Race and law in "Cecilia Valdés", by Cirilo Villaverde

Abstract

The relationship between the law and narrative fiction goes back to their common origin in rhetoric and in modern Latin America to a shared common past with Spain that begins in Alfonso el Sabio´s Siete partidas, the Recopilación de leyes de Indias de 1681, and the proclamation of constitutions by the new countries that emerge after independence in the early nineteenth century. The most significant of these was the Spanish constitution proclaimed in Cadiz in 1812.  To this is added that many Latin American writers have been lawyers or studied law.  Cecilia Valdés, a novel published in 1882 by Cirilo Villaverde, a Cuban independentist and abolitionist writer in New York, is a historical novel centered in race relations in Cuba during slavery and focused on a family made up of a Spanish father, Cándido and his Cuban wife and children, among them Cecilia, whom he fathered in an illicit relationship with a light mulatta and who looks white.  The main conflict of the novel, other than the overarching one concerning slavery and Spanish colonialism, is focused on the relationship between Cecilia and Leonardo, Cándido´s son, who are not conscious of their being siblings.  A melodramatic plot leads to their marrying and Leonardo being stabbed to death by Pimienta, a mulatto musician who is in love with Cecilia.