In 2014, New York University acquired a rare set of 86 archival documents on Cuban slavery, dated between 1809 and 1898. Now housed in the Fales Library, these records offer a window into the complex world of 19th-century slavery, colonial control, and resistance in Cuba. Broader transatlantic, intercolonial, and intracolonial contexts follows while examining the racialized and multicultural populations represented—and sometimes conspicuously absent—in the archive.

Transatlantic Context: Imperial Crisis and Colonial Resistance

Though Spain’s imperial dominance was crumbling by the 19th century, it fiercely held onto Cuba as a strategic economic stronghold. As revolutions swept across the Americas, Cuba remained loyal to Spain. British and U.S. interventions pressured Spain to end slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, yet Cuba clandestinely imported enslaved people from Africa and China as laborers to maintain its economy.

Enslaved people endured different types of inhumane conditions: family separation, exhausting labor on sugar plantations, and exploitation within slaveholding households. Women, in particular, were frequent victims of sexual violence; for example, one can cite the Spanish royal decree of 1804: “Royal Order extending the free trade in slaves, ordering [at the same time] respect for the 1789 decree regarding their treatment, and to import enslaved women to facilitate procreation” and perpetuate the enslaved population.^[1]

Despite international agreements,^[2] enforcement lagged. Around a million Africans were trafficked to Cuba —many illegally. Spain’s decrees in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, permitting the immigration of escaped enslaved people from British colonies added further complexity.^[3] The Collection on Enslavement in Cuba contains only one explicit mention of British influence, in an 1842 document from Gerónimo Valdés reporting that, under agreements with Britain, no further estate investigations would be conducted to uncover trafficked people. This illustrates colonial cooperation with international treaties. Valdés, a Spanish-born military officer and then governor of Cuba demonstrates the hierarchical authority under which such orders were followed.^[4]

Fears of revolt haunted Cuban elites and prompted harsh surveillance and control of the enslaved populations. To this was added the trafficking of particularly vulnerable indentured laborers, controlled mostly by Great Britain, as occurred between 1847 and 1874, when hundreds of thousands of Chinese men were brought to Cuba through coercion, deception, or kidnapping, in working conditions parallel to slavery, with broken contracts that promised their freedom after eight years of service.^[5] Many were misnamed or forced to take on new identities.^[6] Contracts written only in Spanish rendered their terms opaque.

While examining other contracts of Chinese workers, Lisa Yun reveals that despite appearing legal, the indenture system amounted to slavery by another name. Chinese laborers could be resold, renamed, and even declared dead while continuing to work under false identities. Approximately one tenth of the documents in the collection regard Chinese workers. Identification papers, contracts, and the burial notice of a “sudden death” are among these papers.

Intercolonial and Caribbean Ties: Slavery, Sugar, and Migration

Cuba’s colonial trajectory was entangled with neighboring colonies under French, British, and Dutch rule. Spain’s 1789 decree opening slave trade to its Caribbean colonies fueled human trafficking across the region: Spain granted “license for the slave trade in the Greater Antilles and Caracas,” affecting Cuba, Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico, and Caracas.^[7] On the other hand, the transformation of Saint-Domingue into independent Haiti (1804) further reshaped regional dynamics. Cuba capitalized on the collapse of Haiti’s sugar industry by expanding its own, deepening its reliance on forced labor.

The Cuban elites did not want to be next in the list of colonial failures. On the contrary, they saw theses events as an opportunity to demonstrate their loyalty and gain more favors. The Collection includes cases from Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), such as Manuel María Clavel, enslaved and trafficked to Cuba around 1803, before Haitian independence, and his witnesses –he wanted to marry another enslaved woman– who were identified with terms like morenos or pardos, since they had grown up in another colony and their main identifier was their skin color.^[8] Another case worth including here is that of the identity document of Luis, a three-year-old child, son of Firmina, and enslaved by Sebastián Viñas in the San Felipe neighborhood of Arecibo, Puerto Rico. This document, dated December 31, 1868, constitutes another instance of movement of people between the islands.^[9]

By the late 19th century, Cuban independence movements gained strength. The island’s wars for independence—the Ten Years’ War (1868–1878), the Little War (1879–1880), and the final war (1895–1898)—revealed increasing Afro-Cuban participation. Cross-island solidarities between exiles and activists sustained the revolutionary struggle. Yet, racial divisions and contradictions persisted even within the liberation movements.

Intracolonial Dynamics: Cultural Negotiation and Emerging Cuban Identity

Internally, Cuba’s colonial society was marked by profound racial and social stratification. The concept of racial democracy, later mythologized in Cuban nationalism, was already being crafted in this period. Legal records show that up to 36% of Cuba’s population was enslaved in the early 19th century, and many free people of color lived in precarious conditions.

Some enslaved Africans retained cultural and linguistic connections to their homelands, resisting assimilation and being labeled as bozales—a judicial as well as popular name for newly arrived Africans, who were often viewed as more rebellious due to prior experience with war. Others, born in Cuba or long-term residents, were called criollos (native-born Cubans), or ladinos (accustomed to colonial norms and forms), marking distinctions between acculturated and non-acculturated individuals. Bozales preserved languages, customs, and political and religious practices from their homelands, and in some cases, were better equipped for organized resistance, as seen in the 1812 Aponte Rebellion, or even in the 1864 uprising in El Cobre—where translation was needed to try non-Spanish-speaking Afro-Cubans.

The records also show the interconnections between elite families and enslaved populations. In the same year, 1864, for example, Serafín Pacheco served as godfather to a child from a wealthy family, while also godfathering a 17-year-old enslaved boy of Congolese origin.^[10] These parallel records highlight the complex social structures and tensions within Cuban society, revealing elite families’ oversight and integration of enslaved people into ceremonial and familial networks, even as these populations remained socially subordinated.

The first major independence war, starting in 1868, declared the abolition of slavery and full citizenship as central aims. Nearly 40% of rebel officers were of African descent, including Antonio Maceo, a prominent mulatto general. Yet cultural resistance, such as criticism of Afro-Cuban music and traditions, underscored ongoing tensions. After legal abolition in 1886, ideas of equality clashed with U.S.-backed racial science and imperialism. José Martí’s writings, particularly “Mi raza” (1893), advocated racial unity but also erased specific Black struggles, exposing contradictions in nationalist rhetoric.

Absent Peoples and Origins in the Collection

The documents in this archive reflect the diversity of the population in 19th-century Cuba in terms of their birthplace, social and racial statuses. However, the very broad categorization inscribed in these papers do not necessarily serve to identify exactly who each person was. These broad labels mask the complex origins, cultures, and life histories of the individuals.

Identification methods varied: some documents referenced geographic origin (national or continental), ethnic affiliation, social titles or positions, racial terms, or social status. The use of such identifiers was often ambiguous, with descriptors like pardo blending physical traits with genealogy, occupation, or social standing. Not surprisingly, explicit accounts of whiteness and European-ness are absent, and one can only deduce them by taking into consideration their clerical, military and political positions –although, as mentioned, the last two elements are not that useful after 1868– or directly by looking them up in other archives. Chinese people were legally called colonos but commonly described just as ‘asians.’

Besides the aforementioned pardo and moreno, Afro-descendant people often were mentioned using an ethnic or religious origin such as Carabalí, Lucumí, Ganga, Congo, or Mandinga.^[11] However, these terms are not precise either: lucumí was used to refer to Yoruba people, which in other colonies, such as in Haiti or Brazil were referred to as Nago. Carabalí mostly was used for Africans from the Bight of Biafra, mainly Igbo people; but terms like Yoruba, Igbo, or Ibibio and Mina –other African ethnicities prominent in Cuba during the 16th to the 19th centuries–,^[12] are nowhere to be found in these records. The documents generally placed these identifiers in the contemporary position of a surname, though it is not always clear if the person actually bore that name.

Absent from the collection are Indigenous populations, including the native Taíno,^[13] Maya,^[14] Apache, Creek, and Seminole peoples from the mainland.^[15] This absence highlights their marginalization in Cuban society, despite other historical records showing forced relocations to Cuba for labor and the enduring presence of their Indigenous descendants. Some of these groups occasionally allied with Africans during uprisings, yet their exclusion from official documentation underscores their perceived social invisibility. Forced relocations, whether of enslaved Africans, contract laborers, or Indigenous peoples, were common strategies to disrupt familial and communal bonds and reduce the potential for collective resistance.^[16]

External and Internal Modes of Control

Colonial control over laboring populations operated both externally (through laws, contracts, surveillance) and internally (through religious and legal assimilation). The archive shows both: the role of the Spanish crown in enforcing labor regulations and the ways people navigated these structures for survival. For instance, Gerónimo Valdés’ initial intention to investigate a property suspected of harboring illegally trafficked Africans, only to later cite a treaty with Britain to justify inaction, reflects the balancing act colonial officials performed—oscillating between enforcement and diplomatic evasion.

Legal documents include marriage requests, baptism certificates, and manumission petitions. These were not merely bureaucratic; they were tools of survival. Enslaved and freed individuals used religious rituals to seek legitimacy and protection. The baptism of children, in particular, was a strategic act, granting symbolic inclusion and possibly easing the path toward manumission.

Regarding manumission, different cases reveal differing motivations and frameworks: some were granted by mutual agreement, others for compensation, and some as a favor (“grace”). One document issued in Bolondron on October 9, 1886, only two days after the legal abolition of slavery, recalls the names of Guadalupe, Silvestre, Ricardo, Ruperto, and Eduardo.^[17] While appearing humane, the distinctions between their manumission “reasons” often reinforced elite power, with the language of freedom controlled by slaveholders.

Yet the archive also documents surprising outcomes. A poignant case is that of the two enslaved women, María de la Luz Delgado and her mother Rosa, tried in 1849 for burying an infant in a “profane” place. Their crime hints at the possibility of infanticide as resistance—an act of mercy or defiance against the reproduction of enslavement. Supported by a network of Black women, the accused were eventually spared severe punishment, demonstrating how communal support and legal manipulation offered pockets of agency.^[18]

Conclusion: Archive, Resistance, and Historical Responsibility

MSS 569 at the Fales Library constitutes a palimpsest of violence, but also of adaptation, survival, and resistance. The people captured in its pages negotiated a brutal system through legal, cultural, and spiritual strategies. Their stories expose the fragility of colonial control and the persistence of subaltern capacity. Though produced by colonial administrators, its silences and contradictions offer valuable insights. It shows how individuals navigated an oppressive regime that sought to catalog, control, and often erase them.

The fact that these documents are now accessible to the public through NYU is both a historical opportunity and an ethical challenge. Scholars must ensure these records are used not to glorify imperial bureaucracy, but to illuminate the lives of the enslaved and marginalized.

Lastly, we should further study this collection in relation to others—such as Comision Militar: Espediente, a separate manuscript documenting a slave-led assassination attempt in 1842, held by the Fales Library (call number HV6535.C9 C66 1842). Only by piecing together these fragments can a fuller, more truthful account of Cuba’s colonial past and the many forms of resistance within it emerge.

Bibliography

Ferbel-Azcarate, Pedro, Carpinelli, Adam X., “Caribbean Archaeology And Taino Survival”, in Proceedings of the XX International Congress for Caribbean Archaeology. St. Petersburg: University of Florida, 2003.

Lucena Salmoral, Manuel, Regulación de la esclavitud negra en las colonias de América Española (1503-1886): Documentos para su estudio. Alcala: University of Alcala, University of Murcia, 2005.

Midlo Hall, Gwendolyn, Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

Ortiz, Fernando, Entre cubanos… (psicología tropical). Paris: Paul Ollendorf, 1913.

Yaremko, Jason M., Indigenous Passages to Cuba, 1515-1900. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016.

Yun, Lisa, The Coolie Speaks: Chinese Indentured Laborers and African Slaves in Cuba. Philadelphia: Temple University, 2008.

Endnotes

^[1] The use of italics is mine. In the original Spanish title: “R. Orden reservada prorrogando el libre comercio de esclavos, ordenando respetar la cédula de 1789 para su tratamiento e importación de esclavas para facilitar la procreación.” Manuel Lucena Salmoral, Regulación de la esclavitud negra en las colonias de América Española (1503-1886): Documentos para su estudio. Alcala: University of Alcala, University of Murcia, 2005, p. 418.

^[2] Such as Britain’s 1820 accord with Spain to halt the slave trade.

^[3] One could specifically mention the decrees of 1753, 1789,  1796, and 1814. M. Lucena, op. cit., pp. 217, 248, 270, and 291.

^[4] Document Regarding Enslaved People Who Escaped from a Ship, August 1842. Collection on Enslavement in Cuba; MSS 569; box 1, folder 44; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University.

^[5] Although Chinese indentured workers had been brought to the Americas since 1807 (in Trinidad), their presence had lesser impact; it was not until 1847 that they were taken to Cuba, where their labor gained primacy. While the introduction of those later called ‘coolies’ or ‘culis’ (in Spanish) was of great importance, their workforce did not entirely replace the African one, as Lisa Yun wrote:  “as coolie imports commenced […], slave imports also greatly increased […] Coolie and slave economies were clearly concomittant and coproductive”. The Coolie Speaks: Chinese Indentured Laborers and African Slaves in Cuba. Philadelphia: Temple University, 2008, p. 7.

^[6]  Ibid., p. 125.

^[7] In the original Spanish title: “[Concedía] la libertad para el comercio de esclavos en las Antillas Mayores y Caracas.” M. Lucena Salmoral, op. Cit., p. 246.

^[8] Proof of Bachelorhood and Christianity of Enslaved Manuel Maria Clavel in Order for Him to Marry Maria Luisa, Also Enslaved, April 8, 1809. Collection on Enslavement in Cuba; MSS 569; box 1, folder 26; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University.

^[9] Identity Paper for Luis in Puerto Rico, December 31, 1868. Collection on Enslavement in Cuba; MSS 569; box 2, folder 53; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University.

^[10] Birth Notice of Serafin Urvano de Jesus, and Proof of Baptism of José, July 10, 1864. Collection on Enslavement in Cuba; MSS 569; box 2, folder 69; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University.

^[11] Document Regarding Enslaved People Who Escaped from a Ship, August 1842. Collection on Enslavement in Cuba; MSS 569; box 1, folder 44; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University.

^[12] Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005, p. 25.

^[13] “While race is a social construct, biological and DNA studies do provide evidence of continuity between populations. Some anthropometric studies have been undertaken, notably in Eastern Cuba.” Pedro Ferbel-Azcarate, Adam X. Carpinelli, “Caribbean Archaeology And Taino Survival”, in Proceedings of the XX International Congress for Caribbean Archaeology. St. Petersburg: University of Florida, 2003, p. 489.

^[14]Fernando Ortiz in Entre Cubanos, states that in addition to Europeans, Africans and Chinese there were the “cobrizos” (Yucatecans, Mayans). Fernando Ortiz, Entre cubanos… (psicología tropical). Paris: Paul Ollendorf, 1913, p. 148.

^[15]  Jason M. Yaremko, Indigenous Passages to Cuba, 1515-1900. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016, p.2.

^[16] Ibid., p. 90.

^[17] Emancipation Document for Five People, October 9, 1886. Collection on Enslavement in Cuba; MSS 569; box 2, folder 75; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University.

^[18] Judicial Trial of Rosa Delgado and Maria de la Luz Delgado for Having Buried an Infant on Unholy Ground, April 19, 1849. Collection on Enslavement in Cuba; MSS 569; box 1, folder 16; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University.