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139 Conclusion Performing Culture and the Appropriation of Identifications T he hundreds of thousands of Africans and their children who lived and worked on the cafetales of western Cuba during the first half of the nineteenth century endured enslavement and resisted it through various strategies . It has been the aim of this book to restore their story to the historical record in a meaningful way. Their struggle to rebuild their lives and cultures, to adapt to their new environment, and to form new families had profound effects on themselves and on Cuba during their era, but it also affected the future of the island and its peoples. Their experiences and resistance provoked reactions within the slaveholding community and the broader free society that also touched their own lives. Slaveholders responded predictably with attempts to improve control over the population, harsher punishments, and finally the enactment of a new slave code. The free society at large was of two minds. Some supported the status quo while others began to side with abolitionists. These different trajectories created an array of political, social, and cultural reactions. On the part of the enslaved, the most important legacies created through their own actions were the maintenance of cultural traditions and raising of children. All these together would contribute to a distinct historical trajectory that shaped Cuba throughout the nineteenth century. Slaves on cafetales exercised agency in a variety of ways that challenged the exercise of power projected through planter-defined structure. Slaveholders explicitly sought to mold a compliant, docile workforce and an ordered environment that projected a coherent message of control. The design was focused toward the production of labor. The flaw in the system, from the slaveholders’ perspective, was that masters and their agents were unable to control completely the lives of the enslaved. Owners aimed to constrain the entire space that constituted the field of slave action, but they were unable to manage time in a way that left no possibility for the enslaved to act. This was especially true on cafetales. Slaves resisted the control through actions small and large, passive and violent, unintended and planned. In response, slaveholders reacted with increasing vio- 140 Shade-Grown Slavery lence against the slaves under their control in order to put down uprisings as well as instill fear in the population to forestall further revolts. There are numerous examples of slaveholder violence against the insurgent slaves, such as the case of the Aponte rebellion of 1812. Once the rebels were discovered, they were publicly executed to set an example for others who might consider rebellion.1 The heads of rebellious executed slaves were displayed following the repression of some uprisings, such as the revolt on the Salvador discussed in Chapter 6.2 The use of violence continued to escalate until the so-called Escalera rebellion in 1844, in which many slaves were tortured to death to extract confessions and intelligence .3 This revolt also highlights the increasing anxieties of the slaveholding class during the period, as they imagined vast conspiracies that in their minds resembled the Haitian Revolution.4 Slaveholder fears were also expressed in the new slave code promulgated in 1842.5 The new code reveals the ambivalence within the slaveholding class about the correct approach to managing a large slave population. The new rules continue to emphasize the conversion and instruction of slaves in the Christian religion. The new code also includes an article that mandates teaching slaves to respect members of the slaveholding class. The new rules codified in law what had been customary practices regarding the system of coartación. These rules are clearly designed to instill obedience and passivity among the enslaved while also offering a ray of hope to those who can participate in self-purchase. At the same time, the new code reduced most of the minimal requirements of slaveholders with respect to the material needs of their workers; for example, it lowered clothing and food allotments. This potentially made slavery harsher but there is always the question of enforcement. While it has often been assumed that slave codes were rarely enforced, even selective use of the code would have had a broader impact.6 On the one hand, we have seen that slaves were participating in coartación in significant numbers.7 We can observe rising numbers of slave revolts during the period and increasing repression, finding its full expression in 1844. This era is also when we see more active engagement with the ideas of abolition...

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