Both whites and people of African descent invoked images of Haiti and the Haitian Revolution to weaken or strengthen nationalism in Cuba. While whites invoked Haiti to provoke fear, justify harsher slave codes in Cuba and weaken nationalism, free and enslaved people of African descent used it to positively assert racial pride, unity, and defend abolition throughout the Americas. Thus, Haiti as a symbol and historical agent promoted Afro-Cuban racial consciousness and shaped black perspectives on freedom from the early 19th century to the early 20th century, culminating in the 1912 Oriente province uprising.
For slaves and free people of color during the expansion of sugar plantations from 1790s to 1850s, Haiti’s impact was unquantifiable. White slaveholders feared the presence of Saint-Dominguan slaves in eastern Cuba and the dissemination of news of the black Republic, believing it would contaminate local slaves.[1] Since the reality of a slave revolution that destroyed the plantation agricultural system was realized in the Haitian Revolution, white Creoles and the Spanish colonial government were able to exploit fears of the specter of Haiti. Simultaneously, sugar planters decided to import enormous numbers of enslaved Africans for labor. When free blacks and mulattoes in urban areas began to cooperate with slaves in numerous conspiracies and revolts, the only course of action available for the colonial government was to discriminate against both slaves and free people of color as a whole. By discriminating against both blacks and mulattoes, the colonial government strengthened black racial consciousness and moved away from a three-tier racial system that separated blacks and biracial people.[2] Afro-Cubans then appropriated the imposed collective identity to promote black causes. However, Afro-Cubans appeared to develop a collective racial consciousness prior to increasing discriminatory policies from the colonial government. For example, in several slave conspiracies, urban blacks and mulattoes were involved and named in testimonies of the accused, which means segments of the free population already identified racially with slaves or desired a common goal.[3] In the failed 1812 Aponte conspiracy, a free black carpenter Jose Antonio Aponte recruited slaves and free people of color and showed them images of Haitian revolutionaries, such as Henri Christophe and Toussaint Louverture.[4] Slave testimonies gathered in trials of suspects reveal that slaves and free people of color knew of Haitian leaders and respect and admiration for them was extensive.[5] Their testimonies also attest to Afro-Cubans invocation of Haiti as a goal, especially the desired end of “taking the land,” or forcefully seizing the land and control agricultural production.[6] Aponte and another leader, who assumed the identity of a famous Haitian revolutionary, Jean-Francois, also mobilized slaves and free people of color by telling them Haiti was prepared to provide money, arms, and soldiers for their liberation, which indicates the solidarity Afro-Cubans believed they had with Haitians based on African descent and slavery.[7] Furthermore, by assuming the identity of a Haitian revolutionary and promising aid from Henri Christophe, referred to as the “king of the blacks,” the leaders of the Aponte conspiracy based their claims on actual Haitian policies of abolition and transnational racial identity. Both Henri Christophe’s kingdom in northern Haiti and Petion’s republic in southern and western Haiti promised freedom for any slave on Haitian soil and even intercepted slave ships en route to Cuba.[8] In spite of both Haitian leaders’ promises to not interfere with slavery in European colonies, both invested in the interception of slave ships, invited free blacks from the United States to settle in Haiti[9], and granted citizenship to blacks who resided in the country for one year. Although the extent of Haitian interference with slave ships is little-known, advertising in American newspapers for black immigration and offering immediate emancipation and citizenship to any slave who reached the country demonstrates the transnational dimensions of the Haitian Revolution. As this information spread among slaves and free people of color in Cuba, imagining imminent help from Haiti did not seem so unbelievable. In addition, after the Escalera conspiracy of 1844, which prompted further racist legislation that limited the rights of free people of color, and was linked to claims by Afro-Cubans of Haitian aid, blacks and mulattoes were subsumed under the category of los negros.[10] Therefore Haiti as a historical agent and symbol invoked by Afro-Cubans propelled a new racial consciousness by uniting slaves and free people of color in collaborative conspiracies, causing the colonial government to resort to a two-tier racial system that categorized mulattoes as black.
Nascent Afro-Cuban racial consciousness developing in the first half of the 19th century also carried over into the wars of independence and early Republic. White nationalists like Jose Marti and black intellectual nationalists and public figures, such as Juan Gualberto Gomez, stressed the interracial unity forged by the anticolonial struggle. Unfortunately, white Cuban patriots expected Afro-Cubans to express “gratitude” for the whites’ sacrifices to abolish slavery, meaning Afro-Cubans should not organize along racial lines or challenge the exclusive reality of the myth of racial democracy.[11] Despite white fears and manipulation of the image of Haiti, many blacks still identified with Haiti based on race. Even Antonio Maceo, the leading mulatto general in the Liberation Army, praised Haiti and defended it because racist colonial discourse on Haiti degraded all blacks, indicating the international context of black identity.[12] Maceo went as far as calling for a confederation consisting of Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic in the Protest of Baraguá, his formal rejection of the Pact of Zanjón that ended the Ten Years’ War.[13] The treaty, which only emancipated slaves who participated in the Ten Years’ War, obviously did not meet Afro-Cuban demands for universal emancipation. Maceo clearly believed that Haiti was essential for his conception of Caribbeanness and visited Haiti twice, seeking support for Cuban nationalist causes.[14] Maceo’s public admiration for Haiti was rather controversial as well, since the Spanish manipulation of fears of race war forced Maceo in a precarious position. Accusations of anti-white prejudice leveled against him and others of African descent did not eliminate their beliefs in political associations for blacks because for Afro-Cubans, racelessness was the ultimate goal of an ongoing process that would follow independence.[15] They challenged the myth of racial equality used by Liberals and Conservatives to justify banning racial political organizations.[16]
After independence, Afro-Cubans continued to demonstrate their racial unity through black newspapers, clubs, and even establishing the first black political party in the Americas, the Partido Independiente de Color.[17] The party was not successful electorally because the black middle-class leadership in the organization neglected Afro-Cuban peasant interests when increasing land dispossession struck blacks in Oriente. The Partido Independiente de Color was still able ignite mass black protests in Oriente anyway, though the partly quickly lost control.[18] The Afro-Cuban peasant looting and rioting was motivated by growing landlessness and poverty and targeted foreign-owned property such as Spanish-owned stores, and government buildings that symbolized the Republic’s betrayal of the black population.[19] The Liberal administration of president Gomez and the Cuban press presented the uprising as a racial war to divide the peasants and used excessive force, resulting in the indiscriminate killing of blacks in Oriente, including foreign workers from Haiti.[20] The 1912 uprising represents another form of Afro-Cuban racial consciousness even though the Partido Independiente de Color was not established enough to coordinate it and it became a leaderless series of lootings. These blacks, sympathetic to proportionate representation of blacks in the state bureaucracy at a time of increasing Spanish immigration, were destroying foreign-owned property and public offices that betrayed black economic interests in favor of American-owned sugar estates in Oriente. Prior to American foreign investment and usurpation of peasant lands, the black population in the region had acquired small landholdings and economic independence during the independence wars, leading to immigration into Oriente from western Cuba.[21] The growing American-owned sugar plantations changed it for the worse by seizing peasant and public land.[22] Due to their indispensable role as soldiers in the Liberation Army and the implementation of universal male suffrage, Afro-Cubans expected real inclusion. They were able to mobilize along racial lines but did not target white individuals. In fact, black looters often fled at the sight of Cuban soldiers and reports of white casualties were very low.[23] After the passing of the 1909 Morúa law that prohibited racial parties, which had prompted the 1912 uprising and the massacres carried out by the state, Afro-Cubans were forced to organize along class lines to challenge racial discrimination and economic exploitation. However, the racial character of class division and labor movements demonstrates the continuity of Afro-Cuban racial consciousness, which fused with national labor movements. For instance, the Afro-Cuban rejection of Haitian and West Indian imported sugar estate workers was based on class, since the lower wages the immigrants worked for depressed wages for Afro-Cubans and took away jobs that would have been available for them. In other words, Afro-Cuban racial consciousness did not preclude West Indian immigrant laborers because of their race, since black Cubans already developed a collective black identity. The image of Haiti impacted Cubans of color by pressuring them to join national labor movements that, though not racially defined, were overrepresented by blacks.
Looming over the birth and growth of black racial consciousness in Cuba, the Haitian Revolution and the actions of Haitian leaders undoubtedly shaped international black movements in the Caribbean. Peoples of African descent throughout the hemisphere used the example of Haiti to bolster slave resistance and black nationalism since the early 19th century. Cuba provides several instances of Afro-Cuban social and political organizations that reflect the shift to a two-tier racial system imposed on the black population and used by them to provide a collective identity. Indeed, Cubans of color such as Antonio Maceo even believed in political unity with Haiti and identifying with the larger predominantly black Caribbean. Interestingly, black nationalism in Cuba echoed Afro-Cuban and Haitian slave desires of “taking the land” and collaborative slave conspiracies and rebellions off slaves and free people of color. Black nationalism influenced by positive perceptions of the Haitian Revolution evolved and spread throughout the Black Atlantic, thereby contributing to Negritude, Pan-Africanism of Garvey, and the Harlem Renaissance.
Fanning, Sara C. "The Roots of Early Black Nationalism: Northern African Americans' Invocations of Haiti in the Early Nineteenth Century." Slavery & Abolition 28, no. 1 (2007): 61-85.
Ferrier, Ada. "Rustic Men, Civilized Nation: Race, Culture, and Contention on the Eve of Cuban Independence." The Hispanic American Historical Review 78, no. 4 (1998): 663-686.
Ferrer, Ada. "The Haitian Revolution and Cuban Slave Society." Black Renaissance 5, no. 4 (2004): 179-212.
Ferrer, Ada. Insurgent Cuba: race, nation, and revolution, 1868-1898. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
Ada Ferrer. "Speaking of Haiti: Slavery, Revolution, and Freedom in Cuban Slave Testimony." In The world of the Haitian Revolution. Edited by Geggus, David Patrick and Fiering, Norman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. 223-247.
Fordham, Monroe. "Nineteenth-Century Black Thought in the United States: Some Influences of the Santo Domingo Revolution." Journal of Black Studies 6, no. 2 (1975): 115-126.
Helg, Aline. Our rightful share: the Afro-Cuban struggle for equality, 1886-1912. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
Helg, Aline. "Race and Black Mobilization in Colonial and Early Independent Cuba: A Comparative Perspective." Ethnohistory 44, no. 1 (1997): 53-74.
Perez, Louis. "Politics, Peasants, and People of Color: The 1912 "Race War" in Cuba Reconsidered." The Hispanic American Historical Review 66, no. 3 (1986): 509-539.
Zacair, Philippe. "Haiti on His Mind: Antonio Maceo and Caribbeanness." Caribbean Studies 33, no. 1 (2005): 47-78.
[1] Ada Ferrer, “The Haitian Revolution and Cuban Slave Society,” Black Renaissance 5 (2004): 181.
[2] Aline Helg, “Race and Black Mobilization in Colonial and Early Independent Cuba: A Comparative Perspective,” Ethnohistory 44 (1997): 54.
[3] Ada Ferrer, “Speaking of Haiti: Slavery, Revolution, and Freedom in Cuban Slave Testimony,” in The World of the Haitian Revolution, ed. David P. Geggus and Norman Fiering (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 237.
[4] Ibid., 235.
[5] Ibid., 238.
[6] Ibid., 234.
[7] Ibid., 235.
[8] Ibid., 239-240.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Aline Helg, “Race and Black Mobilization in Colonial and Early Independent Cuba: A Comparative Perspective,” Ethnohistory 44 (1997): 58.
[11] Louis A. Perez, “ Politics, Peasants, and People of Color: The 1912 “Race War” in Cuba Reconsidered,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 66 (1986): 531.
[12] Philippe Zacair, “Haiti on His Mind: Antonio Maceo and Caribbeanness,” Caribbean Studies 33 (2005): 57.
[13] Ibid., 49.
[14] Ibid., 58-70.
[15] Aline Helg, “Race and Black Mobilization in Colonial and Early Independent Cuba: A Comparative Perspective,” Ethnohistory 44 (1997): 66.
[16] Louis A. Perez, “ Politics, Peasants, and People of Color: The 1912 “Race War” in Cuba Reconsidered,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 66 (1986): 531.
[17] Aline Helg, “Race and Black Mobilization in Colonial and Early Independent Cuba: A Comparative Perspective,” Ethnohistory 44 (1997): 58-60.
[18] Louis A. Perez, “ Politics, Peasants, and People of Color: The 1912 “Race War” in Cuba Reconsidered,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 66 (1986): 532.
[19] Ibid., 533-534.
[20] Ibid., 537.
[21] Ibid., 517-519.
[22] Ibid., 523-525.
[23] Ibid., 538.
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