Mambisas. Rebel Women in Nineteenth Century Cuba (review)

It may not be entirely surprising for many readers to discover that the war cry Cuba Libre had a different significance for men than it did for women during the Cuban struggles for independence of the nineteenth century. Yet, surprisingly little attention has been paid to examining the role of women in the process of nation-building in Cuba. In her engaging book, Teresa Prados-Torreira focuses upon the mambisas (the feminine form of the term mambises used by the Spanish to refer to the insurgent forces in Cuba) to explore an important aspect of the revolutionary period. Gender did indeed matter in the struggling colony's attempts to define what a free and independent Cuba should look like. And women were instrumental in that process, helping the island to develop both a sense of nationhood and to carve out the notion of cubanidad.

Beginning with the 18^th century, Prados-Torreira examines the contradictions inherent in the multiple roles women played in the revolutionary movement. Women were used to promote the war cause even as historical circumstances required those same women to step outside of the social strictures of their day to shape the very terms of the conflict (p. 3). The author relies wherever possible on first-hand accounts and uses all forms of cultural artifacts including original letters, poems, and materials from Cuban archives (some in rather rough translations from the Spanish), to explore how women were both producers and products of the nascent national culture. She points to the limitations of previous historiographies – namely, the reductive treatment of the republican period that "turned rebel women into characters stiff with Spartan virtues" (p. 4) and the teleological approach of more recent Marxist historiography, which rejects historical perspectives that obscure the achievements of the 1959 revolution as the final victory over in the struggle over colonialism — and opts instead for an approach bolstered by the theories of Gramsci, feminist theory, and Benedict Anderson's broader view of nation, arguing that "[n]ationalism is not … a specific political agenda one can put in writing and discuss, but … a cultural artifact, part of a large cultural system that includes points of view, longings, and half-consciously held beliefs" (p. 58). As such, women's support of the rebel cause is viewed from a broader perspective, emphasizing "non-political forms of resistance" (p. xii) as well as the direct engagement of women in the wars for independence.

The author turns to CiriloVillaverde's famous novel Cecilia Valdés to illustrate the insular world, heavily constrained by custom and tradition, that 19^th century Cuban women inhabited. Young girls married at the tender age of fifteen or sixteen. Those women bold enough to break out of the mold were viewed with suspicion, if not scorn, as was the case with the well-known writer Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, in whose poetry José Martí saw a man inside the woman (p. 20). Indeed, while Martí, who campaigned tirelessly for the cause of Cuban independence, advocated education and suffrage for women, his views on the role of women in society were rather narrow. He feared that women in the "masculine trades and businesses" would fail as mothers. "It is chilling," he wrote of women in North America who had begun to encroach upon the professions, "to look into their souls" (p. 134). But as the symbols of selfless, motherly love that Martí extolled, women served the political cause of independence when they willingly sacrificed their sons to the revolution. For Martí, the family and la patria, as Prados-Torreira astutely notes, became one (p. 67). The author also devotes an entire chapter to the Evangelina Cossío Cisneros affair in an analysis of the ways this young Cuban woman was used by the yellow press to foment US intervention in the war.

In spite of social limitations, women made bold personal statements with...