No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Transition to Free Labour in Puerto Rico: Class, Race and Politics in a Nineteenth-Century Colony
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 March 2023
Abstract
This article analyses the abolition of slavery and the transition to free labour in late nineteenth-century Puerto Rico, seeking to understand the terms and timing of Puerto Rican abolition and the nature of society in its wake. Especially important in Puerto Rico, it argues, was the intertwined nature of slavery and other forms of forced labour as well as the predominance of foreign merchants and planters in the island's economy, which created multi-class alliances between working-class Puerto Ricans and creole elites. These class dynamics interacted with events in the metropole to influence the terms of labour on the island.
La transición hacia el trabajo libre en puerto rico: clase, raza y política en una colonia del siglo xix
Este artículo analiza la abolición de la esclavitud y la transición al trabajo libre a fines del siglo XIX en Puerto Rico, con el propósito de entender los términos y la temporalidad de la abolición puertorriqueña y las características de la sociedad tras la abolición. Especialmente importante en Puerto Rico, se argumenta, fue la naturaleza interrelacionada de la esclavitud y otras formas de trabajo forzado así como la predominancia de comerciantes y hacendados extranjeros en la economía de la isla, lo cual creó alianzas multiclase entre la clase obrera puertorriqueña y las élites criollas. Estas dinámicas de clase interactuaron con eventos en la metrópoli para influir sobre las condiciones de trabajo en la isla.
A transição para o trabalho livre em porto rico: classe, raça e política em uma colônia do século xix
Este artigo analisa a abolição da escravatura e a transição para o trabalho livre em Porto Rico no final do século 19, buscando entender os termos e o momento da abolição porto-riquenha e a natureza da sociedade que a seguiu. Especialmente importante em Porto Rico foi a natureza entrelaçada da escravidão e outras formas de trabalho forçado, bem como a predominância de mercadores e plantadores estrangeiros na economia da ilha, que criou alianças multi-classe entre a classe trabalhadora porto-riquenha e as elites crioulas. Essas dinâmicas de classe interagiram com os acontecimentos da metrópole para influenciar os termos de trabalho na ilha.
Keywords
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
1 Flinter, George Dawson, An Account of the Present State of the Island of Puerto Rico… (London: Longman et al., 1834), pp. 263–4Google Scholar. On Flinter himself, see ‘Flinter, George Dawson (d. 1838)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), https://doi.org/10.1093/odnb/9780192683120.013.9751 (subscriber access only) (URLs last accessed 6 Feb. 2023).
2 Quatrelles [Ernest l’Épine], Un Parisien dans les Antilles (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1883), p. 63. For l’Épine's biography, see ‘L’Épine Ernest Louis Victor Jules’, in Dictionnaire historique, généalogique et biographique (1807–1947) (Cour des comptes), https://www.ccomptes.fr/fr/biographies/lepine-ernest-louis-victor-jules.
3 Mattei, Andrés Ramos, ‘El liberto en el régimen de trabajo azucarero de Puerto Rico, 1870–1880’, in Mattei, Andrés Ramos (ed.), Azúcar y esclavitud (Rio Piedras, PR: Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1982), p. 97Google Scholar (note that the contents page of this volume incorrectly shows Ramos Mattei's chapter as starting on p. 99); Curet, José, De la esclavitud a la abolición: transiciones económicas en las haciendas azucareras de Ponce, 1845–1873 (San Juan, PR: Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Puertorriqueña, 1979), pp. 13, 19–20Google Scholar; Klein, Herbert S. and Engerman, Stanley L., ‘The Transition from Slave to Free Labor: Notes on a Comparative Economic Model’, in Fraginals, Manuel Moreno, Pons, Frank Moya and Engerman, Stanley L. (eds.), Between Slavery and Free Labor: The Spanish-Speaking Caribbean in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore, MD, and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), p. 263Google Scholar.
4 In the 1970s and 1980s, Puerto Rican historiography experienced a shift toward social history heavily influenced by both Marxist analysis and statistical methods. On the ‘Nueva Historia’ movement, see Dietz, James L., ‘Puerto Rico's New History’, Latin American Research Review, 19: 1 (1984), pp. 210–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Scarano, Francisco A., Sugar and Slavery in Puerto Rico: The Plantation Economy of Ponce, 1800–1850 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984)Google Scholar.
6 Colón, E. D., Datos sobre la agricultura de Puerto Rico antes de 1898 (San Juan, PR: Cantero, Fernández & Co., 1930), pp. 289–91Google Scholar; Cayetano Coll y Toste, Reseña del estado social, económico e industrial de la isla de Puerto-Rico al tomar posesión de ella los Estados-Unidos, (San Juan, PR: Academia Puertorriqueña de la Historia, 2003 [1899]), pp. 9–10. Total annual sugar exports averaged about US$3.6 million between 1864 and 1866, rose to US$5.8 million between 1876 and 1878, and fell back to US$3.6 million between 1890 and 1892. Total annual production in these three periods averaged about 108 million, 146 million and 127 million pounds (50,000, 66,000 and 58,000 tonnes), respectively: Colón, Datos sobre la agricultura, pp. 289–91. Assuming that all production was exported (Colón's data lists only export earnings and total production volume, not export volume) this would yield average sugar prices of 3.4 cents per pound between 1864 and 1866, 4 cents between 1876 and 1878, and 2.9 cents between 1890 and 1892. It seems, in other words, that the fall in sugar prices occurred in the 1880s, after abolition in Puerto Rico.
7 Bergad, Laird W., ‘Toward Puerto Rico's Grito de Lares: Coffee, Social Stratification, and Class Conflicts, 1828–1868’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 60: 4 (1980), pp. 617–42Google Scholar; Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher, Empire and Antislavery: Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, 1833–1874 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999)Google Scholar.
8 The only monograph on the libreta is Labor Gómez Acevedo's Organización y reglamentación del trabajo en el Puerto Rico del siglo XIX (San Juan, PR: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1970). For shorter studies that consider the comparative importance and historical context of the libreta, see Mintz, Sidney W., Caribbean Transformations (Chicago, IL: Aldine, 1974), pp. 82–94Google Scholar; and Scarano, Francisco A., ‘Congregate and Control: The Peasantry and Labor Coercion in Puerto Rico before the Age of Sugar, 1750–1820’, Nieuwe West-Indische Gids / New West Indian Guide, 63: 1/2 (1989), pp. 23–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 On sugar, see Scarano, Sugar and Slavery in Puerto Rico, which focuses on Ponce; and Figueroa, Luis A., Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005)Google Scholar, which focuses on the sugar-producing region around Guayama. On coffee, see Picó, Fernando, Libertad y servidumbre en el Puerto Rico del siglo XIX: los jornaleros utuadeños en vísperas del auge del café (Rio Piedras, PR: Ediciones Huracán, 1979)Google Scholar, which focuses on Utuado; as well as Bergad, Laird W., Coffee and the Growth of Agrarian Capitalism in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983)Google Scholar, which focuses mainly on Lares and Yauco.
10 Eller, Anne, ‘Rumors of Slavery: Defending Emancipation in a Hostile Caribbean’, American Historical Review, 122: 3 (2017), pp. 653–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walker, Andrew, ‘All Spirits Are Roused: The 1822 Antislavery Revolution in Haitian Santo Domingo’, Slavery & Abolition, 40: 3 (2019), pp. 583–605CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Chalhoub, Sidney, ‘The Precariousness of Freedom in a Slave Society (Brazil in the Nineteenth Century)’, International Review of Social History, 56: 3 (2011), pp. 405–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chalhoub, Sidney, ‘The Politics of Ambiguity: Conditional Manumission, Labor Contracts, and Slave Emancipation in Brazil (1850s–1888)’, International Review of Social History, 60: 2 (2015), pp. 161–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 See especially Scott, Rebecca J., ‘Class Relations in Sugar and Political Mobilization in Cuba, 1868–1899’, Cuban Studies/Estudios Cubanos, 15: 1 (1985), pp. 15–28Google Scholar.
13 Stark, David M., Slave Families and the Hato Economy in Puerto Rico (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2017), pp. 29–30Google Scholar.
14 Picó, Fernando, Amargo café: los pequeños y medianos caficultores de Utuado en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX (Río Piedras, PR: Ediciones Huracán, 1981), pp. 43, 45–8Google Scholar.
15 Mintz, Caribbean Transformations, pp. 85–9.
16 I have chosen to use the word ‘enslaved’ rather than ‘slave’ throughout this article, because the former emphasises a relation of exploitation rather than a static or inherent condition. For a helpful summary of recent debates on terminology, see Katy Waldman, ‘Slave or Enslaved Person?’, Slate, 19 May 2015, https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/05/historians-debate-whether-to-use-the-term-slave-or-enslaved-person.html.
17 Stark, Slave Families and the Hato Economy, pp. 64, 137.
18 Klein, Herbert S. and Engerman, Stanley L., ‘Fertility Differentials between Slaves in the United States and the British West Indies: A Note on Lactation Practices and their Possible Implications’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 35: 2 (1978), p. 360CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
19 Stark, Slave Families and the Hato Economy, p. 39.
20 Bergad, Coffee and the Growth of Agrarian Capitalism, pp. 3–4.
21 Scarano, Sugar and Slavery in Puerto Rico, pp. 5, 7. Note that most figures for land area cited here are given in the traditional Puerto Rican unit, cuerdas; however, since 1 cuerda equals approximately 0.97 acres (0.4 hectares), I have changed units to acres for ease of analysis with the assumption that this does not significantly change the quantities.
22 Bergad, Laird W., ‘Agrarian History of Puerto Rico, 1870–1930’, Latin American Research Review, 13: 3 (1978), p. 63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Figueroa, Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom, p. 48.
23 Figueroa, Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom, p. 48.
24 Bergad, Laird W., The Comparative Histories of Slavery in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 9, 18Google Scholar.
25 Scarano, Sugar and Slavery in Puerto Rico, p. 70.
26 David Stark tries to ascertain the percentage of African-born among the enslaved in the eighteenth century by comparing the number of infant baptisms to adult baptisms, and finds that 30 per cent of slave baptisms in San Juan between 1672 and 1727 were of adults, 7 per cent in Arecibo between 1708 and 1764, 17 per cent in Caguas between 1730 and 1765, and 4 per cent in Coamo between 1701 and 1722: Slave Families and the Hato Economy, p. 87.
27 Scarano, Sugar and Slavery in Puerto Rico, p. 137.
28 Miguel, Pedro San, ‘Tierra, trabajadores y propietarios: las haciendas en Vega Baja, 1828–1865’, Anales de Investigación Histórica, 6: 2 (1979), p. 30Google Scholar.
29 Dorsey, Joseph C., Slave Traffic in the Age of Abolition: Puerto Rico, West Africa, and the Non-Hispanic Caribbean, 1815–1859 (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2003)Google Scholar.
30 Scarano, Sugar and Slavery in Puerto Rico, p. 82; on Peninsular merchants see pp. 91–4, 155. Eastern Cuba also received a large influx of planters from Saint Domingue fleeing the Haitian revolution: see Chira, Adriana, ‘Foreign Implants’, in Patchwork Freedoms: Law, Slavery, and Race beyond Cuba's Plantations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), pp. 66–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I would argue that this commonality with Puerto Rico reflected the weakness of eastern Cuba's domestic planter class, as compared to western Cuba.
31 Bergad, ‘Toward Puerto Rico's Grito de Lares’, p. 620.
32 On Cuba see Antón L. Allahar, ‘The Cuban Sugar Planters (1790–1820): “The Most Solid and Brilliant Bourgeois Class in All of Latin America”’, The Americas, 41: 1 (1984), pp. 37–57. Schmidt-Nowara argues that ‘Brazil's planter class was the ruling class of an independent state’, and that while Cuban planters ‘remained defiant’ against abolition efforts virtually until abolition itself, the class power of Puerto Rican planters was weaker as evidenced by the fact that ‘in Puerto Rico, such planter resistance was less successful’: Slavery, Freedom, and Abolition in Latin America and the Atlantic World (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2011), pp. 137, 148.
33 Picó, Libertad y servidumbre, pp. 147–9.
34 Mintz, Caribbean Transformations, p. 91.
35 ‘Bando de Policía y Buen Gobierno de 1824’, in Cayetano Coll y Toste (ed.), Boletín histórico de Puerto Rico (BHPR), tomo 2 (San Juan, PR: Cantero, Fernández & Co., 1915), p. 33: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044035902857&view=1up&seq=365&q1=%22Bando%20de%20Polic%C3%ADa%22. The governor at the time, Miguel de la Torre (or ‘Latorre’), seems to have issued at least two other anti-vagrancy ordinances in 1824: see Pedro Tomás de Córdova, Memorias geográficas, históricas, económicas y estadísticas de la Isla de Puerto-Rico (Puerto Rico: Oficina del Gobierno, Valeriano de San Millán, 1832), vol. 4, p. 283: http://www.bibliotecavirtualdeandalucia.es/catalogo/es/catalogo_imagenes/grupo.do?path=162106.
36 Gómez Acevedo, Organización y reglamentación del trabajo, pp. 88–9.
37 Ibid., p. 52.
38 ‘Instrucciones que deberán observar las Justicias locales de esta Isla para el mejor régimen de los jornaleros de la misma', reprinted in Gómez Acevedo, Organización y reglamentación del trabajo en el Puerto Rico, pp. 449–53. On the definition of a jornalero, see Article 1. On the libreta and punishments for losing it or not having it available on one’s person, see Articles 3, 4 and 6. On work assignments, monthly reporting on jornaleros and punishments for malos antecedentes, see Article 9 (ibid., pp. 449–50).
39 Bergad, Coffee and the Growth of Agrarian Capitalism, p. 126.
40 Curet, De la esclavitud a la abolición, p. 2.
41 For example, by 1872 there were 58,400 Chinese labourers in Cuba, 60 per cent of whom were indentured servants, vs. about 287,600 enslaved people: Rebecca J. Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 1860–1899 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000 [1985]), pp. 87, 101. Brazilian planters also imported European peasants during this period to work on plantations as contract workers, or parceiros: see, for example, Mota, Isadora Moura, ‘Cruzando caminhos em Ibicaba: escravizados, imigrantes suíços e abolicionismo durante a Revolta dos Parceiros (São Paulo, 1856–1857)’, Afro-Ásia, 63 (2021), pp. 291–326Google Scholar. See also Dean, Warren, ‘An Experiment in Free Labor’, in Rio Claro: A Brazilian Plantation System, 1820–1920 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976), Chapter 4, pp. 88–123Google Scholar.
42 Mintz, Caribbean Transformations, p. 83.
43 On the significance of the eastern frontier of peasant settlement in Cuba compared to the relative absence of a frontier in Puerto Rico, see Ayala, César J., ‘Labor and Migration’, in American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean, 1898–1934 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), Chapter 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 148–82.
44 Picó, Libertad y servidumbre, pp. 39n, 84, 88; Amargo café, pp. 61–2.
45 Bergad, Coffee and the Growth of Agrarian Capitalism, pp. 47, 105.
46 Picó, Amargo café, pp. 57–9, 61. See also Picó, Libertad y servidumbre, pp. 40–73; and Bergad, Laird W., ‘Coffee and Rural Proletarianization in Puerto Rico, 1840–1898’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 15: 1 (1983), pp. 89–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. notes 24 and 32, and p. 95n42.
47 ‘Resúmenes generales (Puerto Rico)’, in Junta General de Estadística, Censo de la población de España, según el recuento verificado en 25 de diciembre de 1860 (Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1863): https://www.ine.es/inebaseweb/pdfDispacher.do?td=192525&ext=.pdf.
48 Vicente Gozálvez Pérez and Gabino Martín-Serrano Rodríguez, ‘El censo de la población de España de 1860: notas de propedéutica sobre la población ocupada’, Cuadernos de Geografía, 100 (2018), pp. 80–1.
49 ‘Despacho del Vicecónsul británico en Mayagüez, 6 de febrero de 1866’, in CIH, El proceso abolicionista, vol. 1, pp. 48–51. Reproduced in original English.
50 ‘Sublevación de esclavos en la hacienda “Restauración” de Mayagüez (Puerto Rico)’ (21 Aug. 1866), Signatura 5154.12, Archivo General Militar de Madrid (AGMM) in Archivo Digital Nacional de Puerto Rico (ADNPR): https://archivonacional.com/PL/1/1/3151.
51 Figueroa, Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom, p. 190.
52 de Wagenheim, Olga Jiménez, Puerto Rico's Revolt for Independence: El Grito de Lares (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1985), p. 86Google Scholar.
53 Bergad, ‘Toward Puerto Rico's Grito de Lares’, pp. 631, 636–40.
54 Toro, Fernando Bayrón, Elecciones y partidos políticos de Puerto Rico, 4th edn (Mayagüez, PR: Editorial Isla, 1989), p. 52Google Scholar.
55 Schmidt-Nowara, Empire and Antislavery, pp. 126–7.
56 Ramos Mattei, ‘El liberto en el régimen’, pp. 102–3. According to the law, children born after 1868 would begin to earn half of the wage of free labourers at age 18 and be fully emancipated at age 22: Figueroa, Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom, p. 114.
57 Bayrón Toro, Elecciones y partidos políticos, pp. 45–8, 51–4, 65, 347. The Liberals received 9,773 votes while the Conservatives received only 1,004. Bayrón Toro gives no further detail regarding the roughly 5,163 voters that remain unaccounted for out of the 16,000 total.
58 ‘Informe de la Audiencia de Puerto Rico al Ministro de Ultramar, 27 de julio de 1871’, in CIH, El proceso abolicionista, vol. 1, pp. 168–70. This report, at least as reprinted in El proceso abolicionista, is signed simply with the surname ‘Mendoza’.
59 ‘Narración Histórica: La Estrellada, por Cayetano Coll y Toste’, in Cayetano Coll y Toste (ed.), BHPR, tomo 6 (San Juan, PR: Cantero, Fernández & Co., 1918), p. 359: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044035902873&view=1up&seq=749&q1=estrellada.
60 Suffrage in the 1871 elections was limited through tax payment and literacy requirements: see García, Gervasio L. and Rivera, Angel Quintero, Desafío y solidaridad: breve historia del movimiento obrero en Puerto Rico (Río Piedras, PR: Ediciones Huracán, 1982), p. 28Google Scholar. However, the Census of 1860 (see note 47) had already recorded 6,572 literate people of colour as well as 4,563 proprietors, 321 comerciantes and 512 industriales of colour on the island. It is thus likely that a not insignificant number of people of colour qualified to vote in the elections of 1871.
61 ‘Desorden ocurrido en Ciales (Puerto Rico)’, (Expediente, September 1871), Signatura 5157.40, AGMM/ADNPR: https://archivonacional.com/PL/1/1/3199.
62 Capitanía General de Puerto Rico; Ministerio de Ultramar, ‘Sublevación en Camuy (Puerto Rico)’ (Expediente, 1873), Signatura 5595.10, AGMM/ADNPR: https://archivonacional.com/PL/1/1/4864.
63 ‘Importantísimo – Otra vez lo de Lares’ (indexed as ‘Lo de Camuy, por el “Boletín”’), and ‘Proclama de la prensa radical de París’ (indexed as ‘Lo de Camuy, por la Prensa Liberal’), in Coll y Toste (ed.), BHPR, tomo. 6, pp. 365–6, 366–9: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044035902873&view=1up&seq=755&q1=%22Otra%20vez%20lo%20de%20Lares%22 and https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044035902873&view=1up&seq=756&q1=proclama.
64 ‘Narración Histórica: La Estrellada’, p. 360; Fernando Picó, Contra la corriente: seis microbiografías de los tiempos de España (Río Piedras, PR: Ediciones Huracán, 1995), pp. 54–5; Bayrón Toro, Elecciones y partidos políticos, p. 65. (Arecibo, a plantation city in the northwest, was known as a ‘bastion of antiabolitionism’; see Figueroa, Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom, p. 111.)
65 Picó, Contra la corriente, pp. 61–5.
66 See Iguina, Astrid T. Cubano, ‘Economía y sociedad en Arecibo en el siglo XIX: los grandes productores y la inmigración de comerciantes’, in Scarano, Francisco A. (ed.), Inmigración y clases sociales en el Puerto Rico del siglo XIX (Río Piedras, PR: Ediciones Huracán, 1981), pp. 67–124Google Scholar.
67 Picó, Contra la corriente, pp. 56–61. Note that, unlike Haiti or Venezuela, which contributed to Puerto Rico's non-creole plantation elite, Spanish Santo Domingo, from which Estrella emigrated, was not a cash-crop plantation society in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. Instead, the two most important sectors in its agrarian economy were a particularly strong smallholding peasantry and a livestock-ranching elite, which resented unification with Haiti not so much because it led to abolition as because it threatened the fragmentation of large-scale property: see Miguel, Pedro L. San, ‘La economía y la vida campesina (fines del siglo XVIII–c.1870)’, in Cassá, Roberto (ed.), Historia general del pueblo dominicano, vol. 3: La eclosión de la nación (1790–1880) (Santo Domingo: Academia Dominicana de la Historia, 2019), pp. 214–15Google Scholar.
68 Capitanía General de Puerto Rico; Ministerio de Ultramar, ‘Sublevación en Camuy (Puerto Rico)’.
69 ‘Narración Histórica: La Estrellada’, p. 360.
70 Bayrón Toro, Elecciones y partidos políticos, pp. 65, 69.
71 Figueroa, Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom, pp. 118–19; ‘Consul Pauli to the Earl of Derby [Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs], May 12, 1875’, in The Slave Trade, 1858–1892: British Foreign Office Collection 541, microfilm (10 reels) (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1977), vol. 20, reel 5, no. 429, p. 521. The law was published in the Gaceta de Madrid: https://www.boe.es/gazeta/dias/1873/03/26/pdfs/GMD-1873-85.pdf, p. 979.
72 Bayrón Toro, Elecciones y partidos políticos, p. 65.
73 Figueroa, Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom, pp. 123–4; ‘Consul Bidwell to the Marquis of Salisbury [Foreign Secretary], April 30, 1879’, in The Slave Trade, vol. 47, reel 9, no. 258, p. 201.
74 Figueroa, Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom, p. 167.
75 Ramos Mattei, ‘El liberto en el régimen’, pp. 95, 105; Mintz, Caribbean Transformations, p. 114. Quotation from Ramos Mattei, ‘El liberto en el régimen’, p. 95.
76 Cents existed as a unit of currency throughout the period discussed in this article. However, the currency itself changed various times during this period. These changes and their broader significance are discussed below. The term ‘cents’, when used in reference to pre-1898 Puerto Rico, refers to 1/100 of a silver peso of various types (Venezuelan macuquinos, Mexican silver pesos, Spanish pesos – see note 93), while they refer to 1/100 of a US dollar after 1898. Consistency in the use of the term ‘cents’ is intentional: as described below, workers struggled during the transition to US rule, for the most part successfully, to be paid in the same number of dollar cents as they had been previously paid in peso cents, which implied a significant increase in real wages.
77 See Ramos Mattei, ‘El liberto en el régimen’, pp. 114, 112; and ‘Consul Pauli to the Earl of Derby, May 12, 1875’, pp. 521–2, 524.
78 Bergad, ‘Coffee and Rural Proletarianization’, p. 94.
79 ‘Consul Pauli to the Earl of Derby, May 12, 1875’, p. 522.
80 Bergad, ‘Coffee and Rural Proletarianization’, p. 95.
81 ‘Consul Bidwell to the Marquis of Salisbury, April 30, 1879’, p. 202.
82 Mintz, Caribbean Transformations, pp. 109–10.
83 Ramos Mattei, ‘El liberto en el régimen’, p. 123. Figueroa actually does do some of this specific tracking in his seminal work on the municipality of Guayama; see Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom, pp. 151–73. Bergad does the same with the libreta in Lares, tracking the development of arrendatarios into jornaleros, peones etc.: see Bergad, ‘Coffee and Rural Proletarianization’.
84 See Colón, Datos sobre la agricultura, pp. 289–91; Coll y Toste, Reseña, pp. 9–10.
85 ‘Crops and Markets’ (Hearing, Arecibo, 14 Jan. 1899), in Henry Carroll, Report on the Island of Porto Rico: Its Population, Civil Government, Commerce, Industries, Productions, Roads, Tariff, and Currency, with Recommendations, by Henry K. Carroll, Special Commissioner for the United States to Porto Rico (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1899), p. 74.
86 ‘Artisans of San Juan’ (Hearing, San Juan, 4 Nov. 1898), in Carroll, Report, pp. 715, 721.
87 Bergad, ‘Coffee and Rural Proletarianization’, pp. 98–9.
88 Carroll, Report, p. 50.
89 ‘Work, Wages, and Meals’ (Hearing, Coamo, 6 Feb. 6, 1899), in ibid., pp. 742–3.
90 ‘Pay of Field Hands’ (Hearing, Yabucoa, 2 Feb. 1899), in ibid., pp. 734–5.
91 Ibid., p. 736.
92 ‘The Field Laborers’ (Hearing, San Juan, 6 Jan. 1899), in ibid., pp. 724–5.
93 Ramos Mattei, ‘El liberto en el régimen’, pp. 119–20; di Venuti, Biagio, Money and Banking in Puerto Rico (Río Piedras, PR: University of Puerto Rico Press, 1950), p. 9Google Scholar. Several currencies were used in Puerto Rico during the nineteenth century, including Venezuelan macuquino silver coins from 1813 to 1857, Spanish silver pesos from 1857, Mexican silver pesos from 1876 to 1895, and special provincial Spanish coins from 1895: di Venuti, Money and Banking, pp. 6–9. In this context, the tension between gold and silver represented that between, respectively, anti-inflationist and inflationist monetary policy and, in turn, a clash of various class interests. Farmers and debtors had an interest in a silver currency and inflation because it devalued their debts; creditors and wage workers had an interest in a gold currency because it increased the value of their assets and wages, respectively.
94 Coll y Toste, Reseña, pp. 14–15.
95 ‘Effect of the President's Order’, in Carroll, Report, p. 497.
96 ‘Crops and Markets’, in ibid., pp. 71–2.
97 ‘Exchange and Free Trade’ (Hearing, Arecibo, 14 Jan. 1899), in ibid., pp. 468–9. Fires were an established tactic of class struggle on Puerto Rican plantations, particularly after abolition. Luis Figueroa finds that, between 1871 and 1887, criminal investigations were initiated into 30 plantation fires in the southern towns of Guayama, Arroyo, Patillas, Maunabo and Salinas alone, of which only two took place before abolition. These fires affected a total of 16 haciendas, so at least some of them were attacked more than once: Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom, p. 70.
98 Di Venuti, Money and Banking in Puerto Rico, pp. 17–22.
99 Pagán, J. Ferreras, Biografía de las riquezas de Puerto Rico: Riqueza azucarera (San Juan: Tipografía de Luis Ferreras, 1902), vol. 1Google Scholar, pp. 8, 16, 77–9, 89–91, 99. Ferreras Pagán's study, despite its obvious partialities as the work of a planter, is an undervalued and underused one in Puerto Rican historiography: see Mattei, Andrés A. Ramos, ‘Riqueza azucarera: una fuente olvidada para nuestra historia’, Caribbean Studies 13: 3 (1973), pp. 103–9Google Scholar. Ultimately, the situation of the planters was greatly alleviated by the inclusion of Puerto Rico behind US tariff walls in 1901, which granted the island free access to the US market and afforded Puerto Rican sugar producers the same tariff protection as mainland producers (see Bergad, ‘Agrarian History of Puerto Rico’, p. 75). Planters petitioned for free access to the US market in the Carroll hearings in 1899. Yet, from Ferreras Pagán's complaints, it seems the effects of this access had not yet been felt at the time of his writing in 1902, while the effects of the money conversion, effected three years prior, were (see ‘Exchange and Free Trade’, in Carroll, Report, pp. 468–9, and Ferreras Pagán, Biografía … Riqueza azucarera, vol. 1, pp. 7–8).
100 ‘Huelga de trabajadores en Loíza y Carolina (Puerto Rico)’ (Expediente, April 1898), Signatura 5162.23, AGMM/ADNPR: https://archivonacional.com/PL/1/1/3277.
101 Carroll, Report, p. 51.
102 Sanger, J. P., Gannett, Henry and Willcox, Walter F., Report on the Census of Porto Rico, 1899 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1900), pp. 327–8Google Scholar, 56.
103 Carroll, Report, p. 51; Sanger, Gannett and Willcox, Report on the Census, pp. 48, 73.
104 ‘Artisans of San Juan’, in Carroll, Report, pp. 715–16.
105 Davis, George W., Report of the Military Governor of Porto Rico on Civil Affairs (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1902), p. 115Google Scholar.
106 To the author's knowledge, the term peón never carried an explicitly racial connotation in Puerto Rico. The fact that Davis evidently thought it did might have been because a majority of those considered ‘peones’ at the time – just as the majority of the general population – were probably also considered ‘white’.
107 Suffrage was extended to all males in Spain in 1890; Puerto Rico followed suit in 1897: ‘Ley Electoral de 26 de Junio de 1890. Adaptación para las Islas de Cuba y Puerto Rico’, Gaceta de Madrid, 26 Nov. 1897: https://boe.es/datos/pdfs/BOE//1897/330/A00626-00629.pdf, p. 626.