On the racial contradiction of Cuban government, in the country and outside it

A problem for the existence of black Cubans outside Cuba, is the projection of their own government; exposing them in a special way to the economic impoverishment of the country, but not recognizing this precariousness either. As a principle, the Cuban problem in general is expressed as economic, but it is eminently political; since it consists in the incapacity of that government for that economic development, which it justifies in its historical transcendentalism.

In this regard, the people of Cuba in general suffer the hardships of this inefficiency, which insists on its political nature; in an eternal dispute with the United States, which has historical bases, but involving the government and not the people it sacrifices. In this sense, it is not the nature of this national institutionality to defend that dignity, but of individuals; whom as nationals, would have to endorse with political mechanisms the representativeness or not of that government. That is not possible in Cuba, which thus falls into the conventional category of political dictatorship; even with its violence, which is necessarily directed against the people, as a form of political control.

It is in this situation that black person is particularly affected, given his political precariousness; which is systematic and endemic, preying on the revolutionary process, but stagnating because of it. This may be a common state for the Negro in the West, but here he does not have the resources to solve it; which being in its transnationality, it comes up against the barrier of false solidarity with which its government interferes in these processes.

Indeed, one of the paradigms of the Cuban revolution is that of its solidarity with the international proletariat; as a single category, in which every stratum other than the bourgeoisie, including the blacks, is gathered. The first defect of this category is that as a determination it is political and not existential in nature; but beyond that technicality, the problem is the demonization of Black dissent by the rest of Blackness.

Thus, the black Cuban —like all conservatives by extension— is morally disqualified on principle, as anti-black; identifying racism with capitalism, as if all African development were not capitalist, for example. Worse than that, all of these categories are established by a white, Western, eighteenth-century ideology; which, acting in its own interest, subordinates everything else in its own sense of the historical, including the racial problem.

This would show the inconsistency of discourses on racial identity, at least in their political projection; in which they are only legitimate when they follow a direction, curiously established by the very ones who created the problem. It is not that identity does not exist as a sufficient object, or that it has not emerged from the postcolonial tradition; but the persistence of a political situation of the first half of the 20th century in the 21st, on an ideology of the 19th.

Above all, an ideology so Western that it is a derivation of its culture in the inhumanity of its Humanism; and that for that reason alone, it should force black people to look over the wall, even to contemplate the suffering of their brethren. In an incomprehensible way —or not at all— the intellectual elite of black Americans persists in averting their gaze; which is also not surprising, if they had already subordinated their own blackness, since the dissolution of the Niagara Movement by W.E.B. Du Bois.

The Black Problem in the Cuban Revolution

The problem with the Cuban revolution is that, like all revolutions, it justifies itself and within its own parameters; so that it reorders history, in an understanding that justifies it transcendentally, just like religions do. In fact, all this has been happening since Modernity, in which politics assumes the doctrinal character of religions; and in doing so, it assumes its own superstructural function[1], stripping culture of its existential value.

With respect to the Cuban revolution, this means its reordering of history in an ideological sense; which, functioning as a foundational myth, legitimize it in its political behavior as transcendent. The problem with these justifications is that they are proper to the historical transcendentalism, of the idealist tradition; and in this, they do not understand the basic problem of dialectics, as a Manichean reduction of reality, which cannot comprehend this. In this specific case, it ignores the determinations of the real, in its understanding of the historical; remaining political rather than existential, thus violating the effective determinations of history, with ideology.

In any case —consciously or not— this is a political process with existential repercussions, not the other way around; and in this way it will respond to the political determinations —not existential ones— of Cuban society, different from its culture. Cuban culture and society diverge from the determination of the latter, in the feat of independence; which, ignoring the popular will of the country in its relationship with Spain, imposes nationalism as a founding principle.

The problem here is the violence, intrinsic to Cuban political culture, from its origin in the voluntarism of its patricians; whom as warlords, settles their differences with that violence and popular manipulation, in populism. This, coupled with the growing racial differentiation of the economy, will increase these already typical contradictions; which erupts into systematic conflicts, such as successive revolutions and coups d'état, beginning in 1906.

In these conflicts, the Massacre of 1912 stands out, which bloodily culminated the Independent Party of Color; imposing a turn that definitively marginalize blacks, as an emerging force in the political tradition; and whose development, although contradictory and difficult, had led one of them to the presidency of the Senate[2]. Since then, blacks have tended to join the ranks of the Communist Party in politics, due to their patronage; as is characteristic of modern liberalism, insofar as it subordinates it to its own political cause against capitalism[3].

This is the national state in which the Cuban revolution triumphs, but —at least in principle— as a bourgeois revolution; which went against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, precisely by that high bourgeoisie, because of its popular rather than populist character; as indeed it is that bourgeoisie, in its contradiction of this popular character of politics, that belches with Batista's violence. Note that the revolutionary process itself is as violent as Batista's, only justified in its transcendence; which is where the communist forces take it, organizing it ideologically, in the same sense of Christian theology.

In this sense, the advance of blacks is definitively interrupted by the strong political corporatization of society; which, responding to the political guidelines of communism, does not allow individual developments such as those that help black development. This may not be necessarily due to a racist character of the revolution, but to the racial nature of its bourgeoisie; which, being the one that feeds the revolution and integrates its political structure, reproduces typical behavior.

This process is also internal, not visible to the outside world behind the ideological curtain of socialism; which in its struggle against capitalism, subordinates all the contradictions of modern society. Thus, aligned with liberal anti-capitalism, the political emergence of the black Americans does not accede to this reality; having to contend with its own patronage by that same liberalism, which subordinates it to its particular political interests.

In any case, the inefficiency of the Cuban government would not be ideological but practical, due to its economic incapacity; and this is what makes it politically illegitimate, by justifying this incapacity in ideology, without effectively resolving it. It would be in this contradiction that blacks are especially affected, given their own political precariousness; in which they would lack the necessary resources to overcome it, due to the endemic disproportion of their poverty; that in the face of the revolution had alternatives in individuality, frustrated in this strong corporativity of socialism.

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[1] tags. Cf: On the Structure [Politics of Society and Its Substructural Functions]

[2] tags. Cf: Martín Morúa Delgado

[3] tags. Cf: On the Dialectical Contradiction Between Capitalism and Socialism

From the Gustavo E. Urrutia’s series

It cannot be stressed enough the difference between the intellectuality of Morúa Delgado and the political acuity of Urrutia; they only share the pragmatism, which in one is probabilistic and in the other is socially projected, more tactical than strategic. Between them, they illustrate the diapason of black intelligence in Cuba, with all its conservative nuance; which the relative liberalism of exceptions such as Juan Gualberto Gómez barely manage to tinge, pointing out its functionalism.

The difference is not only strange but also functional, which is what makes them both important in this illustration; one with the organization of a cosmology in the dramatic value of the real, whose anthropology emerges in their literature; the other in the understanding of that cosmology, and implementing it meticulously, in the brief piece of journalism. That is why Urrutia can never dare —nor does he care— in a project like Morúa's Political Essay[1]; but he can push that vision, as the other cannot do in his literary excellence, speaking to the common man.

Urrutia's other value is the illustration of Cuban conservatism, in its political advance with the triumph of Batista; that cannot obey just to a folkloric frivolity or a mere immorality, which is what it is reduced to ideologically. Any understanding of Batista is determined by his violence, as if the revolutionary one were not just as vicious; as if violence were not the characteristic of Cuban political culture, from its very genesis in the voluntarism of the Creole landowners of the independence.

This persistence should draw attention to its nature, at least in the case of black Cubans; who since Morúa presided over the Senate, only with Batista —and never again— did they achieve any political preeminence. Batista means something that is more serious than the supposed fickleness of a people that no one bothers to understand; and that secret would be in this sarcastic shadow, which follows him like a sixty-four[2] that the country recurrently encounters.

Urrutia makes it clear that Cuban racism, distinct from its racial prejudice[3], is a mimicry of that of the American; which is why it is typical of a high bourgeoisie with aristocratic pretensions, distancing itself from all petty bourgeois and proletarian ties[4]. That is important, because it is this false bourgeoisie that rejects Batista as well as Cubans in general in politics; and in this game of dichotomies, the Cuban is that sarcasm that persistently crosses it, eventually with its own violence.

This is important, because it diverts to Cuba the possibility of development that is impossible in the United States; since humanity cannot be concretized in this violence of subjugation, if it depends on the will to relate ones to others. That what means Batista's strength, understandable in the incredibly liberal reasoning of Urrutia's conservatism; and it is the kind of subtlety that, in its extreme tactical practicality, escapes the great cosmologies such as that of Morúa and his literature.

There is a detail in the joy with which Urrutia refers to Nicolás Guillén, no matter the obvious ideological divergence; and that recalls the subreptitious persistence with which Guillén maintains the memoirs of Lino Dou and Morúa in the revolutionary Cuba. It is an identity that, not being political, is not racial either —in that same ideological sense— but existential; even if this existentiality comes —as pragmatism— from his experience, in the political precariousness of his race. It is the same silent effort —perhaps unconscious— with which Fernández Robaina collects them all and puts them in order; it doesn't matter if he does it underhandedly, in that context of the Aponte Society in Cuba, which others take advantage of to ripe the new slave market of American Universities.

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[1] tags. It refers to the Political Essay or Cuba and Racial Integration.

[2] . 64, Grand Dead (ancestor) in Cuban Charade.

[3] . Racism and racial prejudice would be distinct categories, one referring to the organization of society as a principle, and the other to a cultural atavism with concrete practices; In this case, Cuban racial prejudice would be subordinated in principle to the integrationism of Iberian culture, while its racism would be subordinated to the mimicry of the Cuban high bourgeoisie of North American segregationism.

[4] . The excessive stratification of modern rationalism tends to identify the bourgeoisie as a single class, unaware of its own formation; with the upper bourgeoisie generated from the financial specialization of a part of it, which allows it to replace the traditional aristocracy, with the transformation of capital, from military to financial.// Cf: Onthe Reactionary Character of Every Revolution

The Rare Case of Cuban Hoodoo

More than religion, Hoodoo is a culture of the American black, with a broad religious expression; ranging from the conventional Christianity of Baptists and Methodists to magical practices of African origin. Although as a culture it is syncretic —like all others— it is original in this fusion, providing its own identity; which in many cases organizes itself in that original Christianity of his, and in others it refuses to do so with restraint.

This is the result of the relationship of these African cultures with the specific Christianity of Protestantism, which in its Baptist aspect —rather than the Methodist— enhances individual over collective responsibility; with great resonance in all African magical practices[1], especially those of Congo (Bantu) origin. In Cuba the relationship is reversed, given the peculiarity of Catholicism, susceptible in its imagery to this sensibility; to which the magical sense of its liturgy —no matter how much it is rationalized— and hierarchy also contributes.

This difference would cause Catholicism in Cuba to result in an inverse Hoodoo, as a popular expression of culture; which, contrary to its North American counterpart, is exhibited in all its syncretism, given the magical scope of its liturgy and devotional practices. This ambiguity, which permeates all religions in Cuba, reaches its maturity in the Kimbisa or Rule of the Christ for the Good Journey; an original religion, which effectively merges the three aspects that prevail in Cuba, Catholicism and the Lucumí and Conga rules. Such an artifice is due to a peculiar character—ñáñigo and tertiary Franciscan—, Andrés Facundo Petit; who not only created the Kimbisa Rule, as a result of his own syncretism, but also opened the Abakuá cult to the whites.

This is very important, as seen in the opposite sense of the North American Hoodoo, appropriating Christianity; which in fact is replicated in a certain way in Cuba with the Rule of Osha, before the Africanist purism that permeates the cult of Ifa[2]; but not to the point of an appropriation of blackness by whites, as in this case of Cuban syncretism. In fact, this syncretism permeates the entire cultural structure, from the promiscuity of the slums; that whites and blacks shared in the same humanity[3], without the economic differentiators of the American working class.

This is what is expressed in this religious appropriation by the whites, who thus integrate it as a political value; as blacks could not do so because of their political precariousness, added to the economic ones they shared with poor whites. That's important, because Christianity —as a Western cosmology—integrates this American cultural structure; It requires adjustments to restore its first function, as existential rather than political, but does not admit its negation.

This is what Cuban syncretism resolves, making possible the subreptitious movements of North American Hoodoo; And it does so because of this social projection of theirs, which compensates for the original individualism intrinsic to Protestantism; but without the political excesses that perverted it as Christianity, given the influence of traditional African practices. This functionality of a Cuban Hoodoo is not mysterious but pragmatic, given by practical —and not political— needs; and it would not have begun with Petit and the Kimbisa Rule or the entry of the whites into the Abakuá, but with Omí Ifá and the organization of the cult of Orula in Cuba; when —long before Petit— he consecrated whites in the orisha cult, to prevent their persecution by the African ogbonis.

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[1] tags. Lidia Cabrera highlights the individualistic nature of African religious practices, including the cellular character of the family as the ultimate community expression. Cf: Lidia Cabrera, La sociedad secreta Abakuá, Ed. CR (Havana)/ 1958, Liminares.

[2] . It refers to a tendency, which arose with the relative officialization of the cult, to seek legitimacy in African origin; but more as part of the contradictions generated by this process of officialization, reverted as a snobbish and intellectualist attitude. In any case, given the conditions in which it is formed in Cuba, this cult is an original and autochthonous religion in itself; that although it recognizes its African origin, it has a peculiar, sufficient and proper development, alien to that of religion in Africa.

[3] tags. Manuel Granados describes the way in which whites incorporate the social behavior of blacks as vernacular, based on this promiscuity aroused by poverty. // Cf: Manuel Granados, Apuntes para una historia del negro en Cuba, Afro Hispanic Review, Vol. 24, N0. 1.

Gustavo E. Urrutia and the Not-So-Strange Case of Black Conservatism

Martín Morúa Delgado may be the most dramatic black personality in Cuba, with his importance and deepness; but this drama has a historical meaning, given by the political confrontation with the Independents of color. More interesting, although less striking, would be the case of Juan Gualberto Gómez, with his black associationism; also Gustavo E. Urrutia, with his distrustful conservatism and middle-class rationality, excelling in prosperity.

All of them —but especially Urrutia— have against them that conservatism, making them reprobate to the revolutionary spirit; it may be —but no one knows— because in its anthropological functionality it shows the political dysfunction of the other. In short, liberalism is paradoxically conservative, with its emphasis on the preservation of the status quo; which is society as the ultimate structure of the human, in a value of its own that superimposes it on culture. In contrast, black conservatism is functional in its anthropological rather than political nature; responding to its intrinsic precariousness in this sense, even if it converges with classical conservatism; which is political, because of its directly economic determination, and based on the structurality of the social.

That is paradoxical as a principle, but not in the reality in which it occurs, as an expression of the middle class; with the agglomeration of an aristocracy resentful of the absolutism of seventeenth-century Versailles, with so much time available. This, in the context of a new economy extending the feudal clientelism in modernity with a consumer culture; in which economic corporatism subverts and corrupts industrialism, as traditional aristocracy is replaced by the financial, in the securing of capital.

None of this has anything to do with black culture, which emerges in Cuba as one of service, subordinated to this decadence; but it does condition it in that first precariousness, in which the concrete person must ensure his subsistence. This would be the explanation of this conservatism, incomprehensible to revolutionary moral suprematism; widespread in the patronage of the poor classes in another form of determinism, also racial in that suprematism.

In short, liberalism understands its own determinations, but not those of the black race it says to sponsor; and which it reduces to poverty of caste, with that difficulty of idealism in understanding historical singularity. The problem with conservatism in general would be that it starts from a contradiction of liberalism as a premise; which is false, because both are expressions of the same economic structure, distorted by political pressures.

From there it becomes the moral reduction, which presupposes a political identity proper to Black people, as poor; which is offensive, based on its patronage by the liberal contradiction, no less supposed than its own liberalism. Thus, the conservative Black person is universally regarded as declassed, condemned to the fate of the proletariat; who —in that racism of progressiveness— may escalate or try to escalate to petty bourgeois, but at the cost of its legitimacy.

For this reason, the political merit of these Black people is delegitimized on principle, without recognizing any possibility of it; discarding even—as supposedly individualistic—the family and community effort that built them. Gustavo E. Urrutia was formed as intellectual and politician against this political rudeness, from his professional solidity; as a representative of an astonishing black, Cuban and prosperous middle class, against all ideological reductionism.

There is no more eye-catching illustration of this than the collaboration between Booker T. Washington and Juan Gualberto Gómez; exchanging efforts for the professional training of black Cubans, as the foundations of their middle class and bourgeoisie. From this alternative network, which was of cultural rather than political resources, arose the elitism of the Athens Society; and this elitism, as the crosshairs of black society, as long as they were not played the dirty joke of socialist patronage.