Luis A. Figueroa offers an analysis of the emergence, development and decline of slavery in the town of Guayama, Puerto Rico, during the nineteenth century, situating it within the larger framework of Puerto Rican and Caribbean histories. He revisits old and lasting myths depicting slavery as irrelevant to the economic, social and cultural life of the island and supporting a benign racial democracy. Instead, Figueroa convincingly proves that sugar and slavery were as intrinsic a part of the development of Puerto Rico as they were for any other part of the Caribbean where the plantation throve. Drawing on compelling personal accounts, he offers an exhaustive revision of the historiography and he demonstrates that these myths prolonged racism against people of African descent on the island.
This well researched book illuminates our understanding of Spanish colonialism in the long nineteenth century through a combination of fine descriptions of the colonial apparatus, insightful nuances into the local elites and their negotiations of power, and a sensitive eye to the lives of the popular classes. Figueroa documents how, throughout the nineteenth century, two competing hegemonic projects dominated colonial politics. Favoured by the Spanish state in the first half of the nineteenth century, Coamo elites prescribed a plantation economy based on the increased importation of African slaves. In contrast, San Juan elites, fearing another Haiti-style revolution, envisioned an exceptional path for Puerto Rico where white settlers, rather than African slaves, constituted the majority of the working population. In 1865 the Spanish state called delegates from its colonies to meet in Spain for consultation in order to reform colonial governments. Almost by chance, the San Juan elites dominated the Puerto Rican commission, even though they did not represent a majority. Once in Spain, therefore, the Puerto Rican delegates proposed a radical project to abolish slavery, claiming that slavery in Puerto Rico was insignificant for the island's economic development. The project materialised in the 1870s, giving birth to two of the most pervasive myths in Puerto Rican history: that slavery was irrelevant, and that Puerto Rico achieved a harmonious transition from slavery to free labour.
Figueroa demonstrates that this transition was far from harmonious. In fact, most ex-slaves or libertos resisted the stipulations of the law, in particular the three-year apprenticeship that forced libertos to work for the same masters. Actively searching for freedom, ‘a substantial number of libertos chose to contract with employers other than their masters’ (p. 128). While a few ex-slaves bought land and engaged in agriculture, a larger number moved to the city, giving ‘impetus to the formation of plebeian barriadas (slums) that would continue and develop further after the turn of the century’ (p. 162). Female ex-slaves had a better chance to find employment than men in the city because of the urban demand for a great number of domestics, a profession dominated by women. Whatever the path, libertos no longer accepted the paternalistic order of their former masters; instead, they developed new loyalties along class lines that authorities labelled dangerous to the social order.
The book is full of metaphors and similes that occasionally seem confusing. It also introduces some theoretical concepts that are not explicitly tied to the research or the general discussion. Nonetheless, the book's contributions outweigh these minor blemishes. Indeed, this book is a must-have for any student of race relations, slavery, colonialism and Caribbean history.
