Sugar Plantation and Mill, Cuba, c.1860. 409 slaves and 170 indentured Chinese workers

Boiling House, Sugar Mill, Cuba 1857

Cuban Exports to US

1859 1865 1877

42% 65% 82%

in sugar

Ten Years’ War, 1868-1878

Spanish blockhouse and the “trocha,” [trench], Cuba, 1896

Pinar del Río

HavanaMatanzas

Santa Clara

Puerto Príncipe(Camagüey)

Santiago(Oriente)

Isla de Pinos

Map 1: Approximate Administrative Subdivisions in Cuba during the 19th century

West

Center

East

Rebel handbill directed to slaves, Cuba, 1869

“The blacks are the same as the whites. The whites are not slaves nor do they work for the blacks. Neither should the blacks be slaves nor should they work for the whites. The Cubans want the blacks to be free. The Spaniards want the blacks to continue being slaves. The Cubans are fighting against the Spaniards. The blacks who have any honor should go fight together with the Cubans. The Spaniards want to kill Cubans so that the blacks can never be free. The blacks are not dumb, they have a big heart and they fight together with the Cubans…The time to fight has come. It is better to be in the woods fighting together with the Cubans so that all men, black as well as whites, be free, than to be working as slaves. Long Live Liberty.”

War and Abolition of Slavery in Cuba

�  1870. Moret Law: Newborns from slave mother would be free. Issued during Ten Years’ War (1868-1878)

�  1879-1880. Guerra Chiquita or Little War, Black Leadership

�  1880. Apprenticeship or Patronato system �  Scheduled to end slavery by 1888, but patrocinados

(apprentices) shortened the period of apprenticeship to 1886.

�  Colonial state did not compensate masters, but the labor of the remaining slaves paid for their emancipation.

�  Established the ability to self purchase at a lower price.

�  Adult slaves perceived a stipend.

�  Established quotas: each former master had to liberate one in four patrocinados by 1885 and one in three by 1886

1895-98 War of Independence

Ricardo Batrell, 1880-?

Ricardo Batrell, A Black Solder’s Story, [First published 1912]

“I witnessed one of the great events of the war, although in peacetime its significance has been ignored. Colonel Dantin was shot in the leg, so his assistance, Ciriaco, a large, very strong black man, carried him on his shoulders from the center of the town until they got to the opening of the fort that faced the Armonía sugar plantation. As they were crossing the barbed wire there, the heroic Ciriaco was shot and wounded more severely than his commanding officer, whom he was trying to save. When that courageous Cuban fell in that supreme effort to rescue his commander, Colonel Dantin threw his devoted and heroic savior on his shoulders. […] Isn´t true, reader, that this scene inspires us to believe that humanity was perfected in such a display of democracy?” [1896]

“The Republic is for All” Arch in Suárez Street, Havana, 1902

Top to bottom: 1) Inauguration of first Cuban President, 2) the first Cuban Congress,

and 3) a Cuban cabinet meeting

Massacre of 1912 against the Colored Cuban Party (Partido

Independiente de Color)

Cartoon on the newspaper, La Discusión, June 8, 1912. Caption: “Is this how futbol [soccer] will be played in Oriente?

Caption: “Burial of Evaristo Estenoz, leader of the revolutionaries of the colored race who took the arms against the Government of the Cuban Republic”