President Barack Obama’s historic visit to Cuba is not only opening the doors to redefining the relationship between the two states, it is also highlighting the hopes, dreams, and conditions of a large group of Cubans who are black and/or African descended. Our perception of the racial/cultural identity of Cubans is often skewed by our view of the Cuban-American population here in the U.S. The vast majority of Cubans who fled here after Fidel Castro took power identify themselves as “white.” That perception is also reinforced when we see photos of Cuban leaders Fidel and Raul Castro.
The demographic data on the people who live in Cuba tells a different story, and it varies wildly, depending on the source. The CIA Factbook states whites account for 64.1 percent of Cubans, mestizos make up 26.6 percent, and black Cubans number 9.3 percent (this is a 2012 estimate). These figures are often disputed by academics.
The Cuba Briefing Sheet states: “US State Department officially identifies Cuba as 62% black. Cuban scholars say up to 72% of population is non-white” (emphasis added). The large population that is counted as “mulatto,” meaning mixed-racial ancestry, and major cultural elements on the island like food, music, dance, and forms of religious worship owe a far bigger debt to West Africa than to Spain. Regardless of the way “race” is defined, it is clear that at least one-third of the population is “not white” by the Cuban government’s definition.
Due to President Obama’s visit, there has been a flurry of articles in the U.S. media highlighting blacks in Cuba.
From the Washington Post, an article titled: “For Black Cubans, Obama Visit a Source of Pride, Inspiration:”
One of Fidel Castro's first acts after overthrowing Cuba's government was to declare an end to a regimen of segregation that mirrored unequal conditions for blacks in the United States. Afro-Cubans praise the country's incorporation of anti-racism into its official ideology, and acknowledge that black Cubans have made dramatic advances thanks to the revolution.
But nearly 60 years later, Afro-Cubans are underrepresented in the ranks of Cuba's political and economic elites and make up a disproportionate number of the urban and rural poor. Black Cubans have benefited less than their white counterparts from closer relations with the United States. Relatively few hold coveted, lucrative jobs serving foreign visitors.
Discriminatory hiring is particularly egregious in the elegant private restaurants where Cubans can earn more in a night in tips from tourists than the average monthly salary. There, as with many jobs in hospitality and tourism in Cuba, waiters, waitresses and bartenders are overwhelmingly white or light-skinned, mixed-race Cubans. Cuba's state ideology of race-blindness means there's little official discussion of race, and few programs to help black Cubans overcome the legacy of slavery and segregation.
From ABC News: What Obama's visit means for Cuba's national conversation about race.
In recent years, Afro-Cuban intellectuals have started gathering in a cramped Havana apartment to discuss a topic long considered off-limits in Cuba: race.
Fidel Castro’s communist revolution 60 years ago promised to wipe out racial divisions and level the playing field for all Cubans, regardless of color or wealth. Yet racism persists in Cuba, and many say recent economic changes here have overwhelmingly favored the light-skinned elite.
The historic visit this week of an American president who happens to be black is of special significance to Afro-Cubans, who, like many minorities around the world, view President Obama as a symbol of what is possible. It’s of particular importance for the small but growing movement of black activists on the island, who have struggled for years under government pressure, and who hope that warming U.S.-Cuba relations will push Cubans toward greater race consciousness.
“Maybe without an enemy, everyone here can begin to look more closely at things inside our own country,” said activist Manuel Cuesta Morua, who said he is one of several Cuban dissidents, most of whom are not black, invited to meet with Obama on Tuesday. “We hope it will help people see the racism here with more clarity, and see that there is diversity, and diverse ways of thinking.”
Dr. Devyn Spence Benson, author of Antiracism in Cuba: The Unfinished Revolution, wrote a Huffington Post article titled, “What President Obama’s Visit to Cuba Means for Cubans of African Descent.”
Unlike black American tourists, President Obama will be entering Cuba as a head of state. Hopefully, rather than using Cuba as photo opportunity or chance to impose U.S. politics on the island, President Obama will see what Afro-Cubans know all-too well: Cuba is a messy, contradictory place where racial differences and racism are both being fought and reinforced everyday. Ironically, if he looks beyond the veil of post-racialism, the first black president’s trip to Cuba may reveal what can be seen anywhere in the US. As Daisy Rubiera Castillo, put it, “we will see what happens.”
From The Grio, here’s an article titled, “For Afro-Cubans, President Obama is a source of pride and inspiration:”
HAVANA (AP) — Yolanda Mauri’s ancestors almost certainly came to Cuba in chains, laboring as slaves on an island of French coffee plantations and fields of Spanish sugarcane.
Her parents became their family’s first professionals, graduating with engineering degrees after Cuba’s 1959 revolution ended segregation. Mauri, 26, graduated from an elite technical university with a degree in computer programming. Today, she struggles to patch together a living from poorly paid government work and freelance jobs like building websites. She feels the sting of racism in casual derogatory comments or a maître d’s refusal to seat her in an expensive restaurant. For Mauri and other black Cubans, Barack Obama isn’t just the first U.S. leader to visit their country in nearly nine decades. He’s a black man whose rise to the world’s most powerful job is a source of pride and inspiration.
Obama’s March 20-22 visit has raised Cubans’ hopes that a new era in relations with the United States will bring an end to the U.S. trade embargo and improve life for everyone on the island. For Afro-Cubans in particular, the presidential trip carries a special charge, a hope that an African-American leader’s near-universal popularity among Cubans of all races will help end lingering prejudice and inequality.
“He’s black and in some moment of his life he must have realized that as an African-American he had to elevate his performance level because as a black person you have to work twice as hard to get the same result as a white,” Mauri said. “I identify a lot with him because of that.”
President Obama’s visit to Cuba is momentous, but also brief. I do not know if he will visit Callejon de Hamel and view the Afro-Cuban art of Salvador Gonzáles Escalona.
The Cayo Hueso neighbourhood, near the University of Havana, has its share of crumbling infrastructure, despite the on-again-off-again restoration projects of the past decade. Yet there's one part of Cayo Hueso where urban decay has been vanquished, where the dazzling has replaced the dismal, where a pyrotechnic explosion of poetry and music and painting broadcasts Havana's vibrancy and invites the world in for a closer look.
Callejón de Hamel (Hamel's Alley) is many things to many people. It is a testament to a community's creativity, because the profusion of sculpture and murals here are the work of people who live in the alley and outlying neighborhood. It is a celebration of Afro-Cuban culture. It is a Santeria shrine. It is a wild rumba street party every Sunday afternoon. And it is the place that Salvador González Escalona, the artist who started the whole thing back in 1990, calls home.
I know he will not get a chance to experience the beauty, grace, and power of the Conjunto Folklorico Nacional, the national folkloric dance troupe based in Havana, which features Afro-Cuban cultural, religious, dance, and music traditions. Perhaps doors will be opened for them to tour the U.S.
One of the best places on the internet to explore Afro-Cuban history, politics and culture is Afro-Cuba Web, which “presents the African cultures in Cuba: news, music, films, books, articles, festivals, conferences, and organizations.”
Thanks to Professor Henry Louis Gates’ 2011 PBS series Black in Latin America, many U.S. viewers got a chance to explore the relationship between Africa and the New World. The series is being widely used in high school and college classrooms.
In Cuba: The Next Revolution, “Professor Gates finds out how the culture, religion, politics and music of this island are inextricably linked to the huge amount of slave labor imported to produce its enormously profitable 19th century sugar industry, and how race and racism have fared since Fidel Castro’s Communist revolution in 1959.”
Gates’ series was only a beginning, and as President Obama has opened the door to dialogue and exchange with Cuba —no matter the reaction of right-wing politicians —here’s hoping that this first step will also allow a deeper and fuller exploration of the issues of race and racism in Cuba, as well as a freer exchange between us. I have a vested interest in being able to travel back and forth without making trips via Mexico. My religious ancestors are black Cubans.
Thank you, President Obama!