The Process of Cultural Change Among Cuban Bozales During the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

On again reaching Matanzas, I ascertained that a slave-ship had just entered the port from the African coast, with 250 slaves on board. … On preceding to the quarter where these wretched beings were confined, I found them all huddled together in a large room, in which they were all exposed to sale like some drove of pigs, in a complete state of nudity, with the exception of a bandage tied round their loins. They … were seated on the floor in groups of eight and ten, feeding out of a parcel of buckets. … Three of these miserable outcasts were extremely ill, from the effects of close confinement during a long voyage.Thus began the experience of many nineteenth-century slaves upon their arrival in the New World. Hundreds of thousands of people from West and West Central Africa, bozales as Spaniards called newly arrived slaves, were torn from their own lands and plunged into a system that not only enslaved their bodies but also, through a system of physical violence and social control, re-inscribed personal and group identification.