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3. Calculated Expulsions: Free People of Color in Mexico, the United States, Spain, and North Africa
- University of Georgia Press
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3 / Calculated Expulsions: Free People of Color in Mexico, the United States, Spain, and North Africa We can certify to the tears we shed over our desolate families, such that we ran with the current of emigration far from Cuba. —josé moreno On March 19, 1844, José Falgueras, president of the Cuban Military Commission, condemned free blacks Anastasio Ramirez, José Castillo, Mateo carabalí, and Alonso lucumí to imprisonment in Ceuta, Spain’s presidio in North Africa. Moreover, the Commission prohibited them from returning to Cuba or Puerto Rico.1 These men represented the first of hundreds charged as accomplices in the Conspiracy of La Escalera who would suffer the same fate: overseas incarceration and banishment. Colonial authorities did not stop there. Emboldened by torture and terror , the Leopoldo O’Donnell administration unfurled broader plans to further expunge the island of free blacks. In addition to those formally sentenced to deportation by the Military Commission, O’Donnell devised a strategy for the “prudent and calculated expulsion” of free people of color, targeting three sectors: free blacks who attempted to enter Cuban ports, the foreign-born residing in Cuba, and native libres de color living in urban centers in and around Havana.2 Individuals such as Carlota Molina, who attempted to return to Cuba via Jamaica, Vicente Pacheco , a native of Caracas living in Havana, and José Moreno, an exile in Mexico, would all become caught up in the colonial administration’s determined efforts to purge Cuba of racial strife. These measures, however, proved far from uniform and would often produce results contradicting the stated aims of Cuban officials. O’Donnell’s desires to reduce the number of libres de color renewed previous debates over the dangers of having so many free and enslaved men and women of African descent in the colony. In the wake of the calculated expulsions / 69 1843 rebellions, O’Donnell took up the mantle of former captain general Francisco Dionisio Vives. In the 1830s, Vives had ardently supported the expulsion of all free people of color from Cuban shores, but had hesitated to implement this idea. Doing so, he reasoned, could potentially lead to a labor shortage and greater dissidence among free blacks and slaves.3 The 1843 uprisings and the subsequent conviction of over 1,800 people, the majority of whom were libres de color, however, forcefully revived the issue.4 The harassment and removal of hundreds of free blacks underscored the crisis of slave rebellion that engulfed Cuba in the mid 1840s. The revolts in the Matanzas province jeopardized the colony’s prosperity. Abolishing slavery, however, was not an option; planters, officials, and merchants had too much at stake. Without a coerced and controllable agricultural labor force, profits would plummet and lead to Cuba’s demise . Consequently, free people of color suffered irreversably from the colonial government’s attempts to remove them via legislation and coercion in the Escalera era. Although some regional officials questioned the purpose of the mass relocations to Mexico or challenged the legality of aiding Spain in the surveillance of Cuban subjects on American soil, Cuban authorities pushed these issues with threats and covert activities in both locales.5 Fueled by the fear of conspiratorial black plots from within and without, the O’Donnell administration facilitated the departure of free blacks as a means to weaken their alleged rebellious influences in the colony and pursued evidence of an insidious network poised to conquer Cuba from afar. Accused of leading the rebellions, libres de color became easy scapegoats in the continuing repression and a powerful example to erode lingering creole dissidence. Above all, coerced removal struck at the heart of the free black community . Economic stability unraveled as authorities compelled some families to separate from their loved ones on what would surely be difficult and dangerous journeys into prison and exile. However, as the imposed embarkations thrust free people of color into unfamiliar Atlantic World settings, many responded with established negotiation tactics. Libres de color sentenced to banishment and imprisonment in Morocco and Spain petitioned for family reunification. Individuals and ship crews seeking to enter Cuban ports challenged bans prohibiting disembarkation . On Cuban soil, those born elsewhere protested anti-immigrant expulsion orders. During the coerced relocations to coastal Mexico and American port cities such as Philadelphia, New Orleans, and New York, libres de color forged transregional linkages within a new black [54.160.243.44] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:47 GMT) 70 / calculated expulsions Cuban diaspora that would subvert colonial...