The Power of the Archive in El negro Francisco by Antonio Zambrana

Abstract

During most of the 19th century, an important body of literary works appeared outside of Cuba criticizing the institution of slavery on the island, the system’s inherent violence, its sexual practices, and its repercussions on the white population. Among the most famous works published at the time were Sab (1841), by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, and Cecilia Valdés ([1839] 1882), by Cirilo Villaverde. In this essay, I would like to explore a lesser known novel that was published by a Cuban writer of the following generation—El negro Francisco (1875), by Antonio Zambrana y Vazquez—in order to understand the principal role of the legal and anthropological archives in the novel, as well as the author’s use of newspaper reports and advertisements. How are these texts and styles intertwined in the novel to criticize institutional slavery on the Island? How does the authorial voice appear in the novel when we consider a tradition present since the beginning of the Spanish Conquest of the Americas—which reached the 20th century with novels such as Los pasos perdidos (1958) by Alejo Carpentier? I would base my arguments on Roberto González Echevarría’s interpretation of Latin American novel in Mito y Archivo, una teoría de la narrativa latinoamericana, in which he employs basic concepts of US critical anthropology in order to re-interpret various aspects of 19th century Latin American history.

Keywords

• anti-slavery, novels, archive, justice, newspaper, Zambrana, Cuba