Slaves and the Creation of Legal Rights in Cuba: Coartación and Papel
On August 16, 1855, Dona Carlota Dascar, a resident of Santiago de Cuba, initiated a lawsuit against the city’s public advocate (sindico procurador) to prevent the forcible sale of her slave Maria. Dascar had tried to sell Maria, whom she described as a healthy criolla without vices, for 700 pesos. The slave, however, “presented” herself before the sindico Miguel Rodriguez — the municipal official charged with the representation of slave interests — to request that he initiate the customary process of assessing her value in order to fix the price at which she would become coartada: the price that she would have to pay, in installments, to purchase her freedom. He invited Dascar to appoint