Imagining a Post-Reconstruction US History and a Post-Emancipation Cuban Nation: Afro-Latinas in Nineteenth-Century Nation-Making

Félix Varela and José Antonio Saco are well-known figures in Cuban historiography. Varela is considered the first Cuban to advocate for abolition (1821), and Saco is known for his Historia universal de la esclavitud... [ view full abstract ]

Félix Varela and José Antonio Saco are well-known figures in Cuban historiography. Varela is considered the first Cuban to advocate for abolition (1821), and Saco is known for his Historia universal de la esclavitud (1879), which trace a universal history of slavery. Yet, both of these individuals sacrificed racial equity and racial justice in the name of so-called Cuban national
integration. The Afro-Cuban Martín Morúa Delgado may be associated with these figures in that he likewise sought Cuban national consolidation while sacrificing black political agency as epitomized by the Ley Morúa of 1910, which banned political parties based on race thereby leading to the Race War of 1912. In this position paper I argue that a close reading of female characters in Morúa’s two novels, Sofía (1891) and La familia Unzúazu (1901) lead to a reconceptualization of the place of Afro-Latinas in these works and the works’ commentary on slavery and race in the nineteenth century more broadly. Sofía denounces the transcontinental, transamerican and transnational nature of prostitution, linking Afro-Latinas through slavery to a key trope in post-Reconstruction reconciliation narratives. In contrast, La familia Unzúazu constructs a place of revolutionary resistance through minor Afro-Latina characters. These figures escape the narrator’s intentions and instead drive the narrative and speak to the vital role of black women in the future Cuban nation. In the end, Morúa’s novels presents an alternative narrative to those expounded by Varela and Saco, one that places Afro-Latinas at the very heart of US and Cuban national imaginaries.