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The Process of Cultural Change Among Cuban Bozales During the Nineteenth Century*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

William C. Van Norman Jr.
William C. Van Norman Jr.*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
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Extract

On again reaching Matanzas, I ascertained that a slave-ship had just entered the port from the African coast, with 250 slaves on board. … On preceding to the quarter where these wretched beings were confined, I found them all huddled together in a large room, in which they were all exposed to sale like some drove of pigs, in a complete state of nudity, with the exception of a bandage tied round their loins. They … were seated on the floor in groups of eight and ten, feeding out of a parcel of buckets. … Three of these miserable outcasts were extremely ill, from the effects of close confinement during a long voyage.

Thus began the experience of many nineteenth-century slaves upon their arrival in the New World. Hundreds of thousands of people from West and West Central Africa, bozales as Spaniards called newly arrived slaves, were torn from their own lands and plunged into a system that not only enslaved their bodies but also, through a system of physical violence and social control, re-inscribed personal and group identification.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , October 2005 , pp. 177 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2005

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Professor Louis A. Pérez, Jr. for his invaluable assistance, guidance and criticism in preparing this project. I would also like to thank Patty Van Norman and Oscar Chamosa for reading numerous drafts of the paper throughout its evolution. The research for the paper would not have been possible without the support of the Tinker Foundation and the Consortium on Caribbean and Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Finally, my partner, Patty Van Norman, has been both supportive and inspiring and my deepest thanks go to her.

References

1 Tudor, Henry, from Narrative of a Tour in North America, Comprising Mexico, the Mines of Real del Monte, the United States, and the British Colonies with an Excursion to the Island of Cuba. (2 vols.) (London: James Duncan, 1834), vol. II, pp. 132–33 Google Scholar quoted in Pérez, Louis A. Jr., ed., Slaves, Sugar, and Colonial Society: Travel Accounts on Cuba, 1801-1899 (Wilmington, North Carolina: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1992), pp. 104–05 Google Scholar.

2 I am using the terms identification and categorization rather than identity to draw upon the insightful article of Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper in which they problematize the analytical category of identity and show its imprecision. They suggest a shift to more useful and active terms that more closely reflect the processes at work and that do not imply fixity. See Brubaker, Rogers and Cooper, Frederick, “Beyond ‘Identity’,” Theory and Society 29 (2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 The term “racial understandings” comes from Frank Guridy, A., “From Solidarity to Cross-Fertilization: Afro-Cuban/African American Interaction during the 1930s and 1940s,” Radical History Review 87 (Fall 2003), p. 20 Google Scholar, in which he proposes the term in response to Brubaker and Cooper’s call for better terms for analysis of questions of identification. “African” as a category is problematic as it is a geographic term of Western construction and does not correspond to any colonial or pre-colonial identification of the peoples of that continent. I will use the term as a convenience to refer to the various peoples who were brought to the New World as slaves from the slave ports of the African continent.

4 Sugar farming depended on a large labor force which planters resolved through the importation of vast numbers of slaves from Africa. They were able to engage in a pattern of growth as a result of the Bourbon reforms instituted by the Spanish Crown, which saw the passage of the Free Slave Trade Law of 1789.

5 In 1792 there were 6,216 slaves in the region, growing to 10,773 by 1817. See Bergad, Laird W., Fe Iglesias García, María del Carmen Barcia, The Cuban Slave Market, 1790-1880 (Cambridge, Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 16, 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar. These figures are similar to those found in La Filial del Instituto de Historia del Partido Comunista de Cuba en la provincia de Matanzas, ed., Las rebeldías de esclavos en Matanzas (Havana: 1976), p. 17 Google Scholar. The editor(s) of that work report 1,900 slaves in 1792 and 9,447 in 1817. These figures are somewhat lower than other estimates as they are taken from single documents rather than a survey of multiple sources as done by Bergad et al. For that reason I conclude that the population numbers in The Cuban Slave Market are more reliable. I have included these alternate totals because they are roughly comparable and they also reflect the rapid growth of the African population. In 1841, 94,374 slaves populated the environs of Matanzas, declining slightly to 89,643 by 1862. Bergad et al., p. 34. The total cited by Filial …, p. 18, for 1841 is 53,322 slaves. For 1860 the number rises to 94,440.

6 Bergad, Laird W., Cuban Rural Society in the Nineteenth Century: The Social and Economic History of Monoculture in Matanzas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 74. See figure 4.6Google Scholar.

7 There were more than five ethnic groups that planters recognized but these few made up the over whelming majority of imports during the period considered here. See Bergad et al., p. 72. This ethnic construction will be explored below. The ethnic categories were roughly consistent throughout Latin America. For a comprehensive list of New World ethnicities see Karasch, Mary C., Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808-1850 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970)Google Scholar. Karasch makes an attempt to connect particular ethnicities to slaves’ points of origin in Africa. This is useful to examine possibilities of African identity but is limited due to the realities of the slave trade on the African mainland. Persons being sold into slavery often were brought by traders from some distance inland, concentrating them at the ports for sale. This could result in a cargo of slaves being classified as a single ethnicity, based on their port of departure. In fact, the people on board any given ship often came from a multitude of places.

8 Pérez, Louis A. Jr., Cuba Between Reform and Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar. See Table 9, p. 86 for Cuban population totals during the first half of the nineteenth century. I base my estimate on the figure cited by Pérez of 323,759 slaves in Cuba in 1846 compared to 94,374 slaves in Matanzas in 1841 as reported by Bergad.

9 I differentiate between Self and Other and Same and Other depending on the context for the Africans. In some situations it was a question of individual identification corresponding to Self. In other instances there was communal identification expressed which would relate to Same or a notion of Us as a group, over against an Other. Typically, these ideas were somewhat conflated as individual identification was subsumed in the group in response to a dominant overpowering or at least persistent Other, though, at times, glimpses of personality emerge from the historical record revealing the development of Self as well as Same during the period.

10 While it is understood that personal identification is the self-conscious differentiation between Self and Other it is clear that in a lived-life of human complexity there is a constantly shifting focus of what constitutes Other with relation to the Self. Homi Bhabha argues that a point of identification is primarily constituted between the sign and the signifier—in other words, within a binary relationship. In his argument this is especially true for the subaltern where there is a doubling or a dual inscription of identifications. On the one hand there is the self-identified construction and on the other there is the definition provided by the Other or dominate group. This concept has value in slave studies to explain the spheres of expressed identifications among slaves, though I find it only of limited use as he has failed to capture the multi-dimensional aspect contained within each sphere, public and private. See Bhabha, Homi K., “Interrogating Identity: Frantz Fanon and the Postcolonial Prerogative” in Bhabha, Homi K., The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994)Google Scholar.

11 The use of the term “space” in this context refers to the conditions necessary to facilitate change, both physical and psychological. I have chosen to use this term because it is metaphorically connected to the idea of a new range of possibilities open to slaves as well as the gap between the expectations of the planter class of the masters and the memories of past realities for Africans. This gap between realities was a necessary element in the creation of new identification as it provided the opportunity for slaves to conceptualize new notions of self and to act them out.

12 The framework of ritual theory developed by Turner will be explored for its applicability as a conceptual model which corresponds to the ways in which African peoples understood the world. In spite of the fact that ritual was entered into voluntarily, in contrast to the forced nature of slavery, the common transformative nature of the two experiences indicates some correspondence. Ritual can be a means to understanding in both a religious context and in general social situations of stress. Miers, Suzanne and Kopytoff, Igor, in “African ‘Slavery’ as an Institution of Marginality” in Suzanne, and Miers, Igor Kopytoff, ed., Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), pp. 3–81 Google Scholar, argued along similar lines concerning the use of ritual as a means to integrate new slaves into groups in Africa. In addition, I will be informed by the cultural theory of Sidney Mintz and formulations of group consciousness and identity of W. A. Elliott and Saul Kripke to provide a broader theoretical framework.

13 Performative theory, as explained in Parker, Andrew and Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, eds., Performativity and Performance (New York: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar, turns on the idea of doing something and saying something being equivalent acts. Parker and Sedgwick, building on the works of J. L. Austin and Jacques Derrida, argue that not only are speech acts and actions interchangeable, they are also clearly tied to expressions of identification. In the context of bozales in Cuba, dancing and drumming can be seen as a marker of distinctiveness and a way for slaves to express group identification in resistance to the world constructed by their masters.

14 Some have argued that Africans did try to rebuild their homeland in maroon communities such as in the case of Palmares in colonial Brazil. My contention is that these communities were neo-African as a result of their multi-ethnic make-up, their encounter with New World/European cultural forms, and the different physical environment in which they found themselves.

15 The model offered here is intended as a first step in the process of understanding the identities of slaves—before, during, and after slavery, the elements and the process. This is therefore not meant to describe the experience of all slaves except in a general sense and is confined to life on rural plantations. The difference between labor systems and organization on coffee and sugar plantations is an issue yet to be taken up and I have not chosen to explore the way in which urban slaves’ lives meshed with that of their rural counterparts. Initially it may seem inappropriate to apply ritual theory outside of religious practice, but in fact, Turner has used his ideas concerning ritual to analyze social conflict. See Turner, Victor, “Social Dramas and Stories about Them,” in On Narrative, Mitchell, W. J. T. ed. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 137–64 Google ScholarPubMed. The work of Turner demonstrates that the organizing concepts and effects of ritual are not confined to the religious, but occur in all types of social situations. Public crisis situations such as enslavement and the middle passage created the “‘pupation’ of liminal seclusion … [in which] transformation occurs most radically” (p. 157). Also see Bloch, Maurice, Prey into Hunter: The Politics of Religious Experience (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992)Google Scholar for his application of ritual theory to cultural and institutional violence.

16 Turner, Victor, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1969)Google Scholar. Turner builds upon and extends the earlier work of Arnold Van Gennep, who first proposed the three-stage model of ritual: separation, margin, and aggregation. See Van Gennep, Arnold, The Rites of Passage, trans. Vizedom, and Monika B, Gagielle L. Caffee (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1909)Google Scholar.

17 Turner, , The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, pp. 94–95 Google Scholar.

18 Law, Robin and Lovejoy, Paul E., eds., The Biography of Mahommah Grado Baquaqua: His Passage From Slavery to Freedom in African and America (Princeton, NJ: Markus Weiner Publishers, 2001), p. 137 Google Scholar.

19 Ibid., pp. 139, 44-45, 51.

20 Turner, , The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, pp. 102–03 Google Scholar.

21 The stairwell metaphor is taken from Bhabha, The Location of Culture, p. 4.

22 Falconbridge, Alexander, “The Men Negroes … Are … Fastened Together … By Handcuffs,” in African American Voices: The Life Cycle of Slavery, ed. Mintz, Sidney (St. James, New York: Brandywine Press, 1993), pp. 58–59 Google Scholar. (original source is Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa, London, 1788) According to Falconbridge, women were also on board and suffered similarly, though they were not usually shackled.

23 Ibid., p. 61.

24 See Baptist, Edward E., “‘Cuffy,’ ‘Fancy Maids,’ and ‘One-Eyed Men’: Rape, Commodification, and the Domestic Slave Trade in the United States,” American Historical Review 106:5 (2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for his recent account of the sexual dimension embedded in the slave trade of women especially during the nine-teenth century.

25 This account is largely taken from a report on an investigation from 1841 and 1842 concerning the conduct of the captain and crew of the Jesús María. “Expediente formado acerca de la Real Orden del Ministerio de Estado de 24 de septiembre de 1841, pidiendo informe sobre la queja del ministro británico, de los horrores cometidos por el Capitán y tripulación del buque negrero ‘Jesús María’.” 1842, Gobierno Superior Civil, Legajo: 941 Número: 33176, Archivo Nacional de Cuba. Hereafter cited as ANC. Some general detail of the Middle Passage experience is also taken from Falconbridge, “The Men Negroes … Are … Fastened Together … By Handcuffs.”

26 Evidence of vaccinations comes from certificates signed by Calves, Manuel, “Fiscal de Medicina Manuel Calves, “Fiscal de Medicina de esta Ciudad [Matanzas].” 28 March 1818 Google Scholar, Esclavos Bozales Gobierno Provincial, Legajo: 21 Número: 12, Archivo Histórico Provincial de Matanzas. Hereafter cited as AHPM.

27 Bhabha, , The Location of Culture, p. 4 Google Scholar.

28 Though as the slave period progressed, there were slaves waiting who would have already begun the work of establishing new identifications. This may have hastened the process in bozales in the middle and later decades of the century. In addition, the continued interaction between the peoples of Europe, the Americas, and Africa may have contributed to the transportation of New World conceptualizations back to Africa. There is some evidence that this did occur. The account of Baikie, William Balfour, Narrative of an Exploring Voyage up the Rivers Kwóra and Bínue: Commonly Known as the Niger and Tsádda in 1854 (London: Frank Cass and Co. Ltd., 1966 Google Scholar; reprint of an 1856 edition), shows that the regional or meta-identification of Igbo, which Douglas Chambers argues was constructed in the New World, was present in nineteenth-century Sierra Leone and around the Niger Valley. See Chambers, Douglas B., “‘My Own Nation’: Igbo Exiles in the Diaspora,” Slavery and Abolition 18:1 (April 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In addition, national affinities began to be seen in parts of the Bight of Benin as Lisa Lindsay shows in her examination of the city of Lagos. She provides evidence of former slaves returning to the city from Brazil who subsequently maintained a separate Brazilian orientation. See Lindsay, Lisa A., “To Return to the Bosom of their Fatherland’: Brazilian Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Lagos,” Slavery and Abolition 15:1 (1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. While this certainly adds a new dimension to an already complex problem, one that deserves further inquiry, it does not significantly alter the contours of the situation for departing slaves during the period under consideration here.

29 Miers and Kopytoff, citing Van Gennep and Turner, note that Africans from a wide range of cultural groups used ritual for all types of transitional experiences. See Miers, , ed., Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, pp. 14–16 Google Scholar.

30 These activities took place even for slaves sold directly from a slave ship. They might be resold if bought by a speculator but at the least they were renamed, branded, and baptized.

31 Documents concerning runaways and advertisements placed in local newspapers in search of escaped slaves usually included a description referencing these types of markings which were understood by slave owners as signs of African ethnic identity. Examples abound in the Archivo Histórico Provincial de Matanzas in the fondo Gobierno Provincial/Cimarrones and can also be seen in most editions of the local newspaper “Aurora de Matanzas” circa 1830-1849.

32 See Classen, Constance, Inca Cosmology and the Human Body (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Douglas, Mary, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York: Pantheon, 1970)Google Scholar; and Turner, Bryan, The Body and Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984)Google Scholar for notions on the cultural construction and conceptualizations of the body including markings and ritual activities relating to the body. All three authors argue, within different contexts, that ritual inscription of the body, as practiced in many parts of the world including Africa, was understood as marking important transformational events and signifying identity. From that I conclude that to reinscribe someone by force would be understood by the slave as not only representing a shift but also as an act of power. This could then become a focal point in the contestation of identity.

33 “Real Orden.” 18 February 1768, Real Cédulas y Ordenes, Legajo: 6 Número: 80, ANC.

34 Author Unknown, July 1857, Esclavos Bozales, Legajo: 21 Número: 95, AHPM. This quote is taken from a letter explaining some of the details of the event and commending the work of those who had compiled the information on the illegal bozales captured on the ingenio Susana. The last page of the letter is missing; therefore the author is unknown.

35 Turnbull, David, Travels in the West. Cuba; with Notices of Porto Rico, and the Slave Trade (London: Longman Orne Brown Green and Longmans, 1840), p. 48 Google Scholar.

36 Such scenes were repeated over and over throughout Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This is evidenced by the experience of Baquaqua. He too was renamed; in Brazil he was known as José da Costa. See Law, Robin and Lovejoy, Paul, eds., The Biography of Mahommah Grado Baquaqua: His Passage From Slavery to Freedom in African and America, (Princeton: Markus Weiner Publishers, 2001), p. 24 Google Scholar. Upon gaining freedom in the United States Baquaqua resumed using his African name. When Stanislas Foäche (1737-1806) sent instructions to the manager of his plantation at Jean-Rabel, St. Domingue, he understood the destabilized state of new slaves. He directed his overseer that “[t]he new negroes should be treated like infants during the first year.” Debien, G., Plantations et Esclaves à Saint-Domingue: Sucrerie Foäche [La Sucrerie Foäche à Jean-Rabel et ses Esclaves (1770-1893), vol. 67, Notes D’Histoire Coloniale (Dakar [Macon]: Imprimerie Protat Frères, 1962 [May]), p. 46.Google Scholar (“Les nègres nouveaux doivent être traités dans la première année comme des enfants.”) He thought to influence new slaves to be good workers, they should be renamed accurately to reflect their new occupations. Debien, Plantations et Esclaves a Saint-Domingue, p. 53. Foäche also warned of the dangers present in the extreme malleability of “new negroes.” They were vulnerable to bad influences and “it is very difficult to restore them when they” become corrupted. (Debien, Plantations et Esclaves a Saint-Domingue, p. 46. “Il est très difficile de les rétablir quand ils sont dans cet état.”)

37 This transition was more typical of sugar plantations than on coffee plantations where bohíos remained in use on many farms until mid-century.

38 There is a great deal of testimony from travelers’ accounts as to the nature of the barracón. See Hurlbert, William Henry, Gan-Eden: or, Pictures of Cuba (Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1854)Google Scholar; Jay, W M L (Woodruff, Julia Louisa M.), My Winter in Cuba (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1871)Google Scholar; Townshend, Frederick T., Wildlife in Florida with a Visit to Cuba (London: Hurt and Blackett, 1875)Google Scholar; Gurney, Joseph John and Clay, Henry, Familiar letters to Henry Clay of Kentucky, Describing a Winter in the West Indies (New York: Press of Mahlon Day, 1840)Google Scholar; Baird, Robert, Impressions and Experiences of the West Indies and North America in 1849, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1850), I, pp. 222–27 in Pérez, , ed., Slaves, Sugar, and Colonial Society: Travel Accounts on Cuba, 1801-1899, pp. 112–14 Google Scholar; Bremer, Fredrika, The Homes of the New World: Impressions of the New World, trans. Mary Howitt (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1853)Google Scholar. Also see “El Barracón de Ingenio en la Época Esclavista” in de la Riva, Juan Pérez, El Barracón y Otros Ensayos (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1975), pp. 15–74 Google Scholar, for descriptions of the jail-like structures and the manner in which the barracón was used. Also, for insight into the active use of spatial control on the plantation see Delle, James A., An Archaeology of Social Space: Analyzing Coffee Plantations in Jamaica’s Blue Mountains (New York: Plenum Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Gurney, and Clay, , Familiar Letters to Henry Clay of Kentucky, Describing a Winter in the West Indies, p. 210 Google Scholar.

40 Townshend, Wildlife in Florida with a Visit to Cuba, p. 193.

41 Governor of Matanzas (signature unclear), 18 October 1861, Cimarrones, Legajo: 16 Número: 30, AHPM. This is a series of documents related to the capture of Manuel Congo and an investigation of his accusation against the mayoral of killing a slave named Alejandro. Manuel said that the reason he fled “era el temor al castigo tan desproporcianado.”

42 “Oficio del Gobernador de Matanzas to Tenencia de Gobierno y Comandancia Militar del distrito de Güines.” 18 October 1861, Cimarrones, Legajo: 16 Número: 30, AHPM. “Durante el viaje … lo agolpeó estremadamente rompiéndole la Cabeza y clavándole las espruelas como á un Caballo; al siguiente día le dío veite [sic] y cinco azotes de cuyo castigo.”

43 The reaction of the government toward the death of Alejandro might raise the objection that violence was something out of the ordinary. If this was the case it would explain the investigation. The balance of the records of the case reveal that this was not the owners’ or the governmental officials’ main concern. The focus quickly shifted away from whether or not Alejandro had been killed towards the matter of treatment and control on the ingenio of Sedano. Their comments and testimony show that the central interest was in the control of the slave population. If one of their ranks was not keeping his labor force under control the others feared that the forces of rebellion could spread. It was decided that all involved were blameless. I conclude from this that owners felt justified in using whatever force they deemed necessary but felt they should use some minimal amount of restraint so as not to provoke a rebellious response.

44 Ballou, Maturin Murray, History of Cuba; or, Notes of a Traveller in the Tropics (Boston: Phillip Samson and Company, 1854), pp. 180–82 Google Scholar quoted in Pérez, , ed., Slaves, Sugar, and Colonial Society: Travel Accounts on Cuba, 1801-1899, p. 119 Google Scholar.

45 See Kripke for his discussion on the significance of names and the problem of inherent meaning in Kripke, Saul A., Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1980)Google Scholar. Though the author is primarily concerned with the names of “inanimate objects,” I find his argument salient to the highly objectified slave.

46 Drummond, Lee, “The Cultural Continuum: A Theory of Intersystems,” Man: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15:2 (1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Mintz, Sidney W. and Price, Richard “Sociocultural Contact and Flow in Slave Societies” chap 2 in Sidney W. and Richard Price Mintz, The Birth of African American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective, 2nd ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), pp. 23–37 Google Scholar.

47 Auberro, Pedro, “Real Jardin Botanico.” 13 January 1834, Gobierno Superior Civil, Legajo: 938 Número: 33092, ANC.Google Scholar

48 See Francisco de Santiago Aguirre, “Comisión Militar. Criminal contra los autores y complices principales de la sublevación de negros del Cafetal Salvador de D. Francisco Santiago de Aguirre ubicado en Banes ocurrida la noche del 13 de Agosto por cuyo delito se jusgan á Pedro el carretero; Gonzalo mandinga; Eusebio gangá; Luis idem; Pascual Lucumí; Bernualdo id.; Antonio lucumí; Agustín id; Atilano id.; Juan id; Hermenegildo id. Juez Fiscal: El Capitán de Ynganteria D.n Tomas de Salazar Secretario: El Teniente graduado Don Lorenzo Baltánas.” 29 August, 1833, Miscelánea de Expedientes, Legajo: 540 (173-177v) Número: B, ANC.

49 See Fondo, : Miscelánea de Expedientes, Legajo: 540, B, ANCGoogle Scholar.

50 Hennig Cohen demonstrates this usage among slaves of South Carolina; the importance of this persistence is reflected among the Gullah people of coastal Carolina who are considered the most African of the African-American population of North America. Cohen, Hennig, “Slave Names in Colonial South Carolina,” American Speech 28:1 (May 1952)Google Scholar.

51 See Parker, ed., Performativity and Performance, for a discussion of the significance of speech acts that can be considered actions.

52 The guiding concept in this section is derived in part from Drummond and his use of the idea of the cultural continuum and the construction of creole identity in another context.

53 For a discussion on the impact of African cultures on the formation of Cuban identification among the European descended population see Jr., Louis A. Pérez, On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality and Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999)Google Scholar, and Moore, Robin, Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920-1940 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

54 Mullin, Michael, Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South and the British Caribbean, 1736-1831 (Urbana: 1992), p. 15 Google Scholar. This also points to two things: the unintended aspect of master actions with their tacit acceptance of new slave networks and also the purposefulness behind the phenomena of ethnic designations in the New World. In addition, it is unlikely that masters understood the concept of language group; more likely, what Mullin is referring to is masters assessing what language a slave understood and assigning him or her to the corresponding category. Many Africans, however, were multilingual.

55 Abbot, Abiel, Letters Written from the Interior of Arcana, To the East, And of Cusco, To the West in the Months of February, March, April, and May, 1828 (Boston: Bowles and Dearborn, 1829), p. 14 Google Scholar. From letter IV, written from La Carolina plantation, February 19, 1828. Also see Dana, Richard Henry Jr., To Cuba and Back. With a new introduction C. Henry Gardiner (Carbondale, Ill.; Boston: Southern Illinois University Press, 1966 [reprint of an 1859 edition]), pp. 107–08 Google Scholar, for an additional testimony of attitudes in Cuba.

56 Cugoano, Ottabah, “From Thoughts and Sentiments of the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species,” in Three Black Writers in Eighteenth Century England, ed. Francis D. and Barry Sanders Adams (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1971), p. 48 Google Scholar.

57 See Baikie, Narrative of an Exploring Voyage up the Rivers Kwóra and Binue, p. 4.

58 See Caron, Peter, ‘“Of a Nation Which Others do not Understand’: Bambara Slaves and African Ethnicity in Colonial Louisiana, 1718-60,” Slavery and Abolition 18:1 (April 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Bambara was also used in Cuba, though infrequently.

60 Montejo, Esteban, The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave, ed. Miguel Barnet, trans. Jocasta Innes (New York: Pantheon Books, 1968), p. 17 Google Scholar. Montejo’s comment is telling of the dual construction of identifications in Cuba. He claims a Cuban category—Lucumi—at the same time maintaining an African identity—Oyó.

61 Elliott, W. A., Us and Them: A Study of Group Consciousness (Aberdeen, Great Britain: Aberdeen University Press, 1986), p. 6 Google Scholar. Author’s emphasis.

62 Montejo, , The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave, p. 33 Google Scholar.

63 For an explanation of the development of Neo-African identities in another context see Chamosa, Oscar, “The Black Associations and the Emergence of Neo-African Nations in Buenos Aires, 1770-1870” (unpublished seminar paper, University of North Carolina, 1998)Google Scholar.

64 See Mintz, The Birth of African American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective.

65 Illegible signature, accounting of the property of Rita Estremes, “Plano a fs. 1129, 4a pieza. Plano que manifiesta el terreno que ocupa el Cafetal titualdo la Campana de la propriedad de los heredores de la Sra. D. Rita Estremes, en el partido de S. Marcos, firmado José Govin. se encuentra en la testamentaria de Rita Estremes.” 1835, Escribanias de Salinas, Legajo: 238 Número: 3752, ANC. While there were a significant number of criollos on the Campana only 13 were above the age of 12. Among the adult population African-born people were a clear majority.

66 Little work has been done in examining what influence ecology played on the slave populations in the New World. The use of plants, both in food and in more structured rituals, was central to African people. The reinterpretation based on newly available plants would likely reveal the ways African people [reconstructed their worldview in a new locale. See Voeks for his examination of the use of plants in Brazil by people of African descent and how they differed and reinterpreted ritual from their African counterparts. In Voeks, Robert A., Sacred Leaves of Candomblé (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997)Google Scholar. His work is a promising first step in this field.

67 Division de Gobierno de Ultramar, “to Gobernador Capitán General de la isla de Cuba.” 10 January 1848, Reales Ordenes y Cédulas, Legajo: 145 Número: 6, ANC.

68 For one example see the series of letters between various planters and the Governor de Matanzas, Gobernador de Matanzas, “Cartas.” 28 June to 20 August 1839, Esclavos, Legajo: 23 Número: 29, AHPM.

69 See Capitanía del partido Guanábana, 24 May 1845, Religiones Africanas, Legajo: 1 Número: 2, AHPM; Curato y Vicariao de la Iglesia de San Carlos de Matanzas, undated, Religiones Africanas, Legajo: 1 Número: 2, AHPM; Angela Rivera, “to Capitanía del Partido.” 3 July 1880, Religiones Africanas, Legajo: 1 Número: 2, AHPM.

70 Harrodd, Harold L., Becoming and Remaining a People: Native American Religions on the Northern Plains (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995), p. xviii Google Scholar.

71 Real Cédula of 1795 and restated in a Royal Order “Real Orden.” 10 January 1848, Reales Ordenes y Cédulas, Legajo: 145 Número: 6, ANC. Also see Brandon, George, Santería from Africa to the New World: The Dead Sell Memories (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), pp. 61–62 Google Scholar.

72 Letter recounting the inquiry of a slave named Joaquin by Julio; Bernardo Reyes; Manuel Hernandez de la Maya, “Cartas.” October 1861, Cimarrones, Legajo: 16 Número: 30, AHPM.

73 Montejo, The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave, p. 36.

74 Gobernador de Matanzas, July 1839, Esclavos, Legajo: 23 Número: 29, AHPM and Gobernador de Matanzas, 12 April 1852, Gobierno Provincial Orden Público y Policía, Sublevaciones, Legajo: 11 Número: 2, AHPM. In both of these cases the decision was to revoke permission to hold festivos.

75 Beato, Pedro F., “to Gobernador de Matanzas.” 26 February 1847, Esclavos, Legajo: 23 Número: 47, AHPM. My emphasis.Google Scholar

76 “Cartas.” 28 June to 20 August 1839, Esclavos, Legajo: 23 Número: 29, AHPM.

77 “Cartas.” 24 May 1845 to 30 December 1899, Religiones Africanas, Legajo: 1 Número: 2, AHPM.

78 Juan Bautista, “Carta to Brigadier Gobernador Político.” 9 May 1852, Religiones Africanas, Legajo: 1 Número: 3, AHPM.

79 Most significant in this area were his later works, see Ortiz, Fernando, La africana de la musica folklorica de Cuba, 1993 reprint ed. (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1950)Google Scholar, and Ortiz, Fernando, Los bailes y el teatro de los negros en el folklore de Cuba, reprint 1985 ed. (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1951)Google Scholar.

80 The ideas of Barbara Myerhoff applied in this paragraph are taken from Myerhoff, Barbara, “Life History among the Elderly: Performance, Visibility, and Re-membering,” in Remembered Lives: The Work of Ritual, Storytelling, and Growing Older, ed. Marc Kaminsky (Ann Arbor: University of Michian Press, 1992), p. 235 Google Scholar.

81 Ibid., p. 234.

82 Paulino López Magdalena, “Carta to Gobernador de Matanzas.” 7 April 1882, Religiones Africanas, Legajo: 1 Número: 76, AHPM.

83 Ibid.