SOURCE: Luis, William. “Fiction and Fact: The Antislavery Narrative and Blacks as Counter-Discourse in Cuban History.” In Literary Bondage: Slavery in Cuban Narrative, pp. 1-17. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.

[In the following excerpt, Luis discusses the historical and social conditions in Cuba that made the condemnation of the slave trade and slavery itself a growing concern in nineteenth-century Cuban literature.]

FICTION

Antislavery narrative refers to a group of works written mainly during the 1830s, an incipient and prolific moment in Cuban literature. They include ex-slave Juan Francisco Manzano's Autobiografía (written in 1835, published in England in 1840 and in Cuba in 1937), Anselmo Suárez y Romero's Francisco (written in 1839, published in 1880), and Félix Tanco y Bosmeniel's Escenas de la vida privada en la isla de Cuba (written in 1838, published in 1925) and “Un niño en la Habana” (written in 1837, published in 1986).¹ These early works were requested by Domingo del Monte, Cuba's most influential literary critic, and reflect the literary and historical circumstances of the times.² They provide a sympathetic view of blacks and slaves during a period in which slavery was at its peak and Cuba was the most important sugar-producing country in the world.

Fiction in the antislavery works is not part of a creative or inventive process intended to entertain or delight the reader. On the contrary, it is a carefully constructed system whose purpose is to reveal a reality not often seen, accepted, or understood by the reader; one intended to alter a socioeconomic system based on sugar, slavery, and the slave trade. By creating a verisimilar narrative system, fiction takes on a special meaning; it becomes a way of rewriting other fiction and, most importantly, history. There is an intrinsic relationship between the antislavery narrative and history: The antislavery works are based on a historical reality which allows them to challenge history and rewrite in narrative discourse a different version of the same history. The dominant discourse in Cuba during the early part of the nineteenth century centered on slavery and the cultivation of sugar, as represented, for example, in Francisco Arango y Parreño's Discurso sobre la agricultura de la Habana (1792). In his Discurso, Arango encouraged Havana sugar growers to take advantage of the insurrection in Saint Domingue by filling the sugar void in the international market and promoting their own agricultural prosperity.³ The antislavery narrative, on the other hand, is a counter-discourse to power whose immediate aim is to question and ultimately dismantle nineteenth-century colonial and slave society.⁴

Any sympathetic presentation of blacks in nineteenth-century Cuban literature represents a counter-discourse to power and is subversive to a Western form of rule. If the fabric of colonial Cuba was based on sugar and slavery, the antislavery narrative questioned the very strength that motivated the society by resorting to an image that challenged and undermined it. In the antislavery works, blacks are not described as mere accidents of history but as an indispensable element of Cuban culture and nationality.

The antislavery works were written during the emergence of Cuban narrative and, therefore, make a daring attempt to include blacks as an integral part of the island's culture. In effect, they create a permanent space for blacks in a literature of foundation. This narrative represents the first cohesive movement to describe blacks and slaves as a dominant element in Cuban and Latin American literatures and broadens the margins of literary discourse.⁵ The antislavery writers inserted a different voice into an undifferentiating and hermetic discourse to produce a dialogue on slavery. Although the dialogue was initiated, it was not totally realized. Even though the antislavery works were written for the most part by white intellectuals with a European-style education, they did not form part of a dialogue on slavery but rather fell outside of it. By questioning the slavery system, the narrations inevitably complemented other historical events which undermined the power of sugar and slavery, in particular those surrounding the rebellion in Saint Domingue (1791) and the Aponte Conspiracy in Cuba (1812), two movements intending to create a power space for blacks within their respective countries. In Cuba, the antislavery works were considered a threat by the Spanish authorities, were censored, and were not published on the island until slaves ceased to represent an imminent danger to whites.

As counter-discourse to power, the antislavery narrative represents a counter-writing of fiction and history and proposes a counter-reading of narrative discourse. Writing is a conscious manipulation of language and a careful structuring of story and plot.⁶ The author of the antislavery narrative (re)orders commonplaces produced by the dominant discourse and writes and rewrites the roles of characters in history and literature. The author creates a counter-world in which he is another participant. Writing is a commitment to and a reliving of the events narrated.

The reader is an important part of the writing process. The author strives to persuade the reader into understanding and accepting the life of the slave, someone antagonistic to his own interest and existence. In other words, the narrative strategy reduces the distance between the master's quarters and the slave's barracoon, between the oppressor and the oppressed, the white and the black. The space traditionally occupied by master and slave is also inverted and the interested reader is persuaded to view slavery no longer from the master's perspective but from the slave's. With the change in space, the signs are also inverted; black as negative and white as positive are revealed not as absolute categories inherent in Western language or culture but as an arbitrary system of signs subject to textual manipulation. If blacks and slaves represented a threat to whites, as the Haitian example suggests, they are now portrayed as the victims of a society which exploits them without apparent justification. Likewise, if the familiar slave master and overseer are the protectors of slavery and the livelihood of whites, they are transformed into morally corrupt individuals whose interest is to satisfy their own libidinal needs.

As a form of protest against the slavery system, the antislavery narrative did not end with the emancipation of slaves in 1886 but continues well into the twentieth century.⁷ The abolition of slaves in Cuban history has not altered a concern for the antislavery theme, which up to the present study has been limited to the early nineteenth-century works. From their inception to the present, the antislavery works can be divided into four historical moments: slavery, postslavery, the republic, and the Cuban revolutionary periods. This chronology suggests two different but complementary patterns. The antislavery works are both a beginning regarding the four synchronic moments surrounding the specific circumstances in which the works were written and a continuum reflecting the conditions of slaves who lived tied to an economic and racial system based on sugar. Yet an investigation into the literature shows that a structure based on discourse and counter-discourse, oppression and rebellion which allowed the antislavery narrative as a form of protest to emerge is reflected in the lives of blacks in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Cuban history. In this introductory chapter, I will propose a periodization of the antislavery narrative and then show how the same stages are also present in the history of blacks in Cuba. I divide the antislavery narrative into four historical periods: the first, from its beginning in 1835 to emancipation in 1886; the second, from emancipation to 1902, the founding of the Republic of Cuba; the third, from 1902 to the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959; and the fourth, from the Cuban Revolution to the present.

Not until the beginning of the nineteenth century did the tension between the white oppressor and the black slave peak in Cuba. This was due mainly to the rapid increase in the number of blacks on the island, an increase directly related to the growth of the sugar industry. The success of the Haitian rebellion, which created a vacuum in the world sugar market that Cuba filled, precipitated this growth.⁸ As a result of sugar, the Cuban census indicates that the number of slaves grew along with the number of all colored people. Blacks for the first time outnumbered whites during the first half of the nineteenth century. The fear of the rising number of blacks and the recent Haitian rebellion led white slave owners to become more oppressive, thus increasing pressure within the system and causing a higher number of slaves to attempt to flee.

In response to an alarming concern regarding the number of slaves and their treatment in Cuba, Del Monte commissioned antislavery narratives from Tanco y Bosmeniel, Suárez y Romero, and the slave Manzano. These works represent a political-literary discourse and were written with an immediate purpose in mind: to bring an end to slavery and the slave trade. To the early antislavery works, I add another group that was written or completed and published abroad: Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda's Sab (Madrid, 1841), Antonio Zambrana's El negro Francisco (Santiago de Chile, 1873), and Cirilo Villaverde's Cecilia Valdés (New York, 1882). Villaverde belonged to the Del Monte literary circle and wrote and published two earlier versions of his Cecilia Valdés in 1839, but I have decided not to include them among the early antislavery works. There are substantive differences between the short story and volume 1 and the last edition of Cecilia Valdés. The first two narrations were not antislavery works; they passed the censors and were published in Cuba. The last version reflected the sentiments of the early antislavery works and was completed not in Cuba but while Villaverde lived in exile in New York.⁹

Gómez de Avellaneda did not belong to the Del Monte circle, but her knowledge of the slavery system in Cuba, her compassion, and a liberal political climate under Regent María Cristina in Spain allowed her to write and publish her novel. And although Zambrana was not born until after the writing of the first antislavery works, he attended at the home of the abolitionist Nicolás de Azcárate a reading of Suárez y Romero's manuscript. Zambrana's El negro Francisco is a rewriting of Francisco. His novel was not requested by Del Monte but by another patrician, doña Ascensión Rodríguez de Necochea, a Chilean who wanted to read a novel written by the Cuban writer. Zambrana seized the opportunity to express his political views regarding blacks on the island. Like Villaverde and Gómez de Avellaneda, Zambrana wrote and published his novel while living abroad.¹⁰

With the exception of Silvestre de Balboa's epic Espejo de paciencia, an early seventeenth-century poem whose protagonists include an Ethiopian slave,¹¹ the antislavery narratives were the first works to introduce blacks and mulattoes as protagonists in Cuban narrative. In these early works, the authors describe the tragic lives of passive and defenseless slaves who are ruthlessly abused by their masters. But the incipient Cuban narrative also includes works which describe slavery not from the slave's but from the slaver's point of view, as represented by the slave hunter. Written in the same period as the antislavery literature, Francisco Estévez's Diario de un rancheador (written between 1837 and 1842) documents his periodic trips to hunt fugitive slaves, and José Morillas's short story “El ranchador” (written in 1839 and published in 1852) narrates the life of another slave hunter, Valentín Páez. Recently, Adriana Lewis Galanes discovered the content of the album Del Monte gave to Madden for his antislavery cause. According to her, it included an earlier version of Morilla's “El ranchador.”¹² Even though the short story formed part of the early antislavery works, because of its theme and development I have decided to read it alongside Estévez's diary. From a different perspective, the short story and the diary also describe the sufferings of slaves and the brutalities of proslavers. The slavery and antislavery works depict the same historical moment, the first third of the nineteenth century, a time in which uprisings were commonplace and the tension between whites and blacks was increasing.

Antislavery works written and published after the emancipation of slaves, the founding of the republic, and the triumph of the Cuban Revolution continued to highlight the same slavery period and the plight of the Cuban slave, but with some important differences. The works of the early authors contained a direct correspondence between the time of the narration and the time in which the works were written; they described a condition that was present during the time of the writing and turned history into a narrative discourse. Later, writers continued to narrate the same slavery period but from a different point of view, one that reflected the conditions of the society in which they lived, a contemporary period familiar to them and their readers. The passage of time has allowed these writers a privileged perspective into a historico-literary process of which their works became an integral part.

Francisco Calcagno is an example of a writer who published his novels during a crucial moment of transition in Cuban history, from slavery to emancipation. He wrote some works before the abolition of slavery; because of the censors he suppressed them and published them many years later. For example, Los crímenes de Concha was written in 1863 and published in 1887, and Romualdo, uno de tantos was written in 1869 and published in 1881.¹³ These works capture the historical period of the early antislavery narratives but incorporate a contemporary understanding of slavery, one present during the time in which the works were written, when the slave trade was coming to an end and the abolition of slavery was an inevitable course of history. A correlation between the time of the narration and the one in which the works were written allowed for the reader and author to understand that little had changed between the two periods. Equally important, nothing will have changed, as the prologue, written during the time in which the work was published, indicates.

As slavery came to an end, the antislavery works were no longer a direct threat to the colonial government and were published; the postslavery works moved from the space outside the dominant discourse on slavery to a space within it. They entered into a dialogue on slavery, one which now coincided with the shift in society, away from slavery but where sugar continued to be the dominant discourse and blacks, though inside the dialogue, remained at the margins of it. …

FACT

The antislavery works contain and reflect a historical process, and the same fictional patterns they represent are embodied in history. Although social conventions have attributed marked differences to history and fiction, writing as textuality has allowed them to be read side by side. Fiction has provided me with a reading of history and history with a reading of fiction, thus privileging a simultaneous reading of blacks and slavery in Cuban history and fiction. Both fact and fiction are conditioned by a “deep structure” based on discourse and counter-discourse, oppression and rebellion, which motivates them to unfold in a similar manner. Thus the patterns which allow me to view the antislavery narrative as both a historical continuum and a beginning are also evident in the experiences of blacks in Cuban history. Throughout their history, the subjugation of slaves and free blacks conforms to a historical pattern, one which the antislavery literature addresses eloquently. The history of blacks as counter-discourse has challenged white dominance over them, as seen by numerous black uprisings and rebellions since Africans were brought to the New World. And, if we continue the parallel between fact and fiction, we discover that the oppression of blacks under the Spaniards did not end with the emancipation of slaves but continued into the founding of the republic in 1902 and well into the twentieth century.

In literature, the counter-discourse is defined by the antislavery narratives; in history, the same counter-discourse of blacks and slaves is represented by their attempt to undermine and subvert the white power structure based on sugar, slavery, and the oppression of blacks. The actions of slaves to flee slavery and live in Maroon communities in the mountains denoted a total rejection of the white power structure, which intended to define their roles, though central to sugar production, as subordinate and expendable within the society at large. The escape of slaves to the mountains represents a counter-discourse to power with an inherent power of its own. However, so long as the ex-slaves remain in mountain communities, their discourse falls outside the dominant one. But once the fugitive slaves come into contact with proslavers, the dominant discourse, their interaction produces a dialogue on slavery, one questioning the other, one attempting to undo the other, and, in their struggle, one remaining marginal to the other.

As with the antislavery narrative, the history of blacks and slaves in the slavery, postslavery, republic, and revolutionary periods reflects the passage of time. What may be understood as synchronic periods separated by transformations in Cuban history taken together offer insight into a diachronic history of blacks in Cuba. The continuous oppression of blacks has been interrupted by their struggles to gain liberation and political freedom. Thus a meta-historical reading of the lives of blacks in Cuba would inevitably recount over and over again a struggle for liberation, freedom, and self-determination.

In literature, the antislavery narrative represents a moment in which the black theme asserts itself, but it always responds to the patterns of history. In history, the oppression and marginality of slaves and blacks and their rebellion against whites are evident especially in three distinct events—during the Aponte Conspiracy of 1812, the Ladder Conspiracy of 1844, and the Race War of 1912—and propose to continue into the Cuban revolutionary period.

Although a Caribbean counter-discourse may have started with the coming together of Africa and Europe, the black and white races, it became more evident during the nineteenth century. The Haitian rebellion, certainly the most important event in Caribbean history and in the history of blacks in the Americas, had a profound impact on the lives of blacks in Cuba. The revolt gave free blacks and slaves the incentive to fight a dominant power to gain their freedom and inspired independence movements throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. It also put Spanish officials and slavers on guard to prevent a similar occurrence on the island of Cuba. Thus proslavers resorted to more oppressive measures to control the ever-increasing black and slave population, often imprisoning, whipping, or killing them.¹⁴

The Haitian rebellion caused a general unrest among blacks in Cuba and would be used by Spanish officials and slavers to justify oppressing slaves and free blacks on the island.¹⁵ At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the colonial authorities feared Dessalines, whose emissaries were sent to organize black and slave rebellions in Cuba and other countries.¹⁶ But not until 1812 did a unified movement form on the island to gain independence from Spain and emancipate slaves. In many ways, the free black José Antonio Aponte became Cuba's Toussaint Louverture. The 1812 Aponte Conspiracy in Cuba echoed the neighboring rebellion, but it had its origin two years earlier in another uprising, organized by Román de la Luz and Luis Francisco Bassave y Cárdenas.¹⁷ Like Bassave, Toussaint, and others, Aponte was a well-known figure. A successful carpenter and a first corporal of the prestigious Havana militia of the Batallón de Morenos, Aponte was also important among members of his community. He was the leader of the religious chapter Shangó-Teddun; an ogboni, or member of a powerful Nigerian secret society; and, within his religious order, an Oni-Shangó, a position that recognized his civil and spiritual powers.¹⁸

Aponte used his religious and civil leadership to unite blacks and mulattoes throughout the island by organizing the various tribes and black and mulatto émigrés living in Cuba. The black leader used his broad appeal to gather into his movement whites who participated in the 1810 conspiracy and others who were influenced by the separatist movements in Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia. Aponte's goal was to abolish slavery and the slave trade and replace the colonial status with a just government. His plan included setting fire to sugarcane fields in the provinces of Havana and Matanzas and taking over the Atares fortress and the Cuartel de Dragones to arm rebels. In Havana, Aponte visited Gil Narciso, one of Dessaline's generals, who, en route from Central America to Saint Domingue, enlisted his participation and learned first-hand about the Haitian uprising. The black rebel was also familiar with Henri Christophe's triumph in the northern part of Haiti and considered the possibility of receiving help from the black leader.¹⁹

However, unlike the Haitian rebellion, Aponte's plan failed. There was dissension among the rebels. Unity was not based totally on race; some blacks and mulattoes preferred to defend the colonial system.²⁰ There was a successful assault on the sugar mill Peñas Altas in the province of Havana on March 15, 1812, but the attack on Trinidad the following day proved fatal. Slave Pedro María Chacón, who had been in Bayamo, another rebel city, warned his master, and a priest, Manuel Donoso, convinced slaves not to rebel.²¹ Captain General Someruelos intervened with his forces and detained Aponte and other leaders in the Cuartel de Dragones. On April 7, Aponte was condemned to die, and two days later he and his followers were hanged. That same day, Aponte's severed head was displayed in a cage for all to see.

The Aponte Conspiracy, in which blacks and mulattoes rebelled but were then killed or punished severely, would be repeated in the Ladder Conspiracy of 1844. By the time Richard Madden, the arbiter in Mixed Court, published Manzano's Poems by a Slave in the Island of Cuba in 1840, the British had abolished slavery in the Anglophone Caribbean. Sugar islands like Jamaica were at a distinct disadvantage; they depended on wage laborers, while Cuba still counted on a large slave population to work the sugar plantations. Unlike the sugar islands, Cuba's sugar was comparatively less expensive since the island had the capacity to refine it.²² Through British pressure, Captain General Valdés received orders from Spain to execute a plan to emancipate slaves taken to Cuba after 1820. However, once the order reached the island, it was suppressed and never carried out. With the increasing black and slave populations and conspiracies for the political independence of Cuba, as promoted, for example, by the society Sol y Rayos de Bolívar,²³ many feared a racial confrontation provoked by abolitionists.

By 1841, the British appeared to be winning the emancipation battle. In July, the Anti-Slavery Report of London gave encouraging news: “It is my pleasure to inform you that the abolitionists principles are beginning to take root in this city and in Matanzas. The present moment is full of the best hopes for favorable results for humanity and liberty. … The abolitionists of this city … although few in numbers are influential in means.”²⁴ In that same year there were numerous rebellions, including those in the sugar mill of Arratea in Macurijes and the coffee plantation of Perseverancia in Lagunilla and in the construction of the Palace of Aldama belonging to relatives of Del Monte.

With Conservatives coming to power in England, the more conciliatory Lord Aberdeen replaced the relentless and unyielding abolitionist Lord Palmerston. Consequently, in 1842 Joseph Tucker Crawford replaced Turnbull in Cuba, thus forcing him to leave the island. Nevertheless, Turnbull's name and ideas were a cause for alarm in the Spanish colony. Turnbull resided on the nearby island of Jamaica and became head of the Luso-British Mixed Court in Kingston. Hysteria about the possibility of slave uprisings and black invasion from abroad plagued Cuba.²⁵

Instead of the sporadic rebellions of previous years in the Matanzas-Cárdenas regions, in 1843 there were successive uprisings in the sugar mills of Alcancía, La Luisa, La Trinidad, Las Nieves, and the ranch Ranchuelo, as well as in the railroad construction line from Cárdenas to Jucaro. Like the others, these rebellions were suppressed. Although the uprisings were not a part of the Turnbull conspiracy, some hoped that they had aborted the larger one which was still to come.²⁶

Rebellions continued after Valdés left office and into the interim government of Francisco Javier de Ulloa, who governed from October to November 1843. Under his administration, a major rebellion erupted in the sugar mill Triunvirato, where whites were killed. When Leopoldo O'Donnell (1843-1848) took over as the next captain general, rumors of Cuba becoming another Haiti were widespread. In another uprising at the Santísima Trinidad sugar mill, a slave told her master, Esteban Santa Cruz de Oviedo, of a major slave uprising planned for December 25, 1843, which would include the massacre of many whites.²⁷ O'Donnell seized this opportunity to put his ruthless plans into action and terrorized the slave and free black populations. His actions were known as the Ladder Conspiracy of 1844, which Hugh Thomas describes in the following manner: “In early 1844, about 4,000 people (in Matanzas) were suddenly arrested, including over 2,000 free negroes, over 1,000 slaves, and at least 70 whites. Negroes believed to be guilty of plotting were tied to ladders and whipped to confess—the name La Escalera thus becoming notorious, though this has been for a long time the name of a recognized type of punishment. Seventy-eight were shot, and perhaps one hundred more whipped to death.”²⁸ Thomas also points out that the authorities used this opportune time to “disembarrass themselves of all troublemakers, real and potential,” and entertains the idea of a contrived conspiracy to raise the price of slaves.²⁹ José Luciano Franco's sources place the whipping fatality at over seven thousand and suggest that the “conspiracy” was provoked by Captain General O'Donnell with the cooperation of traffickers in slavery. Their intentions included suppressing the growing black bourgeoisie,³⁰ some of whom appear in Villaverde's Cecilia Valdés. Those who were not killed were jailed or forced into exile.

The conspiracy, which delivered a strong blow to a growing black professional class, also destroyed the environment which had produced such antislavery works as Suárez y Romero's Francisco and Tanco y Bosmeniel's “Petrona y Rosalía” and forced other writers, like Juan Francisco Manzano, into permanent silence. The mulatto poet Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés, better known as Plácido, a frequent visitor at the Del Monte tertulia, or literary salon, was accused of leading the uprising in Matanzas. Plácido in turn accused Del Monte, Tanco y Bosmeniel, and Manzano, among others, of participating in the rebellion. Del Monte left the island in 1843 and died in exile in 1853. Plácido and other free blacks were shot in the back on June 24, 1844; Plácido's accusation against Del Monte may have been contrived since he never signed the confession.³¹

As in the antislavery narrative, the emancipation of slaves in 1886 brought an end to the old order and the start of a new one. But this beginning and the next one, during the founding of the republic, did not signal a radical change for blacks in Cuba. …

Notes

1. Of the stories in Escenas, only “Petrona y Rosalía” has been preserved. Although written in 1838, it remained unpublished until 1925. See Max Henríquez Ureña, Panorama histórico de literatura cubana (1492-1952) (New York: Las Américas Publishing Company, 1963), Vol. 1, 235-236. Adriana Lewis Galanes tells us that there were three Tanco stories. The other two were “El hombre misterioso,” later called “El cura,” and “Historia de Francisco,” later entitled “El lucumí.” See “El album de Domingo del Monte,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 451-452 (1988): 255-265. Recently, Lewis Galanes discovered “Un niño en la Habana” in the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid; we believe it also to be a part of Tanco's collection of stories. See Rolando Hernáldez Morelli, “Noticias, lugar y texto de ‘Un niño en La Habana’ espécimen narrativo inédito de 1837,” Círculo: Revista de Cultura 15 (1986): 73-84. José Fernández de Castro states that fragments of Tanco's story can be found in Cuba Contemporánea. See “Tema negro en letras de Cuba hasta fines del siglo XIX,” in Orbita de José Antonio Fernández de Castro, ed. Salvador Bueno (Havana: Unión, 1966), 177.

2. For a summary of Del Monte's ideas, see Salvador Bueno, “Domingo del Monte como crítico,” in La crítica literaria cubana del siglo XIX (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1979), 32-50.

3. In a highly recommended article, Antonio Benítez Rojo defines the discourse on sugar as the Spanish Crown, the colonial government of Cuba, slave traders, the sugarocracy, and the sugar mill. For him, Arango y Parreño's text prefigured the change Cuba would undergo to an intense sugar economy. The sugar plantation was a complete system. See his “Azúcar/Poder/Texto: Triada de lo cubano,” Cruz Ansata 9 (1986): 93-117, and, in particular, 95.

4. For the ideas on discourse and counter-discourse, I am indebted in part to Michel Foucault's work, in particular to his Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977) and his Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972). After writing this introduction, I became aware of Richard Terdiman's Discourse/Counter-Discourse (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985). Although he also uses Foucault's ideas as a point of departure, Terdiman's book and mine develop along different lines.

5. Blacks are present in Spanish literature, but they are represented as marginal characters. See, for example, essays by Sylvia Wynter, Martha Cobb, Howard M. Jason, Carter G. Woodson, and Valaurez B. Spratlin in Blacks in Hispanic Literature, ed. Miriam DeCosta (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1977), 8-52.

6. For a discussion of these terms, see Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978).

7. The abolition of slavery began with the law of February 13, 1880, which substituted slavery with a patronage system. This new method of subjugation gave the slave a monthly stipend. The patronage system was finally abolished by the royal decree of October 7, 1886. However, Fernando Ortiz tells us that blacks were not considered free until 1890. See Los negros esclavos (1906; enlarged version of Hampa afro-cubana: Los negros brujos, Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1975), 353-355, Ortiz's italics. Also see Rebecca Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 127-197.

8. See Ramiro Guerra, Azúcar y población en las Antillas (1930; repr. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1970), 47. The importance of slavery to sugar is summarized by Rebecca Scott when comparing slaves to laborers: “By tying workers to the workplace, slavery protected planters from the potential competition for labor, wage demands, or even strikes that might result from intense dependence on workers during the harvest. By permitting physical coercion slavery further enabled masters to force workers to perform the demanding tasks required, even at the cost of exhaustion and injury” (Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba, 24-25).

9. For an analysis of the different versions of Cirilo Villaverde's masterpiece, see my chapter on Cecilia Valdés, which is an expansion of my “Cecilia Valdés: The Emergence of an Antislavery Novel,” Afro-Hispanic Review 3, no. 2 (1984): 15-19.

10. See Juan J. Remos's preface to El negro Francisco (1873; repr. Havana: Fernández y Compañía, 1953), vi, 3-7; Henríquez Ureña, Panorama histórico, vol. 1, 236. Zambrana was born June 19, 1846, two years after the Ladder Conspiracy which kept Domingo del Monte in exile until his death in 1853.

11. See Silvestre de Balboa, Espejo de paciencia (Havana: Dirección de Cultura del Ministerio de Educación, 1942).

12. See Lewis Galanes, “El album,” 264.

13. Although slavery officially ended in 1886, it was a result of a gradual patronage process which began in 1880. See Fernando Portuondo, Historia de Cuba: 1492-1898 (Havana: Editorial Pueblo y Educación, 1975), 472-473.

14. According to Rebecca J. Scott, the slave population continued to grow as late as the early 1860s. Because of a conscious immigration policy to increase the numbers of whites, the 1861-62 census shows that the black/white balance had shifted and the white minority became the majority. See her introduction to Slave Emancipation in Cuba and in particular tables 1 and 2, pp. 7 and 10, respectively.

15. For a list of uprisings, see José Luciano Franco, Ensayos históricos (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1974), 133-134.

16. According to José Luciano Franco, the black unrest had other explanations. The war between England and Spain (1804) created a drop in prices and the U. S.-British rivalry for dominance in the Caribbean compounded the problem. Slaves were affected the most. The inferiority of some food products and the decomposition of others stored for long periods of time caused sickness among slaves. The scarcity of food created violent protest. See ibid., 138.

17. Bassave, who was known among the poor sectors of Havana, incited the battalion of Milicias Disciplinarias de Pardos y Morenos and other blacks and mulattoes, including Aponte, to rebel against the colonial government. This early movement failed; it was betrayed by Captain Morenos, Isidor Moreno, and the sergeant of Pardos, Pedro Alcántara Pacheco. De la Luz and Bassave were imprisoned in Spain and barred from traveling to America; Aponte and others eluded capture. See ibid., 139-143. For documents regarding the 1810 and 1812 conspiracies, see José Luciano Franco, Las conspiraciones de 1810 y 1812 (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1977).

18. Franco, Ensayos históricos, 148-149.

19. Ibid., 155, 176-177.

20. For example, in Puerto Príncipe the mulatto slave Rafael Medrano accused black José Miguel González of enlisting him in the uprising. In San Blas, slave Antonio José Vázquez also denounced the conspiracy. In Havana, businessman Pablo Serra betrayed Aponte. Recalling the failed attempt in 1810, Serra wanted to protect his own interests and gave a document he received about the rebellion to Spanish Captain General Someruelos. See ibid., 175.

21. Ibid., 176-177.

22. For an explanation regarding the differences between Cuba and the French and British colonies in the Caribbean, see Manuel Moreno Fraginals, El ingenio, vol. 1 (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1978), 25, note 13.

23. The Sol y Rayos de Bolívar was founded in 1821 with the intention of establishing the Republic of Cubanacán. However, its leaders were captured and detained. For a description of this society, see, for example, Portuondo, Historia de Cuba, 284-286.

24. Levi Marrero, Cuba: Economía y sociedad (Madrid: Editorial Playor, 1983), 82, my translation.

25. Ramiro Guerra, Manual de historia de Cuba: Desde su descubrimiento hasta 1868 (Madrid: Ediciones Erre, 1975), 425-434.

26. Ibid., 446-448; Marrero, Cuba, 85.

27. For these and other uprisings, see Guerra, Manual de historia, 444-448. For an account of the Triunvirato uprising, see José Luciano Franco, La gesta heróica del Triunvirato (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1978).

28. Hugh Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 205.

29. Ibid., 205-206.

30. Franco, Ensayos históricos, 198. Marrero provides a different set of figures. He states that of the accused there were more than 4,039 persons which he classifies in the following manner: 2,166 free blacks, 972 slaves, 74 whites, and 827 without classification. Of these, 78 were killed (1 white, 1 woman of color, 39 slaves, and 38 free blacks), 1,292 were jailed, and 435 were exiled from the island. As the figures show, there were a significant number of free blacks accused (93-94). Pedro Deschamp Chapeaux points out that just as there were white slave owners, there were also black masters. He also reproduces newspaper ads seeking help in capturing fugitive slaves. See El negro en la economía habanera del siglo XIX (Havana: UNEAC, 1971), 51.

31. See, for example, Marrero, Cuba, 93-95; Guerra, Manual de historia, 453.