Afro-Cuban Costumbrismo: From Plantations to the Slums

Notes

Notes Chapter 1. Cuban Costumbrista Portraits of Slaves in Sugarmills 1. For a comprehensive list and descriptions of the Cuban publications published between 1781 and 1840, see Bachiller y Morales, Apuntes 207–66. 2. This book examines only the political mechanisms in colonial Cuba that prevented negative reports about slavery. There was also a strong ecclesiastical censorship that operated throughout the nineteenth century (Bachiller y Morales, Apuntes 187–205). 3. Other brutal types of punishment imposed upon slaves did not appear in any Costumbrista essays. Their absence was conspicuous in the few descriptions of rural slavery practices with field hands or with workers in sugarmills or coffee plantations. 4. Cuban scholar Elías Entralgo, speaking about the few instances that overseers became literary characters, attributed it to their small numbers in the Cuban countryside (Períoca 12). 5. For comprehensive studies on the development of the sugarcane plantation in Cuba, see Moreno Fraginals, The Sugar Mill; Marrero; Pérez de la Riva, La habitación and El barracón. Also see Pérez de la Riva, El café, for a study of the specific conditions of coffee plantations in Cuba. 6. The ñáñigos were members of a secret nineteenth-century religious order initially composed of only Black males in urban settings. For studies on the ñáñigos, see Lydia Cabrera ’s La sociedad secreta Abakuá narrada por los viejos adeptos [The secret Abakuá society as described by old followers] and La lengua sagrada de los ñáñigos [The secret language of the náñigos]. 7. Founded in 1865–1866 by the Puerto Rican Julio Vizcarrondo (1829–1889), the Society published a newspaper, El abolicionista español [The Spanish abolitionist]. It tracked violations to international treaties banning slave trade, while avoiding discussions of the legality of slavery itself (Soler 270). 8. The list of international visitors who were attracted by the booming slave popular culture and went to Cuba is extensive. Prominent among them was the Swedish suffragist and novelist Fredrika Bremer (1801–1865). Her travelogue, The Homes of the New World (1853), depicted her 1851 three-month visit to Cuba, which included an extended stay at a sugarcane plantation in the province of Matanzas. 9. That tertulia included distinguished Costumbrista writers: Ramón de Palma y Romay (1812–1860), José Antonio Echeverría (1815–1885), Juan Francisco Manzano (1797?-1854), José Ramón Betancourt (1823–1890), Ramón Zambrana Valdés (1817–1866), José Silverio Jorrín (1816–1897), José Joaquín Govantes (?–1881), José Jacinto Milanés (1814–1863), Francisco Ruiz (1797?-1857), Cirilo Villaverde (1812–1894), José María Cárdenas y Rodríguez (1812–1882), José Victoriano Betancourt (1813–1875), Plácido (1809–1894), Rafael Matamoros y Téllez (1813–1874), and Felipe Poey (1799–1891) (González del Valle 9; Mijans 145–46; Bueno, Domingo del Monte 10). The critic Francisco G. Del Valle in his introduction to the letters by the Costumbrista writer José Zacarías González del Valle broadened the del Monte group to include political activists José de la Luz y Caballero (1800–1862) and the historian José Saco (1797–1879) (9). Other writers associated with the del Monte group were Ramón Zambrano (1817–1866), Gaspar Betancourt y Cisneros (1803–1866), Félix Tanco y Bosmeniel (1797–1871), Manuel Costales y Govantes (1815–1866), Francisco de Frías y Jacott (1809–1877), and Ramón de Palma y Romay (1812–1860) (Fernández de Castro 37–42; Mitjans 145–46). Besides his association with Suárez y Romero, another notable contribution of del Monte was his promotion of works by the Black writers Plácido and Juan Francisco Manzano. 10. Other abolitionist texts given to Madden were: Elegías cubanas [Cuban elegies] by Matamoros y Tellez, and a poem by José Zacarías Tallet (1810–1893), the youngest writer of the del Monte group (González del Valle 11–12). I have found no source to explain why Madden eventually declined to publish Francisco in England. 11. For exhaustive research on the Spanish government’s violations of the trade of slaves, which then included traders from Cuba, refer to Franco, Comercio clandestino de esclavos. 12. The “album” was a popular tradition in the Caribbean. Libia González described its strong hold among the upper-class members in Puerto Rico: “An ‘album’ was understood to be an offering or declaration of affection made public in a publication or magazine. The most common ‘albums’ were poems, biographical sketches or obituaries, that did not use visual...