The Cuban Heritage Collection will be featuring highlights from Goizueta Fellows’ research investigations conducted during their fellowships. Idania Cater (icater@fiu.edu) shares the following about her research on costumbrismo and 19th century Cuban national identity:
“As a Goizueta Pre-Prospectus Fellow, I had the privilege of spending 4 weeks in the Reading Room, perusing rare historical documents, taking notes, and capturing pictures of materials that I will utilize in my dissertation.
The Cuban Heritage Collection houses a plethora of works related to costumbrismo, a 19th-century style of media which encompassed literature, painting, and theater.
Domingo del Monte was a cultural influencer in Cuba in the early 19th century who promoted costumbrismo. The Cuban Heritage Collection allowed me to access several of his works, including “La Moda, o Recreo Semanal del Bello Sexo”, a weekly periodical through which he promoted cultural enlightenment through prose, poetry, and painting. This access offered me the opportunity to make several key discoveries in my research.
His promotion of costumbrismo through his tertulias (literary salons), influenced several Albums Pintorescos, pictured here, including Frederic Mialhe’s, Tipos y Costumbres de la Isla de Cuba (illustrated by Victor P. Landaluze), and eventually literary works like Cosas Que Pasan (by Fernando Romero Fajardo) and El Quitrín (by Ildefonso Estrada y Zenea).
Scholars often underestimate costumbrismo’s significance, but recent scholarship reveals how the national identity projects of many Latin American countries, including Cuba, depended on costumbrismo.
I am very thankful to the Cuban Heritage Collection community for providing me the opportunity to conduct research in their repositories. I only regret not having more time to review even more sources and documents.”
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