Libertad que no llega: Cuatro siglos de esclavitud en el Caribe español

This article examines the singular history of the Spanish Empire as both the originator of large-scale slavery in the Americas and one of the last powers to abolish it in 1886. It argues that the protracted and conflict-ridden process of abolition in the Spanish Caribbean was not an anomaly but the result of a deliberate ‘policy of postponement’. This strategy, developed by metropolitan authorities in alliance with Creole elites, involved a constant dual game: making rhetorical concessions to international anti-slavery pressure while implementing practical obstructions to ensure the system's survival for decades. The article traces the genealogy of this policy, from the initial justifications for slavery in the early colonial ‘laboratory’ of the Antilles, through the rise of the ‘second slavery’ in 19th-century Cuba following the Haitian Revolution, to the final, ambiguous acts of emancipation. It connects the early, diverse forms of urban and rural slavery with the later, more brutal and industrialised system of the sugar plantations, arguing that the Haitian Revolution provided the catalyst for Cuba’s rise as a sugar power, intensifying its reliance on enslaved labour. The analysis highlights the role of British diplomatic pressure, which, despite leading to treaties in 1817 and 1835, was systematically undermined by Spanish officials. The article concludes that the end of slavery was not a moral victory but a complex outcome driven by international shifts, such as the American Civil War, and internal crises, including the Ten Years' War in Cuba. The legacy of this systematically deferred freedom, it contends, is the profound structural inequality that persists in the region today.