On their arrival in Cuba the poor wretches who survived the ordeal began to fare better. E. M. Masse, a French traveler and writer, in his work "L'Isle de Cuba et la Havane" describes the quarters in which they were lodged. They were the baracones, the famous barracks originally destined for the troops which were to take Pensacola, and that had cost four million pesos, though they could have been put up for a few thousand. At the time of his visit to Havana, some of the contractors who had made this handsome profit on the buildings were still in jail. He goes on to say that immediately on landing the negroes were taken to these barracks, waiting to be sold. They contained one immense room, covered with straw and divided into three compartments. The first was for the employees or jailers; the second for the women slaves, the third for the men. There was a spacious court or yard with a kitchen in one corner. In this yard they spent their days, shielded from the sun and the rain by tents. They were permitted to bathe in the sea. The writer looked at the spectacle with an artist's eye. For he remarks that he had always considered the pose of the Venus of Milo unnatural, until by observing these women slaves at their bath in the surf, he found that the identical pose was frequently assumed by them, and hence must have been natural. The only garment obligatory as long as a slave was not sold, was a kerchief; if somebody made them a gift of another kerchief, they made of it a turban or wore it like a sash.
The freedom which they enjoyed in this brief interval between landing in Havana and being sold, may in the lives of the majority have been the only freedom they were to know. Being merchandise, it was of course in the interest of the slave traders to have them appear well when put on the market. Hence the food they received was wholesome. They were also encouraged to indulge in their wonted amusements and could be seen marching or dancing around in the yard, as they raised their voices in song. The African who had just arrived and spoke only his native tongue, was called bosale; the slave who was born in Africa, but spoke Spanish and knew the trade he was destined for, was called ladino. Children of African or European origin born in Spanish America, were called criolles, from which the French derived the term in use today: creole.
Miscegenation was not favored in Cuba. When the immigration from Santo Domingo brought into the island a great number of mulattoes, quadroons and octoroons, the color line was severely drawn. A woman of colored origin with a perfectly white and very beautiful daughter was known to have denied her child in order to make it possible for her to marry a Havanese. Many of these women were far better educated than the native Cubans; M. Masse says that the art of conversation, unknown in Havana society, flourished only in their homes. But they were rigidly barred from the drawing-rooms of the wealthy Havanese.
According to the data available, the number of slaves introduced into the island from the beginning of its colonization until the year 1789 was probably not below 100,000. It is estimated that in the two hundred years between 1550 and 1750 the annual importations of the assientists into Spanish America averaged at least three thousand a year. In the census taken by Governor la Torre about 1772 Cuba was found to have 45,633 slaves. In 1775 their number had risen to forty-six thousand and that of free colored people to about thirty thousand. The relaxation of the commercial restrictions gave a strong impulse to all sorts of enterprises, mercantile and otherwise, and especially to building, and the laboring forces employed on all the new constructions were mostly slaves. By the year 1775 their proportion to the free colored population was four and sixth tenths to three. As the value of slave labor began to be recognized in that period of internal improvements and general progress, the number of slave importations steadily increased. According to Blanchet, Cuba acquired in the years 1783 and 1784 one thousand and five hundred negroes through contracts between the government and various French and Spanish firms, as also the British house of Baker and Dawson and the private shipowners D. Vicente Espon and Col. D. Gonzalo O'Farrel. Armas y Cespedes gives the number of slaves for the year 1774 as 44,333; for the year 1792 as 84,590. In the enormous number of negroes imported between 1791 and 1816 there were counted 132,000 imported legitimately, 168,000 by contraband means.
A more systematized and conclusive estimate of the number of negroes gradually introduced in Cuba was made by D. Francisco de Arango, the high-minded patriot of the period of Governor Las Casas. It covers the time from the beginning of the sixteenth to the middle of the eighteenth century. D. José Antonio Saco, author of "Collecion de papeles cientifices, historicos, politicos y de etros ramos sobre la isle de Cuba, ya publicados ya ineditos," and "Historia de la Esclavitud," did the same for the eastern part of the island from 1764 to 1789. These estimates furnish the following figures:
| Imported on the whole island from 1523 to 1763 | 60,000 |
| By the Compania de la Habana in 1764, 1765, 1766 | 4,957 |
| By the Marquis de Casa Enrile from 1773 to 1779 | 14,132 |
| By the permiso of 1780 authorizing the supply of negroes from French colonies during the war ending 1783 | 6,593 |
| By the house of Baker & Dawson from 1786 to 1789 | 8,318 |
| From the eastern part of the island, 1764 to 1789 | 6,000 |
| Total | 100,000 |
Humboldt remarks in his "Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial regions of America during the years 1799-1809, "that the British West Indies then contained seven hundred thousand negroes and mulattoes, free and slave, while the custom-house registers proved that from 1680 to 1786 two million one hundred and thirty thousand negroes had been imported from Africa, which suggests a rather high mortality. In Cuba the annual death rate of the recently imported negroes was seven per cent. Hence the current assumption that the African negro was particularly adapted for and could stand the climate of Cuba, does not seem to be well founded.
About this time the social conscience of mankind seemed to be suddenly awakened and philanthropic ideas began to modify the general conception of slavery. Nations whose political organization made the government dependent upon public opinion, had already begun to yield to the demand of abolishing slave trade. The United States had auspiciously inaugurated that movement. The state of Virginia had closed her ports to the traffic in 1778; Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts followed in 1780, 1787 and 1788. The Third Congress of the American Republic proclaimed negro traffic as contrary to the civilization of Christian peoples and condemned it before the end of the eighteenth century. At the same time the Convention of the French Republic declared its abolition in the colonies of France, and the events in Santo Domingo, like a seismic disturbance made all slave-owning nations tremble. Stimulated by the example of America and stirred by the noble words of her own great humanitarians, Howard and Wilberforce, England, too, began from 1787 on to discuss that problem.
In the course of the serious debates that took place in the British parliament in May, 1788, it was said that a decree abolishing the traffic would in a short time paralyze the commerce carried on by British merchants with Africa. In her isolation from the current tides of thought in Europe and other countries, Cuba had so far been untouched by the humanitarian aspect of the question and looked upon it merely from her utilitarian viewpoint. Fearing that the house of Baker & Dawson, which had been her main source of supply for negro labor, would no longer be able to furnish her the hands she needed in her deserted fields, she hastened through her representative in the Ayuntamiento to solicit from the king permission to continue the traffic. Hence on the twenty-eighth of February, 1788, a royal decree permitted the Spaniards, and foreigners in general for the term of two years, to introduce negroes, exempt from duties, in Cuba, Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico and in the province of Caracas.
Guiteras, in his "Historia de la Isla de Cuba" speaks of the slavery problem with a remarkable display of native fervor. He says: