Until the publication of this book in the original Spanish, Los palenques del oriente de Cuba: Resistencia y acoso (Editorial Academia, 1988), there had not been any thorough investigation into the phenomenon of runaway slave settlements (palenques) in Cuba. La Rosa Corzo’s work is a solid preliminary study based on archaeological fieldwork and the analysis of 28 previously unknown diaries containing the detailed reports of slave-hunting parties in the eastern region of the island. The documentary evidence was obtained in the Archive of the Indies in Seville and in the National Archive of Cuba in Havana. La Rosa Corzo carefully documents the existence of runaway settlements from their rise in the 1730s to their obsolescence in the 1860s. He relates these settlements to the parallel development of the terror systems intended to eradicate them. In the process, he uncovers both the tactical and infrastructural innovations developed in the...

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