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Reyita: The Life of a Black Cuban Women in the Twentieth Century (review)
- The Americas
- The Academy of American Franciscan History
- Volume 58, Number 4, April 2002
- pp. 653-655
- 10.1353/tam.2002.0058
- Review
- Additional Information
The Americas 58.4 (2002) 653-655
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The testimonial record of common people is often sought after and prized as part of the historical text. Life stories provide authenticity, vibrance, and intimate portrayals of the past. They also verify or nuance important historical events or trends. Selecting and using autobiographical narratives for scholarly publication requires skill, sensitivity to the links between individual experience and the historical moment, and profound knowledge of the culture that is the medium in which the individual maneuvers. Yet testimonial remembrances are not without controversy. Critics question the accuracy of an individual's memory, whether the informant has a purpose for remembering circumstances in a particular way, and they question the [End Page 653] historian's ability to verify and contextualize the story. Testimonial narrative is most valuable when it deepens our understanding of the human consequences of public policy, environmental changes, technological development, and new cultural, economic, and intellectual concepts. But testimony can also be just a family story, album material, without the guidance of historical insight.
The narrative testimonial of a Cuban mulatta whose life spanned 94 years and whose parents could remember the nineteenth-century independence campaign is potentially invaluable. Reyita: The Life of a Black Cuban Woman in the Twentieth Century suggests real life perspectives of a humble woman of color about race relations, gender status, motherhood, grandmotherhood, pre- and post-revolutionary realities, the daily challenge to survive, religion, and family experiences. Maria de los Reyes Castillo Bueno told her story to her daughter Daisy Rubiera Castillo, whose interest in her mother's story was primarily personal. Daisy Rubiera has a university degree, and she recognizes the value of these memories, but she recorded the testimony without directing the conversation with questions about the environment or introducing historical material for discussion. Thus, the text is apolitical and intimate, which is startlingly different from most autobiographical narratives recorded since 1959. But it is also unconnected with, even indifferent to, twentieth-century Cuban history.
With greater information about the historical context, we could learn much more about how difficult it was for a poor, black mother to support her children. In Reyita's case, obstacles included not only poverty, but her husband's limited view of his children's potential and his unwillingness to sacrifice for them. Racial stereotypes could be more exactly nuanced by contrasting Reyita's and Rubiera's family life with Cuba's unique version of racism. Reyita was a mulatta of dark color, and Rubiera was white. She yearned for upward mobility, and he was unmotivated by his own poverty. She discovered her own power and economic viability before the 1959 revolution by acquiring commodities through work in the informal labor sector. She was educated and loved reading poetry; he was unremarkable save for his determination to live with a woman from a lower social caste. Reyita drew strength from the Virgin del Cobre de la Caridad, Cuba's patron saint, whom she petitioned for favors ranging from a house to the well being of her descendants during the revolutionary period. Yet she also said that she did not belong the Catholic Church nor Afro-Cuban groups. She is silent about the Cuban Communist Party.
Reyita's story is about survival in an environment in which nothing is as it seems. Her contradictions are what make her and Cuba interesting, yet challenging to understand. Her testimony avoids political ideology, which is potentially the ideal sort of memory, yet the book lacks a good context or focused reporting. Elizabeth Dore, who wrote the introduction, does not isolate the interesting contradictions or elaborate on the authenticity or uniqueness of Reyita's story. Her outline of the history of twentieth-century Cuba is inadequate, as is her discussion of criticisms of testimonial literature...