Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico

by Luis A. Figueroa

The contributions of the black population to the history and economic development of Puerto Rico have long been distorted and underplayed, Luis A. Figueroa contends. Focusing on the southeastern coastal region of Guayama, one of Puerto Rico's three leading centers of sugarcane agriculture, Figueroa examines the transition from slavery and slave labor to freedom and free labor after the 1873 abolition of slavery in colonial Puerto Rico. He corrects misconceptions about how ex-slaves went about building their lives and livelihoods after emancipation and debunks standing myths about race relations in Puerto Rico.

Historians have assumed that after emancipation in Puerto Rico, as in other parts of the Caribbean and the U.S. South, former slaves acquired some land of their own and became subsistence farmers. Figueroa finds that in Puerto Rico, however, this was not an option because both capital and land available for sale to the Afro-Puerto Rican population were scarce. Paying particular attention to class, gender, and race, his account of how these libertos joined the labor market profoundly revises our understanding of the emancipation process and the evolution of the working class in Puerto Rico.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 2005

Reviews

[Sera Taíno · Rating 4 out of 5]

This selection is part of the research I am doing on my current work in progress - a historical romance set in post WWII Puerto Rico. This is a continuation of a now six-month research project to understand the important changes on the island as a result of the transition from agricultural to industrial economies. To accomplish this, I had to school myself on the role of slavery and sugar production to get a sense of the cultural, political and economic climate in Puerto Rico in the 1950s. This is an excellent non-fiction companion to Conquistadora, by Esmeralda Santiago, a novel set on a sugar cane plantation in southern Puerto Rico during the late 1800s.