Afro-Cubans

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Afro-Cuban children playing (in Trinidad )

As Afro Cubans are referred to from Africa coming part of the Cuban population. The Afro-Cubans make up at least 10% of the population, together with the mulattos over a third according to the official census . This number is based on self-reported information. According to some estimates, 60–70% of Cubans have African ancestry.

Afro-Cuban culture is now an important part of Cuban culture, for example with the religion of the Santería , an originally West African rite that adopted various symbols from the Catholic cult of saints under the system of slavery.

History of the Afro-Cubans

The history of Afro-Cubans is closely linked to the colonization of Cuba and social movements throughout Cuban history .

Colonization of Cuba

The first immigrants from Cuba were Indians from the neighboring islands and Latin America , it was not until the submission by Spain in the 16th century and the sugar cane and tobacco cultivation led to the deportation of African slaves to Cuba. The working conditions were extremely bad. Alexander von Humboldt reported in 1826 that 15 to 18 out of 100 slaves per year died on some plantations.

In 1817 the first treaty ended the slave trade and a class of “free colored people” developed in Cuba, which made up around 20% of the population and was therefore larger than on the neighboring Caribbean islands. This led to a relatively early mixing of the skin colors. However, human trafficking only came to a complete standstill after the American Civil War in 1865.

From the independence struggles to the 1959 revolution

During the independence struggles of 1868 and during the independence war of 1895–1902, Afro-Cubans played a crucial role as they were the most disadvantaged group of that social order. Afro-Cuban generals Antonio Maceo and Guillermo Moncada are revered as national heroes to this day.

In 1908 Afro-Cuban veterans of the War of Independence founded the Partido Independiente de Color (PIC) - the first national black party in the entire Western Hemisphere - to defend the social interests of the dark-skinned population against the disadvantage of white-led governments. The party demanded full civil rights and free university access, but also campaigned for Afro-Cuban farmers who were driven from their traditional fields by large US investors in the course of the incipient land concentration. The political protest movement culminated in an uprising in Oriente Province (eastern Cuba) in 1912, which was brutally suppressed by the Cuban government. According to various sources, between 2000 and 5000 PIC supporters were killed and the party smashed.

The Cuban constitution of 1940 , which was particularly progressive in international comparison , but which was only poorly implemented, prohibited any kind of racist discrimination.

Afro-Cubans were clearly underrepresented within the various political and paramilitary resistance groups, mainly supported by the middle class, who achieved the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista . The most prominent Afro-Cuban comandante of the July 26th Movement led by Fidel Castro was Juan Almeida .

Role after the revolution

After Batista was overthrown at the beginning of 1959, Fidel Castro, as the leader of the revolutionary government, initiated social upheavals that affected Afro-Cubans like all other parts of Cuban society. In the second year of the revolution, the central instruments for implementing the political goals from top to bottom were the various unified mass organizations under the direct control of the government (e.g. trade union , women's and student associations and committees for the defense of the revolution ). These replaced the previous independent interest groups, which were gradually dissolved or banned. However, a mass organization specifically dedicated to the concerns of Afro-Cubans was not founded, which could have assumed the function of the sociedades de negros , which has been central to the self-organization of Afro-Cubans for several decades . In the government's view, with the triumph of the revolution, such a representation of interests had become superfluous, since all forms of discrimination had now been overcome.

Afro-Cuban activists or intellectuals who pointed to persistent elements of racism and related discrimination, including under the new social order, were violating a taboo subject and faced persecution in the first three decades of the revolution. The most prominent example was the ethnologist and historian Walterio Carbonell, trained in France, a longtime activist of the communist party PSP, who came from a wealthy Afro-Cuban family, had supported Fidel Castro since 1953 and served as Cuba's ambassador to Tunisia from 1959 onwards. In 1961 he published the critical social analysis Cómo surgió la cultura nacional , which was banned shortly afterwards and cost him his job at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After he had set up an informal organization against racism a few years later, he was re-educated in a labor camp (UMAP) for two years and then temporarily placed in a psychiatric institution. Carbonell was not rehabilitated until 2005 when his originally controversial work was allowed to appear in an edited new edition in Havana. The Afro-Cuban was also posthumously honored in 2011 by the government's official daily Granma for his “jewel of history”.

In the 1960s and 1970s, numerous members of the Abakuá Brotherhood, a traditional Afro-Cuban secret sect, were also exposed to persecution by state institutions. It was only approved as a legal association by the Cuban Ministry of Justice in 2005.

Current situation

Since the collapse of the Cuban economy as a result of the cessation of aid by the Soviet Union in 1990, social inequalities have become more apparent again, with the Afro-Cuban population being disproportionately affected by the growing gap between rich and poor. At the same time, there are increasing reports of racially motivated discrimination, for example in access to lucrative jobs in the tourism sector, which has been developing since the 1990s. Coveted media jobs such as television presenter are mostly awarded to Cubans with buena presencia y cultura (good looks and culture), which in Cuban parlance are mostly white Cubans. Blacks are also underrepresented in the centers of political power,

Public discussion of racism

After years of efforts by various actors from civil society and academia to publicly discuss the long politically taboo question of racism, prominent representatives of the Cuban Communist Party recognized for the first time under the presidency of Raúl Castro that discrimination based on skin color still exists and as a social one Problem is to be taken seriously. In 2006 and 2010, the Cofradía de la Negritud (" Négritude Brotherhood"), an association of scientists and anti-racism activists founded in 1998, addressed Parliament in open letters, referring to both the teachings of José Martí and the current one Constitution and the official principles of the "Cuban Socialist Project". In December 2009, President Raúl Castro, in his six-monthly address to the Cuban parliament, described it as a “disgrace” that the revolution in 50 years had only insufficiently achieved the rise of Afro-Cubans and women to leading positions in society.

Since 2011, there have been an increasing number of events by state institutions that deal with aspects of racism and that are also reported in the media controlled by the government. In December 2011, a parliamentary committee dedicated itself to the subject for the first time. In addition to the Cofradía de la Negritud , the Ciudadanos por la Integración Racial (CIR, “Citizens for Ethnic Equality ”), founded in Havana in 2008, is another prominent association of Afro-Cuban activists, in which members of the political opposition and Cubans living in exile are also involved whose events are often banned or hindered by the authorities as a result. In May 2012, for example, several CIR activists were arrested by the police in Havana in order to take part in a commemoration held by the Cofradía de la Negritud and the anti-government, Marxist network Observatorio Crítico for the 100th anniversary of the massacre at the Partido Independiente de Color to prevent.

literature

  • Michael Zeuske : Black Caribbean: Slaves, Slavery Culture and Emancipation. Rotpunkt, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-85869-272-7 .
  • Alejandro de la Fuente: ¿Adiós a Martí? The Partido Independiente de Color and the discussion about race and nationality in Cuba ... In: Cristina Eßer et al. (Ed.): Cuba. 50 years between revolution, reform - and standstill? (PDF; 83 kB) . Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Berlin, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86573-595-9 .
  • Aline Helg: Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1995, ISBN 0-8078-4494-2 .
  • Bert Hoffmann: Cuba. 3. Edition. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-55851-1 .
  • Esteban Morales Domínguez: Desafíos de la problemática racial en Cuba. Fundación Fernando Ortiz, Havana 2007, ISBN 978-959-7091-62-2 .
  • Carlos Moore: Pichón: A Memoir. Race and Revolution in Castro's Cuba. Chicago Review Press, Chicago 2008, ISBN 978-1-55652-767-8 .
  • Walterio Carbonell: Cómo surgió la cultura nacional. 2nd, corrected edition. Biblioteca Nacional José Martí, Havana 2005, ISBN 959-7137-17-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Zeuske: Island of Extremes. Cuba in the 20th century . Rotpunkt-Verlag, Zurich, 2nd, updated edition 2004, ISBN 3-85869-208-5 , p. 224.
  2. ^ Bert Hoffmann : Cuba. Verlag CH Beck, Munich, 3rd edition. 2009, p. 29.
  3. ^ Bert Hoffmann: Cuba. Verlag CH Beck, Munich, 3rd edition. 2009, p. 30.
  4. ^ Silvio Castro Fernández: La Masacre de los Independientes de Color. (No longer available online.) In: La Jiribilla. February 2002, archived from the original on April 22, 2002 ; Retrieved April 18, 2014 (Spanish).
  5. ^ Eugène Godfried: “Sociedades de Negros” / “Societies of Blacks”: The African Cuban Diaspora's Cultural Shelters and their Sudden Disappearance in 1959 in: AfroCubaWeb , September 2000, accessed on May 17, 2012 (English)
  6. ^ A b Samuel Farber: Cuba since the Revolution of 1959. A critical assessment London: Haymarket, 2011.
  7. ↑ Juan Goytisolo: Walterio Carbonell, el cimarrón del orden revolucionario in: El País of April 17, 2008, accessed on May 17, 2012 (Spanish)
  8. ^ Carlos Moore: Pichón: A Memoir: Race and Revolution in Castro's Cuba Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2008, p. 298.
  9. ↑ Madeleine Sautié Rodríguez: Walterio Carbonell, un hito en la historiografía nacional ( Memento from September 13, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) in: Granma from September 25, 2011, accessed on May 17, 2012 (Spanish)
  10. ^ Samuel Farber: Gays in Cuba after the Revolution in: Havana Times, December 16, 2011, accessed May 17, 2012.
  11. ↑ Reinaldo Cosano Alén: La sociedad Abakuá en Cuba ( Memento of October 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) in: Cubanet of January 12, 2007, accessed on May 17, 2012 (Spanish)
  12. ↑ Naomi Glassman: Revolutionary Racism in Cuba in: Council on Hemispheric Affairs of June 21, 2011, accessed on January 2, 2012 (English)
  13. ↑ Michael Zeuske: Cuba in the 21st century. Revolution and reform on the island of extremes. Rotbuch, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86789-151-6 , pp. 170, 134.
  14. ↑ Patricia Grogg: Problema racial a la agenda política ( Memento from July 10, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) in: IPS Noticias from June 21, 2011, accessed on January 2, 2012 (Spanish)
  15. ↑ Cofradía de la Negritud se dirige al parliamento cubano ( Memento of July 7, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) in: Voces (IPS Cuba) of February 4, 2010, accessed on May 18, 2012 (Spanish)
  16. ↑ Raúl Castro: Discurso pronunciado por el Presidente de los Consejos de Estado y de Ministros de la República de Cuba ... of December 20, 2009, website of the Cuban government, accessed on May 18, 2012 (Spanish)
  17. ^ Debate on Racial Situation in Cuba , Prensa Latina, May 15, 2012.
  18. ↑ Patricia Grogg: Cuba: Parliament deals with the topic of racism ( memento from April 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) in: Womblog.de from December 29, 2011, accessed on January 2, 2012.
  19. ↑ La Policía impide la realización de un foro antirracista in: Diario de Cuba of November 25, 2011, accessed on May 18, 2012 (Spanish)
  20. ↑ Detenidos varios disidentes por intentar poner flores a Mariana Grajales in: Diario de Cuba from May 9, 2011, accessed on May 18, 2012 (Spanish)
  21. ↑ El régimen arremete contra activistas antirracistas in: Diario de Cuba of May 23, 2012, accessed on May 24, 2012 (Spanish)