Jackson 1 Essays (2752 words) - Cuba, Americas, Politics

Jackson 1 What impact did the Cuban revolution have on Afro-Cubans and race relations in Cuba? Describe the experience of African American radicals and nationalists in Cuba. In March 1959, two months after the conquest of state power, Castro broke the conspiracy of silence on racism in Cuba by confronting it head on. His first step was to abolish the old private school system and establish a well-funded public school system that was completely integrated. Economic and social conditions for Blacks improved dramatically when the revolutionary government decreed the Agrarian Reform and Urban Reform Laws, which gave the land to small farmers, and lowered ren ts in the cities by 50 percent. Laws were enacted and enforced prohibition discrimination in jobs, scho ols, housing, and medical care. In Cuba, race prejudice would be a punishable offense. Official Cuban census figures say black and mixed-heritage people are about 35 percent of the island's population, but a quick stroll around any Cuban town will provide visual confirmation of just how many Cubans of color deem themselves "white" . That may not be surprising, given that r ace is not an objective scientific category, but rather an organizing principle of political power both before and after the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. Cuba (pre-Fidel) had been a place where multiracial alliances coexisted with persistent, entrenched rac ism and vast racial inequality. The last pre-revolutionary president, Fulgencio Batista, was a mulatto who may have had some Chinese and Indian blood. While he may have firmly ruled that system of inequality, he was, demographically speaking, more inclusive than were the white revolutionaries who overthrew him. But once the rebels won and tens of thousands of the wealthiest whites fled to Florida, Castro emphasized independence from American capitalism, improvements in healthcare, and literacy drives and he also told Jackson 2 American journalists in January 1959 that his new government would work to erase racial d iscrimination once and for all. In 1962, a North American survey found that 80 percent of black Cubans were wholly in favor of the revolution, compared to 67 percent of whites. The ensuing years saw visible gains towards social equality. The entire country was literate, regardless of color, a nd the 1980s, saw a generation of young black Cubans whose parents had been sugarcane and service workers enter the workforce as doctor s, engineers and professionals. Still, despite major economic and social gains, b lack Cubans remained unrepresent ed in the political leadership. In the years between Castro's ascendance and the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, race was an issue kept under the rug. During the Black Power Movement, the African American organization that established the most significant relations with Cuba was the Black Panthe r Party. The B lack P anther P arty was a radical Marxist organization which was inspired by the Cuban rev olution. Huey P. Newton, cof ounder with Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party , wrote in his autobiography: "For Castro guerrilla warfare was a good form of propaganda. Walking armed through R ichmond was our propaganda". For many Black Panthers , Cuba symbolized a perfect example of how a socialist system could succeed in offering equal oppor tunities to all its citizens. Socialist Cuba also became a safe place for those panthers who wanted to escape from the illegal activities of John Edgar Hoover's Counter Intelligence Program, a nd starting from 1967-68 many members of the Black Panther Party m embers went into exile in Cuba. Among the African Americans in exile in Cuba there were some of the most prominent leaders of the Black Power Movement such as Eldridge Cleaver, Hu ey P. Newton and Assata Jackson 3 Shakur. Cleaver came to Cuba in 1968 to avoid arrest and sp ent eight months on the island. His story is particularly interesting because, as the Minister of Information of the B lack P anther P arty , he had high expectations from the alliance with the Cuban government: he hoped that the Cubans would organize a military camp for the training of Af rican American revolutionaries. The project failed because the Cubans decided not to transform their political support for the African American