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Civilization before citizenship: education, racial order, and the material culture of female domesticity in American-occupied Cuba (1899–1902)

The wars of independence in Cuba (1868–1898) catalyzed social change, as women, people of African descent and workers challenged existing social hierarchies. With the inauguration of American military rule (1899–1902), however, Cuban political elites had to preserve order in order to demonstrate their fitness for self-government by performing an elusive and changing notion of civilization. Military authorities and local elites promoted diverging visions of social order, a key determinant of civilization, through the expansion of public instruction and the manipulation of its curriculum. The project of socially appropriate education aimed to create future citizens who knew their place in society, though women, workers, and people of African descent continuously challenged the parameters of this elite policy. On the international stage at the 1901 Buffalo Exposition, conservative local educational administrators silenced this dissent to showcase their civilizing achievements based on gender-differentiation because official racial segregation became socially unacceptable and politically dangerous in Cuba. With a geographic focus on Cienfuegos, this research shows that local elites took advantage of the imperial project of the international exposition to bolster their own political preeminence by claiming a unique variant of civilization based around female domesticity as a symbol of social order.