Page 49 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Cuba

THE HIST OR Y OF CUBA  47

Carlos Manuel de Céspedes,
the owner of an estate near
Manzanillo, freed his slaves on
10 October 1868, thus triggering
the Cuban wars of independence.
In his manifesto he asked for The dances and music that are thought to
the abolition of slavery. have given rise to the rumba (see p35) were
performed in the ingenio, accompanied by
the drumming of cajones, wooden boxes
The barracones (the slaves’ used to transport goods. Every year on
dormitories) were rectangular 6 February the plantation owners allowed
buildings divided into small their slaves to celebrate their origins by
rooms and with only one dancing in the streets dressed in
grilled door.
traditional costumes.
The Ingenio
The sugar factory (ingenio) was in
reality an agro-industrial complex,
in the middle of which stood the
owner’s house. This was usually an
elegant building, often embellished
with arches and wrought-iron
grilles. The sugar factory owner
would stay here during the long
inspection periods. The batey, an
Amerindian term used to describe
collectively all the buildings on
an ingenio, included a sugar cane
mill, refinery rooms, a distillery, an
infirmary, stables and cow sheds,
vegetable gardens, storehouses,
and the slaves’ barracones, or
sleeping quarters.

A Cultural Melting Pot
The ingenio was a place where landowners,
farmers and slaves, white and black, men
and women, had to live and work together.
The African slaves came from different ethnic
Symbol of the groups and spoke different languages,
Abakuá religion but they managed to keep their religious
practices alive by meeting in the cabildos
(mutual aid associations), where they continued to pray to
their gods, “concealing” them in the guise of Roman Catholic
saints (see pp26–7). The Spanish themselves ended up
The ethnologist Fernando assimilating elements of the very traditions they had been
Ortiz (1881–1969) was the first trying to suppress. Present-day Cuban music and dances
person to seriously analyze the were widespread in the batey, and the original songs and
social condition of the black literature constantly refer to the ingenio, since it was here
Cubans, emphasizing the cultural that the cultural crossover, typical of Cuba, evolved.
bonds with African traditions.

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