17February2024
Is Cuba the land of no racism that Fidel Castro's rise to dictatorship was based on? The short answer is yes, but the real and more complex answer is no. Although race doesnt seem to be the biggest issue in segregation of the people that reside there, it is the underlying thing that still separates the people but it is buried in color and class differences rather than ethnicity. Fidel did try to make Cuba a place where race didnt matter with regards to access to education, a fair wage, and housing. Some would say he was successful because from a race standpoint, it doesnt seem that you are denied access to things you need to be successful. However, from a color standpoint, people are separated and things are unequal. It is more about the way you look, meaning more directly, the amount of pigmentation you have in your skin that creates the bigotry. If you look deeper though, one would realize that the people most discriminated against are the people that mostly resemble the African race. So, for Afro Cubans, life is much harder if your skin resembles those from your African ancestry. In a place where Africans and European exiles fought side by side to gain freedom of their country from Spain, it is sad that their offspring are not treated equally. When Gates traveled to Cuba and visited the areas mainly populated by the "Black Cubans", such as Oriente, those areas were poor, and in disrepair and did not seem to be flourishing like the other areas, such as Havana. However, even in living in poverty, you could see the African culture deeply cemented in the now Cuban culture through the religion of Santeria, the music of Son, and in the food dishes. Afro Cubans were persecuted for practicing the religion for awhile until white Cubans started to practice it and make it more widespread. Now, it is no longer illegal to practice the African based religion. Just like in the US, when it is white, it is right.
I could go on and on about the history of Cuba, but the thing that stuck with me in this week's readings was that the US are the main culprits of why racism exists in Cuba. Every country they touch, they always want the white race to be the superior race and they backed Cuba in a corner until they had no choice but to institute segregation and follow their model. The US wants to cover up all history that points back to them in a negative light so we as a people need to join together and encourage our people to read and study not only our history, but the history of the African diaspora and how far reaching our ancestry culture really is across the entire world.
In the 1920's and 1930's there was an Afro-Cuban writer/poet named Nicolas Guillen who wrote about the social problems faced by Black people. He became a great friend of Langston Hughes who was an American writer/poet who wrote about similar issues. His short poems were inspired by the music of son, a popular Afro-Cuban genre of music and the living conditions of Black people in Cuba. Nicolas Guillen's poem "Cana" provides a small yet powerful description of the relationship between the US government and the Cuban people in that time period. Listed below is the poem:
The Black man next to the canefield
The Yankee over the canefield
The Earth under the canefield
Blood that is draining away from us!
What meaning do you get from this poem? Please send me your thoughts.
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