CUBA 233
slaved Africans. In 1827 there were 1,000 mills;
by 1846 there were 1,442; and by 1860 there
were 2,000. During the fi rst few decades of the
nineteenth century, a reinvigorated African slave
trade increased the slave population from 18,000
in 1788 to 125,000 in 1810; Spanish slave traders
sold 161,000 Africans into slavery between 1811
and 1820, and thereafter some 200,000 new
slaves worked the Cuban sugar plantations.
The expansion of trade and the introduction
of large-scale sugar production created a fantastic
economic boom and delayed the development of
a creole rebellion against Spanish rule that swept
the rest of Spanish America. Cuba stayed loyal to
Spain during the Spanish American wars of in-
dependence, for its creole leaders feared slave re-
bellions and saw no reason to tamper with their
newfound prosperity. Meanwhile, discontent grew
among slaves and free blacks, as a result of the rise
of an increasingly harsh plantation system; in ad-
dition to everyday acts of resistance, such as work
slowdowns, feigned illness, equipment sabotage,
and abortion, enslaved African men and women
periodically punctuated their protests against en-
slavement with major slave revolts like the Aponte
Rebellion in 1812 and La Escalera in1844. Very
much infl uenced by the Haitian Revolution and
other slave insurrections throughout the Carib-
bean world, these rebellions united enslaved Af-
ricans, Cuban-born black slaves, free blacks, and
free people of color to seek the destruction of slav-
ery and plantation agriculture.
By the last half of the nineteenth century,
however, wealthy creoles became increasingly
resentful of corrupt Spanish offi cialdom, which
was determined to enforce continued obedience
from Spain’s last and richest colony in the New
World. The colony grew increasingly dissatisfi ed
with repressive Spanish rule and less dependent
economically on the mother country. As Cuba
turned increasingly toward the United States as a
market for its products and a source of needed im-
ports, schemes for the annexation of Cuba to the
United States emerged both on the island and in
some North American circles. In Cuba, conserva-
tive creole planters saw in annexation an insur-
ance policy against the abolition of slavery; in the
United States, some pro-slavery groups regarded
annexation as a means of gaining a vast new area
for the expansion of plantation slavery. Some even
dreamed that carving Cuba into three or fi ve states
would give the South increased power in the U.S.
national government, but the Civil War ended
these projects.
During the 1860s, creole discontent grew and
was heightened by a developing national and class
consciousness. The creole elite rejected various re-
form proposals offered by a weak Spanish govern-
ment that had been battered by internal dissension
and economic diffi culties. It became increasingly
clear to the creoles that Spanish economic and
political policies were severely restricting Cuban
development—a feeling sharpened by a serious
economic downturn.
Meanwhile, Cuba’s sugar economy had de-
veloped a sectional specialization. To the east,
a sparse population, predominantly composed
of free “whites” with a relatively small share of
black slaves, worked on cattle ranches that pro-
duced meat for consumption on the slave-based
sugar plantations that dominated western Cuba.
Creole landowners in the east, less dependent on
slave labor, feared slave rebellions less than they
feared Spanish domination. As a result, on Octo-
ber 10, 1868, in the small town of Yara in Oriente
Province, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, a creole
landowner, voluntarily freed his own slaves and
launched Cuba’s fi rst movement for independence
from Spanish colonialism. During the Ten Years’
War that followed, race increasingly divided the
rebel movement, as free black and mixed-race
leaders like Antonio Maceo predominated. Their
demands were simple and straightforward: they
wanted independence, the abolition of slavery, and
the establishment of a postcolonial racial equality.
Even as the Spanish sought to divide the rebels
by manipulating creole planters’ racial fears, the
movement’s increasingly black military leadership
celebrated the idea of nation over race. In 1869 the
rebel movement drafted a constitution that declared
“all inhabitants of the Republic entirely free” and
granted citizenship to all “soldiers of the Liberation
Army,” a majority of whom were Afro-Cuban. But
some creole rebel leaders, fearing the radicalism