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World News See other World News Articles Title: White Power in Cuba During some recent travels, I came across a copy of Lonely Planet: Cuba. The authors, who clearly sympathize with the country’s communist regime, nonetheless note the following: While there are no ghettos or gangs in Cuba’s larger cities, a quick tally of the roaming jineteros/as [petty criminals] in Vedado and Habana Vieja will reveal a far higher proportion of black participants. On the other side of the coin, over 90% of Cuban exiles are of white descent and of the victorious rebel army that took control of the government in 1959 only a handful (Juan Almeida being the most obvious example) were of mixed heritage. (Lonely Planet, p. 57) Cuba then fulfills the usual pattern for Latin America, with predominantly-white elites fighting among themselves to determine the country’s direction, with the black, Amerindian, and/or mixed-race majority remaining relatively passive historical actors. (There are obviously major exceptions to this pattern: black rule in Haiti, Mestizo rule in Venezuela, and Amerindian rule in Bolivia.) The Cuban case is striking in that the usual racial disparities have persisted despite six decades of radically egalitarian communist socio-economic policies. If the charges of “Jewish Bolshevism” had some credence in Europe and North America (as Winston Churchill and Yuri Slezkine have observed), we can speak of “White Bolshevism” in communist Cuba. In the case of the Argentine Ernesto “Che” Guevara, right-wingers have long enjoyed pointing out the left-wing icon’s racist sentiments. During his youth: The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the Portuguese. . . . The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations. After the 1959 revolution: We’re going to do for blacks exactly what blacks did for the revolution. By which I mean: nothing. Cuba has the same racial disparities that exist elsewhere. The government is overwhelmingly made up of Mediterranean and Amerindianized whites, with a few token blacks and mulattoes. The National Football Team by contrast is overwhelmingly made up of blacks and mulattoes, with a few token whites. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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