Legal avenues to freedom, combined with the opportunities afforded by a vibrant mercantile economy, meant that the population of free people of color increased dramatically. By 1610, about 8 percent of habaneros were free people of color. By 1774, the year of the first census in Cuba, they represented more than 40 percent of the island’s population of color. Throughout this period and beyond, they would play a major role in the course of Cuban history.18
