Identidades in English No 4, December 2014 | Page 76

The arrival of the twentieth century brought little
change to the stigma that weighed upon black
people; as a matter of fact, the stigma was reinforced, although under subtly deceptive conditions of tolerance that fooled quite a few people.
Black roles in popular theater as representative of
typical Cubans, along with the mulatt o women
and Galician, more often than not ended up being
played not by someone black, but rather by a
white actor in blackface, made to look even more
sarcastic and stigmatized, in an act of transvestism. The psychological projection of the black
man was that of a schemer, buffoon, rogue and
capable of all trickery. This stereotyped characterization of the qualities of blackness was emerging as such; it was difficult to change it and
continued on into the Republican period (19021958).
The black theme became a principal motif addressed by the period’s artists, and not only in the
plastic arts. In other manifestations—literature,
music and dance—examples abound. The convincing notion that the cultural manifestations of
this important part of the Cuban populace belonged wholly to the nation’s cultural enterprises
put forth an image that still had some folkloric attributes. In most cases, the role of religion is given
exaggerated importance in terms of its “culturally
integrated nature” in establishing the underpinnings of the complicated concept of identity.
In most works, the image of blacks as social beings is often quite similar to that of the colonial
period, especially as it appears in boxes of Cuban
cigars.
Mockingly, the actions represented in the images
feature laziness, minor theft and snooping, if not
drunkenness and a quarrelsome nature. If there is
written dialogue for the characters, it is transcribed in imperfect Spanish (De Juan 1978: 33).
This limited, culturally erroneous view with its
incomprehension, embodies a notion of the world
of ancestral roots, and is totally out of context,
which means it simply cannot obey the thinking,
social behavior, and lifestyle of Westerners.
There was a marked difference between progressive intellectual thinking and whichever, current

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government was in power regarding the social demands of blacks and freedom of expression in
their cultural manifestations.
The Avant-Garde
The presence of blacks in the plastic arts in the
so-called Avant-Garde first generation is relatively scarce. The general thematic line of some
artists copies the legacy of stereotyped images.
The paradigmatic work “El rapto de las mulatas”
[The Kidnapping of the Mulatto Women] (1938),
by Carlos Enríquez (1900-1957), with its intentional promotion of the sensual nature of black or
mestiza women would become a classic.
Second generation Avant-Garde showed greater
evidence of having incorporated Afro-Cuban cultural elements. Wifredo Lam (1902-1982), Roberto Diago (1920-1957), Eduardo Abela (18911965), René Portocarrero (1912-1985) and others
somehow reflected the marginalization of this
population group. They emphasized the presence
of blacks from within their own worldview as
well as cultural anthropology, through use of
symbols, colors and a whole series of elements
that alluded to religious practices of African
origin. (Fig. 2a, 2b, 2c)

Fig. 2a. Eduardo Abela (1928).
El triunfo de la Rumba. [The Triumph of the Rumba]
Painting. Oil on canvas