In 1844 an unprecedented wave of violence engulfed the island of Cuba. “The Year of the Lash,” as it came to be known, was one of the darkest moments in the history of Atlantic slavery. In March, May, and November 1843, a series of slave revolts had broken out across the island. Accusations were raised of an alliance of free people of color, enslaved men and women, creole dissidents, and British abolitionists. In order to “root out” the conspiracy, Captain General Leopoldo O’Donnell launched a brutal campaign of torture and repression. The conspiracy of “La Escalera,” as it was called, took its name from the ladder to which officials tied and whipped the accused until they confessed. More than four thousand individuals were arrested. Like all American slave societies, nineteenth-century Cuba was built upon systematized violence, but this spectacle of arrests, tortured confessions, and public executions represented a new departure....

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