BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY : SLAVERY AND SLAVE TRADE IN CUBA :

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Cuba was dependent on an economy based on the sugar cane and coffee crops and on slaves imported from Africa to work on the sugar and coffee plantation. It is estimated that over 600,000 African were taken from West Africa and shipped to Cuba over three centuries with thousands dying during the brutal Atlantic crossing. Most of the people were brought to Cuba between 1780's and the 1860;s  as the slave population rose from 39,000 to 400,000. Despit the fact that the U.S. slave trade to Cuba was illegal after 1794. U.S. traders including the DeWolf family frequently made slave voyages to Havana, and they profited from there own Cuban plantation.

At the peak of the slave based economy, enslaved people comprised nearly one third of the Cuban populations even when Britain, America and Spain abolished the slave trade in the 1820's. Cuba remained one of the most common destination for slave ships through the 1860's. Slavery was not abolished in Cuba until 1886.