Beyond Slavery by Darién J. Davis

Author:Darién J. Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780742571594
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2013-06-24T16:00:00+00:00

By late 1909, Previsión’s tone had turned virulent as it became obvious that the new Liberal administration that followed the second U.S. occupation would not bring fundamental change for Afro-Cubans. Continued racial discrimination now became the major target of the Independiente newspaper, which increasingly focused on cases of Afro-Cubans being turned down for jobs, denied service in restaurants and shops, and unfairly arrested or sentenced. Previsión labeled these incidents “moral lynchings” and included them on the long list of crimes against free blacks that started in 1844. It argued that Cuban racism was particularly ugly because it was based on fear of blacks and was thus hidden. This characteristic implied permanent white control of blacks designed to prevent Afro-Cubans from thinking and acting on their own, the paper asserted. Any sign of AfroCuban independent initiative terrified whites and servile blacks, who would immediately respond, “Racism! Don’t divide the races!” The time had now arrived to act. Afro-Cubans were summoned anew, in the name of those who had fallen in the War for Independence, to oppose racism—even, if necessary, with violence.27

In the face of the Independiente challenge, the government and white politicians used the myth of Cuban racial equality to stigmatize their mobilization as racist and anti-white. On this basis, in early 1910 the party’s newspaper was seized, and the leaders and hundreds of members of the party were arrested and persecuted for allegedly conspiring to transform Cuba into a black republic. Simultaneously, Senator Morúa proposed his amendment to the electoral law banning black parties, which was approved.28

The government, by resurrecting the scarecrow of Cuba becoming another Haiti, secured approval for the repression from mainstream AfroCuban politicians. Although found not guilty in the trial that followed, the independientes were disorganized by repression. Moreover, their party had been banned. After 1910, they strove to regain legality. By May 1912, their leadership, borrowing a strategy already used successfully by other political groups, decided to organize an armed protest that would force the re-legalization of their party before the November 1912 national election. By showing their force, however, the independientes prompted an outburst of racism that swept the entire country, unmasking the mythical character of Cuba’s racial equality. The independientes’ protest was immediately misrepresented as a race war similar to the Haitian Revolution. This allowed the government to send the army and zealous volunteers against them in the name of Cuban unity: because they had allegedly taken up arms against their white brothers, these blacks threatened the basis of the Cuban nation and thus needed to be physically eliminated. In Oriente, the only region in which the independientes actually demonstrated, the armed protest resulted in the death of 2,000 to 6,000 Afro-Cubans, among them the top leaders of the party and hundreds of other independientes. Most victims, however, were black peasant families.29 The massacre by the Cuban army put a definitive end to the Partido Independiente de Color and made clear to all Afro-Cubans that any further attempt to challenge the political and social order would be crushed.

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