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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 February 2009
Nineteenth-century Cuban colonial and slave society sharply divided its inhabitants by race and ethnicity. These race and ethnicity divisions, and the formidable repressive apparatus necessary to sustain slavery and colonialism, hindered the emergence of a class identity among the urban popular classes. However, this oppressive atmosphere created working and living conditions that compelled workers of diverse ethnicity and race to participate, increasingly, in collective action together. Free labour shared many of the adversities imposed on unfree labour, which led the emerging Cuban labour movement, first to oppose the use of unfree labour in the factories, and later, to become openly abolitionist.
2 For works focusing on sugar slavery in Cuba, see Raúl Cepero Bonilla, “Azúcar y abolición (apuntes para una historia crftica del abolicionismo)” (1st pub. 1948), in Bonilla, Raúl Cepero, Escritos históricos, ed. Fernandez, Maria Luisa Cepero (Havana, 1989), pp.11–171Google Scholar; Muñiz, José Rivero, “Esquema del movimiento obrero”, in Sánchez, Ramiro Guerra y et al. (eds), Historia de la nacidn cubana, 10 vols (Havana, 1952), VII, pp. 247–300Google Scholar; Knight, Franklin W., Slave Society in Cuba during the Nineteenth Century (Wisconsin, 1970)Google Scholar; Scott, Rebecca J., Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 1860–1899 (Princeton, 1985)Google Scholar; Fraginals, Manuel Moreno, El Ingenio: complejo enondmico social cubano del azucar, 3 vols (Havana, 1978; 1sted. 1964)Google Scholar; and Bergad, Laird W., Cuban Rural Society in the Nineteenth Century: the Social and Economic History of Monoculture in Matanzas (Princeton, 1990)Google Scholar.
3 See, for instace, Spalding, Hobart A. Jr, “The Workers' Struggle: 1850–1961”, Cuba Review, 4 (1) (1974), pp. 3–10Google Scholar; Aguirre, Sergio, Eco de caminos (Havana, 1974)Google Scholar; Hidalgo, Ariel, Orfgenes del movimiento obrero y del pensamiento socialista en Cuba (Havana, 1976)Google Scholar; Las Closes y la lucha de closes en la sociedad neocolonial cubana, 5 vols (Havana, 1980–1981); Moro, Aleida Plasencia, “Historia del movimiento obrero en Cuba”, in Casanova, Pablo Gonzalez (ed.), Historia del movimiento obrero en América Latina, 4 vols (Mexico City, 1984), I, pp. 88–183Google Scholar and Instituto de Historia […] de Cuba, Historia del movimiento obrero cubano 1865–1958, 2 vols (Havana, 1987)Google Scholar.
4 This development is best exemplified in Cepero, “Azácar y abolición” Moreno Fraginals, El Ingenio; and Knight, Slave Society, pp. 178–182.
5 Scott's Slave Emancipation and Bergad's Cuban Rural Society best represent this point.
6 Codina, Joan Casanovas, “Labor and Colonialism in Cuba in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1994), pp. 32–53Google Scholar.
7 For the relationship between slavery and racial segregation, see Martínez-Alier, Verena (or Stolcke), Marriage, Class and Colour in Nineteenth Century Cuba: A Study of Racial Attitudes and Sexual Values in a Slave Society (London, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Brusone, Julio Le Riverend, La Habana (Biograjia de una provincia) (Havana, 1960), p. 310Google Scholar.
9 Howard, Philip A. in “Culture, Nationalism, and Liberation: The Afro-Cuban Mutual Aid Societies in the Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D., Indiana University, 1988), p. 226Google Scholar, contends that in the 1880s “white and black urban labourers in some cities shared similar socioeconomic experiences”, which led them to develop joint collective action. However, Howard does not provide information about the working conditions that increasingly drove these “white and black” workers together.
10 Brusone, Julio Le Riverend, Economic History of Cuba (Havana, 1967), pp. 158–159Google Scholar.
11 Artiles, Leví Marrero y, Cuba: económia y sociedad, 15 vols (San Juan and Madrid, 1972–1992), XIII, pp. 147–150Google Scholar.
12 For the workshops of the Sociedad Econdmica, see Lobo, Jacobo de la Pezuela y, Diccionario geográfico, estadístico, histdrico de la isla de Cuba, 4 vols (Madrid, 1866), III, p. 267Google Scholar; and Gordon, Antonio Maria de, El tabaco en Cuba y de Acosta (Havana, 1901), pp. 36–37Google Scholar. These workshops seem to copy the English new ”Workhouses” or ”Bastilles” established after the Poor Law of 1834, just two years before Bachiller's proposal, and which Thompson, E.P. has studied in The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1966), pp. 266–268Google Scholar. For apprentices remaining as such long after learning the trade, see Muñiz, José Rivero, Tabaco: su historia en Cuba, 2 vols (Havana, 1964), II, pp. 263, 272–273Google Scholar.
13 Cuba, , Reglamento para el aprendizaje de artes y oficios (Havana, 1849)Google Scholar.
14 Cuba, , Proyecto de Reglamento de la Junta y Ramo de Aprendizaje de la Habana y su Jurisdicción Administrativa (Havana, 1863)Google Scholar. de Letona, Antonio L[ópez], Isla de Cuba: Reflexiones sobre su estado social, politico y económico; su administración y gobierno (Madrid, 1865), pp. 57–58Google Scholar.
15 For an assessment of the number of apprentices that the Sociedad Econódmica indentured in the 1840s and 1850s, see Marrero, Cuba, XI, p. 81;ibid., XIII, pp. 147–150; “Resumen estadistico de la población, riqueza agrfcola, comercio, industria, y fomento de la isla de Cuba”, p. 30 (in Cuba, , Comisón de Estadistica, Cuadro estadístico de la siempre fiel Isla de Cuba, correspondiente al año de 1846 (Havana, 1847))Google Scholar; and Wurdemann, John George F., Notes on Cuba (Boston, 1844), pp. 235–239Google Scholar(transcribed in Pérez, Louis A. Jr (ed.), Slaves, Sugar, & Colonial Society: Travel Accounts of Cuba, 1801–1899 (Wilmington, Delaware, 1992), pp. 141–142)Google Scholar.
16 For the decline of the indentured apprenticeship system after the Ten Years' War, see Muñiz, José Rivero, “La lectura en las tabaquerías; monograffa histórica”, Revista de la Biblioteca National [of Cuba], 2nd series, 2:4(1951), n. 29 on p. 228Google Scholar.
17 On physical punishments to discipline apprentices, see Rivero Muñiz, “La lectura”, pp. 252–253; Instituto de Historia, Historia del movimiento obrero I, p. 19; ”Partes de novedad de la Jefatura Superior de Policáa, 1883–1884”, Archivo Histórico Nadonal, Madrid (hereafter AHN), Ultramar, leg. 5917, exp. 2; and the periodical El Productor (Havana and Guanabacoa, 1887–1892).
18 “Libreta para oficiales artesanos dispuesta por el Superior Gobierno en resolución de 25 de julio de 1851” (transcribed in Portuondo, Joseé Antonio, “La Aurora” y los comienzos de la presna obrera en Cuba (Havana, 1961), pp. 102–105)Google Scholar. Cuba, Proyecto de Reglamento de la Junta y Ramo de Aprendizaje, p. 7; and D. del G. de 22 de Diciembre de 1856, previniendo que las libretas de oficiales de tabaquerta se expidan por la junta de aprendizaje de artes y oficios (transcribed in Eré;nchun, Fé;lix, Anales de la Isla de Cuba. Diccionario administrativo, econdmico, estadtstico y legislativo […] Año de 1856 (Havana, 1857), p. 736)Google Scholar. Although Rivero Muńiz in Tabaco, II, p. 276 states that the Libreta del tabaquero system did not last long, it lasted more than a decade.
19 “Circular” no. 1829, signed by Captain General José [Gutiérrez] de la Concha on 16 March 1859 (transcribed in Portuondo, “La Aurora”, pp. 105–107).
20 For the debate on the use of the Libreta to discipline the workforce, see Velasco, José María, Guerra de Cuba. Causas de su duración y medios de terminarla y asegurar su pacificación (Madrid, 1872)Google Scholar. Concha, in trying t o extend the Libreta to rural labour, was probably following the system already implemented in Puerto Rico in 1849, and which fell into disuse in much of the island by the late 1860s. It was finally suppressed with the end of slavery in 1873. For the Libreta system in Puerto Rico, see Mattei, André A. Ramos, “Technical Innovations and Social Change in the Sugar Industry of Puerto Rico, 1870–1880”, in Fraginals, Manuel Morena et al. , (eds), Between Slavery and Free Labor (Baltimore, 1985), pp. 161–163Google Scholar; and Información sobre reformas en Cuba y Puerto Rico celebrada en Madrid en 1866 y 67 por los representates de ambas Islas, 2 vols (2nd ed. New York, 1877), I, p. 126.
21 [Roig, ] “La patria y los obreros”, El Productor (Havana) (hereafter E.P.H.), II:63 (12 05 1889), p. 1Google Scholar; J., , ”La libreta y ‘La Lucha1’”, E.P.H., 2nd series, 1:2 (12 09 1889), pp. 1–2Google Scholar.
22 On the working conditions of the tobacco factory dependientes and apprentices, see Rivero Muñiz, Tabaco, II, p. 272. For the authorization dependientes needed in order to change their place of work, see “1854.–Noviembre 30.–Decreto del Gobernador Capitan general dedarando las resoludones que correspondan á la Secretaría del Gobierno político de la Habana”, in Pedro, Joaquín Rodriguez San (ed.), Legislación ultramarina, 12 vols (Madrid, 1865–1868), X, p. 71Google Scholar.
23 For the “semi-free” status of dependientes in tobacco factories after the abolition of slavery, see Rivero Muñiz, Tabaco, II, p. 307; Muñiz, José Rivero, “Bosquejo Histórico de la Sodedad de Escogedores de Tabacos de la Habana”, Revista Tabaco, 1:3 (1933), p. 11Google Scholar; Pantín, Santiago Iglesias, Luchas Emancipadoras (cronicas de Puerto Rico) (San Juan, 1929), pp. 17–18Google Scholar; and Galló, Gaspar Jorge García, Biografia del Tabaco Habano ([Santa Clara], 1959), pp. 71, 75, 83Google Scholar.
25 Cepero, “El Siglo (1862–1868) un periódico en lucha contra la censura” (first pub. 1957), in Cepero, Escritos históricos, pp. 189–193.
26 For El Sigh's exposition of socialist ideas, see Cepero, “El Siglo”, pp. 191–192. See too de Fuentes, José Moreno, Estudios econdmico-sociales (Havana, 1865)Google Scholar.
27 “Utilidad de las tribunas en los talleres”, La Aurora, 1:27 (22 April 1866).
28 For the acceptance of separatism among the popular sector in Havana, see Pino, César García del, “La Habana en los dfas de Yara”, Revista de la Biblioteca National José Martí, 20 (1978), pp. 149–172Google Scholar.
29 “Exp. prom, por el Gobernador Político dando cuenta del espediente instruido á consecuencia de la solicited d e D. Saturnino Martínez, para establecer una Sociedad que se titule ‘Instituto de Artesanos’”, AHN, Ultramar, leg. 5899.
30 “Inmigración Asiática”, La Unión, 20 (12 October 1873), p.2
31 “Carta del Ministro Plenipotenciario de España en Washington al Ministro de Estado. Manifestación de comunistas franceses y emigrados cubanos, La International, la Alianza”, 27 January 1872, Real Academia de la Historia. Colección Caballero de Rodas, doc. 858, vol. IV, ff. 270–271. On the support that separatists in New York expressed for the Communards, see Instituto de Historia, Historia del movimiento obrero, I, pp. 37–39.
32 Pierce, Frank H., consul at Matanzas, 5 03 1886Google Scholar, “Labor troubles in Cuba”, in US Congress, House, Reports from the Consuls of the United States, April–December, 1886, House of Representatives, 49th Congress, 2nd Session, 1886–1887, Miscellaneous Documents, 55, vol. 4 (Washington, 1886), p. 266Google Scholar.
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