IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 5 ENGLISH | Page 32

In addition to being cruelly repressed,
both conspiracies revealed how well
prepared free blacks and mestizos were
to visualize leaders ready to take action
and with their own opinions (intellectuals). The ferocity with which the principal figures were executed also showed
the need to eliminate the incipient,
black bourgeoisie in certain production
sectors, such as all sorts of crafts, and
from any process of integration into the
nation that was taking shape.
1868 saw the beginning of a series of
independence wars that ended in 1898,
and in which blacks and mestizos played
a fundamental part. Yet, skin color differences continued determining the role
those who had been slaves or descended
from them would really play, even in
the midst of battle. Economic life was
also marked by Cuba’s late abolition of
slavery, in 1886.4 The black situation
did not improve much during the republican period, either. The revolution
fought in the Cuban hinterland was
started and carried out by members of
the nascent, criollo bourgeoisie (upper
and middle class people, and to a lesser
degree, landowners), who in the twentieth century aligned themselves with the
most conservative elements of the former Spanish regime, and did not turn to
black Cubans for the creation of the
young republic. This how the exclusion
of any economic activity on their part
came about as the nation was developing, for example the administration of
public or private companies, managing
the State’s budget, banking, railroad
administration, shipping, large production companies and investing.
What was and is left for Cuban blacks is
the limited option of going back to
crafts, manual labor and, as an example

of gender discrimination, domestic
work for black women, to serve whites
in differing levels of society in the
bourgeois republic. Another factor affecting them was that as the white population’s economic strength grew, the
lower middle class saw itself losing
economic ground, becoming poorer, and
slowing going back to work in the service sector.
This is when th