[ Although it still causes many prejudices, misunderstandings and
challenges, there is no choice but to pay attention to skin color.
Above all, in its consideration within the media and national
statistics.] [[link removed]]

THE CENSUS, SKIN COLOR AND SOCIAL ANALYSIS  
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Esteban Morales Domínguez
June 30, 2021
CubaNews
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_ Although it still causes many prejudices, misunderstandings and
challenges, there is no choice but to pay attention to skin color.
Above all, in its consideration within the media and national
statistics. _

Cuban trumpet solo by Riccardo Maria Mantero Reuse Information, This
image was marked with a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license.

 

Although it still causes many prejudices, misunderstandings and
challenges, there is no choice but to pay attention to skin color.
Above all, in its consideration within the media and national
statistics.

Cuban society is a multiracial society, or rather, multicolored,
mestizo. And that reality has to be registered statistically. Not by
handling the Census as a simply numerical matter, but as a cultural
demographic one.

It is about the fact that color is a legacy of slavery. It is not
possible to avoid it, since it has marked Cuban society since its
origins.

When the Spaniards arrived in Cuba, in 1492, they did it with white
credentials and that is how they stayed. Those who came of their own
free will did so in search of a fortune, which they often found.

But Spain is not White. Colonized by the Arabs for 800 years, it is
impossible to consider it as such. Even when the Spanish do not assume
that identity.

So, the colonizers of our Archipelago were not white. Their power did
not consist in being white, but in having arrived with the cross and
the sword.

They arrived in a territory of indigenous people, of low culture and
they only used them to find gold. They exploited them mercilessly and
their population mass did not last long, although we still have
representatives of that original population in Cuba.

Chinese also came, brought by means of a system of contracts that
turned them into slaves. The so-called “culíes” [coolies], who
since then added their beauty to the population of the Island,
becoming a part of our nationality. These three large groups were the
ones that formed the Cuban population. Later, other Antilleans joined,
although not in the magnitude of the first ones, also merging with our
population.  

Although the Spanish Crown, put rules for the care of the indigenous
population; anyway, the ambition of the colonizers, together with the
regime of the Encomiendas and slavery, reduced that population to its
minimum expression.

In little more than 100 years, the so-called Tainos, Siboneys and
Guanahatebeys, almost disappeared, because they were not of an
advanced culture, as it happened for the rest of America. Cultures,
Aztecs, Mayas, Toltecs, etc. Those that did, culturally, had
practically nothing to envy to the European cultures of their time.

But the existing indigenous population in the Cuban Archipelago lacked
the strength that comes from belonging to a superior culture.

Along with the Spaniards came the first blacks. Not from Africa, but
directly from Spain. Those blacks were called “Ladinos”. They were
slaves in Spain. They knew how to speak the language and had a certain
culture, acquired in the work of servitude, for which they also
arrived in Cuba. But they did so in reduced numbers.

The vast majority of the blacks who arrived in Cuba, massively, did so
later, as a result of the slave trade. And massively, after the
Haitian Revolution of 1791, they settled in the eastern end of the
island. They had a great cultural impact, since they were accompanied
by their French masters. This is how the French contradanza and the
so-called Tumba Francesa arrived in Cuba. All of which, we know as
antecedents of our national dances, the Danzón.

Through the eastern region, the Antillean groups entered to
participate in the sugar production, hence the mixture that
characterizes that region, which covers up to the current province of
Camagüey, where we find many descendants of French (Haitians), or
English (Jamaicans) and other Antillean groups. This made the
situation of racial discrimination in the aforementioned regions more
complicated.

However, they did not give rise to the formation of minorities, as in
the United States, but merged with the Cuban population, keeping their
English and French surnames.

Then, the blacks were brought as slaves to Cuba, first for the work of
construction and later for the work of sugar production, within a
colonial regime already organized. To say black in Cuba was to say
slave.

These slaves, practically, since the XVI century, could buy their
freedom.

As the Spaniards arrived, they were men alone. Immediately, they began
to mix with the Indians and blacks, thus initiating the mestizaje of
the Island. And within a complex mestizaje, because it was formed by
free or enslaved people, mestizos or blacks. Not so the Spanish
whites, who never suffered the condition of slavery.

Unlike the blacks who were brought to the territory of the Thirteen
North American colonies, which later became the United States of
America; those who arrived, also brought from Africa as slaves to the
aforementioned territory, could not speak their languages, but only
English, they could not practice their religions or their cultures.
They were not allowed by the colonizers. In this sense, the slave
regime coming from England was harsher, with an almost absolute
separation between blacks and whites. That is what has ended up
characterizing the American society.

To blacks brought to Cuba, also from Africa, the Spanish colonization
allowed them to speak their languages, worship their gods and practice
their cultures.

It was that, for historical and cultural reasons, the Spanish were
more inclined to coexist with the cultural practices of the slaves in
Cuba and with the different colors.

Unlike in North America, in Cuba, the Spaniards coexisted better with
the differences in color. This also contributed to the differences
introduced in black slavery by the existence of domestic slavery and
plantation slavery.

In Cuba this did not take place, but in the American colonization,
there was a type of colonizer who, not having money to cover the
expenses of his transfer to America, requested a loan, which obliged
him to work, practically as a slave or serf. Once the loan debt was
paid, he received a piece of land, becoming a poor farmer. Except for
the existence of some slaves, who did not live in the barracks and
cultivated a small piece of land, to supply the master’s house, in
Cuba there were never serfs as such.

On the plantation, blacks had to work from sunrise to sunset, under
the whip of the Foreman or Overseer. Meanwhile, in domestic work, the
tasks were deployed in the house of the slave owner, intertwined with
the activities of service to the family. There one could be a
coachman, cook, seamstress, wash and iron, set the table, mend the
master’s clothes and made him a concoction, when he was ill, etc.
Performing tasks that practically prepared him for a trade, in case
one day he was able to obtain his freedom, bought or manumitted.

The contact with the family instructed them and endowed them with a
certain culture, which differentiated them from the plantation slaves.
They were only allowed to work in sugar cane cutting or sugar
production.

Blacks, wherever they were, were still slaves, and the trap, before
the slightest disobedience, was over him, like the Sword of
Damocles.  For the white master did not allow them those freedoms
that could inculcate in them a culture of independence, which was
closely guarded. But, in domestic work, in fact, the advantages, they
had them and not few took advantage of them very well.

For example, the girl of the house took a liking to the nice, docile
little black man, and could even teach him to read and write. In the
domestic context, the skillful, respectful, docile Negro was intimate
with the father of the house and got to know him even certain secrets,
such as his affairs with the black women, from which, not
infrequently, “bastard” children were born within the family.

The black man, a connoisseur of herbs, prepared a concoction that
cured the master of pain. And within this intimacy, the master
practically began to see him as part of the family. He gave him
chores, shared certain secrets with his slave and thus, sometimes,
this one, already old, earned manumission, or the letter of freedom.

Within the master’s house, living together as a domestic slave, the
black man achieved advantages, which he often took advantage of and
which made him advance in social life, even while maintaining his
status as a slave.

Domestic slavery generated a certain culture and within it, a level of
permissibility, of which the black could take advantage. This allowed
him to become part of society, even with all the disadvantages of a
slave society.

Meanwhile, in the United States, after the Civil War, slavery was
abolished in the North, but they had to continue to struggle with it
in the South. Blacks escaped to the North, where they became free, but
not infrequently, they left behind relatives who remained as slaves in
the South.

Not in Cuba, where slavery was a homogeneous system throughout the
island. Therefore, when the laws that attenuated it began to appear,
such as the so-called Law of Free Wombs, until its official abolition
in 1886, this had a national effect.

Of course, slavery began to disappear after a long process, in which
Spain abolished it, as a first step, giving freedom to blacks who had
fought, on both sides, during the First War of Independence
(1868/1878) until it was finally abolished in a general way in 1886.

However, in America, slavery took color. And with it came racism and
racial discrimination, which were not born with capitalism, but which
hit it very well, as an instrument of power and exploitation.

Therefore, slavery disappeared, but racism and discrimination, which
it engendered, for more than 400 years, remained imbricated within the
structure of Cuban society. And so, since the middle of the 19th
century, a society with a racist, mestizo and white hegemonic culture
began to emerge. Therefore, racism, racial discrimination and white
hegemony, within our mestizo society, have not yet been eliminated,
although they have been attenuated.

Therefore, the Revolution that triumphed in 1959, found a society in
which there was a well-defined structure. The so-called whites had the
power, they always had it. Mestizos were, more or less, in an
intermediate position, some few had access to power; the blacks were,
almost always, in the subsoil of society. This is the result of a
distribution of wealth that colonialism inaugurated and
Cuban-dependent capitalism took charge of solidifying.

In Cuba, poverty was also massively white, but wealth was never black,
and almost never mestizo.

After Fidel, almost since the triumph of the Revolution, began to
treat it systematically, racism, racial discrimination and white
racial hegemony have not disappeared.

The social policy that the revolution inaugurated in 1959 has always
had a profoundly humanist character, but, from the beginning, it
focused only on poverty, making no differentiation among the poor,
treating poverty as unique, which was never homogeneous, without
differentiating within it, according to skin color.

Would it have been possible, so early on, to have considered poverty,
taking into consideration its differences and levels, according to
skin color?

I don’t think so.  I believe that this would have greatly
complicated the fight against racism and racial discrimination that
was beginning at that time. I believe that if Cuban society was not
prepared, as it became clear, to assimilate Fidel’s speech against
racism, much less would it have been prepared if, in addition, the
existing differences in the levels of poverty according to the color
of the skin had been introduced. I believe that this would have
implied the introduction of a certain level of affirmative action, for
which whites, mestizos, and not even blacks themselves were prepared.

That is why, I believe, social policy, in Fidel’s speeches, began by
demanding employment for blacks, while everything else: health,
education, culture and sports and social security, fell under its own
weight and equally for all. When there was an equal distribution for
all, blacks and mestizos got what, in general, had never been given
to them before. Because the blacks and, to some extent, the mestizos,
had never enjoyed free and quality education and much less, blacks,
health. Sport was the opposite. And so, it began to produce a
distribution of national wealth, which the nation had never known.
And, within which, to blacks and mestizos, almost never, almost
nothing had touched them. For this reason, although skin color was not
taken into account, blacks and mestizos benefited as never before in
the history of the nation. For this reason, it was not difficult for
blacks and mestizos to understand that the revolution was their
revolution and that Fidel had been concerned and fought for their
welfare.

This is one of the aspects that, in the last 40 years, we have managed
to fine-tune. Without yet reaching, as such, so-called Affirmative
Action. Forms of the latter have been gradually appearing in Cuba, but
almost indirectly. And we are still in the process of perfecting the
initiated path. What is beginning to take shape, by means of concern
and an occupation by the political leadership that there is no one
left behind. 

Having demonstrated that race does not exist, that it is a social
invention. But that, however, color does, and that, in our country,
after 500 years [M1] of colonialism, skin color continues to behave as
a variable of social differentiation. Against which, we have proposed
to fight.

This tells us why, since the beginning of the Republic, in Cuba, there
were black and mestizo societies. It is true that they acted within a
racist and discriminatory context, which made them respond to it. But
they also functioned as fraternal societies, which helped the black
and mestizo members to train themselves, on the basis of free courses
for their young people, social and cultural activities, which in
general helped this population to face the problems of inequality.
Sometimes they made it easier to find employment and, in general,
helped blacks and mestizos to have a certain recognized social
presence.

However, after the triumph of the Revolution, these societies began to
disappear, as a result of the consideration that they were not
necessary, since the revolution assumed the defense of blacks and
mestizos and that they could contribute more to the racial division
within the Cuban society.

However, paradoxically, at the same time, the Spanish Societies,
considered as white, were maintained in Cuba until today. The question
still remains unanswered: Why did the black ones disappear and these,
coincidentally, of whites, did not?

This is something that has brought controversy and uneasiness,
although not only among blacks and mestizos. Today, it is even
questioned whether black and mestizo societies should not reappear.
Today, the subject tends to re-enter the debate. Especially because
the problem of racism and racial discrimination has not yet been
completely overcome.

But the blacks and mestizos, from the beginning, did not make any
demands and everything remained as it was.

Here in Cuba, after 60 years of a radical Revolution, of profoundly
humanist essence and of an extraordinary struggle against poverty,
injustice and inequality, to the very edges of egalitarianism, 
still, from the point of view of social position, access to certain
resources and certain advantages in social life, it is not the same to
be white, black or mestizo. This is not a burden, but it responds to a
structural dysfunctionality that even Cuban society drags along and is
capable of reproducing.

In particular, the so-called Special Period showed that the economic
crisis had not affected all racial groups equally. Blacks and mestizos
suffered the most. This became evident. 

Our government also realized that the difficulties with racism, which
surfaced with some force during the Special Period, were indicating
that it was a problem that, having been considered as solved, was not
really solved; or at least, it was not being solved at the pace that
many had imagined, but rather, racism had been hidden in the midst of
the difficulties experienced during those years of the mid-eighties
and early nineties.

Until then, there had been a long period of general silence on the
subject, which Fidel broke on several occasions, both inside and
outside Cuba, but without achieving then that the racial issue would
definitely occupy its rightful place in the struggle for a better
society in Cuba today.

I think that, in this, we have to start from the existence of
inequalities, to reach real equality. Unfortunately, inequality is
what we find at every step. Equality is a social project, not yet
achieved by Cuban society as a whole.

Therefore, we should not mechanically assume that all Cubans are
equal, because that was also wielded as a hypocritical slogan of
Republican Cuba.

All Cubans are not yet equal. We are equal before the law, but not
socially. They are two very different phenomena. Equality before the
law has been achieved. But achieving social equality is a much longer
and more complex process. Equality before the law is not social
equality. It is, perhaps, only a step towards the latter.

Today, there is a clear awareness that we must continue to fight
against inequality, pursuing it to those places where marginality
still assaults members of our society and not only blacks and
mestizos. Therefore, the work with the so-called Community projects
gains unusual strength.

It is possible to observe the Party and the government,
extraordinarily busy, mobilizing qualified human forces and resources,
which are put in the function of the solution of multiple material,
spiritual and social problems, which the Cuban society still has to
overcome.

This task of the Community Projects is strongly intertwined with the
Government Resolution, which serves as an instrument for the fight
against racism and racial discrimination.

Fidel had already become aware of all this and began to take action.
He conducted in-depth investigations in several underprivileged
neighborhoods on the situation of sometimes marginalized sectors.

It was also, then, when the experience of the so-called Social Workers
was carried out; most of them blacks and mestizos, which resulted in
many young people, who neither studied nor worked (it is said that
there were 80,000 in Havana) reaching the Universities. Those that had
been “whitened” during the Special Period.

Then, at the end of the eighties, we took up the subject again. Which,
I think, is the period in which we find ourselves now, at the height
of 2021.

Previously, during the 20’s and 30’s, above all, the racial issue
had been present in the written media, especially in the press of the
time. Personalities such as Juan Gualberto Gómez, Arredondo, Guillen,
Deschamps, Chailloux, Ortiz, Portuondo, and others, had produced
important texts on the subject. And they managed to keep it within the
debate in the press of the time, even in Diario de la Marina.

But that momentum was not maintained and by the triumph of the
revolution, it had almost disappeared.

But, since the 80s, many publications of books, articles, essays,
documentaries, and research in some universities began to reappear.
Cinema frequently brought up the subject, as well as plastic arts,
theater and literature. Discussion groups and community projects
arose, which today deal with the racial issue and have given it a
growing presence in the national culture and life. In fact, it had
been years since the subject had such an important place in the
national debate.

Miguel Díaz Canel, who dealt with the issue before becoming president
and continues to do so now, together with the Aponte Commission of the
UNEAC. The Aponte Commission replaced the group “Como agua para
chocolate” (Like water for chocolate), led by Gisela Arandia. She
was the initial promoter of the racial debate in UNEAC. Already,
previously, the racial issue had been taken to the party and later
located in the National Library, but it was, finally in the UNEAC,
where it found its definitive location. And now it is unfolding.
Through the work of the aforementioned Aponte Commission.

All this movement has concluded, with the appearance of a Governmental
Resolution, above mentioned, where the guidelines for the attention
and treatment of the racial topic at national level are proposed. With
the presence, also, of all those groups interested in the subject.
Aspects of participation, which still require development.

However, I consider that, although we have made progress, we are still
far from giving the racial issue the impetus it requires. There are
still many situations to be resolved.

Although our society is culturally mestizo, the presence of racism,
racial discrimination and a certain [amount of] white hegemonism are
still felt in the following matters:

-Inequalities, persist within the racial population structure, formed
by whites, blacks and mestizos. This is not a burden, but a phenomenon
of social dysfunctionality, which even Cuban society is capable of
reproducing.

-Differences in access to employment also persist. With privileges for
the white population, in the most important and better-remunerated
jobs: tourism, corporations, state positions, etc. Not so in political
positions, especially within the party, Popular Power and Mass
Organizations, where the participation of blacks and mestizos is
becoming more present.

-Differences by color, in the access to possibilities of higher
studies, Universities, masters, doctorates, etc.

-Racism, prejudice and discrimination against the black and mestizo
population, which tends not to manifest itself aggressively, but are
still present.

-Marked presence of an insufficient number of interracial marriages.
With a marked tendency towards racial mixing among young people, which
is indicative of the fact that young people are shedding their
prejudices.

Discrimination in the mass media, mainly on television, in which white
faces have dominated, and only recently have black and mixed-race
faces begun to appear. In response to a recent specific claim made by
Army General Raúl Castro in the National Assembly.

-Our written press barely reflects the problems of the racial issue.
There is no systematic treatment on the subject. Nor is there any
promotion of writers who deal with the subject. Almost never in our
press there is an article that deals with the subject.

-Our Political and Mass Organizations do not debate the racial issue.
They do not promote its discussion, nor do they consider it in their
work agendas.

-Discrimination in classical ballet.

-Racist jokes and expressions abound in cabaret activities.

-Only recently, the teaching of history has begun to reflect the place
of blacks and mestizos in the formation of our national history. And
teachers are being prepared to address it.

-Until very recently, the bibliography used, with honorable
exceptions, and very well known, did not reflect the role of the black
and mestizo population in the construction of our nation. Now a strong
and arduous bibliographic work is being carried out by the Ministries
of Education, aimed at solving this insufficiency of vital
consideration for the teaching of history.

-There is neither a Social History of the black nor of the black
woman, produced in Cuba.

-Even dealing with the racial issue, at any level and in any social
space, can generate certain discontent, prejudices and discomfort.

-It is only recently that our national assembly has begun to present a
structure that almost faithfully reflects the racial composition of
Cuban society.

-For those who deal with the subject in a systematic way, their
discussions are not disclosed, always remaining in the frameworks of
groups and interested persons.

-In Cuban schools there is no mention of color, leaving it to personal
spontaneity to deal with the problem.

-In our universities, the racial issue is hardly studied. Nor does it
appear in the teaching curricula.

-Our academic research hardly refers to the racial issue sufficiently
and it is practically absent from the student scientific work.

-Only recently, we have begun to observe that an effort is being made
to attend to the racial composition of workgroups, activities, or
situations in which the black and the mestizo should be represented.
This can be seen with particular emphasis on television.

-In reality, our statistics, social, economic and political, are
colorless. Throwing centuries of national history into the dustbin.
They fail to appreciate where the problems lie.

-Our economic statistics do not allow to cross color, with variables
of employment, housing, wages, income, etc. This prevents us from
investigating, in-depth, how the standard of living of the different
racial groups is advancing. Especially those who were previously
disadvantaged.

We consider that as long as the racial issue is not treated
systematically and coherently, at a comprehensive level, and is
reliably reflected in our statistics and in our media, we cannot
aspire to socially advance the country on the subject.

Our inherited culture is racist; that is to say, the practice of
racism is cultural, instinctive, responding mainly, but not only, to
inherited mechanisms that work, not infrequently, unconsciously.

Therefore, until the issue enters education, is strongly discussed
socially, is part of the systematic work of the media and is
statistically considered, we cannot expect it to become part of the
culture, nor can we aspire to advance in it, banishing it from the
usual forms of behavior of citizens in our country.

The fact is that the absence of attention, almost generalized, for a
long time, of the racial issue, has very negative consequences. This
is because its knowledge, understanding and consideration at the
social level, as something that harms the Cuban nation. This is a very
serious problem to overcome if we want our society and its culture to
advance in an integral way, guaranteeing the success of the social
project of the revolution.

_ESTEBAN MORALES DOMÍNGUEZ (born in Matanzas, Cuba, 1942) has been
an active participant in the Cuban revolutionary project for the past
fifty years and is one of Cuba’s most prominent Afro-Cuban
intellectuals. He is a member of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, has
held numerous academic posts, and has been awarded three times by both
the Cuban Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Higher Education. He
is the principal or co-author of fifteen books and has published more
than a hundred theoretical articles; his 2007 book, Desafios de la
problemáticas racial en Cuba (Challenges of the Racial Question in
Cuba) was the first book-length academic publication on this subject
by a scholar based in Cuba since the 1959 revolution._

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