Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy

2. A Convergence of Interests

A Convergence of Interests The expansion of the Cuban economy in the nineteenth century created new problems and exacerbated old ones. The rise of sugar production transformed Cuban society and announced the emergence of new social classes and new class tensions. A Creole propertied elite acquired its distinctive features during these years, shaped as much by its frustrations with colonialism as by its function in the colony. Creole elites constituted a majority of sugar planters, coffee growers, tobacco farmers, and cattle ranchers. They controlled much of the real property. They possessed wide-ranging power over the population in their domains as slave masters, employers, and rentiers . But their power was not unlimited. Cubans demanded greater control over resources and commerce—control, in short, over all areas of vital importance to their interests. As producers of commercial export crops, Creoles demanded direct access to foreign markets and cheap prices for foreign imports. They resented peninsular control of overseas trade and resisted Spanish taxes on foreign commerce. The clash of rival economic interests between planters and merchants served to exacerbate political tensions between the colony and the metropolis. Spanish customs duties on foreign imports upon which Cubans were becoming increasingly dependent, foodstuffs no less than agricultural and industrial equipment, combined to raise the cost of living and increase the cost of sugar production. Creole property owners demanded not only economic policies to protect and promote their interests but political positions so they could implement the policies to meet their needs. Cubans demanded freedom to promote their own interests, arrange their own taxes, regulate their own economic growth. They demanded freedom to expand, to develop resources according to their needs on their terms, to earn more by producing more, and to expand more by exporting more. They 29 2 30 CUBA AND THE UNITED STATES needed, above all, access to political power to protect their economic interests. At the same time, however, Creole elites were mindful of the constraints their social reality imposed on their ambitions. They were required to press for their demands with circumspection, and always with moderation. They understood, most of all, that their local preeminence was to a large extent dependent on the very source of their discontent. Certainly the colonial system obstructed their political ascendancy, and it limited economicexpansion. Butit also acted to contain the social forces that threatened their socioeconomic prominence . And therein lay the singular contradictionof the colonialpolitical economy in the nineteenth century. The spectacular expansion of Cuban sugar production and the consolidation of the Cuban planter class occurred against a backdrop of political unrest and social upheaval . An economy largely dependent on slaverycameinto existence at the precise moment when slavery was under attack from many quarters abroad and meeting growing resistance among many groups in Cuba. The slave trade was on the decline, and pressure for the abolition of slavery was on the rise. As early as 1792, Denmark banned the slave trade in its Caribbean territories. England and the United States abolished the slave trade in 1808, followed by Sweden in 1813 and Holland in 1814. One other consideration preyed on the minds of local elites. The island was filling with new slaves even as slave rebellion was succeeding in the neighboring colony of Saint-Domingue and as slave uprisings were spreading elsewhere in the Caribbean: in Jamaica in 1795, 1824, and 1841, in Barbados in 1804 and again in 1824, in Demerara in 1808, and in Antiguain 1831. Even in the UnitedStates slave conspiracies and rebellions occurred periodically:in Virginia in 1800, New Orleans in 1811, South Carolina in 1822, and again in Virginia in 1831. Indeed, both the opportunity and the occasion for slave uprisings increased markedly in Cuba during the nineteenth century, largely as a result of the rapid expansion of slavery across the island and the 31 A Convergence of Interests sudden surge of recently arrived adult slaves. The island filled with vast numbers of African-born slaves—intractable, undisciplined, resentful , and with a memory of their lost freedom: 385,000 slaves were imported between 1790 and 1820, 272,000 more between 1820 and 1853, another 175,000 between 1853 and 1864. Bythe early nineteenth century perhaps as many as 75percent ofall those in bondage in Cuba had been born in Africa. Creole fears were not unfounded. Social unrest and slave uprising cast a long shadow over Cuban prosperity. Slave rebellions occurred with increasing frequency as the discontent...