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Questions Of Race And Gender: Evangelina Cisneros And The Spanish-Cuban-American War, Anne Fountain

Faculty Publications

At the turn of the century, the name "Evangelina Cisneros" (known in Cuba as Evangelina Cossio) was a household term throughout the United States. Newspapers and books described her daring escape from a Havana prison, and pleas on her behalf flourished--including a request for clemency by Queen Victoria and an eloquent letter from the wife of Jefferson Davis. Although the Cisneros saga has all but disappeared in the general historical references to the eighteen nineties, her prison predicament and her prominence in the press of the times reflect fundamental issues of race and gender that are part of the socio­-political …