Slaves and Sugar

There's always a sugar and slaves story in South and Central American countries, and Cuba is no different.

Christopher Columbus, according to the ditty we all had to learn in 4th grade, 'discovered' the Americas in 1492, and that included Cuba. He bought sugar cane with him to Cuba, but it wasn't till the mid 1500s that it was cultivated as a serious crop. Like other similar countries, there was a shortage of cheap, manual labour for the sugar fields, and so the Spanish bought slaves to the colony, principally from Congo, Angola and Nigeria to work the fields and tend their estates.

Eventually the English and others put pressure on the Spanish to abolish slavery (Wilberforce and all that). Though they signed the treaty, the Spanish ignored it, and that only had the effect of making slaves more valuable, and therefore more lucrative to transport and sell. It wasn't until 1886 in the last dying days of Spanish rule, that Cuba was one of the last countries to abolish slavery.

In it's heyday, there were some 68 sugar mills in the district, and a railway running the length of the valley to the closest port. Depending on the year, they produced between 4 and 5 million tons, most of it I'm sure I've eaten, though today it's down to about 2 million tons, having only recently been overtaken as Cuba's number one source of income by tourism.

We started by driving up the sugar cane valley from Trinidad, and visited the preserved home of one of the largest sugar cane land owners. In his day he would have been fabulously wealthy. After the war of independence from the Spanish, American business interests gradually bought up the farms and railways (and hotels and casinos and factories ...) which eventually led to the US government support of political regimes who supported American business interests, and the rest you know.

There is also coffee grown in Cuba largely, but not solely, as a result of coffee farmers who had their properties seized after the revolution in Haiti and fled (with their slaves) to Cuba to start again. Cuban coffee seems to have quite a mild flavour, and is very nice, though it's spoilt a bit by being served with hot, powdered milk, having no fresh milk in the shops.

Back in the town of Trinidad, we did a walking tour through the old, historical part of the town, looking at the squares and buildings, and talking a bit about the synthesis of religions that the black slaves developed, merging their animism with catholicism. White magic, voodoo and patron saints are an interesting mix. Apparently you can tell their persuasion by the colours of the beads they wear around their necks - if you know the code.

It seems that Cubans are fairly unrestricted in the travel they are allowed to do. Most of the issues are due to whether destination countries will allow them in. Our guide is filling out copious amounts of paperwork to get a Canadian visa to visit a friend, and is hoping to be successful. We had to laugh though when, after describing all of the bureaucracy he was going through, he declared that he wasn't that fussed about visiting Canada really, but when he has his Canadian paperwork he will be entitled to visit Panama where he really wants to go, because that's where he can buy an affordable air-conditioner for his apartment.

After leaving our guide, we had lunch at a cafe, who displayed their annoyance at us sharing a pizza by giving us our change in a pile of 10 cent pieces.

After a rest in the afternoon, we had dinner in an outdoor courtyard while we watched a salsa lesson. Most Cuban dancers wear a towel around their neck, as its pretty humid, though these tourists didn't and they were certainly the worse for wear after an hour of solid dancing.