José Martín Félix de Arrate's Enlightenment Discourse of Cuban Exceptionalism

This chapter analyzes the work of Havana-born José Martín Félix de Arrate, often regarded as Cuba's first historian and deemed the most representative Enlightenment writer of the island's emergent criollo elite. The chapter focuses particularly on Arrate's Llave del Nuevo Mundo, antemural de las Indias Occidentales: La Habana descripta (1761), a detailed historical account of Havana as the “key” to the entire New World and its antemural, or rampart. Grounded in in an emergent Cuban consciousness nurtured in exceptionalism, the chapter argues, Arrate showcased the island's military value; the commercial and economic potential of its environmental and geographical attributes, natural resources, and excellent ports; and the emergent cultural prestige of Havana as a site of reason, while also connoting a race-based hierarchy, typical of the Enlightenment era, of the island's human potential for labor and defense.