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

Cuban oral history is one of the embarrassing gaps of contemporary Latin American historiography. Collections published by Cuban historians have usually been commissioned by the Communist Party's "Department of Revolutionary Orientation," predictably furnishing only the politically correct interpretation of the lives of workers, peasants, women, and blacks. On the American side, productivity has been scarce. The three revealing volumes of interviews conducted in the 1960s by Oscar Lewis, Ruth Lewis, and Susan Rigdon—Four Men (1977), Four Women (1977), and Neighbors (1978)—are sadly out of date, and José Yglesias's beautiful bucolic, In the Fist of the Revolution: Life in a Cuban Country Town (1968), regrettably out of print. Oral histories recorded by foreigners during the "special period" of economic decline since the 1990s make for grim reading and tell us little we cannot learn from the mass media.

The recollections of María de los Reyes Castíllo Bueno potentially mark a renaissance in Cuban testimonial literature. Born in 1902, Reyíta, as she is affectionately known, confesses her marginality from politics. Perfunctory references to "the triumph of the revolution" in 1959, and even the death of her son Anselmo, resulting from the sabotage of the Belgian freighter "La Coubre" in Havana harbor in 1960, are de-politicized by curt language and lack of historical context. Oddly, Reyíta claims to have known dictator Fulgencio Batista (1940-44; 1952- 59) in his youth, and recalls him fondly as "a happy, cheerful boy who wore shorts made of flour sacks" (p. 53). This is typical of her memory of politicians, be it Batista, Fidel Castro, or the many presidential crooks who ruled in between; she is more impressed by their appearance—clothes, speech, manners—than by the content of the regime. Paradoxically, the book reads like a poignant remembrance of the Batista years, when the author waxes nostalgic about the variety of foods for sale, the dresses she used to wear, the dances she attended. Perhaps because her thoughts are confided to her own daughter, Daisy Rubiera Castillo, the impression left on the reader is that of after-supper table talk, not documentary evidence for the ages.

Reyíta's life has been devoted to the upbringing of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, whom together number 118. Most of this tale consists of the matriarch reveling in her proficiency at every imaginable profession: cook, herbalist, laundress, and even sorceress. While it makes for delightful reading, the autobiography of Reyíta resembles numerous other testimonials by Afro-Latin women, notably Bitita's Diary: The Childhood Memoirs of Carolina María de Jesus (1998); but that memoir is striking not only for the fine attention to the details of everyday life, but also in capturing the author's rebellious spirit—pitted against her mother, white matrons, and Catholic nuns—as well as her unique perspective on critical events in Brazilian history, from the Tenentista revolt to the assumption of power by Getúlio Vargas in 1930. The one topic that might make this book suitable for undergraduate teaching is blanqueamiento (whitening). Reyíta chose her husband, Antonio, chiefly due to his race, hoping to breed light-skinned offspring, at which she succeeded prodigiously. For a course on gender, race, and social history, this book can supplement Verena Martínez-Alier's Marriage, Class and Colour in Nineteenth-Century Cuba (reprint 1989). More than 115 years after abolition and 42 years after the revolution, black women in Cuba still feel the stigma of "impurity of blood" (Martínez-Alier, p. 72), belying both the abolitionist and the Fidelista argument to have forged a race...