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Cuba: A New History QUOTES

Cuba: A New History QUOTES

1 " The development of the sugar industry was to have a significant impact on the politics and culture of the island, since it lead to a huge increase in Cuba's slave population. This in turn helped to fuel the growth of the island's white racism, fueled by the migrants from Santo Domingo and Louisiana. The image of the Haitian revolution, and the inflated memory of its excesses — echoed not just in Cuba, but in the United States and Latin America as well — was to hover over Cuba throughout the nineteenth century and beyond, a permanent intimation of what might happen to the white population if faulty political or administrative decisions were made. Many whites in Cuba felt that they lived permanently in the shadow of a slave rebellion on the Haitian model. "

― , Cuba: A New History

2 " The 'buccaneers' came ashore in search of bacon. The Cuban Indians had learnt (from the natives of Haiti) a process of preserving meat by drying it and then smoking it over a fire of green leaves and branches. The Indians called the rack on which the meat was laid out a boucan or buccan [bacon], while those who prepared and sold the meet were referred to as buccaneers. "

― , Cuba: A New History

3 " In the history of all empires, it has proved difficult to enslave the local population for the benefit of foreign invaders. The indigenous inhabitants refuse to work, die off or leave to go elsewhere. Slaves have to be brought in from outside. The Indians of Cuba proved no exception to this. Many had been massacred during the punitive expedition of Pánfilo, but many simply withdrew their labour and disappeared into the hills. "

― , Cuba: A New History

4 " Although the Indian population was clearly destroyed as a continuing civilisation and culture, the record suggests that individual groups of surviving Indians may have 'disappeared' becaues it suited Cuban authorities, at certain moments in the island's history, to say that they had. "

― , Cuba: A New History

5 " He often reflected on his reluctance to extend the struggle to the Caribbean, and wrote in one of his many letters that it was 'more important to have peace than to liberate these islands. An independent Cuba would take a great deal of work.' Even Bolívar was not immune to the belief that a liberated Cuba might become another 'Republic of Haiti. "

― , Cuba: A New History

6 " Although a handful of progressive individuals favoured independence from Spain, Cuba's economic elite was conservative, fearful of the economic and social consequences of a break with the colonial motherland. Without Spanish support, the planters would not be able to sustain the slave system on which their economic power was based, nor would they be strong enough to crush slave revolts "

― , Cuba: A New History

7 " The Spanish authorities believed their secret weapon in curbing the separatist ambitions of the white settlers wsa the existing preponderance of blacks. 'The fear of the Negroes,' said a Spanish minister in the 1830s, 'is worth an army of 100,000 men.' This was the Spanish trump card that would 'prevent the whites from making any attempts at revolution.' This was an accurate assessment,f or even the white, independence-minded intellectuals emerging in the 1830s were not immune to the racist virus. "

― , Cuba: A New History

8 " Later in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, progressive Cubans were happy to downplay the survival of the Indians since those who promoted indigenismo, and sought to praise and promote Cuba's Indian heritage, were usually conservative racists who wanted to glorify the Indian past and downgrade the contribution of the black African element in the population. Novelists in the nineteeth century, anxios to preserve Hispanic culture, often sought Indian images for their historical fiction as a counterweight to the arguments of those who exalted Cuba's African heritage. "

― , Cuba: A New History

9 " The 'buccaneers' came ashore in search of bacon. The Cuban Indians had learnt (from the natives of Haiti) a process of preserving meat by drying it and then smoking it over a fire of green leaves and branches. The Indians called the rack on which the meat was laid out a boucan or buccan [bacon], while those who prepared and sold the meet were referred to as boucaniers or buccaneers.

Pigs had been brought to Cuba from Europe by the first Spanish settlers. The early litters had been allowed to roan freely over the islands, becoming a vital source of food, not just for the settlers but also for the pirate who arrived in forgotten coves to replenish their water and their stores. They learnt to appreciate the pig meat dried on the boucan, and the world became associated with the pirates themselves,the men who brought home the bacon. "

― , Cuba: A New History