Ricardo Chavira Chicano

In the first years of my time in Cuba, I found many things striking, among them the concept of race.

For Cubans, race is secondary to nationality. Being Cuban is more important than your racial composition or skin color. Imagine if the United States Blacks considered themselves above all Americans and incidentally Black.

Cubans for centuries have been intermarrying, producing people of every hue. There are several racial categories ranging from Black, to mulato-it’s not a derogatory term in Cuba–to snow white. Cuba is extremely different from the United States in that Cubans self-categorize ethnically. There is no “one drop” rule still common in the United States.

There is no Black music or soul food. Cubans of every age socialize without regard to racial composition.

Yet, there is racism directed at Blacks. The stereotypical Black criminal or lout notion exists. If a theft occurs, white Cubans might say, “Surely, it was a Black man.”

Blacks

Here’s a story I wrote in 1998 that is still relevant

HAVANA – As a young man in the early 1950s, Clinton Adlum made the mistake of walking through Miramar, a residential enclave of gated mansions and verdant gardens. “Because I’m black and that’s where the wealthy white people lived, guards stopped me and asked what I was doing there,” Mr. Adlum recalled twenty years ago. “I had to leave.” Such stories were common in the virulently racist Cuba of those years. But with the triumph of Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959, blatant discrimination was supposed to have been swept away.

The reality, says Maria Fragua, is something else. Ms. Fragua, a black historian, married a white man a few years ago and moved to his neighborhood. “I was the only black person there. So, when my relatives and black friends came to visit, our neighbors wanted to know who they were and what they were looking for,” she said.

What the two stories illustrate, say Cuban authorities, is that while Castro and his government significantly improved the lives of blacks by ending official discrimination, informal racism survives in this heavily black nation. Only now, they say, is the primarily white Cuban leadership coming to grips with that reality.

 A special commission is assessing the problem. “There is no official racism here anymore,” said Mr. Adlum, a retired diplomat. “But there is still a culture of racism. The mistake was to think that just by having everyone integrated, racism would fade away.”

 African slaves were brought to Cuba for three centuries, and slavery wasn’t abolished until 1886. During those years and beyond, blacks were barred from white schools, neighborhoods, social clubs, and other institutions. Afro-Cubans endured high unemployment rates, and when they found work, they were relegated to the lowest-paying, most arduous jobs.

 Early attempts by blacks to gain recognition were crushed.

 In one notorious 1912 incident, government troops killed about 3,000 blacks in fighting that erupted after an Afro-Cuban political party was declared illegal.

Just months after taking power in 1959, the revolutionary government outlawed housing and workplace discrimination, banned all-white country and social clubs, and, perhaps most significantly, granted free universal access to higher education. Castro, signaling the changes, announced that “in the schools, white and black children must be together so that later the white man and black man will be in a position to earn their living at the same workplaces.” Pablo Diaz, a black foreign ministry official, never had a government so directly taken on racial discrimination.

 “You can’t overestimate the positive impact that had on blacks,” he said. “My family was destitute, and nobody even dreamed of attending a university before the revolution. Today, we have engineers, economists, and doctors in my family. And many other black families experienced the same change,” Mr. Diaz said.

Rafael Belicer, 56, credits the revolution for changing his fate. “I’m an educated black man who can speak four languages – English, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish,” he said. “I have a degree in civil engineering, and I’m driving a French Peugeot. . . . The revolution has been very good to black people in Cuba.”

 Gisela Arandia, a University of Havana researcher, said that blacks weren’t entirely singled out by race but by circumstance. “Because they were so marginalized, blacks and mulattoes made great advances in the early years of the revolution,” she said.

The Castro government sent thousands of troops and advisers to African nations in a more controversial undertaking. About 70,000 African students were brought to Cuba for free education. But many here say the government has made no further moves to root out subtle, intractable racism. Some blame the government’s Marxist bent.

“The socialist commitment and strictly fair nature of the new regime would eventually assure the gradual and spontaneous resolution of the racial question,” wrote Osvaldo Cardenas, a former Cuban official. Further, as long as Cuba maintained hostile relations with the United States, “it was officially determined that any reference to race relations represented a threat that could divide the population along racial lines,” according to Mr. Cardenas.

 Even today, Ms. Fragua said government-issued documents don’t specify race. Ms. Arandia said that practice stems in part from the centuries-old tradition of distinguishing between blacks and persons of mixed white and black ancestry, or mulattoes. “You have many people here who don’t think of themselves as black, [but] who in the United States would definitely be black,” she said. “So you don’t have anything like the level of black consciousness that you do in the United States.

It also means you limit the possibilities that race will be discussed frankly.” Ms. Arandia, who is black and has studied race relations in America, said that Cuban racism shows itself in many ways. Until 2018, there were few Afro-Cubans in government leadership roles. Today, three of the six vice presidents of the State Council in power are black, including the first vice president, and three are women.

 In the newly burgeoning tourist industry, management jobs mainly have gone to nonblacks, say many Cubans. Blacks are primarily relegated to menial jobs, such as kitchen helpers and hotel maids. “Just look around here,” Ms. Arandia said as she sat on the patio of the luxurious Hotel Nacional. “All the people working behind the counters are white.”

Black actors and actresses frequently play the role of servants or slaves, as in the current popular soap opera, Echo of the Stones. Said Ms. Arandia: “We see these racist images that don’t reflect reality. We have thousands and thousands of black professionals who are not portrayed in the media.” While no statistics are available, experts here say most of those imprisoned for criminal offenses are black.

“The army is heavily black, but blacks get only so far in rank,” Ms. Fragua said. “There are just two generals.” The crushing economic crisis that has engulfed Cuba since 1989 has hit blacks disproportionately hard, many here agree, because most emigrants are white.

“Relatives abroad send home dollars, and few blacks receive them,” said journalist Marta Rojas. Some white Cubans harbor anti-black sentiments, attitudes often openly expressed. At a dinner gathering here a few years ago, a retired factory worker, the white host, lamented his neighborhood’s ramshackle state. “It was beautiful until Fidel let all those blacks from the countryside move here,” he growled. “They didn’t care to keep up their apartments.”

In a recent interview, a foreign ministry official, Roberto de Armas, offered a different view. Some blacks who had lived in poverty, he said, had no idea how to care for their apartments.” “Merely changing their social situation is not enough. You have to educate them,” said Mr. De Armas, who is white.

For all the evidence of racism, visitors to Cuba often are struck by how fully integrated Cuban society seems to be. Cubans of all hues mingle in public and socially, and intermarriage is not unusual. “In that regard, we are further along than the United States,” Ms. Arandia said.

 “There, blacks and whites generally don’t sit down together. I’ve had African-Americans visit here, and they just don’t understand how this happens.” And popular Cuban culture – especially music and dance – is strongly rooted in West African traditions. Santeria, an African-derived religion, rivals Catholicism in the number of followers. Only now, and at the insistence of black intellectuals, is the Cuban government quietly reassessing race relations.

 The commission formed to study the situation is expected to produce a report sometime next year. Whatever the report’s conclusion, many blacks say the ultimate solution lies in changed attitudes. “In truth, 1959 to today is a very short time to cure an illness that is centuries old,” Ms. Arandia said. “Cuba, and every other country on Earth, has to get beyond race. If we do, there will be no problem.”