Watching Cuba: The Next Revolution was very thought provoking, and brought up several questions for me. First, I wonder how racism in Cuba might have developed, had the U.S. not intervened. It seems the racism has gone very back and forth between in Cuba, with Cubans at times identifying as Cuban regardless of race or color, and then there have been the times where Cuba has been intensely divided by race, an issue which still seems prevalent today. In 1840s, when Cuba wast still under Spanish rule, the sugar economy grew to be the largest in the world, slaves were brought over from Africa, giving Cuba two times more the number of slaves than currently resided in the U.S., and dividing the country into two groups.
When the country revolted against Spain in 1868, fighting for independence, the people became united, regardless of race, because the battle was about Cubans for Cuba, and unity was more important than division. Antonio Maceo, a black man, was the general of the Cuban army, leading the Cubans to victory, and dying in the struggle. What really shocked me was how, when the U.S. intervened, and when the war ended, how Maceo was dissected to see if he was more black or white, because, according to the white upper class, his superior strength and skill must only have been possible if he had been more white than black. And as time passed, he began to appear more and more white in photographs and representations, showing how the white upper class was determined to erase black achievement and replace it with white. The incident of the dissection really struck me, because it wasn’t even so much of a division of multiple people, but an attempt at a division within one man, separating him into two parts, showing how deeply racism was ingrained. I believe that this incident is a symbol of how racism has developed, as an attempt to keep dividing that which is one, into two groups. Would the dissection of Maceo have occurred had the U.S. not intervened?
Of course, racism had previously existed, but after the revolution, there was a sense of unity as one country, but the U.S., by taking control of the country, tried to implement policies that the country had just fought to get rid of, by attempting to segregate the island, leaving the duties of law only open to whites. And here’s where I was really shocked into drawing parallels between that time and today. When blacks began to resist, and to protest against segregation and racism, the white upper class fed fear into others through fake news, in exactly the same way that fear has been instituted in the U.S. Blacks were displayed as violent, as criminals, criticized, and isolated. Everything black was represented as black. This tactic was very effective, resulting in a massacre of over two thousand black Cubans. I wonder if the tactic of fake news is still used to day in Cuba the way it is used in the U.S.? And if it is, to what extent? When Batista took control of the island, he did nothing to help the problem, and the whites in Cuba remained wealthy, while blacks suffered and remained poor.
When Castro took control, leading the Cuban revolution in 1953 and forcing out Batista, separating from U.S. control, and uniting with the Soviet Union, he declared that racism was over forever. Because of this declaration, no one could speak about racism, even those who were still experiencing its effects. If no one speaks of a problem, does it really go away? Does the problem stay the same, or even grow in some way? I think that the best way to overcome a problem, especially a systematic one, is to go straight through it, to talk about it and work it out, even though it may take a great deal of effort. I think that silence may possibly be the easiest way to breed a problem. Today, the door does not even seem to have opened for people to be able to speak about racism. How should Cuba go about making steps towards addressing racism? What is the best way for Cuban artists today to address racism?
What also seems to be an important racial instrument is the two tiered currency that Cuba employs: the cuc, and the peso, which is of much lesser value, with one cuc equalling approximately 18.7 pesos. Keeping the cuc circulating among the wealthy white class is an easy way to keep racism alive, by making sure that the wealth cannot trickle down. I have been researching, I have seen articles about Cuba planning to eliminate the cuc, but haven’t been able to discover if they’ve actually implemented it yet.
Works Cited
“Cuba Confirms Elimination of Hard Currency CUC - Havana Times.Org.” Havana Times.org
Cuba Confirms Elimination of Hard Currency CUC Comments, 21 Dec. 2013, www.havanatimes.org/?p=100721.
Gates , Henry L . Black in Latin America: Cuba: The Next Revolution , PBS, 2011, www.pbs.org/video/black-in-latin-america-cuba-the-next-revolution/.
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. “Cuban Independence Movement.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 7 Oct. 2015, www.britannica.com/event/Cuban-Independence-Movement.
Dear Fiona, most Cubans today, especially in the urban centers, have handled CUCs (convertible Cuban pesos), regardless of their race. Based on my own observations (I have not been able to find Cuban government data on this) it does seem to be the case that the large majority of Cuban entrepreneurs appear to be of European descent. This, in part, mirrors the inequalities present in the U.S.: if you inherited wealth then you are most likely to produce and access wealth. In Cuba, as in the U.S., class and race are inextricably connected.
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