Rescuing Our Roots

International Journal of Cuban Studies, 2015

Descendants of the African Diaspora have encountered different challenges to well-being within their respective countries. In Cuba, it appears that while the Cuban Revolution attempted to level the outcomes for all citizens, Black Cubans remain marginalised and targets of discrimination. We, three African American and one Black Cuban women researchers, used a roundtable approach to analyse our experiences in Cuba. Using our individual reflections as data, the four of us sought to make meaning of cultural identity and expression within Cuba, and impact on well-being. Implications of this work can inform interventions for well-being of multiple African Diasporic populations in North and South America.

Cuban Studies, 2003

2016

This paper seeks to demonstrate the importance of examining racial inequalities in today's Cuban society. When the island is clearly in the verge of experiencing fundamental transformations, it is more than ever necessary to study the basic mechanism underpinning the pervasiveness of racial prejudices and racism against Black Cubans both on the island and within its exiled communities. How can the current negotiations between the Cuban and US government impact everyday lives of Black Cubans? The avalanche has not stopped. News about Cuba and its future keeps coming, each day more and more, since December 17th, 2014. A " miraculous " day, many thought, when, coincidentally with the celebration of San Lázaro—one of the most popular and revered saints for Cubans—Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro announced mutual intentions to reestablish the relationship between Cuba and the United States. Public reactions have been multiple and both superficial and deep analyses are not scarce; while speculations proliferate through the press, social media, as well as in entrepreneurial circles and throughout the academic milieu. Most of these accounts and debates fluctuate between two strong positions: one adopts a utopian vision of the Cuban future, where a new island with plenty of possibilities, a promised

Contributions in Black Studies, 1994

UBA HAS, AT LEAST SINCE the American revolution, occupied the imagination of North Americans. For nineteenth-century capital, Cuba's close proximity, its Black slaves, and its warm but diverse climate invited economic penetration. By 1900, capital desired in Cuba "a docile working class, a passive peasantry, a compliant bourgeoisie, and a subservient political elite.'" Not surprisingly, Cuba's African heritage stirred an opposite imagination among Blacks to the North. The island's rebellious captives, its anti-colonial struggle, and its resistance to U.S. hegemony beckoned solidarity. Like Haiti, Ethiopia, and South Africa, Cuba occupied a special place in the hearts and minds of African-Americans. Significantly, that special place evolved from a contact that proved of greater durability than African-American ties with others in the Diaspora. Long before 1959 Cubans and African-Americans had forged working relationships: abolitionists jointly formed organizations, leftists and trade unionists exchanged strategies, and journalists, novelists and poets aroused mutual sensibilities. On a mass level, musicians and baseball players actually shared the same cultural venues, entertaining millions of regular Black folk in Cuba and in the United States. When the Cuban revolution culminated in 1959 most Blacks applauded its success. Since then, these relations have suffered a rupture as a result ofthe United States blockade against Cuba, different but no less racialized social alignments in the post-Civil Rights era, as well as tense relations with recently-arrived Cuban-Americans. Thus, while Cubans on the island continue to visualize African-Americans through a greater, but nonetheless circumscribed flow of information from news and familial sources,2 African-Americans born since the 1960s have come to imagine Cuba, if they do at all, through the cloudy lens of a more-racially and ideologically-sophisticated system ofdominance. Based on preliminary research, this essay projects that present against aspects of past, primarily the nineteenth century, in order to provide reflection on the future. • I extend special thanks to Otis Cunningham for his assistance in helping me develop this idea, and to three of my students, Dawn Gorchow, Delecia Bey, and Mary Pennington, for their research support.

International Review of Social History, 2014

Fifteen years ago, Louis Pérez published the celebrated On Becoming Cuban, illustrating how Cuba's encounter with the United States shaped Cuban identity. 1 Robert Whitney and Graciela Chailloux Laffita offer another international dynamic shaping what it meant to be Cuban before the Revolution of 1959: the interactions between Cubans and British Caribbean workers in eastern Cuba and the larger relationship between eastern Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean. While Pérez looked especially at the cultural dynamic shaping the imagination of what is Cuban identity, the authors of Subjects or Citizens focus on transnational migrant working-class experiences on the job, on relations with the Cuban and British governments, and on their own cultural lives as they carved out identities for themselves in eastern Cuba and in turn shaped the identity of this most Caribbean part of the Caribbean island of Cuba. As a result, the authors (one based in Canada, the other in Cuba) argue ''that Cuban national identity in the twentieth century, like that of other Caribbean peoples, is a diaspora identity'' (p. 20), but more than just a result of the African and Spanish diaspora. Rather, one has to also consider the Caribbean diaspora to the island. Whitney and Chailloux Laffita unravel this identity by exploring records in nearly twenty different archives, museums, and institutes in Canada, the United Kingdom, Jamaica, and Cuba. While most of the utilized written primary source material comes from the Jamaican Archives and the British National Archives, the authors incorporate small golden nuggets of insight from municipal records scattered throughout eastern Cuba. They couple the written sources with formal interviews with twenty-seven people of British Caribbean origin still living in Cuba at the beginning of the millennium. These oral histories-along with countless informal conversations with Cubans of British Caribbean descent-have also yielded more papers and records stored in peoples' personal collections. The result is a history of the British Caribbean experience in eastern Cuba as told from British, North American, and Cuban official sources as well as the very people who make up this story. And what a fascinating story it is. There is a long historiography of Cuba that identifies the ''exceptional'' nature of the island. This exceptionalism is based in part on the island's longer history with slavery than most other Caribbean islands, its unique relationship with the United States, and of course the revolution of 1959 that created the first socialist state in the western hemisphere. However, the authors ask the reader to reconsider this exceptionalism. Cuba is a Caribbean island that went through most of the same torturous historical episodes of history that its sister islands did. Now this is not a particularly earth-shattering claim. After all, Gordon Lewis made the same claim about the Caribbean islands over thirty years ago by noting how the histories of the islands were more different in degree than in kind. 2 But so many scholars of Cuba, both on and off the island, have tended to see Cuba in exceptionalist terms. Yet, when one explores the eastern region of the island-the primary location for this book-one discovers that the Oriente is much more ''Caribbean-like'' than western Cuba. The primary reason is the influx of hundreds of thousands of British West Indian

International Review of Social History, 2014

Fifteen years ago, Louis Pérez published the celebrated On Becoming Cuban, illustrating how Cuba's encounter with the United States shaped Cuban identity. 1 Robert Whitney and Graciela Chailloux Laffita offer another international dynamic shaping what it meant to be Cuban before the Revolution of 1959: the interactions between Cubans and British Caribbean workers in eastern Cuba and the larger relationship between eastern Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean. While Pérez looked especially at the cultural dynamic shaping the imagination of what is Cuban identity, the authors of Subjects or Citizens focus on transnational migrant working-class experiences on the job, on relations with the Cuban and British governments, and on their own cultural lives as they carved out identities for themselves in eastern Cuba and in turn shaped the identity of this most Caribbean part of the Caribbean island of Cuba. As a result, the authors (one based in Canada, the other in Cuba) argue ''that Cuban national identity in the twentieth century, like that of other Caribbean peoples, is a diaspora identity'' (p. 20), but more than just a result of the African and Spanish diaspora. Rather, one has to also consider the Caribbean diaspora to the island. Whitney and Chailloux Laffita unravel this identity by exploring records in nearly twenty different archives, museums, and institutes in Canada, the United Kingdom, Jamaica, and Cuba. While most of the utilized written primary source material comes from the Jamaican Archives and the British National Archives, the authors incorporate small golden nuggets of insight from municipal records scattered throughout eastern Cuba. They couple the written sources with formal interviews with twenty-seven people of British Caribbean origin still living in Cuba at the beginning of the millennium. These oral histories-along with countless informal conversations with Cubans of British Caribbean descent-have also yielded more papers and records stored in peoples' personal collections. The result is a history of the British Caribbean experience in eastern Cuba as told from British, North American, and Cuban official sources as well as the very people who make up this story. And what a fascinating story it is. There is a long historiography of Cuba that identifies the ''exceptional'' nature of the island. This exceptionalism is based in part on the island's longer history with slavery than most other Caribbean islands, its unique relationship with the United States, and of course the revolution of 1959 that created the first socialist state in the western hemisphere. However, the authors ask the reader to reconsider this exceptionalism. Cuba is a Caribbean island that went through most of the same torturous historical episodes of history that its sister islands did. Now this is not a particularly earth-shattering claim. After all, Gordon Lewis made the same claim about the Caribbean islands over thirty years ago by noting how the histories of the islands were more different in degree than in kind. 2 But so many scholars of Cuba, both on and off the island, have tended to see Cuba in exceptionalist terms. Yet, when one explores the eastern region of the island-the primary location for this book-one discovers that the Oriente is much more ''Caribbean-like'' than western Cuba. The primary reason is the influx of hundreds of thousands of British West Indian

Journal of American History, 2011

2019

Anyone and everyone that has talked to me in the last year has heard about this thesis. A project like this is not just about my research, thoughts, and analysis, but also the community around me that has supported me. First and foremost, I want to extend my gratitude to the professors here at Georgetown from every department who have listened to me brain-dump or just rattle on about this project, specifically Professor Katherine Benton-Cohen who has read countless versions of this thesis and drilled passive voice out of this paper. Also, I would like to thank Professor John Tutino for not only advising this thesis, but also introducing me to a view of history that changed my academic career. If it were not for the lengthy papers I wrote in HIST 305 or the hours I spent reading about silver capitalism, I would not have found Latin American history to begin with at Georgetown. To all my friends who have watched me over countless cups of coffee, late hours at my desk filled with books, or been seen with me and controversial book titles like Cuba, the Blacks, and Africa I could not have done it without you. To all my classmates, we did it! Thank you for allowing me to get to know you and your projects. The residents of Henle 86-Daphne, Olivia, Melissa, Sofia, and Claire-thank you for the countless hugs and help. Mark, thank you for reading every chapter in this thesis ten times over no matter how minute the change and being my biggest editing cheerleader. I cannot imagine starting this project without the support and love of my family. Devon, Jade, Mom and Dad thank you for all your love and allowing me to rant about the same thing 100 times over. Lastly, I would never have started this project without my dad who mentioned one day in 8th grade that Fidel Castro had a friend from Argentina named "Che". I give permission to Lauinger Library to make this thesis available to the public. Voyles iv Important Dates 1492 Columbus sails to the "New World" and lands in Cuba 1776 US American Revolution and a simultaneous boom in the sugar market 1789 French Revolution Voyles 1 Introduction: (Afro-)Cuba On March 22, 1959, Fidel Castro announced that Cuba had eliminated discrimination. 1 Six days later, a cartoon appeared in the revolutionary guerrilla's newspaper, Revolución, depicting Castro asking the artist to add "little Black angels" into an Easter drawing (See Appendix A). 2 Despite the fact that Castro announced the Revolution's success in eliminating discrimination on the island, the cartoon posits what anti-discrimination meant in practice. Eliminating segregated parks and race-based hiring did not remove visual differences nor did it resolve the enduring effects of hundreds of years of explicitly racialized policies on the island. Discrimination had been solved, but race lived on. The cartoon blatantly depicts Fidel asking for Black figures to be added to the image as a means to convey Cuba as inclusive as a result of eliminating racism. 3 By making race explicit, the cartoon showed just how non-racist Castro's government envisioned itself to be. The cartoon likely intended to capture a moment of social progress, increased equality, and the "success" of the Revolution. 4 However, this pursuit of incorporation reflected a larger phenomenon: blackness as a political tool and a symbol of the revolutionary government's success in in uniting the country. Blackness was no longer an identity for Afro-Cubans while the "non-whiteness" of the island became a central tenet of

Ethnohistory, 1997

... Independent Cuba: A Comparative Perspective ... This article questions the validity of racial studies that separate Anglo-America from Latin America by comparing Cuba's racial system and postslavery black mobilization with those of Jamaica, Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil. ...