Race & Ethnicity in Cuba
Part 1 — Black Cuba
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Race & Ethnicity Introduction | Black Cuba | White Cuba | The Cuban As He Is |
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Africa West AS EARLY AS 1517 CHARLES I
granted the right to introduce slaves. And ever since the first five hundred
(arrived) under hatches from Congo and Mozambique—out of the vast African continent—many different groups crowded in the pestilent "black-birder" slave
ships had been brought to
Cuba. As early as 1532, the blacks formed 62.5 percent of the population. Not until 1859 was
the ratio reduced to 47.8
percent.1 1Fernando Orriz, Los negros esdovas, gives the following
percentages (a few points off here and there) from official sources:
1532—62.5
1855—52.2 Toward the end of 1912, Gómez authorized the United Fruit Company to bring in 1,400 Haitians. Under Menocal, from 1913-21, 81,000 Haitians and 75,000 Jamaicans were admitted. Thereafter, the legal entries were:
Year
Haitians
Jamaicans In addition it is estimated that from 1913 to 1927 40,000 negroes a year were smuggled in. Since then and owing to the prolonged economic crisis, few have been brought in even illegally. The companies which have brought in negroes during the period of the Republic, were supposed to send them back at the end of their yearly contract, but this was evaded. As El Pais wrote: 2 "The Haitian immigration comes for the zafra, but soon is diverted toward the towns and never goes back to the plantations of his own country, the result being that the following year it is necessary to introduce another contingent." According to
official statistics, 30 percent of Cuba's population is now black, the rest white. The time has been too short to
reverse so decidedly the proportion between the two races. But the Cuban esteems white blood to be far more potent than
do we Americans: he is classified white if he has a drop of white blood; in the United States a man is colored if he has a drop
of black blood. Both systems are equally (il) logical. The white drop is just as apt to produce white progeny as the black drop
pickaninnies. And so in Cuba, at least 70 percent black according to American classification, is put down by its Creole rulers
who affect no race prejudices as predominantly white. It is predominately mestizo, viz.: pure white, 25-30 percent;
black, 25-40 percent; mixed, 30-50 percent. The 75 percent negro and mestizo, ranging from coal black to chocolate, to tan and olive and a dirty cream color, has been variously recruited. Up to less than a century ago, old plantation lists carried after the name of each person, his or her original African nationality. Today, on the eastern part of the island, are found the Lucumis, from the slave coast along the Calabar River, a people with well-formed features, noses thin, not sunk as in other groups, a serious, proud clan, less joyous than the ingrained melancholia leads to an exaggerated number of suicides; but they are quick and sensitive. They believe faithfully in brujo, black magic, and can do wondrous things either for good or ill, with toe-nails, pieces of clothing. vindictive pins and other implements. Occasionally a hill-billy still tattoos vertical slits down cheek and arm. The Carabali, also from the Calabar River, is below medium height and cuivrée, i.e., less black, in complexion. He is industrious, faithful, economical and independent. Originally worshipers of the shark, they were the originators in Cuba of the religious system of ñañigo, an offshoot of voodooism, involving in Africa, perhaps, human sacrifice, but changed in the New World to goat or cock sacrifice. Their ancient song, dance and sacrifice have been pre served in secret benefit associations, logias, the inner rites of which could be successfully screened from prying whites and the authorities. These logias spread to all the black groups in Cuba. Rival organizations developed; gradually they became maffias, produced feuds, slave revolts and other difficulties. On the lower social fringes whites, coming in contact with ñañigo, formed their own logias, taking over the black rites. These Carabalí lodges played their part in the independence movement and have had frequent political importance. Up until the present Machado government, the ñañigo devotees performed part of their ceremonies in public; they dressed up in odd costumes, with flowers, fiber collars, royal headdresses and, carrying enormous lanterns, danced and sang through the streets. These harmless and joyous demonstrations are now forbidden as indecent by white officials, dwarfed by the negroes' greater vitality and honest joy; even the lodges, though still existing, are illegal. The most intelligent, but not the most interesting, of the negroes are the Mandingás, in northern Cuba, originally from between the tenth and twentieth latitudes in Africa. One wing, especially the Fulas, had considerable cultural interchange with the neighboring Arabs; the music of both shows mutual borrowings. The Mandingás are a tall, muscular folk, amiable and faithful; but if ill-treated, they prove fierce and rebellious. The Yalofes, a war-like division, caused so much trouble, their further importation as slaves was forbidden. Like the Lucumis, the faces of the Mandingás are not so typically negroid, nose less flat, lips less prominent; the facial angle, even by western European standards, can be considered quite handsome. The Congos and Haitians are the blackest. The Haitian immigrant is atrociously backward. The Congo is the best built of all the negroes, despite his clumsy facial features—sturdy, lusciously shaped bodies quite too elegant for clothes. Both sexes display phenomenal grace in walking and in all their movements. The Congo has great perseverance, courage and dignity, but is refractory to education. Sleepy and lazy, he shrugs off insults easily, and though often quickly treacherous, is never rancorous. The Minas and Gangás are lighter in color. The Mina is small, with a low brow, deep-set flat nose, prominent jaw and
pronounced lips. He is delicate, impressionable, rather cowardly. The
Gangás, from the Calabar slave coast, though usually considered very inferior, are most interesting. They are a long-headed, large-breasted people with vigorous physiques.
Among them are still found traces of the old Majá, or snake-worship cult.
All these black cultural heritages are going into the melting pot. Cuba is not only a grist mill for blacks and whites, but for the various African groups, which despite the isolation of recent slavery and of aloofness in remote sectors, have already developed something of a common culture and a common dialect—ñañigo. In most places, divisions are now definitely chromatic, not tribal. In Santiago is a quite well-to-do negro club, all of whose members must be black as sin. A chocolate or high "yaller" or a white is thrown out on his ear faster than he came in. In the same city exists a "yaller" club with a very definite chromatic range. The bond of fellowship between black and white has been historically unusually close. During much of the colonial period there was a light-hearted tolerance, which, however, largely disappeared during the nineteenth century tenseness. In earlier colonial days, on the Day of Kings, the negroes paraded the streets in gay festival, while the whites kept behind closed doors; and the Governor-General received their leaders in high state in the Palace. And except for several bitter occasions, although there were often slight skirmishes with negroes who preferred death to the horrors of slavery under some cruel masters, Cuba has had practically no purely negro revolts. At times, definite negro movements have sprung up. There was considerable agitation in Cuba under Viceroy Luis de las Casas (1790-96) when the blacks, influenced by the French revolution and the sweeping aside of slavery in Haiti, showed restiveness. African importations were temporarily forbidden, and Canary Island laborers flooded in to work on the plantations. In 1812, the Aponte uprising, bent on freeing the slaves,
caused the burning of a number of haciendas and the killing of their owners, until Jose Aponte was finally captured and hung. White and black, without regard to pigmentation, suffered and struggled side by side during the independence wars. Black General Maceo and black General Moncada, noblemen both, had more than loyal white officers; and no man was more honored than the ex-slave Juan Gualberto Gomez, one of Cuba's finest patriots and most brilliant journalists. "The war began in Oriente" wrote Man de Ia Cruz, "because there the negro is loved, not feared." And the independence assemblage at Guaimaro voted immediate emancipation. The blacks struggled far more persistently for national independence than did the whites. With national freedom, the whites, though grateful to the negro, were in a superior economic and intellectual condition and controlled most of the wealth. The negro, but recently lifted from slavery, less educated, was kept in subordinate position. although the average white Creole hotly disclaims any such thing as color prejudices. A little conversation with the white Cuban soon reveals the real barrier that exists. The American occupation at once exercised repressive measures. The negroes' lodges and other cultural activities were prohibited. In appointments the white Creoles were favored and social barriers were set up. This division, despite the patriotic events which at times have welded the races, is long-standing and fundamental. Cuba's greatest novel, Cecilia Valdés, written by Cirilio Villaverde in 1833, deals with the passionate but tragic love of a beautiful octaroon for a Spanish youth of high family—a story of bitter frustration due to the strict drawing of the color line, against which the novel propagandizes. And in more recent times, straws in the wind have indicated that Cuba is not always the brotherly place its leaders vehemently insist. The negro who rises in the social scale must at least be worthy the phrase, "He passes for white." To some extent Estrada Palma, Cuba's first recognized President, continued the Wood attitude toward the negroes; and during Magoon's administration subtle discrimination was exercised against them. By 1907 a definite movement along color lines had been provoked. In that year Evaristo Estenoz—a negro general in the 1906 revolt against President Estrada Palma's reelection—organized the Independent Party of Color to fight for negro rights. They argued that while the negroes had provided 85 percent of the 1895-98 soldiers and constituted 75 percent of the voters, they had not been rewarded politically to a corresponding degree. They had been generously offered many things by the Liberal politicians in 1908; but after elections, ignored. Estenoz and his companions continued agitating, till in 1910 they were arrested and put on trial in April. The following month the Morúa law was passed forbidding any political party along racial or color lines. The black leaders were released, but for two years bitterness increased—the whole movement being involved
in many political machinations. By 1912 it got out of hand. It is said, but not authenticated, that President
Gómez prompted its disorder that he might declare martial law to dominate approaching elections and tyrannically reinstate himself. In any event,
May 20, the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Republic, Estenoz led his followers to open revolt. Though
the negro Martin Moffia Delgado held a high Conservative Estrada Palma, socially he was discriminated
against; but under Liberal Gómez, Morúa became President of the Senate and Secretary of Agriculture;
and his very black wife was admitted to the highest official and
diplomatic ceremonies. At his death, much to the
disgust of the white Creoles, President Gómez beside his two black brothers at the funeral. In 1849 the Cuban Economic Society used the phrase, "150 negroes produce 400 tons of sugar." And as
Márquez Sterling adds nearly a century later, "The slave served as the machine. Machines later freed the slaves, but did not free the blacks; and
this most miserable slavery which weighs down the spirit of the country, from which both blacks and whites suffer, spreads
through the land, carpeted with sugar-cane, ignorance, superstition and poverty."
Much of Cuban culture is definitely negro in origin—music, folklore, dancing, some of the food. Music is a golden net which entangles the feet of every Cuban; the negro has given Cuban music a cachet recognized the world over. Father of our modern jazz, Cuban music has reached refined interpretation for both Cuban and Paris concert hall and operetta in the work of Moises Simón, who also has written some of the best danzón tunes, based on negro melodies, and is best known in this country for his Peanut Vender In the plastic arts, negro influence, though as yet twice removed, also enters. The Cuban intelligentsia took up fevently the vanguardista movement in sculptoring; this has influenced the work of such artists as Sicre but especially Navarro. Many of the vanguardistas who might not have been so receptive of the new tendencies had they been derived directly from Cuban negro sources, unwittingly hailed with enthusiasm African forms delivered via Paris; but the basic negro inspiration in them has perhaps caused such work to be more intelligible, hence more at home in Cuba, than in other New World Latin countries. The Cuban negro possesses little literary tradition. In Africa literature was monopolized by a special class which carried on the group traditions. This protected class naturally never fell into the hands of the slave-traders, hence, the negro was brought to the New World shorn of his literary heritage, though popular song and dance and many old memories have been preserved. These have been recorded by, among others, that indefatigable folklorist, Dr. Fernando Ortiz, forced into exile because of the intolerance of the Machado regime. The first notable negro in Cuban belles-lettres was the ill-fated Gabriel de Ia Concepción Valdès, who besides flaming love-poems and proletarian cantos, which made him the idol of all Cuba and carried his fame to far Hispanic lands, was a salty political critic. His biting polemics landed him in a prison cell, from which he continued to pour forth plaintive lyrics. Finally he was executed at the early age of thirty-five in the year 1844. A group of modern younger negroes has recently become literary conscious and are turning out interesting work. The journalist, Gustavo E. Urrutia, for the first time, has turned public attention to basic facts in the negro problems of Cuba. The poems of Regino Pedroso, though inspired by the modern proletarian movement, have definite negro roots, form and phraseology. Of them all, the most outstanding is Nicolás Guillén, whose slim but brilliant book of verse, Sóngoro Coson go, is a violent, singing, lilting outburst of the negro heart. The lines swing to the rhythm of the rumba, of ñañigo dancing, to the beat of drums and rattles and dusky hands pounding out jungle music. Guillén represents a complete rupture with traditional Castilian verse-forms and a definite attempt to express negro sentiments, thoughts and life in typical negro-Cuban Spanish. Though not prolific, he has written the most vital poetry of modern Cuba. The patriotic mulatto Maceo said on being asked if he resented being classed as a negro: "'When the black man is not ashamed to be black, there'll be no shame in being black."
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