Order and Social Control: The Structure and Functioning of the Police in Nineteenth-Century Havana

During the nineteenth century the Havana police assumed functions ranging from urban policing to those of a judicial police, and numerous provisions sought to regulate and improve the force. Drawing on regulations, bandos de buen gobierno, Ayuntamiento reports and the correspondence of the captains-general held in the Archivo Nacional de Cuba and the Archivo de la Oficina del Historiador de La Habana, this article traces its evolution from a rudimentary structure of unpaid comisarios de barrio and urban militias to a more hierarchical body with elements of professionalisation, notably the Guardia Civil. Against the image of a centralised and effective security apparatus drawn from studies of the Military Commission and La Escalera, it shows a fragmented structure, contested between the Ayuntamiento and the general government and subject to reforms rarely carried into effect. This was no linear transformation into a modern civil police: the force became an instrument of colonial social and political control, oriented above all towards defending the slave regime and metropolitan sovereignty. Complaints about its inefficiency were constant and had structural causes: the absence of fixed salaries, heterogeneous personnel, the want of integrity among some members and deficient urban infrastructure, which fed a persistent cycle of corruption.