After thirty years of anticolonial struggle against Spain and four
years of military occupation by the United States, Cuba formally
became an independent republic in 1902. The nationalist coalition
that fought for Cuba's freedom, a movement in which blacks and
mulattoes were well represented, had envisioned an egalitarian and
inclusive country--a nation for all, as Jose Marti described it.
But did the Cuban republic, and later the Cuban revolution, live up
to these expectations?
Tracing the formation and reformulation of nationalist ideologies,
government policies, and different forms of social and political
mobilization in republican and postrevolutionary Cuba, Alejandro de
la Fuente explores the opportunities and limitations that
Afro-Cubans experienced in such areas as job access, education, and
political representation. Challenging assumptions of both
underlying racism and racial democracy, he contends that racism and
antiracism coexisted within Cuban nationalism and, in turn, Cuban
society. This coexistence has persisted to this day, despite
significant efforts by the revolutionary government to improve the
lot of the poor and build a nation that was truly for all.