Black Cuba/White Cuba
Few tourist ships dock at Havana’s famous esplanade. The United States government prohibits American businesses in Cuba. American travel to Cuba is restricted to relatives, journalists, students, and researchers. On a recent trip to Havana conducting research on the American Civil Rights Movement, this writer discovered the Martin Luther King Jr. Center as well as the color line.U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American, is a strong contender for Willard “Mitt” Romney’s presidential ticket. Recently, Senator Rubio led a protest against issuing a U.S. visa to President Raul Castro’s daughter to attend a Latin American Studies conference in San Francisco. Raul Castro assumed the presidency of Cuba following his brother Fidel's lengthy illness. No such protests arose against communist Russia, China, or visits by relatives of despots.The conflict with Cuba is political and emotional. Following the 1959 Revolution, Cuban immigrants lost more than businesses when they fled to America. They lost race-based privileges. Considered ‘White’ in Cuba, they are people of color or Latino, in America. George Zimmerman, the killer of African-American teenager, Trayvon Martin, is a self-identified White Cuban-American.
In Cuba, “Mammy” dolls with dark-skin, big red lips, enormous breasts, wearing headscarves, and carrying watermelons fill the shops. This color line is not unique to Cuba. Offensive Black caricatures abound in Latin America as remnants of Spain's slave trade.
The slave ship Amistad, made infamous by the uprising led by Cinque, flew under a Spanish flag. That ship sold part of its human cargo in Cuba prior to arriving in Connecticut’s Long Island Sound. The United States obtained Cuba by defeating Spain in the Spanish-American War. When Cuba gained independence in 1902, America kept the naval base called Guantanamo Bay.
Race, class, and color would dictate opportunity for most Cubans. Although the Afro-Cuban, Antonio Maceo, known as the Bronze Titan, fought heroically for Cuba’s independence, Black Cubans remained oppressed by law. In 1912, Afro-Cubans rebelled against the near slave conditions of the sugarcane plantation. America crushed this Afro-Cuban uprising using military force to protect its U.S.-owned plantations there.
