La Botija, a privately owned restaurant in Trinidad, features a cast-iron roller once used to squeeze the sweet juice out of sugar cane. This machine, known for sometimes ripping arms off overworked slaves, was the centerpiece of the outdoor patio. Ensuring that the machine’s origins in the exploitation of slaves would not be lost on the viewer, a life-sized model of an enslaved African man powering the gears accompanied the roller, replicating the process that turned green stalks of cane into money for Cuba’s masters. Absent, however, was any reference to the unconscionable human cost of the operation: on average, a man like the one depicted in the diorama would have lived only seven to nine years on a plantation before succumbing to hunger, disease, and exhaustion. Trinidad, June 2022.
Created by Guest Curator Arturo S. González, University of Miami.