Etat de l’Isle de Porto Rico

This document is a census and agricultural register from 1778, when the island was still colonized by Spain. The register is divided into categories for different people, including white people, free biracial people, free black people, and enslaved people. Like other colonies in the Americas, slavery was a common facet of life and an important part of the colonial economy. After the destruction of indigenous societies during the encounter period in the 1500s, colonies began to import slaves to support their economies (Chasteen 2016, 82). As African slaves arrived in Puerto Rico, a process of transculturation began to transform the island’s culture while simultaneously, the colonizers tried to control and limit any racial mixing by establishing a detailed caste system, dividing people into hierarchies based strictly on race (Chasteen 2016, 68). This document clearly shows the way that racial categories were divided at that time in Puerto Rico, and it also shows that these categories were important enough to be included in this primarily economic-based register.

The register further lists several important agricultural products and the amount of land that was used for the cultivation of each, including sugar, banana, coffee, cotton, and livestock, with sugar being the most important for the island at the time. These products were typical cash crops for a Spanish colony, especially one in the Caribbean, and especially after the Spanish colonizers depleted the area of gold early on (Chasteen 2016, 56). Even with these important crops, however, Puerto Rico was still considered to be part of the periphery of the Spanish empire in the Americas. Unlike the important mining colonies of Mexico and Peru, colonies in the Caribbean received much less colonial attention and investment during this time (Chasteen 2016, 77).

Works Cited

Chasteen, John Charles. Born in Blood and Fire: a Concise History of Latin America. 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016.

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. “Etat de L’Isle de Porto-Rico” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed February 11, 2020. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/71b0f110-dfcc-0132-7509-58d385a7b928