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    ~~ NY~ Robert L. Paquette! Sugar Is Ma de Bloo The Conspitacy of La Escalera and the Conflict between Empires over Slavery in Cuba Ww ‘Wesleyan University Press ‘Middletown, Connecticut ECA v. Seay aaa utes ey D DAfe ro JOB Date Copyright © 1988 by Raber L. Paquet For my parents, aoe ‘ Al rights reserved Arthur C, and Dorothy L. Paquette BF MH 0000 SHE FE acinar Anerson we Used Sa ty expe in wi Bae te el Seely ppt Ses ramets ates ee te amet fe ots Cras page ae oe Sie cig gee it nee, Me ade Pao Pre lencae boepely enya cnc er ic er All inquicie ead pecwissions requess thould be addressed to the Pub- lishee, Wesleyan University Fress, 110 Me. Vernon Stet, Middletown, Connecticut 06457 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Paquerte, Robert Ly 1951~ ‘Sugae is made with blood. Bibliography: p. Includes index, +, Cuba—Histosy—Negro Conspeacy, 1844. 2. Slavery— Cubn—History. 5. Cuba—Race relations. I. Tide. Fi783Paz 988 gy20v'05 87-5450 SAN 0-8195-5192-9 ‘Manafscnued in the United Stace of America FIRST EDITION te NN OM OS SONI NY MN MS ES aw YY te, Preface ‘My interest in the Conspiracy of La Pscalera stems from a longstanding interest in the comparative history of slavery in the Americas, ‘The more I studied Cuba, the more absorbed I became by this episode about which the historians so sharply disagreed, In he early stages of my research a. hunch paid off In the Massachusetts Historical Society I uncovered pieces of the puzzle long sought by Cuban scholars: the leters of Domingo Del Monte, a white Cuban intellectual implicated in the Conspiracy, to Alexander Everett, a United States statesman. I became convinced that a complex revolutionary conspiracy of the people of color had existed in Cuba in Egil dhs beam convince do Fall understanding of the events Fe quired a trans-Atlantic perspective. Cuban scholars have tended to see the events of 1844 as the culmina- tion of a lengthy process, which, in a sense, entered a climactic stage with the coming to Havana in 1840 of the abolitionist David Tuenbutl. I agree and have followed their lead. In certain places I have started well before 1840 to see with the eyes of the participants from the time of the develop- _ment of Cube's plantation system, have noe written social history about the world the Cubaa slaves made, although I discuss their world, Rather, Thave used the process of La Excalera as an entry point into a larger ex: oration kG rl rap intic politics and diplomacy as well as otCibars o ciet})| eschewed a striGly chronological approach hectuse, as my perspec tive widened and the full interplay of external and internal factors were revealed, the process of La Escalera appeared to me less as one raging cu- rent than as many streams running inexorably to a violent confiuence. ‘The |} resulr is preeminendly « political history in_a socio-economic context. I argue that the Conspiracy of La Estalera existed not a8 one conspiracy but ‘were revolutionary in theis aspirations. “My inital seudy appeared in a 1982 doctoral dissertation, Since then I have had the opportunity to visit many more archives and pore over volu- an $s wget |jeecal distinct yet overlapping conspiracies, central elements of which shit, vii | viii Preface minous additional documentation. I traveled to Cuba in 1982 with the hope of gaining access to Cuban archives. But I was denied and so was forced to rely on materials in repositories outside of Cuba. Some of what I write about Cuban slavery is synthetic, and my debt ro Fernando Ortiz, Pedro Deschamps Chapeaux, José Luciano Franco, Verena Martinez-Alier, and Franklin Knight will be apparent to specialist. To my great fortune, ‘while pursuing information about the José Escoto Collection at the Hough ton Libraty of Harvard University, I came in touch with Enildo Garcia of St, Francis College, a native of Cuba and an authority on Plicido, the mulatto poet executed in 1844 as a leader of the Conspiracy. Professor Garcia had preceded me to the rediscovery of the Escoto Collection, which turned out to be one of the tichest sources for colonial Cuban history in the United States and an invaluable source of information on La Escalera. Professor Garcia's research, the recent writings of Jorge Castellanos and Daisy Cué Ferninde, to which he led me, and documents in the Archivo Historico Nacional of Madrid together forced me to revise my original estimation of Plécido, In other respects, subsequent research strengthened my earlier arguments. T also benefited greatly from the work, criticism, and warm encourage- ment of David R. Murray, who was completing his excellent study on the abolition of the Cuban slave trade while I was finishing my disserration. His chapters on David Turnbull and the Conspiracy of La Escalera focus ‘on the British connection. agree with him on certain points; on others, I disagree and have atwempted to extend the discussion. Tn the process of researching and writing about La Escalera I have ac- ‘cumulated many other debts, I must first thank the stafis of all the libraries and archives listed in the notes. I am also indebted to Wendy Kramer and (Olga Joya for special help in locating documents in Spanish archives. Petet Dalleo, in an act of uncommon generosity among academics, sought me cout at a conference to apprise me of the Cuban materials in the Rodacy Collection at the Historical Society of Delaware, William DeMacigny Hy- land introduced me to relevant archival material in New Orleans. Thave exchanged ideas and information about slavery with David Eleis since our graduate school days at the University of Rochester, We have not always agreed, but Iam truly grateful for the time he took away from his important book on the trans-Atlantic slave trade to give an carly draft of my manuscript his careful attention. David Brion Davis, Kenneth F. Kiple, and David Barry Gaspar read the manuscript ia its entirety and of- Preface ix ularly served as a resource on Caribbean cofture and literature. Few studies of slavery appear these days without having profited from » careful read- ing by Stanley Engerman. This book is no exception. Jeasmnette Hopkins provided me with an education in editing, Her criticism did not always take easy reading; it aid make for a better book. I would also like 10 thank her staff at Wesleyan University Press, paticulaly Eliza Childs and Peter Potter. C. Duncan Rice as dean of Hamilton College not only provided finan- cal support but read the manuscript in its entirety. I continued to receive {generous support from his successor, Melvin B. Endy, Jr. For a special contribution I am grateful to Walter Beinecke, Je. My colleagues in the department of history, Eugene Tobin, Alfred Kelly, and David Millar, provided friendship and encouragement. Joan Wolek of the interlibrary loan department deserves a medal for filling my hundreds of requests. Laurie Moses, Sharon Gormley, Theresa George, and Jan Piefoni extended themselves for me on too many occasions typing various drafts of the manus. “Thanks prove embarrassingly inadequate to express what I owe Eliza. beth Fox-Genovese. Without her criticism, generosity, and encouragement T would not have finished a dissertation on La Escalera, much less a book. ‘She sets high standards inside and outside the classroom, and for that I am extremely grateful. Cag directed my dissertation and has not ceased to show interest in may work. AST have said before, my debt to ‘Zoya, my wife, has sacrificed much and endured much while I was completing this book. That she remains my wife may speale well for her love but not her good sense. As she knows, Iam sill trying to make it up to her. POC ODOC ISRULOLOLOLOLGrG) jG TOOSSCOSSTOCCOCSCSCOCUSCS eens we NN NS NN NS Contents PREFACE vii TABLES xiii ILLUSTRATIONS xv Introduction: La Escaleta and the Historians 3 T Sugar and Society in 1840 1, Land, Color, and Class 29 2, Of Blood and Sugar 51 3. Cuban Whites and the Problem of Slavery 8x 4. The Eree People of Color 104 I Cuba and Imperial Expansion 5. David Turnbull and the Crusade against Slavery 131 6. Francis Ross Cocking and International Conspiracy 158 7. Africanization or Annexation to the United States? 183 I Conjuncture 8, The Year of the Lash 209 9. LaEscalera Reexamined 233 APPENDIX I: The Slave Code of 1842 267 APPENDIX 11: Slave Regulations of 1844 273 NOTES 275 INDEX 329 Tables 1. Manumnissions, 1858-1862 64 1. Occupational Distribution of Cuba's Free Colored Population in 1846 107 IIL, Sentences of Matanzas Branch of Military Commission, 1844 229 aid Illustrations Following page 46 Plaza de Armas, Havana ‘Harbor, Havana ‘Map of Havana, ¢. 1840 ‘Map of Cuba's Western Department cana sogar plantation Slaves and whites, boiling house, Cuban sugar plantation Cuban tobacco fasm Black postilion drawing a guitrin, a chaise Montetos, class of poor rural whites Street scene with slaves and free people of color Postion, an urban slave Free parda, a woman of partial Aftican ancestry Free colored midwife in ateendance Nitiigo, prankster, member of Afro-Cuban secret society Street celebration Dia de los Reyes, the Day of Kings Following page 142 David Turnbull, Britis consul in Havana, radical abolitionist Francisco Arango y Partefio, prominent liberal planter, who sup- ported gradual abotition Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros, influential Creole planter, advocate of ending slave trade José Antonio Saco, liberet expelled fron Cube in 1834 for demun- ciation of slave trade Félix ‘Tanco, Colombian-born abolitionist, author of antistavery novel, Pesrona y Rosalia Domingo Del Monte, liberal intellectual implicared in the Con- spiracy Gerbnimo Valdés, Cuba's Captain-General, chief executive from 184r to 1843, Musteations Advertisement listing 673 captured runaway slaves ‘José de Ia Lux y Caballero, director of Havana Economic Society, ‘acquitted of iavolvement in Ls Escalera Father Félix Varela of Cuba's San Carlos Seminaty, liberal activist, exiled to US. and suspected of involvement with Cuban dissidents General Narciso Lopez, leader of the separatist, proslavery “Ameri- can” party John George F. Wurdemann, South Carolina physician, who wrote Notes on Cuba Alexander Hill Everett, special U.S. envoy to Cuba, who supported ‘American annexation Abel Upshur, U.S. Secretary of State in President Tyler's proslavery administration Advertisement for “Esclavo préfugos,” ranaway slaves Cuban slave hunter (rancheador), with bloodhounds Slave shackles Following page 206 ‘Free moreno militiaman iy of Matanzas Sansisima Trinidad sugar plantation, site of a 1843 conspiracy Ingenios, sugae planuations ovtside Matanzas, where slaves were in- volved in conspiracy Leopold O'Donnell, successor to Valdes as Captain-General ‘News story of firse sentences of the Matanzas branch of the Military Commission Santiago Marifo, soldier and adventurer suspected of inciting rebel- ion in Cuba in early 1840s ‘Francisco de Sentmanat, Cuban nationalist and adventurer suspected of involvement in the Conspiracy La Buaalera, or “the Ladder” to which slave suspects were bound Section of Matanzas, Larrio de Versales, where Plicido was exe- cuted in 1844 ‘Svory informing public of impending execution of Placido Plan showing location in barrio de Versalles where Plicido was shot Plicido, che Cuban poet executed in 1844 25 ringleader of the con- spiracy ‘Modern sculpture of Plécido in the city of Matanzas eis right thae what is just should be obeyed; it is necessary that wha is serongest should be obeyed. Justice without might is helpless, might withoue justice is tyrannical. Justice without smighe is guinsaid, because there are always offenders; might without justice is condemned. We must then combine justice and might and, for this end, make whac is just strong, or what is strong just. PASCAL, Penséer POUCG OU INTRODUCTION ; La Escalera and the Historians Sonate bee Tae sat eon 4844, Introduction: La Escalera and the Historians ‘The "Conspiracy of La Escalera’ is, in shor, the most illusive and contemptible page of our history José ANTONIO RAMOS, "Una mauerre que no debe olvidarse,” Gacsta del Caribe s (Joly 1944): 6 ‘The society built on slavery and colonialism appeared to be undergoing dissolution in Cuba in 1843. Slave revolts had broken out in March and November of that year. Separatist sentiment had increased among Cuba's ‘whites in response to Spain’s unwillingness to liberalize its imperial role and its seeming incapacity to secure life and property. Rumors abounded that British abolitionists and United States annexationists were advancing their own designs by competing for the support of the dissidents. Cuba’s sizable free colored population was restive. When, near Christmas, 3 planter in Matanzas province claimed to have uncovered a conspiracy to raise the slaves of the sugar district of Sabanilla, government agents un- der the orders of Captain-General Leopoldo O'Donnell, Cuba's new chief executive, moved in, They’tortured suspects, then executed the “confessed” ringleaders. ‘Donnell, doubting thatthe proceedings in Sabanilla had located the oor of the conspiricy,/Widened the cintle of investigation. Persecution and torture spread throughout much of western Cuba in 1844. Govern- ‘ment officials said they had exposed an even wider conspiracy, one that in- cluded slaves, free people of color, Cuban-born whites, and foreigners. ‘They implicated two of Guba’s preeminent liberal intellectuals and.proto- nationalist writers(Domingo Del Montdjand José de la Luz y Caballero) they convicted in abst David Turnbull the Former Batak eoasul in Havana, of being the “prime tiover the conspiracy; they executed MICS GGGCS DG LS Gs Se Ww MN MN SS ition Airersnd 4 Introduction (Gabiiel de la Concepcibn Vals, alias Plicido, a free mutatto and one of a wwe Poets, as head of a conspiratorial faction of peo- ple of color. By the year’s end, thousands of ale of color, free and slave, had been executed, banished, or imprisoned, or bad simply da pave Thewoale onipaer aeel e erin remembrance of the principal implement to which slave suspects ‘were bor i ir tion. le year 1844 itself has down in Cuban hiswory as e! Ado det Cuero—the Year of the Lash, ‘The Conspiracy of La Escalera has received uncommon attention in wn Le Sueliny Cuba. Generations of leading Cuban scholars have studied the events. ton balan Periodicals have devoted special issues to La Escaleca and Plicido. Chil. dren's literarure discusses them. Audiences have watched reenactments on stage. On the centenary of Plicido's death, in 1944, the Auténtico regime of Ramén Grau San Martin issued a two-centavo stamp with Plécido's pic. ‘ture and the inscription “Gloria de Ia Poesia Cubana, Martie de la Liber- tad? Fidel Castro's 1974 speech in honor of the twenty-first anniversary Of the attack on the Moncada Barracks, his frst blow against the regime of Fulgencio Batista, honored the sleve rebels of 1843 as “precursors of ‘oar social revolution” and deserving of a monument for theit heroic ef- fors on behalf of liberty and justice? And before Fidel, it seems, the umber 44 was popular in the casinos. 1a Escalere remains one of the most controversial, episodes in Cuba's colonial history. Some interpreters have called it a preempted revolution that threatened the foundation of Cuba's slave society: Others have doubsed its existence, arguing thae che government manufactured it t0 justify a Machiavellian policy of colonial repression. Some who are convinced that there was a sote of conspiracy, purposefully exaggerated by the govern- ment, have trouble separating the innocent from the guilty. Among the sakers of Cuba's colonial history, probably only José Marti, the great na- ‘onalist thinker and revolutionary leader, who was martyred in 189 dur- ing Cuba's War of Independence, has received more attention than Plécido. And debate has caged from the time of Plicido's death over whether he should be celebrated a8 a martyr for liberty of mourned as a docile vi In 1894, ata time when Cuba's people of color were calling fora stare in Plécido’s honor, an article appeared using the official record to substan- tiate the existence of the Conspiracy of La Escalera as a revolutionary movement of the people of color, inspired by the example of Haiti, to overthrow Spanish rule and establish a nonwhite nation, Its author was Joséde Jesis Mirquer, a prolific weiter with a wellarmed reputation for La Escalera and the Historians 5 defending the interests of Cuba's working class. His prose and verse had appeared in periodicals chroughout Cube, most notably La Astrora, the anarcho-syndicalist Havana newspaper whose founding in 1865 coincided ‘with the organization of Cuba's first tobacco union by Marquez and sev- eral other young socialists® Mérquez called Plécido a leader of the Con- spitacy, a martyred hero who struggled against che oppressors of his race.* Yn making his case for the Conspiracy as abortive revolution, Mérquez in effect allied himself with such earlier conservative Spanish writers as José Ferrer de Couto, José de Ahumada y Centurién, and Justo Zaragoza, and against an influential circle of white Cuban intellectuals, liberal, prop- ertied, and proudly nationalist Among this latter group was Manuel Sanguily, a rebel officer during the Ten Years’ War (1868-1878) and a formidable orator. He replied to Mécquer. Sanguily had studied under José de la Luz y Caballero, one of the intellectuals implicated in the 1844 events, It was Plicido, so it was said, who had contributed to Luz y Caba- ero's arrest and interrogation by naming him to the authorities as a con- spicator, Sanguily’s reply to Marquez was sharpened by his affection, even unapologetic reverence, for his mentor and by his anti-Spanish national- ism. In earlier estays, Sanguily had denied that Plécido had any poetic talent; even Plicido's famous “Plegaria a Dios” {Prayer t0 God], said to be composed in prison just before his execution, was, Sanguily contended, ‘apocryphal.® In his response to Marquez, Sanguily declared that the truth about La Escalera would probably never be known, that the government's records could not be trusted, and that Plécido “as a Cuban and as a man merits only pity or oblivion.”* || Alshough Sanguity’s blunt dismissal of Plicido elicited criticism inside and outside Cuba at the time, after independence from Spain and well into the twentieth century denial of a conspiracy and acceptance of the inno- cence and docility of Placido became the predominant view in Cuba* In 1901 Vidal Morales 7 Morates’s tribute to Cuba's long struggle against Spanish rule, Iniciadores primeros mértires de la revolucién cubana {nitiators and first martyrs of the Cuban revolution}, contained two chapters on the Conspiracy, “Sultanaro de O'Doaaelt” {O'Donnelt's sultanate] and “La Llamada Conspiraci6n de los Negros” {The so-called conspiracy of the blacks}. Morales acknowledged that no one had yet es- tablished whether a conspiracy of the people of color had existed in 1844, although few could deny the bloodbath of reprisal. Although he offered litele explicit analysis of his own, quoting extensively from his sources, his interpretation is easy to infer. La Escalera was largely an invention of 6 Introduction rapacious Spanish officials, who manufactured it to sow mistrust and fear among the races, to repress dissidents, and to plunder well-to-do free people of color.’ Plécido appears as an innocent victim of a politically calculated terror. Morales conceded the serious outbreaks of slave revolt in March and November of 1843, but his sources attributed them to local causes, The outbreaks were, typically, partial and isolated; they were put down quickly in a wave of torture. Morales concluded that “the sup- posed conspiracy marked in Cuba the zenith of the sufferings inflicted on the African race,” ‘Morales relied on information supplied by select members of Cuba's white intelligentsia. Some had studied La Escelera after the fact; many had lived through it and several wrote to Morales at his request to relate their experiences. He himself had family connections to the grim history of 1844. A distant relation and celebrated man-of-letters, Antonio Bachi- Iler y Morales, was associated with Luz y Caballero and Domingo Del ‘Monte; inconsistently, to the Conspiracy in several of hhis writings" Morales's father-in-law, @ Spanish-born military man named Ramén Flores de Apodaca, had actually participated in the inves- tigations as one of the government's chief agents." “Morales quoted his good friend Francisco Jimeno more than any other source. Future students of the Conspiracy would follow Morales in citing Jimeno as an authority. Jimeno had been consulted by Manuel Sanguily before he wrote his reply to Mérquez.* Jimeno, a member of one of the leading families of the city of Matanzas, had been a nineteen-year-old stu: dent at a college in Havana in 1844. He acknowledged that he had wit nessed the brutalization of people of color by government agents, He ‘knew Plicido, although apparently not well, but from what he knew and heard, he rejected the government's charges against him on the grounds that, since he was almost white himself and seemingly meek and deferen- tial, especially in his dealings with whites, he could not possibly have par- ticipated in a racist revolution, much less led one. Much of what Fran- cisco Jimeno conveyed about the Conspiracy of La Excalera in letters to Morales and Sanguily came from his father. Jimeno’s father, Simén Jimeno, had close ties to a priest named Nicolés Gonnilez de Chavez, ‘who had fathered 2 number of children by a free woman of color. A son, Santiago Pimienta, was extcuted with Placido. A daughter, Gabriela Pi- mienta, had married a free colored dentist named Andrés José Dodge, also executed with Plicido, Simén Jimeno tried to save Dodge from danger in 1844 by counseling him to leave Cuba. According te his son Francisco, La Eséilera and the Historians 7 he strongly believed jf the’ innocence of Dodge, Pimienta, Plécido, and other prominent free people-Of color and regarded the government agents as licele more than assassins. Morales made no’ mention of his father: agent in investigating the Conspiracy. Private correspondence suggests that Morales, mortified by his father-in-law’s participation, sought to play ic down. Indeed, except for the published judgments of the trial pro- ‘ceedings, Morales ignored the government's record of the Conspiracy alto- gether, a particularly noteworthy omission since in 1900, after the United States’ intervention in Cuba's war for liberation from Spain, the provi- sional goverament of the United States had appointed Morales to direct its National Archive."* Whether he rejected the government's record out of hand because of its use of rorture in extracting confessions or whether he had insufficient time before publishing his book to examine the volu- sinous trial documentation remains unclear. He died in 1904 while at work on « monumental study of the life and times of the liberal intellec- tual Domingo Del Monte, who had been implicated in the Conspiracy." Had it been completed, it might have answered many questions. Over the next several decades the Morales interpretation received no serious challenges. Because he had written the most widely used school text in Cuban history, his basic views on che Conspiracy would reach a wide audience** A special edition on Plicido in the Matanzas periodical EL Album, published sixty years to the day after his execution, assembled a variety of experts whose views largely conformed t0 those of Morales, although one acquaintance of Plécido did suggest a much more complex personality than the humble, apolitical, and obsequious bard described by others.” Assorted journals and newspapers fearared stories on Plicido in 1909, the centenary of his birth, bue these and many subsequent articles tended to engage more narrow questions about Plicido's character, his appearance, and the quality of certain of his poems than the facts about La Escalera® Still, here and there, new and poceatially damaging information sur- faced. Students of the Conspiracy benefited from the organization of the National Archive, carried on most skillfully by Joaquin Llaverias after ‘Morales's directorship. Fernando Ortiz, in his classic study of Cuban slavery, Hampa afro-cuberla: los negros esclavos (Afro-Cuban life: the black slaves} (1916), fotind the Archive's voluminous holdings on the Conspiracy a “source of very cutious data that could not be fied into this work.” Nevertheless, while agreeing with Morales that Captain- Jaw’s role as a government rT 8 Introduction General O'Donnell exploited the idea of conspiracy, Ortiz did assert ‘without qualification that a plot had developed in 1844 to raise the slaves of the plantation districts around Matanzas and Cardenas. ‘The Boletin of the National Archive, which began publication under ‘Morales's direction in 1902, issued a few important documents about the Conspiracy and its causes. In the year of Morales's death, it published a confession by Francis Ross Cocking, aide to David Turnbull, the British consul, that he had conspired with Cuban whites and people of color to end slavery and overthrow Spanish rule. Cocking had offered to sell his confession to the Spanish government seven years after 1844 and five years after trying to sell it to the British ‘The Matanzas newspaper Yucayo (Native Voice), in 1909-1910, the centenary year of Plicido's birth, presented a series of documents on the Conspiracy, mostly reports ‘on what was happening in Cuba in 1844 written by a Cuban correspon- dent of an obscure Paris-based newspaper, José Escoto, the compiler and editor of these documents, introduced them with an admission of their limitations and of the great “dificulties in giving a cestain interpretation” to the Conspiracy." They nonetheless delivered a clear message that in 1844 certain prominent whites in Cuba strongly believed that people of color were plotting in league with the British abolitionist David Turnbull Escoto's interest in the Conspiracy continued throughout his life. He published little himself but, from his position as head of the Matanzas public library, he relentlessly accumulated a treasure of manuscript mate- rial on the history and literature of Cuba2* In 1922 Carlos M. Trelles, the great Cuban bibliographer, listed as among Escoto’s holdings eighty letters from Captain-Genetal O'Donnell to Antonio Garcia Ofia, governot of Matartzas province, in which “the sectet of the conspiracy is found.” ‘These letters probably formed part of the Escoto Collection purchased by Harvard University in 1929, where they lay uncatalogued and lecgely ig- nored until recenely 2" ‘José Bscota married Dolores Maria de Ximeno y Cruz, the granddaugh- ter of Simén Jimeno and the niece of Francisco Jimeno. Her memoirs, published in installments beginning in r9.24, recall her conversations with her maternal geandmother about the Conspiracy and Plicido. Her grand- mother knew Plicido, described his appearance before his death, and when asked about his innocence said noncommittally, “the innocence ot guilt of Plécido was much discussed then.” When asked if the Conspiracy really existed, she replied, "Of cousse the conspiracy existed; only itis not La Escalera and the Historians 9 known with certainty who were innocent ot guilty among those said to be its principal chiefs."** ‘Not until Francisco Gonzilez del Valle presented his discourse, “José de Ja Luz y Caballero en la Conspiracién de x844," ro the Cuban Acad- emy of History in 1925 did a more detailed and far more analytical study than Morales’s appear. Gonzilez del Valle, like Morales, came from one of Havana's old patrician families and had matured into a major figure in Caban intellectual and cultural life. On a previous occasion before the ‘Academy, he had countered Manuel Sanguily of the question of the ai theaticty of Plécido's poem “Plegaria a Dios."® He intended his new discourse to be the frst of a trilogy of works on La Escalera, concentrating first on Luz y Caballero, then on Domingo Del Monee, and last on Plé- cido®® He completed only the firs, @ painstaking atrempt based on con- siderable original research. In the National Archive he had examined records of the military tribunal that had tried the alleged conspirators. He also had access to the unpublished epistolary of Domingo Del Monte, in the possession of Domingo Figarola-Caneda, another well-known Cuban scholar and specialist on Plicido?! He also used documents in the archive of Vidal Morales. - Gonzilez dei Valles discourse began with a brief description of the antecedents of La Escalera. Census figures for 1847 told‘Cuban whites for the first time that they had become outnumbered by slaves. In the early 1840s a small band of white Cuban intellectuals, in response to the con- timation of a massive illegal slave trade, was battling elements of the slave-trading interest to prevent what they saw as the Africanization of Cuba, David Tumbull had arrived in Havana in x84o to fill the post of British consul. He brought with him the real possibility that Britain, ‘through Spain, might impose on Cuba an agreement that would rapidly abolish slavery. The powerful slave-trading interest, fearing an abrupt end to a profitable business, began to stir up the populace by slanderous campaign against Great Britain and Turnbull. After Turnbull was com- pelled to leave Cuba in 1842, Cuban authorities imprisoned several of his colored acquaintances for plotting an insurrection. ; Gonwiler del Valle’s story turned next to the relationship berween Domingo Del Monte and Alexander Everett, a United States intellectual and statesman. Gonzilez del Valle learned from. Everett's letters in Del “Monte's epistolary that Del Monte, in a letter t0 Everett of 20 November 1842, had disclosed the existence of a revolutionary conspiracy inspired x0 Introduction by British abolitionists. Precisely what Del Monte had written in this ewer, Gonzilez del Valle could not say. He had no knowledge of the ‘whereabouts or even existence of Del Monte’s letters to Everett. He did know that word of the conspiracy had passed from Everett to highly placed officials in the United States government and from them to Span- ish officials. Gonzilez del Valle concluded that Captain-General Valdés, ODonnell’s predecessor, had at least some intelligence about the aboli- tionist conspiracy and had taken precautionary measures, but Valdés seems to have thought the threat much exaggerated. He was quick to assert that Del Monte's 1842 denunciation of a plotted revolt, in the letter to Everett, bore no direct responsibility for the vengeful actions of O'Donnell. Gon- zilez del Valle wondered how Del Monte had learned about the abolition- ist conspiracy. The most likely source seemed to be either Turnbull or Francis Ross Cocking. Why would either man or both confide in Del ‘Monte? Del Monte claimed—and Gonzélez del Valle agreed without in- vestigation—that information about the abolitionist conspiracy had come +0 him unsolicited. Gonzélez del Valle found the primary cause of the events of +844 in the Draconian personality of Leopoldo O'Donnell himself. O'Donnell had come to Cuba in October 1843. Ia November came slave revolts in the ‘western sugar plantation regions, In December a female slave on a sugar plantation owned by Esteban Santa Cruz de Oviedo disclosed an extensive pplot for a slave uprising in, Cuba's sugar heartland. Gonzélez del Valle blamed Santa Cruz de Oviedo for seeding in O'Donnel’ head the idea that this plot and earlier unrest in the countryside had originated outside the plantations themselves and that they constituted a conspiracy. The ensuing investigations led to che torture and persecutions of 1844 and the dis- covery of "the Conspiracy of La Escalera.” Once government agents had called a terror into existence to deal with the Conspiracy, Gonzélez del ‘Valle maintained, it took on a life of its own. ‘Was it fear, wickedness, or the belief there really existed the general conspis- acy, of which <0 much had been said for so long, chat motivated the use of such measures as the only means to know what was wanted to be known? All cof these did but principally fear and unrestrained cruelty* ‘To further substantiate his argument, Gonzalez del Valle pointed to the irrational and contradictory testimony in the court records. Predictions had differed oa when the Conspiracy was to break out. Of the caches of ‘munitions and weapons, said t0 be in different places by different wit- nesses, none were ever found. And who really led the Conspiracy? Turn- La Escalera and the Historians ar ball, after ail, had left the island in 1842. Did the free people of color? The slaves? "In these proceedings,” wrote Gonzélez del Valle, “all is con- fusion and irregularity; all is contrary to reason and Sogic; all is anbitrary and unjust; all is false; all is crime and pain."** ‘A declaration of José Erie,'a free colored militiaman, who commited suicide one day after giving it’had led to the initiation of proceedings in Havana and the arrest of Luz y Caballero and other prominent Cuban whites. Gonzilez del Valle believed that a particularly corrupt govern- ‘ment official named Pedro Salazar had advanced the idea of white involve- tment in the Conspiracy, possibly because of his own connections t0 the slave-trading interest. With Erice’s suicide, Salazar needed more testimony to build a case and so tried 40 manipulate Placido with a hollow promise of freedom into implicating those whom Salazar wanted to implicate. But the consequent cases against the white Cuban intellectuals never held up in court. Indeed, as GonzAlez del Valle pointed out, Salazar himself was eventually tried and imprisoned for misconduct during the proceedings. ‘Thus, beneath all the lies and distortion, the perversity and bloodletting, Gonzilez del Valle had discerned’in che Conspiracy only 2 fragment of truth, one that could be easily accommodated 10 the Morales interpreta- tion, “For me,” he concluded, “what existed [in 1844] was a projected {slave} uprising, fixed for » specific date which should have begun, cer- tainly, on the estate of Esteban Santa Cruz de Oviedo, and which other {estates} would have followed later; neither more nor less than had al- ready occurred so many times."** Gonzilez del Valle's study would exert considerable influence on the thiaking in Cuba about La Escalera. He had proven to the satisfaction of most readers the innocence of Luz y Caballero and of other accused Cuban whites; he had substantially reinforced the belief that the Conspiracy did not exist or, rather, that it existed largely as the creation of a corrupt and ruthless Spanish government. When talking about the history of 1844, scholars began to replace the term “La Conspiracién de la Escalera” (The Conspiracy of the Ladder] with "La Causa de la Escalera” (The Cause of the Ladder} ot “El Proceso de la Escalera” (The Process of the Ladder}.*® But in concentrating on the €xculpation of Luz y Caballero, Gonzélez del ‘Valle had left ample room for further research and debate. ‘At a time when Cuban historians, before their counterparts in the United States, were beginning to challenge the notion that Africans had passively accepted their enslavement, some students of the Conspiracy of ‘La Eacalera could not pass s0 lightly over the great unrest on the planta- ie a Introduction tions in the early 1840s or the confession of Francis Ross Cocking and what it implied. Herminio Portell Vilé and Ramiro Guerra y Sénchez, for example, while agreeing with Gonzélez del Valle that the Conspiracy of Ta Escalera did not exist as the government hid depicted it, suggested that the abolitionist plotting by Turnbull and his minions had somehow encouraged plantation slaves, already prone to rebellion, to further excit tion and tebellion®* In 1941 Roberto P. De Acevedo and Benito) Alonso y Artigas stim lated some reconsideration of Plicido and the Conspiracy with the publi- cation of documents on an eatler arrest of Plicido, in 1843, in the town of Villa Clara, The authorities found in Placido’s possession a brief letter of introduction, written for Plicido to somebiie. named Martinez, into which could be read references to a conspiracy: For example, Martinez was thanked for his interest “in the little affair” [en el asuntico] and was told that “bereer days are soon coming” [das més serenos prontos por venir}, thus also suggesting that Placido had been serving as a kind of courier ** ‘Skeptics, however, could point to the comments of the editors themselves thar the letter and the other documents could not prove Plécido’s involve- ‘ment or whether the Conspiracy existed at all. One year later, at a national congress of Cuban scholars, a member of the Ximeno family entered the debate with a stunning revisionist inter- pretation. In a twenty-seven-page paper, José Manuel de Ximeno, the nephew of Dolores Matia de Ximeno and José Escoto, argued that Cuban slaves and free people of color, with the help of Turnbull, Haitian agents, and a few Cuban whites, most certainly had plotted a sophisticated, island- wide revolutionary conspiracy to end both slavery and Spanish rule, Un- like Gonzélez del Valle, Ximeno saw no disjunction between the aboli- tionist conspiracy, as revealed in Cocking’s confession and as told by ‘Domingo Del Monte to Alexander Everett in 1842, and what O'Donnell’s agents had uncovered after they extended their investigations in the coun- tryside in December of 1843. The so-called Conspiracy of La Escalera, according to Ximeno, actually originated in 1841 and underwent several transmutations in response to the loss of external support from Britain and Haiti and the growing distance between whites and people of color and between mulattoes and blacks. Toward the end, according to Ximeno, the conspirators had actually split into two distinctive movements, one of ‘mulattoes and one of blacks. Plicido had joined the Conspiracy at the be- ginning and for years had traveled about Cuba to forward it. To many ‘Cuban whites, Plicido had seemed weak and servile; to Ximeno, he was ‘La Escalera and the Historians 13 le _ Imprisoned by the authorities, Plicido had demonstrated sea digi aad courage in refsing to divulge information about the Conspiracy, long after some of his fellow conspirators had talked. ‘Kimeno’s original paper was abridged for publication in 943 £0 com dense his most original material into seven pages and it provided no iden- ‘ifeation of sources, He, like Gonzélez del Valle, had entered the Na- Sonal Archive to examine the colonial records, He had paid particular tention to what the people of color had said under interrogation and had pieced together, moch a the authorities had done in x84 the broad outlines of a vast revolutionary conspiracy, one that, ia Ximeno's words, vas “the frst great Cuban separatist conspitacy with ramifications through- gue the entice sland"™* Yer, without references, further detail, or a critical Took at his sources, his broad strokes looked far too impressionistic. "To some extent, reaction to Ximeno's interpretation reflected « larger scruggle within the historical profession in Cuba berween menabers ofthe ld more conservative, and more exclusive Academy of History and those of the revisionist Caban Society of Historical and {nternational Stod- ies. The Society had taken shape in x940 under ce leadership of Emilio Roig de Lenchenrng, a well-known lawyer and historian after Roig bad resigned from the Actdemy. From his oficial postion as Historian ofthe Gry of Havana he gathered around hi a group of talented young minds, many of whom wete influenced by Marxism and frostrated by che failure Sf revolution after the fall of che dictatorial regime of President Gerardo Machado in 19334 Members of the Socey focused more on the lower Classes on hiseorcal process, Yankee imperialism, and the centrality of

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