Díaz Soler published his fine study of Puerto Rican slavery in 1953. This second, “corrected,” edition is welcome for several reasons. The author has added an indispensable part of scholarly works, previously dispensed with—an index. And the book is more handsomely produced and legible this time, although the use of larger paper brought with it new pagination. Díaz dropped one appendix, a badly reproduced photo of a slave bill of sale, but there appear to be only the most minor changes in the text.
Rayford Logan reviewed the first edition (HAHR, XXXIV, 332-34) and noted: “Puerto Rico was fortunate in never having a large number of Negro slaves…. When emancipation was finally decreed in 1873, there were only 32,000 slaves in a total population of 617,328. Because of the small number … their treatment was generally better than elsewhere…. House slaves, field hands and slaves hired out by the day could obtain their freedom in eleven different ways…. Free Negroes, in the reviewer’s judgment, seem to have been somewhat better off than those in the United States.” These considerations are the meat of Díaz’ interpretation. Although he does not minimize the fact that slavery was at worst raw coercion, and at best acquiescence drawn from the threat of coercion, his account is not an unbroken catalog of horrors.
It is a pity that Díaz did not add some afterthoughts to this edition reflecting upon the recent literature on slavery in the Americas, and the place of Puerto Rico in the current debates among historians of North American and Latin American slavery.
