5 Quotes by Richard Gott

Although a handful of progressive individuals favoured independence from Spain, Cuba's economic elite was conservative, fearful of the economic and social consequences of a break with the colonial motherland. Without Spanish support, the planters would not be able to sustain the slave system on which their economic power was based, nor would they be strong enough to crush slave revolts

He often reflected on his reluctance to extend the struggle to the Caribbean, and wrote in one of his many letters that it was 'more important to have peace than to liberate these islands. An independent Cuba would take a great deal of work.' Even Bolívar was not immune to the belief that a liberated Cuba might become another 'Republic of Haiti.

In the history of all empires, it has proved difficult to enslave the local population for the benefit of foreign invaders. The indigenous inhabitants refuse to work, die off or leave to go elsewhere. Slaves have to be brought in from outside. The Indians of Cuba proved no exception to this. Many had been massacred during the punitive expedition of Pánfilo, but many simply withdrew their labour and disappeared into the hills.

Although the Indian population was clearly destroyed as a continuing civilisation and culture, the record suggests that individual groups of surviving Indians may have 'disappeared' becaues it suited Cuban authorities, at certain moments in the island's history, to say that they had.

The 'buccaneers' came ashore in search of bacon. The Cuban Indians had learnt (from the natives of Haiti) a process of preserving meat by drying it and then smoking it over a fire of green leaves and branches. The Indians called the rack on which the meat was laid out a boucan or buccan [bacon], while those who prepared and sold the meet were referred to as buccaneers.