Oriental Imprisonments: Habaneras as seen by Nineteenth-Century women travel writers

Resumen

There is an extraordinary richness and variety in nineteenth-century women's accounts of travel to the Caribbean region. This article analyzes the writings of several U.S. and British travelers to Havana in the second half of the past century, bringing to light the orientalist strategies adopted to bring the unfamiliarity of the region into the realm of their and their readers' experience. The travelers' classic profile is that of educated, Protestant women from the middle and upper-middle classes, democratically or parlamentarily scornful of Spanish tyranny, secure in the power of their burgeoning empire, with little or no Spanish language abilities, and above all white. Their representations of las habaneras rest frequently on a language misunderstood, are often cast in the mold of the preconceived, and are habitually overshadowed by Anglo-American notions of race. The author of this article shows these women as both aware of American designs on Cuba and imbued with the conviction that their nation was poised on the brink of empire; the orientalist metaphor translates Havana into an exotic and tyrannical realm fit for imperial intervention.