A New View of Cuban Slavery: The Life, Labor, and the Material Culture of Tobacco Enslavement

Focusing upon slaves living and working on tobacco farms in the far western Cuban province of Pinar del Río during the nineteenth century, this paper explores how the conditions of tobacco cultivation produced both a unique and radically-different life experience for thousands of enslaved men, women, and children.

Tobacco slaves, by virtue of their specific living arrangements, work requirements, and spaces of autonomy were subjected to a world fundamentally different from the more commonly-accepted   narrative defined by slaves on sugar plantations in Cuba.