This essay recovers the history of 1960s and 1970s black movements in Cuba through an examination of works by Afro-Cuban intellectuals and their meetings with Caribbean thinkers to show the coexistence of mestizaje and black consciousness as a defining, but overlooked, feature of black activism in Cuba. While the existing literature locates black consciousness in the English- and French-speaking Caribbean, this essay highlights how Afro-Cubans in Spanish-speaking countries were not only aware of but also adapted Caribbean ideologies to local circumstances. Using oral histories, cultural productions, and meetings between Caribbean intellectuals, this examination of Afro-Cuban activism reframes the period leading up to Nancy Morejón’s 1982 Nación y mestizaje en Nicolás Guillén to show that the poet was one of many artists-activists who resurrected black history, revalued African culture and black identity, and promoted Caribbean black consciousness in Cuba despite state attempts at censorship. For Morejón that meant offering a definition of mestizaje that goes through and coexists with black consciousness.
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Research Article|
July 01 2021
Redefining Mestizaje: How Trans-Caribbean Exchanges Solidified Black Consciousness in Cuba Available to Purchase
Devyn Spence Benson
Devyn Spence Benson
devyn spence benson is an associate professor of history and African American and Africana studies at the University of Kentucky. She is a historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin America with a focus on race and revolution in Cuba. She is the author of Antiracism in Cuba: The Unfinished Revolution (2016) and an editor of Afrocubanas: History, Thought, and Cultural Practices (2020).
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Small Axe (2021) 25 (2 (65)): 91–108.
Citation
Devyn Spence Benson; Redefining Mestizaje: How Trans-Caribbean Exchanges Solidified Black Consciousness in Cuba. Small Axe 1 July 2021; 25 (2 (65)): 91–108. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-9384286
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