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Debates on Racial Inequality and Afro-

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Debates on Racial Inequality and

Afro-Cuban Culture in Adelante

MIGUEL ARNEDO-GOMEZ

Victoria University of Wellington

Introduction

In July 1933, shortly before the collapse of the administration of CubanPresident Gerardo Machado, a group of young Cubans met in a private housein Havana to found an association that would defend and promote the rightsof Cuban blacks. In another meeting, after the fall of Machado, Adelante wasofficially inaugurated. Its primary mission was expressed as follows by theeditors:

En la ciudad de La Habana, a los 19 das del mes de septiembre de 1933,reunidos los senores que al margen se expresa, en el domicilio del Sr.Leonardo Montalvan, sito en la calle de San Jose 114, acordaron

organizar una asociacion de caracter cvico cultural que tuviera comoobjeto el de estrechar los lazos de confraternidad que deben existir entretodos los integrantes de la sociedad cubana, a la vez que obtener lasreivindicaciones inmediatas a que tiene derecho la parte de esa sociedadque hoy no las disfruta. Acto seguido y previa amplia discusion se acordopor mayora que la asociacion se denominara Adelante y que tuvieracomo lema: Pro cultura y justicia social.1

The association edited a monthly journal of the same name (Adelante), whichfrom 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 Adelantecontributions by intellectuals like Juan Antonio Martnez, Juan Luis Martnand Alberto Arredondo in his analysis of black middle-class reactions to

Afrocubanismo.2 In her historical study, Alejandra Bronfman dedicates

1 Una sociedad negra que enaltece a Cuba. Breve resena sobre la asociacion

Adelante, Adelante, 3:36 (May 1938), 1819 (p. 18).

2 Robin Moore, Nationalising Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in

Havana, 19201940 (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), 21012.

ISSN 1475-3820 print/ISSN 1478-3428 online/11/05/000711-25

# Bulletin of Spanish Studies. DOI 10.1080/14753820.2011.587969

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


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seven pages to an analysis of the association and its journal. She focuses inparticular 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 longestanalysis to date of the journals role in debates on racial inequality and

Afro-Cuban culture in the 1930s, shedding light on little studied Cuban blackintellectual discourses of this time. The article starts by discussing theemphasis of several Adelante contributors on the historical roots of Cubanblacks subalternity. Black middle-class attitudes to Afro-Cuban culture arethen analysed on the basis of writings on race and culture published in thejournal. Taking into account the ideological elements from black discoursesseen in the first two sections, the last part revisits the comparsas controversyin Adelante. Whereas Moores and Bronfmans analyses can at points

promote the impression that Adelante tended to convey the black middleclasses disapproval of Afro-Cuban culture, the present analysis highlightsits revalorization of Afro-Cuban cultural forms. It concludes that Adelante

succeeded in reflecting conflicting views within the 1930s black Cubanintellectual 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 subalternstatus. For example, black intellectual A ngel Pinto referred to the fact that

slavery had produced structures of exploitation that could not be made todisappear just by declaring blacks equal members of society:

Desde que el negro fue arrebatado a las vastas regiones en que naciera,para venir a fecundar con su sudor y su sangre estas tierras recienabiertas a la explotacion del desaprensivo conquistador europeo, quedovirtualmente escrito para largos siglos su tragico destino. La bajacondicion de esclavo con que se le incorpora al tipo de econom a queimporto a la isla, los que de ella se apoderaron por virtud de un estupidoderecho de conquista que aun subsiste, le marco un rumbo definitivo, alquedar determinada su inferioridad economica, y por tanto, social ypoltica, frente a los demas nucleos de pobladores que con el inician elevento colonizador de la isla.4

In another article, Pinto ridiculed the idea put forward by some Cubaneconomists 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, 19021940 (Chapel Hill/London: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2004), 16571.

4 A ngel Pinto, El derecho frente a la reivindicacion del negro, Adelante, 1:11 (April

1936), 78 (p. 7).

712 BSS, LXXXVIII (2011) MIGUEL ARNEDO-GOMEZ


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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*losmagnates del acero, del petroleo ni de la manteca; pero al menos seremoslos prncipes de los coquitos quemados, de los chiviricos, o del pan deCaracas.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 ciudadana que esimposible que de porque se le ha tenido abandonada; se pretende que lapoblacion negra en la miseria y en el olvido*pues si se le recuerda esunicamente para despreciarla*aporte al concurso social, bienes de quecarece porque el estado social no la puso en condiciones de cultivarse.Y esta exigencia torpe y menguada sirve para echar terminantes repulsascontra el negro, sin ahondarse en el proceso comparativo de su raza enrelacion con otras que quisieron ser superiores.6

In a similar manner, Armando Hernandez claimed that el llamado

problema negro tiene su causa principal en la institucion de la esclavitud

and more specifically in the fact that the colonial government thwarted

blacks attempts to acquire Western culture and education:

Si consideramos especialmente la cuestion cultural nos encontramos queel mantenimiento del negro en la mayor incultura no se deb a al acaso,sino a una poltica de los duenos de esclavos. El negro, a traves de todo elperodo colonial, carecio por completo de elementos de cultura y de

posibilidades para adquirirla. Se procuro por todos los medios, apartarledel camino de la educacion. Al Gobierno colonial ni a la clase propietariade esclavos convena la difusion de la cultura y con ella de las ideas delibertad que predominaban entonces, producto de los enciclopedistas y dela Revolucion Francesa. Por eso, cuando la negra libre Ana del Torosolicito en 1827 permiso para abrir una escuela para ninos de color, se lenego, fundandose el Gobierno en el superior dictado de nuestra seguridad

5 A ngel Pinto, Economa trascendental, Adelante, 2:17 (October 1936), 7.

6 Carlos Duarte Moreno, El drama de Cuba. El hermano negro, Adelante, 1:4

(September 1935), 15.

RACIAL INEQUALITY AND AFRO-CUBAN CULTURE IN ADELANTE 713


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y conservacion; y, por eso, tambien cuando el negro Manuel GarcaAlburquerque, solicito en 1865 autorizacion para fundar una escuelanocturna para adultos en que se ensenaran las asignaturas de Gramatica,Geografa, Dibujo e Historia, el Gobernador General Domingo Duke, lehizo saber que estaba prohibido, con arreglo a las Leyes de Indias, la

clase de ensenanza que aquel solicitaba, diciendole, ademas, que si nosaba que estaba prohibido para los negros tales sabidur as [sic].7

Jose del C. Velazco also attributed the problems affecting Cuban blacks to

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

race were still influential. For example, according to A ngel Pinto, a Cuban

study entitled La naturaleza en los primeros anos, 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:

Pero su libro contiene algo que ha interesado vivamente mi atencion,ya que usted afirma en el, rotunda y categoricamente, contra la opinionde autoridades bien calibradas y de credito universal en este problema delas razas humanas, la inferioridad mental de la raza negra. Como enefecto en la pagina 253 usted textualmente dice La mayor parte deellos*los negros*se han civilizado tanto como los blancos, si bien suinteligencia es generalmente inferior. Los negros africanos en epocasremotas andaban casi desnudos como los indios, y vivan salvajes encasas hechas de troncos de arboles.9

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

Juan Gualberto Gomez and his supporters even before the War of

7 Armando Hernandez, El negro, la cultura y la revolucion, Adelante, 2:13 (June

1936), 8, 16 (p. 8).

8 Jose del C. Velazco, La Morfologa del prejuicio, Adelante, 1:9 (February 1936), 8.

9 A ngel Pinto, Dos cartas a proposito de un libro, Adelante, 2:22 (March 1937), 6.



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Independence. This involved political integration for Cubans of colour as aprocess 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 achievetrue 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 strictmorality, enhancement of family values, education and money. He concluded

the article by quoting a statement by Jose Mara Cespedes which advocated

the need to erase differences by elevating inferior races to the level of

superior ones through increased education:

No hay mas que un medio seguro para borrar las diferencias: que lasrazas inferiores se eleven hasta las superiores, por medio de la educacio ny la instruccion. La inteligencia es el gran nivelador de la especiehumana.

Similar ideas can be found throughout Serras essay Educacion y dinero,

which was also included in Entre blancos y negros.12

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, highmoral 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), 10001, 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

Law, which prohibited political parties organized along racial lines (Osvaldo Cardenas and

Gale McGarrity, Cuba, in No Longer Invisible. Afro-Latin Americans Today, ed. Minority

Rights Group [London: Minority Rights Publications, 1995], 77108 [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, 18861912 [Chapel Hill/

London: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1995], pp. 22425, 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 educationnotwithstanding. 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

and Hernandezs emphasis on the historical roots of blacks inequalitiesbrought 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.

Portuondo Cala, who demanded that an asamblea constituyente be

established to tackle racism, a phenomenon which, he argued, had not

been taken into account when the 1901 constitution was created.17

But for radical intellectual A ngel Pinto, redressing the historical

oppression and discrimination against blacks would require more than

mere legal reforms. He believed that blacks would remain excluded fromCuban 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

la destruccion de todo el viejo sistema existente, comenzando como esnatural, por la base, por la transformacion economica, creando un nuevotipo de economa, ya que sobre esto se levanta todo el orden social.

14 De la Fuente, A Nation for All, 14951.

15 De la Fuente, A Nation for All, 156, 139.

16 Nicolas Guillen, Prosa de prisa. 19291972, Vol. I (Havana: Editorial Arte y

Literatura, 1975), 7.

17 Romilio A. Portuondo Cala, Sobre el problema negro, Adelante, 3:25 (June 1937), 12.

18 A ngel Pinto, El morbo patriotico del negro, Adelante, 1:9 (February 1936), 4; Una

opinion mas sobre el problema negro, Adelante, 1:7 (December 1935), 4.



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Therefore, for Pinto, blacks needed to focus on how to destroy completely thecurrent social system:

Por mi parte, yo, que no soy poltico ni intelectual, pero que sufro lasduras consecuencias del regimen, sigo pensando que la unica puerta

abierta a la verdadera, autentica y definitiva reivindicacion del hombrede color, la que lo redimira de sus angustias presentes y futuras esaquella que conduce a la liquidacion del sistema social basado en laexplotacion del hombre por el hombre sea blanca, negra o amarilla, lapigmentacion de su piel.19

In other publications Pinto denounced the fact that Cuba was ruled by asocial class of obstinate racists that purposely marginalized blacks.20 Pintosvision, therefore, stood in direct opposition to the belief that the Afro-Cubanmasses should earn their place in society through education and progress.

The radical nature of Pintos perspective can be equally appreciated in hisrefutation of Gustavo Urrutias proposed solution to black Cubans lackof political influence. Urrutia proposed that blacks should not join thesame political party in order to maximise their influence but, rather, joindifferent political parties and fight for black rights within each one of them.For Pinto, this strategy, and others (such as Jose Armando Plas proposalthat blacks should not join political parties whose programmes did notinclude antidiscrimination policies), would not be effective. What Cubanblacks 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 heateddiscussions regarding the role of Afro-Cuban culture in the lives of themodern Cuban black. On the one hand, many Cuban blacks defined theirethnic identities on the basis of their African cultural heritage. This isillustrated by the case of Fernando Guerra, who was the Secretary of theAfro-Cuban association Sociedad de Proteccion Mutua y Recreo del CultoAfricano Lucum. He addressed a circular to the president of the republic and

other important officials in defence of the Afro-Cuban cultural practices ofthis association. He claimed that the practices of Lucum did not interferewith Catholicism, and acknowledgement of African heritage did not implydisregard of modern citizenship.22

On the other hand, the black middle classes overtly condemnedAfro-Cuban traditions. As de la Fuente explains, black middle-class sectors

19 Pinto, El derecho frente a la reivindicacion del negro, 8, 4.

20 As cited in de la Fuente, A Nation for All, 34.

21 A ngel Pinto, Ante la proxima constituyente, Adelante, 4:41 (October 1938), 5.

22 As cited in Bronfman, Measures of Equality, 9495.



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in general called upon blacks to de-Africanise themselves while condemning

Santera and other Afro-Cuban cultural expressions, particularly when they

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 andfinancial 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 theyattempt 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

somos una raza en formacion, en evolucion dialectica hacia una sntesis que

algunos escritores como Jose Vasconcelos han denominado cosmica .24 In

his article Conglomerado social, no; raza cubana, P. Alacan ventured that a

common Cuban race was evolving in Cuba based, not on colour, but on a

common culture.25 Both Arredondo and Alacans description of Cuban

identity reflect a Latin-American tendency to adapt European racist theory

in ways that did not condemn their nations to failure. As Nancy Stepanexplains, 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 ScientificRacism (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, 15455.

24 Alberto Arredondo, El negro y la nacionalidad, Adelante, 1:10 (March 1936), 6.

25 Oscar P. Alacan, Conglomerado social, no; raza cubana,Adelante, 1:11 (April 1936), 4.

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), 15; 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 necessarilyresulted in racial inferiority and national decay and asked whether it couldactually lead to a national homogeneous type through a process of racial

fusion.28 The ideology of mestizaje prevalent in 1930s Cuban nationalistdiscourse reflects this Latin-American ambivalence towards Scientific

Racism as it assumed the existence of races whilst contradicting theoriesabout mixed-blood degeneracy. This is clearly reflected in an Adelante articlefrom 1936 in which J. I. Jimenes-Grullon put forward the reverse idea that itis racial purity which results in degeneration:

Pero ya es un hecho demostrado que las razas puras empobrecen ydegeneran. La mezcla aparece*ante los ojos de los biologos modernos*como un factor de enriquecimiento. Somos pueblos nuevos, surgidos delcurioso epitalamio de razas dismiles.29

Whilst producing alternative understandings of race that contradicted itsoriginal conception in European Scientific Racism, Adelante contributorswere short of reaching the intellectual position on race that Jose Mart hadhoped for. In his 1891 essay Nuestra America, Mart had argued that the

idea of race was an intellectual construct devised by small-minded scholarswho 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 librera, que el viajero justo y elobservador cordial buscan en vano en la justicia de la Naturaleza, donderesalta, en el amor victorioso y el apetito turbulento, la identidaduniversal del hombre. El alma emana, igual y eterna, de los cuerposdiversos en forma y en color.30

Mart knew that racial identities were valid categories of differentiation formost of his compatriots so he knew that racism would only be supersededonce 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 theearly 1930s nationalist intellectuals referred to the new cubanidad as aCuban race .32 It is worth remembering, however, that Fernando Ortiz did

28 Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics, 137.

29 J I. Jimenes-Grullon, Factor etnico e intercambio humano, Adelante, 2:15 (August

1936), 9.

30 Jose Mart, Nuestra America [first published in 1891], in Jose Mart. Sus mejores

paginas, ed. Raimundo Lazo (Mexico DF: Editorial Porrua, 1985), 8793 (p. 92).

31 Jose Mart, Nuestra America, 92; Jose Mart, Mi raza [first published in 1893], in

Jose Mart. Sus mejores paginas, 5253 (p. 52).

32 De la Fuente, A Nation for All, 178.



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draw on Marts questioning of race in his own dismissal of the idea in 1939.33

An exceptional contributor to Adelante who questioned the validity of race4 years before Ortiz was Jimenez Pastrana.34

In an environment in which the existence of different races was widelyaccepted, a common conceptual strategy amongst supporters of racial

equality was to posit that there were no intellectual differences betweenracial groups. This was directly expressed in Adelante by Antenor Firmn. As

can be appreciated in the following quotation, Firmn accepted the existenceof races but thought that they all possessed the same natural skills andabilities:

Los hombres estan, en todas partes, dotados de las mismas cualidades yde los mismos defectos sin distincion de color ni de forma anatomica. Lasrazas son iguales; todas son capaces de elevarse a las mas altas virtudes,al mas alto desenvolvimiento intellectual, como de caer en la mas

completa degeneracion.35

Similarly, in a 1935 article about the black United States female writerPhillis Wheatley, Jose Manuel Saenz specifically attacked theories that

supported the existence of superior and inferior races. He argued for thenotion that all races can reach the highest levels of intellectual and cultural

development and substantiated this with the example of how Wheatleymanaged to learn to read and write, become familiar with all the classics ofEuropean literature and succeeded in becoming a famous and accomplished

writer.

36

This was in fact the idea behind the black middle-class discourse onblack equality outlined earlier. The connection is explicit in Antenor Firmns

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 poseeaptitudes diferentes a las otras, es preciso que la raza negra dirija sincesar sus aspiraciones hacia la conquista de las fuerzas moralese intelectuales unicas que igualan a los hombres.37

Examples of Cuban blacks who had excelled in the dominant society andculture throughout history were routinely used to demonstrate that blacks

could be just as advanced as whites if they acquired the right education and

33 Fernando Ortiz, Estudios etnosociologicos (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales,

1991), 13.

34 Juan Jimenez Pastrana, Jerarquas etnicas, Adelante, 1:4 (September 1935), 18.

35 Antenor Firmn, La igualdad de las razas (conclusion), Adelante, 1:9 (February

1936), 1516 (p. 16).

36 Jose Manuel Saenz, Reminiscencias . . . Phillis Wheatley, Adelante, 1:4 (September

1935), 11, 19 (p. 11)

37 Firmn, La igualdad de las razas, 15.



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culture (i.e., the dominant, elite culture of European origins). For example,

Arabella Ona wrote that el numero de negros intelectuales es cada vez

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 Ona made

this point only then to protest about the fact that these black individuals

continued to be excluded and marginalized despite excelling in the dominantculture: Con todo esto, aun en la actualidad, en que el negro esta al nivel

intelectual de las razas mas civilizadas, es repudiado del seno de la

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 groupsappeared 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

written and published overseas. Roberto Gonzalez Echevarra 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 ofnon-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 Ona, 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), 56.

40 Stephen, K. Sanderson, Evolutionism and its Critics. Deconstructing and

Reconstructing an Evolutionary Interpretation of Human Society (London: Paradigm

Publishers, 2007), 1021, 45.

41 Roberto Gonzalez Echevarra, 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:

El artista primitivo dispone, segun Lipschutz, de una imaginacioninfatigable y de grandes facultades de observacion; siempre esta el

listo para seleccionar a los estmulos que mana del ambiente. Tiene lasimplicidad piadosa e introspeccion como dones naturales, lo que leaventaja 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

Adelante. For example, Armando Hernandez, referring to Cubans in general,

wrote that es evidente que todava no hemos ascendido mucho en la escala

cultural.43 Juan Luis Martn wrote against poesa 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:

El negro nuestro es cubano, sus tradiciones son las de Cuba, sus he roes

son cubanos, sus mitos son los del pueblo de Cuba y hasta la forma desus composiciones juglarescas se confunde y acopla con la espanola.Cuando se unen dos civilizaciones en el espacio y el tiempo, supervive,por ley biologica, la mas apta. De aqu que es inutil buscar lo barbaro,rascar en la personalidad de la raza, registrar el caracter racial,excitarlo, porque su aparicion no tendra sino un valor esporadico, tandebil, tan tenue, que sera artificiosa, circunstancial, falsa, y por lo tanto,un simple idiotismo que ha dejado de ser africano para ser nacional ypuramente cubano.44

Carlos A. Cervantes also believed that the more blacks had integrated intothe Cuban people, the less culturally African they had become. He argued

that el negro ha sabido asimilar la civilizacion de los blancos and he

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 1314 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.

43 Armando Hernandez, El negro, la cultura y la revolucion, 8.

44 Juan Luis Martn, Falsa interpretacion afrocubana, Adelante, 3:25 (June 1937), 7.



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que mas pesa.45 Another illustrative exponent of this kind of perspective isthe black intellectual Alberto Arredondo. In an article entitled Un Hurra!Para Adelante he described the African-influenced marching bands knownas congas and comparsas as cultural manifestations that had already beensurpassed by black culture:

El negro ha progresado poltica, economica y socialmente. Su musica,insertada en nuestro folklore, ha ido evolucionando a traves de la coloniay la republica. Las congas y las comparsas constituyen sin lugar a dudauna etapa artstica vencida.

Arredondos belief that some cultures are less advanced than others, or in achild-like stage of development is patent in one of the articles he published in

Adelante in response to A ngel Pintos defence of the comparsas. He wrotethere that

hemos estudiado el grado de la civilizacion africana en los distintosmomentos de la Trata Esclavista y solo encontramos bailes guerreros conrudimentaria tecnica instrumental, ritos y costumbres religiosos como lasdanzas circulares, y barbaro infantilismo en todas las manifestacionesartsticas.

In an article entitled El negro en la colonia he wrote that upon the discoveryof America, Spain had the responsibility to infundir una nueva civilizacionen pueblos de cultura nula, rudimentaria.46

Another example of cultural evolutionism in Adelante is an articleentitled El negro, la cultura y la revolucion, in which its author, ArmandoHernandez, wrote that blacks had not ascended the cultural scale.47 Theseperspectives are reminiscent of the type ofmestizaje proposed by the Mexicanintellectual Jose Vasconcelos. In a 1938 article published in Adelante, he putforward the idea that the way for Latin-American nations to progress was tolevantar 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 inAdelante 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), 78

(p. 8); Arredondo, El arte negro a contrapelo, Adelante, 3:25 (July 1937), 56, 20 (p. 5);

Arredondo, El negro en la colonia, Adelante, 1:12 (May 1936), 15.

47 Armando Hernandez, El negro, la cultura y la revolucion, 8, 16.

48 Jose Vasconcelos, Raza pura o mezclada, Adelante, 4:4243 (December 1938), 6, 20

(p. 6).



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1930s. These were marching bands through which enslaved or free blacks in

Cuban slave society represented their cabildos de nacion during the Da 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 Da de Reyes celebrations were banned by

the end of the nineteenth century, in the early twentieth century thecomparsas 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,

published in March 1937 and in an article A la nacion cubana, published in

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 thebeginning of A la nacion cubana that the phenomenon known as the

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 disfracesoriginales y tpicos van bailando uniformemente al compas de congaso ritmos especiales. A este baile se le da el nombre de arrollao. Y a losque van detras de las comparsas, se dice que van arrollando.

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

49 The cabildos de nacion were associations of mutual aid that were supposed to gather

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

del Da de Reyes [first published in 1921 under the title Los cabildos afrocubanos] [Havana:

Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1992], 9). The only book-length study of the cabildos de nacionis 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, 18601899 (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

Leon, Del canto y el tiempo (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1984); Lydia Cabrera, El

monte (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1975); Olavo Alen Rodrguez, De lo afrocubano a la salsa.

Subgeneros musicales de Cuba (Havana: Ediciones Artex, 1994).

50 For a more detailed analysis of the comparsas, see Moore, Nationalizing Blackness,

6286 and Odilio Urfe, La musica y la danza en Cuba, in Africa en America Latina, ed.

Manuel Moreno Fraginals (Mexico DF: Siglo XXI, 1977), 21619.



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at different events and celebrations. The Adelante association was specifically

referring to the espectaculo que con vibracion musical de indiscutible

influencia africana y con paso de baile de inclinaciones rotundamente negras

o negroides, se ha reproducido ultimamente en La Habana, con pintorescos

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

un espectaculo poco edificante, que nos denigra, no solo ante el forastero a

quien se le quiere hacer grata su permanencia mas o menos transitoria enla ciudad, sino que ofende al mismo tiempo el buen gusto de los elementossensatos del pas.

The other group was of the opposite opinion, believing that the comparsas,

fuente riqusima 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

costumbres que estamos mas obligados a conservar por su tipicidad. Moved

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 economicprotection.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

populares del carnaval habanero, cuestion resuelta.53 The editors of

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 asdisorganized 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:

51 A la nacion cubana, Adelante, 3:34 (March 1938), 78, 20 (p. 7).

52 Actividades de la Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos durante el ano 1937, Estudios

Afrocubanos, 1:1 (1937), 16062 (p. 162); Las comparsas, Adelante, 2:22 (March 1937), 3.

53 Actividades de la Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos durante el ano 1937, 162.



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El permiso para el libre transito y el libre arrollao de las comparsas enlos barrios, traiciona la inspiracion artstica que motivara su reproduccion.Las comparsas, dejadas a la libre colaboracion de los barrios devienen encongas, se transforman precisamente en manifestaciones que Adelantetildo de bochornosas y que habran de constituir un baldon para las

autoridades que las propiciaran.

In February 1937, the comparsas were finally authorized by the Mayor onthe basis of the report by the Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos. In a written

document, Adelante communicated to the authorities that they supported thelegalization of the comparsas but that they thought that they needed to bewell organized and rehearsed and not include the spontaneous participation

of the public. But against their recommendation there stood the extensivereport of the Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos, seemingly also supported bythe Club Atenas. The Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos, according to

Adelante, apoyaba calurosamente la re-edicion de las comparsas sin nnguncriterio limitativo.54

Several issues of Adelante from 1937 and 1938 include articles objectingto the legalization of the comparsas. In her contribution to the heated debate,

Mara Luisa Sanchez wrote that in colonial times this cultural practice hadserved black slaves as a means of forgetting about their suffering. Now in therepublican period, she argued, it was still serving a similar purpose byhelping 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 . . . Losturistas sonren incomprensivamente, con comentarios banales, convulgares discriminaciones, haciendo gala de sus refinamientos. . . Losturistas [. . .] recorren las calles repletas de gente . . . De gente que nocomprenden que hay ruido porque tienen hambre! . . . Que olvida susnuevos amos . . . que olvida que tiene amos, que son esclavos, que una vezal ano y solo unos meses, se tiene zafra, se tienen vales para la bodega . . .Que olvida que los ninos sufren, que los ninos mueren de tosferina, de

paludismo, de tifoidea y tuberculosis. . .

porque tienen hambre, porque nohay dinero!. . . Todo el mundo olvida la tragedia honda!. . . Todas lascomparsas de los negros olvidan sus cuartuchos tristes, sus cuartuchoshumedos, sus cuartuchos de negros. [. . .] Todo por el turismo y lascomparsas 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 A la nacion cubana, Adelante, 3:34 (March 1938), 7-8, 20 (p. 7).

55 Mara Luisa Sanchez, Zafra y comparsas, Adelante, 2:23 (April 1937), 13.



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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

the 1938 Convencion de Sociedades Negras, Cloris Tejo argued that those

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 ofculture and low morality of the black popular sectors:

Aplaudimos la conga, y luego exigimos responsabilidad moral a los negroscongueros, para que se preocupen de la cultura de sus hijos. Por que lossenores convencionalistas y los de alguna cultura por mediana que estasea no bailan la conga, ya que consideran que ella es el arte negro en sugenuina manifestacion? En este caso estos senores son como el cura hazlo que yo diga, pero no lo que yo hago. Quienes aplauden a la conga y nola bailan en publico, pero alimentan a otro para que la baile, son tanculpables de la incultura y discriminacion del negro como el blancoracista, y no tienen derecho a quejarse de la moral de las masas popularesnegras.56

An intellectual who adopted a similar perspective was Juan Antonio

Martnez, 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 eldolor (muy intenso por cierto) de contemplar por las calles de esta Habanatan culta y tan cosmopolita, a los nuestros contorsionandoselubricamente al conjuro del tambor; y en defensa de eso que es remoray atavismo, quebro lanzas un intelectual cubano de primera fila, quienparece haber olvidado que por mucho que se llame a estas escenas,tradicion cubana, siempre sera el negro a quien se de el papel principal.Esa candidez del negro cubano es un estado de conciencia que responde alos siglos de esclavitud moral y material que ha padecido, y lo que lo

obliga a subordinar sus iniciativas propias a las especulaciones de losdemas. Para romper con ese estado de conciencia, lo menos que podemoshacer es dar un fuerte impulso a las labores de ndole cultural, porquesolo cuando eso ocurra vendra la nivelacion economico-social-poltica dela que estamos urgidos.57

56 Cloris Tejo, En torno a la Convencion de Sociedades Negras, Adelante, 3:34 (March

1938), 5.

57 Juan Antonio Martnez, 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 ofthe 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 theireditorial Despues de las comparsas the significado retardatario de las

comparsas and for demonstrating that the congas were un obstaculo almovimiento 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 theirmembers dancing behind them. Towards the end of the article, it becomes

evident that Arredondos dismissal of the comparsas as valuable componentsof 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 dangerousdivisive 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 toassume that writers like Martnez 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 ofthese cultural forms strikes one as extremely narrow-minded. Since the

revalorization of Afro-Cuban culture in the 1930s, the work of many

renowned intellectuals such as Fernando Ortiz, Romulo Lachatanere, Lydia

Cabrera, Natalia Bolivar, Martn Lienhard, Stephan Palmie and RaulCanizares has demonstrated that Afro-Cuban culture is an intricate and

sophisticated cultural system. In addition, since 1959 the Cuban revolutionarygovernment 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

un problema que es de la Nacion, y no de un contingente de ciudadanos de pigmentacion

negra (6). Serapio Paez Zamora also rejected the idea of the libre determinismo de la faja

negra claiming that it was not a solucion cubana to the problema negro (Clarificacion de la

postura del negro en este momento historico, Adelante, 4:4243 [December 1938], 4).

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 theirassumptions. Many activists in the struggle for racial equality believed

that it was precisely these sectors of the population who had to be convinced

of blacks equality. For example, the mulatto poet and journalist Nicolas

Guillen thought that an important way to fight against racial discrimination

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 withhow it would justify racist practices. One such writer was Mariano Salas

Aranda. In his article Posicion actual y futura de las sociedades negras he

accused the members of the 1938 Convencion de Sociedades Negras and the

Mayor of supporting a spectacle that fomented racism and that completely

discredited the black race:

Repetimos que nuestra mision debe estar encaminada a levantar el nivelcultural, economico y poltico de nuestra raza, por ello, nos asombramosque los mismos hombres que con anterioridad ofrecieron su

consentimiento para que el alcalde habanero nos ofreciera el espectaculode las Congas, espectaculo que ha dado pie para que se cometanvejaciones y discriminaciones contra el negro sean los mismos que ahorapretenden recabar respeto y consideraciones para la misma raza que ellosen nombre del arte y la tradicion lanzaron por el fango y el descredito.63

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, rony lena! Son unos degenerados! Estan en la selva! En plena barbarie!Estan los negros por civilizar! Que se diviertan, que bailen conga! Queotra 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.

62 Guillen, Prosa de prisa, 9.

63 Mariano Salas Aranda, Posicion actual y futura de las sociedades negras, Adelante,

3:33 (February 1938), 5.



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Arredondo then added that

lo lamentable, lo que nos sorprendio, era que muchos de estos comentariosvinieran no solo de polticos, periodistas y capillitas reaccionarias, sino deelementos del propio pueblo, de companeros historicos del negro en las

luchas de la reivindicacion nacional.

64

This shows particularly well that, despite his negative views regarding thelack 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 anyvalue 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 differencebetween congas and comparsas and clearly valued the artistic potential of

the latter. The penultimate paragraph of their aforementioned article A la

nacion cubana makes it clear that they were also primarily concerned with

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-classblacks, who were more likely to join in street celebrations for a few cents and

a jar of alcohol:

A nombre de esos arrollaos, senalando acusadoramente el especta

culo delas congas negras, se volveran a erguir las nefastas teoras de lainferioridad racial y el retraso del negro. Aprovechandose de lasautorizaciones oficiales para manifestaciones artsticas, los polticosvolveran a coger en sus manos las congas y sacar de sus estratos a eseolvidado y miserable negro, que sin cultura y sin preparacion, y lo que espeor, sin saber las consecuencias de sus actos por las horas de alegra deun vaso de alcohol y por el goce apretado y extraordinario de unoscentavos estara dispuesto a vender su presente de ciudadana ante laselecciones 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. Thisis 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 Arredondo, El arte negro a contrapelo, 6.

65 A la nacion cubana, 8.



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supporters, nor the vehement critics of the comparsas seemed to care much

about resurrecting the past and then cites Mara Luisa Sanchezs description

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 heis seeking to illustrate.67 The editors ofAdelante 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

Afro-Cuban street bands. A case in point is A ngel Pintos article Una

aclaracion, written in response to Alberto Arredondos Un hurra! para

Adelante . Pinto argued against practically every basic assumption inArredondos 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 cosadespreciable, salvaje y barbara cuando procede del negro, desde sumusica y bailes hasta la virilidad y resistencia para el trabajo con que elamo de ayer*y el de hoy*se ha enriquecido, y ha podido permitirse ellujo 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 ofcultural 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 Bronfman, Measures of Equality, 169, 170.

67 Moore, Nationalizing Blackness, 21011.

68 Despues de las comparsas, Adelante, 2:23 (April 1937), 3.



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Mas, debo de decirlo honradamente, si no bailo conga, si no arrollo por lascalles de La Habana, acaso no sea esto una virtud ma; eso se lo deboquiza a mis padres que tuvieron la gran fortuna de haber adquiridolos elementos necesarios para haberse colocado, dentro de las estrechaslimitaciones que vivieron en su epoca como negros, por encima de sus

demas hermanos de infortunio. Pero, ni todos los negros hemos tenidopadres, ni todos nuestros padres fueron afortunados en la vida. Hacer deesta desgracia del negro, que es desgracia nuestra, un topico pararecriminarlo y escarnecerlo, es infringirle un doble castigo por un delitoque el no ha cometido.

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 inpoint. Urrutia wrote this essay in response to a text by Bonifacio Lo pez that

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

contenidas en un Chango, en los jimaguas y en otros dolos de las religionesafricanas que nos circundan.70 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 attentionto the social prejudices and the complejo de inferioridad that had stood in

69 A ngel Pinto, Una aclaracion, Adelante, 3:25 (June 1937), 1011, 20 (p. 10).

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

Miguel Arnedo-Gomez, Writing Rumba. The Afrocubanista Movement in Poetry (Charlottes-

ville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 2006), 7981, 100101, and Robin Moore, Representations of

Afro-Cuban Expressive Culture in the Writings of Fernando Ortiz, Latin American Music

Review, 15:1 (1994), 3254 (pp. 4546).



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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 sobrenuestra escultura y nuestra pintura encontro una oposicion inerte y

subconsciente en el prejuicio social que demeritaba la escultura africanapor su identificacion con la brujera, y que este arte solo ha ido abriendosepaso, lenta y subrepticiamente, enmascarado por el vanguardismoy protegido por el prestigio magistral de los franceses como un dogmanuevo. En tal complejo de inferioridad late en embrion un elementointelectual ideologico, que es factor de las bellas artes representativas.71

In the second part of the essay, Urrutia affirmed that la raza negra tiene una

riqusima tradicion literaria de caracter romantico, religioso y guerrero,

capaz de competir con otras civilizaciones antiguas.72 In the third part, he

explained that the reason why African literature had not influenced Cubanliterature 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 ofthe aesthetic value and sophistication of these cultural forms:

El sentido especfico de la mentalidad, imaginacion y sentimentalismoafricanos, esta sembrado en nuestra poblacion negra; as como ellaguarda en potencia y sin duda inconscientemente, la tecnica de suliteratura. La manera pomposa, penetrante y pintoresca de estructurar yproyectar sus ideas y sentimientos, la agudeza y el graficismo de susimagenes verbales, la vision fatalista y a la vez regocijada de la vida, surendimiento a la potestad divina, el vigor y la frescura de sus ironas y lamordacidad de sus sarcasmos, son elementos puramente literarios yfilosoficos de la mentalidad negra que persisten a traves del negro cubano.

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], 67 [p. 6]).



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Hay en Cuba todava cuentos bellsmos como el de SIQUILLANGAMAque publique en la pagina dominical de los IDEALES DE UNA RAZA.Hay muchos cuentos afrocriollos, agudos y socarrones como los quereproduje a menudo en esa misma pagina. Hay leyendas deliciosas depoesa romantica, semejantes a la de ARANDO JENU, transcrita por

Lino Dou en LA MARCHA DE UNA RAZA, su pagina tambien dominicalde El Mundo. Todo ello duerme en la mente del negro sin haber influ doen nuestra literatura.74

Another example of a text published in Adelante which celebrated

Afro-Cuban culture was Marcelino Arozarenas article Rebelda 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 lascalles de la Vida.Traicion?No. Vigilemos el dolor que se le hincha en los labios o se desangra en ellooping the loop de una carcajada; dolor y risa tienen aristas gemelas: larisa es llanto de ciegos, y es la lagrima una carcajada de la boca sin palabras.

Cuando en sus manos*

races de ecos barbaros*

como metronomosfreneticos miden sobre la piel caliente y dura de los parches, la precipitadafuga de indomitas percusiones, despierta en nosotros una liturgica ilusionhaciendo danzar los espinazos como culebras encantadas.No hay en ello un gesto rebelde contra la inercia? Un grito frente a lamudez del musculo en reposo. Una insubordinacion de cintura ante laencendida arenga de los cueros? Reconozcamoslo aqu en este rincon degustos que es el papel aguijoneado de letras.75

Arozarenas description challenges the view of comparsas as sedatives that

had the effect of dampening social awareness expressed by Mara LuisaSanchez. It also pre-empted modern interpretations of black Latin-American

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, Rebelda paradojal, Adelante, 1:5 (October 1935), 15.

76 Celeste Fraser Delgado and Jose Esteban Munoz, 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 understudiedplatform for the expression of very different black perspectives on racialinequality and culture in 1930s Cuba. Whereas the black middle-classideology shifted the responsibility for attaining equality onto lower-classblacks, Adelante contributors denounced the structures of inequality

inherited from slavery and called for active policies to combat racialdiscrimination. More radical intellectuals like A ngel Pinto went as far asadvocating the need for a radical revolution and complete restructuring ofCuban society. Although some of these writers challenged biologicaldeterminist conceptions of race from European racist ideologies in order tocreate more optimistic visions of their national development, most of thembelieved in the existence of distinguishable races of equal intellectualabilities and embraced cultural evolutionist ideas to explain the lesserdevelopment of the Cuban black. These views partly explain the hostilitytowards Afro-Cuban culture on the part of many middle-class blackintellectuals, but it is important to take into account that they were alsoconcerned with the image of blacks that Afro-Cuban culture promotedamongst racist whites. Despite this, other black intellectuals like Pinto,Urrutia and Arozarena actually defended Afro-Cuban cultural forms asworthy cultural manifestations in several Adelante publications, confirmingthe journals self-professed status as a vehicle for the expression of differentand conflicting opinions.


miguel arnedo-debates on racial inequality in adelante

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