Identidades in English No 5, Abril, 2015 | Page 14

cal positions of the organizations’
members. One could be a shoemaker or
journalist, a businessman, bricklayer,
carpenter or politician. Ideological preferences were not among the obstacles to
being accepted as a new member. There
was room for all, even if all did not always act in harmony.
This is about a sociocultural phenomenon that specialists have seen in different ways, according to their personal
views and political prejudices. Yet,
none of them has concluded that free
Associationism would be harmful to its
members; quite the opposite. They all
concluded that it would be beneficial to
the socioeconomic and cultural progress
of its members.
Studies carried out from the revolutionary government’s point of view, for
example Capas populares y modernidad
en Cuba [The Popular Classes and Modernity in Cuba] (Fuente Viva, 2009),
by María del Carmen Barcia, or Vida y
cultura de las sociedades Instrucción y
Recreo [Life and Culture of Instructional and Recreational Societies (UNED,
1998), by María Victoria Suerio, both
agree and acknowledge their transcendent contributions. In the end, I am not
trying to undo the issue by telling a story that has already been told very well,
in detail, and by more than on expert. I
am humbly trying to make sure that we
don’t lose sight of what Associationism
has meant for Cuba’s slave descendants,
and highlighting the fact that the tougher their situation, the more efficiently
they sought to represent their desires
and interests as a group.
If by the early twenty century there
were already 70 black societies in Cuba,
a number that continuously increased
throughout the republican period, and if

By 1903, there was already a manifesto
circulating among them that denounced
the way the current status violated their
rights. By 1907, associations like these
were already in a position to unify and
make known their aspiration to defend
slave descendants. The heroic Independents of Color association was
forged and born at the very core of this
intention, as was its official publication,
Previsión—and it wasn’t the only one.
Out of this forge were born numerous
publications designed to denounce racial discrimination, communicate their
demands regarding an improvement in
the lives of blacks and mestizos, and
divulge the rich (although often disdained) values of their religious beliefs
and their culture, in general. This was
all made possible by the invaluable
channel that Associationism provided.
The noteworthy magazine Minerva was
also born (and later reborn, and stronger) from these circumstances. It premiered in 1888, but the colonial authorities
interrupted its circulation till it reappeared in 1910, as an official publication of the, then inappropriately called
‘race of color’ under the name Revista
Universal Ilustrada, dedicated to science, art and literature, among other
topics. Nowadays, blacks and mestizos
in Cuba have no publication like that
that allows them to openly express
themselves free of ideological trappings
or the State’s intellectual monopoly on
the issues that most concern them, or in
protest because of the reality that
plagues them.
Another characteristic that defined the
Associationism that is so missed today
is the diverse socioeconomic and politi-

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