You are invited to the next International Slavery Seminar, which will be on
Friday 5 December:
[Please note that this seminar will take place in the International Slavery Museum]

Speaker is: Manuel Barcia (University of Leeds):
Title: 'Disguised and Nonviolent Forms of Slave Resistance on Cuban Plantations, 1790-1850'

ABSTRACT:
In Cuba, as elsewhere, slaves found ways to express their ideas and to
reproduce their traditions and inherited knowledge about the world.
Even today, African-derived religions and cosmologies constitute an
important part of Cuban culture. These cultural traditions and
knowledge were transmitted from generation to generation despite the
harsh character of the Spanish slave system in the New World.
Slaves
often reproduced forbidden habits, customs, religious beliefs, and the
autochthonous elements of their native cultures. Those who were
warriors maintained their military pride and, not surprisingly, started
numerous movements of resistance. But revolts and marronage were not
safe ways to oppose slavery. Day-to-day life was full of imperceptible
incidents and events that in one way or another constituted safer forms
of resistance.
On Cuban plantations slaves were well aware of the
limits of their private and public actions. Consequently, rather than
to give up easily, they accepted some elements of their oppressors'
culture by integrating them into their own cultural and religious
practices. The best known example of this phenomenon, though not the
only one, is slaves' acceptance of the saints and virgins of the
Catholic pantheon and their merging of these figures with the various
African deities they worshipped. This process, known under the terms
"syncretism" and "transculturation," is a fashionable subject of study
among scholars today, inspiring prolific research not only in Cuba but
also across the world. In this paper I look at the wide range of the
19th Century Hidden Transcript practiced by slaves on Cuban plantation
and how these apparently harmless actions helped to transform their
lives and the lives of their oppressors.

Manuel Barcia is
lecturer in Latin American Studies at the University of Leeds. His
recent publications include his book Seeds of Insurrection': Domination
and Resistance on Western Cuban Plantations, 1808-1848 (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 2008).  http://www.lsu.edu/lsupress/bookPages/9780807133651.html

Time and date: 5 December 2008, 5pm
Location: the seminar will be in the Anthony Walker Education Centre, International Slavery Museum, Albert Dock, Liverpool.

This seminar is organised by the Study of International Slavery (CSIS), a partnership between the
University of Liverpool and National Museums Liverpool. For more information on
this or other events organised by the Centre for the Study of International
Slavery, please contact Dmitri van den Bersselaar on [log in to unmask]
<mailto:[log in to unmask]>