Memory of an Ignominy

• March 21 – International Day against Racial Discrimination.

BY PEDRO DE LA HOZ

In the debate of ideas around the history and fate of the Cuban nation, some people nowadays tend to go to extremes at the time of reviewing how life was during the republican period of 1902-1959. They attach themselves -sometimes in a direct way and others not that openly- to the dream of restoring the old order, disguised under the canopy of their rejection of the socialist project we have nourished over the last half a century amid countless obstacles and aggressions.

only 19% of civil servants WERE black or mestizo.

The frustration of those years of the Republic thought by José Martí, as a consequence of imperial interventionism and of the interests of the upper echelons it favored, was an undeniable fact. The endemic economic hardship of the majority, political corruption, frequent outrages against the population and the US interference in internal affairs, influenced the republican crisis to the point that it was necessary to change the course of history by way of the revolutionary struggle.

Does this mean that we have to wipe the slate clean of the Republic as a whole? Deny realizations of various types? An objective analysis of those years shouldn’t lead us to not recognizing the complexity of historical processes or to nostalgic or unreal celebrations –like the one trying to weave a fiction around the opportunities of social promotion for black people and people of mixed race. We’re talking about calculated invention. Although the spokespersons of that fiction recognize –they can’t avoid not to- the existence of racial discrimination throughout that period, they feed the field of speculation by saying that such status was about to be overcome. Some have even stated that, indeed, the Revolution favored the social access of black people to educational and labor institutions, but that in the Republic, before 1959, new ground had been broken for the advance of black people and that this path was leading to integration, sooner than later. They’re practically telling us that the past always looks better.

A shrewd observation by poet Víctor Fowler points to the understanding of certain pre-existing logic that intends to serve as justification for that sweetened vision. Fowler, also an essayist, takes, as a starting point, the social situation of black and mestizo people after the brutal repression of the movement known as Independents of Color, which made "the myth of the Cuban racial fraternity" reach crisis point. Fowler expresses the following:

It’s fact that tells us there were hardly any black Cubans among the main figures or that were members of the diplomatic corps in any of the Republican governments; that blacks hardly worked in numbers in large store chains or in electric companies or refineries; that they didn’t occupy leadership positions in sugar mills, and thousands of other pieces of evidence of the visceral racism of the Cuban elites. Contrary to this, in the past, hundreds of thousands of black people believed and tried, in all good faith, to go up the pyramid of a classist society by way of their own work and investing as much as they could in the education of their children, convinced that the increase of cultural level was going to guarantee their improvement.

But when we analyze this period carefully and in depth, we notice that there’s an enormous gap between wish and reality. The possibility of promotion was a mere hope. One of the most consistent experts of the racial problem in Cuba, Esteban Morales, sets with precision the legal and social coordinates of the period:

The Republic considered blacks as citizens since 1901, according to Article 11, Section 4 of the Constitution, but, in practice, if came up against classist interests and racial prejudices, which didn’t differ very much from the situation during colonial times. Therefore, non-white people were still one of the most marginalized groups by the bourgeois society, since they were mostly part of the humblest and poorest sectors of the country. At the same time, foreign masters and ruling white Cubans used the racist ideology along with the myth of racial equality, inherited from nationalism to subordinate and repress the blacks and mestizos, together with the insistence on hiding, manipulating and making people forget the glorious past that had tended to unite them during the struggles for independence.

the possibilty of social promotion for black people at the time was a mere hope.

The marginalization of blacks in the Republic never stopped being evident. So much so, that scarcely a month after the official proclamation of the birth of the new State, a group of black veterans discharged from the Liberation Army created a committee to denounce the discrimination they suffered themselves.

In 1929, Nicolás Guillén wrote:

What are the problems of the colored race in the Republic of Cuba today? Is it that after two great revolutions against Spain and after the establishment of a free homeland there can be a group of Cubans feeling they’re different from others?

In 1943, according to the Census, 71.9% of owners, managers and top civil servants were white, 18.5% foreign and only 9.6% black or of mixed race. The same document reflects that 80% of civil servants were white, 1% foreign and 19% black or mestizo. Meanwhile, 63.6% of domestic employees (servants, maids or washerwomen) were made up by the euphemistically called people of color.

If we go by the comprehensive information included in the excellent book by Guillermo Jiménez Los propietarios en Cuba, 1958 (Owners in Cuba, 1958), only a trifling number of mestizos -some with documents of white people- appear on the list.

The memory of those six decades can’t avoid the division of the Santa Clara Park into two promenades, one for whites and one for blacks; the black ball that stood in the way of aristocratic clubs when the slightest suspicion of not having "clean blood" fell on someone trying to join it; the prohibition of access to certain public areas.

The material disadvantages accumulated, the combination of the heavy inheritance from colonial and republican times, and the persistence of the social subjectivity of racial discrimination, were underlined by Fidel Castro as one of the enormous challenges revolutionary power should face. He expressed this early, on March 25, 1959, during a television appearance:

The problem of racial discrimination is, unfortunately, one of the most complex and difficult problems the Revolution has to tackle. The problem of racial discrimination is not the problem of rental, of expensive medicaments, or the problem of the Telephone Company, it’s not even the problem of large estates, which is one of the most serious we have to face.

Maybe the most difficult of all the problems we have ahead, perhaps the most difficult of all the injustices that have existed in our country, is the problem of putting an end to the injustice racial discrimination entails, believe it or not.

There are problems of a mental nature which for the Revolution represent barriers as difficult as the strongest interests created. We have to struggle not only against a series of interests and privileges that have been affecting the nation and above all the people; we also have to struggle against ourselves, we have to struggle very hard against ourselves.

On March 21, on the occasion of the International Day of the Struggle against Racial Discrimination, in a world where xenophobia and racism is eroding the fabric of many societies -just looking at the hatred that Europe unleashes towards immigrants should be enough- Cuba has a record in support of human dignity that many would like to have, for this reason, without stopping, we must continue taking actions against rooted prejudices and obvious inadequacies. We’re talking about a battle we have to complete.

Taken from Granma Daily