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Bulletin of Spanish Studies

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Debates on Racial Inequality and AfroCuban Culture in Adelante

Miguel Arnedo-Gmez
a a

Victoria University of Wellington

Available online: 17 Jun 2011

To cite this article: Miguel Arnedo-Gmez (2011): Debates on Racial Inequality and Afro-Cuban Culture in Adelante , Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 88:5, 711-735 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14753820.2011.587969

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Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Volume LXXXVIII, Number 5, 2011

Debates on Racial Inequality and Afro-Cuban Culture in Adelante

MEZ MIGUEL ARNEDO-GO
Victoria University of Wellington
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Introduction In July 1933, shortly before the collapse of the administration of Cuban President Gerardo Machado, a group of young Cubans met in a private house in Havana to found an association that would defend and promote the rights of Cuban blacks. In another meeting, after the fall of Machado, Adelante was officially inaugurated. Its primary mission was expressed as follows by the editors: En la ciudad de La Habana, a los 19 d as del mes de septiembre de 1933, reunidos los sen ores que al margen se expresa, en el domicilio del Sr. n, sito en la calle de San Jose 114, acordaron Leonardo Montalva n de cara cter c organizar una asociacio vico cultural que tuviera como objeto el de estrechar los lazos de confraternidad que deben existir entre todos los integrantes de la sociedad cubana, a la vez que obtener las reivindicaciones inmediatas a que tiene derecho la parte de esa sociedad n se acordo que hoy no las disfruta. Acto seguido y previa amplia discusio n se denominara Adelante y que tuviera por mayor a que la asociacio como lema: Pro cultura y justicia social.1 The association edited a monthly journal of the same name (Adelante), which from 1935 to 1939 served as an important outlet for black intellectual expression in Cuba. The journal Adelante has received a small degree of critical attention in studies of black Cuban culture and history. Robin Moore uses Adelante contributions by intellectuals like Juan Antonio Mart nez, Juan Luis Mart n and Alberto Arredondo in his analysis of black middle-class reactions to Afrocubanismo.2 In her historical study, Alejandra Bronfman dedicates
n 1 Una sociedad negra que enaltece a Cuba. Breve resen a sobre la asociacio Adelante, Adelante, 3:36 (May 1938), 18 19 (p. 18). 2 Robin Moore, Nationalising Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920 1940 (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), 210 12. ISSN 1475-3820 print/ISSN 1478-3428 online/11/05/000711-25 # Bulletin of Spanish Studies. DOI 10.1080/14753820.2011.587969

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seven pages to an analysis of the association and its journal. She focuses in particular on the 1930s debate concerning the legalization of the Afro-Cuban street marching bands known as comparsas.3 This article contributes to this incipient body of research with the longest analysis to date of the journals role in debates on racial inequality and Afro-Cuban culture in the 1930s, shedding light on little studied Cuban black intellectual discourses of this time. The article starts by discussing the emphasis of several Adelante contributors on the historical roots of Cuban blacks subalternity. Black middle-class attitudes to Afro-Cuban culture are then analysed on the basis of writings on race and culture published in the journal. Taking into account the ideological elements from black discourses seen in the first two sections, the last part revisits the comparsas controversy in Adelante. Whereas Moores and Bronfmans analyses can at points promote the impression that Adelante tended to convey the black middle classes disapproval of Afro-Cuban culture, the present analysis highlights its revalorization of Afro-Cuban cultural forms. It concludes that Adelante succeeded in reflecting conflicting views within the 1930s black Cuban intellectual community. The Roots of Blacks Subalternity An important element of the writings of Adelante contributors was their emphasis on the social and historical causes of Cuban blacks subaltern ngel Pinto referred to the fact that status. For example, black intellectual A slavery had produced structures of exploitation that could not be made to disappear just by declaring blacks equal members of society: Desde que el negro fue arrebatado a las vastas regiones en que naciera, n para venir a fecundar con su sudor y su sangre estas tierras recie n del desaprensivo conquistador europeo, quedo abiertas a la explotacio gico destino. La baja virtualmente escrito para largos siglos su tra n de esclavo con que se le incorpora al tipo de econom condicio a que a la isla, los que de ella se apoderaron por virtud de un estu importo pido un rumbo definitivo, al derecho de conquista que au n subsiste, le marco mica, y por tanto, social y quedar determinada su inferioridad econo s nu l inician el pol tica, frente a los dema cleos de pobladores que con e evento colonizador de la isla.4 In another article, Pinto ridiculed the idea put forward by some Cuban economists and politicians at the time that blacks had to acquire capital in
3 Alejandra Bronfman, Measures of Equality. Social Science, Citizenship and Race in Cuba, 1902 1940 (Chapel Hill/London: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2004), 165 71. ngel Pinto, El derecho frente a la reivindicacio n del negro, Adelante, 1:11 (April 4 A 1936), 7 8 (p. 7).

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order to prosper because they lived in a capitalist system. To acquire capital, argued these analysts, blacks should start small because they had less financial means than most other sectors of the population. One proposed solution was that they could set up fruit or sweet stands that could gradually expand into larger businesses. Pinto ended the article with the following sarcastic description of the success blacks could expect from this: Por supuesto, que para esa fecha, no seremos*ni mucho menos*los leo ni de la manteca; pero al menos seremos magnates del acero, del petro los pr ncipes de los coquitos quemados, de los chiviricos, o del pan de Caracas.5 Carlos Duarte Moreno also referred to the fact that blacks had historically been purposely denied opportunities and that this is what had resulted in low education levels amongst black sectors in 1930s Cuba: Se le quiere exigir a la masa negra un rendimiento de ciudadan a que es porque se le ha tenido abandonada; se pretende que la imposible que de n negra en la miseria y en el olvido*pues si se le recuerda es poblacio u nicamente para despreciarla*aporte al concurso social, bienes de que carece porque el estado social no la puso en condiciones de cultivarse. Y esta exigencia torpe y menguada sirve para echar terminantes repulsas contra el negro, sin ahondarse en el proceso comparativo de su raza en n con otras que quisieron ser superiores.6 relacio ndez claimed that el llamado In a similar manner, Armando Herna n de la esclavitud problema negro tiene su causa principal en la institucio and more specifically in the fact that the colonial government thwarted blacks attempts to acquire Western culture and education: n cultural nos encontramos que Si consideramos especialmente la cuestio el mantenimiento del negro en la mayor incultura no se deb a al acaso, s de todo el sino a una pol tica de los duen os de esclavos. El negro, a trave por completo de elementos de cultura y de per odo colonial, carecio por todos los medios, apartarle posibilidades para adquirirla. Se procuro n. Al Gobierno colonial ni a la clase propietaria del camino de la educacio n de la cultura y con ella de las ideas de de esclavos conven a la difusio libertad que predominaban entonces, producto de los enciclopedistas y de n Francesa. Por eso, cuando la negra libre Ana del Toro la Revolucio en 1827 permiso para abrir una escuela para nin solicito os de color, se le , funda ndose el Gobierno en el superior dictado de nuestra seguridad nego
ngel Pinto, Econom 5 A a trascendental, Adelante, 2:17 (October 1936), 7. 6 Carlos Duarte Moreno, El drama de Cuba. El hermano negro, Adelante, 1:4 (September 1935), 15.

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n; y, por eso, tambie n cuando el negro Manuel Garc y conservacio a en 1865 autorizacio n para fundar una escuela Alburquerque, solicito tica, nocturna para adultos en que se ensen an las asignaturas de Grama ar Geograf a, Dibujo e Historia, el Gobernador General Domingo Duke, le hizo saber que estaba prohibido, con arreglo a las Leyes de Indias, la ndole, adema s, que si no clase de ensen anza que aquel solicitaba, dicie sab a que estaba prohibido para los negros tales sabidur as [sic].7 del C. Velazco also attributed the problems affecting Cuban blacks to Jose the slavery system. This writer believed that slavery in Cuba had created negative moral values that were still very much a part of Cuban society and negatively affected race relations. One of these damaging consequences was a tendency amongst many blacks to try and hide their blackness and pretend to be white by hiding the ethnic origin of their mothers and grandmothers. The legacy of the slave system had even led some of these blacks to adopt the mentality of the slave owners.8 Stressing the historical origins of blacks subalternity was a particularly important endeavour for black intellectuals in the ideological context of 1930s Cuba, where assumptions about the inherent inferiority of the black ngel Pinto, a Cuban race were still influential. For example, according to A study entitled La naturaleza en los primeros an os, by Dra Elsa R. de Cuesta suggested that black people were intellectually inferior. Pinto read the manuscript of the book before it was published and wrote a letter to the author complaining about this in the following way: n, Pero su libro contiene algo que ha interesado vivamente mi atencio l, rotunda y catego ricamente, contra la opinio n ya que usted afirma en e dito universal en este problema de de autoridades bien calibradas y de cre las razas humanas, la inferioridad mental de la raza negra. Como en gina 253 usted textualmente dice La mayor parte de efecto en la pa ellos*los negros*se han civilizado tanto como los blancos, si bien su pocas inteligencia es generalmente inferior. Los negros africanos en e remotas andaban casi desnudos como los indios, y viv an salvajes en rboles.9 casas hechas de troncos de a Insisting on the historical causes of blacks subalternity also challenged the widespread conviction that it was up to Cuban blacks to better themselves. This idea stemmed in part from what Alejandra Bronfman has described as a model of civil citizenship that was practised by black political figures like mez and his supporters even before the War of Juan Gualberto Go
ndez, El negro, la cultura y la revolucio n, Adelante, 2:13 (June 7 Armando Herna 1936), 8, 16 (p. 8). del C. Velazco, La Morfolog 8 Jose a del prejuicio, Adelante, 1:9 (February 1936), 8. ngel Pinto, Dos cartas a propo sito de un libro, Adelante, 2:22 (March 1937), 6. 9 A

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Independence. This involved political integration for Cubans of colour as a process involving education and the acquisition of civil virtue.10 The writings of the black intellectual Rafael Serra are an illustrative example of this approach during the early years of the Cuban Republic. As Alejandro de la Fuente explains, Serra considered lack of education the most important of all problems affecting blacks and saw schooling as the only way to achieve true racial equality. For Serra, education was the only way in which blacks would be able to move out of the status of inferiority in which they were forced to live in the Cuban republic.11 A review of Serras writings from his 1907 collection of essays Entre negros y blancos confirms de la Fuentes characterization. In an article entitled A la clase de color, Serra claimed that the primary objective for Cuban blacks was regeneration through strict morality, enhancement of family values, education and money. He concluded Mar spedes which advocated the article by quoting a statement by Jose a Ce the need to erase differences by elevating inferior races to the level of superior ones through increased education: s que un medio seguro para borrar las diferencias: que las No hay ma n razas inferiores se eleven hasta las superiores, por medio de la educacio n. La inteligencia es el gran nivelador de la especie y la instruccio humana. n y dinero, Similar ideas can be found throughout Serras essay Educacio 12 which was also included in Entre blancos y negros. After the historical episode popularly known as the Guerrita del doce, this perspective became particularly visible in the discourse of the black middle classes.13 By the 1930s, the belief in education and adoption of conservative and elitist values, such as gender roles, family stability, high moral values and decency, was common amongst a growing social sector of
10 Bronfman, Measures of Equality, 68. 11 As cited in Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation for All. Race, Inequality and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill/London: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2001), 140. 12 Rafael Serra, Entre blancos y negros (Havana: Imprenta El Score, 1907), 100 01, 103, 110. 13 The Guerrita del doce refers to the violent repression in 1912 of black protests staged against the prohibition of the Partido Independiente de Color (PIC). The protests were staged in the Cuban region of Oriente by the PIC after unsuccessfully combating the 1910 Moru a rdenas and Law, which prohibited political parties organized along racial lines (Osvaldo Ca Gale McGarrity, Cuba, in No Longer Invisible. Afro-Latin Americans Today, ed. Minority Rights Group [London: Minority Rights Publications, 1995], 77 108 [p. 89]). As Aline Helg explains, the uprising was violently suppressed by the Cuban armed forces and self-defence white militias, provoking the deaths of somewhere between 2000 and 6000 black Cubans. According to Helg, the underlying racism against blacks that was unmasked by the race war remained long after 1912 and it signified the end of black Cuban radicalism even up to the present (Our Rightful Share. The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886 1912 [Chapel Hill/ London: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1995], pp. 224 25, 228).

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black professionals. This sector had consolidated partly due to the fact that many blacks had managed to obtain higher education degrees making use of increased opportunities in the independent republic.14 De la Fuente explains that amongst this sector, a rhetoric of honour, virtue, education and decency developed as a defensive strategy against dominant conventions that denied the possibility of such attributes among blacks, their income and education notwithstanding. This rhetoric was part of the black middle class endeavour to distance themselves from the lower and less educated sectors of the black population by emphasizing their superior education and culture.15 The most objectionable aspect of this perspective is that it essentially shifted the responsibility of solving racial inequalities onto blacks success at becoming more educated. This unjust expectation played into the prejudice of many whites who wanted to attribute Cuban blacks unequal place in society to their low intellectual development.16 By contrast, Pintos, Duarte Morenos ndezs emphasis on the historical roots of blacks inequalities and Herna brought attention to the need for active policies to achieve the social, cultural and educational equality of blacks. Their arguments would have provided a strong basis to claims for specific legal reforms by writers such as Romilio A. , who demanded that an asamblea constituyente be Portuondo Cala established to tackle racism, a phenomenon which, he argued, had not been taken into account when the 1901 constitution was created.17 ngel Pinto, redressing the historical But for radical intellectual A oppression and discrimination against blacks would require more than mere legal reforms. He believed that blacks would remain excluded from Cuban society for as long as it continued to be based on the same economic system. Patriotic Cuban blacks, he argued, held an incorrect and subjective conception of patriotism that had led them to participate in national struggles like the War of Independence in vain, as they would only attain equality when a revolution destroyed the reigning political and economic system.18 He invoked the black hero of the Wars of Independence, Antonio Maceo, as representative of the kind of revolution that should have stemmed from the independence struggle and should have effected n de todo el viejo sistema existente, comenzando como es la destruccio n econo mica, creando un nuevo natural, por la base, por la transformacio tipo de econom a, ya que sobre esto se levanta todo el orden social.
14 De la Fuente, A Nation for All, 149 51. 15 De la Fuente, A Nation for All, 156, 139. s Guille n, Prosa de prisa. 1929 1972, Vol. I (Havana: Editorial Arte y 16 Nicola Literatura, 1975), 7. , Sobre el problema negro, Adelante, 3:25 (June 1937), 12. 17 Romilio A. Portuondo Cala ngel Pinto, El morbo patrio tico del negro, Adelante, 1:9 (February 1936), 4; Una 18 A n ma s sobre el problema negro, Adelante, 1:7 (December 1935), 4. opinio

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Therefore, for Pinto, blacks needed to focus on how to destroy completely the current social system: Por mi parte, yo, que no soy pol tico ni intelectual, pero que sufro las gimen, sigo pensando que la u duras consecuencias del re nica puerta ntica y definitiva reivindicacio n del hombre abierta a la verdadera, aute de sus angustias presentes y futuras es de color, la que lo redimira n del sistema social basado en la aquella que conduce a la liquidacio n del hombre por el hombre sea blanca, negra o amarilla, la explotacio n de su piel.19 pigmentacio
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In other publications Pinto denounced the fact that Cuba was ruled by a social class of obstinate racists that purposely marginalized blacks.20 Pintos vision, therefore, stood in direct opposition to the belief that the Afro-Cuban masses should earn their place in society through education and progress. The radical nature of Pintos perspective can be equally appreciated in his refutation of Gustavo Urrutias proposed solution to black Cubans lack of political influence. Urrutia proposed that blacks should not join the same political party in order to maximise their influence but, rather, join different political parties and fight for black rights within each one of them. Armando Plas proposal For Pinto, this strategy, and others (such as Jose that blacks should not join political parties whose programmes did not include antidiscrimination policies), would not be effective. What Cuban blacks needed to do was to accept the need for a revolution.21 Culture and Race Tied to the debate on how to achieve equality in 1930s Cuba were heated discussions regarding the role of Afro-Cuban culture in the lives of the modern Cuban black. On the one hand, many Cuban blacks defined their ethnic identities on the basis of their African cultural heritage. This is illustrated by the case of Fernando Guerra, who was the Secretary of the n Mutua y Recreo del Culto Afro-Cuban association Sociedad de Proteccio Africano Lucum . He addressed a circular to the president of the republic and other important officials in defence of the Afro-Cuban cultural practices of this association. He claimed that the practices of Lucum did not interfere with Catholicism, and acknowledgement of African heritage did not imply disregard of modern citizenship.22 On the other hand, the black middle classes overtly condemned Afro-Cuban traditions. As de la Fuente explains, black middle-class sectors
19 20 21 22 n del negro, 8, 4. Pinto, El derecho frente a la reivindicacio As cited in de la Fuente, A Nation for All, 34. ngel Pinto, Ante la pro xima constituyente, Adelante, 4:41 (October 1938), 5. A As cited in Bronfman, Measures of Equality, 94 95.

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in general called upon blacks to de-Africanise themselves while condemning a and other Afro-Cuban cultural expressions, particularly when they Santer reached the public sphere. Their disapproval of Afro-Cuban culture could be seen as a part of a discourse of differentiation through which they sought to solve their social predicament. Despite being highly educated and qualified to obtain white-collar occupations, their skin colour, social origin and financial situation, as well as white racism, kept them dangerously close to the world of poverty and manual labour that they were trying to escape. Their condemnation of Afro-Cuban traditions was part of what de la Fuente describes as their efforts to carve out a well-defined social position in a hostile environment.23 The black middle-class perspective on Afro-Cuban culture can be better understood through an analysis of writings by key Adelante contributors that reflect popular conceptions of race and its relation to culture at the time. One of the most striking features of these writings is the ways in which they attempt to redefine the idea of race within positive definitions of Cuban identity. Alberto Arredondo, for example, posited that Cubans were not a race but, rather, an ethnic conglomerate. He then proceeded to argue that n, en evolucio n diale ctica hacia una s somos una raza en formacio ntesis que Vasconcelos han denominado co smica .24 In algunos escritores como Jose n ventured that a his article Conglomerado social, no; raza cubana, P. Alaca common Cuban race was evolving in Cuba based, not on colour, but on a ns description of Cuban common culture.25 Both Arredondo and Alaca identity reflect a Latin-American tendency to adapt European racist theory in ways that did not condemn their nations to failure. As Nancy Stepan explains, ideas about mulatto degeneracy were part of the theories of European Social Darwinists like Gustave Le Bon and Count de Gobineau, and racial hybridization was seen by biologists outside Latin America as the cause of the regions degeneration.26 But as Richard Graham and Peter Wade point out, in Latin-American countries with substantial numbers of mestizos, blacks and Indians, accepting the idea that non-Caucasians and the racially mixed were intrinsically inferior was tantamount to accepting perpetual backwardness. Consequently, many Latin-American intellectuals of the newly formed Latin-American polities re-elaborated European Scientific Racism (Social Darwinism) into theories that contradicted some of its biological determinist elements.27 Nancy Stepan points out that many Latin
23 De la Fuente, A Nation for All, 153, 154 55. 24 Alberto Arredondo, El negro y la nacionalidad, Adelante, 1:10 (March 1936), 6. scar P. Alaca n, Conglomerado social, no; raza cubana, Adelante, 1:11 (April 1936), 4. 25 O 26 Nancy Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics. Race, Gender and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca/London: Cornell U. P., 1991), 45. 27 Richard Graham, The Idea of Race in Latin America (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1996), 1 5; Peter Wade, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (London: Pluto Press, 1997), 30 35.

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Americans questioned the assumption that racial mixture necessarily resulted in racial inferiority and national decay and asked whether it could actually lead to a national homogeneous type through a process of racial fusion.28 The ideology of mestizaje prevalent in 1930s Cuban nationalist discourse reflects this Latin-American ambivalence towards Scientific Racism as it assumed the existence of races whilst contradicting theories about mixed-blood degeneracy. This is clearly reflected in an Adelante article n put forward the reverse idea that it from 1936 in which J. I. Jimenes-Grullo is racial purity which results in degeneration:
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Pero ya es un hecho demostrado que las razas puras empobrecen y logos modernos* degeneran. La mezcla aparece*ante los ojos de los bio como un factor de enriquecimiento. Somos pueblos nuevos, surgidos del curioso epitalamio de razas dis miles.29 Whilst producing alternative understandings of race that contradicted its original conception in European Scientific Racism, Adelante contributors Mart were short of reaching the intellectual position on race that Jose had rica, Mart hoped for. In his 1891 essay Nuestra Ame had argued that the idea of race was an intellectual construct devised by small-minded scholars who wanted to disprove the irrefutable existence of a universal human identity: No hay odios de razas, porque no hay razas. Los pensadores canijos, enhebran y recalientan las razas de librer a, que el viajero justo y el observador cordial buscan en vano en la justicia de la Naturaleza, donde resalta, en el amor victorioso y el apetito turbulento, la identidad universal del hombre. El alma emana, igual y eterna, de los cuerpos diversos en forma y en color.30 Mart knew that racial identities were valid categories of differentiation for most of his compatriots so he knew that racism would only be superseded once Cubans rejected racial identities in the future independent Republic.31 But, as de la Fuente makes clear, the notion of race itself was not widely questioned by Cuban intellectuals until the Second World War and in the early 1930s nationalist intellectuals referred to the new cubanidad as a Cuban race.32 It is worth remembering, however, that Fernando Ortiz did
28 Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics, 137. n, Factor e tnico e intercambio humano, Adelante, 2:15 (August 29 J I. Jimenes-Grullo 1936), 9. Mart rica [first published in 1891], in Jose Mart . Sus mejores 30 Jose , Nuestra Ame xico DF: Editorial Porru ginas, ed. Raimundo Lazo (Me pa a, 1985), 87 93 (p. 92). Mart rica, 92; Jose Mart 31 Jose , Nuestra Ame , Mi raza [first published in 1893], in Mart . Sus mejores pa ginas, 52 53 (p. 52). Jose 32 De la Fuente, A Nation for All, 178.

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draw on Mart s questioning of race in his own dismissal of the idea in 1939.33 An exceptional contributor to Adelante who questioned the validity of race nez Pastrana.34 4 years before Ortiz was Jime In an environment in which the existence of different races was widely accepted, a common conceptual strategy amongst supporters of racial equality was to posit that there were no intellectual differences between racial groups. This was directly expressed in Adelante by Antenor Firm n. As can be appreciated in the following quotation, Firm n accepted the existence of races but thought that they all possessed the same natural skills and abilities:
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n, en todas partes, dotados de las mismas cualidades y Los hombres esta n de color ni de forma anato mica. Las de los mismos defectos sin distincio s altas virtudes, razas son iguales; todas son capaces de elevarse a las ma s alto desenvolvimiento intellectual, como de caer en la ma s al ma n.35 completa degeneracio Similarly, in a 1935 article about the black United States female writer Manuel Sa enz specifically attacked theories that Phillis Wheatley, Jose supported the existence of superior and inferior races. He argued for the notion that all races can reach the highest levels of intellectual and cultural development and substantiated this with the example of how Wheatley managed to learn to read and write, become familiar with all the classics of European literature and succeeded in becoming a famous and accomplished writer.36 This was in fact the idea behind the black middle-class discourse on black equality outlined earlier. The connection is explicit in Antenor Firm ns article cited above, as can be seen in the following extract: Para realizar la igualdad, que es un derecho natural e imprescriptible, puesto que la ciencia demuestra que ninguna raza de hombres posee aptitudes diferentes a las otras, es preciso que la raza negra dirija sin cesar sus aspiraciones hacia la conquista de las fuerzas morales e intelectuales u nicas que igualan a los hombres.37 Examples of Cuban blacks who had excelled in the dominant society and culture throughout history were routinely used to demonstrate that blacks could be just as advanced as whites if they acquired the right education and
gicos (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 33 Fernando Ortiz, Estudios etnosociolo 1991), 13. nez Pastrana, Jerarqu tnicas, Adelante, 1:4 (September 1935), 18. 34 Juan Jime as e n), Adelante, 1:9 (February 35 Antenor Firm n, La igualdad de las razas (conclusio 1936), 15 16 (p. 16). Manuel Saenz, Reminiscencias . . . Phillis Wheatley, Adelante, 1:4 (September 36 Jose 1935), 11, 19 (p. 11) 37 Firm n, La igualdad de las razas, 15.

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culture (i.e., the dominant, elite culture of European origins). For example, Arabella On mero de negros intelectuales es cada vez a wrote that el nu mayor, dando muestras de un claro entendimiento y de su fe inquebrantable por llegar a la meta del triunfo. It is worth adding, that Arabella On a made this point only then to protest about the fact that these black individuals continued to be excluded and marginalized despite excelling in the dominant al nivel culture: Con todo esto, aun en la actualidad, en que el negro esta s civilizadas, es repudiado del seno de la intelectual de las razas ma sociedad.38 What these pronouncements betray is the belief in the existence of superior cultures, rather than races. The belief that some cultures are more primitive or backward than others is related to theories of cultural evolution that began to develop in Europe in the eighteenth century as a way of explaining the vast array of different races, societies and cultures that were being found around the globe. As recently discovered ethnic groups appeared to Europeans to have simpler cultures and forms of social organization, the idea that different societies and cultures could be arranged along a linear, sequential scale of advancement towards progress and civilization began to take hold and human social and cultural diversity was understood in terms of binary oppositions such as primitive and advanced, simple and complex, low and high, savagery or barbarism and civilization.39 In the late nineteenth century cultural evolutionism reached its heyday with the works of Herbert Spencer, Lewis Henry Morgan and Edward Burnett Tylor and it continued to be a highly ethnocentric perspective that uncritically equated evolution with progress.40 One way in which the influence of cultural evolutionism came to Cuba was in the form of scientific works or studies of so called primitive cultures lez Echevarr written and published overseas. Roberto Gonza a refers to the influence on Cuban intellectuals at the time of Oswald Spenglers The Decline of the West, a work that divided the historical evolution of culture into the stages of childhood, adolescence and adulthood.41 Another example is the book Sobre el problema del negro by Alejandro Lipschutz, a Chilean indigenista anthropologist of Lithuanian origin. Lipschutzs book was clearly inspired by the primitivist trend to rescue the potential of non-western cultures, but his treatment of these was tinged with cultural evolutionist ideas and a strong paternalism. This can be appreciated in the
38 Arabella On a, La inteligencia negra, Adelante, 3:34 (March 1938), 8. 39 Elman R., Service, Cultural Evolutionism. Theory in Practice (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc., 1971), 5 6. 40 Stephen, K. Sanderson, Evolutionism and its Critics. Deconstructing and Reconstructing an Evolutionary Interpretation of Human Society (London: Paradigm Publishers, 2007), 10 21, 45. lez Echevarr 41 Roberto Gonza a, Alejo Carpentier: The Pilgrim at Home (Ithaca/ London: Cornell U. P., 1977), 80.

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following extract from a review of this book published in the April 1938 issue of Adelante: n El artista primitivo dispone, segu n Lipschutz, de una imaginacio e l infatigable y de grandes facultades de observacion; siempre esta listo para seleccionar a los est mulos que mana del ambiente. Tiene la n como dones naturales, lo que le simplicidad piadosa e introspeccio aventaja sobre el artista europeo.42 For Cuban advocates of racial equality who still accepted the idea that humankind is divisible into distinguishable racial groups of equal intellectual ability, the notion that African cultures were less developed provided a comfortable explanation for blacks backwardness. The lesser development of African societies and the failure of substantial proportions of the Cuban black population to prosper could be due to their attachment to primitive or backward forms of culture that were not allowing them to move on. Cultural evolutionist ideas can be found in many articles published in ndez, referring to Cubans in general, Adelante. For example, Armando Herna wrote that es evidente que todav a no hemos ascendido mucho en la escala cultural.43 Juan Luis Mart n wrote against poes a negra by arguing that it represented a culture that was inferior and had thus been destroyed through contact with the superior civilization imposed by the Spanish: roes El negro nuestro es cubano, sus tradiciones son las de Cuba, sus he son cubanos, sus mitos son los del pueblo de Cuba y hasta la forma de sus composiciones juglarescas se confunde y acopla con la espan ola. Cuando se unen dos civilizaciones en el espacio y el tiempo, supervive, gica, la ma s apta. De aqu rbaro, por ley biolo que es inu til buscar lo ba cter racial, rascar en la personalidad de la raza, registrar el cara n no tendra sino un valor espora dico, tan excitarlo, porque su aparicio bil, tan tenue, que sera artificiosa, circunstancial, falsa, y por lo tanto, de un simple idiotismo que ha dejado de ser africano para ser nacional y puramente cubano.44 Carlos A. Cervantes also believed that the more blacks had integrated into the Cuban people, the less culturally African they had become. He argued n de los blancos and he that el negro ha sabido asimilar la civilizacio added that cultures can disappear due to the pressure exerted upon them by a superior culture or by becoming diluted en el torrente incontenible de la
42 The review can be found on pages 13 14 of the April 1938 issue of Adelante. It is attributed to Agencia Columbus, presumably a Latin-American news or media agency at the time. The authors name is not provided. ndez, El negro, la cultura y la revolucio n, 8. 43 Armando Herna n afrocubana, Adelante, 3:25 (June 1937), 7. 44 Juan Luis Mart n, Falsa interpretacio

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s pesa.45 Another illustrative exponent of this kind of perspective is que ma the black intellectual Alberto Arredondo. In an article entitled Un Hurra! Para Adelante he described the African-influenced marching bands known as congas and comparsas as cultural manifestations that had already been surpassed by black culture: mica y socialmente. Su mu El negro ha progresado pol tica, econo sica, s de la colonia insertada en nuestro folklore, ha ido evolucionando a trave y la repu blica. Las congas y las comparsas constituyen sin lugar a duda una etapa art stica vencida.
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Arredondos belief that some cultures are less advanced than others, or in a child-like stage of development is patent in one of the articles he published in ngel Pintos defence of the comparsas. He wrote Adelante in response to A there that n africana en los distintos hemos estudiado el grado de la civilizacio lo encontramos bailes guerreros con momentos de la Trata Esclavista y so cnica instrumental, ritos y costumbres religiosos como las rudimentaria te rbaro infantilismo en todas las manifestaciones danzas circulares, y ba art sticas. In an article entitled El negro en la colonia he wrote that upon the discovery n of America, Spain had the responsibility to infundir una nueva civilizacio en pueblos de cultura nula, rudimentaria.46 Another example of cultural evolutionism in Adelante is an article n, in which its author, Armando entitled El negro, la cultura y la revolucio ndez, wrote that blacks had not ascended the cultural scale.47 These Herna perspectives are reminiscent of the type of mestizaje proposed by the Mexican Vasconcelos. In a 1938 article published in Adelante, he put intellectual Jose forward the idea that the way for Latin-American nations to progress was to levantar al indio y al negro al mismo nivel cultural que el blanco.48 The Comparsas Controversy Some of the clearest expressions about Afro-Cuban culture published in Adelante were connected to the controversy of the comparsas during the
45 Carlos A. Cervantes, Las industrias y los negros (II), Adelante, 3:33 (February 1938), 9, 14 (p. 9). 46 Alberto Arredondo, Un Hurra! Para Adelante , Adelante, 2:24 (May 1937), 7 8 (p. 8); Arredondo, El arte negro a contrapelo, Adelante, 3:25 (July 1937), 5 6, 20 (p. 5); Arredondo, El negro en la colonia, Adelante, 1:12 (May 1936), 15. ndez, El negro, la cultura y la revolucio n, 8, 16. 47 Armando Herna Vasconcelos, Raza pura o mezclada, Adelante, 4:42 43 (December 1938), 6, 20 48 Jose (p. 6).

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1930s. These were marching bands through which enslaved or free blacks in n during the D Cuban slave society represented their cabildos de nacio a de Reyes celebrations on 6 January.49 The most sophisticated analysis of the comparsas to date is without doubt the third chapter of Robin Moores study. Moore explains that although the D a de Reyes celebrations were banned by the end of the nineteenth century, in the early twentieth century the comparsas were re-appropriated in vernacular theatre performances and also utilized by political groups in local and national campaigns who started to hire comparsa groups in order to promote their candidates.50 Throughout the years 1937 and 1938 Adelante became the forum for a heated discussion regarding the comparsas. In an editorial Las comparsas, n cubana, published in published in March 1937 and in an article A la nacio March 1938, the editors of Adelante provided an overview of the different stages involved in the debate. Addressing the Cuban nation in relation to an issue that they considered transcendental, the editors explained at the n cubana that the phenomenon known as the beginning of A la nacio comparsas had been recently encouraged in Cuba in the name of Afrocubanismo. The editors then clarified what they meant by comparsa and by arrollao: Se trata de una serie de hombres y mujeres, que en grupos y con disfraces s de congas originales y t picos van bailando uniformemente al compa o ritmos especiales. A este baile se le da el nombre de arrollao. Y a los s de las comparsas, se dice que van arrollando. que van detra The editors then made an important distinction: they were not referring to the costumed groups who traditionally came out during Carnival celebrations or to those groups who since colonial times formed comparsas
n were associations of mutual aid that were supposed to gather 49 The cabildos de nacio together urban African-born slaves of the same ethnic origin. In urban areas these associations allowed black slaves to practise their traditions of African origin on days of national holiday and at particular times (Fernando Ortiz, Los cabildos y la fiesta afrocubanos a de Reyes [first published in 1921 under the title Los cabildos afrocubanos] [Havana: del D n Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1992], 9). The only book-length study of the cabildos de nacio is by Philip A. Howard, Changing History. Afro-Cuban Cabildos and Societies of Colour in the Nineteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State U. P., 1998). Other publications that include information on these associations are the following: Rebecca J. Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labour, 1860 1899 (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1985); Robert Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood: The Conspiracy of La Escalera and the Conflict between Empires over Slavery in Cuba (Middletown: Wesleyan U. P., 1988); Argeliers n, Del canto y el tiempo (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1984); Lydia Cabrera, El Leo n Rodr monte (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1975); Olavo Ale guez, De lo afrocubano a la salsa. neros musicales de Cuba (Havana: Ediciones Artex, 1994). Subge 50 For a more detailed analysis of the comparsas, see Moore, Nationalizing Blackness, frica en Ame , La mu rica Latina, ed. 62 86 and Odilio Urfe sica y la danza en Cuba, in A xico DF: Siglo XXI, 1977), 216 19. Manuel Moreno Fraginals (Me

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at different events and celebrations. The Adelante association was specifically culo que con vibracio n musical de indiscutible referring to the especta influencia africana y con paso de baile de inclinaciones rotundamente negras ltimamente en La Habana, con pintorescos o negroides, se ha reproducido u desfiles.51 According to them, these comparsas dated back to colonial times. Although they were forbidden by the Spanish Colonial government, they were legalized again in the Republic until they were banned in 1913 due to street fights and disturbances. At the beginning of 1937 public opinion about the comparsas was divided into two opposing factions. On the one hand, one group was made up exclusively of black members and it believed that the comparsas were culo poco edificante, que nos denigra, no so lo ante el forastero a un especta s o menos transitoria en quien se le quiere hacer grata su permanencia ma la ciudad, sino que ofende al mismo tiempo el buen gusto de los elementos sensatos del pa s. The other group was of the opposite opinion, believing that the comparsas, fuente riqu sima e inagotable de nuestro folklore, reviven una de las mas bellas y genuinas de las tradiciones cubanas y en tal virtud, es una de las s obligados a conservar por su tipicidad. Moved costumbres que estamos ma by this divided opinion, according to Adelante, the Havana Mayor Dr Antonio Beruff Mendieta, requested a report on the comparsas from the Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos, a society to which the Mayor gave economic protection.52 The report supported the legalization of the comparsas. It was written by the president of the Sociedad Fernando Ortiz and published in a leaflet of the Municipio de la Habana under the title Las comparsas n resuelta.53 The editors of populares del carnaval habanero, cuestio Adelante in their March 1937 editorial described the report as interesting and brilliant but here and in their 1938 editorial they drew what they saw as a very important distinction. Adelante supported the comparsas as professional performing groups based on a rehearsed and prepared performance. What they objected to were the congas, which they defined as disorganized marching groups that were solely based on the arrollao, which involved the spontaneous participation of the public. The congas inevitably became embarrassing spectacles, and part of the problem was that if the comparsas were allowed to perform without proper control and supervision, they inevitably would develop into congas:
n cubana, Adelante, 3:34 (March 1938), 7 8, 20 (p. 7). 51 A la nacio 52 Actividades de la Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos durante el an o 1937, Estudios Afrocubanos, 1:1 (1937), 160 62 (p. 162); Las comparsas, Adelante, 2:22 (March 1937), 3. 53 Actividades de la Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos durante el an o 1937, 162.

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nsito y el libre arrollao de las comparsas en El permiso para el libre tra n art n. los barrios, traiciona la inspiracio stica que motivara su reproduccio n de los barrios devienen en Las comparsas, dejadas a la libre colaboracio congas, se transforman precisamente en manifestaciones que Adelante de bochornosas y que habr n para las tildo an de constituir un baldo autoridades que las propiciaran. In February 1937, the comparsas were finally authorized by the Mayor on the basis of the report by the Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos. In a written document, Adelante communicated to the authorities that they supported the legalization of the comparsas but that they thought that they needed to be well organized and rehearsed and not include the spontaneous participation of the public. But against their recommendation there stood the extensive report of the Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos, seemingly also supported by the Club Atenas. The Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos, according to n de las comparsas sin nngu Adelante, apoyaba calurosamente la re-edicio n criterio limitativo.54 Several issues of Adelante from 1937 and 1938 include articles objecting to the legalization of the comparsas. In her contribution to the heated debate, nchez wrote that in colonial times this cultural practice had Mar a Luisa Sa served black slaves as a means of forgetting about their suffering. Now in the republican period, she argued, it was still serving a similar purpose by helping blacks to forget about their miserable conditions and about the governments lack of success in creating racial equality. This can be appreciated in the following extracts from the said article: Las comparsas de 1937 cruzan, ligeras, bulliciosas, exitantes . . . Los turistas sonr en incomprensivamente, con comentarios banales, con vulgares discriminaciones, haciendo gala de sus refinamientos. . . Los turistas [. . .] recorren las calles repletas de gente . . . De gente que no comprenden que hay ruido porque tienen hambre! . . . Que olvida sus nuevos amos . . . que olvida que tiene amos, que son esclavos, que una vez lo unos meses, se tiene zafra, se tienen vales para la bodega . . . al an o y so Que olvida que los nin os sufren, que los nin os mueren de tosferina, de paludismo, de tifoidea y tuberculosis . . . porque tienen hambre, porque no hay dinero!. . . Todo el mundo olvida la tragedia honda!. . . Todas las comparsas de los negros olvidan sus cuartuchos tristes, sus cuartuchos hu medos, sus cuartuchos de negros. [. . .] Todo por el turismo y las comparsas y . . . el olvido!.55 Conversely, the objections of other Adelante contributors seemed to be based on the belief that this Afro-Cuban cultural practice was intrinsically
54 55 n cubana, Adelante, 3:34 (March 1938), 7-8, 20 (p. 7). A la nacio nchez, Zafra y comparsas, Adelante, 2:23 (April 1937), 13. Mar a Luisa Sa

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worthless, and in some cases, not even a form of art or even culture. For example, whilst complaining about the support given to the comparsas in n de Sociedades Negras, Cloris Tejo argued that those the 1938 Convencio convention members that encouraged blacks to dance or take part in the comparsas were hypocrites because they would not themselves like to be seen dancing to a comparsa. In addition, she held them responsible for the lack of culture and low morality of the black popular sectors: Aplaudimos la conga, y luego exigimos responsabilidad moral a los negros los congueros, para que se preocupen de la cultura de sus hijos. Por que sta sen ores convencionalistas y los de alguna cultura por mediana que e sea no bailan la conga, ya que consideran que ella es el arte negro en su n? En este caso estos sen genuina manifestacio ores son como el cura haz lo que yo diga, pero no lo que yo hago. Quienes aplauden a la conga y no la bailan en pu blico, pero alimentan a otro para que la baile, son tan n del negro como el blanco culpables de la incultura y discriminacio racista, y no tienen derecho a quejarse de la moral de las masas populares negras.56 An intellectual who adopted a similar perspective was Juan Antonio Mart nez, who argued that the spectacle of the comparsas was out of place in Havana, which was a cultured and cosmopolitan city. His language in the description reproduced below, clearly suggests a conception of Afro-Cuban cultural forms as inferior and primitive manifestations: La verdad es que por ser demasiado tradicionalistas hemos pasado por el dolor (muy intenso por cierto) de contemplar por las calles de esta Habana ndose tan culta y tan cosmopolita, a los nuestros contorsiona mora lu bricamente al conjuro del tambor; y en defensa de eso que es re lanzas un intelectual cubano de primera fila, quien y atavismo, quebro parece haber olvidado que por mucho que se llame a estas escenas, n cubana, siempre sera el negro a quien se de el papel principal. tradicio Esa candidez del negro cubano es un estado de conciencia que responde a los siglos de esclavitud moral y material que ha padecido, y lo que lo obliga a subordinar sus iniciativas propias a las especulaciones de los s. Para romper con ese estado de conciencia, lo menos que podemos dema hacer es dar un fuerte impulso a las labores de ndole cultural, porque lo cuando eso ocurra vendra la nivelacio n econo mico-social-pol so tica de la que estamos urgidos.57

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n de Sociedades Negras, Adelante, 3:34 (March 56 Cloris Tejo, En torno a la Convencio 1938), 5. 57 Juan Antonio Mart nez, El afrocubanismo y nuestra cultura, Adelante, 3:31 (December 1938), 11.

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In Un Hurra! Para Adelante Alberto Arredondo argued that the music of the Cuban black was integrated into Cuban folklore and had evolved beyond Afro-Cuban musical forms like the comparsas throughout the colonial and the republican periods. He congratulated Adelante for denouncing in their s de las comparsas the significado retardatario de las editorial Despue culo al comparsas and for demonstrating that the congas were un obsta movimiento renovador que todos impulsamos.58 He pointed out that although the Club Atenas and the Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos had defended the legalization of the comparsas he had not seen any of their members dancing behind them. Towards the end of the article, it becomes evident that Arredondos dismissal of the comparsas as valuable components of black Cuban culture was linked to his belief in the historical integration of Cuban blacks and whites, which also led him to reject Afrocubanismo and even the very term Afro-Cuban. Accepting the existence of an Afro-Cuban component in Cuban identity and promoting Afrocubanismo were dangerous divisive tendencies akin to the idea of the faja negra de Oriente.59 This was the reason why, according to Arredondo, the comparsas needed to be opposed by all those who believed in Cuban racial equality. Cuban music he concluded was not white, black or African; it was simply Cuban music.60 In view of the widespread belief in the inferiority of African-influenced cultural manifestations analysed in the previous section, it is reasonable to assume that writers like Mart nez and Arredondo objected to the comparsas because they did not like blacks being seen in performance of inferior Afro-Cuban cultural practices. From todays viewpoint their refusal to acknowledge the artistic value of these cultural forms strikes one as extremely narrow-minded. Since the revalorization of Afro-Cuban culture in the 1930s, the work of many , Lydia renowned intellectuals such as Fernando Ortiz, Romulo Lachatan ere and Rau Cabrera, Natalia Bolivar, Mart n Lienhard, Stephan Palmie l Canizares has demonstrated that Afro-Cuban culture is an intricate and sophisticated cultural system. In addition, since 1959 the Cuban revolutionary government has tended to promote Afro-Cuban culture as representative of
58 Arredondo, Un Hurra! Para Adelante, 7. 59 The faja or franja negra was a proposal to create a black independent state in the region of Oriente. According to de la Fuente, this proposal had been supported by the Cuban Communist Party in 1934 (A Nation for All, 192). Cuban black intellectuals writing in Adelante were all critical of the franja negra. Alberto Arredondo rejected the proposal in his article El negro y la nacionalidad by arguing that it would be un modo artificial de resolver n, y no de un contingente de ciudadanos de pigmentacio n un problema que es de la Nacio negra (6). Serapio Paez Zamora also rejected the idea of the libre determinismo de la faja n cubana to the problema negro (Clarificacio n de la negra claiming that it was not a solucio rico, Adelante, 4:42 43 [December 1938], 4). postura del negro en este momento histo According to Alberto Arredondo, by 1937 the proposal of the franja negra had died due to lack of support (El arte negro a contrapelo, 5). 60 Arredondo, Un Hurra! Para Adelante, 8.

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Cubas distinct identity, and has used it as a powerful populist symbol of the nation.61 However, one factor that should be taken into account in defence of these Cuban black intellectuals position is that for members of the white dominant social sectors who viewed Afro-Cuban culture as evidence of blacks inferiority, the spectacle of the comparsas served to confirm their assumptions. Many activists in the struggle for racial equality believed that it was precisely these sectors of the population who had to be convinced s of blacks equality. For example, the mulatto poet and journalist Nicola n thought that an important way to fight against racial discrimination Guille was for blacks to demonstrate to such whites that there were no innate differences between them; that blacks and whites were the same, just human beings.62 Indeed, many Adelante contributors seemed primarily concerned with the image of blacks that the comparsas promoted amongst whites and with how it would justify racist practices. One such writer was Mariano Salas n actual y futura de las sociedades negras he Aranda. In his article Posicio n de Sociedades Negras and the accused the members of the 1938 Convencio Mayor of supporting a spectacle that fomented racism and that completely discredited the black race: n debe estar encaminada a levantar el nivel Repetimos que nuestra misio mico y pol cultural, econo tico de nuestra raza, por ello, nos asombramos que los mismos hombres que con anterioridad ofrecieron su culo consentimiento para que el alcalde habanero nos ofreciera el especta culo que ha dado pie para que se cometan de las Congas, especta vejaciones y discriminaciones contra el negro sean los mismos que ahora pretenden recabar respeto y consideraciones para la misma raza que ellos n lanzaron por el fango y el descre dito.63 en nombre del arte y la tradicio There is no reason to doubt that this was a justified concern. In an article entitled El arte negro a contrapelo, Alberto Arredondo explained that in the spectacle of the comparsas that he witnessed he could hear the spectators make comments such as: Y luego hablan de que el negro ha evolucionado! A esta gente, conga, ron n en la selva! En plena barbarie! y len a! Son unos degenerados! Esta n los negros por civilizar! Que se diviertan, que bailen conga! Que Esta otra cosa pueden hacer los negros?
61 Robin Moore, Music and Revolution. Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba (Berkeley/ Los Angeles/London: Univ. of California Press, 2006), 174. n, Prosa de prisa, 9. 62 Guille n actual y futura de las sociedades negras, Adelante, 63 Mariano Salas Aranda, Posicio 3:33 (February 1938), 5.

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Arredondo then added that , era que muchos de estos comentarios lo lamentable, lo que nos sorprendio lo de pol vinieran no so ticos, periodistas y capillitas reaccionarias, sino de ricos del negro en las elementos del propio pueblo, de compan eros histo n nacional.64 luchas de la reivindicacio This shows particularly well that, despite his negative views regarding the lack of intrinsic value of Afro-Cuban cultural forms, Arredondo was mainly concerned with the image of blacks that these cultural practices promoted amongst white racists. Therefore, a refusal to grant Afro-Cuban culture any value may not have been the main source of objections to the comparsas of some of these intellectuals and activists; but rather, the image of blacks that they projected to a racist and cultural evolutionist Cuban public. This judgment certainly applies to Adelantes own position on the issue of the comparsas. As explained earlier, the association emphasized the difference between congas and comparsas and clearly valued the artistic potential of the latter. The penultimate paragraph of their aforementioned article A la n cubana makes it clear that they were also primarily concerned with nacio the negative image of blacks the comparsas promoted and also with the fact that political parties would use them to gain the support of lower-class blacks, who were more likely to join in street celebrations for a few cents and a jar of alcohol: culo de A nombre de esos arrollaos, sen alando acusadoramente el especta las congas negras, se volveran a erguir las nefastas teor as de la ndose de las inferioridad racial y el retraso del negro. Aprovecha autorizaciones oficiales para manifestaciones art sticas, los pol ticos n a coger en sus manos las congas y sacar de sus estratos a ese volvera n, y lo que es olvidado y miserable negro, que sin cultura y sin preparacio peor, sin saber las consecuencias de sus actos por las horas de alegr a de un vaso de alcohol y por el goce apretado y extraordinario de unos dispuesto a vender su presente de ciudadan centavos estara a ante las elecciones o a vender su porvenir como negro libre ante las congas.65 Therefore, Adelante cannot be characterized as being merely a vehicle for black middle-class elitist and evolutionist views of Afro-Cuban culture. This is an impression that both Moores and Bronfmans treatment of the journal could be seen to promote at points. For example, Bronfman writes that the issue of the comparsas produced a heated discussion in which black intellectuals engaged, and dissented from, the opinion of the Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos. Further on, she argues that neither the cautious
64 65 Arredondo, El arte negro a contrapelo, 6. n cubana, 8. A la nacio

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supporters, nor the vehement critics of the comparsas seemed to care much nchezs description about resurrecting the past and then cites Mar a Luisa Sa of the comparsas as a drug that spread docility.66 Moores analysis could equally suggest that Adelante generally favoured elitist and evolutionist notions about Afro-Cuban culture and advocated the superiority of western cultural forms, because this is the aspect of black middle class discourses he is seeking to illustrate.67 The editors of Adelante would have objected to this image. As they claimed in response to some of their contributors decision to no longer collaborate with Adelante because of its position on the comparsas: Adelante es una tribuna desde donde pueden expresarse libremente todas las ideas.68 Indeed, Adelante also published articles that supported the polemical ngel Pintos article Una Afro-Cuban street bands. A case in point is A n, written in response to Alberto Arredondos Un hurra! para aclaracio Adelante . Pinto argued against practically every basic assumption in Arredondos article. First of all, he rightly corrected him for claiming that Adelante pronounced themselves against the comparsas and explained that what Adelante did was to support them in a letter to the Mayor but expressing concern about them turning into congas. He then put forward a devastating criticism of Arredondo by indirectly aligning him with Cuban whites who had historically looked down upon the music and dances of blacks: En Cuba, es ya varias veces secular el criterio indicador de cosa rbara cuando procede del negro, desde su despreciable, salvaje y ba mu sica y bailes hasta la virilidad y resistencia para el trabajo con que el amo de ayer*y el de hoy*se ha enriquecido, y ha podido permitirse el lujo de una vida ociosa y placentera. He then proceeded to declare his unconditional love of black music and directly responded to Arredondos comment that members of the Club Atenas and the Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos did not dance behind the comparsas. He confessed that he did not dance either but that the reason for that was that he had been lucky enough to have access to other means of cultural expression because his parents were economically above the average for blacks and he had received a privileged education. In this way, Pinto argued that condemning the comparsas amounted to ignoring the conditions that had led lower-class blacks to be in a situation in which this was one of the very few vehicles of artistic expression open to them:

66 67 68

Bronfman, Measures of Equality, 169, 170. Moore, Nationalizing Blackness, 210 11. s de las comparsas, Adelante, 2:23 (April 1937), 3. Despue

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Mas, debo de decirlo honradamente, si no bailo conga, si no arrollo por las calles de La Habana, acaso no sea esto una virtud m a; eso se lo debo a mis padres que tuvieron la gran fortuna de haber adquirido quiza los elementos necesarios para haberse colocado, dentro de las estrechas poca como negros, por encima de sus limitaciones que vivieron en su e s hermanos de infortunio. Pero, ni todos los negros hemos tenido dema padres, ni todos nuestros padres fueron afortunados en la vida. Hacer de pico para esta desgracia del negro, que es desgracia nuestra, un to recriminarlo y escarnecerlo, es infringirle un doble castigo por un delito l no ha cometido. que e
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Pinto went on to defend the Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos against Arredondos accusations, as well as the validity of the term afrocubano.69 Some of the articles by Gustavo Urrutia that were published in Adelante also demonstrate that the journal was also a platform for advocates of Afro-Cuban culture. His four-part essay Cuba, el arte y el negro is a case in pez that point. Urrutia wrote this essay in response to a text by Bonifacio Lo brought up the issue of the lack of black influences in Cuban literature. Urrutia set out to analyse the extent of African influence in the arts, particularly in Cuban sculpture, painting and literature. As opposed to many afrocubanista intellectuals who at this time considered that Afro-Cuban culture needed to be refined through forms of Western culture, Urrutia argued that no erudite Cuban artist, neither white nor black, was sufficiently advanced to be able to do justice to the riquezas de plasticidad y ritmo , en los jimaguas y en otros contenidas en un Chango dolos de las religiones 70 africanas que nos circundan. Afro-Cuban idols were as valuable as the African sculptures made famous by Paul Guillaume in Paris, but a Cuban Guillaume would need not only the talent of this French artist, but also not mind being labelled a brujo in Cuban society if he tried to work with these Afro-Cuban images. Urrutias perspective on Afro-Cuban culture is radically opposed to the cultural evolutionist opinions outlined above. Whereas Arredondo considered Afro-Cuban cultures so underdeveloped and primitive that he convinced himself that they were no longer a part of the culture of Afro-Cubans, Urrutia celebrated their aesthetic value and brought attention to the social prejudices and the complejo de inferioridad that had stood in
ngel Pinto, Una aclaracio n, Adelante, 3:25 (June 1937), 10 11, 20 (p. 10). 69 A 70 Gustavo Urrutia, Cuba, el arte y el negro, Adelante, 1:5 (October 1935), 7, 18 (p. 7). For an analysis of the afrocubanista belief in stylizing or refining inferior Afro-Cuban cultural forms by combining them with forms of erudite Cuban art, literature and music, see mez, Writing Rumba. The Afrocubanista Movement in Poetry (CharlottesMiguel Arnedo-Go ville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 2006), 79 81, 100 101, and Robin Moore, Representations of Afro-Cuban Expressive Culture in the Writings of Fernando Ortiz, Latin American Music Review, 15:1 (1994), 32 54 (pp. 45 46).

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the way of a much stronger utilization of Afro-Cuban elements in Cuban sculpture. These ideas are reproduced in the following extract: Por eso acabamos de ver que el proceso influyente del arte negro sobre una oposicio n inerte y nuestra escultura y nuestra pintura encontro subconsciente en el prejuicio social que demeritaba la escultura africana n con la brujer lo ha ido abrie ndose por su identificacio a, y que este arte so paso, lenta y subrepticiamente, enmascarado por el vanguardismo y protegido por el prestigio magistral de los franceses como un dogma n un elemento nuevo. En tal complejo de inferioridad late en embrio gico, que es factor de las bellas artes representativas.71 intelectual ideolo
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In the second part of the essay, Urrutia affirmed that la raza negra tiene una n literaria de cara cter roma ntico, religioso y guerrero, riqu sima tradicio capaz de competir con otras civilizaciones antiguas.72 In the third part, he explained that the reason why African literature had not influenced Cuban literature to the same extent was that in African societies oral literature was a specialized art form (exemplified by the figure of the griot), whereas music was a popular one, which ensured that many of the slaves that were brought to Cuba were proficient in it.73 Despite not having influenced Cuban literature, Urrutia went on to add, the main aesthetic, ideological and conceptual characteristics of African literature were still preserved amongst Cubas black population. The following descriptions of the distinctive features of such literature and his ensuing description of some exceptions of African-influenced Cuban literary works, convey Urrutias appreciation of the aesthetic value and sophistication of these cultural forms: n y sentimentalismo El sentido espec fico de la mentalidad, imaginacio sembrado en nuestra poblacio n negra; as africanos, esta como ella cnica de su guarda en potencia y sin duda inconscientemente, la te literatura. La manera pomposa, penetrante y pintoresca de estructurar y proyectar sus ideas y sentimientos, la agudeza y el graficismo de sus genes verbales, la visio n fatalista y a la vez regocijada de la vida, su ima rendimiento a la potestad divina, el vigor y la frescura de sus iron as y la mordacidad de sus sarcasmos, son elementos puramente literarios y ficos de la mentalidad negra que persisten a trave s del negro cubano. filoso
71 Urrutia, Cuba, el arte y el negro, 7. 72 Gustavo Urrutia, Cuba, el arte y el negro II, Adelante, 1:6 (November 1935), 9, 20 (p. 9). 73 Gustavo Urrutia, Cuba, el arte y el negro III, Adelante, 1:7 (December 1935), 9. Although here Urrutia provided an explanation of the development of African music in Cuba that refuted the widespread assumption that blacks were naturally musical, in another article he did refer to music as one of the cualidades innatas del negro (Opresores y oprimidos, Adelante, 1:4 [September 1935], 6 7 [p. 6]).

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Hay en Cuba todav a cuentos bell smos como el de SIQUILLANGAMA en la pa gina dominical de los IDEALES DE UNA RAZA. que publique Hay muchos cuentos afrocriollos, agudos y socarrones como los que gina. Hay leyendas deliciosas de reproduje a menudo en esa misma pa ntica, semejantes a la de ARANDO JENU, transcrita por poes a roma gina tambie n dominical Lino Dou en LA MARCHA DE UNA RAZA, su pa de El Mundo. Todo ello duerme en la mente del negro sin haber influ do en nuestra literatura.74 Another example of a text published in Adelante which celebrated Afro-Cuban culture was Marcelino Arozarenas article Rebeld a paradojal, published in the October 1935 issue. This article refuted the assumption that Afro-Cuban musical traditions are anathema to the development of a black social consciousness. As can be seen in the following extract, Arozarena chose to interpret even the bodily movements of Afro-Cuban dance and music forms as a rebellious gesture against inertia and as insubordination expressed from the hips: Con su camisa de ritmos desabrochada en canciones cruza el Negro las calles de la Vida. n? Traicio No. Vigilemos el dolor que se le hincha en los labios o se desangra en el looping the loop de una carcajada; dolor y risa tienen aristas gemelas: la grima una carcajada de la boca sin palabras. risa es llanto de ciegos, y es la la rbaros*como metro nomos Cuando en sus manos*ra ces de ecos ba ticos miden sobre la piel caliente y dura de los parches, la precipitada frene mitas percusiones, despierta en nosotros una litu n fuga de indo rgica ilusio haciendo danzar los espinazos como culebras encantadas. No hay en ello un gesto rebelde contra la inercia? Un grito frente a la n de cintura ante la mudez del mu sculo en reposo. Una insubordinacio moslo aqu n de encendida arenga de los cueros? Reconozca en este rinco 75 gustos que es el papel aguijoneado de letras. Arozarenas description challenges the view of comparsas as sedatives that had the effect of dampening social awareness expressed by Mar a Luisa nchez. It also pre-empted modern interpretations of black Latin-American Sa dance traditions as resistance to dominant attempts to control the movement of black bodies.76
74 Urrutia, Cuba, el arte y el negro III, 9. 75 Marcelino Arozarena, Rebeld a paradojal, Adelante, 1:5 (October 1935), 15. Esteban Mun 76 Celeste Fraser Delgado and Jose oz, Everynight Life. Culture and Dance in Latin/o America (Durham, NC/London: Duke U. P., 1997), 11; William Rowe and Vivian Schelling, Memory and Modernity. Popular Culture in Latin America (London: Verso, 1991), 123.

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In conclusion, the journal Adelante is an important and understudied platform for the expression of very different black perspectives on racial inequality and culture in 1930s Cuba. Whereas the black middle-class ideology shifted the responsibility for attaining equality onto lower-class blacks, Adelante contributors denounced the structures of inequality inherited from slavery and called for active policies to combat racial ngel Pinto went as far as discrimination. More radical intellectuals like A advocating the need for a radical revolution and complete restructuring of Cuban society. Although some of these writers challenged biological determinist conceptions of race from European racist ideologies in order to create more optimistic visions of their national development, most of them believed in the existence of distinguishable races of equal intellectual abilities and embraced cultural evolutionist ideas to explain the lesser development of the Cuban black. These views partly explain the hostility towards Afro-Cuban culture on the part of many middle-class black intellectuals, but it is important to take into account that they were also concerned with the image of blacks that Afro-Cuban culture promoted amongst racist whites. Despite this, other black intellectuals like Pinto, Urrutia and Arozarena actually defended Afro-Cuban cultural forms as worthy cultural manifestations in several Adelante publications, confirming the journals self-professed status as a vehicle for the expression of different and conflicting opinions.