SANKOFA CUBA: RACISM AND REVOLUTION IN THE AFRO-CUBAN EXPERIENCE --- by Abdul Alkalimat Afro-Cubans agency during the early years of the Republic The clearest example of how these forces came into conflict emerged at the very beginning of the Republic. The independence army was full of Afro-Cubans. It has been estimated that Afro-Cubans were 40% of the officers, and 60% of the soldiers. However, after the war these Afro-Cuban patriots were pushed aside and discriminated against. In 1901 out of 7,000 appointments to government jobs only 100 went to Afro-Cubans. Yes, some few did get inside Cuban civil society and the government with positions of economic security, but the vast majority returned back to the degraded status they had under slavery. Afro-Cubans responded with courage and self-determination forming the first Black political party in the Americas in the 20th century in 1908. The Independent Party for People of Color (PIC) was formed with many of the activists who had been in the cabildos de nacion and the Directorio for the societies of color. “A Black independent political party was finally organized under the leadership of Evaristo Estenoz in Havana on August 7, 1908.” The response of the new government in 1910 was to declare any organization based on a non-white membership to be illegal, thus driving the new party underground. The curious aspect of this is that this law was an amendment initiated by the only Black member of the Senate, Martin Morua Delgado. In fact he was President of the Senate, yet racism as government practice meant he could not bring his wife to official government receptions. During the independence war Morua Delgado joined the independence struggle towards the very end, after the formation of the Republic, and his high position within the government, his perspective changed. He now believed that Black forms of organization would only make a bad situation worst. However, as the situation got worse anyway the PIC decided to have a public militant protest to shock the society into making reforms to open the society up to become more democratic. They emerged in protest fully armed. Again the Black scare hysteria took over and the government mobilized vigilante action and killed over 3,000 thousand of Afro-Cubans, including all of the leadership of the party. This is known as the massacre of 1912. MOTIVATION FOR ARTICLE This article is in response to the continuing discussion of how the Cuban revolution has dealt with the task to eliminate racism as a fundamental feature of socialist transformation. First it must be stated that this issue has never been ignored by the Afro-Cubans who have suffered from the oppression and exploitation of racism in their own country. On the other hand inside Cuba the reality of racism has not been fully dealt with, while outside Cuba the issue is most often raised to attack the revolution. This is a debate that is now raging outside and inside Cuba. It is a debate that ought to be raised everywhere inside of Africa and the African Diaspora. In fact, the issues speak to the struggle for socialism in the 21st century for all progressive forces in the world. The reason for this essay first developed as a result of two letters exchanged between activists in the US Black Liberation Struggle regarding racism and the struggle for freedom, justice and equality in Cuba. One article took a position against what it perceived as the failure of the Cuban revolution to eliminate racism against Afro-Cubans (afrocubaweb/actingonourconscience.htm), while the other letter rose in defense of the Cuban revolution (blackeducator.org/cubasolidarity.htm). I signed the letter in defense of the revolution but could not let it end there as this was too dangerous a contradiction within our movement about the experience of such an important country. The debate continued. This article has been developed to raise the level of our understanding of the dialectics of the Cuban revolution and how the unfolding of events requires us to grasp the dialectical motion of history and not simply to let perceptual knowledge of specific events dominate our consciousness. We also need to acknowledge and give respect to the response by Cuban comrades (havanatimes.org/?p=16838). jblun.org/issue/2/docs/black-activist-issue-2.htm#_Toc373339060
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 18:56:00 +0000
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