Redalyc.La esclavitud liberal. Liberalismo y abolicionismo en el ...

Liberal Slavery. Liberalism and Abolitionism
in the Spanish Caribbean
Rafael Rojas
Professor and researcher of the History Division at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia
Económicas (dDE), in Mexico City and Global Scholar at the University of Princeton. His last
book is Los derechos del alma Ensayos sobre la querella liberal-conservadora en Hispanoamérica, Taurus,
Mexico City, 2013.
Abstract
This essay proposes a reconstruction of certain
fundamental debates on the abolition of slavery
in the Spanish Caribbean, during the first haif
of the 1 9th century. It begins with the Haitian
Revolution and the polemic over slavery in the
Cortes de Cádiz and ends with the abolítionist
campaign of the aut000mists and Republicans
in Puerto Rico and Cuba in 1860. The essay
posits that just as in the Latin American continental
world, die dispute over the natural rights
of man in the mid-19th century translared into
the terms of the State-Church conflict, in the
colonial Caribbean, this same dispute involved
rhe problem of siave trafficking and slavery
Key words:
Trafficking, slavery, Hispanic liberalism, Haitian Revolution, the Constitution
of Cadiz, abolirionism, autonomy and Republicanism
Final submission: Acceptance:
June 2011 March 2012