SOURCE: García-Barrio, Constance. “The Abolitionist Novel in Nineteenth-Century Cuba.” CLA Journal 21, no. 2 (December 1977): 224-37.

[In the following essay, García-Barrio analyzes six nineteenth-century Cuban novels commonly described as abolitionist, arguing that as a result of strict censorship laws in Cuba prohibiting the denunciation of slavery, only two Cuban novels from the period should rightly be regarded as abolitionist.]

During the first decades of the nineteenth century in Cuba, slaves became the primary source of labor for the rapidly growing sugar industry. The growth of the industry had not been matched by more efficient means of production, and the need for able-bodied workers soared.¹ By 1827, enslaved blacks constituted 41٪ of the population of Cuba, and this percentage increased steadily for more than a decade.² While the number of slaves rose, the treatment they received worsened.³ Enslaved blacks were victims of the exigencies of production; their lives were “short, brutal and nasty.” Conditions were ripe for protest.

Between 1838 and 1873, Cuban writers produced six novels which usually have been described as abolitionist literature. Four of these novels were written between 1838 and 1841 when the slave population was highest, and the difference of opinion about the continued importation of slaves was greatest. The four early novels are cited here with their dates of completion as well as their dates of publication since, in the case of the novels published in Cuba, the years which separate the two dates are indicative of the controversy surrounding the works and efforts to suppress them: Cecilia Valdés (written 1838, published in entirety in 1882), by Cirilo Villaverde, Petrona y Rosalía (written 1838, published in 1925), by Felix Tanco y Bosmeniel, Francisco (written 1839, published 1880), by Anselmo Suárez y Romero, and Sab (written and published in Madrid about 1841), by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda. Francisco Calcagno was the author of a later abolitionist novel, Romualdo, uno de tantos (written 1869, published 1891). The last abolitionist novel of the nineteenth century, El negro Francisco (written and published in Santiago de Chile in 1875), by Antonio Zambrana, was obviously inspired by Suárez y Romero's Francisco. When Romualdo and El negro Francisco were written, abolition had already begun. A law of October 15, 1868, freed slaves born after this date, and in 1870, a second law freed slaves sixty or older.⁴ Laws passed in 1880 and 1886 liberated the remaining slaves although the latter were subject to forced labor until 1890.⁵ In this essay, the early abolitionist novels, especially Francisco and Cecilia Valdés, will be considered as well as El negro Francisco. Comparison of the two early works with Zambrana's novel is helpful since Zambrana, surely encouraged by anti-slavery legislation and hoping that Cubans could present a united front against Spanish rule, was more vigorous in his criticism of the “peculiar institution.”

Although slavery and social distinctions based on race were treated by Villaverde, Tanco y Bosmeniel Gómez de Avellaneda, and Suárez y Romero, the effectiveness of their novels as abolitionist literature was limited by several factors:

1. Censorship made it impossible to publish works which straightforwardly condemned slavery. Undesirable novels circulated only as manuscripts in small literary circles.
2. Some novelists described social life in Havana primarily and treated slavery secondarily as a part of it. Such works were rich in detail about nineteenth-century Cuba, but bankrupt in specific proposals for eliminating the slave trade, implementing gradual emancipation, or improving the life of the slave.
3. The novels were replete with stereotyped black characters and may have served to increase racial prejudice and discriminatory practices.
4. Most writers who treated slavery were greatly influenced by romanticism, the prevailing literary movement of the 1830's and 1840's in Cuba. These writers, in depicting the evils of slavery, were more moved by the romantic compulsion to criticize long standing institutions and to exalt individual freedom and nobility of soul than by moral, social, or political convictions.

A consideration of censorship should preface a discussion of nineteenth-century Cuban literature in which slavery is described. In Cuba in the 1830's and 1840's, censorship was one of the key self-protective measures of slave-owning interests. It determined what could be written and who could write it. In the case of black Cubans, censorship coupled with educational obstacles made protest difficult. Enslaved blacks, whose protest would have been the most strident, were the least able to express themselves. Many had been born in Africa and were struggling with an elementary mastery of Spanish. Slaves were discouraged from learning to read and write, and if they managed to acquire these skills, it was best for them to keep their knowledge to themselves. Francisco Calcagno, in Poetas de color mentions the plight of Jose del Carmen Díaz, a slave who, “… por orden de la autoridad fue preso y luego enviado al campo porque leía periódicos y los repetía a sus compañeros.” (… by order of the authorities was imprisoned and then sent to the country because he read newspapers and repeated them to his companions.)⁶ Literate blacks were not permitted to write about their crushing social and economic disadvantages: “… para los poetas negros de Cuba—libres o esclavos—era muy difícil referirse a su propia situación porque immediatamente se exponíon a persecuciones y castigos por el régimen existente.” (“… for black poets of Cuba—free or slaves—it was very difficult to refer to their own situation because they immediately exposed themselves to persecution and punishment by the existing regime.”;⁷ Authorities hampered black journalists by requiring them to write on subject matter, “… ajeno a todo asunto político y económico.” (“… unrelated to all political and economic affairs.”)⁸

White journalists were equally restricted by censorship: “A principios del siglo diez y nueve se publicaban en la Habana varios periódicos … En casi todos aparecía … el anuncio de la venta de algún esclavo, pero ninguna crítica sobre la trata y la esclavitud porque la censura no lo hubiera permitido.” (“At the beginning of the nineteenth century several newspapers were published in Havana … In almost all of them … advertisements about the sale of slaves appeared, but no criticism of the slave trade because censorship would not have allowed it.”)⁹ In 1832, publication of the prestigious Revista Bimestre Cubana (Cuban Bimonthly Review) was stopped and the editor, José Antonio Saco, was exiled because, “… un periódico en que tan frecuentemente se hablaba de la abolición de la trata … con criterio independiente … no podía vivir holgado en colonia tan oprimida como Cuba.” (“… a periodical in which the abolition of the slave trade was so frequently discussed … with independence of judgment … could not prosper in a colony as oppressed as Cuba.”)¹⁰

Since neither socially critical works of fiction by black writers nor journalistic criticism from blacks or whites was tolerated, the remaining possibility for discussing the adverse effects of slavery lay in works of fiction by white writers. In the case of the novelist, however, censorship still proved a sometimes in surmountable obstacle. Anselmo Suárez y Romero wrote to a friend about his efforts to publish Francisco: “El censor … (lo) rechazó apenas hubo leído los primeros párrafos, y … siempre habia comprendido yo que mi novela no había podía publicarse mientras existiese entre nosotors la esclavitud …” (“The censor … rejected (it) after he had hardly read the first paragraphs, and … I had always understood that my novel could not be published while slavery existed among us.”¹¹

The plots of Cecilia Valdés, Petrona y Rosalía, Francisco by Anselmo Suárez y Romero, and El negro Francisco by Antonio Zambrana, are similar. In these novels, a black or mulatto woman is the ill-fated possessor of irresistible sexual magnetism. The woman attracts two suitors, one black, one white. She inevitably bestows her favors on the white admirer, sometimes freely, sometimes grudgingly. In Cecilia Valdés, Cecilia has an affair with the son of a wealthy family with the hope of bettering herself socially. In Francisco, the heroine, Dorotea, follows the dictates of her own heart as well as those of the social system in choosing her black suitor. She yields to the master only to prevent the death of her black lover who is being tortured systematically under the master's orders.

In Cecilia Valdés and Petrona y Rosalía, the drama is set against the backdrop of a socially distinguished family, complete with a profligate son, philandering father, and a combination adoring mother-jealous wife. The mainsprings of the action are infidelity by the husband, and incest when the son impregnates his half-sister, the child of the father's previous extramarital affair. In Francisco and El negro Francisco, the mother is a widow, and the son is attracted to the mother's young and pretty personal servant. The mother's blind affection permits the son to force his attentions on the heroine without interference. At the end of these four novels, the black or mulatto woman is used, then dies in childbirth or languishes in disgrace or insanity.

El mulato Sab presents a slight variation on this woebegone theme since the protagonist is a man. The essentials of the story, however, are unchanged. Sab, the son of the master and a slave woman, falls in love with the daughter of the family that owns him. He helps make it possible for her to marry a man who is unworthy of her, but Sab is literally consumed by his passion since he dies of despair as his mistress is being wed.

A consideration of the slave and the mulatto woman, the most important black characters in these novels, helps underscore the limitations of the works as abolitionist literature. In the case of the slave, an absolute inability to shape one's life is shown. The slave's only hope, according to these novels, lay in canine obedience to the master and overseer. The work and the whip were to be met with Christian resignation, and one genuflected to one's oppressors. The humanity of the enslaved black is ignored and often denied by his owners. Disobedience brings fearful punishment. In Cecilia Valdés, a slave is told to stop nursing her own baby and nurse only the newborn daughter of her mistress. When she is caught nursing both babies, she is sent to the family sugar plantation for fifteen years and there suffers many indignities by express order of her mistress. In Francisco, Francisco and Dorotea, both slaves, are denied permission to be married after repeated pleas. When the mistress discovers that Dorotea is pregnant, she becomes enraged. She sends Francisco to the country sugar plantation, and Dorotea, whom she no longer considers a fit companion, is forced to work as a washerwoman. The novelists reduce the slaves's self-assertion to the decision to commit suicide.

In these novels, if the slave is beaten literally, the mulattoes and free blacks are beaten by frustration and an awareness of the social and economic restrictions imposed upon them. In Cecilia Valdés, a mulatto tailor with a thriving business explains the secret of his success: “Disimula, aguanta … No ves que ellos son el martillo y nosotros el yunque? Los blancos vinieron primero y se comen las mejores tajadas; nosotros los de color vinimos después y gracias que roemos los huesos.” (“Hide your feelings, be patient … Don't you see that they are the hammer and we are the anvil? The whites came first and they eat the prime slices; we colored folk came later and are grateful to gnaw the bones.”)¹²

Black was black and white was white; never should the twain legitimately meet. Upper class characters in El negro Francisco find marriage between a wealthy black woman and a middle class white man remarkable, not to say disgraceful; ‘En aquellos días se verificó en La Habana un matrimonio desigual. La hija de un español rico que descendía de negros por su madre, encontró un blanco deslumbrado por su riqueza, que solicitase su mano.” (“In those days an unequal marriage took place in Havana. The daughter of a rich Spaniard who descended from blacks on her mother's side, found a white man dazzled by her riches who asked for her hand.”)¹³

The abolitionist authors gave much attention to the division of Cubans of African ancestry into groups of blacks, browns, and mulattoes. In Francisco, the protagonist is a slave born in Africa. He takes months to declare his love to Dorotea because she is a mulatto woman and he fears she will reject a black suitor: “Al principio, procuré ocultar mi amor, temiendo una negativa. Yo pensaba que … esta mulata no había nacido para mí, pobre negro de nación.” (“At first, I tried to hide my love, fearing rejection. I thought that … this mulatto woman had not been born for me, a poor black from Africa.”)¹⁴

The rejection of blacks and mulattoes is mentioned repeatedly in Cecilia Valdés. Cecilia's grandmother advises her that marriage to a poor white is preferable to marriage to a rich black or mulatto: “… eres casi blanca y puedes aspirar a casarte con un blanco. Y debes saber que blanco aunque pobre sirve para marido; negro o mulato, ni el buey de oro.” (“… you are almost white and can aspire to marrying a white. And you ought to know that a white, although poor, is an acceptable husband; a black or mulatto, not even if they're made of gold.”)¹⁵ Cecilia could claim the added prestige of having been in the Valdés Royal Orphanage. She carries the surname of the founder, and the privileges that go with it. One observer of life in nineteenth-century Havana said about the Valdés mulattoes: “Pueden usar Don como los blancos y gozan de todos los privilegios de éstos. Recuerdo haber oído varies veces en cuestiones lanzar como insulto uno a otro la palabra mulato y contestar el agraviado con mucho énfasis: ‘yo no soy mulato, yo soy Valdés.’” (“They can use Don like the whites and enjoy all the benefits and prerogative of the latter. I remember having heard several times in arguments one man call another mulatto as an insult, and the injured party answer with great emphasis: ‘I'm no mulatto, I'm a Valdés.’”)¹⁶ When Cecilia tries to use her Valdés status and her fair skin, she has a rude awakening. She becomes pregnant and is eventually abandoned. Verena Martínez-Alier, in Marriage, Class and Color in Nineteenth-Century Cuba, comments thus on the novel: “Cecilia Valdés is not only an instance of a colored woman victimized by the white man but also a casualty of the social system. She had a suitor, pardo like herself, but rejected him for someone better … She prided herself on her white features, and misjudging the social system, believed that she could escape.”¹⁷ According to these abolitionist novels, one's color inexorably determined one's position in life. The order of the day was: a place for everyone and everyone in his black, brown, or white place.

The slaves, mulattoes, and free blacks are all, in some way, defeated beings. In the novelists' view, they are damned if they conform to the system, for they lose selfhood, and damned if they resist, for they are mercilessly punished. No alternatives are considered. Suárez y Romero, author of Francisco, felt that this type of portrayal would shame the slave-owners and bring public pressure to bear on them. He stated in a letter: “… vine a dotar a Francisco de … resignación y mansedumbre cristianas … Yo dije en mi tristeza—blancos, señores, vosotros sois tiranos con los negros, pues avergonzaos de ver aquí a uno de esos infelices, mejor hombre que vosotros” (“… I came to give Francisco Christian resignation and humility … I said in my sadness - whites, sirs, you are tyrants with the blacks, well feel ashamed to see here one of these poor souls, a better man than you.”)¹⁸

One recognizes good intentions, but the vital questions are these: to what extent did this weeping, wailing, tooth-gnashing characterization of the enslaved black improve the lot of slaves as a group? How useful were the portrayals of other individuals of African ancestry in bettering their situation? What were the writers' intention in this respect? First, as has been noted, the novels were not available to the general public until years after they were written. Save an incomplete version of Cecilia Valdés which was published in 1839, the abolitionist novels did not reach the hands of readers until after 1880, when the major legal steps towards abolition had been taken. Neither Sab nor other works of abolitionist tendency written by Cubans not living in Cuba were allowed to be imported. The authors of the abolitionist novels were aware that their readers were few. José González del Valle, in a letter to Suárez y Romero, points out how few the readers of Francisco will be: “No circulará sino entre los que alguna parte pueden tener en que vayan neutralizándose algún tanto los efectos de la esclavitud doméstica.” (It will only circulate among those who can play some part in attenuating, somewhat, the effects of domestic slavery.”)¹⁹

Since the novels were not available to the Cuban reading public until the 1880's, one could consider how the novels may have affected those who were able to read them. Domingo del Monte was pre-eminent in Cuban literary circles in the 1830's and 1840's, and knew personally most of the novelists who wrote about slavery. He may be treated as a representative member of the group which had access to the manuscripts. Del Monte had the reputation of being liberal. He was instrumental in securing the freedom of Juan Francisco Manzano, a poet who had been a slave. Del Monte also gave the manuscript of Francisco, Suárez y Romero's novel, to the English ambassador to Cuba, presumably with the hope that publication of the work in England would bring international pressure on Cuba to end the slave trade. It must be stressed that although Del Monte felt that no more blacks should be brought from Africa, he had a vested interest in keeping enslaved blacks who were already in forced servitude: “… mi familia por parte de mis padres no tiene otro recurso para vivir que los productos de un ingenio … con cien negros que lo cultivan … Mi suegro recoge por cosecha anual 2,000 cajas de azúcar.” (“With regard to my family, my parents have no other income except the products of a sugar plantation with one hundred blacks who cultivate it. My father-in-law harvests an annual crop of 2,000 boxes of sugar.”)²⁰ Del Monte's desire to help blacks ended where his financial interests began. One supposes that this was also the case with Del Monte's associates who, like him, had the leisure to engage in literary pursuits.

If the novels had been widely read, they would have done blacks more harm than good, according to some critics. Juan René Betancourt feels that the abolitionist writers, themselves members of the upper class, could not avoid the prejudices typical of their group: “La mentalidad esclavista de los escritores y artistas de la clase dominante, los hace, al tratar el asunto negro desfigurarlo y prostituirlo can resabios antinegristas.” (“The slave-owner mentality of the writers and artists of the ruling class makes them, when they talk about matters related to blacks, distort and corrupt them with anti-black implications.”)²¹ He deplores works like Cecilia Valdés: “Semejante argumento y tan singulares personajes, sólo consiguen robustecer en el blanco sus fobias y prejuicios raciales y en el negro su complejo de inferioridad.” (“Such a plot and such odd characters only fortify the phobias and racial prejudices of the whites and the inferiority complex of the black.”)²² The stereotype of the enslaved black man as a hulking, muscular creature of limitless strength is reinforced. One also observes that the condition of the heroine at the end justifies the saying: “There is no sweet tamarind fruit nor virgin mulatto girl.”²³

One notes that certain blacks who were very much a part of the social picture are not mentioned. Cecilia Valdés is a veritable encyclopedia of early nineteenth-century Cuba, but in this otherwise complete catalog, the successfully rebellious slave is conspicuously absent. Yet among the Africans brought to Cuba, there were men who could and did provide the cohesiveness necessary for rebellion and the preservation of African tribal traditions.²⁴ The Catálogo de los Fondos de la Comisión Militar Especial de la Isla de Cuba (Catalog of the Funds of the Special Military Commission of the Island of Cuba) records over three hundred fifty complaints related to uprisings of runaway slaves between 1800 and 1850. There were urban runaways who hid in lowly neighborhoods of Havana but they were relatively few and not considered a great threat.²⁵ Yet in Cuban literature of that period, there is nothing remotely comparable to Biografía de un cimarrón (The Autobiography of a Former Runaway Slave). Antonio Zambrana, in El negro Francisco, does recognize Francisco as a potential leader when he writes: “Algunos hombres de su tierra vinieron en el mismo buque del otro lado de los mares, y después de veinte años de esclavitud, todavía los compatriotas, conocedores de su origen, respetaban en él al descendiente de sus grandes guerreros.” (“Some men from his country came in the same ship from the other side of the seas, and after twenty years of slavery, his compatriots, who knew his origin, still respected him as the descendant of their great warriors.”)²⁶ But this potential is left untapped since Francisco commits suicide. The alternatives of “coartación,” the process by which a slave gradually purchased his freedom, is also excluded. The freeing of slaves by testamentary decree is rarely mentioned.

In Sab, it is implied that a slave would not know what to do with his freedom if it were given to him. Sab is offered his freedom, and through lottery winnings, he could have turned his liberty to profit. However, he shuns freedom, money, a superior education, and the responsibility of leading less fortunate slaves: “… los esclavos arrastran pacientemente su cadena; sólo necesitan para romperla, oír una voz que los grite: ‘¡Sois hombres!’, pero esa voz no será la mía.” (“… the slaves drag their chain patiently; perhaps all they need to break it is to hear a voice that cries to them, ‘You're men!’, but that voice will not be mine.”)²⁷

Relatively little attention is given to the growing black middle class although the government felt threatened enough by this group to destroy it in 1844 in the infamous Conspiración de la Escalera (Conspiracy of the Ladder).²⁸ Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, in Social Control in Slave Plantation Societies, notes how anxious colonial authorities were to repress and reduce the free black population in the 1830's and 1840's. The anxiety felt about this group may account for its lack of champions in literature. The black middle class is mentioned in Cecilia Valdés, but the doctors, musicians, nurses, and midwives of African ancestry are generally sunken in defeat, subordination, or criminal activities. Witness Cecilia Valdés herself, the tailor who “knows his place,” Dr. Montes de Oca, who helps shield the head of the household from the consequences of adultery, and the black woman who acquires wealth and slaves only to lose it all through litigation which she is forced to begin. The abolitionist writers do not imply that the black middle class would increase the prosperity of Cuba as a whole if less crippled by social and economic handicaps.

The novels include no legislative proposals for stopping the slave trade, protecting the slaves from cruelty, nor for freeing them, nor for compensating the owners. One feels, however, that the abolitionist writers achieved their goal not in suggesting the need and way to free the slaves, but rather in entertaining the reader with a story of impossible love and unattainable freedom: Estas novelas tienen por asunto la esclavitud. Son obras de caráter sentimental … Generalmente no son obras de propaganda ni de tesis …” (“These novels treat slavery. Their character is sentimental … Generally, they are not works of propaganda nor do they have a thesis.”)²⁹ In writing page after page of lamentation, the authors were paying homage to romanticism, the literary movement of their day. Within the context of romanticism, the enslaved black could be made to represent the exotic, the noble savage, the ill-fated lover, and the denial of individual freedom. The abolitionist novels have much in common with outstanding works of Spanish romanticism. As in Don Alvaro, the protagonist commits suicide, and the heroine goes mad after her lover's death as in La conjuración de Venecia. In El trovador and Don Alvaro as well as in Cecilia Valdés and Petrona y Rosalía, hidden identity plays an important part. Cirilo Villaverde is on a par with Ramón de Mesonero Romanos for scrupulous attention to local color and customs. Sab reminds one of the romantic glorification of things medieval since “… Sab se comporta como un caballero antiguo al servicio de su dama. Ya existían antecedentes novelescos donde protagonistas negros, mestizos mulatos e indios daban muestras de sensibilidad, y eran los nuevos heroes de una novelística preromántica.” (“… Sab acts like an ancient knight at the service of his lady. There already existed novelistic antecedents where black, mestizo, mulatto and Indian protagonists gave evidence of sensitivity, and they were the new heroes of pre-romantic novels.”)³⁰ Richard L. Jackson, in his article, “Racism in Spanish American Literature,” states: “… Sab dies in true romantic fashion, of … unrequited love for a white woman. The author in no way suggests the possibility of physical satisfaction between her and Sab, thus adding racist justification to a case of romantic ‘amor imposible’”.)³¹

Finally, it should be noted that Francisco by Suárez y Romeo and El negro Francisco by Antonio Zambrana are the two novels for which the term abolitionist seems to some degree appropriate. Suárez y Romero, writing in 1838 in Havana, stated that his purpose was to shame the whites. Zambrana wrote El negro Francisco in 1873. Zambrana, then living in Santiago de Chile, had in his favor the miles which separated him from Havana and the fact that the abolition of slavery had already begun. Although his novel is typically romantic, in the text he cites the ineffectiveness of laws governing slave-owners, cases in which slaves had been killed for slight offenses, and the slave's poor chances for redress of grievances in a court of law. Zambrana's social concerns are reiterated in the epilogue: “Que no se ocupen tanto de combatir la dominación española, de obtener esta o aquella forma de gobierno … que se ocupen sobre todo de los negros.” (“Don't be so preoccupied with fighting Spanish rule, with securing this or that form of government … take care of the blacks above all.”)³² Francisco and El negro Francisco are exceptions in which the term “novela abolicionista” amounts to more than a long standing, much repeated misnomer.

Notes

1. Franklin W. Knight, Slave Society in Cuba During the Nineteenth Century (London: University of Wisconsin Press, Ltd., 1970), p. 50.

2. Kenneth F. Kiple, Blacks in Colonial Cuba, 1774-1898 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1976) see appendix.

3. Franck Bayard, “The Black Latin American Impact on Western Civilization” in The Negro Impact on Western Civilization, J. S. Roueck and T. Kernan, eds. (New York: American Philosophical Library, 1961), p. 296.

4. E. Roig de Leuchsenring, La guerra libertadora cubana (Havana: Oficina del Historiador de la ciudad de la Habana, 1952), pp. 75-78.

5. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Social Control in Slave Plantation Societies (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1971), p. 108.

6. Francisco Calcagno, Poetas de color, 4th ed. (Havaba: Imprenta Mercantil de los herederos de Santiago, 1882), p. 87. (This and all other translations are by the author.)

7. José A. Fernández de Castro, “El aporte negro en las letras de Cuba en el siglo diez y nueve,” Revista Bimestre Cubana 37(1935), p. 55.

8. Pedro Deschamps Chapeaux, El negro en el periodismo cubano en el siglo diez y nueve (Havana: Ediciones Revolucion, 1963), p. 31.

9. Calixto García, “Presencia del negro en las letras cubanas,” El Mundo de Hoy, November 17, 1974, p. 20.

10. Aurelio Mitjans, Historia de la literatura cubana (Madrid: Editorial America, 1918), pp. 139-140.

11. Anselmo Suárez y Romero, Francisco, el ingenio o las delicias del campo (Miami: Mnemosyne Publishing Inc., 1969), p. 40.

12. Cirilo Villaverde, Cecilia Valdés (México: Editorial Porrúa, S. A., 1972), p. 73.

13. Antonio Zambrana, El negro Francisco (Havana: Fernández y Cía, 1953), pp. 26-27.

14. Suárez y Romero, p. 94.

15. Villaverde, p. 14.

16. Antonio de las Barras y Prado, La Habana a mediados del siglo diez y nueve (Madrid: Imprenta de la Ciudad Lineal, 1925), pp. 113-114.

17. Verena Martínez-Alier, Marriage, Class and Colour in Nineteenth Century Cuba (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974), p. 116.

18. Suárez y Romero, Francisco, p. 34.

19. Lolo de la Torriente, La Habana de Cecilia Valdés (Siglo XIX) (Havana: Jesús Montero, 1946), p. 137.

20. Domingo Del Monte, Escritos, Tomo I (Havana: Cultural, S. A., 1929), pp. 193-194.

21. Juan René Betancourt, El negro, ciudadano del futuro (Havana: Talleres Tipograficos de Cardenas y Cia, 1959), pp. 122-123.

22. Ibid., p. 125.

23. See Lemuel Johnson, The Devil, the gargoyle, and the Buffoon, the Negro as Metaphor in Western Literature (Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1969), p. 73.

24. Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), p. 105 “A prince of the Luccomees, with several of his nation, was taken to a plantation on which … he was condemned to be flogged, and the others … to witness the punishment. When the young prince laid himself down … his attendants did likewise, requesting to be allowed to share his punishment.”

25. Pedro Deschamps Chapeaux and Juan Perez de la Riva, Contribución a la historia de la gente sin historia (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1974), pp. 29-52.

26. Antonio Zambrana, El negro Francisco, p. 47.

27. Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Sab (Salamanca: Editorial Anaya, S. A., 1970), p. 153.

28. See introduction of Pedro Deschamps Chapeaux, El negro en la economía habanera en el siglo XIX (Havana: Ediciones Revolucion, 1969).

29. Enrique Gómez-Gil, Historia crítica de la literatura hispanoamericana (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), p. 337.

30. Gómez de Avellaneda, Op. Cit., see introduction, pp. 20-21.

31. Richard L. Jackson, “Racism in Spanish American Literature,” Hispania (Sept., 1975), pp. 467-480.

32. A. Zambrana, Op. Cit., p. 165.