The Juan Francisco Cascales’ Registers of Liberated Africans from the Havana Mixed Commission, 1827–36

When the Mixed Commission was first established in Havana as an international court in 1819, it took five years before it was able to get its first conviction of a captain and crew for participating illegally in the transatlantic slave trade. To conclude the trial, it was policy of the court to liberate the enslaved Africans and register their names, height, age, sex, African "nation" and physical descriptions, as well as the African-born interpreter used during the registration process. Between 1824 and 1841, the Havana Mixed Commission produced 42 registers of liberated Africans, totaling 10,391 individuals. Since registers of liberated Africans have gained much interest among scholars in recent years, it is argued here that more research must be conducted into the lives of the secretaries who were actually responsible for making the documents. This paper therefore explores the life of one secretary, Juan Francisco Cascales, because he made thirty-one registers between 1827 and 1836, totaling 8,690 individuals. Unlike hundreds of other registers from Cuba, Brazil, Sierra Leone and elsewhere in the Atlantic basin, the Cascales' registers of liberated Africans may be some of the most complete and detailed in the history of the transatlantic slave trade; and certainly some of the most substantial number of registers made by any one person. This biographical sketch will examine the roots of the Cascales name from Spain, the family's arrival to Cuba in the late-eighteenth century and the entire professional career of the Cuban-born Cascales, who was Auditor of the Lottery, Lawyer, Secretary of the Mixed Commission and Mayor of Havana.