Mining Women, Royal Slaves: Copper Mining in Colonial Cuba, 1670–1780

Abstract

El Cobre is a modest mining village of almost legendary character to many Cuban people. It lies in the mountains of the Sierra del Cobre, in the island’s eastern region, in what used to be an important Caribbean frontier area in colonial days. In the imaginary of the Cuban people, El Cobre has long been identified as the abode of a miraculous image of the Virgin of Charity, protectress of this mining community and patroness of the Cuban nation. Yet, as its name suggests ( cobre or copper), the village has also been connected with copper mining since its foundation in the sixteenth century. For generations, local families have worked in these copper mines under the aegis of the Spanish crown, private contractors, foreign companies, independent miners, or the socialist state. The centuries long cycles of rise and decline of mining production in El Cobre has constituted an important historical horizon for the development of social and political life in this village. As the crown official in the epigraph suggests, the story of El Cobre before the arrival of modern capitalist mining enterprises in the nineteenth century was quite unusual (not to say fantastic). This study constitutes an attempt to recover that fading memory and to elucidate the alleged fantastic character of that Afro Cuban mining community during an important century of its long colonial history. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.