In 1789 the Spanish crown eliminated the old monopolistic practice of the Asiento, which had kept the slave trade to Cuba in the hands of a selected number of individuals and firms since the sixteenth century, allowing for the first time the free importation of slaves. As a result, over 780,000 slaves, mostly African-born, were imported to Cuba in the following years and decades. They were objectified as merchandise, punished, and compelled to carry out labor for the gain of others.¹ In nineteenth-century Cuban society, this legal system still worked under the assumptions of custom and the traditions of the...