d South America.

The history of the Negro in Spanish America centered in Cuba, Venezuela,
and Central America. In the sixteenth century slaves began to arrive in
Cuba and Negroes joined many of the exploring expeditions from there to
various parts of America. The slave trade greatly increased in the latter
part of the eighteenth century, and after the revolution in Hayti large
numbers of French emigrants from that island settled in Cuba. This and
Spanish greed increased the harshness of slavery and eventually led to
revolt among the Negroes. In 1844 Governor O'Donnell began a cruel
persecution of the blacks on account of a plot discovered among them.
Finally in 1866 the Ten Years' War broke out in which Negro and white
rebels joined. They demanded the abolition of slavery and equal political
rights for natives and foreigners, whites and blacks. The war was cruel
and bloody but ended in 1878 with the abolition of slavery, while a
further uprising the following year secured civil rights for Negroes.
Spanish economic oppression continued, however, and the leading chiefs of
the Ten Years' War including such leaders as the mulatto, Antonio Maceo,
with large numbers of Negro soldiers, took the field again in 1895. The
result was the freeing of Cuba by the intervention of the United States.
Negro regiments from the United States played here a leading role. A
number of leaders in Cuba in political, industrial, and literary lines
have been men of Negro descent.

Slavery was abolished by Guatemala in 1824 and by Mexico in 1829.
Argentine, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Paraguay ceased to recognize it about
1825. Between 1840 and 1845 it came to an end in Colombia, Venezuela, and
Ecquador. Bolivar, Paez, Sucre, and other South American leaders used
Negro soldiers in fighting for freedom (1814-16), and Hayti twice at
critical times rendered assistance and received Bolivar twice as a
refugee.

Brazil was the center of Portuguese slavery, but slaves were not
introduced in large numbers until about 1720, when diamonds were
discovered in the territory above Rio Janeiro. Gradually the seaboard from
Pernambuco to Rio Janeiro and beyond became filled with Negroes, and
although the slave trade north of the equator was theoretically abolished
by Portugal in 1815 and south of the equator in 1830, and by Brazil in
these regions in 1826 and 1830, nevertheless between 1825 and 1850 over a
million and a quarter of Negroes were introduced. Not unti