Slavery in Cuba

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Slavery in Cuba (Spanish: La Esclavitud en Cuba) was a portion of the larger Atlantic slave trade that primarily supported Spanish plantation owners engaged in the sugarcane trade. It was practiced on the island of Cuba from the 16th century until it was abolished by Spanish royal decree on October 7, 1886. The first organized system of slavery in Cuba was introduced by the Spanish Empire, which attacked and enslaved the island's indigenous Taíno and Guanahatabey peoples on a grand scale. Cuba's original population was decimated after the arrival of the Spaniards, due to both a lack of immunity to Old World diseases such as smallpox, but also because of the conditions associated with the forced labor that was used by the Spanish colonist throughout the 16th century. The remaining Taíno intermixed with Europeans or African slaves and no full-blooded Taíno remained after the 17th century, though many Cubans today do have Taíno DNA and are descendants of those intermixed Taínos. Following...

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