A Cuban city, segregated : race and urbanization in the nineteenth century / Bonnie A. Lucero.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lucero, Bonnie A., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Segregation.

History.

Urbanization.

Cienfuegos (Cuba : Province)--History--19th century.

Cienfuegos (Cuba : Province).

Cienfuegos (Cuba : Province)--Race relations--19th century.

Cienfuegos (Cuba : Province)--Social conditions--19th century.

Urbanization--Cuba--Cienfuegos (Province)--History--19th century.

Segregation--Cuba--Cienfuegos (Province)--History--19th century.

Race relations.

Social conditions.

Cuba--Cienfuegos (Province).

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xv, 268 pages : illustrations, maps, ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Tuscaloosa, Alabama : The University of Alabama Press, [2019]

Summary:

A microhistory of racial segregation in Cienfuegos, a central Cuban port city Founded as a white colony in 1819, Cienfuegos, Cuba, quickly became home to people of African descent, both free and enslaved, and later a small community of Chinese and other immigrants. Despite the racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity that defined the city's population, the urban landscape was characterized by distinctive racial boundaries, separating the white city center from the heterogeneous peripheries. A Cuban City, Segregated: Race and Urbanization in the Nineteenth Century explores how the de facto racial segregation was constructed and perpetuated in a society devoid of explicitly racial laws. Drawing on the insights of intersectional feminism, Bonnie A. Lucero shows that the key to understanding racial segregation in Cuba is recognizing the often unspoken ways specifically classed notions and practices of gender shaped the historical production of race and racial inequality. In the context of nineteenth-century Cienfuegos, gender, race, and class converged in the concept of urban order, a complex and historically contingent nexus of ideas about the appropriate and desired social hierarchy among urban residents, often embodied spatially in particular relationships to the urban landscape. As Cienfuegos evolved subtly over time, the internal logic of urban order was driven by the construction and defense of a legible, developed, aesthetically pleasing, and, most importantly, white city center. Local authorities produced policies that reduced access to the city center along class and gendered lines, for example, by imposing expensive building codes on centric lands, criminalizing poor peoples' leisure activities, regulating prostitution, and quashing organized labor. Although none of these policies mentioned race outright, this new scholarship demonstrates that the policies were instrumental in producing and perpetuating the geographic marginality and discursive erasure of people of color from the historic center of Cienfuegos during its first century of existence.

Contents:

Introduction: urban order and racial exclusion

A white colony in the age of "Africanization," 1790s-1830s

A town of racial enclaves, 1840s-1860s

Freedom and marginality in a divided city, 1860s-1890s

Negotiating exclusion in the historic city center, 1890s

Consolidating a white city center under US rule

Conclusion: reclaiming urban space in the early republic.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [241]-257) and index.

ISBN:

9780817320034

0817320032

OCLC:

1049574347