Runaway Slave Settlements in Cuba

by LA Rosa Corzo, Gabino; Todd, Mary

• ISBN13: 9780807854792
• ISBN10: 0807854794
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

Challenging the myths of the palenques. Combining archaeological and historical methods, Gabino La Rosa Corzo provides the most detailed and accurate available account of the runaway slave settlements (palenques) that formed in the inaccessible mountain chains of eastern Cuba from 1737 to 1850, decades before the end of slavery on the island. The traces that remain of these communities provide important clues to historical processes such as slave resistance and emancipation, anticolonial insurgency, and the emergence of a free peasantry. Some of the communities developed into thriving towns that still exist today. La Rosa challenges the claims of previous scholars and demonstrates how romanticized the communities have become in historical memory. In part by using detailed maps drawn on site, La Rosa shows that palenques were smaller and fewer in number than previously thought and they contained mostly local, rather than long-distance, fugitives. In addition, the residents were less aggressive andviolent than myth holds, often preferring to flee rather than fight a system of oppression that was even more effective and organized than generally supposed. La Rosa's study illuminates many social and economic issues related to the African diaspora in the Caribbean, with particular focus on slavery, resistance, and independence. This translation makes the book available in English for the first time.

Author Biography

Gabino La Rosa Corzo is a researcher at the Center for Anthropological Study at the University of Havana. Translator Mary Todd lives in Havana.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(34)
Earlier Historical Studies	12	(15)
Methodology	27	(6)
Symbols Used in the Figures	33	(2)
1. Slave Resistance in Eastern Cuba: The First Few Centuries of Colonial Rule	35	(44)
El Portillo	43	(2)
The Attack on El Portillo	45	(4)
The Captured Runaways	49	(13)
A Settling of Accounts	62	(4)
Decades of Economic Development	66	(13)
2. Active Resistance in the Eastern Region, 1790-1820	79	(38)
Runaway Slave Settlements East of Santiago de Cuba	99	(5)
Runaway Slave Settlements in the Northern Mountain Ranges	104	(13)
3. Eastern Palenques in the Period of Slave Plantation Expansion	117	(52)
Runaway Slave Settlements in the Mayari Mountains	120	(9)
Tightening of the Eastern Repressive System	129	(11)
Consolidation of Resistance and Repression	140	(29)
4. Expansion and Decline	169	(54)
Last Large-Scale Attacks on the Eastern Palenques	178	(29)
Last of the Runaways Living in Settlements	207	(16)
5. Runaway Slave Settlements as a System of Resistance	223	(32)
Specific Characteristics of the Eastern Settlements	231	(4)
Forms of Settlement	235	(8)
Types of Dwellings in Runaway Slave Settlements	243	(7)
Adaptability of the Repressive System	250	(5)
Appendixes	255	(6)
Glossary	261	(4)
Notes	265	(10)
References	275	(6)
Index	281