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Race and Class in Cuba
BY DR GAYLE MCGARRITY
Sunday, January 24, 2010
WHEN I first returned to the United States in 1982, after living for a year and a half in Cuba, I was eager to share with my ´comrades´ on the left the extent to which racism and class divisions were still a glaring reality in ´Revolutionary Cuba´.
I had visited Cuba for the first time in 1976, when I travelled there with a group of Jamaicans interested in the legal and penal system. As it turned out, we never got even a glimpse of the prison system, but it was a great opportunity to get a first-hand view of other aspects of Cuban society. One of the first things that made an impression on me was the way in which white and mulato Cubans stared at a couple in our group -- composed of a very beautiful part Chinese, part Indian and part African girl and a very handsome, very black gentleman.
MCGARRITY... part of the reason for the Eurocentric concept of culture which is so pervasive in Cuba is that the Cuban Revolution occurred in 1959
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MCGARRITY... part of the reason for the Eurocentric concept of culture which is so pervasive in Cuba is that the Cuban Revolution occurred in 1959
1/1 
During this period in my life, I was influenced by the Black Power movement, Marxism-Leninism, Pan-Africanism and Rastafarianism. I was totally enamoured with the Cuban Revolution. I devoured books like Tania, about an East German girl who had been an integral part of the process, works by Che Guevara, and anything I could get my hands on about Cuba. I naively assumed that, since it called itself revolutionary, the government would have incorporated aspects of the international black consciousness movement into both its theory and praxis.
So, as I stayed longer in Cuba, I was very disappointed to find that attitudes towards race and ethnicity were similar to those in the English-speaking Caribbean in the 1950s. I soon realised that the reason the "inter-racial couple" from the Jamaican legal tourism group had been stared at so much, was that their relationship violated the norms of 'blanqueamiento´, which literally means whitening. It was expected that a girl with the characteristics which I described above would yearn to ´whiten´ herself, or more precisely her progeny, by finding a lighter-hued as opposed to a more negroid sexual partner.
White Cubans prided themselves on having eradicated racism. However, racism to them meant legalised segregation, lynching and other manifestations of the ideology of white supremacy in pre-Civil Rights United States. The fact that there was no longer legalised discrimination in public places was touted to mean that there was no longer racism.
Cuban Racism from a Double Perspective
Marxism-Leninism has often been criticised by those concerned with issues of racial inequality for only emphasising class differences and not examining the ways in which different economic systems have created and perpetuated differences based on phenotype. I soon realised that Cuba was not really a socialist state anyway; that is, one based on true Marxist-Leninist principles. But even if we are to accept that the government was really based on these principles, no serious attempt had been made to root out the true ideological bases of racial injustice.
As an anthropologist, I base my conclusions on techniques of participant observation, which simply means immersing oneself to the greatest degree possible into the society and learning about attitudes, behaviours and practices from the inside. As a woman of mixed racial descent, who is fluent in Spanish, I was in a unique position to capture the ideas and beliefs, ie, the ideology, of Cubans of all different racial classifications.
According to popular perceptions, Cubans are usually divided into the following phenotypical groups:
* prieto, which means very black;
* negro, which means black;
* mulato, which means more or less half black, half white;
* moreno, which is a little lighter than mulato, with whiter features;
* jabao, which means with light skin but negroid features;
* indio, which means that one appears to be like an Amerindian, but is actually a light-skinned mulato or darker white;
* trigueno, which is almost the same as moreno or indio, but literally means wheat-coloured;
* blanco, which means white in appearance; and rubio, which is blond.
It is important to emphasise that these categories are not carved in stone. They often overlap, and different individuals will consider the same person to belong to a different category. Also, as the aim of the racial hierarchy in Cuba, and in most of the Hispanic Caribbean and Latin America, is for everyone to gradually whiten themselves or ´mejorar la raza´ -- literally improve the race -- persons will be ascribed a ´higher´ position in the racial hierarchy if the observer likes them or wants to ingratiate him or herself with the observed individual.
During my first trip to Cuba, I also observed that those of similar phenotype tended to date each other, almost without exception. That is, a mulato claro would be seen with a mulata clara, a rubio with a rubia, a prieto with a prieta, etc. I found this strange, expecting that, in a society moving towards colour blindness, one would not find people sticking to their own precise category in their choice of a partner. When someone of a darker complexion did go out with someone lighter, they were generally considered to have really 'improved' themselves (adelantar la raza- to improve the race).
I was also disappointed to see that there were absolutely no contemporary books on blacks in Cuba, or under the topic of Afro-Cuba, in bookstores. The exception was books by Fernando Ortiz, a pre-Revolutionary ethnologist and folklorist. Whites claimed that there were virtually no blacks in higher government positions because blacks had not really participated in the Revolution. I determined that I would find an opportunity to return to Cuba and to really assess the situation methodically.
As luck would have it, my home in Kingston, Jamaica, was right next to the Cuban embassy, so I went there often. When I informed them excitedly that I wanted to study blacks in Cuba, I was told that I should go to Oriente, the Eastern part of the country, as that was where all of the blacks were. I would come to learn that this was an expression of the white Cuban tendency to claim that all blacks were descendants of Jamaican and other West Indian immigrants to Oriente. When I would protest that the Spanish had lots of slaves and that all of the blacks could not possibly be descendants of West Indian immigrants, known derogatorily as pichones (literally blackbirds), I was told that all of the ones who had come as slaves had inter-married, as the Spanish were so much less racist than the British. White Cubans expressed sympathy for the Jamaicans who were under the British, who did not mix with them, supposedly, and so the black population there was not able to dilute itself and move up the racial hierarchy.
I returned to Cuba on several occasions between 1976 and 1981, to pursue a Master's degree in Public Health. I was part of a delegation of persons of American-Indian descent who visited the island in 1980. We met with Fidel´s personal physician who told us about an International Health Master's programme, which was open to foreigners. I applied and got accepted. Now I felt that I would really get a chance to see what it was like to live as a mulata in revolutionary Cuba, and I was correct.
While waiting for the course to begin, I lived with a white woman who was a militante (militant) in the Communist party and who lived in the elite Miramar area of Havana. She prided herself on being very liberal as she had mulato friends. However, she warned me not to go to see the Conjunto Foklorico Nacional, as 'esta gente tiene enfermedades' -- those people have illnesses. I realised that she assumed that I would be doing more with the members of the Conjunto than just participating in their cultural events, as she was clearly referring to sexually transmitted diseases. When I did go to the performances of the Conjunto, there was hardly anyone in the audience. As I stayed longer in Cuba, I realised that no one, except for a very small group of people, was the slightest bit interested in this vital expression of national culture, particularly Afro-Cuban culture.
When I actually began the course, I moved into the Instituto de Desarollo de la Salud -- the Institute of Health Development -- in Arroyo Naranjo, near to Parque Lenin, on the outskirts of Havana. The very first night that I was there, I was thrilled to hear drums in the distance. I asked my fellow Cuban students, who were, with the exception of two mulato students, all white, if I could go and hear this expression of Afro-Cuban culture. I was told that what I was hearing was part of Afro-Cuban religious ceremonies, to which only anti-sociales (those who were against the Revolution) accrued.
A Marxist view of Race and Culture
It did not take me long to realise that ´culture´ in Cuba meant European culture. This perception was not only a result of a history of European colonialisation and slavery, but was also a reflection of the tenets of Marxism-Leninism, as promoted under the Cuban so-called socialist system. The text by Constantinov, used in all educational institutions on the island, and called Fundamentos de Marxismo-Leninismo (Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism), supported a Darwinist view of social evolution, under which societies progressed from primitive communism, through feudalism and capitalism, and on to socialism and communism. The problem with this approach, as far as perpetuating erroneous views of human history, is that it places all of African traditional societies at the lower rungs of evolution and the European societies near the top.
Fidel Castro himself when he speaks about ´cultura´ in his interminable speeches, uses the term as synonymous with education, as opposed to using it in the way that we use culture in English. Throughout the years, he has often referred to how the Revolution improved the lot of ´gente de baja cultura´ -- which can be taken to mean either people of a low educational level or people who are lacking in culture, which anthropologists will tell you do not exist, as all people have some kind of culture and it is ethnocentric to arrange these cultures, conceptually speaking, in a hierarchical fashion.
Part of the reason for the Eurocentric concept of culture which is so pervasive in Cuba is that the Cuban Revolution occurred in 1959, and has remained relatively isolated from world intellectual currents since then. Only information that the government wants to enter the island does so. So all of the changes in mentality and practices that occurred in the United States, Brazil and throughout the region, during the 1960s until the present, have only recently filtered into the island and into the cultural framework of inhabitants. Despite the indisputable limitations of the Black Power movement in the United States, and the more recent growth of a similar phenomenon in Brazil and in other parts of Latin America, the transformation of Eurocentric views of history, culture and aesthetics has been invaluable in successfully attacking manifestations of cultural imperialism. Black began to be seen as something beautiful and not something that needed to be diluted in order to be acceptable. Numerous studies revealed the richness of African culture and the important contributions of African history to world culture and social development.
Yet in Cuba, when manifestations of this new consciousness timidly emerged, they were brutally repressed, despite current government claims that concepts of negritude -- a movement with roots in the Francophone world, which promoted black civilisation and culture -- were encouraged.
Young idealistic black militants from the United States, who fled racism in their homeland, looking for a more racially just society in Cuba, were treated in a hostile fashion by immigration and other government authorities on the island. These militants, many of whom were hijackers, were firmly immersed in ideas of socialism and world revolution, so it is not as if the government could, in all fairness, categorise them as counter-revolutionaries. However, when I lived in Cuba, and even today, anyone who does not agree with the regime´s policies is branded counter-revolutionary and a danger to national security. I met several of these black Americans while I was living in Cuba and was deeply disturbed by the way in which their spirits had been wounded and their idealism challenged by their treatment at the hands of the Cuban government.
See Part 2 next week.
Dr Gayle McGarrity is a professor at the University of South Florida.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/Race-and-Cuba
BY DR GAYLE MCGARRITY
Sunday, January 24, 2010
WHEN I first returned to the United States in 1982, after living for a year and a half in Cuba, I was eager to share with my ´comrades´ on the left the extent to which racism and class divisions were still a glaring reality in ´Revolutionary Cuba´.
I had visited Cuba for the first time in 1976, when I travelled there with a group of Jamaicans interested in the legal and penal system. As it turned out, we never got even a glimpse of the prison system, but it was a great opportunity to get a first-hand view of other aspects of Cuban society. One of the first things that made an impression on me was the way in which white and mulato Cubans stared at a couple in our group -- composed of a very beautiful part Chinese, part Indian and part African girl and a very handsome, very black gentleman.
MCGARRITY... part of the reason for the Eurocentric concept of culture which is so pervasive in Cuba is that the Cuban Revolution occurred in 1959
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MCGARRITY... part of the reason for the Eurocentric concept of culture which is so pervasive in Cuba is that the Cuban Revolution occurred in 1959 1/1 So, as I stayed longer in Cuba, I was very disappointed to find that attitudes towards race and ethnicity were similar to those in the English-speaking Caribbean in the 1950s. I soon realised that the reason the "inter-racial couple" from the Jamaican legal tourism group had been stared at so much, was that their relationship violated the norms of 'blanqueamiento´, which literally means whitening. It was expected that a girl with the characteristics which I described above would yearn to ´whiten´ herself, or more precisely her progeny, by finding a lighter-hued as opposed to a more negroid sexual partner.
White Cubans prided themselves on having eradicated racism. However, racism to them meant legalised segregation, lynching and other manifestations of the ideology of white supremacy in pre-Civil Rights United States. The fact that there was no longer legalised discrimination in public places was touted to mean that there was no longer racism.
Cuban Racism from a Double Perspective
Marxism-Leninism has often been criticised by those concerned with issues of racial inequality for only emphasising class differences and not examining the ways in which different economic systems have created and perpetuated differences based on phenotype. I soon realised that Cuba was not really a socialist state anyway; that is, one based on true Marxist-Leninist principles. But even if we are to accept that the government was really based on these principles, no serious attempt had been made to root out the true ideological bases of racial injustice.
As an anthropologist, I base my conclusions on techniques of participant observation, which simply means immersing oneself to the greatest degree possible into the society and learning about attitudes, behaviours and practices from the inside. As a woman of mixed racial descent, who is fluent in Spanish, I was in a unique position to capture the ideas and beliefs, ie, the ideology, of Cubans of all different racial classifications.
According to popular perceptions, Cubans are usually divided into the following phenotypical groups:
* prieto, which means very black;
* negro, which means black;
* mulato, which means more or less half black, half white;
* moreno, which is a little lighter than mulato, with whiter features;
* jabao, which means with light skin but negroid features;
* indio, which means that one appears to be like an Amerindian, but is actually a light-skinned mulato or darker white;
* trigueno, which is almost the same as moreno or indio, but literally means wheat-coloured;
* blanco, which means white in appearance; and rubio, which is blond.
It is important to emphasise that these categories are not carved in stone. They often overlap, and different individuals will consider the same person to belong to a different category. Also, as the aim of the racial hierarchy in Cuba, and in most of the Hispanic Caribbean and Latin America, is for everyone to gradually whiten themselves or ´mejorar la raza´ -- literally improve the race -- persons will be ascribed a ´higher´ position in the racial hierarchy if the observer likes them or wants to ingratiate him or herself with the observed individual.
During my first trip to Cuba, I also observed that those of similar phenotype tended to date each other, almost without exception. That is, a mulato claro would be seen with a mulata clara, a rubio with a rubia, a prieto with a prieta, etc. I found this strange, expecting that, in a society moving towards colour blindness, one would not find people sticking to their own precise category in their choice of a partner. When someone of a darker complexion did go out with someone lighter, they were generally considered to have really 'improved' themselves (adelantar la raza- to improve the race).
I was also disappointed to see that there were absolutely no contemporary books on blacks in Cuba, or under the topic of Afro-Cuba, in bookstores. The exception was books by Fernando Ortiz, a pre-Revolutionary ethnologist and folklorist. Whites claimed that there were virtually no blacks in higher government positions because blacks had not really participated in the Revolution. I determined that I would find an opportunity to return to Cuba and to really assess the situation methodically.
As luck would have it, my home in Kingston, Jamaica, was right next to the Cuban embassy, so I went there often. When I informed them excitedly that I wanted to study blacks in Cuba, I was told that I should go to Oriente, the Eastern part of the country, as that was where all of the blacks were. I would come to learn that this was an expression of the white Cuban tendency to claim that all blacks were descendants of Jamaican and other West Indian immigrants to Oriente. When I would protest that the Spanish had lots of slaves and that all of the blacks could not possibly be descendants of West Indian immigrants, known derogatorily as pichones (literally blackbirds), I was told that all of the ones who had come as slaves had inter-married, as the Spanish were so much less racist than the British. White Cubans expressed sympathy for the Jamaicans who were under the British, who did not mix with them, supposedly, and so the black population there was not able to dilute itself and move up the racial hierarchy.
I returned to Cuba on several occasions between 1976 and 1981, to pursue a Master's degree in Public Health. I was part of a delegation of persons of American-Indian descent who visited the island in 1980. We met with Fidel´s personal physician who told us about an International Health Master's programme, which was open to foreigners. I applied and got accepted. Now I felt that I would really get a chance to see what it was like to live as a mulata in revolutionary Cuba, and I was correct.
While waiting for the course to begin, I lived with a white woman who was a militante (militant) in the Communist party and who lived in the elite Miramar area of Havana. She prided herself on being very liberal as she had mulato friends. However, she warned me not to go to see the Conjunto Foklorico Nacional, as 'esta gente tiene enfermedades' -- those people have illnesses. I realised that she assumed that I would be doing more with the members of the Conjunto than just participating in their cultural events, as she was clearly referring to sexually transmitted diseases. When I did go to the performances of the Conjunto, there was hardly anyone in the audience. As I stayed longer in Cuba, I realised that no one, except for a very small group of people, was the slightest bit interested in this vital expression of national culture, particularly Afro-Cuban culture.
When I actually began the course, I moved into the Instituto de Desarollo de la Salud -- the Institute of Health Development -- in Arroyo Naranjo, near to Parque Lenin, on the outskirts of Havana. The very first night that I was there, I was thrilled to hear drums in the distance. I asked my fellow Cuban students, who were, with the exception of two mulato students, all white, if I could go and hear this expression of Afro-Cuban culture. I was told that what I was hearing was part of Afro-Cuban religious ceremonies, to which only anti-sociales (those who were against the Revolution) accrued.
A Marxist view of Race and Culture
It did not take me long to realise that ´culture´ in Cuba meant European culture. This perception was not only a result of a history of European colonialisation and slavery, but was also a reflection of the tenets of Marxism-Leninism, as promoted under the Cuban so-called socialist system. The text by Constantinov, used in all educational institutions on the island, and called Fundamentos de Marxismo-Leninismo (Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism), supported a Darwinist view of social evolution, under which societies progressed from primitive communism, through feudalism and capitalism, and on to socialism and communism. The problem with this approach, as far as perpetuating erroneous views of human history, is that it places all of African traditional societies at the lower rungs of evolution and the European societies near the top.
Fidel Castro himself when he speaks about ´cultura´ in his interminable speeches, uses the term as synonymous with education, as opposed to using it in the way that we use culture in English. Throughout the years, he has often referred to how the Revolution improved the lot of ´gente de baja cultura´ -- which can be taken to mean either people of a low educational level or people who are lacking in culture, which anthropologists will tell you do not exist, as all people have some kind of culture and it is ethnocentric to arrange these cultures, conceptually speaking, in a hierarchical fashion.
Part of the reason for the Eurocentric concept of culture which is so pervasive in Cuba is that the Cuban Revolution occurred in 1959, and has remained relatively isolated from world intellectual currents since then. Only information that the government wants to enter the island does so. So all of the changes in mentality and practices that occurred in the United States, Brazil and throughout the region, during the 1960s until the present, have only recently filtered into the island and into the cultural framework of inhabitants. Despite the indisputable limitations of the Black Power movement in the United States, and the more recent growth of a similar phenomenon in Brazil and in other parts of Latin America, the transformation of Eurocentric views of history, culture and aesthetics has been invaluable in successfully attacking manifestations of cultural imperialism. Black began to be seen as something beautiful and not something that needed to be diluted in order to be acceptable. Numerous studies revealed the richness of African culture and the important contributions of African history to world culture and social development.
Yet in Cuba, when manifestations of this new consciousness timidly emerged, they were brutally repressed, despite current government claims that concepts of negritude -- a movement with roots in the Francophone world, which promoted black civilisation and culture -- were encouraged.
Young idealistic black militants from the United States, who fled racism in their homeland, looking for a more racially just society in Cuba, were treated in a hostile fashion by immigration and other government authorities on the island. These militants, many of whom were hijackers, were firmly immersed in ideas of socialism and world revolution, so it is not as if the government could, in all fairness, categorise them as counter-revolutionaries. However, when I lived in Cuba, and even today, anyone who does not agree with the regime´s policies is branded counter-revolutionary and a danger to national security. I met several of these black Americans while I was living in Cuba and was deeply disturbed by the way in which their spirits had been wounded and their idealism challenged by their treatment at the hands of the Cuban government.
See Part 2 next week.
Dr Gayle McGarrity is a professor at the University of South Florida.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/Race-and-Cuba
Jakiyah McKoy, stripped of her Little Miss Hispanic Delaware crown. (Via youtube.com)
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