Measures of Equality: Social Science, Citizenship, and Race in Cuba, 1902-1940 (review)

A commitment to achieving racial equality and an end to racial discrimination were irrevocably tied to Cuban national identity when José Martí claimed that negroes and whites would be brothers and citizens in Cuba Libre. His vision pledged Cubans to the task of overcoming the vestiges of colonialism, racism, and slavery with the birth of the new nation. Naturally, racial harmony and brotherhood were not attained quickly, but the venture into social justice and cultural blending was not simply a war between races in which whites blocked blacks from entry into powerful and wealthy social sectors. The venture also took place when people of color found themselves divided according to their own social prejudices and differing strategies for attaining citizenship and equality. Alejandra Bronfman's first book is a treatment of the intellectual and political positions taken by people of color during the first thirty-eight years of nationhood regarding matters of citizenship, social value, criminality, modernity and civilization, and maneuvering in this period of turbulent political morass. This is a remarkable book for its elevation of the race question to the intellectual questions of the day as well as the praxis of discrimination and resistance. The book presents the dynamics between ideals and reality, the justifications for change and the historical accidents that made change possible, the intellectual diversity within the colored community and the efficacy of multilateral pressure in restructuring the law.

Bronfman has lifted the black intelligentsia out of obscurity and shown the rifts and disagreements within it as it faced matters of constitutional rights; militancy from within the ranks of the colored community when rights were not recognized; the challenge of policing and lawfulness; Cuban cultural integration versus Afro-Cuban cultural separateness; pan-African pride; and intellectual understanding of social deviance, education, progress, and modernity. At stake was the negro's acceptance within the political system; at risk was a unified black consciousness to win that acceptance. As Afro-Cubans joined the positivistic modern realm, they did so as a factionalized group, which brought them into confrontation over whether they should participate along with white citizens in a government that was not fully democratic and that discriminated against blacks or whether it should become militant over discriminatory practices. Political representation was troublesome, especially after 1912 when black organizations were forbidden. Many blacks and mulattos belonged to no party, but they did present their concerns in labor unions and guilds. The Cuban Communist Party was the only party to represent racial causes at the 1940 constitutional congress, and it merged with the National Association of Colored People in order to gain credibility with the black population. Before that, people of color associated in societies with chapters throughout the island, and they communicated through newspapers published by the societies that aired the opposing views of their leaders.

Unity might have formed against police repression, but blacks were members of the police force. People of color joined the police force and served as lawyers and judges that arrested and sentenced their own brethren, some because they were committed to tamping down primitivism that they believed denigrated their race, others because they needed employment. There was no racial consciousness that caused a black official to overrule the letter of the law based on compassion for the circumstance of race. Nothing blocked a black man from employing Spanish and Cuban laws against Afro-Cubans, sometimes with loathing for the African heritage and sometimes because there was no movement or consciousness to stop him from being part of social prejudice against primitive habits and in favor of modern, European-based social values. One can say, then, that Afro-Cubans did not present a threat to the white factions that vied for power during the Early Republic. They were too divided over how to participate in the newly independent and modernizing state. They were not, however, inconsequential...