Freedom at Bay: San Juan’s Underdevelopment and the Depths of Slavery in Puerto Rico, 1800-1850

• In Event: Rivers and enslaved lifeworlds

Description for Program

During the first half of the 19th century, the estuary of the Bay of San Juan-the bay itself along with the navigable rivers and small channels, such as the Río de Bayamón, that flowed to it-was transformed from a military outpost of the Spanish empire to a commercial center that exported sugar, rum, and molasses from its hinterland and imported vast amounts of provisions to fuel its increasing population. Landowners, merchants, and colonial authorities provided the capital and enslaved and free Black people the labor for this type of underdevelopment, as Walter Rodney would put it.
This paper will focus on the relationship between maritime labor and the transformation of the circum-Bay of San Juan during the early nineteenth century. The purpose is to understand how goods and people circulated across the bay and if this work provided spaces for resistance to the enslaved people of the area. It ends by questioning how technological development such as davits on the docks, steam power ferries that crossed the Bay, and better roads connecting the islet of San Juan with the towns that surrounded the Bay affected the work and lives of enslaved people by the middle of the 19th century.

Author

• Gabriel Rivera Cotto