The five-man audiencia, or court, is the…

Sugarcane, which has been grown by the Spaniards in the Canary Islands, is also a part of Cuba's economy.

As early as 1523, the crown had instructed the Contracting House (Casa de Contratacion) to lend money to settlers in Cuba to help finance the construction of a sugar mill.

Other similar loans have been made in latter years, but it is not until the eighteenth century and particularly the nineteenth century that sugar will assume any importance.

Lacking large amounts of capital, an adequate labor supply, and official encouragement, the sugar industry remains overshadowed in importance by the more lucrative and important business connected with the cattle industry and its derivative products.

Few responsible citizens want to become involved in local government by the end of the colonial period.

Those who do are more interested in their personal well-being than in the affairs of the colony.

Peninsular Spaniards, or peninsulares (hereafter, Peninsuars), who buy their offices seek rewards for their investments and enrich themselves at the expense of public funds.

Creoles (criollos), Spaniards born in the New World, also join the Spanish bureaucracy in order to gain wealth and participate in other opportunities controlled by Peninsulars.

They look to local government as one of the few potential areas of employment in which they can succeed.

Very few Creoles ever attain a position of importance in the political hierarchy of the island.

As the bureaucracy grows in the colonial period, a latent hostility develops between Peninsulars and Creoles—a hostility that erupts into hatred and violence during the wars for independence in the nineteenth century.

Havana is formally established in 1607 as the capital of Cuba, and the island is divided into two provinces with capitals at Santiago and Havana.

The governor-captain general at Havana rules in military matters over the entire island, but the governor at Santiago was able to exercise considerable political independence.

Although the governor-captain is nominally subject to the viceroy of New Spain, the viceroy exerts little control over the affairs of the island.

Of more direct influence, and a powerful check on the governor, is the audiencia of Santo Domingo.

This tribunal hears criminal and civil cases appealed over the decisions of the governor, but it soon, as in Spain, becomes more than a court of law; it is also an advisory council to the governor and always exercises its right to supervise and investigate his administration.

At the local level, the most important institution is the cabildo, a town council, usually composed of the most prominent citizens.

The alcaldes (judges) act as judges of first instance, and, in the absence of the governor or his lieu- tenant, preside at meetings of the cabildo.

They also visit the territories under their jurisdiction and dispense justice in rural areas.

As royal government becomes better organized and more entrenched in Cuba, the powers and prerogatives of the cabildo are progressively curtailed.

Spain will focus most of its attention for the next two centuries on the continental colonies from which it obtains much-needed mineral wealth.

A complex and at times cumbersome political and defense system develops to ensure the uninterrupted flow of this wealth.

Cuba is relegated to a mere stopping point for passing ships.

It remains valuable only because of its strategic location as the gateway to the New World, not because of its products.

Cuba's population diminishes continuously throughout this period.

The indigenous peoples continue to die out and there is little new influx of Spanish immigrants.

An economy of scarcity and a hot, sickness-ridden tropical climate offers little incentive for new immigration.

Those who do come to Cuba are mostly Spanish officials, soldiers, and members of the clergy; there are also many transient migrants on their way to Mexico or South America.

Tobacco also makes some modest gains, particularly in the seventeenth century.

Because it is not too bulky and commands high prices in Europe, tobacco is a favorite item for smuggling.

Cattle-raising becomes one of the most prosperous businesses in Cuba, especially in the seventeenth century.

Although the activity calls for daring horsemanship, it requires no sustained effort, for Cuba's abundant pasture lands facilitate breeding.

The cattle are let loose on Cuba's savannas, where they multipliy rapidly.

They are used as a means of transportation as well as for feeding purposes.

Salted meat becomes an important item sold to the Spanish ships that call at Cuba's ports.

Perhaps the chief value of cattle lies in the hides.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as demand for leather grows in Europe, cattle hides will become Cuba's chief export, yielding considerable profit.

Cabildo members are content in the early years to eke out an existence until such time as new opportunities might arise for them to migrate to better lands or until mineral wealth that will bring them instant fortune might be discovered in Cuba.

Those who expect to enrich themselves from Cuba's mineral resources are greatly disappointed.

The island does not enjoy the large deposits of gold and other minerals that are later found in Mexico and South America.

Gold found in the river banks does not represent any great wealth, although washing the gold does require a large labor supply as well as costly equipment.

A handful of Spanish entrepreneurs controls the business and uses natives as a labor supply.

The crown is also involved from the earliest times in controlling mining operations.

The Spanish monarchs take one-fifth of all production as a tax for the right of mining, especially when natives in an encomienda arrangement do the mining.

Spanish law, the Roman Catholic religion, the economic condition of the island, and the Spanish attitude toward blacks all contribute to aid their integration into Cuban society.

While the black population in the British sugar-producing colonies in the Caribbean lives under the tight political control of a small, exploiting minority of overseers and government officials, blacks in Cuba coexist with the rest of the population and live mainly by farming and cattle grazing.

Prior to the eighteenth century, the island avoids the plantation system with its concomitant large-scale capital investment, latifundios (large estates), and docile enslaved black labor force.

Instead, society develops with little outside interference.

Cuba thus begins to find its own identity in a society that combines racial balance, small-scale agriculture, and folk-Catholicism within a Spanish framework.

Most blacks work in Cuba's rural areas, but some perform a variety of jobs in the cities.

A considerable number labor in artisan industries, in construction, in the wharves, and in domestic service.

Some are able to obtain their own earnings and thus liberate themselves or pay the price of their manumission.

Others are freed after they perform services their master is willing to reward.

The number of slaves will decrease continuously until reaching the low figure of thirty-eight thousand eight hundred and seventy-nine, out of a total population of one hundred and seventy-one thousand six hundred and twenty in 1774.

The opportunities for slaves to become free contribute to the development of a uniquely Cuban society.

The condition of the enslaved, although not unbearable, is poor.

Blacks are much more valuable than the natives and seem to have received better treatment, yet Spanish officials complain to the crown that the blacks are given little food or clothing and that they are subjected to abusive corporal punishment, forcing many to escape into Cuba's mountains.

These runaway slaves, called cimarrones, are a constant concern to the Spaniards because by their example they encourage other slaves to escape captivity and to rebel.

As early as 1538, enslaved blacks had rioted and and looted Havana, while French privateers were attacking the city from the sea.