Catholic Conspirators? Religious Rebels in Nineteenth-Century Cuba

Previously untapped, Catholic Church records document historic networks among free black communities in Havana, Matanzas and other Atlantic ports. In earlier centuries, membership in overlapping religious and military corporations advanced their interests and gained them status in Spanish society. The slave revolt of Saint-Domingue, the Cuban sugar boom and the rise of abolitionist activity, however, caused their position to deteriorate rapidly in the nineteenth century. The alleged conspiracies of Aponte in 1812 and La Escalera in 1844 ruined them. Leaders were executed and hundreds more were deported in an Atlantic diaspora. Ironically, the well-recorded connections these groups maintained in the military and the Catholic Church allowed Cuban officials to target them and neither previous loyalty nor service could save them.