Freeing Oneself The Meaning and Practice of Coartacion

Abstract

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...