Black Political Mobilization in Cuba Paper

showcase the accumulative result of your understanding of the broader field of black political mobilization in Cuba

Chris Collins
Dr. Berry
AAAD 361
9 November 2022
Interview Proposal & Annotated Bibliography
Brenner, Philip. “Introduction: Setting the Context” in The Road Ahead: Cuba After the
July 11 Protests. Center for Latin American & Latino Studies, American University,
Washington DC.
This source talks about the recent protest that took place in Cuba last summer on July 11th and
how the President of Cuba begged revolutionaries to take control of the demonstrations that were
taking place in response to the lack of legitimacy from the government over a vast amount of
years. This will help provide a comparison in the interview with Carlota between these recent
protests and Carlota’s
Brunson, T. (2016), ‘Writing’ Black Womanhood in the Early Cuban Republic, 1904-16.
Gender & History, 28: 480-500.
This source helps my interview by building a bridge between Carlota’s era of black womanhood
and the era of black womanhood in the 1900s. It will provide context on the lasting impact on
not only her leadership role as a woman in the rebellion, but also the impact she would have on
the future of black women.
Finch, Aisha “‘What Looks like A Revolution’: Women and the Gendered Terrain of Slave
Insurgencies in Cuba, 1843-44” Journal of Womens’s History, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring
2014).
This source gives me background to Carlota’s rebellion and early life. This is important because
it will help me bring her to life in the interview and truly depict what she would actually see in
responses to my questions.
Helg, Aline. (2007). To Be Black and to be Cuban: The Dilemma of Afro-Cubans in PostIndependence Politics. Beyond Slavery: The Multilayered Legacy of Africans in Latin
American and the Caribbean.
This source will assist me in adding perspect in the questions, because Carlota was kidnapped
from Africa leading her into slavery in the Caribbean. This article will add depth when Carlota
speaks on her hopes on the future of the experiences of blacks in Cuba.
Larnies A. Bowen, Ayanna Legros, Tianna Paschel, Geísa Mattos, Kleaver Cruz & Juliet
Hooker (2017) A Hemispheric Approach to Contemporary Black Activism, NACLA
Report on the Americas, 49:1, 25-35.
This source discusses various forms of contemporary black activism that are linked to the
nonstop fight for freedom. A comparison is developed from this article where I will contrast this
type of contemporary activism with Carlota’s sacrifice and impact in her fight for freedom.
Intro: Good afternoon Carlota, thank you for taking the time to speak with me today about your
multitude of experiences in Cuba. First, I would like to say what an honor it is to be interviewing
you on all of the courageous things you did in the fight for freedom.
1. What can you tell us about where you were from before you were kidnapped from
Africa?
2. How did it feel being a woman in power leading a rebellion and did that take away from
the empowerment of the movement?
3. What was the significance in attacking the overseer’s daughter and what kind of message
did that send to the militia if any?
4. How was your activism unique and necessary compared to the contemporary activism we
see today?
5. Finally, Unfortunately you passed away the day after an important rebellion, but what did
you hope your sacrifice would do for future black womanhood in Cuba?
Gender & History ISSN 0953-5233
Takkara Brunson, ‘‘Writing’ Black Womanhood in the Early Cuban Republic, 1904–16’
Gender & History, Vol.28 No.2 August 2016, pp. 480–500.
‘Writing’ Black Womanhood in the Early
Cuban Republic, 1904–16
Takkara Brunson
The establishment of the Cuban Republic in 1902 ushered in new gender norms
that helped reformulate women’s roles within the public sphere.1 As politicians
sought to create a modern democratic society that differed from the Spanish colonial system, they initiated legal transformations that altered understandings of womanhood. Whereas, during the colonial period, male patriarchs served as the legal
guardians of women, by the late 1910s as part of an effort to secularise society, reformists bolstered women’s independence through new family legislation. Women
gained the right to manage their own property, file for divorce, receive alimony
and maintain authority over their children. The expansion of public education led
more women to attend universities and hold professional careers. Marriage, labour,
education and suffrage became central issues through which reform-minded men
and women articulated womanhood. Even as women pursued opportunities in accordance with new gender expectations, most did not challenge patriarchy; rather,
they drew from traditional understandings of women’s roles as moral, self-sacrificing
caretakers.2
Anxieties about the participation of persons of African descent in modern life
figured prominently into evolving understandings of womanhood.3 Historians have
demonstrated how tensions between anti-black racism and discourses of racelessness,
or the idea that Cuba existed as a society without racial distinctions, shaped processes
of nation formation.4 On one hand, the 1901 Constitution established suffrage for
all men, regardless of race. Politicians declared the elimination of racial barriers in
the labour force and public education. At the same time, white elites used negative
stereotypes to assert that slavery had rendered African descendants incapable for
participation in the public sphere. They explained racial inequities as evidence of
black incompetence rather than discrimination, and accused blacks who protested
racism of undermining national unity. Mainstream magazines and literature reinforced
perceptions of white superiority by depicting upper-class white women as the model of
genteel womanhood. These same venues stereotyped women of African descent as the
antithesis of modern femininity: sexually immoral mulatas (women of mixed African
and European ancestry) and uncivilised brujas (witches), among other caricatures.5
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
‘Writing’ Black Womanhood in the Early Cuban Republic, 1904–16
481
White elites thus used racialized ideas of womanhood to justify black women’s
socioeconomic marginalisation.
Stereotypes of black womanhood highlight the intersection of gender, class and
racial ideologies in the formation of Cuban society. Historians examining this dynamic
have followed two approaches. The first explores what Karen Morrison terms ‘social
reproductive processes’ or sexual choices and procreative practices through which
individuals and communities manipulated racial ideologies as they formed multiracial
families.6 The second approach calls attention to how men and women engaged
gendered and sexualised racial ideals through government policies and political
activism. Tiffany Sippial, for instance, has demonstrated how sexual anxieties led
government officials to target prostitution in their efforts to forge a modern nation,
including policies to segregate prostitutes of ‘undesirable’ ethnic groups (Mexicans,
Asians and Africans) to marginal neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Havana.7 In
his study of black masculinity during the early years of the republic, Maikel Colón
Pichardo analyses how African-descended male activists confronted stereotypes of
black biological and cultural inferiority used by white elites to determine they were
unfit for political leadership, high-ranking jobs in government and access to elite white
civic clubs.8 These studies highlight how social exclusion led elite blacks to establish
their own presses and organisations to forge a modern identity that contested racial
ideologies. Less is known, however, about the ways elite black women imagined and
performed their gender identities in response to racial stereotyping and patriarchal
ideals during the Republican Era (1902–58).9
This article contributes to the study of gendered racial ideologies through an
intersectional analysis of elite black women’s writings during the initial years of
the Cuban Republic. It emphasises how a privileged community of women who
laboured as homemakers and professionals, including many who held familial
ties to prominent men of African descent, employed the black press to perform
womanhood. Few privileged black families possessed the amount of wealth held by
white elites. However, the education and financial standing of the women discussed
below rendered them elite in comparison with the illiterate and poor majority of
African-descended families. I argue that elite women of African descent employed
modernising gender norms in order to counter negative attributes associated with
blackness and to affirm their identification with the values of upper-class whites. Black
magazines and newspapers functioned as gendered, black political spaces. These
publications paralleled and engaged the mainstream press, which tended to exclude
the perspectives of women of African descent prior to the 1920s. Gender expectations
determined the issues elite black women publically addressed. In affirming patriarchal
authority, African-descended women emphasised women’s duties and rights rather
than directly challenging incidents of racial discrimination. Instead, they venerated
women’s roles as caretakers, whether within the home, civic organisations or labour
sector as teachers and nurses. They also deplored informal unions and the practice of
African-based religions among the labouring poor. In the process, they reinforced the
anti-black tenets of Cuban citizenship they hoped to undermine. By analysing elite
black women’s writings, I aim to provide new insight into how race and class shaped
gendered notions of citizenship in Latin America and the Caribbean.
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Gender & History
Womanhood, racism and racelessness during Cuba’s transition from colony
to republic
Early-twentieth-century conceptions of race and womanhood grew out of Cuba’s history of colonial enslavement and the Wars for Independence (1868–98). The involvement in these movements of persons of African descent disrupted the association
between blacks and chattel slavery that denied them an honourable place in society.
Cubans crossed social boundaries to forge a movement for national sovereignty: women
and men, enslaved and free persons, whites and individuals of African descent fought
alongside each other. Independence leaders who included white poet and lawyer Carlos
Manuel de Céspedes, mulato farmer and entrepreneur Antonio Maceo and white poetintellectual José Martı́ formulated a nationalist rhetoric that promoted slave abolition
and the creation of a ‘raceless’ nation. They endorsed the mambisa model in which
all women (regardless of class standing or racial identification) ventured beyond the
household to ‘sacrifice’ themselves for the independence cause.10 Women contributed
as fundraisers, nurses, seamstresses, cooks and spies – rarely soldiers. The commitment
of African-descended individuals like Mariana Grajales and Marı́a Cabrales led Martı́
to endorse women’s suffrage, albeit in gendered terms: ‘The Cuban woman has not
forgotten’, he asserted, ‘how to help her husband sharpen his machete in their palm
tree houses! And since she knows more about virtue than the man does, she should
have the same right to vote. The fatherland belongs to everyone, and it is just and
necessary that we never deny any [virtuous women] a seat in it’.11 Cuban revolutionaries thus envisioned a patriarchal nation in which blacks (and) women had citizenship
rights.
The outbreak of the independence movement initiated the gradual emancipation
of slavery, which formally ended in 1886.12 The writers discussed below were born in
this period. Some gained their freedom through abolition and entered into the wagelabour market. Others were born to free parents of colour, or a freeborn mother and a
white father (who may or may not have formally recognised them); often, they inherited access to land, educational opportunities and patronage networks. Emancipation
subsumed freeborn and formerly enslaved African descendants under the category
‘community of colour’ that identified with a range of ethnic identities and phenotypical classifications.13 While some individuals who identified as mulato separated
themselves socially from blacks (including black elites) on the basis that their European
heritage made them superior, most white elites disparaged all persons of colour due
to their African lineage. Persons of African descent forged an intellectual vanguard
that collectively challenged the nature of Spanish rule, including racial segregation
practices throughout the late 1880s and 1890s.14
Blacks quickly realised the end of Spanish colonialism did not ensure the eradication of racism, however. The Wars for Independence ended with the establishment
of the US occupation (1898–1902). Military officials formed a temporary government that helped rebuild the island while protecting US commercial interests. Shortly
thereafter, Marı́a Cabrales (revolutionary and widow of African-descended general
Antonio Maceo) returned to Havana from exile in Costa Rica. She alluded to the
continued struggle for racial egalitarianism in a letter to fellow revolutionary Magdalena Peñarredonda. As she observed, ‘Cubans who in no way resemble the Saxons
[white North Americans] wish to imitate and listen to them on the question of race;
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483
being in very different conditions than them’. Cabrales feared that white Cubans might
embrace United States racial segregation policies. She anticipated that North American
government officials would attempt to ‘demonstrate the incapacity of Cubans to govern
themselves’.15 Indeed, the officials sought to Americanise the island under the guise
of ‘progress’ and ‘modernity’; they suggested all Cubans were unfit for self-rule due
to their racial heritage.16
The United States occupation influenced the formation of Cuba’s democratic system. North American officials endorsed racial ideologies that undermined the political
authority of black veterans. Most Cubans, however, remained committed to institutionalising the model of racelessness articulated during the independence movement in
public schools, government and patriotic celebrations. The 1901 Constitution’s establishment of universal male suffrage reflected this commitment. While women would
not receive voting rights until 1934, some benefited from US investments in the island’s
infrastructure, especially the education system. Women entered into nursing, teaching,
typing and government employment in unprecedented numbers.17
The persistence of racism despite the elimination of legal discrimination limited
black women’s ability to take advantage of these opportunities following the establishment of the republic. Those trained as teachers and nurses frequently complained of
being unable to attain positions in their prospective fields.18 At the same time, women
of African descent were overrepresented in the workforce; most laboured in unskilled
positions as domestic servants, street vendors and agricultural or factory workers. According to the 1907 census, 20 per cent of women of colour depended upon their
own labour to support themselves and their families, compared to 6 per cent of white
women.19 Social discrimination and high rates of illiteracy limited most black women
from obtaining employment in fields that offered higher wages.
Anti-black racism permeated republican society. Although white elites affirmed
racial equality in their official rhetoric, they barred persons of African descent from
many hotels, restaurants and housing in affluent neighbourhoods on the grounds that
they did not meet the standards of presentation and behaviour expected in society. They
mocked veterans of colour as lacking ‘civility’ and denied them public posts.20 In 1905,
the black newspaper La Antorcha reported that President Tomás Estrada Palma had
planned a presidential reception celebrating patriots of the independence movement.
Editors protested that Estrada Palma invited the wives of white male attendees, but
he did not invite the wives of Senator (and only senator of African descent) Martin
Morúa Delgado and Representatives Antonio Poveda Ferrer and Generoso Campos
Marquetti.21 Within the burgeoning field of social science, studies such as Fernando
Ortiz’s Hampa afrocubana: Los negros brujos (1906) and Rafael Roche Monteagudo’s
La policı́a y sus misterios en Cuba (1908) associated practitioners of African-derived
religions with criminality and witchcraft.22 Government officials also developed policies that aimed to ‘whiten’ the island through Spanish immigration while labelling
black Antillean migrants as undesirable.23
Blacks held conflicting perspectives on how to challenge racial discrimination.
During this period, a group of African descendants formed the short-lived black political party, the Partido Independiente de Color (Independent Coloured Party, or PIC). The
organisation’s primarily working-class membership asserted that the established Liberal and Conservative parties had failed blacks, and it sought to elect leaders who would
fight for equality in labour, government and education. Many individuals of African
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Gender & History
descent, along with most whites, objected to the party’s existence on the grounds that
its emphasis on black political empowerment undermined national unity and violated
the terms of racelessness.24 In 1910, mulato senator Martin Morúa Delgado (of the
Liberal Party) wrote an amendment that banned the PIC and all other race-based organisations. Subsequently, the administration of Liberal Party President José Miguel
Gómez shut down the PIC’s newspaper, Previsión. Tensions escalated when the PIC
staged armed protests in 1912. Some PIC members set fire to foreign-owned sugarcane
fields. Gómez labelled the protesters ‘savages’; his efforts to curb their actions and
avoid another US intervention resulted in the massacre of thousands believed affiliated
with the party.25
The brutal repression of PIC activists greatly affected how persons of African
descent addressed racial discrimination. It showed that the state would go to great
lengths to limit black organising outside of the established political parties and labour
unions. Rumours spread that black men had conspired to take over the government
and assault white women.26 Anti-black sentiments led many whites to declare that
African descendants should go ‘back to Africa’ or at least ‘out of Cuba’. Prominent
black politicians and civic club leaders denounced the PIC and its mission. Adhering
to dominant gender conventions became even more important for affirming blacks’
image as nonthreatening citizens within this context.
For elite black women writing during the early years of the republic, the struggle for racial equality created the need for broad strategies for achieving recognition
as modern citizens. Such strategies included public comportment as virtuous caretakers, obtaining an education and writing for the press. Through the pages of black
publications, a generation born in the late nineteenth century articulated a vision of
womanhood in which women of African descent merited respect. These women and,
to some extent, black men hoped to demonstrate their ability to adhere to contemporary gender norms regarding dress, labour, marriage and civic engagement. Elite
blacks’ gendered expectations of activism permitted only men to protest incidents of
racial discrimination in the press. Most privileged blacks argued that women should
focus on schooling and building strong nuclear households, rather than directly address
racism or demand access to formal positions within civic and political organisations.
Only women who published in the PIC newspaper Previsión discussed racism. It is
within this context that I examine the writings of elite women of African descent who
published in other newspapers and journals between 1904 and 1916.
Womanhood, racial advancement and the black press
Those who wrote for the black press formed part of a small group with the time, resources and level of education necessary to engage in intellectual pursuits. While few
black elite households reached the level of wealth that affluent white families attained,
their earnings as urban artisans, professionals and entrepreneurs and connections to
integrated political parties made them privileged in comparison to average families
of African descent that held low-skilled positions as domestic, factory and agricultural workers. Some women from already prominent black families graduated from
universities on the island or abroad. They cultivated hobbies as writers, musicians and
visual artists. Many served as homemakers, while others entered the labour force as
doctors, teachers and stenographers. This is not to say that upwardly mobile women
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did not occasionally penetrate these circles; certainly, the professional class expanded
throughout the 1910s as more and more Cubans became educated.
Elite women’s writings in the black press built upon a tradition established during
the late nineteenth century. African descendants founded more than 120 magazines
and newspapers during the 1880s and 1890s. Most periodicals were established by
members of sociedades de color (coloured societies), or associations created to promote the interests of newly freed persons.27 One such publication included the first
run of Minerva, originally titled Minerva: Revista quincenal dedicada a la mujer de
color (Minerva: Biweekly Magazine Dedicated to the Woman of Colour, 1888–90).
Established only two years after emancipation, the magazine focused primarily upon
encouraging women of colour to adopt the values and behaviours of the dominant
society. Contributors such as Natividad González asserted that they should ‘Study,
learn, be a model of virtue and abnegation and seek constantly to forgive those who
did so much harm to our poor and disinherited race’.28 Writer Àfrica Céspedes offered
scathing critiques of social scientists who depicted African-descended women as immoral and a threat to modernisation.29 Whether published in cities like Havana or in
small towns, black publications featured editorials, poetry and news summaries that
created a transnational readership, linking men and women throughout Cuba to exile
communities in Jamaica and New York City, as well as Tampa and Key West, Florida.
The lives of Minerva writers Marı́a Storni and Ursula Coimbra de Valverde epitomise how women of African descent drew from elite gender conventions to perform
womanhood. The women came from different backgrounds. Storni was a former slave
who had attained an education while living in Havana. In November 1888, she submitted a letter to Minerva highlighting the importance of schooling and pointed to countries
such as the United States, where citizens valued women’s education beyond ‘ornamentation’. She proposed a foundation for training black women on the island. Storni’s
letter affirmed the importance of instruction for securing employment beyond agriculture and domestic service.30 While Storni began her life in bondage, Coimbra was born
a freeperson in Cienfuegos; she relocated to Santiago de Cuba following her marriage
to tailor and activist Nicolás Valverde. A classically trained musician, she taught piano
and performed recitals. Elite black women lauded her as a ‘distinguished sister of the
race’.31 As exemplars of racial advancement in post-emancipation society, Coimbra
and Storni employed the press as a vehicle through which to ‘indignantly lift our head
and make a titanic effort to regain the dignity granted by the heavens to our race’.32
Coimbra continued to uplift women of African descent following the establishment of the republic. Yet rather than address incidents of discrimination, as many
black women writers did during the late nineteenth century, Coimbra used writing to
challenge perceptions of racial inferiority. She published regularly in the black senator
Rafael Serra’s newspaper El Nuevo Criollo (1904–06) – a periodical in which men
frequently criticised racism in labour and politics.33 She penned a series of essays
entitled ‘La Mujer en la Poesı́a Cubana’ (‘Women in Cuban Poetry’). While the series
highlighted the contributions of all women, it underscored the literary achievements
of women of colour from the eighteenth century onward.34 Similarly, in August 1915,
Maria G. Sánchez of Cienfuegos asserted the importance of black women’s literary
production to ‘honour our own prestige for our improvement’. The Labor Nueva contributor pleaded with women to support black publications as a ‘laudable labour of
culture’ necessary to ‘dispel the thick darkness where endless nights of ignorance are
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mired’.35 Both women employed the press to counter perceptions of blacks’ ignorance
as a formerly enslaved population.
Just as African-descended women’s writings reveal how they articulated womanhood through the press, Minerva’s evolution demonstrates elite blacks’ shifting discussions of race. Progressive political leaders Oscar G. Edreira and Idelfonso Morúa
Contreras revived the magazine for a second run in 1910. Titled Minerva: Revista
Ilustrada Universal: Artes, Letras, y Ciencias (Minerva: Illustrated Universal Magazine: Arts, Letters, and Sciences), the new magazine featured articles written by men
and women, most of whom resided in Havana.36 Editors took care to assert that Minerva was ‘not a magazine of parties or races’.37 They likely sought to demonstrate
their commitment to racelessness delineated by the Morúa Amendment (Idelfonso
Morúa Contreras was the son of Morúa Delgado). The men declared that the magazine
would be apolitical and serve as a vital forum for enlightening the youth of the community of colour. In one issue, they reprinted praise from prominent white journalist
Joaquı́n Aramburu, who lauded the magazine as evidence of the ‘many enlightened
and studious pardos [mulattoes] and morenos [blacks] in Cuba’, including ‘ebony- and
copper-skinned ladies [who were] educated, talented, and enamoured of the ideal of
national aggrandizement’. Aramburu’s article appropriately captured how black writers articulated themselves: ‘youth’ with ‘open spirits’ willing and capable of breaking
with ‘secular molds’ in order to bring the ‘light of truth’ to society.38
These expectations found expression in most black publications of the period. The
editorial boards of Ecos Juveniles (1908–10), La Antorcha, Labor Nueva (1915–16),
and the ‘Palpitaciones de la raza de color’ column of La Prensa (1915–16) consisted
of male professionals and urban artisans; they formed part of the black political elite in
their respective provinces. Educated women occasionally served as co-editors. Though
their political philosophies varied, these individuals consistently affirmed a gendered
project of racial advancement that complemented the activities of sociedades.39 Racial
advancement advocates believed persons of African descent could elevate their social
status through thrift, civility, education and respectability. They promoted matrimony
as the ‘insuperable base of morality’ that sanctified the household.40 They stipulated
that women adhere to codes of sexual morality in order to demonstrate the ‘decency’
of the black community. Advocates also chastised members of the labouring poor
who failed to meet their expectations. Racial advancement strategies served a dual
purpose: to ‘regenerate’ the community of colour according to dominant expectations
of comportment and to demonstrate to elite whites that blacks merited citizenship as
racial equals.41
It is difficult to provide a definitive description of the readership of the black
press. It is more than likely, however, that the publications circulated primarily among
elite blacks within Cuba and émigré communities in Tampa, Florida.42 Most editors
financed their issues by offering subscriptions, in addition to publishing advertisements
that ranged from black midwifery and tailoring services to national clothiers, liquor
and soap company products. In some instances, individuals like Ecos Juveniles reader
Petra Verdura Ruı́z gifted magazine issues as tokens of friendship.43 Readers may have
also encountered the magazines in barbershops, club halls or individual homes. Social
columns fostered a network of sociedades members and associates who supported
editors’ gendered visions of racial advancement. Editors reaffirmed connections when
they reprinted articles from other black publications. While elite whites and poor
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487
blacks may have encountered these newspapers and magazines, editors represented the
interests of privileged African descendants.
Black press editors’ adoration of accomplished women illustrated elites’ commitment to sexual virtue in spite of racist discourses. Popular literature, political
caricatures and advertisements outside the black press reproduced colonial era tropes
created by Spanish artists and writers, as well as foreign travellers, who projected their
gendered understandings of racial difference; they reduced black women’s roles to
those of sex workers, concubines and domestic servants, despite the reality of white
women who held similar roles. Black publications countered these images by gracing
their covers with photographic portraits of women. The portraits incorporated captions
that listed the subject’s name, as well as femininising descriptors like culta (cultured),
belleza (beauty) and distinguida (distinguished). Editors used photographs to provide
the readership with visual evidence of social mobility and moral virtue. Additionally,
magazines and newspapers circulated announcements like university graduations, annual soirees, weddings, baptisms and religious celebrations as further evidence. By
heralding the accomplishments and beauty of consummate women and men of African
descent black publications promoted race pride and elite cultural practices.
The organisation of black sociedades maintained by editors and readers reflected
this commitment. The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed the expansion
of the urban population of African descent as rural migrants joined established urban
communities that had existed since the colonial era.44 Because these men and women
faced exclusion from white elite clubs, including women’s organisations, joining black
associations provided opportunities for entertainment. However, it was the access to
education and political influence these groups provided that made them particularly invaluable. Most associations incorporated education into their programmes to meet the
needs of a largely illiterate population. Additionally, prominent sociedades members
supported candidates throughout their election campaigns. In return, the elected officials were expected to allocate funds to the construction of new lodges, sponsor annual
celebrations or intervene in cases of discrimination. These alliances provided members
‘access to and some influence over the political establishment and the distributions of
patronage’ necessary to obtain white-collar employment positions.45
Black sociedades’ regulations not only reinforced gender norms that limited
women’s public mobility, they also imposed strict public comportment. Formally,
most organisations functioned as patriarchal spaces into which women could enter
only as wives, daughters, mothers or board-approved ‘socias’ (associates) of its most
‘respectable’ male members. Like the regulations established for male ‘socios’, association bylaws dictated that women who attended club gatherings adhere to proper social
customs. For example, La Nueva Era (The New Era) of Guantánamo required single
women who wished to become invitadas (invited guests, rather than full members) to
present a written request signed by the woman’s legal representative and guaranteed by
a male member.46 In Santiago de Cuba, elite male leaders of Luz de Oriente stipulated
in their bylaws that ‘people of recognised morality’ must accompany señoritas who
requested to attend parties.47 Increasingly, throughout the 1910s, organisations such as
the Unión Fraternal in Havana allowed women to participate indirectly through auxiliary groups known as Comités de Dámas (Women’s Committees). Auxiliary groups
elected formal leaders, held fundraisers and organised parties, as well as other cultural
and educational activities. Black women rarely established independent associations.
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Elite black women’s participation in male-headed sociedades highlights that most
women entered into the public sphere through their connection to male family members.
In the case of Minerva, for instance, feminist editors and teachers Vestalina Morúa
Delgado and Arabella Morúa Granados were the daughters of senator Martin Morúa
Delgado and sisters of the co-editor Idelfonso Morúa Contreras. Special editor Prisca
Acosta de Gualba (also a Havana primary school educator) worked alongside her
husband, founder and editor Miguel Gualba. Angelina Rodrı́guez viuda de Edreira
joined Minerva through her familial ties to her son and chief editor Oscar Guillermo
Edreira. No doubt, the association of these women with prominent men buttressed their
social standing within the elite black community.
Elite blacks’ resistance to racism led them to forge a collective project for social
mobility and political representation. Thus, while El Nuevo Criollo editor and National
Radical Party representative Rafael Serra may have held slightly different political ideologies than Minerva editor and public notary Oscar G. Edreira (indeed, many Minerva
writers were affiliated with the Liberal Party), both men articulated their perspectives
within a common, patriarchal framework for racial advancement. Moreover, women
of African descent exercised their agency as citizens when they opted to publish in
a particular magazine or newspaper. Their writings reflected women’s negotiation of
black elite racial ideals and modernising gender expectations.
The contours of black womanhood: patriarchy, elitism and racial
advancement
‘It is undeniable’, declared writer Salie Derome in 1904, ‘that woman has helped man
conquer all of the terrains on which he has fought for the betterment of his rights, but
it is also true that she has been rewarded with the most punitive ingratitude’. Derome
made this pronouncement when she published the first of several excerpts from her
novel Amor y deber (Love and Duty) in the black newspaper El Nuevo Criollo. She
expressed the discontentment of African-descended women who had quickly grown
weary of their proscribed positions in the young nation. Women had participated in the
independence movement – among them, individuals who left the home to participate
in public life for the first time. Subsequently, many expected to receive increased civic
opportunities. Yet men frequently encouraged women to return to their homes and to
focus on their household ‘duties’ as wives and mothers rather than pursue citizenship
rights. Derome placed herself in accord with elite white leaders of the burgeoning
women’s movement when she lamented that, despite their efforts, the Cuban woman
continued to live ‘weakened as a child’.48
Derome’s series for El Nuevo Criollo elucidates the shifting expectations held by
many women in the young republic. This generation of women, inspired by the model
of political authority formulated by mambisas, rejected assumptions of women’s passivity. Their expectations for legal rights varied. At one end of the political spectrum,
for example, Anarchists promoted a revolutionary ideology that emphasised the health
and labour rights of working-class women.49 Although some white feminists and liberal
male politicians demanded women’s suffrage, most elite black women did not publically discuss the issue. Instead, they asserted the necessity of women’s edification –
for intellectual and professional endeavours – while affirming traditional understandings of women’s roles as caretakers. Their writings affirmed women’s parallel
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contributions to the gendered project of racial advancement articulated by black male
intellectuals.
Modernising gender norms affected how elite persons of African descent discussed
racial advancement in the press. Though black writers affirmed male political authority,
many called for women’s expanded civic responsibilities. One of the most vocal advocates was the esteemed politician and intellectual Juan Gualberto Gómez. ‘One of the
characteristics of our century’, he declared to Minerva readers, ‘will be the efforts that
have been achieved and will continue to be achieved in involving women in all facets
of collective life’.50 Gómez became a vocal proponent of women’s edification. He believed women served as ‘man’s sweet and irreplaceable companion’. Moreover, to fulfil
their mission within society and the home, women of the twentieth century should learn
to ‘think and feel like men’. In this sense, Gómez encouraged women to help advance
the race through intellectual endeavours like writing, hosting conferences and teaching
while relinquishing formal political leadership to men. He proposed that publications
such as Minerva serve as ‘an experimental camp’ in which the youth of both sexes
contribute to ‘the advancement of their race in the fields of literature and the arts’.51
Though elite blacks believed that women should ‘think and feel like men’, they
did not promote gender parity. In November 1910, Minerva writer Marı́a Risquet de
Márquez suggested that women had begun to overcome the traditional expectations
that limited them to a life of submission and ignorance. ‘The woman who yesteryear
only served to perform routine chores or to live among frivolities and pleasures today
rises . . . lifting [herself] to the level of man’, she observed with satisfaction. No
longer, Risquet asserted, would a woman’s duties be reduced to ‘chores’. Yet while she
expressed her excitement for women’s opportunities in the young republic, she did not
seek to break the mould altogether. Indeed, she seemed sceptical of formal political
participation. Risquet viewed the political sphere as a space that corrupted women with
‘pure morality’. She declared her admiration for women ‘who, without deserting the
sacred precinct of the home – nor abdicating the sanctified title of wife and mother –
studies, and triumphantly tears a leafy branch of science or adorns her face with
the precise diamond of the immortal crown of fine arts’.52 Risquet thus embraced
modernising gender norms that recognised women’s intellectual capabilities as equal
to those of men.
The majority of elite women’s writings emphasised the connections between education, motherhood and patriotic duty. Women promoted the image of the enlightened
mother: they suggested women controlled the destiny of society as its educators and
caretakers. Often they conflated the two roles. In November 1910, feminist editor
Carmelina Serracent argued women were responsible for the ‘future of the fatherland’
as mothers of its citizens.53 She declared, ‘One cannot doubt that the nascent generation
is in the hands of women. She is the future of the nation, the reservoir of the interests
of the family, society, and the state’.54 Serracent believed Christian-educated women
possessed the spiritual knowledge necessary to cultivate the hearts of young men who
might become soldiers, politicians, magistrates or governors. Writer Eugenia Zayas
y Estévez also viewed female education as the key to ensuring the prosperity of the
home and community. She, herself, was a product of ‘proper’ female education. By
‘bringing the light of truth’ to her home, education had allowed her to ‘progress’ as a
woman of her community and become ‘a good friend, loving wife, and an exemplar of
my race and my country’.55
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Elite black women’s discussion of education elucidates how class shaped their
perspectives. Often, writers like Lucrecia Loret de Mola depicted uneducated individuals as social disappointments who failed to contribute ‘to the betterment of the country
and to join the enlightened citizens on the glorious pages of the history books’. True
intellectual development, she believed, required rigorous study that spanned years.
Loret lamented:
How many people today, arriving at an advanced age, miss the good advice given to them in their
youth to be enlightened in greater or lesser degree? How many young men and women should
have the presumption not to stay in school until a certain age and if they reach adolescence in the
classroom, are ashamed of it, believing themselves to be worthy of ridicule!56
Loret thus determined that one’s decision to walk away from an educational opportunity
was justifiable only in the case that they lost a parent or had to take care of a child.
Certainly, such claims overlooked the privileges required to pursue schooling full-time
(rather than work to support one’s family) and gain entry to a university. Moreover,
such perceptions enabled elites to buttress their own sense of superiority by distancing
themselves from the labouring poor.
Catholicism also figured into how elite women of African descent performed
womanhood. As noted above, editors announced religious celebrations that took place
throughout the island. Women submitted articles that promoted spirituality and religious education.57 Minerva contributor Carmelina Serracent published the column
‘Mundo Religioso’ (Religious World), which encouraged Catholic religious beliefs
and practices. Serracent graduated from a school run by the US-based Oblate Sisters of Providence – a Catholic order founded by women of African descent. The
schools emphasised religious morality, in addition to traditional education that would
prepare women to attend universities. In general, elite writers distanced themselves
from African-derived cultural practices – even disparaging organisations that promoted African traditions – in order to align themselves with the dominant white ideals
of piety.58
These individuals drew upon white elite standards of womanhood found in mainstream publications like Diario de la Marina, El Mundo and Bohemia. Women used
letters, poetry, fashion columns and editorials to demonstrate their civility as enlightened, virtuous caretakers. Black women also wrote with the goal of cultivating a positive
racial identity. Yet elite women’s commitment to racial advancement led them to formulate a model of womanhood that further marginalised women of African descent
who deviated from their expectations. The following two sections demonstrate how
concerns over morality shaped elite black women’s engagement with two discourses:
feminism and calls for black civic unity.
Race, feminism and the paradox of reform
In the year that Congress passed the Morúa Amendment, a group of elite black women
from Havana launched a feminist column in Minerva. The following year, editor
Prisca Acosta de Gualba founded the Feminist Club ‘Minerva’ as an organisation
through which to sustain the community. She and her co-organisers envisioned the
establishment of an association committed to ‘the progress of the arts, literature,
and sports’ that would rise to the level of feminist groups that existed in cities such
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as London, New York, Paris, Berlin and San Francisco.59 That these women chose
to align themselves with Western, white women’s groups demonstrated their broader
adoption of dominant gender norms. They did not mention African-American women’s
activism. The women likely became aware of feminist activities that took place abroad
through the Cuban mainstream and black presses (which featured social, political and
cultural developments that occurred throughout the Americas and in Europe), as well as
their experiences of work, education and personal travel.60 While embracing feminism
enabled de Gualba and her peers to assert their elite standing as ‘refined’ women,
endorsing family law reforms potentially undermined their agenda to craft an image
of sexual virtue.
Black feminists engaged a burgeoning discourse that sought to align women’s
roles with the national agenda for progress. Although feminism had not yet become
an organised movement in Cuba during the 1910s and few ‘feminist’ organisations existed before the 1920s, individual elite and upwardly-mobile women critiqued women’s
subordination in the press. They debated the terms of female education, marriage and
family law, and suffrage rights. However, they had yet to establish a strong public
presence. This resulted, in part, from a lack of cohesion among women’s groups.
Certainly, women published articles on feminism in a range of publications.61 The
first ‘feminist’ newspaper, however, did not emerge until 1918, and the First National
Women’s Congress did not take place until 1923.62 Once established, most feminist
groups excluded women of African descent from their publications and organisations,
effectively limiting opportunities for cross-racial dialogue. Minerva was the only magazine known to publish black women’s perspectives during this early period through
the regular inclusion of its ‘Páginas Feministas’ (Feminist Pages).
Interestingly, the women who wrote for Minerva never defined feminism in their
own words; instead, they incorporated the perspectives of others. In the February 1912
issue, they published an excerpt by the Spanish feminist La Infanta Eulalia, currently
on tour for her book, Au fil de la vie (Throughout Life). The text challenged assumptions of biological differences between men and women, used to defend patriarchal
dynamics, and instead suggested that only social differences existed. ‘In a new society,
submitted to a great moral education, women will regain her complete freedom, the
strength of a noble feminine ideal could prepare the advent of new branches, vigorous
and strong’, she concluded.63 Similarly, black intellectual Jasón Miseret linked the
‘liberation’ of women to Cuba’s modernisation. He contended that the codification
of marriage customs naturalised sexual inequalities. As a result, women suffered not
only physically, but also intellectually by being condemned to the home. Over time,
he determined, feminism would lead to the eradication of racial and sexual prejudices
by undermining religious and politically moderate views that limited women’s roles to
those as caretakers.64 La Infanta Eulalia’s and Miseret’s articles were among the most
radical perspectives published in Minerva. Their inclusion suggests that the feminist
editors debated and many likely embraced progressive gender roles.
If the ‘Páginas Feministas’ provided a platform through which elite women of
African descent fashioned a modern image of virtuous enlightenment, some aspects of
feminist debates threatened to undermine that image. In particular, as male politicians
initiated property, marriage and divorce reforms – as a means of protecting the holdings
and privileges of the propertied classes – white feminists utilised debates on gender
roles to push for expanded rights within the home and public sphere. The 1917 property
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law granted women authority over inheritances from their natal families, even after
they were married, in addition to the right to maintain custody over their children from
previous marriages. Proposed divorce bills aimed to shift jurisdiction over marriage,
as well as birth and death registration, from the Church to the secular courts. When
the divorce law was passed in 1918, both men and women received the option of
filing for divorce, and women gained the right to alimony and authority over their
children. Such laws shifted gender relations by granting women new legal authority.65
Individuals like the white poets Dulce Marı́a Borrero de Luján and Aurelia Castillo
de González used these issues to insert themselves into the male-dominated political
world. Stoner explains ‘[D]ivorce became a feminist issue when feminists realised that
it freed women from the confines of a debilitating relationship and joyless burdens of
family responsibility in a hostile environment’.66 Most women who published in either
the mainstream or black press, however, did not write about divorce, which they likely
considered a threat to Catholic principles and domestic security.
The proposed marriage laws created a paradox for Minerva’s male and female
writers. On one hand, embracing the right to divorce might help elite blacks portray
themselves as enlightened citizens committed to modernising Cuba. On the other
hand, the magazine’s contributors could appear to be furthering the image of black
immorality. Indeed, divorce challenged the model of the ‘moral and legal’ family
that had become crucial to controlling public comportment. Marriage was largely
unavailable to non-white elites during the colonial era, leaving the majority of Cubans
as illegitimate and therefore ‘unrespectable’ in the eyes of society. As demonstrated by
historian Alejandro de la Fuente, whites presupposed the lack of nuclear families within
the black community as ‘as an inherent trait of blackness’ that reflected their ‘congenital
inferiority’.67 Persons of African descent, to challenge negative conceptions of their
civility, presented matrimony as a strategy for regenerating the community of colour.
Thus, even as marriage reforms made divorce more accessible, statistics suggest that
blacks did not avail themselves of this opportunity as much as might be expected. In
fact, the national rate of marriage among non-whites doubled between 1899 and 1943.68
This trend suggests that blacks focused more upon increasing the social standing of
their families than taking advantage of divorce legislation.
Placed within the context of increasing racial tensions and the marriage debates, how did black women who wrote for Minerva view divorce? Both feminist
and non-feminist contributors routinely encouraged Cubans of colour to form nuclear
households. Out of the hundreds of articles published in Minerva between 1910 and
1915, only two directly addressed divorce. The first, printed in March 1911, appeared
within the feminist pages. Titled ‘El Divorcio’, Carmelina Serracent identified divorce
as a complex moral and sociological issue. She wrote, ‘In my opinion, one should
not approve the divorce law, at least for now. Given our intellectual and economic
conditions, character, and customs, its establishment would engender disastrous
results’.69 Serracent suggested that Cuban women in general lacked the ‘intellectual preparation’ necessary to enjoy ‘liberties’ such as divorce. She cautioned against
the implementation of new divorce laws that would undermine the regeneration of the
community of colour.
Serracent compared Cuban women’s progress to that of women in the United
States. She claimed that the Cuban character was excessively passionate and lustful,
leaving women without rational control over their behaviour. Moreover, in the case
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of divorce, women from the United States had enough education to survive without
a husband. In contrast, Cuban women had less formal training and thus often found
themselves in a lower economic status as divorcees. Serracent linked divorce to the
potential danger of descending into ‘lower’ lifestyles as domestic workers or prostitutes,
and she equated poverty with dishonour and illegitimate children.70 For elite blacks
like Serracent, matrimony ensured sexual morality and provided economic stability
under a patriarchal guardian.
More than a year after the feminist column came to an end, a 1914 article published in Minerva revealed a different perspective regarding womanhood and national
progress. In ‘Divorciémonos!’ (‘Let’s Divorce!’), an anonymous writer presented divorce not as a threat to happy marriages, but as a shield for women in violent relationships. Perhaps the author elected to maintain their anonymity due to the controversial
nature of their perspective. The writer noted that married women lacked legal protection against spousal abuse – which in some cases became so severe that it led to
husbands murdering their wives. Reflecting on this reality, they presented marriage as
a dictatorial space in which men dominated women with free reign. The author perceived the divorce laws as an opportunity to rectify domestic issues and suggested that
divorce helped dignify the Cuban woman by ‘saving her from matrimonial tyranny’.71
Above all, the writer noted the benefit of divorce reforms for transforming
women’s social opportunities. Both politicians and social reformists had failed to
support a woman’s right to choose her husband or contribute to making major household decisions. Divorce, at least in theory, presented women with the opportunity to
protect themselves and their children. The author concluded that divorce should be
more easily accessible for women. The divergent perspectives on divorce presented by
Serracent and the anonymous writer represented distinct visions of how legal reforms
would affect women’s social roles and opportunities, especially among the black community. That Minerva published only two articles on the subject reflected a national
trend in which few women opted to take a stand publically. Marital reforms created
anxieties for most Cubans concerned with Catholic virtue and women’s economic
security; they especially concerned elite blacks dedicated to projecting an image of
collective morality.
Debating patriarchy: Morality and unification during the mid-1910s
Concerns over morality not only figured into how elite Cubans of African descent
engaged reforms pertaining to women’s legal rights, they also shaped how women
negotiated black patriarchal authority. Such negotiations required that women affirm
patriarchal values while contesting stereotypes regarding black womanhood. In the
process, elite African-descended women began to challenge black men’s perspectives
on women and family dynamics.
By the mid-1910s, a younger generation of Cubans of African descent attained
elite and middle-class status, many of whom had grown frustrated with the declining
influence of black civic clubs and number of high-ranking black officials in government, despite their commitment to the Liberal and Conservative parties. This emerging
class criticised established sociedades for their lack of ‘decency’ and modern sensibilities during public dances; they established new organisations like the Agrupación
de Asaltos Jóvenes del Vals (1916) and Club Atenas (1917) to socialise privately with
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blacks who met their standards of morality. While this discussion was not new – latenineteenth-century writers, as well as El Nuevo Criollo contributors writing between
1904 and 1906, addressed acts of immorality that took place during social functions
and among unmarried romantic partners – the manner in which elite African descendants articulated gender roles within their publications reflects a shift within the black
community. Male association leaders established a ‘unification’ platform that entailed
two strategies for racial advancement: forming an umbrella organisation that would
advocate for political influence, though not as a distinct party; and building a selective,
‘modern’ constituency of respectable men and women who would represent the highest
potential of the race.72 They sought additional appointments to public posts, elected
positions within established parties and funds for sociedades. Both strategies promoted an exclusive patriarchal leadership that elites deemed superior to the labouring
poor.
Black intellectuals, historian Karen Morrison explains, ‘feared that a large proportion of illegitimate unions [between black women and white men] would contribute
to the extinction of people of color and consistently spoke of the supposed prostitution,
ignorance, and lack of morality of the Afro-Cuban women who involved themselves
in these types of relationships’.73 Journalist Ramón Vasconcelos’ column, ‘Palpitaciones de la Raza de Color’ (Palpitations of the Coloured Race), exemplified this
trend in unification debates that addressed racial advancement within the black press.
Published almost weekly in the national newspaper La Prensa between 1915 and
1916, ‘Palpitaciones’ contributors suggested that black men assume their ‘rightful’
positions as leaders of their communities. In August of 1915, Vasconcelos (penname
Tristán) faulted women as ‘the greatest obstacle in the regeneration of blacks’. He
viewed women of African descent as morally deficient in comparison to their white
counterparts. Black, mulata and mestiza women possessed varying levels of virtue.
Black women were the least appealing. The mulata, ‘target of all [sexual] appetites,’
had ‘the highest rate of prostitution’. Vasconcelos also estimated that 30 per cent of
mestizas prostituted themselves, while only 10 per cent married. He acknowledged
that a lack of education had led women to their sexually indecent positions. He thus
challenged the respectable members of the black population to ‘prepare women for the
fight against the evil limitations’ of the lower classes. Vasconcelos called upon men to
‘restore’ women to the home, as their ‘great mission’ to uplifting the race lay within
the household.74
In September 1915, Caridad Chacón de Guillén, a reader from Havana, submitted
a letter to Vasconcelos entitled ‘Mi Opinión’ (‘My Opinion’). Concerned about the
virtue of women of colour, she approved Vasconcelos’s ‘opinion about the carelessness
with which many women of our race see marriage, and how they are easily delivered
to the brothel’.75 The former Ladies Committee president for the sociedad Divina
Caridad suggested that ‘Palpitaciones’ readers ‘need not be alarmed’ that a man of
colour would criticise the sexual indiscretions of black and mulata women, for these
critiques ‘should be said’. She felt it was important that ‘one understand the difference
between being the wife of a poor immaculate man who lived honestly, versus being
an unnamed concubine’.76 Troubled by the large percentage of unmarried couples that
included women of African descent, Chacón enthusiastically supported reform through
‘moral education.’ She proposed that black sociedades hold conferences to ‘remedy’
the widespread matter.
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Not all female readers of black periodicals supported the generalisation that
women degenerated the community of colour. In an especially charged letter written in
1915, ‘Palpitaciones’ reader Indiana (penname), reprimanded Vasconcelos for arguing
that black women lacked virtue. She affirmed women’s obligation ‘to educate and
guide the family in the home in the path of duty’.77 She also supported his belief
that moral education was ‘the one and only base that supports all virtues’. Yet she
considered his sweeping claim that African-descended women led lives of immorality
a ‘great injustice’ to the number of accomplished women living throughout the island.78
Indiana reminded Vasconcelos that, on average, black women were more literate than
their male counterparts. The real problem lay not in women’s sexual behaviours, but in
the relationship between husbands and wives. Many men created abusive households
and, therefore, undermined the institution of marriage. This dynamic, she claimed, was
the real reason that many women decided to cohabitate. Indiana stated that only when
men complied with their ‘duties’ as husbands and gentlemen, so that their behaviour
would ‘accurately reflect’ that the woman was their wife, would more black women
choose to marry.
Women such as Indiana did not seek to dismantle patriarchy. They affirmed the
bourgeois model of womanhood while protesting the wrongdoings of men. In a second
letter, Indiana reiterated that black men undermined the institution of marriage by
disrespecting their wives. She pondered: ‘[If] the black man marries his wife only to
submit her to ill treatment and not to love her and make her a queen of the home, how can
a woman in such circumstances obey her husband or try to inculcate her most high duties
to family and society’? She also complained that, beyond the household, male leaders
of black sociedades placed too much emphasis on dances and, as a result, brought
virtuous women into contact with women of ‘questionable’ character. Indeed, parents
who had ‘educated their daughters in the sacred principles of morality and decency’
often kept their daughters away from the sociedades. Her observation highlights how
elite black women distinguished themselves from ‘women of questionable conduct’.
For Indiana, men needed to reform themselves, as well as the associations that they
had formed, in order to be worthy of the company of virtuous women.
Despite such calls for virtuous male leaders, some black women were no longer
satisfied with having a patriarch serve as the only authoritative figure. In August 1915,
a woman identified only as N. Lesnar wrote in support of male leaders of black civic
clubs who called for racial unity on behalf of moral reform and greater representation
in the political system. Yet she argued that ‘the unification of the sociedades de color is
not a problem that concerns only men, but also the women who follow them step by step
and even contribute their part’.79 She asserted that both sexes needed to play a role in the
process of community regeneration. Increasingly, women considered their individual
improvement to be a crucial step towards collective progress, a perspective that would
evolve during the early years of the republic. Thus, by the mid-1910s, individuals
like Cienfuegos journalist Ana Hidalgo Vidal demanded new civic responsibilities for
women. As she proclaimed to the female readers of ‘Palpitaciones’: ‘Only when we
have loyally interpreted our rights and duties . . . when we fix our attention on our own
advancement and the advancement of the rest, only then will we have accomplished
the first step of progress’.80 Lesnar’s contemporary, Marı́a G. Sánchez, asserted that
women were more apt than men to overcome the difficulties necessary to achieve
progress. Sánchez boldly stated that women were predisposed – as demonstrated by
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their morality, intelligence and sympathy – to ensure national and racial triumph. She
asserted that a woman was entitled to feel the ‘the owner of herself’.81 As Sánchez
called black women to action, she placed herself in accord with others who questioned
the terms of patriarchy.
Conclusion
Elite black women’s writings reiterate the utility of employing an intersectional framework to examine Cuba’s transition from colony to republic. Patriarchy and anti-black
racism created distinct challenges for white women and black men who pursued equality. Yet women of African descent dealt with both gender and racial discrimination in
their daily lives. Stereotypes of black femininity served as justifications for their exclusion from social, political and employment opportunities. Additionally, black women’s
marginalisation calls attention to the ways elite white women did not have to concern
themselves with anti-black racism, and how men of African descent benefited from
patriarchy. An analysis of black women’s writings highlights the existence of multiple
‘women’s movements’ and struggles for racial equality that also overlapped.
Women’s writings in the black press call attention to the interrelation of social
norms and political transformations. On one hand, the press served as a political space
that featured debates regarding legal reforms and their impact on society. Articles
regarding divorce, for example, elucidated how laws could buttress women’s social
authority or undermine their material circumstances. On the other hand, the press
demonstrated how Catholic mores and anxieties regarding the virtue of the black community shaped how African descendants navigated the political sphere. Adhering to
elite gender norms served as a strategy for challenging racial discrimination. In this
sense, social actions – like writing for the press, mothering and public comportment –
became political actions. Gendered racial ideologies, in other words, facilitated connections between social dynamics and political transformations.
Finally, in focusing on the press, I have sought to illustrate the importance of understanding how women of African descent forged an intellectual trajectory. Elite black
women writing during the early years of the Cuban Republic, many of whom formed
part of a growing professional class, positioned themselves as part of a young generation who sought increased civic responsibilities. Their letters, articles and poetry reveal
how national political dynamics prompted black women to engage broader debates regarding women’s rights and duties. They also show how women of African descent, in
turn, helped shape such debates. Writers from this period established a foundation for
the more progressive black feminist perspectives that would emerge during the 1920s.
Certainly, their emphasis on white elite models of behaviour reinforced assumptions
of black pathology, as well as the marginalisation of poor blacks (and) practitioners of
African-based religions. Nevertheless, their assertion that women of colour could be
enlightened and dignified invites further inquiry into the post-emancipation intellectual
traditions of black women in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Notes
I would like to thank my colleagues in the History Department at Morgan State University for their feedback on
earlier iterations of this paper, as well as James Brunson, Alexandra Gelbard and Jennifer Williams. I also want
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to express my sincere appreciation to the editors and two anonymous readers for Gender & History for their
careful and constructive critiques that helped push my analysis.
1. Cuba existed as a Spanish colony until 1898, when the United States intervened to occupy the island
(1898–1902).
2. K. Lynn Stoner, ‘On Men Reforming the Rights of Men: The Abrogation of the Cuban Adultery Law,
1930’, Cuban Studies 21 (1991), pp. 83–99. Also see K. Lynn Stoner, From the House to the Streets:
The Cuban Women’s Movement for Legal Reform (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991); Julio César
González Pagés, En busca de un espacio: historia de mujeres en Cuba (Havana: Ediciones de Ciencias
Sociales, 2003); Marı́a del Carmen Barcia, Capas populares y modernidad en Cuba, 1878–1930 (Havana:
Fundacion Fernando Ortiz, 2005); Esperánza Méndez Oliva and Santiago Alemán Santana, Villareñas
camino a la emancipación (Havana: Editora Politica, 2008).
3. Within this article, I use several terms to categorise Cubans of African descent, which were derived from
contemporary sources. Negro (black) and mulato (mulatto) refer to individuals who self-identified as such.
Gente de color (people of colour) and raza de color (the coloured race) linked black Cubans to a unified
community, which I refer to as the community of colour. I use these designations interchangeably with the
terms persons of African descent and black.
4. Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation and Revolution, 1868–1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1999); Aline Helg, Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886–1912
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation for All: Race,
Inequality and Politics in Twentieth-century Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
5. Melissa Blanco Borelli, She is Cuba: A Genealogy of the Mulata Body (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2016); Vera Kutzinski, Sugar’s Secrets: Race and the Erotics of Cuban Nationalism (Charlottesville:
University of Virginia Press, 1993); Jill Lane, ‘Smoking Habaneras, or A Cuban Struggle with Racial
Demons’, Social Text 104 (2010), pp. 11–37; Luz Mena, ‘Stretching the Limits of Gendered Spaces:
Black and Mulatto Women in 1830s Havana’, Cuban Studies 36 (2005), pp. 87–104; Gema R. Guevara,
‘Inexacting Whiteness: Blanqueamineto as a Gender-Specific Trope in the Nineteenth Century’, Cuban
Studies 36 (2005), pp. 105–28; Jafari Allen, ¡Venceremos?: Sexuality, Gender, and Black Self-Making in
Cuba (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).
6. Sarah L. Franklin, Women and Slavery in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Cuba (Rochester: University of
Rochester Press, 2012); Verena Stolke, Marriage, Class and Colour in Nineteenth-Century Cuba (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Karen Y. Morrison, Cuba’s Racial Crucible: The Sexual
Economy of Social Identities, 1750–2000 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015).
7. Tiffany A. Sippial, Prostitution, Modernity, and the Making of the Cuban Republic, 1840–1920 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).
8. Maikel Colón Pichardo, ¿Es fácil ser hombre y difı́cil ser negro? Masculinidad y estereotipos raciales en
Cuba (1898–1912) (Havana: Casa Editorial Abril, 2015).
9. Carmen Montejo Arrechea, ‘Minerva: A Magazine for Women (and Men) of Color’, in Lisa Brock and
Digna Castaeda Fuertes (eds), Between Race and Empire: African Americans and Cubans before the
Cuban Revolution (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), pp. 33–48; Dawn Duke, Literary Passion,
Ideological Commitment: Towards a Legacy of Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian Women Writers (Lewisburg:
Bucknell University Press, 2008); Marı́a del Carmen Barcia Zequeira, Mujeres al margen de la historia
(Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2009); Daisy Rubiera Castillo and Inés Marı́a Martiatu Terry
(eds), Afrocubanas: historia, pensamiento, y prácticas culturales (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales,
2011).
10. Barcia Zequeira, Mujeres al margen de la historia, p. 116. Also see Teresa Prados-Torreira, Mambisas:
Rebel Women in Nineteenth-Century Cuba (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 2005); Stoner, From
the House to the Streets.
11. Armando Guerra, Martı́ y la mujer: Conferencia (Artemisa: Editorial ‘El Pueblo’, 1933), p. 30. Also cited
in Prados-Torreira, Mambisas, p. 134.
12. The Spanish colonial government responded to the initial separatist insurrection militarily but also by
passing reform measures and promising liberal reforms. Notably, it sought to demonstrate its commitment
to slave abolition with the passage of the 1870 Moret Law, which freed children and the elderly. Following
the Pact of Zanjón that achieved peace between insurgent leaders and the government, the Spanish state
established the 1880 patronato, or apprentice system for the enslaved. Individuals received a small wage
with the expectation that they remain working for their slaveholders until 1886. See Rebecca J. Scott, Slave
Emancipation in Cuba (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985); Camillia Cowling, ‘Negotiating
Freedom: Women of Colour and the Transition to Free Labour in Cuba, 1870–1886’, Slavery & Abolition:
A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies 26 (2005), pp. 377–91.
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
498
Gender & History
13. For a discussion of phenotypical classifications and ethnic identifications in Cuba, see Melina Pappademos,
Black Political Activism and the Cuban Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012),
pp. 125–47; Olga Portuondo, Entre esclavos y libres de Cuba colonial (Santiago de Cuba: Editorial Oriente,
2003).
14. See Helg, Our Rightful Share; Pappademos, Black Political Activism and the Cuban Republic.
15. Letter from Marı́a Cabrales to Magdalena Peñarredonda. Published in Damaris A. Torres Elers, Marı́a
Cabrales: vida y acción revolucionarias (Santiago de Cuba: Ediciones Santiago, 2005), pp. 82–3.
16. Louis A. Pérez, Cuba Between Empires, 1878–1902 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1982); Marial
Iglesias Utset, A Cultural History of Cuba During the US Occupation, 1898–1902 (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2011).
17. Ada Ferrer, ‘Cuba, 1898: Rethinking Race, Nation, and Empire’, Radical History Review 73 (1999), pp. 22–
46; Sippial, Prostitution, Modernity, and the Making of the Cuban Republic, pp. 112–47; Prados-Torreira,
Mambisas, pp. 147–52.
18. Black women complained of discrimination in their letters to the Senator Juan Gualberto Gómez. See
1908 letter from Carmela López Garrido, Adquisiciones Legajo 11, Expediente 445, Archivo Nacional
de Cuba (ANC). Letter published in Leopoldo Horrego Estuch and Oilda Hevia Lanier, Juan Gualberto
Gómez: Un gran inconforme (Havana: Ciencias Sociales, 2004), p. 301; Letter from Marı́a Amparo
Callara, Adquisiciones Legajo 11, Expediente 445, ANC. For statistical data, see Joseph Prentiss Sanger,
et al., Report on the Census of Cuba, 1899 (Washington DC: Government Print Office, 1900); Victor H.
Olmstead and Henry Gannett, Cuba: Population, History, and Resources, 1907 (Washington DC: United
States Bureau of the Census, 1909); Angel C. Betancourt, Census of the Republic of Cuba, 1919 (Cuba:
Dirección general del censo, 1919).
19. Cuba, Oficina el Censo, Censo de la República de Cuba, 1907 (Havana: Oficina del Censo, 1908).
20. Ada Ferrer, ‘Rustic Men, Civilized Nation: Race, Culture and Contention on the Eve of Cuban Independence’, Hispanic American Historical Review 78 (1998), pp. 663–86; Bonnie Lucero, ‘Engendering
Inequality: Masculinity and Racial Exclusion in Cuba, 1895–1902’ (PhD dissertation, University of North
Carolina, 2013); Pappademos, Black Political Activism and the Cuban Republic.
21. ‘Dos cartas decorosas’, El Nuevo Criollo, 21 January 1905, p. 6. Also see Kim Welch, ‘Our Hunger is
Our Song: The Politics of Race in Cuba, 1900–1930’, in Isidore Okepwho, Carole Boyce Davies and Ali
A. Mazrui (eds), The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1999), pp. 178–96, here p. 184; de la Fuente, A Nation for All, p. 62.
22. Rafael Roche y Monteagudo, La policı́a y sus misterios en Cuba (Havana: Imprenta ‘La Prueba’, 1908);
Fernando Ortiz, Hampa afrocubana: Los negros brujos (apuntes para un estudio de etnologı́a criminal)
(Madrid: Librerı́a de Fernando Fé, 1906); also see Israel Castellanos, Medicina legal y criminologı́a afrocubanas (Havana: Librerı́a é Imprenta ‘La Moderna Poesı́a’, 1937); Alejandra Bronfman, Measures of
Inequality: Social Science, Citizenship, and Race in Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2004); Alejandra Bronfman, ‘The Allure of Technology: Photographs, Statistics and the Elusive
Female Criminal in 1930s Cuba’, Gender & History 19 (2007), pp. 60–77.
23. The press supported these viewpoints in its depiction of West Indian migrant populations. See Aviva
Chomsky, ‘“Barbados or Canada?” Race, Immigration and Nation in Early Twentieth-Century Cuba’,
Hispanic American Historical Review 80 (2000), pp. 415–62; César Ayala, ‘Social and Economic Aspects
of Sugar Production in Cuba, 1880–1930’, Latin American Research Review 30 (1995), pp. 95–124; de la
Fuente, A Nation for All, p. 101.
24. Silvio Castro Fernández, La masacre de los Independientes de Color en 1912 (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias
Sociales, 2002); Frank Guridy, ‘“War on the Negro”: Race and the Revolution of 1933’, Cuban Studies 40
(2009), pp. 49–73; Aline Helg, ‘Black Men, Racial Stereotyping, and Violence in Cuba and the US South
at the Turn of the Century’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 42 (2000), pp. 576–604; Serafin
Portuondo Linares, Los independientes de color: historia del Partido Independiente de Color (1950; repr.
Havana: Editorial Caminos, 2002).
25. Pappademos, Black Political Activism and the Cuban Republic, p. 99.
26. Helg, ‘Black Men, Racial Stereotyping’.
27. Philip A. Howard, Changing History: Cuban Cabildos and Societies of Color in the Nineteenth Century
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1998); Carmen Montejo Arrechea, Sociedades negras en Cuba,
1878–1960 (Havana: Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de la Cultura Cubana Juan Marinello, 2004);
Fernando Ortiz, Los cabildos y la fiesta afrocubanos del Dia de Reyes (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias
Sociales, 1992).
28. ‘La ignorancia’, Minerva, 15 December 1888, p. 4. See also Maria Cleofa, ‘A Onatina’, Minerva,
26 January 1889, pp. 6–7.
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
‘Writing’ Black Womanhood in the Early Cuban Republic, 1904–16
499
29. Jill Lane, Blackface Cuba, 1840–1895 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).
30. Maria Storni, ‘Carta’, Minerva: Revista quincenal dedicada a la mujer de color, 15 November 1888,
pp. 3–5.
31. Ursula Coimbra Valverde (Cecilia), ‘A la Señora Doña Pastora Ramı́rez de Calvo’, Minerva: Revista
quincenal dedicada a la mujer de color, 15 December 1888, pp. 3–4.
32. Coimbra Valverde, ‘A la Señora Doña Pastora Ramı́rez de Calvo’.
33. Indeed, black men developed a rich tradition of protesting racial inequalities in the military, political system
and labour force. Rafael Serra, Martin Morúa Delgado and Juan Gualberto Gómez are among the most
influential figures to have guided their movement. As scholars demonstrate, these men often diverged in
their strategies. For further discussion see Helg, Our Rightful Share; de la Fuente, A Nation for All; and
Pappademos, Black Political Activism.
34. Ursula Coimbra Valverde, ‘La mujer en la poesı́a cubana, I’, El Nuevo Criollo, 15 October 1904, p. 6.
35. Marı́a G. Sánchez, ‘Ante “Labor Nueva”’, Labor Nueva, 20 August 1915, p. 6. Labor Nueva was published
by Enrique Torres out of Havana.
36. Montejo Arrechea, ‘Minerva: A Magazine for Women (and Men) of Color>’; Lane, Blackface Cuba.
37. La Redacción, ‘En Marcha’, Minerva, 15 September 1910, pp. 1–2.
38. Joaquı́n Aramburu, ‘Palabras de Aliento’, Minerva, 15 October 1910, p. 8.
39. On political philosophies and the gendered process of racial uplift within the black Cuban press see de
la Fuente, A Nation for All; Frank Guridy, Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a
World of Empire and Jim Crow (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010); Pappademos,
Black Political Activism and the Cuban Republic.
40. Saturnino Escoto y Carrión, ‘El matrimonio es necesario’, Ecos Juveniles, 30 November 1909, p. 2. Also
see ‘No piensan en Cuba con todas sus palmas’, El Nuevo Criollo, 5 November 1904, p. 1; ‘A la clase de
color’, El Nuevo Criollo, 16 July 1905, p. 3; ‘Oriente es la esperanza’, El Nuevo Criollo, 13 May 1905,
p. 1; ‘Con lentitud’, El Nuevo Criollo, 15 October 1904, p. 1; Canuto de Cana Brava, ‘Un poco de etnologia’,
La Prensa, 13 October 1915, p. 10; Arturo González Dorticós, ‘Premisas’, La Prensa, 5 November 1915,
p. 8.
41. In this sense, black Cuban elite strategies for racial equality mirrored those of African Americans in the
United States. See Kevin K. Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the
Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Michele Mitchell, Righteous
Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Martin Summers, Manliness and Its Discontents: The Black
Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2003).
42. See Marı́a del Carmen Barcia Zequeira, ‘Mujeres en torno a Minerva’, Rábida 17 (1998), pp. 113–20.
43. Emilia Garcia Viamonte, ‘Carta abierta’, Ecos Juveniles, January 1910.
44. Guridy, Forging Diaspora.
45. de la Fuente, A Nation for All, p. 163.
46. Reglamento de la sociedad de intrucción y recreo ‘Nueva Era’ (Guantánamo: Imprenta La Universal,
1928).
47. Legajo 2659, No. 2, Archivo Histórico Provincial Santiago de Cuba (AHPSC).
48. Sallie Derome, Preface to ‘Amor y deber’, El Nuevo Criollo, 3 December 1904, p. 3. Published in parts on
31 December 1904, p. 3; 7 January 1905, p. 3; 14 January 1905, p. 5; 21 January 1905, p. 4; 28 January
1905, p. 5; 11 February 1905, p. 4.
49. Kirwin R. Shaffer, ‘The Radical Muse: Women and Anarchism in Early-Twentieth-Century Cuba’, Cuban
Studies 34 (2003), pp. 130–53.
50. Juan Gualberto Gómez, ‘Minerva’, Minerva, 15 September 1910, pp. 2–3.
51. Gómez, ‘Minerva’.
52. Marı́a Risquet de Márquez, ‘Impresiones y Comentarios’, Minerva, 1 November 1910, p. 10.
53. Carmelina Serracent, ‘La Influencia de la mujer en el porvenir de la sociedad’, Minerva, 1 November 1910,
pp. 10–11.
54. Serracent, ‘La Influencia de la mujer’, p. 11.
55. Eugenia Zayas y Estévez, ‘La escuela’, Minerva, 31 January 1911, p. 8.
56. Lucrecia Loret de Mola, ‘La ilustración’, Minerva, 15 April 1912, p. 14–15.
57. See Inés M.O.M.S., ‘Ateismo y religión’, Ecos Juveniles, July 1910, p. 4; Antonina Collazo y Osguera,
‘La educación se impone,’ and ‘La ilustración’, Minerva, 15 April 1912, p. 14–15; Princesa de Lamballo,
‘Carretera Arriba’, Minerva, 15 November 1911, p. 11.
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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Gender & History
58. Mario González and K. Lynn Stoner, Minerva: Revista Quincenal Dedicada a la Mujer de Color (Havana:
Instituto de Historia de Cuba Microfiche, 1998), p. 5.
59. ‘Club Feminista “Minerva”’, Minerva, 15 January 1911, p. 8.
60. Louis A. Pérez, On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture (New York: Harper Perennial,
2001); Guridy, Forging Diaspora.
61. I have also found a feminist column published during the early 1910s in the Trinidad magazine, entitled,
Alegrı́a.
62. See Stoner, From the House to the Streets; González Pagés, En busca de un espacio.
63. La Infanta Eulalia, ‘El Feminismo’, Minerva, 1 February 1912, pp. 12–13.
64. Jazón Miseret, ‘La Razón de feminismo’, Minerva, 1 October 1913, p. 11. Also see Victor Hugo,
‘El Derecho de la Mujer’, Minerva, 15 January 1914, p. 10.
65. Graciela Cruz-Taura, ‘Women’s Rights and the Cuban Constitution of 1940’, Cuban Studies 24 (1994),
pp. 123–40.
66. Stoner, From the House to the Streets, p. 72.
67. de la Fuente, A Nation for All, p. 155.
68. Enid Logan, ‘The 1899 Cuban Marriage Law Controversy: Church, State and Empire in the Crucible of
the Nation’, Journal of Social History 42 (2008), pp. 469–94.
69. ‘El Divorcio’, Minerva, 30 March 1911, pp. 7–8.
70. ‘El Divorcio’.
71. ‘Divorciémonos!’, Minerva, 15 April 1914, pp. 7–8.
72. de la Fuente, A Nation for All; Pappademos, Black Political Activism and the Cuban Republic.
73. Morrison, Cuba’s Racial Crucible, p. 181.
74. Tristan, ‘Tres Puntos’, La Prensa, 16 August 1915, p. 6. The racial identification ‘mestiza’ refers to women
of mixed European and indigenous and/or African ancestry. Often Cubans used the term to refer to fairskinned persons who were the children of a white parent and a mulato parent. See examples provided in
Morrison, Cuba’s Racial Crucible, pp. 170, 210, 220, 225.
75. Caridad Chacón de Guillén, ‘Mi opinión’, La Prensa, 30 September 1915, p. 10.
76. Chacón de Guillén, ‘Mi opinion’.
77. Indiana, ‘Reflecciones Femeninas’, La Prensa, 31 August 1915, p. 12.
78. Indiana, ‘Reflecciones Femeninas’.
79. N. Lesnar, ‘Palabras de mujer’, La Prensa, 10 August 1915, p. 12.
80. Ana Hidalgo Vidal, ‘¿Es mejor no meaneallo?’, La Prensa, 10 November 1915, p. 13.
81. Marı́a G. Sánchez, ‘Accionemos’, Labor Nueva, September 1916, p. 6.
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
6
To Be Black and to Be Cuban
The Dilemma of Afro-Cubans in Post-independence Politics
Aline Helg
Copyright © 2006. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. All rights reserved.
Cuba, like Haiti, was one of the few countries that abolished slavery before it emerged on
the world stage as an independent nation. Although Cuba declared independence in 1902,
Cuban revolutionaries had been fighting for more political autonomy since the middle of the
nineteenth century. Cubans of all races and backgrounds contributed to the struggle against
the Spaniards, although after independence Afro-Cubans were largely absent from the
important political and economic institutions on the island. This chapter’s main purpose is
to document the contribution and marginalization of blacks in the period following Cuban
independence in 1902. It also highlights the continued tensions among racial and national
identities at the turn of the century when the United States emerged as the preeminent
military and economic power in the Western Hemisphere.
Latin American patriots and nationalists have often persuaded peoples of African descent
to ascribe to given national programs. In many cases, such identifications have done little
to ameliorate pervading social, political, and cultural marginalization for the vast majority
of poor blacks. Uncritical nationalists of all backgrounds have, nonetheless, continued to
label Afro-Latin American protests and attempts at organization as unpatriotic. The lack of
strong democratic traditions in Latin America before the 1980s restricted the activities of
civil society and stymied black mobilization. Based on archival material, Helg demonstrates
how the Cuban state and society collaborated to stymie the emergence of independent black
voices in the first few decades of the twentieth century.
After achieving independence, most Latin American nations banned references to race in their
constitutions and laws and claimed to be racial democracies. However, at the same time that
they promoted myths of racial equality, ruling white elites embraced ideologies positing
whites’ superiority and blacks’ and Indians’ inferiority and designed policies aimed at
maintaining the socioracial hierarchies inherited from colonialism. Such conditions confronted
Latin American blacks with an unsolvable dilemma. If they denied the veracity of their national
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myths of racial equality, they exposed themselves to accusations of being racist and unpatriotic.
If they subscribed to the myths, they had to simultaneously conform to negative views of
blacks. Indeed, the myths made it blasphemous for people of African descent to proclaim their
blackness along with their patriotism.
This chapter focuses on the dilemma faced by Afro-Cubans in the 1900s. After explaining
Cuba’s belated independence in 1902, it describes continuing racial inequalities and examines
how Afro-Cubans were underrepresented and marginalized in politics, in sharp contrast with
their massive participation in the armies that previously fought against Spain. The chapter then
turns to a discussion of the formation and ideology of the first black party in the Western
Hemisphere, Cuba’s Partido Independiente de Color. Founded in 1908, the party was
exterminated in 1912 by the Cuban army and white Cuban volunteers in a bloody racist
massacre that wiped out not only hundreds of independientes but thousands of Afro-Cuban
men, women, and children as well. The chapter concludes by briefly examining the long-lasting
effects of the 1912 massacre and the continuing difficulties faced by Afro-Cubans who identify
themselves as black and Cuban.1
CUBA’S BELATED INDEPENDENCE
Copyright © 2006. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. All rights reserved.
Unlike most of Latin America, Cuba only achieved independence in 1902. Moreover, its
independence was drastically limited by the U.S. imposition of the Platt Amendment and by the
Unites States’ growing domination of Cuban economy. Three main factors explain the island’s
belated and restricted independence.
First, since the 1804 Haitian Revolution, Cuba had developed the most successful sugar
plantation economy in the Western Hemisphere—but an economy so dependent on slavery that
it continued to import slaves in massive quantities from Africa until 1860. As a result,
throughout the nineteenth century enslaved and free people of African descent comprised
between 33 and 58 percent of the island’s population. Obviously, Afro-Cubans were far from
being a homogeneous group. Although all probably shared the experience of some kind of
white racism, broad cultural, educational, class, sexual, and regional differences divided them.
No common Afro-Cuban culture or subculture united them against the dominant Spanish-Cuban
culture. Rather, African and Spanish traditions blended to produce a continuum of subcultures.
At one end of the continuum were the African-born and those women and men deeply
attached to African cultures (notably the Yoruba or Lucumi and the Congo traditions and their
respective religions, santería and palo monte). At the other end were those with long-standing
free status and residence, especially in western port cities, who identified with the dominant
Eurocentric culture. Some mulattoes among the latter also assimilated prevailing racial
prejudices and distanced themselves from blacks, former slaves, and Africans. Socioeconomic
differences among the various regions of Cuba affected Afro-Cubans as well. Not surprisingly,
the racial barrier was stronger where slavery and the sugar latifundios dominated, particularly
in Matanzas and Santa Clara. In Oriente, in eastern Cuba, the existence of an important free
population of color together with a slave population distributed in smaller plantations tended
to blur the racial barrier.
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Second, such a high proportion of blacks made many whites fear a revolution along Haitian
lines in Cuba, a fear astutely sustained by Spain in order to prevent any movement of
independence. In 1844, in particular, the discovery of an alleged conspiracy by slaves and free
people of color to abolish slavery and end colonialism led to the indiscriminate and bloody
repression of blacks and mulattoes. Known as the Conspiracy of La Escalera because suspects
were tortured, tied to a ladder; it left a deep impression on Afro-Cubans, who since then have
remembered 1844 as the Year of the Lash. At the same time, fear of a black revolution,
dependency on slave labor, and hatred of Spain prompted repeated attempts by elite white
Cubans to promote annexation to the United States.2
Copyright © 2006. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. All rights reserved.
Third, even after the launching of Cuba’s first war of independence in 1868 (not
coincidentally after slavery had been abolished in the southern United States), the issue of
slavery confined the conflict to Oriente, where the rebels emancipated the slaves in 1869.
Nevertheless, the fear of some whites of a black takeover continuously debilitated the
anticolonial movement. Simultaneously, the increasing participation of freedmen and other free
people of color in the Liberation Army—not only in the lower ranks but also as military chiefs
—heavily contributed to the white leadership’s decision to negotiate with Spain the Pact of
Zanjón, which ended the Ten Years’ War in 1878. When mulatto general Antonio Maceo and a
few other leaders rejected the pact and started the Guerra Chiquita (Short War) in August
1879, again racism played a major role in their defeat by Spain.3
Afterward Cuba’s independence process was halted for fifteen years. In 1886 the Spanish
monarchy abolished slavery, but Cuban society remained divided along racial lines. Blacks
and mulattoes continued to be destined to the lowest-paid jobs and discriminated against in all
aspects of their lives. There followed several years during which the pro-independence
movement struggled to reconstitute itself. In this process, José Marti, a white Cuban journalist
and writer in exile, acquired the conviction that if so far Cubans had failed to achieve
independence, it was mainly due to whites’ fear of a black takeover after victory. From the
United States, he initiated a campaign to dismiss such a possibility by magnifying the
importance of the 1869 abolition of slavery in the eastern liberated territories and by
idealizing race relations in the Liberation Army that fought from 1868 to 1878.4 Inside Cuba,
mulatto journalist Juan Gualberto Gómez paralleled Martí’s propaganda of racial harmony in
his Afro-Cuban newspaper La Igualdad (Equality).
On February 24, 1895, a new war of independence was launched, but the problem of racism
among the patriot army remained unsolved. Significantly, the supreme military command of the
new Liberation Army was entrusted to the white Dominican general Máximo Gómez rather
than to the Afro-Cuban general Antonio Maceo. In addition, the Manifiesto de Montecristi
announcing the renewal of hostilities against Spain, written by Marti, addressed the risk of a
race war in Cuba with troubling ambiguity: it denied such a threat while simultaneously
contemplating its very possibility. In May 1895, shortly after landing in Cuba, Marti was killed
in a Spanish ambush.5
The patriot rebellion fully succeeded only in Oriente, the region with a significant
population of African descent and a tradition of struggle against Spain. Blacks joined the
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insurgency en masse from its beginning for a variety of reasons, ranging from the need to flee
from Spanish repression to the possibility of improving their personal lives or contributing to
the fight for a just Cuba. In the process, many of them acquired greater expectations regarding
their position once independence was achieved, despite the fact that, not surprisingly, racism
did not vanish from social relations among rebels. However, Afro-Cuban overrepresentation in
the Liberation Army revived the specter of a black dictatorship along Haitian lines in Cuba.
Throughout the War for Independence (1895—1898), white leaders used the threat of another
Haiti to limit the power of Maceo and other Afro-Cubans and to keep blacks “in their place.”
Conversely, other Afro-Cuban leaders were praised for their modesty and held up by whites as
an example of the “good black” who did not seek prestige and popularity. More dramatically
for the outcome of the struggle against Spain, when Maceo completed the most successful
campaign of the war, the invasion of western Cuba that gave the independence movement a
truly national dimension, the all-white provisional government of Cuba Libre interpreted it as
further evidence of Maceo’s supposed plan to transform Cuba into a black dictatorship. They
ignored Maceo’s conviction that, with supplies and fresh troops from the east, the Liberation
Army could soon beat the Spaniards, and they kept his troops isolated in the west. As a result,
they jeopardized the most decisive insurgent victory over Spain and indirectly caused Maceo’s
death in combat in late 1896.
Afterward, neither the patriots nor the Spaniards achieved any major military breakthrough.
In this context, it is no surprise that some elite white Cubans welcomed the U.S. intervention in
1898 and the subsequent U.S. occupation until 1902. Drawing on Cuba’s deeply rooted
patterns of racial differentiation, the U.S. military government imposed policies that often
discriminated against Afro-Cubans.
Copyright © 2006. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. All rights reserved.
RACE IN THE FIRST REPUBLIC
In 1902, far from making a sharp break with the U.S. administration, the first elected Cuban
government carried on several of the latter’s discriminatory policies. Presided over by the
Moderate Tomás Estrada Palma, it continued to marginalize blacks in politics and public
employment. In addition, it launched a campaign to repress traditions of African origin under
the label of witchcraft as a means of denigrating all Afro-Cubans while simultaneously
promoting the “whitening” of Cuba through subsidized Spanish immigration: 128,000
Spaniards, mostly young men entering the labor force, migrated to Cuba between 1902 and
1907, 70,000 of them on a permanent basis. These were significant figures for a total
population of about 2,000,000.6
By the time of the second U.S. occupation (1906—1909), Cuban society was still deeply
divided along racial and social lines, with whites having better positions in all sectors than
Afro-Cubans. According to the U.S.-sponsored census of 1907, Afro-Cubans made up less than
30 percent of Cuba’s total population of 2,048,980, with 274,272 blacks and 334,695
mulattoes, a rapid proportional decline from the mid-nineteenth century. Black and mulatto men
continued to be overrepresented in subordinate occupations, such as agricultural work, day
labor, domestic service, and construction. Commerce was almost closed to Afro-Cubans.
Because few of them had been able to attend school beyond the elementary level, and because
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