Abstract

MENA, Luz M. RACE, GENDER AND SPACE: BLACK AND MULATTO WOMEN IN HAVANA OF THE 1830'S. rev.estud.soc. [online]. 2007, n.26, pp.73-85. ISSN 0123-885X.

Black and mulatto women “negotiated” their place in Havana's society in the 1830s and 40s. They negotiated their insertion in every space of the city, from the most public ones, like the spaces of the law, to the most intimate ones, like those forged through their own sexuality. To a great extent, these negotiations were framed within their decisive role as mediating agents between blacks and whites: as wives, lovers, teachers, wet nurses, caretakers and servants, but also as property owners, entrepreneurs and pursuers of their own legal causes. They negotiated their social and economic inclusion by means of their daily activities, often at the margins of urban regulations and social traditions. These practices engaged in a continuous and tense “dialog” with the discourses of the Creole and Peninsular modernizing elites. These reformers, who considered these women's growing participation in the daily life of the city one of the most worrisome and disorderly elements in the city, developed strong discourses of social order and urban reforms to discipline the growing city. Many of these discourses were oriented to establish clearer and more rationalized social and racial boundaries that would try to contain, if not the activities of these women, at least their infl uence on the population. It was within this dialog, never equal and often violent, that the modern geography of Havana was drawn.

Keywords : Negotiated spaces; daily practices; women of color; discourses; modernity.

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