Sugar Slavery and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico

The contributions of the black population to the history and economic development of Puerto Rico have long been distorted and underplayed Luis A. Figueroa contends. Focusing on the southeastern coastal region of Guayama one of Puerto Rico’s three leading centers of sugarcane agriculture Figueroa examines the transition from slavery and slave labor to freedom and free labor after the 1873 abolition of slavery in colonial Puerto Rico. He corrects misconceptions about how ex-slaves went about building their lives and livelihoods after emancipation and debunks standing myths about race relations in Puerto Rico.<br/><br/>Historians have assumed that after emancipation in Puerto Rico as in other parts of the Caribbean and the U.S. South former slaves acquired some land of their own and became subsistence farmers. Figueroa finds that in Puerto Rico however this was not an option because both capital and land available for sale to the Afro–Puerto Rican population were scarce. Paying particular attention to class gender and race his account of how these <i>libertos</i> joined the labor market profoundly revises our understanding of the emancipation process and the evolution of the working class in Puerto Rico.