Glissant in Poétique de la relation talks about the mestizo as the one who confounds categories, disturbs whiteness. That’s not how they’re constructed in Spanish America, they’re a nation-building category. But it does seem to be how Cecilia works in Cecilia Valdés. Is this further evidence of that novel being written in the United States and furthermore, under a French-Caribbean influence? Did Villaverde read Mercier, L’Habitation Saint-Ybars, or were these two novels co-generated in some way?
The things of the Atlantic keep reappearing, like the repeating island; I’ve called them cane cultures. There is so much to think about.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
See: Pedagogies of race in nineteenth-century Louisiana.
Authors: Hayes, Jarrod jarrod.hayes@monash.edu
Source: Nineteenth-Century Contexts. May 2019, Vol. 41 Issue 2, p. 207-217. 11p.
The article can be read here https://ezproxyprod.ucs.louisiana.edu:2280/doi/full/10.1080/08905495.2019.1551684 and it talks about the book as offering pedagogy about race, how to make racial distinctions.
I think MUCH of the Latin American canon is about this.