“On Not Becoming Cuban”: “African” Immigrants in Early 20th-Century Cuba

This paper will examine how self-identified Africans engaged with, endeavored to shape, and resisted the discourses and practices of citizenship in early twentieth- century Cuba. An engagement with Louis Pérez Jr.’s seminal work on Cuban nationalism, this paper centers on the experiences of afro-descendants in Cuba who refused to “become Cuban” and defended an African political identity instead. Unlike afro-descendants who resisted the nation by seeking repatriation to their homelands, the historical subjects discussed here wished to remain in Cuba, yet refused Cuban nationality. My presentation will center on an intriguing historical document, a letter, sent by the president of a black society in Cuba to the Cuban secretary of state in 1901 when Cuba was under U.S. rule. In the letter, the president of the society claims to be “African”, expresses total divestment in citizenship in any nation, unmasks the Cuban national myth of transracial patriotism, and insists on the legal equality of “Africans and Cuban natives.” The letter raises a number of important questions. First, what did it mean to be “African” in Cuba at a time when the Spanish colonial state was being dismantled, Cuban citizenship was being crafted and the possibility of U.S. annexation had not been fully discarded? Second, how did “Africans” engage with the foundational fiction of the Cuban nation, a fiction that erased Cuba’s centuries-long history of slavery and racial injustice? Finally, how did “Africans” imagine a future in Cuba in which they could remain apart, yet also achieve full legal equality? In this paper, I will explore these questions, and I will argue that the letter discussed here, and similar iterations of African political identity were powerful and meaningful acts of resistance against an emergent Cuban state and an emerging U.S. empire for whom “de-Africanization” was central to civilizational uplift.