Slavery in Cuba

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Slavery in 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 1500s.^{[citation needed]} The remaining Taino intermixed with Europeans or African slaves and no full-blooded Taino remained after the 1600s, though many Cubans today do have Taino DNA and are descendants of those intermixed Tainos.

Following the decimation of the island's native population, the Spaniards wanted new slaves to uphold their sugarcane production. They brought more than a million enslaved African people to Cuba. The African enslaved population grew to outnumber European Cubans, and a large proportion of Cubans today descend from these enslaved peoples—perhaps as much as 65% of the population.^{[citation needed]}

Cuba became one of the world's largest sugarcane producers after the Haitian Revolution and continued to import enslaved Africans long after the practice was internationally outlawed. Cuba did not stop participating in the slave trade until 1867, nor abolish slave ownership until 1886. Due to growing pressure on the trade throughout the 19th century, it also imported more than 100,000 Chinese indentured workers to replace dwindling African labor.^{[citation needed]} Slavery in Cuba was perpetuated by the French, British, Spaniards, and Americans. These four groups were interested in keeping and using their slaves, so they moved their interests to Cuba. Because of this, Cuba was living in a time gap: The rest of the world was abolishing slavery while their slavery was only growing.