The Year of the Lash: Free People of Color in Cuba and the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World

1. “Very Prejudicial”: Free People of Color in a Slave Society

1 / “Very Prejudicial”: Free People of Color in a Slave Society The free sector of color expands immensely throughout the population without constraint, and without any hope that they or their children will be alleviated from the low condition in which they find themselves. —francisco arango y parreño “You will be surprised to observe the number of free blacks and mulattoes ,” wrote Abiel Abott, a Massachusetts minister who visited Cuba from February to May 1828 in a quest to improve his lung condition.1 Numerous travelers, primarily North Americans and Europeans, who regularly selected Cuba as a destination point for enhancing their health, promoting business, comparing slave systems, and sightseeing in the 1820s and 1830s, reiterated Abbot’s observations. In the thriving port city of Havana, visitors noted the black stevedores, sailors, and day workers clustered near the wharf attending disembarking and departing ships and passengers.2 They passed artisans and washerwomen of color traversing streets lined with shops, stately mansions, and dilapidated huts.3 Carts loaded with sugar, coffee, and molasses rattled alongside carriages, and moreno street vendors walked about selling fruits and other products .4 On Sundays, black soldiers, dressed in distinctive uniforms, practiced drills in the colony’s central plazas.5 Amid this flurry of activity, some men stood smoking at the outer gates to homes, waiting “to eye and answer strangers” approaching the entryway.6 Music echoed from the heart of Havana as popular pardo band musicians entertained those who rode or strolled along the Paseo’s broad thoroughfare.7 Imperial data backed up travelers’ observations that a large proportion of these laboring individuals were of African heritage and legally free. According to Cuba’s 1827 census, free people of color constituted 15 percent of the island’s inhabitants and 27 percent of the African-descended population 18 / “very prejudicial” (see figure 1).8 Abbot viewed the substantial proportion of libres de color as proof of Cuba’s progress in race relations under slavery. He predicted that former slaves, “in obtaining their liberty will form those habits which will render them good subjects, and capable of taking care of themselves.”9 Although Abbot’s observations primarily addressed only one category of Cuba’s free black population, his commentary and that of other foreign visitors reveals the vital presence of libres de color. Cuba’s free black community, whether former slaves or free-born, had grown steadily throughout the eighteenth century via manumission, free birth, and immigration . Due to the Spanish empire’s traditional practice of prohibiting individuals of color from professional occupations, libres de color established niche roles ranging from skilled artisans to midwives. They also defended the Spanish empire as militiamen, maintained community and cultural ties through membership in cabildos de nación (sociocultural mutual aid associations based on African-derived ethnicity), and owned businesses, homes, and slaves. Situated between slaves and creoles, and with personal links to both, free blacks established themselves as crucial to colonial society, but also as a potential danger to social and political hierarchies. Would they completely displace white artisans? Would they remain loyal to the Spanish crown during the age of independence? Would they join with slaves and international abolitionists in support of emancipation? The complex and, often, contradictory roles of free people of color, especially as Cuban sugar production escalated and the importation of enslaved Africans increased, produced sharp tensions between colonial officials and elites over how to control the ubiquitous presence and influence of libres de color. From Buenos Aires to Boston, free sectors of color represented an inherent contradiction to the slave system. Nevertheless, by the early nineteenth century, they persisted in varying proportions throughout the hemisphere, enhanced via manumission, natural reproduction, and political immigration streams. The circumscribed conditions of freedom, however problematic, enabled free blacks to carve out a space to bend and maneuver through colonial restrictions. In Cuba, the friction created from being perceived as simultaneously vital and menacing to both slave society and the Spanish empire often aided free men and women of color in negotiating, and, at times, reconstructing established meanings of labor, service, social relations, and politics for their own benefit. Using the voices and actions of officials, elites, foreign travelers, and free people of color, this chapter examines the anxieties surrounding “very prejudicial” / 19 race, slavery, and freedom from the late eighteenth century to just prior to the Escalera rebellions in 1843. It emphasizes the transitional nature...