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A New Step Toward the Emancipation of

Black Cubans?
José Hugo Fernández

class and gender in Cuba and the world

Writer and journalist
Havana, Cuba

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I

have been noticing certain signs of economic
improvement among black and mestizo citizens in Havana, while the unmovable, revolutionary government visibly declines these days.
This may seem contradictory, since it concerns
those who have for too long been the poorest of
the poor, who generally have been forced to accept the least wanted and worst paid jobs.
Suddenly, this tendency is perceptible only in
very specific sectors of the population. I would be
remiss if I did not clarify that I am referring to a
visible perception, something for which we are
trying to find an empirical explanation, without
resorting to specialized studies or surveys, which
would be nearly impossible to conduct without
the authorities intervening.
Nevertheless, it may suffice to freely and objectively sharpen our gaze to notice that something
is afoot with citizens who years back—even prior
to the so-called Special Period—were very obviously scraping the bottom of poverty’s barrel.
Despite the fact that the economic situation continues being critical, one could not extrapolate
from this perception that Cubans, in general, are
better off now than they have been in decades—
especially those who have been able to find employment outside the government’s infrastructure. Perhaps the only way to understand this improvement among black citizens is to analyze

how they are trying to put a new twist on their old,
traditional dependency on the State.
As circumstances increasingly warrant it, they
have been slowly but progressively moving away
from their State jobs and trying their hand at private enterprise and self-employment.
If the perception of economic improvement
among many of them is correct (even if it is modest and even relative), it might be due to the fact
they finally understood that the emancipation and
progress that was so often promised them and delayed for over half a century did not depend on
anyone other than themselves, as individuals, and
as a group.
This phenomenon was not a perceptible result of
what at the beginning Cubans on the island called
the ‘liberation’ of small, private business (the
ability to have small, private business); much less
did it have to do with the explosion in remittances
coming from abroad. Neither of these things favored blacks. Instead, they seemed to worsen
their already disadvantageous economic and social situation.
Yet, today, this is a reality as plausible as it is revealing. Were it confirmed by the social sciences,
one would have no choice but to admit that it is
the result of the capacity that Afro-descendants
have always shown not only for adapting to adverse circumstances, but to reacting in search of