Sugar Boom and Slavery

The depletion of the gold-bearing sands and the population's drastic reduction - included the Spaniards, enlisted in great number in the successive expeditions for the settlement of the continent - they transformed to the stockbreeding into the main source of wealth of Cuba.

The Spanish settlers established the cattle raising and the sowing sugar cane and tobacco like the main economic objectives of Cuba. This way the wealth of Cuba between 1823 and the end of the XIX century rose a lot. The field marshals transformed the island into a dictatorship completely different to the previous autocracies.

The slavery and slaves smuggling (forbidden) sustained the progress. The indigenous manpower had already disappeared completely and African slaves were imported to work in the ranches and plantations through the United States ships and insureds in this country. Several North American presidents caressed the idea of acquiring the island.

Years later, the situation economic Cuban experienced significant changes. The coffee production collapsed, knocked down by the bumbling Spanish tariff politics, the competition of the Brazilian grain and the superior profitability of the cane sugar.

The own sugar production was impelled to the modernization of its factories before the mercantile push of the European beet sugar. More and more dependent of a single product - the cane sugar - and of the American market, Cuba was urged from socioeconomic deeply transformations to which the slavery and the colonial Spaniard spoliation interposed big obstacles.