Cuba: An American History

Ferrer describes how Italian navigator Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain on August 3, 1492, with the goal of finding a westward passage from Europe to Asia. On October 12 of the same year, Columbus and his ships landed on an island in the Bahamas; he believed they were in Asia. He claimed the island for Spain and then sailed on. He landed in Cuba on October 28 and asserted that it was Japan (“Cipangu”). After claiming Cuba for Spain, he went on to Hispaniola, the island where Haiti and the Dominican Republic are located. Columbus established a permanent settlement there and returned to Spain. In the following year, 1493, Columbus returned to Hispaniola to find that the locals had killed the settlers he left behind. More Spanish settlers arrived and settled on the island. By 1500, many of the Indigenous people of Hispaniola had been killed by war, disease, malnutrition, and overwork, so the Spanish turned their attention to Cuba.

In 1511, the Spaniard Diego de Velázquez founded a settlement in Cuba. Hatuey, a Taíno leader from Hispaniola who left as a refugee and settled in Cuba, organized an early uprising against the Spaniards at this settlement. However, he was defeated and burned at the stake. The Spanish crown instituted encomienda—a system where colonists were given apportionments of land and the right to demand forced labor from the people they conquered. The Spanish colonists killed many Taíno people while establishing their settlements.

In 1519, Hernán Cortés returned with gold from the Yucatán in Mexico. Soon after, many Spaniards left Cuba chasing the gold rush.

In 1513, a Spanish navigator named Antón de Alaminos discovered the Gulf Stream, which flows from the Gulf of Mexico to Spain and facilitates the oceanic voyage. It can be picked up just off the coast of Havana.

In 1538, Isabel “Inés” de Bobadilla arrived in Havana with her husband, Hernando de Soto. He left soon after to conquer Florida, and Inés was left in charge of the settlement.

In 1551, Spain instituted legislation that ships crossing the Atlantic with goods from the “New World” had to do so in armadas or groups of 10. These ships would assemble in Havana, prompting the settlement’s rapid growth. However, it was not well defended. In 1555, the French pirate Jacques de Sores (who was nicknamed “the Exterminating Angel”) conquered the settlement and then burned it to the ground when he was not paid a ransom.

By 1600, the Spanish crown fortified the settlement. It built two new forts on either side of the bay of Havana: the fort of San Salvador and the Castle of the Three Wise Men (also known as the Morro).

Much of the labor in Havana was done by enslaved African people who were first transported there in 1526. Under Spanish law, enslaved people could purchase their freedom or those of their loved ones, resulting in a sizable free Black population on the island as well. Overall, however, Spanish enslavement was just as brutal as that of the British, French, or other European powers.

The Spanish established copper mines in the mountains to the east of Havana in a place known as El Cobre. In September 1612, two Indigenous brothers, Rodrigo and Juan de Hoyos, and an enslaved boy, Juan Moreno, fished a small statue of the Virgin of Charity out of the ocean. They brought it back to El Cobre and created a small altar for it. However, the statue kept supernaturally disappearing and reappearing. They interpreted this as an expression of her desire for a more permanent home, so they built a permanent shrine to her in 1617. Today, La Caridad, the Virgin of Charity, is Cuba’s patron saint.

The people of El Cobre, known as cobreros, resisted being sold when the Spanish crown took over the mines in 1670. In 1677, Moreno, the enslaved boy who found the statue of La Caridad, petitioned the Spanish Crown for a stay. The cobreros earned the status of “royal slaves,” meaning that they could not be sold. However, they continued to fight with authorities. In 1780, cobrero Gregorio Cosme Osorio went to Madrid to petition the king of Spain for their freedom. In 1800, the king granted their petition, and the cobreros were freed. This created a model of resistance and a symbol of hope for other enslaved people in Cuba.

By the time the Seven Years’ War (also known as the French and Indian War) broke out in 1756 on the American continent, Havana was “the most fortified city in the New World” (43). By 1761, Spain had allied with France against Britain in the war. In response, Britain declared war on Spain in 1762. However, news of the declaration was slow to reach Havana. On June 6, 1762, British ships led by Admiral Pocock and commanded by the Earl of Albemarle landed in Havana and laid siege to the city. To boost the numbers of the Spanish troops, the Cuban governor Prado offered freedom to enslaved people who joined the fight against the British. The siege dragged on for seven weeks, and British reinforcements arrived from the American colonies. On August 11, Havana fell to the British, and Albemarle established himself as governor.

At that time, sugar was a key commodity in Cuba, and most of the labor relating to sugar production was done by enslaved Africans. Albemarle gave a Liverpool merchant license to traffic Africans to the island, and the sugar industry in Cuba expanded.

In 1763, the Europeans settled the Seven Years’ War with the Treaty of Paris. In the settlement, Britain ceded Cuba, and Spain ceded Florida. On July 4, 1763, the Spanish reclaimed Cuba, and they built a new fort to defend Havana from future attacks.

On January 12, 1776, Fichacgé, a chief of the Uchiz Nation in Florida, arrived in Havana to petition the Spanish crown for assistance in fighting the British colonists who were “encroaching on their land” (57). Cuba’s governor refused to grant this request for support because he did not want further conflict with the British. Meanwhile, the American ambassador Arthur Lee traveled to Madrid to likewise petition Spain for its support in the American Revolution. The Spanish agreed to provide monetary and material support to the American revolutionaries. They also agreed that American “merchants and vessels […] would be welcomed in Havana as ‘a most favored nation’” (59).

The Spanish trader of enslaved people Juan de Miralles was sent from Havana to the American colonies to spy on the revolutionary efforts. He attended the Continental Congress and made connections with the revolutionaries. He lobbied the Congress to recognize Spain’s right to Florida and established a private shipping lane between Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Havana.

In the 1780s, the American colonies traded flour for silver from Cuba. Cuban silver was used to pay American and French soldiers at the decisive battle of Yorktown in 1781. In 1782, the Spanish crown ordered that foreign ships were no longer allowed to dock in Havana, but the Havana authorities ignored the order. In 1789, the port officially reopened to American ships that traded flour and other goods for enslaved people.

In 1788, Franscisco Arango—a lawyer and sugar plantation owner from Havana—traveled to Madrid to propose an expansion of the trade in enslaved people. He argued that instead of granting a monopoly to one trader of enslaved people, the crown should allow anyone to sell enslaved people in Cuba. The crown agreed. This created a massive boom in the trade of enslaved people on the island. However, in 1791, Spain temporarily reversed this policy. They had learned about the uprising of enslaved people in Saint-Domingue (in Haiti) and were worried about a similar uprising in Cuba due to the large numbers of enslaved people on the island. However, Arango convinced the crown that the uprising in Haiti was actually an opportunity for Spain, and the “open slave trade policy” was reinstated (69). The treaty argued for the “accelerated expansion of sugar and slavery” (69). By 1830, Cuba was the world leader in sugar production, and the brutal work was done by enslaved people.

There were regular rebellions by enslaved people from 1795 to 1812, inspired by leaders like the Haitian Toussaint Louverture. In Cuba, these rebellions were led by leaders like Juan Barbier and José Antonio Aponte, and they were violently suppressed.

In 1822, Rhode Island senator and trader of enslaved people James DeWolf met with Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. He was concerned that Britain, which had abolished the trade of enslaved people by then, was going to try to take Cuba from the Spanish. Adams dismissed DeWolf’s concerns even though he recognized the competing claims on the island from independent Mexico, Spain, Britain, and the US. Cuba was important geographically since it sits between the Gulf of Mexico and the eastern seaboard. Adams predicted that Cuba would “gravitate only toward the North American Union” (84).

Cuba and the US were natural allies since their economies were both dependent on enslavement. Cuban planters worried that Spain would abolish enslavement due to increasing pressure from Britain. Some of the enslavers in Cuba plotted to gain independence from Spain and hoped to join the US. However, President Monroe resisted the annexation of Cuba in 1822. In 1823, the new governor of Cuba, Francisco Dionisio Vives, crushed an independence movement and reinforced Spain’s absolute control of the island.

On December 2, 1823, President Monroe issued his Monroe Doctrine, which declared that “the American continents” would no longer be “subjects for future colonization by any European powers” (91). This doctrine would defend Cuba from colonization by Britain in anticipation of Cuba eventually joining the US, which was Cuba’s principal trading partner. Although Spain outlawed the trade of enslaved people in 1820, Americans continued to illegally trade enslaved people in Cuba in exchange for sugar.

In the 1830s and 1840s, the Cuban writer Diego Gabriel de la Concepción (known by his penname Plácido) became famous for his romantic poetry. He collaborated with the white Cuban poet Domingo del Monte to rebel against the Cuban government and enslavement. Del Monte came from an aristocratic family that owned enslaved people. Plácido and del Monte worked with British abolitionists David Turnbull and Francis Ross Cocking to plot a revolt. However, del Monte began to worry that the plot was getting out of control, and he alerted the US about the imminent revolt. In November 1843, the revolt began, and plantations were burned. The authorities violently suppressed the revolt in a movement known as La Escalera, or “the ladder,” a term that refers to a torture technique where rebel conspirators were tied to a ladder and whipped to death. Three thousand people were executed, including Plácido, whose role in the revolt is debated. Afterward, the “white creoles” felt that joining the US would be the best way to preserve their economy that relied on enslaved people.

In March 1853, President Franklin Pierce was inaugurated as president of the US. His vice president, William Rufus King, was a cotton planter and enslaver. King spent time in Cuba attempting to treat his tuberculosis with a “sugar cure,” or time spent in the sugar-filled air of Cuba’s plantations. He took the oath of office in Cuba and then died two weeks later. Ferrer argues that this episode shows how closely linked Cuba and the US were at the time. Their economic relationship was based on the illegal trade of enslaved people.

The debate about whether the US should annex Cuba continued throughout the 19th century. Cuban planters hoped to encourage this by launching a series of “filibustering campaigns” or “private expeditions” in Cuba to gain independence from Spain in the hope that the US would then annex the island. One such filibusterer was Narciso López—he gained support from enslavers like John C. Calhoun for his campaigns. In 1850, his second filibuster flew the “newly designed Cuban flag” (113), which was based on the US flag—this was the first time the flag of Cuba was flown. López and his troops were captured and killed by the Spanish.

In 1853, Spain sent a new governor to Cuba: Juan Pezuela, who set about enforcing Spanish laws about the trade of enslaved people and arming free Black and biracial militias. In response, the US issued the Ostend Manifesto, threatening to go to war with Spain if they did not allow the US to purchase the island. 

In 1856, James Buchanan was inaugurated as president of the US. In his inauguration speech, Buchanan reinforced the US’s intention to annex Cuba.

In May 1865, the Confederacy surrendered in the American Civil War. Enslavers in Cuba supported the Confederacy, while the enslaved people supported the Union. Following their loss, many Confederates relocated to Cuba. One such family was the Ripleys, who established a sugar plantation in Mantanzas, Cuba. In addition to African enslaved people, the plantation also relied on imported Chinese contract labor. (In 1874, after hearing news of labor abuses in Cuba, China cut off this trade.) In 1872, Eliza Ripley abandoned the plantation and returned to the US when war in Cuba broke out over the island’s desire for independence from Spain.