Race, Gender, and Socially Appropriate Education in US-Occupied Cuba

This paper examines the racial and gendered dimensions of public education during the US military occupation of Cuba (1899-1902). US military authorities and local elites collaborated to implement a project of socially-appropriate education aimed to create future citizens who knew their place in society. At the local level, women, workers, and people of African descent continuously challenged the parameters of this elite policy. On the international stage at the 1901 Buffalo Exposition, conservative local educational administrators silenced this dissent to showcase their civilizing achievements based on gender-differentiation because official racial segregation became socially unacceptable and politically dangerous in Cuba. With a geographic focus on Cienfuegos, this research shows that local elites took advantage of the imperial project of the international exposition to bolster their own political prospects by claiming a unique variant of civilization based around (white) female domesticity as a symbol of social order.