Copyright by Michele Bernita Reid 2004 The Dissertation Committee for Michele Bernita Reid Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Negotiating a Slave Regime: Free People of Color in Cuba, 1844-1868 Committee: Oloruntoyin O. Faloloa, Co-Supervisor Aline Helg, Co-Supervisor Jonathan C. Brown Pauline T. Strong James Sidbury Virginia Burnett Negotiating a Slave Regime: Free People of Color in Cuba, 1844-1868 by Michele Bernita Reid, B.A., M.M., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2004 Dedication To my parents Acknowledgements Completing this dissertation has been a challenging, rewarding, and shared journey. I have received immeasurable guidance from the six members of my dissertation committee. I would like to thank my co-advisors, Professors Aline Helg and Toyin Falola. I am indebted to Professor Helg for recognizing and fostering my potential as a historian. I am grateful to Professor Falola for sharing his wisdom and nurturing spirit. I would like to thank Professor Jonathan Brown for his feedback on the graduate seminar paper that later inspired my dissertation topic. I am thankful to Professor Polly Strong for encouraging me to embrace my interdisciplinary interests. Professor Ginny Burnett’s dedication and infectious enthusiasm continue to inspire me. I would like to thank Professor James Sidbury for nourishing my interest in free people of color in the Americas. It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with all of you. Thank you for your leadership, patience, and confidence in my abilities. In addition to my dissertation committee, many colleagues and friends provided critical intellectual support and encouragement. Professor Myron Gutmann’s passionate approach to academia motivated my scholarly pursuits. Fe Iglesias, my mamá de la isla, enriched my dissertation research with everything from guidance in the archives of Havana to cooking lessons a lo cubano. I am indebted to Sandra Frink for accompanying me on the dissertation and job search journey. Kimberly Hamlin and Rebecca Montes v offered valuable insight on issues of gender and labor. I would like to thank Russ Lohse and Ben Vinson, III for their feedback and unwavering encouragement. My fellow Cubanists, Denise Blum, Amanda Warnock, José Ortega, Marc McLeod, and Anju Reejhsinghani provided boundless generosity and camaraderie in Havana and at home. Kristin Huffine, Jenifer Bratter, and Margo Kelly, although we lived miles of part, I could not have imagined making this journey without you. This project would have been difficult to complete without financial assistance. I would like than the following organizations and departments for providing vital funding to conduct research in the United States, Cuba, and Spain: the Fulbright Commission, the Conference on Latin American History, the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports and United States Universities, and the Department of History, the Institute of Latin American Studies, the College of Liberal Arts, and the Study Abroad Office at the University of Texas at Austin. The archivists and scholars I worked with during dissertation research, particularly those at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, the Archivo Histórico Nacional in Madrid, and the Archivo Nacional de Cuba, the Instituto de Literatura y Linguística, and the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí in Havana enriched this study immensely. Finally, I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to my family. Thank you for embracing my decision to purse a doctorate in history, offering your support over the years, and trusting that this journey would lead me back home. vi Negotiating a Slave Regime: Free People of Color in Cuba, 1844-1868 Publication No._____________ Michele Bernita Reid, Ph. D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2004 Supervisors: Oloruntoyin O. Falola and Aline Helg In my dissertation, I investigate how race, gender, and freedom intertwined in colonial Cuba’s slave-based society. By examining government documents, newspapers, manuscript censuses, petitions, and personal accounts from archives in Cuba, Spain, and the United States, Negotiating a Slave Regime charts the strategies employed by free people of African descent (libres de color) to navigate nineteenth-century Cuba. In 1844, a series of slave uprisings, known collectively as the Conspiracy of La Escalera, ruptured the tenuous stability of the colony. Cuban officials accused libres de color of leading the revolt, in collaboration with Creoles, slaves, and British abolitionists, to overthrow slavery and Spanish rule on the island. The ensuing repression intensified Spain’s efforts to limit the influence and demographic growth of libres de color by expelling them from the island, restricting their occupational opportunities, and curtailing their social activities. While Cuba’s proscribed legal, racial, and gendered norms marginalized free men and women of color because of their racial ancestry and potential threat to the slave regime, this system simultaneously cast them as vital to providing for the needs of Spaniards and Creoles. Nevertheless, the tensions of this duality enabled libres de color vii to maneuver effectively within colonial constraints. By 1868, the advent of the Ten Year’s War, Cuba’s first war for independence from Spain, the free population of color had achieved a remarkable demographic recovery. Fueled by the predominance of women, and legal and occupational perseverance, libres de color nurtured a new leadership and political consciousness. By narrating the re-emergence and development of free people of African descent in Cuba, my dissertation explores the themes of freedom and resistance. Moreover, I illuminate the dynamic nature of colonial social relations and the challenges to imperial ideology and control in nineteenth-century Cuba, the African Diaspora in Latin America, and the Atlantic World. viii Table of Contents Introduction..............................................................................................................1 Chapter 1 Free People of Color in a Slave Society: Vital Roles and a Threatening Presence ........................................ 37 Chapter 2 Spectacle of Power: The Repression of the Conspiracy of La Escalera..........................70 Chapter 3 Labor and La Escalera...................................................................104 Chapter 4 Cubans of Color in Exile...............................................................140 Chapter 5 Redefining Service: The Militia of Color in Cuba.......................171 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................198 Bibliography .......................................................................................................216 Vita ....................................................................................................................230 ix INTRODUCTION In 1846, José Moreno wrote to the Spanish Ministry of Justice on behalf of himself and twenty other free Cubans of African descent living in exile in Campeche, a port city on the Gulf Coast of Mexico.1 Moreno’s group, and hundreds like them, had fled Cuba in the wake of the 1844 Conspiracy of La Escalera, an alleged plot to abolish slavery and colonial rule on the island. The ensuing repression forced them to emigrate. After two years of living under difficult circumstances in a foreign land, the cadre of artisans, laborers, and their families felt compelled to request permission to return home. Their letter, which wound its way through the hands of the Spanish Consul in Mexico, the Captain General in Cuba, and the Ministries of Justice and Overseas Affairs in Spain, addressed the tragic circumstances of their departure and the impact of the repression on their lives. Moreover, Moreno’s letter implored Spanish officials to facilitate the group’s safe passage back to Havana. …We were not among the people of color who planned the secret conspiracy, that was fortunately discovered, but we trembled at the [Military] commissions, for they never were about justice… and we can certify to the tears we shed over our desolate families, such that we ran with the current of emigration far from Cuba, a blessed land, sweet like sugar, a land consecrated by the work with which our fathers earned Christian freedom, and which they then gave to us. 1 I use the following terms to refer to the greater free African-descended population in nineteenth- century Cuba: of color, of African descent, libres de color. The terms free and libres are used interchangeably to indicate individuals or groups who are not legally slaves. During the nineteenth century, individuals were denoted in the records I examined for this study as pardo, parda, mulata, and mulatto refer to persons who physically appeared to have partial African ancestry, typically a mixture of African and European heritage. Similarly, the terms moreno, morena, and black refer to persons recorded as appearing to be of full African ancestry or dark in complexion. I may also use the term black in a broader sense, but only when referring to diasporas or political challenges. I use the terms white, Spanish, and Creole to refer the European-descended population, although I recognized that Creole or criollo was a term that generally indicated that individuals were born