The mastermind of this would-be revolution was a free Black carpenter named José Antonio Aponte. We have met him and his grandfather already, if only in passing. His grandfather had served in the city’s Black battalion and defended Havana against the British invasion of 1762. The younger Aponte, the leader of the 1812 conspiracy, was himself a veteran of Havana’s Black militia and had fought against the British in the Bahamas during the American Revolution. Now in 1812, Aponte plotted to attack the city and install a government that would end slavery and, with it, the power of planters and
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