"Roaming Coartados" Strengthening the Rural Slave Sector

Abstract

Sugar cane plantations began to incorporate coartados in the mid-nineteenth century. This chapter examines the shift of labor from city to country. While many coartados did everything in their power to remain in Havana, where their right to change owners or buy themselves out of slavery tended to be more easily recognized, others remained in rural areas where they were subject to the same rights, or rather lack of rights, as any rural slave.