ABSTRACT
This chapter compares the incorporation of European and African immigrants in Cuba and Puerto Rico after the reexpansion of the slave plantation in the late 18th century. It examines the formation of a Creole identity on the basis of the interactions between diverse ethnic groups. Puerto Rico’s commercial expansion depended substantially on forced labor legislation. The chapter argues that ethnicity must be analyzed in relation to the social class structure, and that ethnic groups are conditioned by the factors of production: capital, land and labor. It also argues that ethnic relations were transformed in Cuba by the conversion to a monocrop export economy, and that the plantation reinforced the contrasts of color, status and occupation as the major mode of channeling competiton for scarce resources. In Cuba, many of the ethnic boundaries coincided with ecological space. African ethnicity in Cuba varied according to socioeconomic position, demographic concentration, and geographic area.
