When was slavery abolished in Cuba?
The abolition of slavery in Cuba
La abolición de la esclavitud en Cuba
October 1886. Cuba's sugar plantations made it one of the last slave societies in the Americas.
Draft: not yet checked against its sources.
Where: The Spanish Caribbean, Spain, Cuba, Havana
What happened
Cuba's sugar plantations made it one of the last slave societies in the Americas. Spain had abolished slavery on the peninsula in 1837 and in Puerto Rico in 1873, and the Moret law of 1870 freed children born to enslaved mothers and the old. In Cuba the planters resisted, and the rebels of the Ten Years' War (1868–1878) had freed slaves who joined them. The law of 13 February 1880 ended slavery in name but replaced it with the patronato, eight years of forced labour for the former owners at minimal pay; Caribbean deputies and Spanish abolitionists such as Rafael María de Labra demanded immediate freedom. A royal decree of October 1886 abolished the patronato two years early. Freedom was partial: many former slaves stayed on the plantations in near-dependence into the twentieth century.
Say it
La esclavitud terminó en Cuba en 1886, muy tarde.
Slavery ended in Cuba in 1886, very late.
Why it matters
Cuba's late abolition explains the strong African presence in its culture, its music and its Spanish, and why the independence movement of the 1890s under Martí and the Black general Antonio Maceo made racial equality part of the nation's idea of itself.
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Connected
- Dominican independence from Haiti (27 February 1844)
- José Martí and the Cuban War of Independence (24 February 1895–1898)
- José Martí and the Cuban War of Independence (24 February 1895–1898)
- The Disaster of '98 (1898)
Sources
- Cronología de la abolición en España — Universitat de Barcelona (Ciudadanía y Derechos)