One of the aims of this excellent book is to show how extremely complicated the agency of slaves was within the given legality of a specific slavery regime. The analysis shows a much more dynamic slavery in Cuba than in the United States or Brazil—namely, a capitalist commodification of slaves amid extreme asymmetrical colonial dependency, which also could hardly be controlled by a state-formed legality. Market economic relationships between slaves (esclavos) and masters (amos) were complicated and dynamic. In the course of the second slavery's development in Cuba during the nineteenth century, the state increasingly intervened in this “private relationship”—above all because the amos needed more money and became increasingly violent and fraudulent, “the most common abuse [being] not putting the [oral] coartación agreement in writing” (pp. 139, 6).
Chapter 1 explains both the law and practice of self-freeing in Cuban slavery and their role for...
