Cuban Race Relations Essay

The once powerful Spanish Empire was hanging onto a thread as Cuba and Puerto Rico were their last two major colonies. Tension between the Cuban people and the Spaniards had been building since the beginning of Spanish reign over the island in 1492. One of the leading issues was the “impact of increased taxation and an international economic crisis” (LOC). Spain was exploiting Cuba for its sugar plantations and treating the locals very poorly. This poor treatment and taxation by Spain would lead to the “Ten Years' War” (LOC), from 1868 to 1878, in which the Cubans

My cultural ancestry comes from a Cuban and Mexican decent. I have chosen to write about my Cuban side because I can relate to them more than I could with my Mexican side. I was raised around my Cuban family and would occasionally see my Mexican side due to them living so far away. I have spent a lot more time associating with Cubans and have adapted to more of their habits.

Race in Argentina and Cuba, 1880-1930: Theory, Policies, and Popular Reaction, by Aline Heig; In the Analysis of the writen of Sarmiento, Bunge, and Ingenieros; Heig explain the believe of the racial theory in Argentina and Cuba. She explained about the different treatments during those times in which the social and racial class it was divided. Cuba and Argentina it was characterize by the separation of skin color. The Anglo-Saxon in Argentina and Cuba have the idea of superiority race and inferiority. However, Heig explain that the ideology of the Argentina culture is very similar because they believe in the white superiority and Indians and black inferiority.

Generations upon generations of people have been thriving in Spanish speaking countries. Cuba is no different, through traditional clothing and special holidays they always are in tune with the past. With flamboyant traditional attire, that rivals the suns bright color and Spring flowers, coupled with fun to watch free flowing up beat music like Guaguancó or Pachanga, the Cuban culture is very exciting. In order to start to describe my family ties with Cuba, I will use an analogy: With every spin of a vibrant dress it seems as if the hands of time slowly turn back time. As the clock goes back so does my family history. In the early 1920's my great grandmother and her family made the trip from Spain to Cuba. Ever since then my family has had bearings

This week’s reading of Silence on Black Cuba interesting in how it showed racism and discrimination in “Black” Cuba. Although about 50 percent of the estimated 6.7 million population of Cuba was African decent, there was still discrimination towards them. What was even more interesting was that even some of the Afro-Cuban soldiers who fought along side Fidel and Che encountered discrimination. This being the case, Fidel simply downplayed the issue stating that their discrimination wasn’t as serious as the Southern States.

In Ileana M. Rodríguez-Silva’s book Silencing Race: Disentangling Blackness, Colonialism, and National Identities in Puerto Rico, she reconstructs defining historical moments between the 1870s and 1910s when over-racialized boundaries became politically expedient in the building of a cohesive Puerto Rican national identity. Ileana M. Rodríguez-Silva is an associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at the University of Washington, Department of History. She earned her B.A. at the Universidad de Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras and her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has also won an award for writing Silencing Race: Disentangling Blackness, Colonialism, and National Identities in Puerto Rico.

In order to understand the complex relationship that Cuba has with the United States and the nature of Cuban American immigrant communities that exist in South Florida, it is necessary to first understand the unique circumstances that led to the large influx of Cuban immigrants.

Race and gender have not only shaped the lives of people, but the history of colonial Latin America as well. The hierarchical system in colonial Latin America was that people of whiter skin enjoyed more privilege (white privilege as a category of whiteness) and more power than people of darker skin. In terms of gender, men were seen as superior to women. The issue of racism developed since colonial times, where people of darker skin were the ones who have been oppressed by people of lighter skin, one example of this was slavery. Interestingly, in colonial Latin America, one’s race and gender were not just based on skin color or on biological sex. Instead, colonial Latin Americans placed people into categories used different criteria, as either ‘man’ or ‘woman’ or ‘black’ or ‘white.’ These criteria ranged anything from where one was born, to one’s physical appearance, or even to the amount of money one was willing to pay to get to move up to a higher class. Essentially, race and gender came down to class in colonial Latin America. That meant that if you had more money the “whiter” you seemed and if you were a woman the more “feminine” you would be. Class is intertwined with race and gender and they informed one another. However, race and gender have created significant systems of power in Latin America by intersecting with its economic, political, and social projects. In particular, they have intersected with Brazil’s, Haiti’s, the Dominican Republic’s, Cuba’s, Puerto Rico’s

The Caribbean is a diverse region with a unique history. The progress and advancement of each island complied with the European country in control of it at the time. The Caribbean was conquered and colonized soon after Columbus’ discovery in 1492. A similar aspect of the heterogeneous region has been its plantations. The plantations were an important aspect of the cultural history of the Caribbean. Mintz believed that the plantations tied the colonies in the Caribbean to the European country that was colonizing it. He states:

In this paper, the question of why did Cuban slavery collapse in the nineteenth century will be answered. In 1820s, some Spanish colonies rebelled and finally gain the independence, while Cuban was still loyal to the Spanish. It is partly because Cuba depends on Spain for trade and the need for continuous protection from pirates and slave rebellions. Although, at that period of time, they were unhappy about Spanish rules, they were more afraid of the rising power of United States. During that time, Cuba continuously conveys sugar, coffee and tobacco to Europe and American. And to do so, the economy of Cuba needs slaves, since slavery was the economic foundation for the farming and mining

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the island of Cuba was in the process of emerging from a Spanish colony to an independent nation. Freedom from Spain, however, was not the only struggle that Cuba was experiencing at this time. After having been oppressed by slavery for several centuries, Afro-Cubans, who had joined the fight for independence in large numbers, were demanding equality in Cuban society. Nevertheless, whites, especially in the elite, continued to initiate discriminatory practices against them. As a last resort, Afro-Cubans staged an armed protest in response to the outlawing of their political party in 1912. Although valiant, the attempt was

Knowledge of the native peoples in Cuba, the largest island in the Caribbean, prior to the colonial era derives from the

19th century Cuba was unique in many respects when compared with all other Spanish colonies of the period. It held the title of largest exporter of sugar in the entire hemisphere, and was perfectly situated for the cultivation of tobacco leaves. Both of which combined to make it Spain’s most profitable colony. More importantly, from a sociological standpoint, its anti-colonial movement and societal revolution was firmly based on racial unification.

“We are a migrant family,” she began. It was 1968 when my grandmother, Teresa Hernandez, and her spouse of seven years, Roger Hernandez, fled from the communist country of Cuba with my two-year-old mother, Maria. Fulgencio Batista ruled as a ruthless dictator prior to the well-known Castro family, driving the Cuban economy into collapse and publicly executing those who disagreed with his governing tactics. He was over-thrown in 1959 by the Cuban people during “La Revolución”, a radicalized movement led by Fidel Castro promising wonderful restoration, but it only led to the genesis of his totalitarian regime. Life on the island rapidly changed: businesses were forced to close, the government owned all, and the inhabitants owned not one thing to their names. Many, such as her family, fled the country despite the dreadful consequences to seek “un nuevo futuro”: a new future; a new life.

For those who have not studied Cuba, it is simply ‘that socialist island in the Caribbean’, reducing a fascinating history to one label. The book ‘Havana: Two faces of the Antillean Metropolis’ by Scarpaci, Segre and Coyula helps to debunk this myth through the story of its capital city and its citizens proving that Havana, and by extension Cuba, is a complex, contradictory country where “history has left its handprint on every street corner” (back cover). The general theme in Cuban studies is that Cuba is a country of many contradictions and dichotomies; the book perpetuates this idea through its exploration of Havana emphasizing dichotomies such as those between the Spanish and American Influence, pre and post-revolution, capitalist and socialist Cuba, and the Havana experienced by tourists and locals.