Race and Reproduction in Cuba

Womens reproduction, including conception, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and other physical acts of motherhood (as well as the rejection of those roles), played a critical role in the evolution and management of Cubas population. While existing scholarship has approached Cubas demographic history through the lens of migration, both forced and voluntary, Race and Reproduction in Cuba challenges this male-normative perspective by centering women in the first book-length history of reproduction in Cuba. Bonnie A. Lucero traces womens reproductive lives, as well as key medical, legal, and institutional interventions influencing them, over four centuries. Her study begins in the early colonial period with the emergence of the islands first charitable institutions dedicated to relieving poor women and abandoned white infants. The books centerpiece is the long nineteenth century, when elite interventions in womens reproduction hinged not only on race but also legal status. It ends in 1965 when Cubas nascent revolutionary government shifted away from enforcing antiabortion laws that had historically targeted impoverished women of color. Questioning how elite demographic desiresspecifically white population growth and nonwhite population managementshaped womens reproduction, Lucero argues that elite men, including judges, physicians, philanthropists, and public officials, intervened in womens reproductive lives in racially specific ways. Lucero examines how white supremacy shaped tangible differences in the treatment of women and their infants across racial lines and outlines how those reproductive outcomes were crucial in sustaining racial hierarchies through moments of tremendous political, economic, and social change.