GRAN COLOMBIA 235
competition among centrales for cane, a condition
previously unknown because of transportation
limitations, resulted.
The owners of centrales confronted the neces-
sity of guaranteeing enough cane at the lowest
possible prices for the zafra (harvest). They could
do this either by reducing the independence of the
colonos or by acquiring their own cane land. The
fi rst method transformed the once-free farmers
into satellites of the giant mills. The second led to
the creation of latifundia. Small and medium-sized
growers fell by the wayside, to be replaced by ten-
ants or day labor. The colonos managed to hold
their own until independence, after which time
the massive infl ux of foreign capital into the sugar
mills overwhelmed them. With their dwindling fi -
nancial resources, they were doomed.
Entrepreneurs from the United States fi lled the
vacuum created by the ruin of the creole aristoc-
racy and the bankruptcy of Spanish interests by
the war. Thousands of North Americans accompa-
nied their investment dollars to the island to run
the sugar mills and merchant houses. The McKin-
ley Tariff Act of 1890, which abolished import du-
ties on raw sugar and molasses, greatly increased
American trade with and economic infl uence in
Cuba; by 1896, U.S. interests had invested $50
million in Cuba and controlled the sugar industry.
The United States purchased 87 percent of Cuba’s
exports. The growth of U.S. investment in Cuba
also brought about an increasing concentration of
sugar production, a trend signaled by the entry of
the “Sugar Trust” (the American Sugar Refi ning
Company of Henry Q. Havemeyer) into the island
in 1888.
Although the Ten Years’ War had trans-
formed Cuba into a haven for North Americans,
it had done nothing to eliminate racial segrega-
tion and discrimination, even after emancipation.
Elite Spanish and creole white supremacists domi-
nated late-nineteenth-century Cuba and routinely
blamed Afro-Cubans for all manner of Cuban social
ills, denied them access to education and adequate
health care, engaged in employment discrimina-
tion, and created obstacles to full citizenship. In-
terracial marriage, prohibited by law until 1881,
remained socially stigmatized thereafter.
This racial apartheid created two Cubas—one
steeped in Spanish cultural traditions and ritual
practices like Catholicism and Freemasonry, and
the other centered in African santería, a syncretic
popular religion, and ñáñigos, secret mutual aid
societies. According to historian Aline Helg, Afro-
Cubans, frustrated by limits imposed on their abil-
ity to rise in Spanish society, increasingly relied on
their African heritage to protect themselves and to
organize social protest movements that demanded
their “rightful share.”Gran Colombia
The early history of Venezuela and Colombia is
inseparably linked to the name of the liberator
Simón Bolívar. Venezuela was his homeland, and
Colombia (then called New Granada) and Venezu-
ela were the theaters of his fi rst decisive victories in
the war for Latin American independence. Bolívar
sought to unite Venezuela and New Granada into a
single large and powerful state and looked toward
the creation of a vast federation of all the Span-
ish American republics, extending from Mexico to
Cape Horn. In 1819 the Congress of Angostura (in
Venezuela) approved the formation of the state of
Colombia (later called Gran Colombia, or Greater
Colombia) that would combine Venezuela, New
Granada, and Ecuador (then still in Spanish hands).
In 1821, at Cúcuta on the Venezuelan-Colombian
border, the revolutionary congress formalized the
union and outlined a liberal reform program that
included the gradual abolition of slavery, the abo-
lition of native tribute, the division of indigenous
communal lands into private parcels (a “reform”
that opened the door to land-grabbing), the sup-
pression of smaller male convents and the seizure
of their property for the support of public second-
ary education, and a general expansion of educa-
tion. It also adopted a centralized constitution that
guaranteed citizenship rights to all people, irre-
spective of gender or race.
Drafted according to Bolívar’s wishes, the
constitution created a nation-state that refl ected
his indictment of Spain’s colonial domination. For
him, Spain had functioned as a tyrannical father
who enslaved his children for his own profi t and