Petitioning for Autonomy, Questioning Arbitrariness: Enslaved Women’s Lawsuits in Cuba, 1791-1880

This chapter aims at centering enslaved women’s practices of petitioning in colonial Cuba. The aim is to show how, by using the law, they rewrote the meanings of political concepts they were excluded from, challenging hierarchies and power relations. Firstly, some context elements about slavery in Cuba along with the gendered and racialized coercion that was inflicted onto women’s lives and bodies will be discussed, as well as further general aspects on the Caribbean space – theatre of dispossession and resistance. Secondly, this chapter will touch upon the legal traditions, customs, and set of practices enabling enslaved women in Cuba to resort to the law. The overrepresentation of women in the petitions presented by the enslaved to the tribunals will be underlined and connected to the gendered structure of slavery and the sexual division of labor. Moreover, this work will explore the repertoires and the concepts resignification put to use by enslaved women in the courts. In other words, it will be shown how—in the interstices of the standard wording and formal rhetoric imposed by the bureaucratic language of the courts and its officials – enslaved women in Cuba stated their rights, starting from the one to be heard. In this sense, the practices and the implications of sevicia allegations, of petitioning for manumission and coartación will be analyzed, emphasizing how enslaved women in Cuba asserted the power to dispose of their lives in the courtrooms. In conclusion, this chapter will underline the political character of these lawsuits, pointing out how enslaved women brought conflict directly into the seats of colonial institutions. Petitioning for autonomy, questioning the arbitrariness of the enslavers, enslaved women in Cuba forged their way towards abolition, bringing forward their own ideas on justice, rights, and the law.