ABSTRACT
Planters’ preference for enslaved males is hard to explain from an economic standpoint. Enslaved females performed most domestic services and were also employed in agricultural and processing tasks. The data systematized by Noel Deerr demonstrates that, from 1774 to 1841, males more or less constantly made up two-thirds of the Cuban enslaved population. It would be excessive to assume that enslaved owners had no interest in procreation as a means to naturally increase their enslaved workforce. Manumission or alforria existed in all slave regimes from Antiquity to the modern era. Miscegenation went hand-in-hand with slavery everywhere, and nowhere did it change the situation of the mass of enslaved people or have any negative effect on the stability of the slave regime. While certainly better treated, the enslaved remained an exploited, humiliated, and punished slave.
