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The Demographic Structure of Slavery in Puerto Rico: Some Aspects of Agrarian Capitalism in the Late Nineteenth Century*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

James W. Wessman
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Extract

The nineteenth century was a critical period in the evolution of Puerto Rican society, as the following citation from Fernández Méndez eloquently indicates: The century of Salvador Brau [the noted Puerto Rican social historian] is the century of the forging on Puerto Rican soil of a native bourgeoisie of planters – padres de agrego or señores de ingenio— born in a movement of cultural transformation which converted the preponderant subsistence economy of the eighteenth century into an active agrarian capitalism of sugar and coffee plantations. This system of plantations in the realm of the Spanish Antilles was in its epoch the revolutionary equivalent of the manufacturing system which transformed life in European society in innumerable ways during the nineteenth century.1

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , November 1980 , pp. 271 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

1 Méndez, E. Feránandez, Historia Cultural de Puerto Rico, second edition (San Juan, Ediciones ‘El Cemi’, 1971), p. 208.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., pp. 213–14.

3 For example, Rivera, A. G. Quintero, ‘Background to the Emergence of Imperialist Capitalism in Puerto Rico,’ Caribbean Studies, No. 13 (1973) pp. 31–63.Google Scholar

4 de Loubriel, E. Cifre, La Inmigración a Puerto Rico Durante el Siglo XIX (San Juan, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1964).Google Scholar

5 Méndez, Fern´ndez, op. cit., p. 223.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., pp. 223–4.

7 See Gould, L. J., La Ley Foraker (Río Piedras, Editorial Edil, 1969)Google Scholar and Denis, M. Maldonado, Puerto Rico: Una Interpretación Histórico-Social (México, Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1973).Google Scholar

8 See Mintz, S. W., Caribbean Transformations (Chicago, Aldine, 1974), pp. 82–94.Google Scholar

9 Acevedo, L. Gómez, Organización y Reglamentación del Trabajo en ci Puerto Rico del Siglo XIX (San Juan, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1970), pp. 56ff.Google Scholar

10 Méndez, Fern´indez, loc. cit.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., pp. 243–5.

12 Ibid., p. 258.

13 United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, , Census of Population: 1970, Puerto Rico, Number of Inhabitants (Washington, D. C., Government Printing Office, 1973), Table 1.Google Scholar

14 Mintz, op. cit., p. 91.Google Scholar

15 Rivera, Quintero, op. cit., p. 50.Google Scholar

16 Piedras, Río (Editorial Universitaria, 1965) (second edition).Google Scholar

17 Ibid., pp. 139–40.

18 This ledger was located in the municipal archives of San Germán, Puerto Rico.Google Scholar

19 Puerto Real, in the municipality (then jurisdiction) of Cabo Rojo, was an important western port until 1841, when the port facilities were moved for political reasons to Mayagüez. Coll, C. y Toste, Boletín Histórico de Puerto Rico, Vol. 12 (San Juan, Cantero Fernández, 1925), pp. 44–6.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., Vol. 8 (1921), p. 208.

21 Ortíz, C. Buitrago, ‘The Development of Agrarian-Commercial Capitalism in Puerto Rico: Some Aspects of the Coffee Hacienda System,’ manuscript.Google Scholar

22 Gil-Bermejo, Juana, Panorama Histórico de la Agricultura en Puerto Rico (Sevilla, Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, Publication No. 189, 1970).Google Scholar

23 Blanco, Tomás, Prontuario Histórico de Puerto Rico, (6th edition) (San Juan, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1970, original 1935), p. 81.Google Scholar

24 Curtin, P., The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), p. 44.Google Scholar

25 Blanco, loc. cit.Google Scholar

26 See Weiss, K., ‘Demographic Models in Anthropology,’ American Antiquity, Vol. 38, No. 2, Part 2 (1973), pp. 61–4.Google Scholar

27 Mintz, S. W., ‘The Culture-History of a Puerto Rican Sugar-Cane Plantation, 1876–1949,’ Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 33 (1953), p. 226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Soler, Díaz, op. cit., p. 150.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., pp. 154–5.

30 Ibid., pp. 174–5.

31 See ibid., p. 181.

32 Ibid., p. 196.

33 See Marx, K., Pre-Capiralist Economic Formations, (ed. by Hobsbawn, Eric), (New York, International Publishers, 1965), p. 119.Google Scholar

34 Francisco Mariano Quiñones, the abolitionist, was still listed as a slave-owner in San Germán in 1872. Salvador Brau, the noted social historian, was a slave-owner in this jurisdiction until 1871.Google Scholar