The Cuban Anti-Antislavery Genre: Anselmo Suárez y Romero's Colección de artículos and the Policy of Buen Tratamiento

While Anselmo Suárez y Romero's (1818–78) articles depicting slavery have conventionally been read as philanthropic efforts to put an end to this institution in Cuba, they are in fact propaganda for a program of labor reform called buen tratamiento, or good treatment, the purpose of which was the economic rationalization and prolongation of slavery. Although the flow of chattel labor to the Pearl of the Antilles continued even after successive Anglo-Spanish bilateral treaties banned the trans-Atlantic slave trade (1820, 1835, 1845), the price of a slave increased exponentially. Due to the augmented value and relative scarcity of slaves, some creoles promoted a series of labor reforms that were designed to prolong the productive life of slaves and encourage their natural reproduction. These reforms were known as buen tratamiento. Intellectuals of the period, such as Suárez, had a stake in the planters' extrication from peninsular slavers and the Crown's colonial authority: they wished to secure Antillean political and economic liberties. By rereading Suárez's costumbrista sketches of slave life through the lens of buen tratamiento, I hope to provide a more nuanced understanding of nineteenth-century creoles' conceptualization of slave labor that moves beyond the pro- and anti-slavery binary that currently dominates discussions surrounding Cuban abolitionism.