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.