The Virgin, the King and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre
Negotiating Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670-1780

This book tells the extraordinary story of a village of peasants and miners in late 17th- and 18th-century Cuba who were slaves belonging to the king of Spain and whose local patroness was a miraculous image of the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre.

As they produced social memory and appropriated popular religious traditions centered on the Virgin of Charity, they reinvented their past and present as a new people within the structures and strictures of Spain s colonial world.

Introduction
1. From African slaves to Creole Royal slaves: some demographic transformations
2. Slavery to the King: shaping social identity
3. An unusual proposal
4. The virgin in local history
5. Remaking a Marian tradition
6. A mainly farming village
7. Owning personal slaves: an extreme instance of the right to property and to familial legacies
8. Copper mining: a small independent and mostly female local industry
9. The unbreachable burdens of bondage: laboring as the King's slave
10. Local government and politics
11. Reaching the King: regional politics and litigation
Epilogue
Conclusion.