Hidden markers, open secrets: on naming, race-marking, and race-making in Cuba

Abstract

Focuses on how in Cuba race-marking was interrelated with surname-giving, also after the abolition of slavery. Through researching life histories on the local level in the Cienfuegos region, the author examines names of former slaves, finding that these were after abolition in notarial records often marked with the adjectives s.o.a., or "sin otro apellido" (without other surname, taking into account the Iberian double surname tradition). This, according to him, points to a stigmatization of these black citizens and related to their former status as possession, and is thus a racial marker, only more hidden than the open racial assignations during slavery. He relates these postemancipation surnames of former slaves to the dotation of surnames during slavery, whereby most surnames of slaves were those of the last owner of the slaves. He also discusses differences in name-giving between the notarial records and everyday life. He further indicates that a new racism developed in the Cuban society of the late 19th c. and early 20th c., which was voiced more openly in the realm of culture, and regarding events as incarceration and death, and more hidden within the civil and judicial spheres, where the fiction of a race-blind republic was maintained.

Renomear para Recomeçar: Lógicas Onomásticas no Pós-abolição

“…Talvez porque esse tipo de designação não pudesse ser introduzido oficialmente, sendo mais uma espécie de "rótulo de mercado" do que uma identificação comunitária. Estudando a sucessão de sobrenomes em Cuba durante o século XIX, Michael Zeuske (2002) salientou que a ausência de sobrenome ou a presença somente do sobrenome da mãe 9 eram os primeiros indicadores do estatuto de escravo. A classificação aparentemente objetiva inscrita em um nome denotava, na verdade, uma marca quanto à condição social da pessoa.…”

The Allure of Technology: Photographs, Statistics and the Elusive Female Criminal in 1930s Cuba

“…carried with it the taint of impropriety. 59 Her physical description betrays another potential source of criminality. The term prognatismo was very often used by Lombrosian criminologists to describe a prominent jaw, which in their view signalled an atavistic physical type, prone to criminality.…”

From Enslavement to Emancipation: Naming Practices in the Danish West Indies

“…Some scholars have focused on the onomastics and etymologies of the names used to designate the enslaved in historical records, searching for names that functioned as markers of origin, kinship, or ethnicity (Thornton 1993; Álvarez López 2015). Others have analyzed slave names as vectors for social relationships, contemplating, for instance, the dynamics of power between enslaved individuals and the authorities charged with (re)naming them (Hébrard 2003; Cottias 2003); how naming patterns can indicate processes of acculturation, creolization, and racialization—or, conversely, efforts at cultural resistance and self-determination (Inscoe 1983; Zeuske 2002); and what the switching or maintenance of names in transitions from slavery to emancipation reveals about the stakes of attempting to name oneself (Durand and Logossah 2002; Benson 2006).…”

“… 3 In colonial Cuba, racial and ethnic tags were used in a similar way to identify enslaved individuals in official documents (Zeuske 2002: 216–17).…”