Today’s DOTD - Drink Of The Day - is a Cuba Libre inspired by slavery being officially abolished in Cuba by Spanish royal decree, on this day in 1886. That decree also made an indentured servitude system, known as “patronato,” illegal.
The first organized system of slavery in Cuba was introduced by the Spanish Empire, which attacked and enslaved the island’s indigenous Taíno and Guanahatabey peoples on a grand scale, starting around 1520. By the end of the 1500s, Cuba’s entire native Indian population was all but wiped out, due to disease & the brutalities of Spanish colonialism.
Slavery in Cuba expanded massively with the sugar boom in the late 1700s, after Spain began to allow “free trade” in slaves. At one point, Cuba had an estimated 1.3 million enslaved workers imported from Africa, vastly outnumbering the European population. Today perhaps as many as 60 percent of Cubans are descended from the enslaved African people.
The Haitian Revolution, which began at the end of the 1700s and ended with Haitian independence in 1804, foreshadowed the end of slavery in Cuba & most of the Caribbean during the 1800s. The world began to change drastically during that century, as the slave trade began to be abolished, & slave revolts became increasingly common. Eventually, Spain passed the Moret law in 1870, which implemented the abolition of slavery incrementally in Spain’s Caribbean colonies. By 1886, the law was finally fully implemented, and legal slavery in Cuba ended.
And that deserves a legendary drink, like today’s DOTD, the Cuba Libre, which can be made “full strength” or as a “virgin” - meaning non-alcoholic - drink!
Ingredients
Here’s what you’re going to need for this drink:
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