Racial discrimination in Cuba. It was one of the most complex problems that the Revolution had to face, a part of the transformation program carried out by the Cuban State, aimed at eradicating it and ending racial prejudice. Racial discrimination is a concept that is often identified with and encompasses racism , although these concepts do not exactly coincide. While racism is an ideology based on the superiority of some races or ethnic groups over others, racial discrimination is an act that, although it is usually based on a racist ideology, it is not always so. [1]
Summary
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- 1 Emergence in Cuba
- 2 Republican stage
- 3 Fight against racial discrimination
- 4 See also
- 5 References
- 6 Sources
Emergence in Cuba
Coinciding with the rise of the slave plantation, in the 19th century discriminatory measures were applied in teaching against free blacks and mulattos, and non-white people were prohibited from exercising the teaching profession.
In 1800 , 25 percent of the student body were black children, while in 1861 they represented only three percent.
Since 1801 there was a prohibition on marriage between blacks and whites, if not authorized by the Captain General, but these permits were rarely granted, so extramarital unions predominated. Authorizations given only after 40 years of concubinage are registered, after verifying the honesty of both.
Almost all artisans were from the seventeenth century , free blacks and mulattoes, skilled in various trades. After slavery was definitively abolished in 1886 , the majority of blacks became workers, as they began to be displaced from the craft industry by Spanish immigrants (mainly Catalans, Galicians and Asturians).
Republican stage
With Yankee economic, political and military domination, a discriminatory regime of the poor, blacks and mulattoes, women, agricultural workers and workers was established in Cuba.
In Havana of the fifties of the twentieth century college plot it was practically closed to blacks and mestizos. So were secondary schools and other schools, beginning with private ones.
The work of clerks, both in private companies and in government bodies, was not a source of employment for blacks and mestizos either. The same happened with the sector of shop assistants.
Recreational societies and clubs were segregated: clubs for whites and clubs for blacks and even for mestizos only. Blacks could be farm workers, work in arts and crafts, be construction workers. For women, work as domestic servants. The police forces were almost exclusively white, as were the armed forces, especially the officers. The only sector that maintained the existing tradition since the 18th century with a large participation of blacks and mestizos was music.
Politics was also a white business. The only political party in which blacks could develop their leadership qualities was in the Popular Socialist Party , its Secretary General, Blas Roca , was a mulatto.
Within Cuban bourgeois society there were institutions that faced, with their practice, racial discrimination. Among them is the Cuban Freemasonry and, especially, its youth branch, the Association of Young Hope of the Fraternity (AJEF), which grouped adolescents and young people between 14 and 21 years of age.
Racial discrimination prevailed in Cuba in the republican stage until the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 . It was both economic and social since they had to perform the lowest paid jobs, they were excluded from multiple jobs and professions; they were considered inferior.
Fight against racial discrimination
The 22 of March of 1959 , Fidel Castro set the position and path of the Revolutionary Government regarding this cancer of Cuban society. At that time he expressed:
“We must dictate anathema and public condemnation against those who, full of past aftertastes, prejudiced pasts, have the unscrupulousness of discriminating against some Cubans, of mistreating some Cubans for reasons of lighter or darker skin.”
The 21 of April of 1959 the Law No. 270 declaring public use all coasts and beaches in the country, which is terminated misappropriation of important coastal areas by private entities and also settled approving the exclusivism and various forms of racial discrimination that were practiced in these places.
They ended the exclusive beaches, the exclusive residential neighborhoods, the clubs, parks, hotels with their qualifier “exclusive”; Access to work centers would no longer be limited. Blacks and whites were to enjoy the same rights, the same rights to work, to culture, to sports, zero privileges of color, caste, and social position.
Exclusion on racial grounds was eliminated in a new practice that has prevailed to this day as the beginning of the new revolutionary process.
