Reyita: The Life of a Black Cuban Woman in the Twentieth Century

This testimonial history by María de los Reyes Castillo Bueno (1902-1997), Reyita, provides a unique perspective on Cuba's past, interpreting it through the often-disregarded experiences of a black woman. Like the best testimonial literature, Reyita's clear, matter-of-fact narrative, translated from the original published in Cuba in 1996, offers a refreshing break from the traditions in Cuban social scholarship that generalize the experiences of all women and all blacks. She represents another of the voices from below, the most alienated segments of Cuban society. Within Cuban studies, Reyita can be viewed as a continuation of the classic tales of Esteban Montejo in Autobiography of a Runaway Slave, but one that now speaks from a female viewpoint and recalls critical moments for the nation, from the final abolition of slavery, through the intense racial politics of the 1910s, to the uncertainties of the Batista dictatorship, and to the initial euphoria of the 1959 Revolution. In Latin American Studies more generally, it is comparable to the Brazilian diaries of Carolina María de Jesus's Child of the Dark or the earlier chapters of Rigoberta Menchu's I, Rigoberta Menchu, which are less concerned with class violence than they are with ethnic traditions and familial struggles for survival.

Reyita recounts her options and the limitations imposed on her, which were distinctively defined by race, gender, and class, but invariably privileges class over the others. Race determined her family's entry point into Cuban society, their liberation from slavery, and their continuing fight against discrimination. It also created a color consciousness that no one escaped. Gender determined her economic possibilities and the nature of her marriage. Yet, ultimately, Reyita accepts that class was the greatest determinant of one's social value in Cuba at midcentury. When speaking of some of her unofficial foster children, she defends her explicit mention of race. "If I point out that some of those children were white, it's to emphasize that the most fundamental problem in Cuba was not just being black, but being poor" (72).

Stylistically, in its first two chapters Reyita follows a chronological arrangement that it later rejects in favor of a more random organization. This potentially could leave the reader unsure of the work's direction. The book does not recount Reyita's life to the end; in fact, the period after 1963 remains unclear. By that time, Reyita had chosen to focus on her responsibilities as a grandmother and made few social critiques. She makes no evaluation of the Revolution beyond an appreciation for the new access to education and employment made available to her children and grandchildren. One of the most surprising statements in this book comes not from the main storyteller's own words, but appears early in the scholarly introduction. There, noted feminist historian Elizabeth Dore declares, "Reyita is the story of a woman who did not [her emphasis] make history because of the conditions she inherited from the past" (1). The assumption is that to "make history" one must create transformations that reach beyond the personal, and that a simple existence is generally not worthy of historical attention. Despite this clear rejection of the subject's historical agency, this work is of pedagogical value to introductory Cuban or Latin American history courses that want to escape the teleological emphasis on the Revolution and teach the value of an ordinary life making history in the most simple ways. Reyita lived the majority of her life "just as a mother," but if her circumstances did not allow her to "make history," at least she was able to interpret it.