Page 48 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Cuba

46  INTRODUCING CUBA

Sugar, Slaves and Plantations

At the beginning of the 19th century the Cuban sugar Bells marked the daily routine
industry was booming, thanks to the growing demand for of life in the ingenio: at 4:30am
sugar in Europe and America. The growth of the industry the Ave Maria was played to
wake the workers; at 6am the
was made possible by the labour of slaves brought from assembly marked
Africa in their greatest numbers from the late 18th to the the beginning
early 19th centuries. About one million men and women of work proper.
were brought to Cuba, and by around 1830, black Africans, At 8:30pm
the last bell
including slaves and legally-freed slaves, made up more sounded to
than half the population of Cuba. The island became the announce
world’s leading sugar manufacturer, overtaking Haiti, bedtime.
and the industry continued to thrive after the abolition
of slavery. Life on the sugar plantations therefore became
a key feature of the island’s history and life.
Storehouses, stables and The sugar refining area stood in
cattle sheds were built the original core of the sugar
around the ingenio area. factory, the trapiche or mill.

Cimarrones were runaway slaves
who hid in the mountains or
forests to avoid the rancheadores,
whose job it was to find and
capture them, dead or alive.
These fugitives organized
frequent revolts, which were
almost inevitably suppressed
with bloodshed.

The first stretch of railway
on the island, which actually
preceded the introduction
of trains in Spain, was
inaugurated in 1837 to
transport sugar cane to
the port of Havana.

Slaves were used
in all phases of sugar
manufacture, and not
only as field labourers.
This old illustration
shows the sala de las
calderas, where the
cane juice was boiled
before being refined.

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