Policing Cuba’s Tierra Adentro: Contraband and Colonial Pesquisas in the 17th Century

Cuba’s interior, referred to as tierra adentro in documents, comprised not only vast forests, swamps, and mountains, but also some of the most notorious hotbeds of contraband on the island. The idea of Cuba’s tierra adentro was often vague; it could describe the inland settlements of Bayamo and Sancti Spíritus, but it could also include the coastal city of Santiago de Cuba. These settlements throughout the 17th century were the subjects of pesquisas, or special investigations, to look into the ever-present issue of unlicensed trade.

This presentation analyzes the development of pesquisas from the end of the 16th century until the last quarter of the 17th century. Earlier investigations were ad hoc, with local authorities able to act with significant freedom. This freedom, which spurred controversy both in Cuba and back in Madrid, was eventually curtailed in favor of highly regulated and defanged commissions. In this paper, I argue that pesquisas became less effective in dealing with contraband and instead served an important function in the maintaining of imperial control. Because the king was so far away and parts of Cuba so remote to even the judges of the appellate court based in Santo Domingo, pesquisas became fact-finding investigations that informed the Council of the Indies about situations pertaining to foreign influences on the island in the form of merchants and pirates.

Pesquisas often levied heavy punishments ranging from hard labor in far-flung provinces, the confiscation of property, or even death, but these sentences would often be lessened by the Council itself. In doing so, the metropole reminded Cubans not only of the rule of law, but also of the clemency that the king wielded. This process, imperial bureaucrats reasoned, fostered loyalty between the king and his subjects. The pesquisa, therefore, came to be much more than a criminal investigation.