University of Havana Professor of History Digna Casteneda spoke to students and faculty yesterday afternoon about the role of slave women in the first half of the 19th century in Cuban society.
The speech, titled "African-Caribbean Women and the Slave Experience," was translated by Marysa Navarro, a history professor and chair of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program.
"It is necessary to understand the past in order to understand the present, imagine the future and help change societies," Casteneda said.
The 600 documents that Casteneda researched from the national archives in Cuba revealed that only about 10 men pursued slave-related legal cases, while the rest was done by women.
"Women were responsible for legal battles and for the freedom of family members," she said.
She hypothesized that the higher involvement of women in legal affairs was because slave women came into more contact with people who had knowledge of the legal profession through their work in households and cities, Casteneda said.
Slave women worked in various settings, including sugar plantations, cities and domestic environments. They were hired out by their owners as nurses, cooks, seamstresses and even prostitutes, she said.
Female slaves were not free from the harsh physical punishments male slaves suffered, even during pregnancy, Casteneda said.
Among the forms of abuse slave women suffered were separation from family members and the repeated sale of an already-freed person, Casteneda said.
The Slave Code of 1842 created a program in which slave owners could set a fixed price on the value of a slave and give the slave the right to buy his or her freedom in stages, Casteneda said.
However, slave owners kept raising the price of freedom, hindering slaves from attaining freedom, she said.
The tendency of slave owners to ignore the laws established by the Slave Code of 1842 was another factor that contributed to the suffering of slave women, Casteneda said.
Slave women had important roles in society because of their work as slaves and their function as promoters of the cultural and biological life of their community, Casteneda said.
"Slavery is not understood in all extensions unless women slaves are taken into account," Casteneda said.
