Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Slaves
Were Forced To Celibacy On The Pretext Of Avoiding Moral Disorder.
The
Jesuits and the Bethlemite monks alone renounced that fatal prejudice,
and encouraged negresses in their plantations.
If the census, no doubt
imperfect, of 1775, yielded 15,562 female, and 29,366 male slaves, we
must not forget that that enumeration comprehended the totality of the
island, and that the sugar plantations occupy even now but a quarter
of the slave population. After the year 1795, the Consulado of the
Havannah began to be seriously occupied with the project of rendering
the increase of the slave population more independent of the
variations of the slave-trade. Don Francisco Arango, whose views were
ever characterized by wisdom, proposed a tax on the plantations in
which the number of slaves was not comprised of one-third females. He
also proposed a tax of six piastres on every negro brought into the
island, and from which the women (negras bozales) should be exempt.
These measures were not adopted because the colonial assembly refused
to employ coercive means; but a desire to promote marriages and to
improve the condition of the children of slaves has existed since that
period, when a cedula real (of the 22nd April, 1804) recommended those
objects "to the conscience and humanity of the planters."
The first introduction of negroes into the eastern part of the island
of Cuba took place in 1521 and their number did not exceed 300. The
Spaniards were then much less eager for slaves than the Portuguese;
for, in 1539, there was a sale of 12,000 negroes at Lisbon, as in our
days (to the eternal shame of Christian Europe) the trade in Greek
slaves is carried on at Constantinople and Smyrna. In the sixteenth
century the slave-trade was not free in Spain; the privilege of
trading, which was granted by the Court, was purchased in 1586, for
all Spanish America, by Gaspar de Peralta; in 1595, by Gomez Reynel;
and in 1615, by Antonio Rodriguez de Elvas. The total importation then
amounted to only 3500 negroes annually; and the inhabitants of Cuba,
who were wholly engaged in rearing cattle, scarcely received any.
During the war of succession, French ships were accustomed to stop at
the Havannah and to exchange slaves for tobacco. The Asiento treaty
with the English in some degree augmented the introduction of negroes;
yet in 1763, although the taking of the Havannah and the sojourn of
strangers gave rise to new wants, the number of slaves in the
jurisdiction of the Havannah did not amount to 25,000; and in the
whole island, not to 32,000. The total number of African negroes
imported from 1521 to 1763 was probably 60,000; their descendants
survive among the free mulattos, who inhabit for the most part the
eastern side of the island. From the year 1763 to 1790, when the
negro-trade was declared free, the Havannah received 24,875 (by the
Compania de Tobacos 4957, from 1763 to 1766; by the contract of the
Marquess de Casa Enrile, 14,132, from 1773 to 1779; by the contract of
Baker and Dawson, 5786, from 1786 to 1789). If we estimate the
introduction of slaves in the eastern part of the island during those
twenty-seven years (1763 to 1790) at 6000, we find from the discovery
of the island of Cuba, or rather from 1521 to 1790, a total of 90,875.
We shall soon see that by the ever-increasing activity of the
slave-trade the fifteen years that followed 1790 furnished more slaves
than the two centuries and a half which preceded the period of the
free trade.
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