido, and Federico Zalba. Ellibro de los Sindicos de Ayun-
tamiento y de las Juntas Protectoras de Libertos. Havana: Imprenta del
Gobierno, 1875.
Cantero, Justo German. Los ingenios: Colecci6n de vistas de los principales
ingenios de azucar de la isla de Cuba. Havana: L. Marquier, 1857.
Carr, Raymond. Spain: 1808-1939. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.
Centro de Investigaciones Hist6ricas. Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueiia.
El proceso abolicionista en Puerto Rico: Documentos para su estudio. 2
vols. San Juan, Puerto Rico: 1974, 1978.
Cepero Bonilla, Raul. Azucar y abolici6n. Havana: Editorial Cenit, 1948;
reprint ed., Barcelona: Editorial Critica, 1976.
China. Tsung li ko kuo shih wu ya men. Report of the Commission sent
by China to Ascertain the Condition of Chinese Coolies in Cuba. Shang-
hai: Imperial Maritime Customs Press, 1876; reprint ed., Taipei: Ch'eng
Wen Publishing Company, 1970.
Clark, William J. Commercial Cuba. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1898.

308
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clark, Victor. "Labor Conditions in Cuba." Bulletin of the Department of

Labor 41 (July 1902): 663-793.
C6digo penal vigente en las Islas de Cuba y Puerto Rico mandado observar
por Real Decreto de 23 de Mayo de 1879. Madrid: Pedro Nunez, 1886.
Cok Marquez, Patria. liLa introducci6n de los ferrocarriles porta tiles en la
industria azucarera, 1870-1880." Santiago 41 (March 1981): 137-47.
Conrad, Robert. The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, 1850-1888. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1972.
Conspiraci6n de la raza de color descubierta en Santiago de Cuba el lOde
diciembre de 1880 siendo comandante general de la provincia el Exmo.
Sr. Teniente General Don Camilo Polavie;a y Castillo. Santiago de Cuba:
Secci6n Tipografica del Estado Mayor, 1880.
Corbitt, Duvon C. "Immigration in Cuba." Hispanic American Historical
Review 22 (May 1942): 280-308.
- - . A Study of the Chinese in Cuba, 1847-1947. Wilmore, Ky.: Asbury
College, 1971.
Corwin, Arthur F. Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 1817-1886.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967.
Craton, Michael, ed. Roots and Branches: Current Directions in Slave Stud-
ies. Toronto: Pergamon Press, 1979.
Cuba, Archivo Nacional. Catalogo de los fondos del Conse;o de Admi-
nistraci6n de la Isla de Cuba. 3 vols. Havana: Archivo Nacional, 1948-
1950.
Cuba, Centro de Estadfstica. Noticias estadisticas de la Isla de Cuba, en
1862. Havana: Imprenta del Gobierno, 1864.
Cuba, Centro de Estudios Demograficos. La poblaci6n de Cuba. Havana:
Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976.
Cuba. Comisi6n de Estadfstica. Cuadro estadistico de la siempre fiel Isla
de Cuba, correspondiente al ano de 1846. Havana: Imprenta del Gobierno
y Capitanfa General, 1847.
Dana, Richard Henry, Jr. To Cuba and Back: A Vacation Voyage. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1859; reprint ed., Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illi-
nois University Press, 1966.
Davis, David Brion. Slavery and Human Progress. New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1984.
Dean, Warren. Rio Claro: A Brazilian Plantation System, 1820-1920. Stan-
ford: Stanford University Press, 1976.
Deerr, Noel. The History of Sugar. 2 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1949-
1950.
Deschamps Chapeaux, Pedro. El negro en la economia habanera del siglo
xix. Havana: Uni6n de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, 1971.
- - - . El negro en el periodismo cubano en el siglo xix. Havana: Ediciones
R., 1963.
Diembicz, Andres. "Poblamiento post-azucarero en Cuba: Perduraci6n y
funciones socio-econ6micas actuales." Economia y desarrollo 34 (March-
April 1976): 99-115.

309
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dumont, Henri. "Antropologfa y patologia comparada de los negros escla-

vos." Revista Bimestre Cubana 10, no. 3 (May-June 1915)-11, no. 2
(March-April 1916).
Dumoulin, John. "El primer desarrollo del movimiento obrero y la forma-
ci6n del proletariado en el sector azucareroj Cruces 1886-1902." Islas 48
(May-August 1974): 3-66.
Edo y Llop, Enrique. Memoria hist6rica de Cienfuegos y su jurisdicci6n.
2nd ed. Cienfuegos: J. Andreu, 1888.
Eichner, Alfred E. The Emergence of Oligopoly: Sugar Refining as a Case
Study. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969.
Eisenberg, Peter L. The Sugar Industry in Pernambuco: Modernization
Without Change, 1840-1910. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1974.
Ely, Roland T. Comerciantes cubanos del sig10 xix. Bogota: Aedita Editores,
1961.
- - - . Cuando reinaba su majestad e1 azucar. Buenos Aires: Ed. Suda-
mericana, 1963.
Engerman, Stanley, and Eugene Genovese, eds. Race and Slavery in the
Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies. Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1975.
Entralgo, Elias Jose. La 1iberaci6n etnica cubana. Havana: Universidad de
La Habana, 1953.
Exposici6n del Exmo. Senor Conde de Vega Mar. Madrid: Establecimiento
Tipografico de T. Fortanet, 1868.
Fernandes, Florestan. The Negro in Brazilian Society. Translated by Jac-
queline D. Skiles, A. Brunel, and Arthur Rothwell. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1969.
Fernandez Robaina, Tomas. Unpublished bibliography of Afro-Cuban
history.
Fleisig, Heywood. "Comment on Keith Aufhauser, 'Slavery and Technolog-
ical Change.' " The Journal of Economic History 34 (March 1974): 79-83.
Flory, Thomas. "Fugitive Slaves and Free Society: The Case of Brazil." The
Journal of Negro History 64 (Spring 1979): 116-30.
Fogel, Robert William, and Stanley L. Engerman. "Philanthropy at Bargain
Prices: Notes on the Economics of Gradual Emancipation." The Journal
of Legal Studies 3 (June 1974): 377-401.
Foner, Laura, and Eugene D. Genovese, eds. Slavery in the New World: A
Reader in Comparative History. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1969.
Foner, Philip S. A History of Cuba and Its Relations with the United States.
2 vols. New York: International Publishers, 1962, 1963.
Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, and Eugene D. Genovese. Fruits of Merchant Cap-
ital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Cap-
italism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Franco, Jose Luciano. Los pa1enques de los negros cimarrones. Havana:
Departamento de Orientaci6n Revolucionaria del Comite Central del Par-
tido Comunista de Cuba, 1973.

310
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Friedlander, Heinrich. Historia econ6mica de Cuba. Havana: Jesus Montero,

1944.
Frucht, Richard. "A Caribbean Social Type: Neither 'Peasant' nor 'Prole-
tarian.' /I Social and Economic Studies 16 (September 1967): 295-300.
Gallenga, A. The Pearl of the Antilles. London: Chapman and Hall, 1873.
Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, fordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New
York: Random House, 1974.
- - - . The World the Slaveholders Made: Two Essays in Interpretation.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1969.
Gerteis, Louis S. From Contraband to Freedman: Federal Policy toward
Southern Blacks, 1861-1865. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press,
1973.
G6mez, Juan Gualberto. La cuesti6n de Cuba en 1884. Historia y soluciones
de los partidos cubanos. Madrid: Imprenta de Aurelio J. Alaria, 1885.
Graham, Richard. "Slavery and Economic Development: Brazil and the
United States South in the Nineteenth Century." Comparative Studies
in Society and History 23 (October 1981): 620-55.
Great Britain. Parliament. Parliamentary Papers (Lords), 1875, vol. 23 (Slave
Trade No.2) "Correspondence Respecting Slavery in Cuba and Puerto
Rico, and the State of the Slave Population and Chinese Coolies in those
Islands./I
- - . Parliamentary Papers (Commons), 1878, vol. 67 (Slave Trade No.
1) "Report on the Labour Question in Cuba./I
- - . Parliamentary Papers (Lords), 1882, vol. 24 (Slave Trade No.3)
"Report by Acting Consul-General Carden on the Number and Condition
of the Slaves in Cuba./I
Green, William A. British Slave Emancipation. The Sugar Colonies and the
Great Experiment, 1830-1865. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1976.
Guerra y Sanchez, Ramiro. Azucar y poblaci6n en las Antillas. Havana:
Cultural, 1944; reprint ed., Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976.
- - - . La guerra de los diez 0l10S, 1868-1878. 2 vols. Havana: Cultural,
1950-1952; reprint ed., Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1972.
- - - . Manual dehistoria de Cuba. 2nd ed. Havana: Cultural, 1938; reprint
ed., Havana: Consejo Nacional de Cultura, 1962.
- - - , ed. Historia de la naci6n cubana. 10 vols. Havana: Editorial Historia
de la Naci6n Cubana, 1952.
Gutman, Herbert. The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1976.
Hall, Douglas. Free famaica, 1838-1865: An Economic History. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1959.
Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo. Social Control in Slave Plantation Societies: A
Comparison of St. Domingue and Cuba. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1971.
Helly, Denise. Ideologie et ethnicite: Les Chinois Macao a Cuba: 1847-
1886. Montreal: Les Presses de l'Universite de Montreal, 1979.

311
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Higman, B. W. Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, 1807-1834. Cam-

bridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Hirschman, Albert O. Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public
Action. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.
- - - . The Strategy of Economic Development. New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1958.
Hoemel, Robert B. "Sugar and Social Change in Oriente, Cuba, 1898-1946."
Journal of Latin American Studies 8 INovember 1976): 215-49.
Holt, Thomas C. "The Problem of Freedom: The Political Economy of
Jamaica after Slavery. II Forthcoming.
Hyatt, Pulaski F., and John T. Cuba: Its Resources and Opportunities. New
York: J. S. Ogilvie, 1899.
Ibanez, Francisco Feliciano. Observaciones sabre 1a utilidad y con venien cia
del estab1ecimiento en esta isla de gran des ingenios centra1es. Havana:
Imprenta y Litografia Obispo 27, 1880.
Ibarra, Jorge. Ideo10gfa Mambisa. Havana: Instituto Cubano del Libro, 1972.
Iglesias Garcia, Fe. "Algunos aspectos de la distribuci6n de la tierra en 1899."
Santiago 40 IDecember 1980): 119-78.
- - - . "Caracteristicas de la poblaci6n cubana en 1862." Revista de 1a
Biblioteca Naciona1 Jose Marti, 3rd series, 22 ISeptember-December
1980): 89-110.
- - - . "EI censo cubano de 1877 y sus diferentes versiones." Santiago 34
!June 1979): 167-214.
Izard, Miguel. Manufactureros, industriales, y revo1ucionarios. Barcelona:
Editorial Critica, 1979.
Jenks, Leland Hamilton. Our Cuban Colony: A Study in Sugar. New York:
Vanguard Press, 1928.
Jimenez, Juan Bautista. Los esc1avos b1ancos, par un colona de Las Villas.
Havana: A. Alvarez y Comp., 1893.
Jimenez Pastrana, Juan. Los Chinos en las 1uchas par 1a liberaci6n cubana
(1847-1930). Havana: Instituto de Historia, 1963.
Kiple, Kenneth F. Blacks in Colonial Cuba, 1774-1899. Gainesville: The
University Presses of Florida, 1976.
Klein, Herbert S. "Consideraciones sobre la viabilidad de la esclavitud y las
causas de la abolici6n en la Cuba del siglo diecinueve." La Torre 21 IJuly-
December 1973): 307-18.
- - - . Slavery in the Americas. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1967.
Knight, Franklin W. The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nation-
alism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
- - - . Slave Society in Cuba during the Nineteenth Century. Madison:
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318
 Index

abolition. See emancipation 19,77; of workers, 233, 293

abolitionism: in Brazil, 284; in Cuba, ayudantes (assistants), in 1868-1878 in-
136-37, 191,284; in Spain, 63-64, Ill, surgency, 48, 59
122,284 Azcarate, Nicolas, 267
abolitionists, charges against juntas, 133,
149,158; denunciations of 1880 law, Badia, Jose, 286
174; pressures from, 176, 194; rela- barrac6n (slave barracks), 17, 18, 19, 19n
tions with slaves and patrocinados, Barrera, Jose, 103
75n, 184 batey (mill yard), 32, 289
accommodation, by slaves andpatroci- Beal, P. M., 231, 243
nados, 169-71 Beltran, Jose, 182
Acosta, Cecilio, 203 Bernardino, patrocinado, 153
administrators: colonial, 7; of estates, Betancourt, Joaquin, 55
54,55, 178, 179. See also sugar bohfo (palm hut), 17, 18,245
plantations Brazil: abolitionism in, 284; after eman-
African languages, 66 cipation, 241; slavery in, 26, 92; sugar
Afro-Cuban society, transformation of in,208,284,285
after emancipation, 264-78 British West Indies, apprenticeship in,
age, disputes concerning, 144. See also 180, 181. See also Jamaica
Moret Law Brocal, Antonio, 159
agricultural census of 1877,90
Aimes, Hubert, 76 caballerfa (unit of measurement equal to
Alava, ingenio, 98 33.3 acres), 22
Alfonso XII (district), cane farms in, 210 cabildos de naci6n (associations of slave
Angelita, ingenio, work force on, 69, and free persons of African origin), 9,
103-107 66, 163, 164; cabildo Arriero, 266, 268;
Antolines, Catalina, 79 cabildo Congo, 266; after slavery, 265-
Arenciba, Gabriela, 167 68
Argudin, Clementina, 153 Calvo and Co., 154
Argudfn, Jose Suarez. See Suarez Calvo, Manuel, 67n, 224
Argudfn, Jose Cambaca, Lucas, xi
Argudin, Justo, 245 campesinos (country people): and cane
Ariosa, Agustin, 185, 187 farming; 210; and 1868-1878 in sur-
Armas, Francisco de, on free labor, 37 gency, 45,46
Atkins, Edwin, 207, 210, 232; and insur- Canal de Vento, 71
gents, 289 Canary Islands, immigrants from, 215-16
Aufhauser, R. Keith, 27 Candelaria, ingenio, 32
autonomy: of former slaves and patroci- Candelaria, potrero, 53
nados, 167, 193, 194,237,247,253; of cane fires, 62, 118,290,291
libertos, 50-54; of slaves, xii, xiv, 15- Caracas, ingenio, 40n

319
 INDEX

Cardenas, Nicolas de, 177, 178 opment of, 208-13; and former slaves,
Caridad, ingenio, 151 240-42
Carlos, a slave, 81 colonia Icane farm). See colonato
Carlota, a slave, 106 colonia militar Imilitary settlement),
Carreras, Jose, 188 215
cartillas Iworkbooks), 236 colonization, military, 102,215
Casino Espanol de Hombres de Color, colonos Icane farmers) 203,204,260; or-
269,274 ganization among, 286; range of per-
Castelar, Emilio, 65 sons in category, 212. See also
Catholic Church, and slavery, II, 13,74, colonato
265 Comisi6n Central de Colonizaci6n, 100
cattle ranches, population on, 11 Commission of Enquiry, sent by China,
censorship, press, 136, 184 33, 100
censuses, Cuban, discussion of, 6n, 7n, compadrazgo Iritual kinship), among
86n, 256n slaves andpatrocinados, 18, 18n, 163
centrales Icentral sugar mills), 207, 208- Concepci6n, ingenio, 97n
12,232,247 Conchita, central, 210
Cepero Bonilla, Raul, 48, 276 Conga, Filomena, xi
Cespedes, Carlos Manuel de, 45, 46, 47 Congo, Magin, 154
Chac6n, Juan Bautista, 116 Consejo de Administraci6n: appeals to,
children: education of, 167, 183; labor of, 80, 129, 132, 152; attitudes toward ab-
183; maintenance of, 167; under the olition, 195; on the cabildos de na-
Moret Law, 68, 69, 93; obstacles to ci6n, 267; on immigration, 213; on in-
freedom of, 166-67 tegration, 274-75; on vagrancy, 220
China, government of, and immigration Conspiraci6n de la Liga Antillana, 270
to Cuba, 217. See also Commission of Constitutional Union IConservative)
Enquiry party, 136, 172; and the pa trona to,
Chinese laborers: behavior of, 33, 34; 124; on race, 270, 276-77
complaints of, 33; and cuadrillas, 99; contracts, 71; of Chinese laborers, 29-34;
in 1868-1878 insurgency, 57-58,112; between colonos and mills, 211-12
numbers of, 89, 90, 100; relationship contradictions, within slavery,S, 28,
to slaves, 109-10; status of, 29-35, 120; 28n, 91, 97, 108-10
and technology, 28,98 contramayoralldriver), 178
cimarrones lrunaways), 30, 124 conucos Iprovision grounds), IS, 16,50,
Circulo de Hacendados. See Planters' 259; sale of goods from, 149-50; after
Association slavery, 183,244-45
Circulo de Obreros, 272 convenidos Islaves freed by the Pact of
Civil Guard, 280 Zanj6n), lIS, 117
civil rights, campaign for, 272-78, 281-82 convict labor, 103
Civil War IU.S.)' 83 Corbitt, Duvon, 99
class relations, 237, 237n; on centrales, cordellunit of measurement equal to
289; after emancipation, 202 400 square meters), 257
Claudio Sarria,289 Cortes. See Spain, Parliament
coartci6n Igradual self-purchase): de- Corwin, Arthur F., 5n, 25n
fined, 13; in 1870s, 14, 74-77 passim, courts, patrocinado appeals to, 188
129; incidence of, 14; limitations on, Cowley, Rafael: on freedmen, 242; on
82; regional patterns of, 161. See also immigration, 214; on smallholding,
self-purchase 246; on vagrancy, 220
coffee plantations, slaves on, 11 Crecencio, a slave, 142-43
colona to Isystem of cane farming): devel- credit: and sugar plantations, 35, 121,

320
 INDEX

195; use of, by workers, 235, 236 Eleuterio, a Chinese worker, 151
Creole elite, 7 emancipados (Africans nominally freed
Criolla, Caridad, 156 from captured slave shipsl, 223; and
Criolla, Panfilo, 154 the Moret Law, 70, 71
crops cultivated, by slaves and former emancipation: character of, xii, xiv, 40,
slaves, 16, 17,255-64 passim. See also 127,163,167-69,279-82; comparison
conucos of Cuban with that elsewhere, 77, 283-
cuadrilla de Pomares, 203 85; dynamics of, 6,168,189,193-94;
cuadrillas (work gangsj: Chinese labor- and politics, 39-41, 63-66, 136-37,283;
ers in, 99, 101, 120; former slaves in, and regional patterns, 190-92. See also
229; use of, 203-204 Moret Law; patronato; slavery; Spain,
Cuba, geography, 1878 provincial divi- government of
sions, 4, 21, 21n employers, divisions among, 189. See
Cuban Junta (New Yorkl, 62 also planters
Cuban Revolutionary Party, 287 Espana, ingenio, 98, 173; Chinese work-
Cuevas, Francisco, 252 ers on, 33
estancias (small farms devoted to food
Dahan, Luis, 115 cropsl, population on, 8, 11
debt: of Chinese workers, 30; of former Estrada Palma, Tomas, 114
slaves, 234; of patrocinados, 188; of ethnicity, conflicts over, 59-60, 66
planters, 35, 35n. See also credit exports of sugar, 84, 207
Delicias, ingenio, 97n, 101
Demajagua, ingenio, 45 family strategies, of former slaves, 242-
Democratic party, 137 44. See also kinship
depression of 1884, 195 Felipa, a liberta, 53
dep6sitos (depotsj: of Chinese laborers, Fernandez de Castro, delegate to Parlia-
100; of runaway slaves, 124 ment, 124
Desage, Jorge, 103 Fernandez, Juan Bautista, 32
Deschamps Chapeaux, Pedro, 252n Fernandina, ingenio, 55
Desengano, ingenio, 34n Fernando, patrocinado, 154
Destino, ingenio, 95 flight: oflibertos, 51, 53, 54; of patroci-
Diaz Torriente, Francisco, 101, 102 nados, 189. See also cimarrones
Dionisio, a liberto, 54 Flor de Cuba, ingenio, 33
discrimination, racial, 8-9, 241, 272, 274 Florentino, a liberto, 60-61
distribution of land. See land food, issued to workers, 229-30
distribution former slaves, 227-54, 255-93 passim.
domestic service, slaves in, 54, 88 See also patrocinados
Dominguez, Juana, 163 Foster-Canovas treaty, 207, 285
"Don" (titlej, use of, 209, 274 Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, 109n
dotaci6n (permanent work forcel, 28, free labor, ideology of, 37, 39,214,284.
90n, 110, 112,203 See also labor
\
free persons of color: assistance to patro-
education, integration of, 272-74, 272n, cinados, 163, 164, 164n; distribution
275,278; See also children, education of, 8; position of, 9
of Freedmen's Bureau, 77, 77n, 228, 285
El Banco, ingenio, 103 French West Indies, cane farms in, 208
E1 Dem6crata, 164
E1 Pais, 276 Galicia, immigrants from, 217
E1 Productor, 230 Gamboa, Maximo, 222
El Progreso, 273 Garcia, Calixto, 116

321
 INDEX

Garcia, Manuel, wife of, 223 also self-purchase

Genovese, Eugene D., 5n, 28n, 109n, ingenio (complex of fields and sugar
120n mill). See sugar plantations
Gervasia, a slave, 106 insurgency, 1868-1878,45-62. See also
godparents. See compadrazgo Ten Years' War; insurgents, 1868-
G6mez, Juan Gualberto, 269, 271 1878
G6mez, Maximo, 114,287,288 insurgency, 1895-1898,287-93; partici-
Gonzalez, H., 149 pation of Afro-Cubans in, 287-89
Goytisolo, Agustin, 93 insurgents, 1868-1878,45-62 passim;
gradualism: aims of, 40, 127; character aims of, 46; composition of army, 56-
of, xii, xiv, 279-82. See also 59; policy on libertos, 49-52; policy
emancipation on slavery, 46, 47; weakness of, 113-
Grant, Ulysses S., 47 14
Great Britain, 217; policy on abolition, integration, struggle over, 272-78, 274n.
283-84 See also civil rights
Guabairo, colonia, 243 interracial marriage, policy concerning,
Guaimaro, Assembly of, 47 8, 9, 13,38
Guerra Chiquita, 116-17
Guerra, Ramiro: on Ten Years' War, 41n,
Jamaica, 149, 283; after emancipation,
114; on canefarming, 211
253
guerrilla (irregular Spanish forces), 113
Jimenez, Juan Bautista, 286
Guiana, immigrants to, 217
Jordan, Thomas, 57, 59
Josefita, ingenio, 103
Hacienda, intendancy of (Treasury), and
Juan, a patrocinado, 146
vagrancy, 220
Junta de Agricultura, 235
Haiti, slave marketing in, 149
Junta for the Repression of Vagrancy,
Hart, Keith, 28n
221-22
Havana (city): population of, 250; and va-
Junta of Agriculture, Industry and
grancy, 221, 221n
Commerce, 195, 213
Havana (province): pattern of emancipa-
Junta Provincial de Santiago de Cuba,
tion in, 191-92; after slavery, 263
273
hierarchy, elite concepts of, 237, 237n
Junta Superior de Instrucci6n Publica,
Hirschman, Albert 0.,27
273
Hoernel, Robert, 250n
Juntas de Patronato: behavior of, 133-
Hormiguero, ingenio, 240
35, 137-39; composition of, xii, 129;
hours of work. See work rhythms
corruption in, 134-35; importance of,
Hughes, 1. F., 232, 290
184, 188; and plantation visits, 143,
Ibanez, Francisco Feliciano, 211; and 176, 177, 178; records of, 228; rulings
central mills, 208; and Juntas Protec- of, 177, 179
Juntas Protectoras de Libertos: charac-
toras de Libertos, 77-78; lobbying ef-
ter of, 77-79; establishment of, 64;
forts of, 187; and military settle-
membership and functioning of, 68,
ments, 215; and the Moret Law, 73
79-81, 79n; on numbers of slaves
immigrant labor, in Santa Clara, 260.
freed, 71, 72; and slave registration,
See also immigration
122
immigration: during and after emanci-
pation, 213-18, 213n, 217; in the
1870s, 101; of families, 216; of field- kinship: after emancipation, 244; im-
workers, 216 portance of, for patrocinados, 163;
"indemnification of services," under among slaves, 17-19. See also
1880 law, 129, 149, 152, 152n. See compadrazgo

322
 INDEX

Klein, Herbert S., lIn Lucumf, Juan, 75-76

Knight, Franklin W., 5 Luisa, a slave, 78

Maceo, Antonio: and the Cuban Revo-

La Antorcha, 270-71 lutionary Party, 287; during 1868-
La Discusi6n, 274 1878 insurgency, 60, 114; and the
La Fraternidad, 269, 271, 273, 275, 276 Guerra Chiquita, 116; ideology of,
La Gran Azucarera, 93 288; and the Pact of Zanj6n, 115
La Igualdad, 275 Majana, ingenio, 103
La Ponina, ingenio, 34 Mamerta, patrocinada, 153
La Propaganda, 160, 236 Mamerto, patrocinado, 153
La Sagra, Ram6n de: on Chinese labor, Manifesto of Montecristi, 288
28n, 32, 34; on free labor, 37, 39; on manumission, 14, 187
slave labor, 26n Manzano, Juan Francisco, 20n
labor, character of, 20, 189; costs of, 30, Mapos, ingenio: and 1895-1898 insur-
31, 119; division of, 26-28, 232, 233; gency, 292; freedom of patrocinados
patterns of, after emancipation, 202, on, xi, xii, 154, 156-57; labor on, 202
201-54 passim; supply of, 91, 239, Margarita, a slave, 106
242, 279. See also labor control marketing, by slaves and patrocinados, .
labor control: after emancipation, 201, 16, 17, 149-50. See also conucos
223-24, 224-26; during 1895-1898 in- maroon communities Isocieties com-
surgency, 291-92 posed of runaway slaves), 50. See also
Lagardere, Rodolfo de, 269, 277 palenques
land distribution, 249, 249n, 250, 250n marriage, 270; among former slaves,
landholding and land use, regional pat- 229, 229n; interracial, 8, 9, 13, 38;
terns of, 255-64 among slaves, 17; among workers,
Las Canas, ingenio, later central, 33, 243
98,210 marronage Iflight of slaves), 118. See
Lazaro, a slave, 79 also cimarrones; slaves, runaways
Le6n, Jose, 79 Marti, Jose, 287, 288
LiberallAutonomist) party: in 1880s, Martin, a slave, 106
136-37; and the patronato, 124; on Martinez Campos, Arsenio: and Cuban
race, 276 politics, 136; and slaves in insurgent
liberalism, in Spain, 63-64, 284 forces, 112, 113
libertos Ifreed men and women; also Martinez-Alier, Verena, 13, 38
children and the elderly declared free Martinez-Fortun, Jose, 269
by the Moret Law): behavior of, dur- masters: attitudes toward abolition,
ing 1868-1878 insurgency, 50-55; 107, 123, 124; and the Moret Law,
flight of, 51, 53, 54; labor of, 48, 51; 67, 73, 74, 82-83; and the patronato,
in Puerto Rico, 232; in rebel army, 172-97 passim; relations with liber-
60-61; relations with masters, 52-53, tos during 1868-1878 insurgency, 52-
54,60-61; status and treatment of, 53, 54, 60-61; and self-purchase, 155-
47-49, 55. See also children, under 56. See also planters
the Moret Law Mata, Juan de, 106
libreta Iworkbook), 221, 221n Matanzas Icity), population of, 251
Lincoln, Abraham, 38 Matanzas Iprovince): pattern of emanci-
Los Canos, ingenio, 290 pation in, 190-91; after slavery, 261-
Los esclavos blancos, 241 63; sugar production in, 21, 23
Louisiana, 27, 281 mayoralloverseer), 159, 178
Lucumf, Gonzala, 75-76 mayordomo Isteward), 159
Lucumf, Jacoba, 106 mayordomia Idispensary), 185
323
 INDEX

mechanization, of sugar production, 20, Nicolas, a patrocinado, 163

23. See also technology nonregistration of slaves. See slaves,
merchants: Catalan, 64; local, 185-86, registration of
210; relations with planters, 7 Nueva Teresa, ingenio: colon os on,
Mexico, workers from, 102 209; self-purchase on, 152-53, 154,
migration: to Africa, 251-52; to the cit- 155; work and workers on, 180, 181,
ies, 250-51; after emancipation, 247- 234
53; out of Matanzas, 263
Minerva: Revista Quincenal Dedicada O'Kelly: on insurgent communities, 50;
ala Muier de Color, 270 on insurgent forces, 56, 57, 58-59; on
Mintz, Sidney: on Caribbean peasan- slave marketing, 16
tries, 258n; on plantation discipline, Ortiz, Angel, 209
212; on slave marketing, 154-55 Ortiz, Fernando, on migration to Africa,
mobilization, political, after emancipa- 252n
tion, xiv, 288
Mala, Clara, 54 Pact of Zanj6n, 114, 116
Montalvo, Jose R., 276 palenques (societies of runaway slaves),
Montalvo, Maria de la Merced, 76 50,252-53
monte (hills), 56 Panama Canal, workers on, 281n
Monte, {inca, 249 Panfilo, a patrocinado, 163
Montejo, Esteban, 225; on labor, 228, pardo (mulatto), 269, 270
228n, 233; on plantation stores, 234; partidarios (sharecroppers), on estates,
on women's work, 243 104. See also sharecropping
Morales, Rafael, 51 patrocinados (apprentices): achieve-
More, Count of Casa: and immigration, ment of full freedom, 129, 132-33,
213, 215; lobbying of, 187; on Regla- 140, 144-45, 147-71; allies of, 161,
mento governing patronato, 173 163, 163n, 164; appeals by, 131-35,
moreno (black), 269, 270 137, 146-47; behavior of, 141-71 pas-
Moreno Fraginals, Manuel: on aboli- sim, 227; challenges to masters, 157-
tion, 5n, 15; on Chinese laborers, 28, 71; defined, 128. See also patronato
28n, 33n; on contradictions within patronato (apprenticeship): ambiguity
slavery, 26n, 109; on slave family, of, 139, 186; character of, 139-41;
17; on slave population, 92, 92n; on concept of, 127; early proposals for,
sugar, 20, 85, 85n Ill; establishment of, 123, 124; leg-
Moret Law, 63-83; aims of, 65-67; and acy of, 280, 281; provisions and en-
children, 68, 69, 93; effects of, 68, 71- forcement, 127-40
73, 121; and elderly, 69; evasion of, patronos (masters), 172-97 passim; de-
93 fined, 128; during 1868-1878 insur-
Moret, Segismundo, 64, 65 gency, 47; fears of, 165-66, 174; obli-
Marner, Magnus, 277n gations of, 130, 158. See also masters
mortgages. See credit; debt peasantry: development of, 244n, 250;
movilizados (released soldiers), on es- in Santiago de Cuba, 258
tates, 104 Pedro, a patrocinado, 163
"mutual accord" between patrono and Perez, Louis, Jr., 282n
patrocinado, 147, 169, 187, 188 Perez de la Riva, Juan, 249n
mutual aid societies, Afro-Cuban, 268- Perez Ferrer, Adolfo, 79
71,274 periodicals, Afro-Cuban, 269
Petra, a patrocinada, 147
iidiiigos (secret societies), 267 pigs, raised by patrocinados, 144, 150,
Natividad, ingenio, 203; plantation 159, 160
store at, 234, 235; wages on, 238 Pilar, a liberta, 49n

324
 INDEX

Pinar del Rio (province): pattern of 326; representatives at Reform Com-

emancipation in, 192; after slavery, mission, 39
263; sugar production in, 23 punishment, of patrocinados, 145, 173-
Pizarro, Jose Julian, 144, 146 76
Pizarro, Maria Igancia Conga, 144 Purio, ingenio, 228
plantation stores: in 1880s, 159; opposi-
tion to, 185-86; role in limiting mo- Quesada, M., 49
bility, 184-85; after slavery, 234, 235;
as a source of credit, 160 race relations, after emancipation, 232,
plantations, sugar. See sugar plantations 233, 274, 275, 285
planters: adaptations by, 84-110 pas- racial dominance: and immigration,
sim; attitudes toward abolition,S, 82, 214, 216; maintenance of, 9, 175. See
83, 96, Ill, 172; attitudes toward also discrimination
free labor, 119, 120, 120n; divisions railways, 211
among, 165-66; in the east, 117, 118; Ramos, Julian, 81
economic situation after slavery, 211, Rancho Veloz, cane farms in, 209
239; relations with merchants, 7; ties Rebello, Carlos, 21
to the United States, 207-208. See "reconcentration," policy of, 291-92
also masters Reconstruction (United States), 285
Planters' Association, 286; and aboli- Recurso, ingenio, 149
tion, 196; on wages, 238; on work Reform Commission of 1866-1867,39-
day, 231 41, 41n
Placida, a slave child, 80 Reform Commission of 1879, 117, 118-
Poey, Juan, on profitability of estates, 19; on vagrancy, 219
36 reformism, Cuban: in 1860s, 39; in
Polavieja, Camilo, 270; and banditry, 1880s, 136
223; in the east, ll7n, 259; and mili- registration of slaves. See slaves, regis-
tary settlements, 215; and the pa- tration of
tronato, 138 RegIa, Maria de, 144
Pollitt, Brian, 258n Reglamento de Libertos, 47, 48, 51
population: of color, regional distribu- Reglamento governing the Moret Law,
tion of, 248-49; of slaves and patroci- 68
nados, 9-11, 193, 194; structure of, in Reglamento governing the patronato:
1862, 6, 7. See also slave population establishment of, 132, 141, 172; pro-
Portilla, Lino, 103 visions of, 129, 174-75, 179-80
potreros (stock-raising farms), popula- rental of slaves, 97, 97n, 101
tion on, 8, 11 "renunciation" of the patronato, by
Pozos Dulces, Conde de, on sugar in- masters, 169, 187, 191
dustry,37 resistance, by slaves and patrocinados,
prefects, in 1868-1878 insurgency, 52- 169-71. See also slaves, resistance of
53 Revista de Agricultura, 234, 236, 286
productivity, 90, 98 Revolution of 1868 (Spain), 64
profitability of sugar production, 36, 37 Rillieux apparatus, 27
proletariat, rural, 258n, 263 Ripley, Eliza McHatton, 34n
Protectorado de Trabajo, 219 Rita, a liberta, 151
Puerto Principe (province): after slav- Robledo, Romero, 65
ery, 259-60; sugar production in, 23 Rodney, Walter, 233n
Puerto Principe, Audiencia of, 219-20 Rodriguez y Bernal, Tomas, 222
Puerto Rico: abolition of slavery in, Rodriguez, Pedro, 254n
Ill, 111n; former slaves in, 27, 27n; Rosa, a liberta, 52-53
immigrants from, 216; labor in, 231- rural guards, 224

325
 INDEX

S. Antonio Polo, ingenio, 209 87, 89, 90; and technology, 5, 5n, 26,
Sabanilla, ingenio, 55 27, 35, 91, 98, 108
Sagra, Ram6n de lao See La Sagra, Ra- slaves: in 1868-1878 insurgency, 58-59,
m6n de 112; initiatives of, xii, xiii, 19, 78;
Salamanca, governor general, and im- prices of, 13, 13n, 14n, 35n, 36n, 96-
migration, 216 97; registration of, 70, 80-82, 121-22,
San Agustin, ingenio, 95 145; rental of, 97, 97n, 101; resist-
San Carlos, ingenio, 222 ance of, 115, 121; runaways, 115,
San Fernando, ingenio: food on, 230; la- 117. See also insurgents, 1868-1878;
bor on, 202-204 libertos; patrocinados; slave
San Jose, potrero, 79 population
San Miguel, ingenio, 116 smallholding, after emancipation, 244-
San Rafael, ingenio (also called Armen- 47
teritos!, 142-43, 178 Socarras, Francisco, 52-53
San Vicente, ingenio, 154 social relations, among blacks, mulat-
Sanchez, Angelina, 54 tos, and whites, 9, 271-73, 277. See
Santa Ana, cane farms in, 209 also discrimination
Santa Clara (province): pattern of eman- Sociedad Colonizadora (Sagua la
cipation in, 190-91; after slavery, Grande!, 102
260-61; sugar production in, 23, 25 Sociedad Econ6mica de Amigos del
Santa Isabel de las Lajas, 92-96, 204-206 Pais, 242; and abolition, 196; on im-
Santa Rosa, ingenio, 53, 54, 97n migration, 213; on vagrancy, 220; on
Santiago de Cuba (province): mutual wages, 238
aid societies in, 270; pattern of eman- Sociedades de Instrucci6n y Recreo. See
cipation in, 192; after slavery, 256- mutual aid societies
59; sugar production in, 23 Sociedades de la Raza de Color. See
scrip, at company stores, 186, 234, 235 mutual aid societies
seasonality of demand for labor, 25, Soledad, ingenio and later central: and
202-204, 223, 280 insurgency, 289, 290; labor on, 232;
Secundina, a slave, 106 wages on, 238; workers on, 243
self-purchase: in the 1870s, 105-107; in Spain, colonial office. See Ultramar,
the 1880s, 129, 149-57 ministry of; Spain, government of
Semanario Militar, 102 Spain, government of: and Afro-Cu-
Serrano, Nicolas, on vagrancy, 221 bans, 65-66, 265, 268, 270, 273-75;
sevicia (excessive cruelty!, 145 colonial policy of, 7, 40, 41, 112-13,
sharecropping: on estates, 104; by liber- 201, 283, 285; and labor control after
tos, 52, 53, 55 emancipation, 225-26; military forces
Silva y Placeres, Emiliano, 290 of, 56, 115, 290-92; policy on emanci-
Silvestre, a slave, 106 pation, xii, 63, 64-68, 113, 118, 122,
stndico (protector of slaves!, 75 123, 130-31. See also Ultramar, min-
sitios de labor (small farms devoted to istry of
food crops!, population on, 8, 11 Spain, immigrants from, 7, 215, 217,
slave population, 9-11; decline in, 86- 218
89, 86n; distribution of, 11; structure Spain, Parliament: debates on abolition,
of, 92-96. See also emancipation; 64-67, 123-24, 195; seating of Cuban
slaves delegates, 114
slave trade, 10,37,38,39; contraband, Spanish Abolitionist Society, 63, 112.
93 See also abolitionism
slaveholders. See masters Stein, Stanley J., 92n
slavery: character of, xiii, 10-12, 13n, Stipendiary Magistrates, 77
14,19,107-108; importance of, 25, stipends, of patrocinados, 130; late pay-

326
 INDEX

ment of, 181, 182; nonpayment of, United States: abolition in, 38; atti-
158-59, 176; planters' petitions con- tudes of Southern planters, 120,
cerning, 181-82; rules concerning, 120n; market for sugar, 206, 226;
160 ownership of Cuban properties, 207,
stocks and chains, 174, 175, 176 250; policy toward Cuba, 38; policy
strikes, 224, 224n toward 1868-1878 insurgency, 47, 63,
Suarez Argudfn, Jose: and ingenio An- 113. See also tariffs; sugar, exports of
gelita, 103, 104; views on slavery, 67
subprefects. See prefects vagrancy: debate over, 218-21; prosecu-
suffrage, for Afro-Cubans, 65, 275-76 tion for, 221-25, 221n, 222n
sugar: beet, competition from, 206; ex- vales Iscrip): use of, 186, 234, 235. See
ports of, 84, 207; prices of, 84, 206- also plantation stores
207 Valle-Iznaga, family, 202
sugar plantations, 14, IS, 24, 85; labor Varona, Enrique Jose, on freedmen, 246,
force on, 90n, 91, 107; profitability 247
of, 36-37; size of, 22-23; working con- vegas ltobacco farms), population on, 8,
ditions on, 20, 24-28. See also sugar 11
production viandas lroot crops and starchy vegeta-
sugar production, xiii, 3, 285; levels of, bles), 60, 250
89, 239-40; process of, 20, 21, 23, 24, Virginia, a "citizen of color," 54
28; regional patterns of, 22, 23, 24 Virginia, slave labor in, 26
Suzarte, Jose Quintin, 239
wage labor: by former slaves, 228-40;
tariffs, U.S., 37, 206, 285
introduction of cuadrillas, 99; in San-
taxes, imposed by Spain, 41
tiago de Cuba, 258; during slavery,
technology, and slavery,S, 5n, 26, 27,
25, 25n, 28, 30, 107, 110
35, 91, 98, 108. See also
wages, 91, 176; after emancipation,
mechanization
237-39; of immigrants, 102; of patro-
Ten Years' War, 45-62; causes of, 41,
cinados, 181. See also stipends
41n, 45, 46; contrasted with War for
War for Independence. See insurgency,
Independence, 289, 291, 292; effects
1895-1898
of, 63, Ill, 259. See also insurgents,
whipping: of Chinese workers, 29, 29n,
1868-1878
33; use of, 173, 175, 178
Teresa, central, 286; and insurgents,
Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act, 285
290, 291
women: former slaves, during 1868-
Terry, Tomas, 32, 32n, 252; and contra-
1878 insurgency, 49, 50; labor of,
band slaves, 40n; landholdings, 93 229, 229n, 243, 262
tiendas mixtas. See plantation stores work rhythms: during patronato, 179-
tobacco, 263
81; during slavery, 24-25; after slav-
Treaty of Peking, 100
ery, 231
Trinidad, slave and later patrocinada,
lSI, 152, 167, 188
Trinidad, immigrants to, 217 Yucatecans, 6, 102

Ultramar, ministry of: on immigration, zafra Iharvest), 24, 25

214; and the patronato, 127, 131; and Zaldivar, Florentino, 60-61
slave appeals, 78. See also Spain, gov- Zayas, F. de, on labor costs, 119
ernment of Zulueta, Julian, 32, 32n; on abolition,
Uni6n, ingenio, 159 67, 67n; and Juntas Protectoras de
union, of colon os, 286 Libertos, 68, 77; on slavery, 37

327