“What became known as ‘Afro-Cuban Study Groups’ began in 1974, virtually in the same spontaneous fashion as the black Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional had in 1968, or as the idea to present a black position paper to the 1968 World Cultural Congress, or as the so-called ‘Movimiento Black Power.’ ‘First, we would just sit around to listen to nice records, dance, and talk a bit,’ recounted Reinaldo Barroso, one of those ultimately accused of having initiated these all-black group study sessions. ‘Then someone would say, ‘Oye, chico, I have an Ebony magazine with an article on this or that.’ And then we just started passing interesting information to each other about black movements around the world, about African cultures, and things like that. We didn’t even realized that by coming together to listen to music—jazz, soul, Funk, salsa, Fela’s Afro-beat—we unconsciously were fulfilling a need to talk about ourselves as Blacks.” “According to Esteban Cardenas’s written account of the events that followed, ‘In 1974, a group of young Blacks … started up the first of a series of study groups. They merely wanted to investigate, analyze and study the history of Cuba, but from the standpoint of its link with black African cultures.’ They all felt a deep void within themselves, although the state’s media and the leaders of Cuba proclaimed that they had all they needed. There was nowhere Blacks could go, no institution, movement, or school in Cuba, said Cardenas, to satisfy a thirst for ethnic fulfillment… ‘They felt that a supposedly revolutionary country should have some type of structure which could allow Man to get rid of whatever form of historical alienation, derived from the colonization of the mind, was imposed by western culture,’ he explained. ‘For instance, they felt it was abnormal for Cuban Blacks, men and women, to continue behaving the way they did, wanting to become physically white, or as close to it as possible, and aping white behavior. Craving to become like the whites resulted from the exploitation and oppression Europe had imposed over several centuries on countries known as the ‘Third World,’ they felt. In other words, these young Blacks were theorizing heavily on the concept of racial alienation’… “ “Cardenas further related that the Editorial Ciencias Sociales of the Ministry of Culture had flatly refused, in 1974, to even consider publishing Cheikh Anta Diop’s Blacks in Antiquity, or any of his other works. ‘It was argued that Diop was a falsifier of history who had ‘Negrified’ Greek history and ‘Negroized’ the ancient Egyptians,’ Cardenas recalled. ‘The young black scholar who had made the proposal that Diop’s works be published, Lazaro Rodriguez, was immediately summoned before the Editorial Board and the base cell Party committee of the publishing outfit. He was asked to explain the reasons behind such a proposal which betrayed ‘ideological escapism,’ ‘black racism’ and indicated his ‘lack of firmness and loyalty to revolutionary principles’…” “The young Afro-Cubans who started the ‘study groups’ simply hungered for knowledge of their historical past—in Cuba as well as in the general history of mankind. They were women and men, all Blacks, their ages ranging from 18 to 25 years. All were born under the Revolution; they had known no other system but socialism. They didn’t hide, or try to meet covertly. This was not because they felt that what they were doing was innocent: reading ‘black’ books, commenting on ‘black’ issues, listening to ‘black’ music from various parts of Africa and the world. On the contrary. They were painfully aware of the price they would sooner or later have to pay for their ‘suspicious’ quest, though there was nothing sinister in their undertaking. They were born under the Castro regime, and understood it too well to make the mistake of going about their business in secret. ‘We grew up under a system where everyone is watched, so we just acted normally,’ Barroso recalled. ‘We always met at someone’s flat to have fun, dance, play records and, as a part of that whole boisterous commotion, we exchanged knowledge about things Black’…” “They knew that the secret police would soon infiltrate their groups, so they decided that no name, especially nothing like ‘study group,’ which would have really sounded subversive, should be attached to their activities. If anyone ever got curious, the answer was to be simple: ‘Dancing, singing, and listening to music are enjoyable things, and the Revolution was made to bring joy, not sadness, to the Cuban people.’ In a word, they were happy Cuban Blacks, happy to be Cuban, happy to be revolutionaries, and only incidentally Blacks. As Cardenas explains further, ‘they were all acutely aware that the social situation in Cuba was characterized, particularly at that stage of 1974-75, by extremely repressive methods. But they persisted with their studying and research. And they began to meet more and more frequently, with youthful zeal, as if wanting to show that those black intellectuals who were repressed years before, and were now silent, deserved successors who would break the silence’….” Carlos Moore “Castro, the Blacks, and Africa” Page 313
Posted on: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 02:28:33 +0000
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