CUBA: Following the Trail of a Woman Who
Lived as a Man
By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA (IPS) - When Cuban historian
and anthropologist Julio César González and
his Spanish friend Alberto Góngora Sanz
arrived at the birthplace of Swiss physician
Enriqueta Favez, in the city of Lausanne,
Switzerland, their joy at finally reaching
their destination was so great that they
broke into tears and dropped to the ground
in the square across the street from her
house.
"I even kissed the door," González told IPS.
"The people passing by didn’t know what to
make of us. Her home is still standing, but
there’s no plaque, nothing to remember her
by. There’s nothing there or in any other of
the many places this woman - who was Cuba’s
first female doctor - passed through in her
life," he added.
"Such a remarkable woman and history ignores
her," he said.
"When she was tried, she was judged as a sad
creature, when in fact she was a woman who
disguised herself in men’s clothes so she
could study medicine and succeed in an era
when such professions were denied to her
sex. Dressing like a man was for Favez an
act of rebelliousness against the
establishment of her time," he added.
After a long quest, which began in the
United States in 1995 and took him to
different places in Switzerland, France,
Guadalupe, Mexico and Cuba, following
Favez’s trail, on Jul 16 the Cuban
researcher launched his book "Por andar
vestida de hombre" (For Dressing Like a Man)
in Havana, at a presentation organised by
the "José Martí" International Institute of
Journalism.
In a digital version by the Colombian
publishing house Carisma, González puts out
the results of 14 years of research, made
possible through grants from the Swiss
Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC),
the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and
the Community of Iberian-American Forums, in
addition to support from many friends.
A range of documents and sources - including
love letters between Favez and Juana de León
preserved in a private collection in the
United States - are interwoven harmoniously
into a story that may sound fictional but
was pieced together through careful
historical and archaeological research and
is entirely true.
In this first, multimedia edition, the story
is also told through numerous images,
including a photo album depicting Favez’s
childhood home in Lausanne, her residence in
the Mexican city of Veracruz, the classroom
she studied in at the Sorbonne University in
Paris, and her cousin María Cavín’s house in
Cuba.
Best known for the sexual scandal that ended
in her incarceration and final expulsion
from Cuba in 1824, Favez is rediscovered by
González as a woman of her time who, like so
many others throughout history, refused to
conform to the roles imposed by men and
defied male conventions in the only way she
could: by pretending to be a man.
"As a soldier, doctor, lover, prisoner and
nun, she challenged dominant power
structures," said González, who heads the
Iberian-American Masculinities Network, an
organisation created to discuss alternative
forms of masculinity and promote gender
equality and a culture of peace.
Little is known about her early years,
except that she was born on Apr 1, 1791 into
a Swiss bourgeois family. The most accepted
account has Favez marrying French officer
Juan Bautista Renau at 15, and accompanying
him as he served in Napoleon’s army in
Germany.
"I saw my husband die. I was a widow at the
age of 18 and was left childless when my
infant daughter died eight days after she
was born," she told the court when she was
tried in Cuba in 1823. The trial was later
published as a serialised account in 1860,
in the magazine "La Administración", which
is preserved in Cuba’s National Library.
Shortly after her husband’s death, Favez
decided to pose as a man and pass herself
off as a military officer so she could enrol
at the Sorbonne University in Paris to study
medicine. Upon graduating in 1811, she
enlisted as a surgeon in the French army,
participated in Napoleon’s failed Russian
campaign, and was taken prisoner in Spain.
When the war ended, she sailed off to the
island of Guadalupe, in 1814, and from there
she travelled to Cuba "without changing my
attire, dressed like a man, which is how I
was accustomed to dressing and how I felt
free, because that way I could practice my
profession and make my fortune, with no
intention of hurting anyone, but rather with
the aim of helping the needy with my trade,"
Favez herself explained.
She settled as Dr. Enrique Favez in the
eastern city of Baracoa, some 1000
kilometres from Havana, and built up an
important practice, treating the city’s
wealthiest residents while also providing
free medical care for the poor and
travelling long distances to teach
illiterate people, including slaves and
former slaves.
It was one of those teaching expeditions
that would take her to the town of Tiguavos,
where on Apr. 20, 1819 she met and fell in
love with Juana de León. After rescuing
Juana from a state of poverty and disease,
Enriqueta arranged the marriage that would
later land her in jail.
Although throughout the trial Juana de León
was portrayed as a victim of deception, from
the letters the two women wrote each other
González gathers that Enriqueta confessed
her true gender to Juana before they were
married, and that they both agreed to live
as husband and wife.
"I never blamed you for what happened. It
was they who could not understand that we
loved each other no matter what," Favez
wrote in a letter from New Orleans, dated
May 23, 1846.
By then she was known as Sister Magdalena.
Following her conviction and a brief period
in prison in Cuba, at the age of 33 she was
sent to New Orleans to live with relatives,
who in an effort to protect the family name,
swore her to secrecy and packed her off to a
nunnery.
Enriqueta would spend her last years as a
missionary in Veracruz and Guadalajara,
Mexico, where she donated part of her
fortune to the desperately poor, and worked
as a nurse, combating epidemics, and as a
midwife for women inmates.
She died in 1856, ten years after Juana, at
the age of 65. "The cemetery where she was
buried in New Orleans was destroyed by
Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Even her remains
are gone," González says.
The author is excited about bringing
Enriqueta’s story to the public in this
multimedia format that provides "a digital
and environmentally-friendly book, written
in a language that is attractive to young
readers," and has made the book available
for download at the Iberian-American
Masculinity Network site.
"Favez’s life is a testimony of
transgression that reaches out to us from
the past. It makes us realise that what we
face today is nothing compared to what women
like her were up against. Men and women have
been challenging established norms since
they began living together in society," the
historian says.
According to González, author of another
book on Cuban women, "Favez was a woman
challenging gender roles; it wasn’t about
sex. That was what she herself claimed in
her trial: she dressed like a man because
that was the only way she could find
respect. No trials or rules could ever crush
her." |
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