CUBA AND PORTO RICO.
Cuba, the stronghold of Spain, in the western world, has labored
under the disadvantages of slavery for more than three hundred years.
The Lisbon merchants cared more for the great profits made from the
slave-trade, than for the development of the rich resources of this,
one of the most beautiful of the West India Islands, and therefore,
they invested largely in that nefarious traffic. The increase of
slaves, the demand for sugar and the products of the tropics, and the
inducement which a race for wealth creates in the mind of man, rapidly
built up the city of Havana, the capital of the Island. The colored
population of Cuba, like the whites, have made but little impression on
the world outside of their own southern home. There is, however, one
exception in favor of the blacks. In the year 1830, there appeared in
Havana a young colored man, whose mother had recently been brought from
Africa. His name was Placido, and his blood was unmixed. Being with a
comparatively kind master, he found time to learn to read, and began
developing the genius which at a later period showed itself.
The young slave took an interest in poetry, and often wrote poems which
were set to music and sung in the drawing-rooms of the most refined
assemblies in the city. His young master, paying his addresses to a
rich heiress, the slave was ordered to write a poem embodying the
master’s passion for the young lady. Placido acquitted himself to the
entire satisfaction of the lover, who copied the epistle in his own
hand, and sent it on its mission. The slave’s compositions were so much
admired that they found their way into the newspapers; but no one knew
the negro as their author.
In 1838, these poems, together with a number which had never appeared
in print, were entrusted to a white man, who sent them to England,
where they were published and much praised for the talent and scholarly
attainment which they evinced. A number of young whites, who were
well acquainted with Placido, and appreciated his genius, resolved to
purchase him, and present him his freedom, which was done in 1842.
But a new field had opened itself to the freed black, and he began to
tread in its paths. Freedom for himself was only the beginning; he
sighed to make others free.
The imaginative brain of the poet produced verses which the slaves sung
in their own rude way, and which kindled in their hearts a more intense
desire for liberty. Placido planned an insurrection of the slaves, in
which he was to be their leader and deliverer; but the scheme failed.
After a hasty trial, he was convicted and sentenced to death. The
fatal day came, he walked to the place of execution with as much
calmness as if it had been to an ordinary resort of pleasure. His manly
and heroic bearing excited the sympathy and admiration of all who saw
him. As he arrived at the fatal spot, he began reciting the hymn, which
he had written in his cell the previous night.
“Almighty God; whose goodness knows no bound,
To Thee I flee in my severe distress;
O, let Thy potent arm my wrongs redress,
And rend the odious veil by slander wound
About my brow. The base world’s arm confound,
Who on my front would now the seal of shame impress.”
The free blacks in Cuba form an important element in her population,
and these people are found in all the professions and trades. The first
dentists are Blake and Coopat, mulattoes; the first musician, Joseito
White, a mulatto; one of the best young ladies’ academies at present
existing at Havana is personally conducted by an accomplished negro
woman, Maria de Serra, to whom many a lady of high rank owes her social
and intellectual accomplishments. The only Cuban who has distinguished
herself as an actress on foreign stages is Dacoste, a mulatto;
Covarrubias, the great comedian and lively writer, for many years the
star of the Cuban stage, was also a mulatto; Francisco Manzano, the
poet, was a negro slave.
The prompter of the theatre of St. John, of Porto Rico, is Bartolo
Antique, a negro, so intelligent that the dramatic companies that come
from Spain prefer him to their own prompters. The engineer of the
only steamboat in Porto Rico is a colored man. The only artist worthy
to be mentioned, in the same Island, is the religious painter, José
Campeche, a mulatto. These are only a few known and acknowledged as
colored, but should we search the sources of every family in Cuba and
Porto Rico, we are sure that more or less, we could trace the African
blood in the greatest number of our most illustrious citizens.
In Porto Rico, Dubois, a mulatto, paid the penalty of his head for his
boldness and patriotism. There were in Cuba, in 1862, two hundred and
twenty-one thousand four hundred and seventeen free colored people, and
three hundred and sixty-eight thousand five hundred and fifty slaves.
In Porto Rico, in the same year, there were two hundred and forty-one
thousand and fifteen free colored people, and forty-one thousand seven
hundred and thirty-six slaves.
When the English troops invaded the Island of Cuba, in 1762, the
negroes behaved so well during the siege at Havana, that a large
number of them received from Governor Prado’s hands, and in the name
of the King, their letters of emancipation, in acknowledgment of their
gallantry and good services.