Abstract
Eugenio Hernández Espinosa is today recognized as one of the most important playwrights of Cuban theater, mainly for plays that have to do with the people’s reality, that portray the popular masses, and that have ruptured the prejudicial approaches to issues of blacks. This study seeks to characterize the role of the female character in his work María Antonia, a theatrical piece launched in 1967. An intense and polemical drama recognized as the major Afro-Cuban tragedy, María Antonia allows us the opportunity to contemplate black theater in Cuba during an era ideologically less inclined to promote the possibility of this kind of productiongiven its focus on Afro-Cuban culture and the argument of its marginalization. María Antonia brings to the stage a complex elaboration and reveals socio-economic, ethno-racial, and afro-religious issues in a plot that opens the door for a critique around the manner of envisioning and portraying the Afro-Cuban woman in imposed spheres and roles such as bearer of religious heritage, emotionally unstable and sensual figure, mulatoness, violence, and resistance.