Slavery in Cuba

The first organized system of slavery in Cuba was introduced by the Spanish Empire, which attacked and enslaved the island's indigenous Taíno and Guanahatabey peoples on a grand scale.

Cuba's original population was decimated after the arrival of the Spaniards, due to both a lack of immunity to Old World diseases such as smallpox, but also because of the conditions associated with the forced labor that was used by the Spanish colonist throughout the 1500s.

[citation needed] Cuba became one of the world's largest sugarcane producers after the Haitian Revolution and continued to import enslaved Africans long after the practice was outlawed for Spanish citizens in 1817.

Due to growing pressure to stop the Cuban slave trade throughout the 19th century, more than 100,000 Chinese indentured workers were imported to Cuba to replace dwindling African labor.

Throughout the 1500s and 1600s, slaves made up a large portion of the services sector of the city's economy and also held numerous skilled trade positions in Havana.

[1] European Cuban historian [osé Martín Félix de Arrate y Acosta recalled in 1761 that "negros and pardos" were "very able and capable to apply themselves, becoming distinguished masters, not only in the lowest ones such as shoemakers, tailors, masons, and carpenters, but also in those which require more ability and genius, such as silversmith's craft, sculpture, painting, and carving, as denoted by their marvelous works.

[1] In 1740, the Havana Company was formed to stimulate the sugar industry by encouraging the importation of slaves into Cuba, although it largely unsuccessful.

[4] Given their role in the Seven Years' War, Spanish colonial official Julián de Arriaga realized that Cuban slaves could support foreign nations that offered them freedom.

[7] In the long run, Santiago de Cuba was a receptive landing point for men and women who hoped to restore the social relations of slavery, and for their project of redefining others among the refugees as slaves.

Authorized since 1789 as a port of arrival for the transatlantic trade in African captives, Santiago served an expanding hinterland of plantations producing sugar and coffee.

Ships arrived regularly from the west coast of Africa, delivering bound laborers into the urban and rural economy.

Men and women from Saint-Domingue who brought with them both financial resources and the habit of command could make a convincing case that they – and their ‘slaves’ – offered something of value to a developing agricultural export sector.

Those with more-modest resources, including men and women designated mulatos or mulatas libres, could simply point out that they needed the labor of one or two slaves to avoid becoming a charge on the Cuban government.

[9] As the new freedmen set up small subsistence farms in Haiti, Cuba's planters gained much of the sugar market formerly held by Saint-Domingue's large plantations.

[11][failed verification][page needed] In the early 19th century, Cuban planters, who relied almost exclusively on foreign slave traders, closely followed debates on abolishing slavery in both Britain and the United States.

[14] After the revolts were suppressed by the local militias armed by the government, hundreds of slaves were arrested, with many of the leaders being tried and executed.

[15] By 1817, Britain and Spain were making a concerted effort to reform their diplomatic ties and negotiate the legal status of the Atlantic slave trade.

Enslaved people who misbehaved, underproduced, or disobeyed their masters were often placed in stocks in boiler houses, where they were abandoned for anywhere from a few days to as much as two to three months at a time.

When subjected to whippings, pregnant women had to lay "face down over a scooped-out piece of round [earth] to protect their bellies.

[22] Machismo and marianismo functioned symbiotically: the Hispanic Cuban male was expected to express dominance in public spaces and ventures like the slave trade, while Hispanic women exercised control of private spaces (including those staffed by enslaved people) through feminine virtues like motherhood, modesty, and honor.

Enslaved women in the city of Havana, from the sixteenth century onwards, performed duties such as operating the town taverns, eating houses, and lodges, as well as working as laundresses and domestic laborers.

For instance, historical interpretations of the La Escalera conspiracy reveal the role of machismo in Cuban historiography: As December 1843 drew to a close, an enslaved woman in the Sabanilla district named Polonia Gangá shocked her master with the information that his prized sugar property was about to be engulfed in open rebellion… But commencing the story of 1844 at the moment of Polonia's declaration also necessarily equates a woman's betrayal.

[24]A machismo historical perspective frames betrayal as one of the only possibilities for enslaved women's participation in insurrection, because it associates rebellion exclusively to masculine aggression.

Free mixed-race people thus eventually began to constitute an additional Cuban social class in a stature beneath ethnic Europeans and above enslaved Africans.

Cuban writers such as Nicolás Guillén and Lydia Cabrera participated in the Pan-African Négritude movement of the early 20th century (locally known as negrista or negrismo).

Afro-Cuban writers undertook a Hispanophone effort to reclaim Cuban blackness and connections to African culture, while expressing a new sensibility comparable to the Harlem Renaissance in New York City.