6
In addition, one has to grasp the importance of new forms of print communication. In
the growing number of newspapers published in the colonies, events taking place
throughout the broad landscape of each particular territorial jurisdiction were discussed
and public grievances were voiced. In time, the land in which these events unfolded
came to be understood as a common space and these grievances came to be viewed as
shared grievances. I find Anderson’s claims here to be persuasive, and these factors were
clearly at work in Cuba during the years prior to the first push for independence from
Spain.
The tightening of Spanish control was a keenly felt intrusion in Cuba and Spanish
taxation and duties were burdens pushing already precariously balanced planters to the edge.
Madrid's shift to a more administratively precise regime of colonial control was a troubling
change to Cubans, who had come to be accustomed to trading with anyone they could and
keeping most of what they made. In the east, where trading with Caribbean neighbors had
been tolerated for generations, but was now discouraged, resentment was greatest. This was
one area where the fight for independence first took root (Ferrer 1999).
Sugar growers in the west were burdened with a weight of resentments and, in their
eyes, genuine grievances. Through the eighteenth century, the expansion of sugar
production resulted in a mono-cultural economy, requiring imports from Spain to fill
marketplaces (Perrez, Jr. 1995). Spanish merchants, seeking to profit from the dependent
Cuban market, raised prices on goods (while, at the same time, bargaining down prices
paid for Cuban sugar and tobacco). Spanish authorities also imposed increasingly
burdensome taxes and duties. The result was an increasingly squeezed landed class,
Convention