Subaltern Navigations: Intersections of Race, Gender, and Enslavement in Nineteenth-Century Cuba

This paper discusses the complexities of the lives of enslaved and free women of color during the first decades of the nineteenth century in Cuba. The work will draw on the examples of three women using a variety of sources with the aim of developing a richer understanding of the multiple binds with which women had to cope. Interlocking layers of power relations expressed through notions of gender, race, status (slave or free), as well as attendant violence mediated women’s actions. As with all hegemonic systems these constructions also created spaces for acts of intentionality that women exercised thereby creating tensions in the system. The stresses within the system were becoming more evident during the 1830s and 1840s as challenges erupted on several fronts. Anxiety was high among the dominant population. The paper seeks to provoke a discussion of how these subaltern women worked within these constraints and challenged the existing hierarchy as well as how the existing order was sustained and stabilized.