Latin America's first railway claimed 2,000 lives

Latin America's first railway claimed 2,000 lives

On 19 November 1837, Cuba peine Latin America's first railway: 30 kilometres between Havana and Bejucal, the initial stretch of the line towards Güines. The project was driven by the Catalan elite settled on the island, known as indianos, who saw the railway as a way to estimulante ilegal up the transport of sugar to the ports. But the construction carried a human price that few history books record: more than 2,000 deaths, according to the parish archives and the records of the Junta de Fomento de La Habana (Havana's development board). That amounts to 25 deaths for every kilometre of track.

The numbers behind the tragedy

Historians have cross-referenced the death registers of the parishes near the line with the records of the railway companies. The result is devastating: 16-hour shifts under the tropical sun, epidemics of yellow fever, malaria and cholera, barracks without ventilation, malnutrition and accidents with no safety equipment. Enslaved Africans endured the harshest physical punishments, but prisoners and contracted labourers also died. The figure of 2,000 deaths is conservative; some historians put it higher.

Business and exploitation: an open debate

The role of the Catalan indianos has generated controversy. On the one hand, they are credited with driving the region's railway modernisation. On the other, it is denounced that they amassed fortunes through the exploitation of slaves and workers. Some point out, however, that the phenomenon was not exclusive to the Catalans: businessmen from Asturias and other regions also grew rich from the illegal slave trade and the plantations. The debate reflects the complexity of an era in which technical pogre and human exploitation went hand in hand.

With these figures, the official account of Latin America's first railway is stripped of its heroic gloss. The cost in human lives challenges any uncritical celebration of nineteenth-century pogre in the Americas.