Review

Reviewed Work(s): Runaway Slave Settlements in Cuba: Resistance and Repression by

Gabino la Rosa Corzo
Review by: Daniel O. Sayers
Source: NWIG: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids , 2005, Vol. 79, No.
3/4 (2005), pp. 328-330
Published by: Brill on behalf of the KITLV, Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast
Asian and Caribbean Studies

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41850407

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328 New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids vol . 79 no. 3 & 4 (2005)

Runaway Slave Settlements in Cuba: Resistance and Repression. Gabino La

Rosa Corzo. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. xii +
292 pp. (Paper US$ 22.50)

Daniel O. Sayers

Department of Anthropology
College of William and Mary
Williamsburg VA 23187-8795, U.S.A.
<dosaye@wm.edu>

There are precious few readily available publications in archaeology cen-

tered on Maroon settlements in the Western Hemisphere. This book help
fill this palpable void in archaeological literature of the African diaspora
Focused on Maroon settlements in eastern Cuba between 1731 and 1886, i
is also a significant contribution to our understanding of how such commun
ties emerged, operated, and persevered on a day-to-day level.
La Rosa Corzo organizes his detailed analysis along two interrelated
axes, one economic and the other historical. In the first he suggests that since
1607 Cuba has been effectively divided into two halves - eastern (centere
on Santiago de Cuba) and western (centered on Havana) - according to topo-
graphic, natural, and economic differences. The main economic variable is that
intensive sugar production developed more thoroughly in the western region
while mountainous terrain helped promote a more diversified and less inten-
sive agricultural regime in the eastern region. He sees this "uneven develop-
ment" as a result of contradictions internal to Cuban political economy.
The second axis is a temporal frame that sets La Rosa Corzo's detailed
historical discussion within a few general periods that are largely define
by general transformations in colonial Cuban economy. While he briefly
discusses the two-and-a-quarter centuries before the rise of intensive agri-
culture and commercialization (roughly 1510-1730), his analysis centers o
the 1731-1886 period, after the first Maroon settlement emerged, near the
Santiago Del Prado mines of eastern Cuba. After 1731, Maroon settlements,
such as El Frijol, Todos Tenemos, and Calunga, repeatedly emerged and
reemerged, becoming the bane of the local population and law enforcement.
He argues convincingly that economic transformations internal to the easter
region actually prompted the development of runaway settlements. This is a
major point of his work as many scholars had seen the eastern region as
haven for runaways from the western region.
La Rosa Corzo develops a three-tiered model that frames his total histori-
cal analysis and is in constant dialogue with the two underpinning axes. The
first tier is his conceptualization of forms of resistance, ranging from "pas-

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 Book Reviews 329

sive" resistance (breaking to

as marronage. The second ti
which La Rosa Corzo argues th
tion of Maroon settlements (a
(from centers of population),
and natural concealment (topo
ity). The third tier is a contin
guished by the intensity and
used by the Cuban regional
So, in La Rosa Corzo's view,
petit marronage , fleeing for
runaway "settlements" (i.e. pe
marronage). Settlements in tu
rancherías , where imperman
used, and palenques , which in
such as cabins, and in which t
When combined, the three tie
his analysis of relevant docum
La Rosa Corzo adeptly weav
analysis of Cuban Maroons
how their chronic resistance
legal, governmental, and local
to locate Maroon settlement
settlement patterns of Maro
or diaries written by member
numerous palenques in the e
is of great significance for t
ologies in the region and be
discussion of archaeological
because of a lack of material
reminds us that he has provid
reports, in general, on his "
above-surface Maroon landscap
clear areas that betray site l
slope areas, for example, are
settlement, architecture, an
nals and maps. As a result, th
tive survey, description, and
Maroon communities in the remotes of eastern Cuba.
This book is a worthwhile study that elucidates yet another hazy corner in
the history of the African diaspora. In documenting the rise of Maroon com-
munities and the major developments within them as spurred on by larger-
scale external processes and historical events, La Rosa Corzo has presented

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330 New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids vol. 79 no. 3 & 4 (2005)

a solid analysis of Cuban marronage using written, oral, and archaeologi-

cal sources. This is a highly readable, provocative work that deserves great
scholarly attention.

Igniting the Caribbean 's Past: Fire in British West Indian History. Bonham
C. Richardson. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. xviii
+ 233 pp. (Paper US$ 19.95)

Kenneth H. Orvis

Department of Geography
University of Tennessee
Knoxville TN 37996-0925, U.S.A.
<orvis@utk.edu>

Igniting the Caribbean's Past is a tale of obsessions. The British colonials of

the late-nineteenth-century Caribbean were obsessed with the increasingly
restive African underclass, with their own precarious position, and with fire as
both symbol and agent of uncontrollable physical, economic, and ultimately
social change. Then again, there is the obsession of Bonham Richardson with
these obsessions. As readers we are drawn in, lured into focusing on the
flames until we become nearly as hypnotized by Richardson's vision as he
himself is.
The book principally spans the last two decades of the nineteenth century
and the first decade of the twentieth, but to provide context it often glances
back toward the time of slave emancipation (which occurred in 1838) and
earlier. The central historical thread is the puzzle of how a British plantation-
based sugarcane economy founded on slavery could maintain itself despite a
rapidly changing social fabric comprising free and freed peoples hailing from
Europe, Africa, and Asia, not all of whom spoke English, and many of whom
were moving out of their ancestral roles in society. Economic depression,
occasioned mainly by low sugar prices after the advent of beet sugar pro-
duction in continental Europe and the subsequent imposition of high import
tariffs, kept the issues and resulting social struggles in sharp relief.
The book opens with a broad discussion of Antillean hazards: hurricanes,
earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, fires, and their social and economic impacts.
But the special place of fire, especially the striking difference between its
strong role in Afro-Caribbean cultural identity and its equally strong fear-
someness to northern Europeans, takes center stage. Torches in the night
signified celebration, and celebration of cultural identity, to the first group,

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