Role of AfroCubans in the War of Independence
What distinguished the final War of Independence (1895-1898) from the earlier Ten Years' War (1868-1878) and the short-lived Guerra Chiquita (1879-1880) was the war's success throughout the majority of the island, the final ousting of the Spanish through the American intervention, the espousal of an egalitarian ideology by a radical multiracial military leadership, and the iconization of the war's two most revered heroes: Jose Marti and Antonio Maceo. As has been documented, the aims of the liberation were modified when elite Cuban planters joined the insurgent cause beginning in 1896 and brought their social agenda to bear on the civil wing of the separatist cause (Perez 1983:125). The liberation army under Maximo Gomez, however, sought to eliminate the very socio-economic basis of Cuban society by razingl the sugar plantations as a means towards creating a more egalitarian society. While the division between the civilian and the military was in fact a deciding factor for the final outcome of the war and led to the intervention of the United States, the tension between the two wings has gathered too much attention at the expense of examining how class and racial conflicts before the final war were the source of later divisio
Scott, Rebecca J. 1985. "Class Relations in Sugar and Political Mobilization in Cuba, 1868-1899." Cuban Studies 15(1): 15-28. Alliances were not determined by factors of either race or class alone. Rather they resulted from the inevitable confluence of race and class in a society dominated by the institution of "racial" slavery and privileged, white property owners. Afro-Cubans participated in greater numbers during the final war, and while there were divisions among them as well, a majority of these former slaves on the rebel side shared a nationalist vision for a freer, more egalitarian Cuba (Helg 1995:44). The source of this vision can be located in their struggle for liberation from slavery itself and their participation in the failed rebellion of the Ten Years' War. Rebecca Scott (1994:81) reports that in the early 1860s, 173,000 slaves resided on around 1,500 sugar estates in Cuba. Before slavery was outlawed in 1886, over 100,000 former slaves had already gained freedom through self-purchase, flight, legal means, and individual arrangements. In addition the Pact of Zanjon with Spain at the conclusion of the Guerra Chiquita had secured the freedom of all slaves who had fought for the rebel cause. It is in the intermediary period after the Guerra Chiquita and before the War of Independence that the debate over the Afro-Cubans' role in previous wars and their participation in future liberation armies was to determine the character of their nationalist identity and the eventual betrayal which Afro-Cuban veterans experienced after 1898. Kaplan, Amy 1993. "Black and Blue on San Juan Hill," in Cultures of United States Imperialism, ed. Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease, 219-236. Durham: Duke University Press. Consequently, Gomez and others described their struggle not as an affirmation of their Africanness, but as an effort to unite all Cubans. These Afro-Cuban journalists characterized the civil rights struggles of the 1890s as "Cuban" struggles and countered the accusation of the threat of a "race war" with the rebuff that it was in fact certain white sectors' perpetuation of racist attitudes that posed the real threat to unity (Ferrer 1995:266). In 1887, the Directorio Central de las Sociedades de la Raza de Color was created by Afro-Cubans led by Juan Gualberto Gomez in order to challenge the Spanish government's racist laws. The PRC publicly endorsed the Directorio's cause as opposed to other major white party elements: the pro-Spanish Constitutional Union and the liberal Autonomists (Helg 1995:45). However, even members of the white separatists like Manuel Sanguily did not share Marti's views towards racial equality.
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2666
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)
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