Contesting Slavery's Legacy: Memory and Racial Identity in Cristina Ayala's Poetry (1888-1912)

Cristina Ayala was an Afro-Cuban teacher, poet, and feminist, who was born in captivity. She witnessed the complex period of abolition and emancipation, followed by the political repression of Afro-Cubans during the beginning of the Cuban Republic. Her poetry constitutes a unique legacy of freedom that expresses the desire for Afro-Cuban intellectuals to be recognized as equals before the law. Indeed, her poems created a lucid account of Afro-Cuban struggle for education, job opportunities, and political commitment. This paper explores the discursive practices implemented by Ayala to represent herself as a black leader and a civic role model for Afro-Cuban women. I also analyze the rhetorical strategies implemented by Ayala to narrate slaves’ experiences as well as the disastrous consequences of slavery. I argue that Ayala intervened effectively in the public sphere, thus becoming a political activist with a well-established reputation across many different audiences. Particularly, I discuss her use of a rhetoric of heroism to promote the idea that Afro-descendants symbolically embody Cuba’s desire for emancipation. By placing Afro-Cubans at the center of the national history, her poems emphasize a crucial contribution to Cuban culture and society. By restoring the political dimension to her poetry, my paper contributes not just to a better understanding of the social process of racial and gender oppression in Latin America, but also offers an innovative methodological approach that might have a broad impact on Latin American History, Gender Studies, American Cultural Studies, and Ethnic and Diasporic Studies.