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He Who Doesn’t Have Some Congo Has
Some Carabalí: Blackness and Blacks
as the Image of a Race in Cuban Art’s Discourse of Identity
José Clemente Gascón Martínez
Master of Science, plastic artist and art critic
Havana, Cuba
The fatherland is everyone’s fate,
and everyone’s pain, and a firmament for all,
and no one’s domain or chaplaincy.
José Martí

T

black slave is in the foreground, with his masters,
and was the one who explained to his owner the
medicinal properties of his property’s springs
(Ribeaux 1998:2).
From these initial works, the images appearing in
Federico Mialhe’s engravings are almost exclusively of blacks; the most illustrative one appears
in the lithograph “El Día de Reyes” [Three Kings
Day], which displays the cultural figure’s typical
costume.
Regardless the intention with which it was created, the nineteenth century is chock full of images of black people. (Figures 1a, 1, 1c)

he image of blacks as the image of a race
has been manipulated in every way possible in Cuba’s plastic arts. Most commonly, it has been exploited from a religious,
folkloric point of view, and has joined concepts
of race and identity in order to sieve or elude a
point which few dare to examine, given its delicate treatment. If this were not so, the political
connotations could lead to an examination of this
point of view.
Nicolás Escalera (1734-1804) is responsible for
the first appearance of a black person in Cuban
painting. His was the first example of a representation of a Cuban-born black at a time when
the island was under colonial rule and the
scourge of slavery in full swing. Escalera receives as payment for his services what today
would amount to a birth certificate that “removed any blemish from his blood” and guaranteed he belongs to the white race. If his value
as an artist resides in having pioneered the subject of blacks in Cuban art, in reality the black
figure in question can be found in one of the
pendants in a crossbeam at the Santa María del
Rosario Church, a “country cathedral” conFig. 1a. Federico Mialhe (XIXth century).
structed between 1760 and 1766. It is a recreaEl
día
de
Reyes [The Epiphany]. Engraving. Lithograph
tion of the Casa Bayona legend, in which the

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