3) Spanish and other European immigrants that were encouraged to settle in Cuba as per attempts to "bleach" the island. This was the first time anything like this was seriously proposed since Haiti earned its independence. This is important to note because the "spectre" of Haiti loomed ominously over Spanish and Cuban whites for a century and most of their policies towards Cuba's Blacks were reflective of it. The following year, the Cuban Ward Connerly of his day, Martin Morúa Delgado was elected Speaker in Cuba's Senate. The year after that, Morúa introduced legislation that became known as the Morúa Amendment and it outlaws the PIC because is was based on race and racism was supposedly eradicated in Cuba. Just before the vote was taken to enact this bill into law, Estonez and other PIC leaders were imprisoned and were kept in jail until after the law was passed.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
247 p., Describes how black Cubans experience racism on two levels. Cuban racism might result in less access for black Cubans to their group's resources, including protection within Cuban enclaves from society-wide discrimination. In society at large, black Cubans are below white Cubans on every socioeconomic indicator. Rejected by their white co-ethnics, black Cubans are welcomed by other groups of African descent. Many hold similar political views as African Americans. Identifying with African Americans neither negatively affects social mobility nor leads to a rejection of mainstream values and norms.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
311 p., Focuses on conflict and convergence among African Americans, Cuban exiles, and Afro-Cubans in the United States. Argues that the racializing discourses found in the Miami Times, which painted Cuban immigrants as an economic threat, and discourses in the Herald, which affirmed the presumed inferiority of blackness and superiority of whiteness, reproduce the centrality of ideologies of exclusivity and white supremacy in the construction of the U.S. nation.
The Cuban journey on race relations denotes an adventure driven by ideology. A doctrine of equals and the need for consensus building towards national unity called for the reversal of disenfranchisement commonly practiced prior to the revolution. Public policy has affirmed a commitment to social integration of people of color yet the residue of bigotry still inflames the Cuban populace and stymies potential maturity among its people.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
365 p., As Louisiana and Cuba emerged from slavery in the late 19th Century, each faced the question of what rights former slaves could claim. Observes the people, places, legislation and leadership that shaped how these societies adjusted to the abolition of slavery. The two distinctive worlds also come together, as Cuban exiles take refuge in New Orleans in the 1880s, and black soldiers from Louisiana garrison small towns in eastern Cuba during the 1899 U.S. military occupation.
