SOURCE: Luis, William. “Textual Multiplications: Juan Francisco Manzano's Autobiografía and Cirilo Villaverde's Cecilia Valdés.” In Literary Bondage: Slavery in Cuban Narrative, pp. 82-119. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.

[In the following excerpt, Luis discusses the three different versions of Cecilia Valdés: the two-part story published in La Siempreviva, the 1839 novel published in Cuba, and the 1882 version published in New York.]

Cecilia Valdés is the most important novel written in nineteenth-century Cuba and perhaps one of the most significant works published in Latin America during the same period. Elías Entralgo states: “Cecilia Valdés is our most representative literary myth. For Cuban literature, it is the equivalent of what the Quijote is for the Spanish, Hamlet for the English or Faust for the German literatures.”⁴

In a comparative reading, I will analyze the three versions of Villaverde's Cecilia Valdés and show that even though the short story and the first volume have the same title, the first two publications differ from the last one. In spite of the similarity in characters and theme, only the 1882 version contains antislavery sentiments. Some critics believe that the definitive version of the novel was a continuation of the first volume, which they also considered antislavery.⁵ If this were the case, Villaverde's short story and novel would have been the only antislavery narratives published in Cuba during the time of the writing, a highly unlikely case, since all works had to be cleared by three censors.⁶ All the early antislavery works were published abroad: Manzano's “Life of the Negro Poet” in England in 1840; Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda's Sab in Madrid in 1841; Antonio Zambrana's El negro Francisco in Santiago de Chile in 1873; and Villaverde's Cecilia Valdés in New York.

Villaverde's life and literary production can be divided into two stages: the first, his formative years in Cuba, during which he published the short story and the novel; the second, his political involvement in Cuba and exile to the United States, where he completed the definitive version of Cecilia Valdés. By writing his early works, Villaverde was already researching his Cecilia Valdés. A review of his life and works provides an understanding of the concerns present in his last and most important work.

Like many Cuban writers of the nineteenth century, Villaverde was an intellectual who pursued many interests; he was a novelist, a journalist, and a political activist. Born on October 28, 1812, in the jurisdiction of San Diego de Núñez, in the region of Vuelta Abajo, Pinar del Río, Villaverde was the sixth of ten children of don Lucas Villaverde y Morejón and doña Dolores de la Paz y Tagle. Of modest economic means, the Villaverde family lived on a sugar plantation, where the father worked as a doctor. The plantation contained more than three hundred slaves, exposing the young Villaverde to the evils of the slavery system; he would recall his early experiences on the sugar plantation in writing the definitive version of Cecilia Valdés. Of these early years, Julio C. Sánchez writes:

His mischief and trips allowed him to see the wicked atrocities of the overseer, the inhuman, cruel, and endless work of blacks, and distrust between naiveté and malice which developed in the slave's soul. He freely penetrated the superstitions, beliefs, atavism, fantasies, and legends which were the vital strength in the recently imported African primitivism, in the mysterious background, devotions, and miracles so pleasing to the uneducated taste and feared by the white farmer. He possessed a source of information which revealed the popular Cuban soul and much of the slave's resentment. He had direct dealings with events and fraud so varied and surprising like the ones that can be reproduced and are produced within the context of the human and primitive residents of the countryside and the blacks of the barracoons. These experiences will always be present in his novels.⁷

At the age of seven, Villaverde began his education, attending the classes offered by a priest of the church of San Diego; however, they were soon interrupted when the teacher died. At eleven he traveled to Havana, where he stayed with his father's widowed aunt and attended Antonio Vázquez's school. Villaverde later studied Latin with his maternal grandfather, a storyteller of sorts who influenced Villaverde's later writings. In the introduction to El penitente (published in serial form in 1844 and in book form in 1889), Villaverde highlights the importance of this colorful figure; the grandfather converses with the author and even has the last word in the closing moments of the novel.⁸

Villaverde returned to formal education by attending Father Morales's school and later studying philosophy at the Seminario de San Carlos, where he obtained a law degree in 1834. The Seminario was the center of cultural progress, breaking with scholasticism and instructing its students in art, science, research, and politics.⁹ Drawing from his experiences, Villaverde mentions the Seminario in Cecilia Valdés, and the character Leonardo Gamboa attends the Seminario in the same year Villaverde did. At the Seminario, Villaverde befriended José Antonio Saco and other future Cuban notables. Simultaneously he studied drawing at the Convento de San Agustín. After briefly practicing law, Villaverde abandoned the profession because of corrupt lawyers and judges.¹⁰

Villaverde's disenchantment with the law profession and his change of fields were important for his livelihood and his development as a writer. He taught at the Colegio Real Cubano and the Colegio Buenavista in Havana and then at La Empresa in Matanzas. He pursued his interest in literature and published his first four short novels, “El ave muerta,” “La peña blanca,” “El perjurio,” and “La cueva de Taganana,” in the newspaper Miscelanea de Util y Agradable Recreo in 1837. “El ave muerta,” narrates an incestuous relationship between the protagonists, who do not know that they are brother and sister,¹¹ a theme repeated in “La peña blanca,” but, more importantly, in the definitive version of Cecilia Valdés.

These early works are not without flaws. The novelist Ramón de Palma has suggested that Villaverde's characters are not realistic and some of their behaviors are never explained. For example, in “La cueva de Taganana,” Fernando enters and leaves Paulina's room for no apparent reason and his crimes and evil character remain a mystery to the reader.¹² However, Palma also recognized in those early works the excellent qualities seen later in Dos amores, published in serial form in 1843 and in book form in 1858, and Cecilia Valdés. Following Palma's romantic style, Villaverde wrote El espetón de oro, which contained Palma's introduction and was published in El Album in 1838. El espetón de oro, reprinted in book form the same year, is considered the first book published in Cuba.¹³

Villaverde had other critics. In an essay entitled “Martín Morúa Delgado: Impresiones literarias. Las novelas del sr. Villaverde,” Morúa pointed out numerous faults contained in Cecilia Valdés.¹⁴ Morúa is perhaps the first Cuban writer to experience an anxiety of influence with regard to Villaverde's work. Morúa himself went on to write his version of Cecilia Valdés, which he entitled Sofía. Contemporary Cuban writers have also been inspired by Villaverde's masterpiece; their works include such novels as Alejo Carpentier's Manhunt (1954), Guillermo Cabrera Infante's Three Trapped Tigers (1967), César Leante's Muelle de Caballería (1973), Cintio Vitier's De peña pobre (1980), and Reinaldo Arenas's Graveyard of the Angels (1987).

Domingo del Monte was Villaverde's most influential teacher and, like other young writers, Villaverde profited from his direction. Although Del Monte had not commissioned Villaverde to write an antislavery novel, he advised him and other writers to abandon the romantic tradition and accept Realism, which would allow them to depict accurately Cuban society. For Del Monte, the change in literary focus also represented a possible means of combating slavery and altering Cuban colonial society. Villaverde was influenced by Del Monte and the early antislavery works, and his Cecilia Valdés was the last antislavery novel to be published before the emancipation of Cuban slaves in 1886.

A leader among young Cuban-born writers, Del Monte shared books in his vast library with Villaverde and other friends and instructed them on important writers and trends.¹⁵ Villaverde's Cecilia Valdés represents a rejection of the Romanticism and costumbrismo (literature of manners) of his early works in favor of a more realistic expression of Cuban problems. Villaverde wrote his novel in the tradition of Walter Scott and Manzoni and did so many years before Zola and Galdós became established figures.

Cecilia Valdés is a realistic novel. In his prologue, Villaverde explains:

Far from inventing or pretending imaginary and unrealistic characters and scenes, I have carried realism, as I understand it, to the point of presenting the principal characters of the novel with all their “hairs and ear-marks,” as they vulgarly express it; clothed in the dress that they wore in their lifetime, the majority under their true Christian surnames; speaking the same language they spoke in the historical scenes in which they appear, copying as far as possible, d'après nature, their physical and moral features, in order that those who knew them in the flesh or by tradition should recognize them without difficulty and should at least say: “The resemblance is undeniable.”¹⁶

Many of the characters in Cecilia Valdés are real. In a letter dated November 21, 1883, the author confirms what he stated in the prologue and confesses to Julio Rosa, a pseudonym for Francisco Puig de la Puente, the nature of his characters:

In your letter of the 6th you ask me if the characters in my novel were real and true, and immediately you would like to know what happened to some of them. Although I have taken all those who figure in it from among my friends, schoolmates, acquaintances, parents, etc. it cannot be said that they are portraits. They have all served me to outline the scenes of real life of my country during a particular period; but with some exceptions, I did not describe any of them d'après nature. Doctor Mateu, Cocco, Cándido Valdés, Fernando O'Reilly, Cándido Rubio, father and son, or Gamboa, don Joaquín Gómez, Medrago … Uribe, the tailor, and others such as these are portraits. … But Cecilia, Isabel, Adela, Rosa Ilincheta, Pimienta, María de Regla, Dionisio, the cook, Catalapiedra, etc. are copies of imaginary characters which existed by mere transference and composition in my mind … for Cecilia, a very beautiful mulatto with whom my schoolmate and friend in Havana, Cándido Rubio, had a love affair.¹⁷

By 1841, Villaverde's literary career was under way. In his early works, Villaverde wavered between documenting history and customs and writing about frustrated love, two literary interests which would be combined in Cecilia Valdés. Of the other works published in this first stage, his best known include El guajiro (published in serial form in 1842 and in book form in 1890), in which he documents the life of a Cuban peasant in the region of Vuelta Abajo. The story is a pretext for describing the customs of an important rural sector of Cuban society. El penitente (1844), which pertains to Bernardo de Gálvez's conquest of Florida, narrates primitive Cuban society and the people and customs of the time. Mainly a historical novel, it also describes the frustrated love between Rosalinda and Alfonso. In Alfonso's absence, Rosalinda marries Eguiluz. Alfonso returns and, attempting to stab Rosalinda's child, by accident kills her instead. The shift of one murder to another is reproduced in the closing moments of Cecilia Valdés. Cecilia, who seeks revenge, asks her admirer, Pimienta, to kill Isabel Ilincheta, Leonardo's wife-to-be. However, and not by accident, Pimienta seeks his own revenge and does not kill Isabel as instructed but Leonardo Gamboa. Dos amores (1843) describes Celeste's love for her lover, Teodoro, and her hatred for don Camilo; when the latter is not able to win Celeste's affection, he forces her father into bankruptcy. La joven de la flecha de oro (published in serial form in 1840 and in book form in 1841) narrates a prearranged marriage between Paulina and a contemporary friend of her father's, Simón Alegrías, in which she is forced to give up her love for the younger Jacobo. Under the guise of a better life, Paulina becomes a prisoner of her own husband. The 1839 volume of Cecilia Valdés is also a part of Villaverde's most representative works.

Of his other works during this first stage, Excursión a Vuelta Abajo, published in two parts, in El Album in 1838 and in Faro Industrial de La Habana in 1842, gathered in one volume in 1891, is of notable importance. Like some of the other narrations, the two travel stories describe the countryside and the customs of the region, a journey which covered the limits of Guanajay to the Cabo de San Antonio. However, Villaverde's picturesque narration recalls the nature scenes the author describes in his introduction to Francisco Estévez's Diario de un rancheador,¹⁸ which he heard about as a child and later possessed. Villaverde published only the introduction under the “Palenques de negros cimarrones” in 1890.¹⁹ More importantly, Villaverde included the historical figure of Estévez in the definitive version of his Cecilia Valdés. To do so, Villaverde broke with the chronology of the novel and the diary and fused both narrative times to bring this cruel figure into his novel, continuing to rewrite his Cecilia Valdés. Villaverde also broke with its chronology to include other important characters, as we shall later see.

Cecilia Valdés is Villaverde's most important work. The short story, which serves as the nucleus of the first volume, narrates the life of Cecilia, a ten-year-old orphan mulatto girl whose beauty is admired by the Gamboa family and who resembles members of the family, especially the father. The second part of the story is a conversation between Cecilia and her grandmother Josefa in which Cecilia relates her experience with the Gamboas. The grandmother is alarmed and pleads with Cecilia not to visit the Gamboas again, telling her a story about a girl like Cecilia who is kidnapped by a student, like the young Leocadio Gamboa, and literally swallowed by the earth. The short story ends with a vicious description of Leocadio, Cecilia's disappearance and downfall, and the grandmother's death.

There are only minor differences between the short story and the first two chapters of the 1839 version of the novel. In a comparison between the two, we notice, for example, that Leocadio's name is changed to Leonardo and Susanita, Cecilia's mother, becomes Rosario Alarcón. In the 1882 edition, the name Leocadio is given to a coach driver. The story and the first volume of Cecilia Valdés coincide word for word and paragraph for paragraph. We must note that, although both the short story and the first volume narrate the love relationship between Leonardo and Cecilia, the theme of incest, important in the final edition, is never mentioned explicitly. Josefa's advice can be interpreted as a maternal concern for her granddaughter, and the resemblance between Cecilia and the Gamboas can be coincidental. Blacks and the theme of slavery, so important in the definitive version of Cecilia Valdés, are not present in the short story and appear as only a marginal element in the novel. The only nonwhites mentioned in the versions of 1839 are urban mulattos.

The change in focus between the early works and the definitive version of Cecilia Valdés is evident in Villaverde's life. In his mid-thirties Villaverde abandoned novelistic concerns for political activities in the separatist movement but later completed Cecilia Valdés. As he became more committed to Cuba's separation from Spain, Villaverde favored a more politically oriented writing, which included journalism, and an antislavery position in the definitive version of his novel. In terms of adventures, some aspects of Villaverde's life rival his own fiction.

By 1847 Villaverde was a conspirator in the Club de la Habana, a group of well-to-do Cubans who desired separation of Cuba from Spain and annexation to the United States.²⁰ Many of its members promoted annexation to preserve slavery in Cuba, but others like Villaverde admired the democratic life of the northern states. Some simply preferred annexation to Spain's domination over the island. Pablo, a character in La joven de la flecha de oro, who lived in the United States for eight years, best represents Villaverde's position. When referring to the United States, Pablo speaks highly of a civilization that respects the rights and liberties of both men and women. María Paulina, Villaverde's protagonist, recalls her counterparts in the North. Like his future wife, Emilia Casanova, María Paulina is an individual who consistently asserts her rights and can even be considered a precursor of the feminist movement.

While in Cuba, Villaverde had joined Gen. Narciso López in a failed uprising against the colonial government. López escaped to the United States, and Villaverde was captured and jailed on October 20, 1848. After a few months of detention, Villaverde escaped with the aid of a guard, García Rey, and a prisoner, Vicente Fernández Blanco, reaching Florida in April 1849.²¹ He traveled to New York and became López's secretary. With the help of Villaverde and others, General López conducted three expeditions to Cuba, in 1848, 1849, and, the most successful one, 1850. López invaded the island for the last time in August 1851. He was betrayed, captured, and executed in September.²² As a posthumous homage to General López, Villaverde began (but never completed) the story of his life; the incomplete version was published under the title To the Public (General Lopez, the Cuban Patriot) in New York, dated 1851.²³

Villaverde's annexationist ideas received another blow in a debate with José Antonio Saco. Unlike Villaverde, Saco favored independence, not annexation: he believed that U.S. citizens would take over the island; Cuba would not be annexed but absorbed into the Union. Villaverde answered Saco with his El señor Saco con respecto a la revolución de Cuba, published in New York in 1851.²⁴

Shortly after he arrived in New York, Villaverde collaborated in the separatist magazine La Verdad and, in 1853, became its editor. That same year he founded and published the weekly El Independiente in New Orleans. Villaverde returned to New York in 1860 and published La América, Frank Leslie's Magazine, and El Avisador Hispano Americano. He was also editor of El Espejo Masónico and La Ilustración Americana from 1865 to 1873, El Espejo from 1874 to 1894, and El Tribunal Cubano in 1878.

At the outset of the Ten Years' War, which lasted from 1868 to 1878 and marked the first of two stages of insurrection against Spain (the second was from 1895 to 1898), Villaverde renewed his interest in politics, with a slightly different but significant change. Rather than annexationist, he now favored Saco's position and total independence of the island. In a document addressed to Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, entitled La revolución de Cuba vista desde Nueva York (1869), Villaverde warns the Cuban patriot of the intent of the United States not to help the rebel forces.²⁵ By supporting Céspedes and other rebels, Villaverde explicitly embraced the antislavery cause. The Constituent Convention of the Guáimaro Assembly, in which Antonio Zambrana, author of El negro Francisco, participated, made provision for the emancipation of slaves in Cuba.²⁶

While living in the United States, in 1855 Villaverde married Emilia Casanova, a Cuban whose family fled the island because of their support for Cuban independence. Villaverde returned to teaching and even opened and directed a school in 1864. This aspect of his life and his ideas regarding the Civil War in the United States and its implications for Cuban history are documented in Apuntes biográficos de Emilia Casanova de Villaverde, published in New York in 1874.²⁷

Villaverde made two brief trips to Cuba, the first from 1858 to 1860 and the second for two weeks in 1888. During the first trip he acquired La Antilla publishing company, which published Suárez y Romero's Artículos. With the close collaboration of Francisco Calcagno, he also founded the magazine La Habana. Villaverde also planned to edit his own complete works. With the omission of his first four stories, Villaverde would have printed the works in six volumes. Meanwhile, Villaverde attempted unsuccessfully to rewrite his Cecilia Valdés: “I undertook the venture of revising, of recasting the other novel, Cecilia Valdés (an intermediate version, very incomplete) of which only the first volume existed in print and a small part of the second in manuscript form. I had outlined the new plan to its most minute details, when once again I had to abandon my country.”²⁸ Fearful of Captain General Concha's powers, Villaverde returned to New York. There he completed his last and most important work, Cecilia Valdés. Villaverde died fifteen years later on October 20, 1894; his body was shipped to Cuba and was buried in the Havana Cemeterio de Colón on December 12 of the same year.²⁹

The first and last versions of Cecilia Valdés span Villaverde's literary career. A concern for certain themes in his early works, Del Monte's influence, and Villaverde's political involvement were important factors which contributed to the rewriting of Cecilia Valdés. A comparison between the first two versions and the last one will show the political and antislavery motives of this important work.

By rewriting his novel, Villaverde altered the previous versions; changes in the work were not only necessary but inevitable. In his 1879 prologue to the final version, Villaverde confesses that when he escaped from Cuba in 1849 he left behind all his manuscripts and books; once he received them he no longer had any use for them.³⁰ We also know that Villaverde made extensive revisions in his final draft. In a letter to the journalist and writer Julio Rojas dated May 18, 1884, Villaverde reveals that he reduced his eleven hundred—page manuscript to one-third the original size.³¹ The changes made from the first to the final versions of Cecilia Valdés are evident in a close reading of the texts.

The forty-three-year interval that elapsed between the first two versions of Cecilia Valdés and the final one proves revealing regarding the theme of slavery. Except for stylistic and name changes, the short story and the first two chapters of the 1839 version coincide, not with the first, but with the second and third chapters of the 1882 edition. Beyond these similarities, the versions of 1839 and 1882 are different. For example, the 1839 version ends with Leonardo's practical joke on Solfa, followed by Leonardo's conversation with Diego Meneses regarding Cecilia, Isabel, and Antonia. Unlike the 1839 version, volume 1 of the 1882 edition ends with the formal dance in which Cecilia encounters the Gamboa cook Dionisio. Some events appear out of sequence and do not take place in the definitive version until volume 2. For example, Leonardo's and Meneses' conversation regarding the young Gamboa's love affair of the 1839 version does not appear until the second volume of the 1882 edition. In spite of what Villaverde states in his prologue, I wonder if he really consulted the 1839 edition in writing the definitive one. Although there is a coincidence in characters, the two works develop in completely different directions. I propose, on the other hand, that Villaverde did make use of his short story, because it is reproduced almost verbatim in chapters 2 and 3 of the 1882 edition and narrates Josefa's death, an account absent from the first volume of the 1839 version. The first volume of the 1882 edition narrates Leonardo's and Cecilia's incestuous relationship, a central theme absent from the previous editions. Practically everyone but Cecilia and Leonardo know that Cándido Gamboa is Cecilia's father.

The three versions of Cecilia Valdés were written with different purposes. The short story narrates the demise of Cecilia's romance. The 1839 version takes up this theme but also documents the once-popular Ferias del Angel. This is made explicit in Villaverde's dedication to Manuel del Portillo, a friend who inspired the author to write about the celebration. Villaverde included it in the novel and it is made explicit throughout the text: More than three-quarters of the novel narrates October 23, 1831, the Eve of San Rafael.³² The last version of Cecilia Valdés, an antislavery novel, is a political denunciation against the colonial government. The 1882 edition rewrites the two earlier versions and places the action of the novel within the historical context of the administration of Gen. Francisco Vives. This is evident in the second chapter:

A few years after the events just recorded, martial law was put into effect in Cuba, following the fall of the second and short period of constitutional government, and Don Francisco Dionisio Vives was appointed Captain-General. In those days, if one frequented the district of Havana known as El Barrio del Angel, he could not fail to notice a little girl, about 12 or 13 years of age [the original states eleven to twelve years old], playing or wandering about alone in the streets. This fact, and other circumstances about to be related, made her a conspicuous figure in the neighborhood.

(28)³³

Although Cecilia's approximate age is the same as in the other versions, the dates have been changed to situate the 1882 edition at the time of the corrupt Vives government. Let us compare: The first two versions mention that around 1826 or 1827 Cecilia was ten years old. This means that Cecilia was born either in 1816 or 1817. However, in the final version, Cecilia was born in 1812, and in the second chapter she was eleven or twelve years old. This slight change in time places the present narrative time around 1823 and frames the Vives government, which lasted from 1823 to 1832.

The complete freedom with which el monte [a card game] was openly played everywhere in the island, especially during the governorship of Captain-General Don Francisco Dionisio Vives, proved beyond peradventure that his policy or that of his government was based upon the Machiavellian principle of “corrupt in order to rule,” copied from the celebrated method of the Roman statesman, divide et imperia, because the corruption of the people served to divide their minds in order that they themselves should not be aware of their own misery and decline.

(47)³⁴

If we take into consideration the time of the conclusion, the novel ends not in 1831, the year of the Ferias del Angel of the first version, but in 1832. (In the definitive version of Cecilia Valdés Villaverde tells us that the Ferias del Angel ended in 1832.) In his prologue Villaverde informs his readers that the novel develops between 1812 and 1831 (51). I contend otherwise. Although Cecilia's one-year detention in the Paula hospital could have been imposed at the time of her sentence, that is, in 1831, Isabel Ilincheta's one-year stay in the convent, which she entered also in 1831, could only have been determined after the end of her stay there. This is evident in the following passage: “Isabel Ilincheta, having given up hope of ever finding happiness or peace of soul in the social sphere into which it had been her lot to be born, sought seclusion in the convent of the nuns of Santa Teresa, the Carmelites, and after a year's novitiate took the veil” (546). Therefore, from the point of view of the narrator, the time of the conclusion is 1832, the end of the Vives government.³⁵

The date on which Cecilia was born is also important, not only because it was the same year in which Villaverde was born (interestingly, they also have the same initials),³⁶ but more significantly because 1812 is the year of the Aponte Conspiracy, in which free blacks, with the help of Haitians, attempted to liberate Cuban slaves; the conspiracy was suppressed in its early stages.³⁷ However, by pointing to the Aponte Conspiracy, the novel alludes to another uprising, the Ladder Conspiracy of 1844, as we shall later see. The time span of the novel was a period in which blacks outnumbered whites in Cuba. The fear of a Haitian-type revolution in Cuba and the availability of African slaves caused whites to fear blacks and oppress slaves even more. While the 1839 version is limited to describing the relationship between Cecilia, Leonardo, and Isabel, the first volume of the 1882 edition provides important information regarding blacks and slavery.

Unlike the earlier antislavery narratives, Villaverde's protagonists are not all slaves. Villaverde's realistic narration allows him to describe in detail the slave society of the nineteenth century with all its complexities. His characters are victims of the forces in society. On the one hand, Cecilia is a free mulatto who falls in love with Leonardo Gamboa and, to improve her social, racial, and economic position, desires to marry him. On the other, for Leonardo it was socially acceptable for him to have sexual relationships with black and mulatto women but not to marry them. In this sense, the “love” theme explored in Suárez y Romero's Francisco and Tanco's “Petrona y Rosalía” is present in Villaverde's work. After all, Leonardo was following in his father's footsteps. Both father and son love their mulatto mistresses more than the white women they married or intended to marry, doña Rosa and Isabel Ilincheta, respectively. But Leonardo's attraction for Cecilia is also based on his love for his full sister, Adela, who looks exactly like Cecilia. This is most evident when María de Regla, Cecilia's and Adela's wet nurse, who had not seen Cecilia since she nursed her, is astonished by the resemblance between the half sisters: “The Negress crossed her arms and looked at Cecilia face to face. Every now and then she would murmur softly: ‘See! the same forehead! the same nose! the same mouth! the same eyes! even the little dimple in the chin! sí, her hair, her body, her manner, the little angel herself! why, her living image!’” (539). Here Villaverde alludes to a more direct incestuous desire Leonardo had for Adela which would culminate in his relationship with his half sister, Cecilia. But by concentrating on describing the early part of the nineteenth century, Villaverde exposes the many facets of a society which is based on the separation and exploitation of the races.

The definitive edition of Cecilia Valdés is indeed an antislavery novel. The first volume conveys aspects of the history of the slave trade which are absent in the first volume of the 1839 version. The history of the slave trade will be developed in detail by Lino Novś Calvo in El negrero (1933). The 1882 edition shows how Cándido Gamboa enriches himself by trafficking in slaves, how slaves were thrown overboard so slavers could outrun British ships, and how, piled one on top of the other, they suffocated in the bowels of ships. These revelations even horrified slave owner doña Rosa Gamboa. The second volume conforms more closely to the earlier antislavery works insofar as it sets the stage for a description of slavery in the sugar mill. The lives of slaves and free blacks are an important component of this society. We are told the story of the former slave Dolores Santa Cruz, whose hard work brought her freedom and enough money to buy a house and slaves. She lost everything, however, including her sanity, to the legal system that disputed her ownership of the house.

We are also told of a well-known tailor, Francisco Uribe, who practiced a profession limited mainly to pardos and morenos (both terms refer to shades of blackness; a pardo is lighter than a moreno). According to Villaverde, Uribe was one of the preferred tailors of well-to-do whites. But Uribe achieved his prominence after the narrative ended; that is, between 1833 and 1844. Uribe established his shop on 57 Ricla Street in October 1833.³⁸ As with the slave hunter Estévez, to include Uribe Villaverde broke with the chronology of the novel and inserted a posterior moment into the time of the narration. There were other prominent tailors whose chronology would have been consistent with Villaverde's time span. For example, Villaverde could have included Leandro Varona, a tailor and captain of the Batallón de Pardos Leales de La Habana (Uribe was only a sergeant); his shop was located on Obrapia Street. Varona practiced his trade during the time of the novel, and his net worth was more than 4,718 pesos. His death on September 28, 1832, which marks the end of the Vives government, would have conformed more closely to the structure of the novel.³⁹ Other notable tailors during the time of the narration were Joaquín López, Montes de Oca, and Ramón Rodríguez.⁴⁰ Perhaps Villaverde included Uribe for personal reasons; since Uribe worked for whites, Villaverde or his friends may have known him. Thus Villaverde brought a familiar figure into his narration.

There were also political reasons for including Uribe in the novel. To those who knew him, his presence in the novel recalls his death. In 1844 Uribe was accused of participating in the Ladder Conspiracy and was sentenced to die. The prosperous Uribe had amassed considerable wealth, which included twelve slaves, two houses, and a small fortune of more than 7,398 pesos.⁴¹ Villaverde included Uribe and other successful mulattoes who were victims of the conspiracy to refer to the events of 1844. This is also the case with mulatto musicians mentioned in the novel. For example, Brindis de Salas, lieutenant of the Batallón de Morenos Leales de La Habana, was a musician and a highly respected individual. Bachillery Morales considers him to have been “a gentleman of pleasant and ceremonious manners, formal in his social relation; he was the cream of the crop of the politicians of this species, and his aristocratic tendencies made him become friends with gentlemen and professors of the other race.”⁴² Brindis de Salas was implicated in the Ladder Conspiracy and forced into exile. He returned to the island in a clandestine manner and was caught and imprisoned. Although he received amnesty in 1852, he never regained the popularity he had before 1844.⁴³ Other notable mulattoes included by Villaverde in his novel suffered the consequences of the Ladder Conspiracy: the violinist Ulpiano Estrada, known in the novel as “el maestro Ulpiano,” and Sgt. Tomás Buelta y Flores, composer, director, and distinguished musician of the Real Casa de Beneficencia.⁴⁴

Villaverde and his readers may have known and had some dealings with Uribe, Brindis de Salas, Buelta y Flores, and others. Familiar with their situations, Villaverde's readers were certainly aware that these and other well-to-do mulattoes were either put to death or punished during the Ladder Conspiracy for no apparent political reason. Morúa Delgado remembered Uribe within the context of the conspiracy, as

that mulatto was subjected to imprisonment and suffering by the obstinate government, which did not have any other origin than in the systematic persecution declared by all the representative classes of the colony against the black and mixed class for the crime of possessing large sums of money, accumulated by the strength of their own personal labor. … By the way, I have under oath of the people of that period, that tailor Francisco de Paula Uribe did not do anything else in his life other than to make lots of clothes which the rich Havana dandy paid generously for those who worked, and often spent their money in the most extravagant and loud manner, which is typical of the lower classes and without honorable reason scorned by all disorganized society. His crime, with those of the majority of the colored families which at that time experienced the wickedness of a bastard regime, was to distinguish himself by his vain competition with the privileged colonists.⁴⁵

Perhaps the most important mulatto mentioned in Cecilia Valdés is the poet Plácido, Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés, whose own life, in some respects, parallels that of Cecilia but who, like Uribe, suffered the consequences of the conspiracy. Son of a clandestine relationship between a white dancer, Concepción Vázquez, and a mulatto hairdresser, Diego Ferrer Matoso, Plácido was born in the Casa de Beneficencia y Maternidad, the same place where Cecilia was born and where they both, as was customary, received the founder's surname, Valdés. Like Cecilia, he fell in love with a white, but unlike her he married the woman he called Celia in his poems, although he sustained only a brief relationship with her.⁴⁶

Although a poet, Plácido earned a living by making ornamental hair combs, some of tortoiseshell, and by working as a typesetter. A gifted poet, he composed his first poem at the age of twelve. At the age of twenty-five, in homage to the Spanish poet Francisco Martínez de la Rosa, Plácido wrote his “La siempreviva,” a composition which brought him fame not only in Havana but in Spain and Mexico. Plácido was not liked by everyone. While in charge of the poetry section of the newspaper La Aurora de Matanzas, he was criticized for writing laudatory verses to distinguished people and receiving payment in gold. Also, as a mulatto, he was hated by many whites.⁴⁷

During the time of the narration, between 1826 and 1832, Plácido lived in Matanzas. While there, the characters in Cecilia Valdés had already heard of his reputation. However, not until the end of the narration, in 1832, did Plácido gain recognition. He wrote “La siempreviva” in 1834 and by 1836 he was considered the most popular poet of the times. That same year the poet José María Heredia visited Plácido and offered to pay his expenses to live in Mexico, but the mulatto poet declined. Plácido's first collection of poems, Poesías de Plácido, was published after the narration in 1838.⁴⁸

Like Uribe, Plácido is another figure who was taken out of his historical setting and included in the time of the narration. And like the tailor, he was accused by Leopoldo O'Donnell of being one of the leaders of the Ladder Conspiracy; on June 22, 1844, he and ten others were shot in the back by a firing squad. Villaverde, indeed, had the Ladder Conspiracy in mind when selecting his characters and he altered historical time to bring them into his narration. This is evident in the last chapter of the first volume of the 1882 edition, which is different from the last chapter of the 1839 version. While at a dance, black and mulatto characters go and pay their respects to Cecilia. In this section, Villaverde records the victims of the Ladder Conspiracy:

Among them we may mention Brindis, the musician, a man of distinguished bearing and excellent manners; Tondá, the protégé of Captain-General Vives, a young Negro, intelligent and brave as a lion; Vargas and Dodge of Matanzas, a barber and a carpenter respectively, both of whom took part in the alleged conspiracy of the Negroes in 1844 and were shot in an execution held in the Paseo de Versailles in that city; José de la Concepción Valdés, whose pen-name was Plácido, the most inspired of Cuban poets, who had the misfortune to follow in the footsteps of the two just mentioned; Tomás Vuelta y Flores, celebrated violinist and composer of well-known country dances, who that same year died on the rack, a torture decreed by the judges to force him to confess complicity in a crime, the existence of which had never been legally proved; Francisco de Paula Uribe, a skillful tailor, who took his own life with a barber's razor rather than lose it at the hands of the authorities, at the very moment when he was being locked up in one of the cells of the Cabaña Fortress; Juan Francisco Manzano, sentimental poet, who just recently had been granted his liberty, thanks to the benevolence of certain literary men of Havana; and of course José Dolores Pimienta, tailor and skilful clarinetist, and handsome as he was modest and correct in his personal conduct.

(316-317)

We have noted elsewhere that Juan Francisco Manzano received his freedom in 1836. Of the nine characters mentioned, all but two were accused of participating in the conspiracy.

The final edition of Cecilia Valdés, both within and outside the time of the narration, suggests that the oppressive conditions of blacks and slaves form a hermetic system from which there is no escape, at least not through legal means. Furthermore, slavelike conditions existed even outside the slavery system and included the systematic massacre of many prominent blacks whose reputation and wealth rivaled those of some whites. The cruelties of slavery are clearly visible in the second volume of the novel, when the Gamboas return to their sugar mill. Going one step beyond the other antislavery novels written under Del Monte's supervision, Cecilia Valdés gives us a vivid description of runaway slaves both in the city and in the country and the reasons for their daring actions. For example, the life of the slave Pedro provides a disturbing account of a Maroon who, after being bitten and captured by dogs, is placed in the cepo (shackle). He is later taken to the infirmary, where he commits suicide by swallowing his tongue. If Suárez y Romero's Francisco hanged himself because of Dorotea's rejection, Pedro prefers to die a slow and painful death than return to slavery. María de Regla narrates the story:

“As I was looking out of the window at the dance, I heard Pedro move, turned my head and noticed he had his fingers in his mouth. I thought nothing about it, but he made a movement as if nauseated. I ran to his side. He took his fingers out of his mouth, ground his teeth and succeeded in grasping the cot with both hands. He began to get convulsions. I was horrified. I sent for the doctor, and at that moment he lay dead in my arms. He lay just as he was when don José, the doctor, found him. I have seen many die here but never such a horrible death.”

(415)

Contrary to María de Regla, Cocco and don Cándido are unaffected by the story and return to the house to drink coffee.

Perhaps the most significant addition to the 1882 novel is the increased presence of doña Rosa, Leonardo's mother. A peripheral character in the first two versions, she has a more visible and important role and can even be considered one of the most powerful characters, not only because of her material wealth, for it is her sugar mill, but because of the strength of her personality. She is the reason don Cándido does not send Leonardo abroad to prevent his relationship with Cecilia, and although doña Rosa has a weakness for her only son, it is she who controls him. She consents to, and pays for, the support of his mistress, Cecilia, and even tells him when it is time to end the relationship and marry Isabel, a white woman of his own class.

As in the early antislavery stories, Cecilia Valdés calls into question the concept of family and motherhood in nineteenth-century white Cuban society. The black slave María de Regla, the maternal counterpart of doña Rosa, is the “real” mother of all the children in the novel. Doña Rosa was unable to nurse her children and had her slave, María de Regla, feed Adela, an act doña Rosa always resented and regretted. María de Regla nursed Adela, her own daughter, Dolores, and also Cecilia; she was, therefore, their symbolic mother. Among the mothers in the novel, neither doña Rosa, Adela's mother, nor Rosario Alarcón, Cecilia's mother, nurses her own child. Only the black wet nurse, María de Regla, is described as performing the motherly act of nursing. María de Regla, whose name suggests both the Virgen María (Virgin Mary) and the Cuban black Virgen de Regla, known in Afro-Cuban culture as Yemayá, is not only the mother of Adela, Cecilia, and Dolores but the mother of the white, mulatto, and black races her daughters represent. Symbolically, María de Regla is the mother of the Cuban people. Her presence in the novel is well timed. She is present at the opening and closing of the novel: She is in the first chapter of the 1882 edition, when she is called upon to nourish the newly born Cecilia, and in the last one, when she is asked by Leonardo to visit Cecilia in jail. (The first chapter of the last edition is not contained in the first two versions.) María de Regla's presence is felt throughout the novel; it is she and not doña Rosa who knows the secrets of don Cándido's life.

In Villaverde's novel, Pimienta, Cecilia's frustrated mulatto lover, kills Leonardo Gamboa. Pimienta, at the end of volume 1, protects Cecilia with a knife from the black slave Dionisio. At the end of volume 2, Pimienta continues to protect Cecilia; however, he becomes an independent character, this time acting on his own and, instead of killing Isabel as Cecilia asks, he stabs Leonardo. This act is a radical departure from other antislavery novels, even though the murder is committed by a free mulatto rather than a slave. Leonardo's death has broader implications; it suggests the end of the Gamboa family, of a mother who lived for her son and of a father who saw in his son a means of carrying on his recently received title of nobility. In addition, the death of Leonardo signals an end to historical exploitation of black and mulatto women by white men. This pattern of exploitation, which was present in other antislavery novels, had existed in Cecilia's family for generations. It began with Magdalena Morales, Cecilia's great-grandmother, and will end with Cecilia's daughter: both 1839 versions state that the exploitation will end in the fifth generation. This locates the beginning of the historical exploitation during the early part of the eighteenth century, possibly when Cecilia's family were slaves, and forecasts radical changes in the Spanish government by the middle of the nineteenth century. Villaverde omitted this information from the 1882 edition because neither the emancipation of slaves in 1886 nor the liberation of Cuba from Spain in 1898 had occurred during the proposed fifth generation.

The incest between Leonardo and Cecilia is at the core of the novel and has fundamental implications for a developing Cuban culture within a slave society. César Leante has already stated that Cecilia and Leonardo had to be brother and sister because so are the races which they represent.⁴⁹ From this perspective, I propose that the theme of incest is the foundation of Cuban slave culture and complements the novel's antislavery discourse. In his Totem and Taboo, Freud tells us that incest is one of the two most ancient taboos.⁵⁰ Although the laws of avoidance may have prevented marriage between whites and blacks or mulattoes, the power relation in nineteenth-century slave society encouraged their sexual relations. Freud associates incest with an infantile trait and, in contemporary society, with neurosis. Both Cecilia and Leonardo, as symbolic representation of the emerging Cuban slave culture, are trapped in an earlier stage from which they cannot escape. The colonial and slave society and the characters subjected to that system in one way or another contribute to the incest. On the one hand, Leonardo is a child and doña Rosa treats him as such. On the other, doña Rosa is also responsible for Leonardo's infantile behavior. In any event, he and Cecilia are “neurotics” and so is the slave society which allowed them to come together.

If both Leonardo and Cecilia represent the young Cuban culture, the novel proposes that the island's culture is based on the violation of a taboo; that is, on a neurosis. In the nineteenth century, slave culture was destined to destroy itself. The slavery system was responsible for the incest between brother and sister. The sexual violation has an immediate effect and causes Leonardo's death and the destruction of his family; symbolically, it also causes the decay of the Cuban family, which had its origin in slave society. Citing Frazer, Freud tells us that among Australian aborigines and in the Ta-ta-thi tribe of New South Wales the penalty for having sex with a member of a forbidden clan is death. In this sense, Leonardo's death is justified, for he broke the sacred taboo and committed incest. With this in mind, Pimienta, his executioner, does not represent the individual act of a jealous lover. On the contrary, he is the conscience of a Cuban society which punishes Leonardo for the crime he committed. Pimienta is the savior of a contemporary Cuban culture opposed to slavery and the slave trade.

The ending of Villaverde's novel has a lasting effect on the reader and is, therefore, more striking than other antislavery works because of the daring killing of a white by a mulatto. Of those who wrote under Del Monte's tutelage, only Villaverde proposes this new solution to the slavery issue. Although Manzano reacts emotionally to the whipping of his mother, his feelings are never translated into action.⁵¹ Similarly, in Zambrana's El negro Francisco, the protagonist contemplates killing his master but is later dissuaded by his lover, Camila.⁵² Only in Cecilia Valdés do we have a daring killing of a white by a mulatto. Villaverde's political activism, his freedom from persecution while in the United States, and the emancipation of slaves in the northern country were important factors which contributed to his description of Leonardo's death. This ending may be offensive to some, but it is indeed suggestive to others. The novel never makes clear whether Pimienta was caught, leaving the possibility of his escape. Moreover, the killing has other positive implications. For example, when Cecilia is detained in the Paula hospital, she is reunited with her mother.

The 1882 version of Cecilia Valdés ends an important phase in Cuban literature in general and in the development of the antislavery narrative in particular: Cecilia Valdés is the last antislavery novel to be published before the emancipation of Cuban slaves in 1886. The last novel in this literary trend, it is also the most daring in its symbolic treatment of the death of a white man who exploited black women, thus rewriting the ending of Manzano's, Suárez y Romero's, Tanco's, and Zambrana's works. The killer, a mulatto, escapes and is never convicted for his crime. For Villaverde there is a higher form of justice with its own regulations which also conspires against the slavery system. …

Notes

1. See “Cecilia Valdés,” La Siempreviva 2 (1839): 75-87, 242-254.

2. See Cecilia Valdés (Havana: Imprenta Literaria de Lino Valdés, 1839).

3. See Cecilia Valdés (New York: Imprenta de El Espejo, 1882).

4. See “El capitalinismo habanero,” in Loló de la Torriente, La Habana de Cecilia Valdés (Havana: Jesús Montero, 1946), 6. Olga Blondet and Antonio Tudisco confirm that “Cecilia Valdés is an antislavery and revolutionary novel in which we can find the first expression of Cuban life as tragedy.” See their edition of Cecilia Valdés (Madrid: Anaya, 1971), 18.

5. For example, Loló de la Torriente does not acknowledge that Villaverde made changes in the first volume and believes that the first volume was published in 1839 and the second in 1879. See “Cirilo Villaverde y la novela cubana,” in Acerca de Cirilo Villaverde, ed. Imeldo Alvarez, 130. Olga Blondet and Antonio Tudisco express the same misconception in an introduction to their edition of Cecilia Valdés (17, 20). Enrique Sosa also complains about critics, like Diego Vicente Tejera, who do not acknowledge the publication of the first version. See his “Apreciaciones sobre el plan y método de Cirilo Villaverde para la versión definitiva de Cecilia Valdés: Su historisimo consciente,” in Acerca de Cirilo Villaverde, 382. In his edition of Cecilia Valdés, Ivan Schulman's brief introduction coincides with some of the ideas expressed in this study. But unlike my interpretation, Schulman looks for the racial and sociopolitical elements of the last edition in the first two. Although I do agree with Esteban Rodríguez Herrera that Villaverde's early intention was not to write an antislavery novel, I disagree with Schulman, who adds that Villaverde did not do so because the author was forced into silence. Furthermore, I contend that the definitive version is more of an antislavery novel than Schulman would have us believe. This is particularly evident in the second part of the novel, when the Gamboas travel to their sugar estate. See Schulman's prologue in his edition of Cecilia Valdés (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1981), xiii-xviii.

6. Del Monte identifies the three censors as the district censor, the sota-censor, a military officer of the palace, and the captain general. Alvarez García, “La obra narrative de Cirilo Villaverde,” in Cecilia Valdés, 28.

7. Julio C. Sánchez, La obra novelística de Cirilo Villaverde (Madrid: De Orbe Novo, 1973), 20-21, my translation. For additional information about Villaverde's life, see articles in Acerca de Cirilo Villaverde.

8. See Villaverde, El penitente (Havana: Editorial la Burgalesa, 1925). Also see Juan J. Remos, Historia de la literatura cubana, vol. 2, 174-179.

9. De la Torriente, “San Carlos, foco de cultura,” in La Habana de Cecilia Valdés, 107-112.

10. M. Eligio de la Puente, “Prólogo a Dos amores,” in Acerca de Cirilo Villaverde, 106-107.

11. See Villaverde, El ave muerta, Miscelánea de Util y Agradable Recreo 1 (August 1837). Also see Eligio de la Puente, “Prólogo a Dos amores,” 112-113 and Sánchez, La obra novelística, 49-50.

12. Ramón de Palma, “La novela,” in Acerca de Cirilo Villaverde, 15-26.

13. Ramón de Palma, “Crítica del Espetón de oro,” in ibid., 27-29.

14. Morúa Delgado, Obras completas, vol. 5, 15-81.

15. Cecilia Valdés, ed. Blondet and Tudisco, 59.

16. Cecilia Valdes or Angel's Hill, trans. Sydney G. Gest (New York: Vantage Press, 1962), 16.

17. See María Luz de Nora, “Cartas de Cirilo Villaverde a Julio Rosas,” Bohemia 57, no. 40 (1965): 100-101, my translation.

18. See Villaverde, Escursión a Vuelta Abajo (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1981) and Estévez, Diario de un rancheador, 47-148. Estévez wrote his diary between 1837 and 1842, about the same time Villaverde wrote his travel book. Estévez was a commissioned slave hunter who distorted the slavery system even further. Villaverde's father was a member of the Junta de Fomento, which formed and inspected slave-hunting groups. The senior Villaverde was one of Estévez's inspectors and had the diary which Villaverde later copied.

19. See Friol's introduction to the Diario de un rancheador.

20. See, for example, Eligio de la Puente, “Prólogo,” and Remos, Historia.

21. Imeldo Alvarez, “La obra narrativa de Cirilo Villaverde,” in Acerca de Cirilo Villaverde, 303-304.

22. For information about López, see Guerra, Manual de historia, 480-494.

23. See Villaverde, General Lopez, the Cuban Patriot (New York: 1851).

24. See Villaverde, El señor Saco con respecto a la revolución de Cuba (New York: La Verónica, 1852). For a discussion regarding the annexation of Cuba to the United States, see Guerra, Manual de historia, 495-565.

25. See, for example, Remos, Historia, 168, and Alvarez, Acerca, 305-306.

26. See Villaverde, La revolución de Cuba vista desde Nueva York (New York: 1869).

27. See Jorge Ibarra, Aproximaciones a Clío (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1979), 51-79.

28. Cited by Sosa, La economía, 385, my translation.

29. Remos, Historia, 169, and Sánchez, La obra novelística, 32-33.

30. See the Havana edition, 48.

31. See Luz de Nora, “Cartas de Cirilo Villaverde,” 100.

32. Friol states that “of the 246 pages of Cecilia Valdés, of 1839, 195 are dedicated to the 23 of October, 1831, the eve of the Fiesta de San Rafael.” “La novela cubana en el siglo XIX,” Unión 6, no. 4 (1968): 199.

33. I have decided to cite from Cecilia Valdes or Angel's Hill. Mariano J. Lorente's translation, The Quadroon or Cecilia Valdes (Boston: L. C. Page and Company, 1935), makes important omissions. All references are to Gest's translation and they will appear parenthetically in the text.

34. Some of Sosa's ideas coincide with the ones developed here. He breaks down the structure of the novel by chapters and dates: Part 1, chapter 1, 1812; chapters 2-3, 1823; chapters 4-12, 1828. Part 2, chapters 1-2, 1829; chapters 3-17, 1830. Part 3, chapters 1-9, 1830. Part 4, chapter 1, 1830; chapters 2-7, 1831. Sosa notices that twenty-five of the chapters, approximately half the novel, take place in 1831; between 1812 and 1823 there are three chapters; none between 1828 and 1831; and forty-one between 1828 and 1831. Of the ones which narrate 1830, about 40 percent take place during the months of November and December. Sosa suggests that Villaverde's interest was to describe Cecilia during her most attractive years. Sosa looks for meaning by comparing Cecilia Valdés to Villaverde's own biography. However, he also takes into consideration the history of the period. I disagree with Sosa, who believes that the novel ends in 1831. See his “Appreciaciones sobre el plan y el método de Cirilo Villaverde,” 381-409.

35. Critics commenting on the time of the novel claim, as Villaverde does in his prologue, that the novel ends in 1831. See, for example, Cecilia Valdés, Blondet and Tudisco, 36, and Sosa, La economía, 387-388.

36. Unlike Sosa, Friol considers Cirilo Villaverde's and Cecilia Valdés's coincidence in initials and date of birth as false clues (Suite, 200).

37. See, for example, José Luciano Franco, Las conspiraciones de 1810 y 1812 (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1977).

38. See Pedro Deschamps Chapeaux, “Francisco Uribe: El sastre de moda,” Contribución a la historia de la gente sin historia (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1984), 55-65.

39. Deschamps Chapeaux states that Varona died during an epidemic in 1833. “Los sastres,” El negro en la economía habanera del siglo XIX, 143. The date I have cited is from his Contribución a la historia, which is more precise, accompanied by an endnote: Archivo Nacional, Escribanía de Junco, leg. 127, no. 1850, 60 and 65, note 8.

40. For a biography of these and other tailors, see Deschamps Chapeaux, “Francisco Uribe: El sastre de moda” and “Los sastres.”

41. Deschamps Chapeaux, “Los sastres,” 144-148.

42. Nicolás Guillén, Brindis de Salas (Havana: Cuadernos de Historia Habanera, 1936). Also cited by Deschamps Chapeaux, “Los músicos,” 107, my translation.

43. Deschamps Chapeaux, “Los músicos,” 108-109. Deschamps's dates do not coincide with those provided by Helio Orovio, who suggests that Brindis de Salas returned to Cuba in 1848, was imprisoned, and received his freedom two years later. See his Diccionario de la música cubana (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1981), 60.

44. Buelta y Flores, who died in 1851, owned sixteen houses and his wealth was estimated between 45,000 and 50,000. Deschamps Chapeaux, 116-117.

45. Morúa Delgado, Obras completas, vol. 5, my translation. In his article, Morúa criticizes Villaverde for his historical aberration and deformation of characters. In particular, he claims that Villaverde presents Uribe as an enemy of whites. From a different perspective, Uribe is described as a man who is aware of the distinction between the races and his own social position within the society. And even if Villaverde imposed certain accusations on Uribe during the Ladder Conspiracy, there is no evidence in the novel that he conspired against whites or that his actions were serious enough to justify the government accusations against him.

46. For information about Plácido, see De la Torriente, La Habana de Cecilia Valdés, 139-148 and Diccionario de la literatura cubana (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1988), vol. 2, 1059-1061.

47. De la Torriente, La Habana de Cecilia Valdés, 141.

48. Diccionario de la literatura cubana, vol. 2, 1059-1061.

49. Leante, “Cecilia Valdés, espejo de la esclavitud,” in El espacio real (Havana: UNEAC, 1975), 29-42.

50. Freud, Totem and Taboo, trans. James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1950), 4-5.

51. Manzano, Autobiografía de un esclavo, ed. Schulman.

52. Antonio Zambrana, El negro Francisco.

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