Cuadros de costumbres en Cuba y Puerto Rico: de la historia natural y la literatura de viajes a las ciencias sociales

In this essay, my interest is to return to the cuadros de costumbres in Cuba and Puerto Rico as one of the ways to rethink the relations between science and literature in the nineteenth century. In its most varied manifestations, the cuadro de costumbres articulated a discursive modality that enabled the organization and structuring of zones of thought in the nineteenth century, from the artistic and literary spheres to racial and scientific discourses. In the long genealogy that stretches from the natural to the social sciences, the cuadro de costumbres operated as a dominant vehicle for the dissemination of knowledge. In a period when scientific disciplines had not attained a high degree of specialization and autonomy, discursively or institutionally, the costumbrista practice generated important knowledge regarding society and forged connections with the rise of scientific discourse in the political and public sphere. This was possible on account of the tropological and conceptual ties that costumbrismo maintained with natural history and travel literature. This process of coming to terms with the dominant scientific paradigms of the nineteenth century gave costumbrismo an epistemological toolkit that would make it a central referent for the emergence and consolidation of the social sciences in Cuba and Puerto Rico.