As this work makes clear, the early 1840s were tumultuous years for Cuba. The British, frustrated by their inability to close the island’s contraband slave trade, were threatening to end slavery itself. Yet the revolution of 1843 in Spain brought to power a government determined to resist British abolitionist pressure on Cuba. The Spanish were joined in this determination by a United States that, on the one hand, was alarmed by rumors of Great Britain’s intentions to turn Cuba into a republic of free blacks under its protection and, on the other, had its own plans for eventual annexation of the island.
Slave unrest in this atmosphere was inevitable. Minor uprisings, and plots of major uprisings, were reported with increasing frequency. Then, in 1843, the torture of suspected slave conspirators in a revolt in the sugar district of Sabanilla led to further investigations that revealed still another conspiracy—with its center in the province of Matanzas. More torture followed, with victims frequently tied to a ladder for whipping. Accordingly, it was called the conspiracy of “La Escalera.”
As Paquette indicates in dealing with the historiography, some authors have expressed skepticism that there was, in fact, such a slave conspiracy. Most decisive in this regard has been Franklin Knight, who, in Slave Society in Cuba during the Nineteenth Century (1970), wrote that “the supposed revolt’ had absolutely no foundation in fact” (p. 81).
Sugar Is Made With Blood rescues La Escalera from such oblivion, for, based on a wealth of archival materials, it demonstrates a huge conspiracy or “several distinct yet overlapping conspiracies” (p. viii). It also places the conspiracy in perspective by revolving around this central theme internal examinations of Cuban slavery, the slave trade, free labor, white society, abolitionism, and Spain’s rule of the island. Externally, Paquette has put the story of La Escalera within an international context and ably sheds light on murky questions of Spain and Cuba caught in a vise between British abolitionism and U. S. annexationism.
The author has provided many engaging illustrations of life in colonial Cuba in a work that is lavishly documented, well written, and well indexed. In sum, this is a meticulously researched, well reasoned, and extremely important book on nineteenth-century Cuba. It is far superior to earlier efforts and should endure for many years to come.
