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Educating in Colors: An Analysis of the
Teaching of History at Different Grade
Levels in Cuba (1959-2015)
Fidel Guillermo Duarte González
Historian and Community Work specialist
Pinar del Río, Cuba

J

anuary 1959 marked the new path Cuba
should follow along a different reality’s
new axes with regard to power relations. With free education for all, the insurrectional movement’s leader was able to put
into motion one of his hallmark political
strategies. In the end, it was successful because it opened up schools and universities
for all Cubans. Along with the well-known
Literacy Campaign, this policy garnered the
island recognition as cutting edge regarding
education, especially in Latin America. The
strategy was employed at different educational levels for history education, a concomitant effect of delivering this politically
motivated education, which as a blazon for
the Revolution’s achievements. When the
Secretariats separated, in 1976, when they
were all only one Ministry of Education and
Culture, the slow but resounding collapse of
the fundamental values essential to measuring educational progress. The race problem
remained hidden, despite the fact the Leader,
himself, acknowledged that it existed, during the triumph’s earliest days. In many cases, the topic ended up being taboo; in other,
those who tried to implement even a timid
response against this historical social phenomenon in different ways, were erased

from the public sphere. The role of blacks in
the long and painful road for the creation of
Cuba was not totally evident in the history
curriculum established by the Ministry of
Education for primary, basic secondary, and
pre-university education, or in technicalprofession education (university education
would end up under the Ministry of Superior
Education’s control). All the way from primary to the university level, only the white
elite played a hegemonic role in what we
learned. A clear example of how those who
would be the principal guarantors of social
justice devalued this learning process for
levels in which adolescents develop consciousness and form their personalities. The
only black figure shown during the history
unit on the Wars of Independence is Antonio
Maceo. At the same time, very different,
dissimilar white ‘patriots’ are praised. Patriots like black Generals Domingo Díaz and
Vidal Ducasse were removed from the
books, and it seems the greatness of men
like Guillermo Moncada and Quintín Banderas did not seem important enough for the
curriculum writers. Another historical fact
totally skipped over by these educational
strategists is the Aponte Conspiracy, whose
principal figure, a slave descendant, planned

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