Analyzing AFRO CUBA LIBRE: A Mini-Documentary on Race in Cuba Sasha Brown Directed, Produced, and edited by Kate Bartel & Shaynah Ferreira
Throughout the film, I see Cubans playing drums and music that sounds familiar and similar to African culture; I also see many people of Darker Complexions. Seeing this immediately made me think about the African Diaspora within Cuba.
Activist and academic Roberto Zurbano explores the widespread problem of anti-black racism throughout the Caribbean. He clarifies the complex mechanisms of racism in Cuba, emphasizing its pervasiveness across societal domains such as legal systems, hierarchies of power, and economic inequalities. Cuba still struggles with a deeply embedded caste system, where people of African heritage are frequently ostracized and repressed despite claims of a post-racial society. Zurbano's findings highlight the persistent difficulties that Afro-Cubans experience and the pressing need for institutional reform to abolish racial discrimination and advance equality in the country.
I like how the film is constructed in a documentary style and as a photographic story. The Faces of Cuba told me the story of African lineage; as I watched the film, I was told that a story about Cuba's African diasporic history needs to be told.
The film says, “In 1959, following the revolution, Fidel Castro made closing the wage gap between black and white Cubans a governmental priority.” The African diaspora and the historical background of slavery and colonialism in Cuba are closely related to the declaration made in the movie about Fidel Castro's priority of bridging the pay gap between black and white Cubans after the revolution of 1959. The transatlantic slave trade, which transported millions of Africans to the Caribbean to labor on sugar plantations and in other industries, was one of the main ways that the African diaspora impacted Cuba throughout history. Slavery's history in Cuba produced a population that was heavily influenced by African culture and comprised a sizable Afro-Cuban community.
The persistent systemic racism and discrimination that followed the abolition of slavery is the root cause of the pay disparity that exists between white and black Cubans. Even after enslavement was officially abolished in Cuba in 1886, racial inequality persisted, with black Cubans facing discrimination in education, employment, and social opportunities.
The film says, “Three years into his reign, Castro delivered a speech declaring the age of discrimination was over.”
Today, the government stresses there are no races; we are all Cubans. A resident of Havana, Cuba, says that no one identifies as mixed or black; everyone is Cuban; this is foreign to my culture as an American, where we have our own identities and come from different places. They are connected to their homeland and are all Cuban.
Roberto Zurbano says that he identifies with his blackness because, for so long, it was repressed, and black pride wasn’t socially accepted.
Race has been taboo under Castro's reign, and it makes me wonder what society would be like in America if we didn’t consider race.
The film interviews a student, and she says that black Cuban men are profiled and asked to identify their reason for being in Cuba. Similar to the states, they still have a prejudice against people of darker complexions. I liked how they incorporated a student from America because her opinion shows the truth behind Cuban culture.
In a country where people everyone identifies as Cuban, we still see discrimination and profiling. When the film director decided to show the tourists artifacts, I noticed they were all of darker complexions and had mainly African features. When the lady who sold it said that, that was what her culture consisted of. This makes me think about how much of an impact the trans-Atlantic slave trade had on Black people. Even though she is Cuban, her cultural traits and traditions stem from Africa. This documentary shows the first layer of what many white people on top want to erase from history. By saying we are all Cuban, it erases any pride people may have for their blackness.
In the Cuban tourist culture, you won’t see any black people working in the frontline of any hotel or restaurant establishments, only white workers. In Cuba, black people have trouble with employment and with getting a job. Black people's exclusion from prominent roles in Cuban tourism culture is a structural injustice that upholds racial prejudice in the nation. The Cuban tourist sector contributes to the maintenance of racial hierarchies and the perpetuation of prejudices about the competence and value of people based on skin color by limiting employment chances for Black people and giving preference to White workers in prominent and visible roles.
There are various reasons why this behavior is unfair. First of all, it keeps economic inequality alive by preventing Black Cubans from obtaining better-paying jobs in the tourism industry that are more visible. This reinforces already-existing inequalities in wealth and opportunity and further marginalizes and impoverishes Black communities.
Furthermore, it perpetuates racial prejudices and discriminatory practices by implying that white people are superior to black people in terms of ability or reliability. This reinforces negative assumptions about black people's inferiority as well as the dignity and self-worth of black laborers.
Black workers' exclusion from front-line roles in the tourism sector also plays a part in the erasure of Afro-Cuban identity and culture from the public eye. The industry promotes a sanitized and whitewashed picture of Cuban culture that downplays the significant contributions of Afro-Cuban traditions and heritage by showing tourists a mostly white face.
Overall, it is unfair that black people are kept out of front-line roles in Cuban tourism since it feeds into negative stereotypes, exacerbates economic inequality, and obliterates popular awareness of Afro-Cuban culture. Action must be taken to rectify this injustice and guarantee equitable opportunity for all Cubans, regardless of race or ethnicity.
Many local Cubans believe that racism doesn’t exist at all in Cuba, but the documentary speaks otherwise. The documentary reveals the caste system that works against black people in Cuba and the trans-Atlantic slave impact on Cuban Culture.
Reading through your blog and learning what afro Cubans went through is really sad. The struggles of racism has it similarities of what afro Americans went through in the United States. This documentary shares much truth and the struggle that afro Cubans went through.
I found the same theme in the documentary I watched which was called "Black and Cuba". These students visited Cuba and talked to real citizens on the streets to get their take on racism and if it exists in Cuba. They met people who identified as Cuban only and they met people that did not want to erase their blackness and identified as Afro Cuban. The common theme was that racism does exist because darker Cubans are profiled and do not gain front end jobs in establishments easily.