“Political Changüí”: Race, Political Culture, and Black Civic Activism in the Early Cuban Republic

This paper examines race and black activism in early republican Cuban politics. It is largely concerned with black politicians and civic activists and the sociability, racial identities, and political strategies they engaged in their pursuit of respectability and resources. Despite the implementation of liberal-democratic citizenship rights after 1898 (including universal male suffrage), and irrespective of Cuban racelessness philosophy, black Cubans suffered ongoing marginalization in education, employment, social status, and, critically, the electoral arena. Further, political patronage flourished alongside Cuban democracy in the republican period, making public office (and public budgets and civil appointments) a key vehicle for acquiring and apportioning public resources. Black activists fought for these plums of public service primarily by demanding government jobs, integrating dominant political parties, and creating civic organizations that helped them to integrate electoral politics. For example, politicians campaigned among clubs and clubs publicly endorsed political candidates.

Club activities also served privileged blacks’ ongoing quest for political authority. Many clubs (whose members were often part of a small yet expanding black professional class) excluded blacks from their rosters even as they generated print media to launch anti-determinist attacks, uphold racial grievances, demonstrate cultural refinement, and make claims on officials. The clubs’ use value, then, was largely to socioeconomically distinguish privileged blacks from the black masses as proof of their leadership fitness. Club leaders, in fact, often also served as black cadre and within a class of political leaders. As institutions, by 1936 they extended their largely local influence by creating a national federation of black civic organizations. This paper, which examines black activism in the context of republican political structure and race, recovers heterogeneity and conflict in black Cuba, whose many-headed histories and desires moved far beyond strict racial consciousness.