The Resurgence of Racism in Cuba
Fuente, Alejandro de la
The ultimate irony is that the same government that did the most to eliminate racism also did the most to silence debates about its persistence. "I don't think you should talk about this...
...I don't think you should talk about this topic," an Afro-Cuban woman replied to a journalist "from the popular weekly Bohemia in 1992 when asked about racial discrimination on the island...
...The great Brazilian sociologist Florestan Fernandes described this denial as "prejudice against prejudice...
...The impact of race on individual life chances had declined...
...I think that, in part, it is an aesthetic question, even though this is not the most important factor...
...Although race as a social product has historical roots in colonial slavery and in the expansion of European capitalism, a characterization that presents racism as a "heritage" runs the risk of minimizing the process through which such inheritance is constantly revitalized...
...In the early 1980s blacks and mulattos were slightly over-represented in the service sector, when these jobs were poorly remunerated and offered little social prestige...
...1 4 Cuban authorities have begun to take notice of these changing realities and have referred to racial issues occasionally...
...Fragmentary, but consistent evidence indicates that cross-racial couples, a particularly sensitive indicator of true racial integration, were on the rise...
...But the then Prime Minister did more: Castro called for a national debate on race and racism, its causes, manifestations and solutions...
...Cultural expressions which had been traditionally hidden or demeaned as "black things," such as Santeria or the Abaku--a secret allmale fraternal society that had been traditionally represented as a criminal gang of African savages-were brought into the public sphere and re-examined...
...To them, silence was the only really patriotic act when it came to race...
...Based on a particular understanding of Jos6 Marti's creed and his foundational myth of a republic "with all and for all," these interpretations have opposed public debates about racism in Cuban society as a betrayal of Martf's legacy and as attempts to divide an allegedly integrated, racially harmonious nation...
...In my company, out of 60 workers three are black...
...The structural crisis of the 1990s, officially known as "The Special Period," not only eroded some of the Revolution's most successful social programs, but also resulted in growing social polar- A santero in Havana...
...Then, why risk anything, if this is business...
...54-67...
...In Cuba, as elsewhere in Latin America, most people are not only reluctant to discuss these questions in public, but quickly deny any charges of being personally prejudiced...
...4 Other informants emphasize the importance of "aesthetics" and its impact on employment opportunities...
...How is it that, the revolution's radical integration social project notwithstanding, traditional racist ideas are very much alive in the island...
...1 5 Meanwhile, a few Afro-Cubans have been promoted to visible positions within the Communist Party...
...Only the revolutionary government, controlling the media, was in the position to impose an effective ban on public discussions of race...
...124-6...
...Previous governments had been equally uncomfortable acknowledging the continuing significance of race in Cuban society, but no administration before 1959 had been able to silence the issue...
...These ideologies were powerful enough to be mobilized by whites responding to a unique set of structural opportunities...
...For instance, although Afro-Cubans are frequently denied jobs in tourism, blackness is used in the sector's advertising campaigns as an icon of sensuality, good music and fun...
...The existence of these ideologies is frequently explained, by government officials and scholars alike, as "left-overs" or "remnants" of the past that still affect Cuban society...
...At the street level, in daily interactions Never before among family members, lovers, friends, neighbors and work and campaign had recreational partners, notions of race are constantly recreated and in Cuba called given new life...
...Yet domestic and culturall expressions that had been demeaned as "black things," been brought back into the public sphere...
...After the 1920s, their campaigns were supported by the Communist Party and by the radical sector of organized labor, both of which turned the struggle against racial discrimination into one of their political priorities...
...Labor, student, civic and religious organizations supported the campaign...
...The experience of revolutionary Cuba raises a number of perplexing questions that are relevant to the struggle against racism elsewhere...
...What, in more general ilogies were n the 1990s, nough to be I by whites to a unique )ortunities...
...The Cuban case provides strong evidence for both the necessity and the limitations of a program based solely, or mostly, on changes in the "structure...
...The Revolution had solved Cuba's historic race problem: Racism and discrimination were things of the past...
...Ratil Castro identified those ministries in which there were neither blacks nor women in leadership positions and warned that, due to the educational advances experienced by the population, the old excuse of a lack of suitable personnel was no longer valid...
...1 (Winter 1996), pp...
...For instance, a young woman who works in a beauty parlor while she attends the university explains that many of her clients, "when they come to have their nails done, tell me that they need to look nice because, since they are black and ugly, they must have a pleasant aspect...
...Race does have a long history, but it has a recent history as well...
...Roughly at the same time, a reader who described himself as a mulatto wrote to The Miami Herald in response to several articles published by the newspaper: "Please, do not speak about races, comments like these do us a lot of harm...what you are doing is dividing us...
...1 3 fro-Cubans' own social activism has also contributed to breaking the official silence on race...
...Charles Tilly, Durable Inequality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998...
...The existence of racism may be acknowledged, but only as a social ill inherited from a past of colonialism and slavery that has not totally faded away yet...
...In the 1960s, the revolutionary government envisioned that the elimination of capitalist exploitation would result in cultural and attitudinal changes in which racial prejudice had no place, but social realities in the 1990s effectively shattered whatever remained of these illusions...
...When those in charge of hiring workers for the tourist corporations apply these Although Afl notions to the prospective candidates, they effectively preclude frequently d the entrance of blacks and mulattos into the sector...
...Young Afro-Cuban males complain of racial profiling among police and claim that they are stopped and asked to show identity papers much more frequently than whites...
...1 6 Government policies of redistribution and the socialization of social services indeed resulted in a significant decrease of racial and other forms of social inequality...
...2, No...
...This is perhaps one of the few areas in which Alejandro de la Fuente is assistant professor of Latin American history at the University of Pittsburgh...
...38-51...
...Susana Lee, "El primer requisito," Granma (Havana), April 23, 1999...
...2. Nadine T. Fernandez, "The Color of Love: Young Interracial Couples in Cuba," Latin American Perspectives, Vol...
...The government's radical policies of redistribution resulted in significantly lower levels of social and regional inequality in general, and of racial inequality in particular...
...Since the early 1990s, scholars inside and outside the island began to study questions of race in contemporary Cuba...
...Measurable racial inequality had SCastro's 1959 I a government Sfor a national rc .nd raricm undoubtedly decreased...
...Cross-racial recreational activities and "fraternity banquets" were organized...
...15 (December 1988), pp...
...The silence has never been total, not even generally observed...
...terms, accounts for the resilience of race even when some of the social contexts that feed its significance have disappeared or been significantly altered...
...89, No...
...Why, then, were people so reluctant to speak about this theme in public...
...Individuals are debate on ra identified using racial markers that are socially relevant and widely understood...
...The main thing is that they are enter32NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERiCAS S 0 0 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 32REPORT ON RACE taining white tourists...
...This created unprecedented opportunities to launch an assault-perhaps even the final assault-against discrimination and racist ideologies on the island...
...119-33...
...New social identities had been created (pueblo, compafiero, revolucionario), based largely on the politics of distribution and on the rhetoric of revolution...
...Roberto Fernandez Retamar, "Documento Cultura y Sociedad," Granma (Havana), November 7, 1998...
...7. Deisy F. Mexidor, "Blanco y negro, sf," Juventud Rebelde (Havana), April 30, 1999...
...This popular outburst in the working-class neighborhood of still there i Central Havana, in which partici- powerful e pants stoned tourist stores and called for "freedom," convincingly mobilized showed that Afro-Cubans should not be construed as passive benefi- responding ciaries of government policies, set of oPF Five years later, the same message was made explicit by a new organization whose main purpose is to fight racial discrimination on the island-the Cofradfa de la Negritud (Black Brotherhood...
...For instance, in order to capture badly needed resources, the government authorized the use of dollars, but by doing so increased significantly the material status of those Cubans with relatives abroad...
...I find this explanation unsatisfactory...
...The most frequent argument revolves around the concept of "pleasant aspect" (buena presencia), a racialized construct that claims that blacks cannot be hired for these jobs due to aesthetic considerations and to the alleged preferences of the tourists...
...One of the testimonies compiled by Cuban historians Rafael Duharte and Elsa Santos is eloquent: "The absence of blacks in tourism is an interesting phenomenon...
...As presidential candidate Carlos Saladrigas explained in 1944, "Black and white Cubans are linked by their patriotic feelings and we can't speak about black and white Cubans without deeply splitting the nationality...
...Although more difficult to assess, some attitudinal changes had begun to take place...
...9. Elena Diaz, Esperanza Fernbandez and Tania Caram, "Turismo y prostituci6n en Cuba," unpublished paper, FLACSO, (Havana), 1996...
...Thus, attempts to debate publicly the limitations of Cuba's integration were considered to be the enemy's work...
...Thus the struggle against racism is not just a struggle against an ominous legacy from the past...
...Rather, it is a struggle against the conditions and social actors that infuse new life into such legacy...
...In 1998 the Fernando Ortiz Foundation sponsored a symposium titled "Multi-Racialism and Integration...
...Pedro Juan Gutierrez, "Razas: diferentes pero iguales," Bohemia Vol...
...By institutionalizing the silence on race, the Cuban government precluded a consistent confrontation of racial ideologies and attitudes...
...1 7 The Resurgence of Racism in Cuba 1. Florestan Fernandes, A integraqao do negro na sociedade de classes (Sao Paulo: Dominus, 1965), p. 293...
...The origin of these markers may lie in a past of colonialism and slavery, but their continuing vigor and social impact are very much contemporary...
...2 (1997), pp...
...The individ- tourism, black ual who examines [the appli- the sector's cants] in one of those corporations," a young white campaigns woman explains, "has a reputation of being a racist and always sensuality, m gives the most difficult tests to blacks...
...As early as 1962, the authorities talked about racism and discrimination in the past tense and formally proclaimed Cuba to be a discrimination-free society...
...Writing the same year, a Communist Party official argued that the "Revolution ha[d] eliminated from Cuban life the odious and humiliating spectacle of discrimination because of skin color...
...6 These racist notions are confirmed in other ways...
...This conservative vision of cubanidad-conservative because it maintained the status quo-was championed by the political and cultural elites throughout the 1902-1958 republic...
...Faced with important threats from within and without, since 1960 the government's priority was to consolidate the unity of the revolutionary forces...
...1 1 The central theme of a 1999 young artists' exhibit at the Center for the Development of Visual Arts in Havana was, precisely, race and the persistence of stereotypes surrounding blackness...
...30 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS his public silence on race is rooted in at least two important factors...
...Various social and political actors heeded Fidel Castro's call...
...13...
...Why, despite massive structural change, did race regain such a central place in Cuban society during the 1990s...
...Since 1959, state power has been used to dismantle the pillars of racial segregation that characterized various social spaces in preRevolutionary Cuba...
...Changes in power relations can gradually undermine the material and even cultural foundations of racism, but the process, as comparative historian George Fredrickson has noted, is unfortunately reversible...
...These activities, from street hustling to prostitution to petty theft, have reinforced pre-existing notions that blacks are naturally predisposed to criminal activities and the easy life...
...There is no explicit policy stating that one has to be white to work in tourism, but it is regulated that people must have a pleasant aspect, and blacks do not have it...
...8-13...
...Juan A. Alvarado, "Estereotipos y prejuicios raciales en tres barrios habaneros," America Negra, No...
...2 Inequalities according to race continued to be significant in areas that had received lower government priority, such as the distribution of housing, but Cuban society had been fairly successful in dismantling some of the social and cultural bases that make race a socially relevant category...
...7 Slowly, these new realities have made it into the public sphere and are becoming part of public discourse...
...LOzara Menendez Vazquez, "Un cake para Obatal6...
...Given the social composition of the Cuban-American community, the origin of most of these resources, it is reasonable to assume that the beneficiaries of the remittances are mostly white...
...3 Fidel Castro summarized the dominant discourse himself when he argued that discrimination in Cuba had disappeared together with class privileges...
...Furthermore, a new generation of Cubans, born after 1959, trained in a thoroughly integrated school system, and socialized in what was, for the most part, a color-blind ethic, was coming of age...
...Public campaigns against racism and discrimination were not new...
...exiles is too small (16.5%, according to the U.S...
...Deisy F. Mexidor, "Blanco y negro, si," JuventudRebelde...
...The manager of one of these corporations, in turn, asserts that they only employ five blacks in a labor force of 500...
...In the summer of 1959, a multitude of conferences, symposia, round tables, television programs and newspaper articles denounced the persistence of racism in Cuban society and called on blacks and whites to unite behind the revolution's radical program of integration...
...15 (December 1988), pp...
...Tomas Fernandez Robaina, Hablen paleros ysanteros (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1994...
...The Cuban Union of Writers and Artists has called for a better representation of blacks in the media...
...Yet this campaign waned almost as quickly as it began...
...Vol )(XXIV, No 6 MAY/JUNE 200131 Vol XXXIV, No 6 MAY/JUNE 2001 31REPORT ON RACE By adopting this position, the Revolutionary government in fact endorsed the traditional dominant interpretation of the nationalist ideology that claimed that race was a divisive issue which endangered national unity...
...The authorities admitted that racist attitudes and prejudices would not wither away overnight, but they were conceptualized as "remnants" of a past that would disappear in due time...
...Thus, whereas the Tropicana cabaret is almost invariably advertised through the faces (and bodies) of mulatto women, in the promotions for the family-oriented dollar "Photo Services," r le ;r a "Iu Vol XXXIV, No 6 MAY/JUNE 2001 all the pictures seem, as a journalist from the official Juventud Rebelde asserted in 1999, taken from "a European journal...
...Tourist personnel acknowledge that few AfroCubans find work in these activities: "I do believe that there is an aesthetic criterion in the selection...which favors whites...
...Race was perceived as a threat to such unity...
...By denouncing the persistence of racism and discrimination in Cuba, Fidel Castro and other revolutionary leaders challenged this silence in 1959 and exposed the hypocrisy with which dominant groups had traditionally approached this problem...
...What had been the subject of a fruitful and unprecedented public debate in the early postRevolutionary years eventually became a taboo...
...AfroCuban intellectuals, the black social clubs and radical cross-racial political actors, such as the Communists, had kept it alive...
...Students of race and racism in Latin America will not be surprised by this...
...Gerardo Tena, "Los 'no blancos' irrumpen en las filas de la disidencia," El Nuevo Herald (Miami), October 2, 1999...
...Material changes surely began to erode some of the ideological pillars of racism, but the pillars themselves were not directly attacked...
...census of 1990) to represent a substantial source of income for the blacks and mulattos living in the island...
...89-115...
...If anything, Afro-Cubans should have had a "structural advantage" to fully participate in the new, service-oriented tourist economy of the 1990s-they had both experience and seniority...
...Yet this does not explain why Afro-Cubans are poorly represented in some of the most dynamic sectors of the Cuban economy, particularly in tourism...
...and racism...
...In this sense, the Malec6n riot of August 1994 was both an expression of just how much racial tensions had esca33REPORT ON RACE lated during the Special Period and a harbinger of possible things to Racial ideo come...
...Although they have not articulated an agenda centered on racially defined claims, some Afro-Cuban leaders, such as Manuel Cuesta Mortia of Corriente Socialista Democrdtica, assert that "racial issues" are indeed part of their concerns...
...In a document submitted to the organization's congress in November 1998, writer Roberto Ferndndez Retamar denounced the "unwillingness to debate in the open the problem of racial prejudice," and criticized employment practices that favor whites in the allocation of the "best remunerated" jobs...
...By the early 1980s blacks and mulattos, who according to the 1981 census represented slightly above one third of the population, had roughly similar access to social goods such as employment opportunities, nutrition, education and middle management positions...
...international observers agree that most tourist-related jobs are performed by individuals deemed to be white in Cuba...
...5 Barred from the most lucrative jobs and with limited access to the exiles' remittances, many Afro-Cubans have turned to activities that are perceived as either illegal or unethical in order to access the dollar economy...
...He is the author of A Nation For All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth Century Cuba (University of North Carolina Press, 2001...
...For instance, the Second Declaration of Havana, issued in February 1962, asserted that the revolution had "eradicated discrimination because of race or sex" in Cuba...
...Some of the best-known leaders of this movement are either black or mulatto...
...Never before had a government in Cuba called for a national debate on race 30REPORT ON RACE Children playing in Villa Panamericana, Havana...
...In contrast to other countries in Latin America, where governments have typically paid lip service to the ideal of national integration but done little to achieve it, the Cuban state has invested its considerable prestige and significant resources to eliminate racism and racial discrimination...
...Journalists and intellectuals were urged to educate the public on the fallacies of racial stereotypes...
...In a meeting of the government's commission of promotions the same year, Radl Castro emphasized the need to promote women, blacks and youths to positions of leadership within the various branches of government...
...Further evidence of black discontent is the prominent presence of Afro-Cubans in the leadership of the various dissident and human rights organizations that have emerged in Cuba during the last decade...
...4. Rafael Duharte and Elsa Santos, El fantasma de la escdavitud: prejuicios raciales en Cuba yAmbrica Latina (Bonn: PahI-Rugenstein, 1997), p. 135...
...Thus, the ultimate irony is that the same government that did the most to eliminate racism also did the most to silence debates about its persistence...
...5 (January 1962), pp...
...Eugene Robinson, "Cuba Begins to Answer its Race Question," Washington Post, November 12, 2000...
...But the 1959 campaign was different: It had been launched by a group in power...
...6. "Aumenta la vigilancia policial en la capital," El Nuevo Herald (Miami), October 11, 2000...
...On the other hand, the Cuban experience suggests that dismantling racism and eliminating race from the social landscape imply much more than changes in the allocation of social opportunities...
...Social problems that the authorities had deemed solved reappeared, including prostitution and new forms of criminal activities...
...This silence, however, began to break in the 1990s...
...Although most efforts have been conducted in the relatively safe area of culture, of which the exhibit mentioned above is a good example, some forms of organization have transcended these limits...
...8. Lourdes Serrano Peralta, "Mujer, instrucci6n, ocupaci6n y color de la piel: estructura y relaciones raciales en un barrio popular de la Habana," America Negra, No...
...3. Jos6 Felipe Carneado, "La discriminaci6n racial en Cuba no volver6 jambs," Cuba Socialista, Vol...
...5. Rafael Duharte and Elsa Santos, El fantasma de la esclavitud: prejuicios raciales en Cuba yAmerica Latina, p. 121...
...The proportion of Afro-Cubans among the U.S...
...What the 1990s have shown is that racial ideologies were there, somehow hidden but alive in the social consciousness...
...I Vol XXXIV, No 6 MAY/JuNE 2001 29 Vol XXXIV, No 6 MAY/BUNE 2001 29REPORT ON RACE Nor would the same students be surprised to know that, despite the pervasiveness of this public silence on race, ideas of race in fact affect and mediate social relations among ordinary Cubans in myriad ways...
...Cubans explain blacks' low presence in tourist jobs using various arguments, all of which more or less openly imply that Afro-Cubans are unattractive, dirty, prone to criminal activities, inefficient or lack proper manners and education...
...During the republic, Afro-Cuban activists and intellectuals had frequently denounced the subordination of blacks in Cuban society...
...23, No...
...You employ only whites and there is no problem...
...9 The ~sic and fun...
...renewed vigor of Afro-Cuban religions has also been the subject of scholarly inquiry.10 Discussions, however, are not confined to relatively isolated academic spaces...
...For instance, during a January 1999 meeting with a delegation of the U.S.-based TransAfrica Forum, Fidel Castro candidly acknowledged that racial discrimination had not disappeared in Cuba and admitted that Afro-Cubans were overrepresented among prison inmates...
...Temas, No.4 (October-December 1995), pp...
...The theme has become one of the central research themes of the Cuban Center of Anthropology, whose researchers have produced several valuable studies concerning the persistence of racial prejudice in the population-an unimaginable research o-Cubans are topic just a decade ago...
...On the one hand, as Charles Tilly suggests, a reorganization of employment, education and other forms of social opportunity has rapid and far-reaching consequences for traditional structures of inequality...
...First, since the late nineteenth century, dominant interpretations of cubanidad have consistently minimized racial differences on the grounds that they endanger national unity...
...C ization, a widening income gap such as Santerfa, have and increased competition for employment and scarce resources...
...Particularly in those jobs that imply direct personal contact with the visitors-and in which the opportunities for complementary income via tips and gifts are greater-the proportion of blacks is abysmally low...
...These white tourists may or may not be racist...
...8 Research teams affiliated with hnied jobs in the University of Havana and the National Committee of the ress is used in Communist Youth have done advertising field research among the jineteras (prostitutes), a large s an icon of proportion of whom are allegedly nonwhite...
...Prominent among these unsolved problems was race, which in the 1990s reclaimed a central place in social relations...
...Some of the paintings denounced racist myths such as the sexual prowess of black males or ingrained fears that associate Afro-Cubans with crime and violence.1 2 Finally, the theme has also found some limited space in the official press...
...Some of these are clearly unintended and undesirable to government authorities...
...most Cubans inside and outside the island agree: It is better not to discuss questions of race, which are frequently perceived as divisive, dangerous and a threat to Cuba's-and the Cuban community's-racial harmony and national unity...
...99-117...
...Given these realities, why did many ordinary Cubans remain uncomfortable debating the social meanings of race and racism...
...Robinson, "Cuba Begins to Answer its Race Question...
...What makes the Cuban case unique is the fact that race continues to affect social relations despite the significant efforts undertaken by the Revolutionary government to create an egalitarian, color-blind society...
...There is widespread and convincing evidence that government policies to cope with the crisis have resulted in racially differentiated effects...
...17 George M. Fredrickson, The Comparative Imagination: On the History of Racism, Nationalism, and Social Movements (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997...
...These groups have demanded a democratization of the country's political structures and respect for individual human rights...
Vol. 34 • May 2001 • No. 6
