Armando Chávez-Rivera
Greenleaf Visiting Library Scholar
Class and Race in Colonial Cuba: Social Tensions, Morality, and Self-Control in Zarzuelas
Zarzuelas have been a cultural vehicle for the fusion of Cuban society. This popular genre displayed classist, racial, and disciplinary discourses on the island during the 19th century. One of the topics of zarzuelas was forbidden relations due to class, racial, and sexual barriers, a theme that had literary expression in romantic novels at that time. This investigation connects the literary studies dealing with the consolidation of Cuban identity with the development of popular music genres. This research focuses on zarzuelas created by the company of Manuel Areu under the influence of Spanish American and Cuban societies.
