Slavery Cuba

Slavery in Cuba (Spanish: La Esclavitud en Cuba) was a portion of the larger Atlantic slave trade that primarily supported Spanish plantation owners engaged in the sugarcane trade. It was practiced on the island of Cuba from the 16th century until it was abolished by Spanish royal decree on October 7, 1886. The first organized system of slavery in Cuba was introduced by the Spanish Empire, which attacked and enslaved the island's indigenous Taíno and Guanahatabey peoples on a grand scale. Cuba's original population was decimated after the arrival of the Spaniards, due to both a lack of immunity to Old World diseases such as smallpox, but also because of the conditions associated with the forced labor that was used by the Spanish colonist throughout the 16th century. The remaining Taíno intermixed with Europeans or African slaves and no full-blooded Taíno remained after the 17th century, though many Cubans today do have Taíno DNA and are descendants of those intermixed Taínos. Following the decimation of the island's native population, the Spaniards wanted new slaves to uphold their sugarcane production. They brought more than a million enslaved African people to Cuba. The African enslaved population grew to outnumber European Cubans, and a large proportion of Cubans today descend from these enslaved peoples—perhaps as much as 65% of the population. Cuba became one of the world's largest sugarcane producers after the Haitian Revolution and continued to import enslaved Africans long after the practice was outlawed for Spanish citizens in 1817. Cuba did not stop participating in the Atlantic slave trade until 1867, and slavery on the island was not abolished by Spain until 1886. Due to growing pressure to stop the Cuban slave trade throughout the 19th century, more than 100,000 Chinese indentured workers were imported to Cuba to replace dwindling African labor. During the 19th century, Cuban slavery was revitalized by French, Spanish and American expatriates, many of whom moved to Cuba either due to the growing importance of the island's plantation economy or the gradual abolishment of slavery elsewhere.