As I watched Cuba: The Next Revolution, I came to a deeper issue that seems to be a common theme. A key thing that was repeated was that Spain was afraid of another Haiti. In a sense that they were afraid that the enslaved Cuban would overthrow their masters. As stated early in the video, Cuba received around 780k slaves which is about 2x more than what the United States received. I believe that with that number in mind and with the words of those enslaved in Haiti revolted against their oppressors, it struck fear into all slave owners all over the world. In my previous discussion I spoke about internal issues such as colorism. In this video specifically I saw the prominent issue of society being anti-black. Keeping the idea of people fearing their being another Haiti. We see comments similar to this in modern society. Instead of it being another Haiti, oppressors may replace that statement with a fear of their being another Black president. A fear of another Black vice president. Of course, these fears are maximized or limited to those specific roles specifically, but those are some examples.
Another time the issue of anti-blackness prevails is in propaganda. In the video they said that around 1908 there was propaganda from Cuba depicting Black Cubans as monkeys. From the way they had the characters stand and just from first glance. You can see how similar depictions of Black people a Cuban or American issue weren't just, but a universal one.
I also wanted to mention was Black culture in terms of music. I feel like African and Black culture goes hand in hand in terms of music. Especially because of the fact that we hold such a huge part of the influence of numerous genres of music. Since obviously they couldn't shut our voices, they attempted to limit it. In Cuba specifically Black culture was “underground”, “jungle music”, and deemed as ugly. So much so that they banned song. As a musical child myself I couldn't live knowing I can’t listen or play any kind of music that I want. All of this because the lyrics and the string instruments were in Spanish and sounded like the Spaniards but the beat from the drum was African influenced. Luckily, in the 1920’s the president at that time asked to have song played at an event. After that it was welcomed back into the Cuban music scene.
My last observation was the influence of currency. Cuba has two different currencies with different amounts of weight. The first one is Cooks. Cooks are weighted higher in terms of currencies. You would more so see white Cubans carrying this kind of currency. On the other hand, Black Cubans would receive Pesos. Pesos are still used but are worth less compared to a Cook. I find it interesting that as Black American we were limited to specific jobs but at least we had the same currency. However, our oppressors attempted to restrain us so much that they were separated in terms of currency is crazy to still digest!
If you want to watch Black in Latin America: Cuba
Hello Paige,
I agree with you totally. We as Black people are not supposed to be that intelligent to even become a president or vice-president of the United States. Because that defies their effort to try to control government and business by maintaining the concept that we are an inferior type of people by race, or ethnic heritage. The fact that they get away with paying people in pesos and others in a currency worth more money in the same country is just crazy. At least here, we are paid in the same type of currency, as you said, but we do on average get paid less for doing the same job until we bring it into notice. More and…
I want to second your mention of the representation of Blacks. The video recalled that they did use caricatures and Gates comments on the point that the Black representations looked like monkeys. He mentioned the way people often depicted Blacks like this in various places. They did say that when it came to nations, Cuba was always seen as a little black boy/child. I thought that was interesting to hear.
Hi Paige,
Like you said society at this time was definitely anti-black. It wasn't even one specific society, all around the world black people were facing persecution simply because of the color of their skin. They tried to come up with all sorts of false narratives to dehumanize us.