The translation of Gloria García Rodríguez’sVoices of the Enslaved in Nineteenth-Century Cuba: A Documentary History(first published asLa esclavitud desde la esclavitud:La visión de los siervos in Mexico in 1996 and then in Havana in 2003) marks an important moment in the scholarship on Cuban slavery. It provides for English-language readers the first substantial glimpse into the very rich—and still very underutilized—material on slavery available in Cuban archives: tomes and tomes of slave judicial testimony, hundreds of slave denunciations against their masters, and countless appeals to authorities for the recognition of rights theoretically guaranteed by law....

Only infrequently do we ourselves have the occasion to listen firsthand to the voices of slaves. In both contemporary and historical literature, the slave voices we routinely hear have been distorted, mediated. We have depended on others, on persons who have never been slaves themselves, to discern these slave voices and to speak on the slaves’ behalf. Acting out of benevolent concern, these interpreters produce slave voices that serve either to exemplify authentic cases of social iniquity or to embody the interests of an omnipotent mercantilism. The slave voices they hear are object rather than subject. These voices are of...

The King. In the code of laws of the Partidas¹ and other bodies of legislation for these realms, in the Collection of Laws of the Kingdom of the Indies, in both general and limited decrees conveyed to my American dominions since the time of their discovery, and in the ordinances, examined by my Council of the Indies, which have merited my royal approval, the system for training slaves in useful endeavors has been established, observed, and consistently followed, and the appropriate measures for their instruction, treatment, and occupation provided, as their owners are obliged, in accordance with the principles and...

Sire,

Hacendados from this city who own sugar-producing ingenios, advised of the royal decree issued in Aranjuez on May 31 last, which provides for the regulation of the education, treatment, and occupations of slaves in these dominions, submit this reverent representation to Your Majesty. We in no way intend to contest these regulations, nor will we attempt to recur to that economic authority which legally authorizes us to govern our establishments as we see fit. We recognize in Your Majesty the full and complete embodiment of the highest sovereignty. We have willingly obeyed Your Majesty as an expression of our...

For the purpose of devising an effective system that I find acceptable for the health and well-being of those slave populations destined for service on rural farms, compatible with their proper management and growth, and that takes into consideration the servitors’ health and reproduction while performing a fair day’s work for their masters, I require the benefit of your enlightened knowledge and established practices in order to acquaint me with the details of matters I address below. I hope that, consistent with the noble disinterest so characteristic of you, with the humanitarian sentiments of an honorable patrician, and as just...

A. Statement of Don José Mieres, twenty-two years old, single, salaried worker in Unzaga’s workshop.

. . . Prompted by a complaint from a neighbor woman . . . that his slave Ildefonso had molested her little blackchinita[diminutive form ofchina, young light-skinned black woman], and made her fear . . . dire consequences, Don Diego resolved to apprehend his slave and forcibly detain him with the help of some of his other slaves. They struggled with Ildefonso, who was brandishing the sharp tool he had been using to dress deer leather. In the meantime, the master became...

A. Statement of Francisco Martínez, native of Güira de Melena, thirty years old, married, illiterate, mayoral on the cafetal.

. . . he had been mayoral for two months, in charge of a work force of ninety-one slaves. . . . He gets the slaves up for work at daybreak, at the hour that morning prayers were already being said on other farms. Customarily, they rest for two hours after lunch and after dinner, which is late, with adequate time to rest, everyone going straightaway to their huts, under no obligation to do any other work. . . . The...

A. Statement of the slave José Antonio Avilés Congo, property of Ana Avilés, thirty to thirty-five years old, single, resident of the La Salud neighborhood, shoemaker by trade.

. . . On Tuesday, the third of this month, he was unable to come up with his daily wage of four reals that he was obliged to hand over to his mistress. A stranger, a moreno with a full beard, apparently English, purchased half a dozen pairs of shoes from him for a total of nine reals, and then he did not pay for them. The deponent recalled that the aforementioned...

The local commissary of Ursulinas reports to you that last night, at approximately eight o’clock, María Ignacia Ayala, parda, registered a complaint with me that in the local grocery next door to her house a black man was being brutally beaten, [the beating] being administered in an outrageous, absolutely intolerable, merciless manner. . . . I found that the report was absolutely true . . . the punishment was extremely harsh, and I found the slave’s feet and hands tied to a ladder, where his master, José Mediavilla, had beaten his buttocks with a manatee leather whip. I ordered that...

The syndic reports that in his opinion the slave woman Catalina is free and so finds in his ruling.

When she was taken to Spain, where slavery was forbidden, she effectively was free from the moment that she set foot in that land. An individual reduced to serving as a slave to another [in Spain] would have constituted an anomaly. Indeed, if she were free, and if freedom were a perpetual state, she hardly could become a slave once again by returning to this island. Whether or not she was given leave to go to Spain with the permission of...