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

356 Pages·2000·29.12 MB·English

by  Rebecca Scott

SLAVE EMANCIPATION IN CUBA

J.
REBECCA 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