Putting the voices of the enslaved front and center, Gloria Garcia
Rodriguez's study presents a compelling overview of African slavery
in Cuba and its relationship to the plantation system that was the
economic center of the New World. A major essay by Garcia, who has
done decades of archival research on Cuban slavery, introduces the
work, providing a history of the development, maintenance, and
economy of the slave system in Cuba, which was abolished in 1886,
later than in any country in the Americas except Brazil. The second
part of the book features eighty previously unpublished primary
documents selected by Garcia that vividly illustrate the
experiences of Cuba's African slaves. This translation offers
English-language readers a substantial look into the very rich, and
much underutilized, material on slavery in Cuban archives and is
especially suitable for teaching about the African diaspora,
comparative slavery, and Cuban studies. Highlighting both the
repressiveness of slavery and the legal and social spaces opened to
slaves to challenge that repression, this collection reveals the
rarely documented voices of slaves, as well as the social and
cultural milieu in which they lived.