- The 1812 Aponte Rebellion in Cuba and the Struggle against Atlantic Slavery
Childs’ book tells the story of a well-known, yet understudied event in Cuban history—the Aponte Rebellion. From January through March 1812, a series of uprisings launched by slaves and free people of color erupted across Cuba. Initial revolts in the island’s interior were suppressed and/or thwarted by Spanish colonial authorities. A few months later, another insurrection broke out on the Peñas Altas sugar plantation outside of Havana. After extensive investigations, thirty-two rebels were put to death while hundreds of others were imprisoned. One of the rebels executed was José Antonio Aponte, a free black carpenter and former colonial militiaman whom colonial authorities saw as the mastermind of the Havana rebellion.
Childs’ analysis of the insurrections provides a snapshot into the world of Cuban slavery during the Age of Revolution. The book excellently situates the Aponte Rebellions within the historiography of the Atlantic World and Cuban/Caribbean slavery. Like Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution & Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787–1804 (Chapel Hill, 2006), Childs’ book shows how insurgents in Cuba were part of the larger liberation struggles of slaves and free people of color throughout the Americas. The book argues that the uprisings were a consequence of the expansion of plantation slavery in Cuba during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Moreover, Childs is attentive to the diversity of the African population on the island, skillfully highlighting the prevalence of African “ethnic” identifications among slaves. Like other recent historians of Cuban slavery, Childs highlights the importance of the cabildos de nación and the colonial militia as niches that Africans and their descendants carved out for themselves in Cuban slave society—precisely the institutions that rebels used to launch the rebellion. Childs’ research shows how Aponte himself—a person of African descent who experienced a tightening racial hierarchy that eroded the privileges of free persons of color—embodied the tensions of Cuban slave society during this period.
Childs is particularly adept at telling the stories of the rebellions. [End Page 306] The most important sources for Childs were the criminal testimony of accused rebels. Childs carefully extracts from these documents details about the lives of the rebels and the institutions that helped catalyze their participation in the uprisings. The most compelling evidence that authorities used to convict Aponte was his fascinating “book of drawings.” The sketches in it that were most alarming to colonial officials were his depictions of Haitian revolutionaries, maps of Havana’s fortifications, and images of blacks defeating whites in battle. Although the book of drawings has not been found, Childs’ attention to the discussion of its contents in the criminal records, combined with other evidence, illustrates the ideologies that inspired the liberation movement.
Childs’ prodigious research refutes Stephan Palmié’s claim in Wizards and Scientists: Explorations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition (Durham, 2002) that Aponte’s role in the rebellion was based more on historians’ fascination with the image of the slave rebel than on actual evidence. Although Childs cannot prove that Aponte was the leader of the uprisings, nor firmly establish that the rebellions were part of a coordinated island-wide conspiracy, he nevertheless provides revealing documentation about Aponte’s involvement in the Havana uprising
Readers of this journal might have wanted Childs to provide an explication of his key theoretical categories, such as “ethnicity” and “identity.” For example, his reasons for applying the term “ethnicity” to African political and cultural formations, contrary to documents from the era that refer to them as “nations,” are unclear. This lack of a justification for Childs’ theoretical tools overlooks the ways scholars have grappled with the utility of these analytical categories in recent years. However, these shortcomings do not detract from Childs’ contributions. The 1812 Aponte Rebellion is a passionately written book that will prove to be a valuable contribution to slavery studies, as well as to the...