Circumventing Censorship through Children's Textbooks in Cuba: The Antislavery Campaign of Cirilo Villaverde and Francisco J. Balmaseda

Abstract

Most Cuban antislavery narratives from the 19th century were published abroad due to censorship. However, some antislavery children's stories circulated without restriction in public and private schools across the island. These stories are little known and have not been studied as part of the abolitionist effort in Cuba. I examine the antislavery stories that appeared in Cirilo Villaverde's El librito de los cuentos (1847) and Francisco Javier Balmaseda's Fábulas morales (1858). These books were approved by Spanish censors and became official reading material in schools at a time when slavery was the foundation of Cuba's economy. I argue that because the children's genre was not perceived as politically dangerous and was, therefore, less scrutinized, Villaverde and Balmaseda used it as a safe platform to promote their anticolonial programs. I consider the two authors' strategies vis-à-vis censorship and draw from postcolonial theory to discuss the use of violence in these stories.