Category Books

Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico »

Authors: Luis A. Figueroa
ISBN-13: 9780807856109, ISBN-10: 080785610X
Format: Paperback
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press, The
Date Published: December 2005
Edition: (Non-applicable)

Author Biography: Luis A. Figueroa

Luis A. Figueroa is associate professor of history at Trinity College.

Book Synopsis

Focusing on Puerto Rico's southeastern coastal region of Guayama, a leading center of sugar cane agriculture, Figueroa examines the transition from slave labor to free labor after the 1873 abolition of slavery in colonial Puerto Rico. Arguing that the black population and their contributions to the economic health of Puerto Rico have been distorted and underplayed, he corrects misconceptions about what ex-slaves did after emancipation and debunks standing myths about race relations in Puerto Rico.

1	Racial projects and racial formations in a frontier Caribbean society	15
2	The hurricane of sugar and slavery and the broken memories it left behind, 1810s-1860s	43
3	Seeking freedom before abolition : strategies of adaptive resistance among Afro-Guayameses	79
4	The gale-force winds of 1868-1873 : tearing down slavery	105
5	The contested terrain of "free" labor, 1873-1876	121
6	Labor mobility, peonization, and the peasant way that never was	151
7	Conflicts and solidarities on the path to proletarianization	175