Every farm with slaves was a slave-breeding farm. Raising slaves was mostly a cottage industry.
Ned SubletteThe two biggest hits (by Machito)... were about that enduring Cuban song topic-food: 'Sopa de pichn' [pigeon soup] and 'Paella'. If you think that all songs about food are double entendres for sex... Well, maybe all songs about food can be double entendres, but in many periods of Cuban history, for many people, food has been harder to get, and the subject of more fantasies, than sex.
Ned SubletteOn occassion, slaves in Spanish New Orleans owned slaves, whose labor they could appropriate toward purchasing their own freedom, or whose ownership they could trade as a partial payment on their own freedom.
Ned SubletteMiguelito, liberated from having to sing with Cugat, sounds like he just got out of jail and is letting it rip.
Ned Sublette