A comment on Carlos Moore’s previous work by Pedro Pérez Sarduy,a prominent Afro-Cuban scholar, who divides his time between Cuba, the UK and the U.S. Originally published in Cuba Update, Summer 1990. Supplied by kind courtesy of Isaac Saney.
It took me a while to respond to CUBA Update’s request for a review of your new book Castro, the Blacks and Africa. There was so much to respond to. In the end, I decided instead to write this open letter, in the hopes that it reaches you in your Caribbean retreat of Fort-de-France or Pointe-a-Pitre….
Full text of Pedro Pérez Sarduy’s Open Letter to Carlos Moore
Las Criadas de la Habana, ("The Maids of Havana") by Pedro
Afro-Cuba: An Anthology of Afro-Cuban Literature, Edited by Jean Stubbs and Pedro Perez Sarduy
This poignant cri de coeur not only reveals the manifold layers which enrobe the question of “race” in Cuba but also its great complexity. I have seldom across a piece as moving as this one – the rich and very varied experience of the writer’s life history, the sincerity of the feelings which he unhesitatingly exposes to public view, the very strong emotion that lies just beneath the surface of his remarks, and the sad disappointment at the evolution of his (erstwhile) friend. I am particularly struck by the courage and frankness with which the writer criticizes an old friend’s views and positions while evidently hoping, against all the odds, that his friend would regard that criticism as evidence of genuine friendship rather than hostility and enmity. Reading between the lines, I doubt that Carlos Moore is likely to take the former view, which would be a great pity.
I have always felt that the most valuable criticism (concerning one’s views and positions) which one can receive is criticism from a friend because such criticism is more likely to be genuine and devoid of ulterior motives than criticism from other sources. Unfortunately, however, I appear to be in a minority in a world where the word “criticism” invariably carries a derogatory connotation. It is too often used interchangeably with the term “negative” as if critical remarks which disaggree can never be positive. I always learn from criticism, which I not only always welcome but actively encourage. If I find the criticism accurate it helps stregthen my opinions on the particular subject, which I adjust to take it into account. If I do not agree with the criticism, it nevertheless gives me insight into another person’s perspective, which helps me improve the effectiveness of the position or argument in question by presenting it in a manner designed to better meet that criticism.
Mervyn
I just returned from public lecture by Carlos Moore, compliments Cultural Studies Dept, Cave Hill Campus. By coincidence,I have also been reading scholarship on and poetry by Nicolas Guillen, and viewing a video conversation with three Cuban poets that includes Pedro Sarduy. The distance between Moore’s positions and Sarduy’s is incredible. So is Moore’s method of doing public lectures for an academic. He eschewed any approach to scholarly discourse and aimed instead for passionate polemic.
After giving us no statistics or indicators of which “races” were likely to have been affected he admitted that when he returned to Cuba at 17 in the first few years after 1959:
-illiteracy was abolished
-the standard of living was raised
-American imperialism was removed
-agrarian reform had distributed land to peasants
-access to beaches, schools,restaurants, “etc” was desegregated.
He followed this with the information that 98% of those who left for Miami were white and that Castro and other white minority leadership found themselves leading a black majority country.
It seems fair to assume that the beneficiaries of those reforms were black, given that Moore established that racism was officially entrenched prior to 1959, with, presumably, consequent harm to blacks on all human index indicators.
Dr Moore then draws all his evidence from a book he tells us was allowed to be published by Raoul Castro in 2000, to support his claim that whites have oppressed blacks severely in Cuba over the last 50 years. Presumably (it was not clear) it was written by authorities of the Cuban government, since it carries the results of surveys he said Castro asked for and then surpressd, but the dissemination of which Raoul Castro now allows. These are his findings:
- 65% unemployment among blacks as opposed to something in the range of 17-25% among whites (I didn’t quite get that last figure so I use the range I thought I heard him make. His statistics were a bit awkward to follow, as I tried to hold in mind his statement that the percentage of blacks in the population has grown from 50% in 1959 to 70% today.)
-blacks living in the worst housing
-blacks holding no leadership positions in society
-a historiography that claims whites as heroes and gives blacks no place of significant contribution
-television stations that do not have black anchor persons
-no blacks in higher education
-state co-operatives 95% operated by whites
-no blacks in the hotel sector “because white visitors asked for them to go.”
-remittances from white immigrants living overseas creating a white middle class
-leadership positions held at provincial and national levels all overwhelmingly white.
He quotes statistics from this book for most of these. He also makes other claims which I did not get in my notes and would not wish to represent depending only on my memory. The lecture and discussion were video taped.
It is not clear why a regime that has “systematically” perpetrated “state discrimination” against blacks would ever print this information if it is indeed accurate. Dr Moore did not offer any possible explanation except to point out in answer to another question that Raoul Castro is different from his brother.
WHile no doubt racism continues to operate in Cuba, Dr Moore made it a categorically simple issue of whites against blacks. Mestizos he told us look like our (Barbados’) last Prime Minister Owen Arthur, or the current one, David Thompson (both of whom in Barbados would be considered unequivocally black.)
If racism expresses itself as access, opportunity and behaviour (I meant to say attitude here), then Dr. Moore could have made a coherent case for any of these points if he had the evidence. Instead, he was contradictory on the questions of access and opportunity, and gave the results from only one survey of negative attitudes to AfroCubans by whites in respect of the latter. The credentials of the survey were slightly blurred to me. He might have said the agency surveying but I missed that, and heard no information about the numbers involved or the methods of selection of participants in the survey.
Many Barbadians are very accepting of the communism bogey. I am afraid that the lack of good scholarship we saw tonight only distorted the idea of Cuba further. It did not shed light on racism in Cuba, but felt like rantings. It would be interesting to get Sarduy here also.
Guidance,
Margaret Kawamuinyo
Although there are many things I could add here now I’ve had time to reflect more on the lecture and the question period (literally “question” period as the moderator did not permit the audience to make statements or ask more than one question, I have restricted myself to correcting grammar and sentence structure of my statement. I wrote the earlier version without adequate editing and would not want it to stand in its present form. The question to which I restricted myself was: Why would a majority of the population, that is well educated and also in a majority in the armed forces not produce leaders to help them organise to fight this level of racist oppression? (He stated at some point that many among the unemployed, which included hundreds of thousands of demobbed army troops from wars in Africa, were qualified engineers, doctors and other technically qualified people.) His answer in effect was, the level of population surveillance in Cuba was extraordinary.
Aqui es un poema que escribo por un otra mujer Cubana who brought me to tears once when she tried to introduce herself to me. Es possible mi poema no es bueno, como mi espanol aqui. Pero…
Iraida: My Circle of Boats
“Estoy from Cuba. So? Y Tu?”
Barbados.
“Ah, Barbados!
My wife,” she said to me
her english slow, “was in el avion. You know?
Cubana…” Her gesture took
her sentence end into the sea;
that language graphic where
her english stopped. My comprendo
began: Ah Cubana!
Su esposo, husband… “Si”
I gave the poem to her later and she cried and gave me a book of letters by Jose Marti. She also told me “I never loved again.” We both cried (what can I say, I am a crier. smile) I have never forgotten her nor my sight of the circle of boats in the water off from the balcony of the student’s guild at Cave Hill in 1976.
However, I did try to be fair to Carlos Moore, because I do believe there cannot NOT be racism against blacks in Cuba or anywhere in this hemisphere. Colonialism was not small in global impact, nor was it superficial. Like my circle of boats, its memories anchor deep, on all sides. So I went to hear how Cuba has dealt with blacks and how blacks have created and managed opportunities to BE in an attempt to grow a different organisation of society in this Caribbean. That story still needs to be told to my mind. I visited there for one week but could not tell. I was asked by a brown-skinned man (he may have been white, who knows)on the street whether I was a prostitute. I had very long dreadlocks at the time and he told me women who had their hair like that were prostitutes. He seemed stupid so I did not base my evaluation of all Cubans on that exchange. But clearly it affected me, as I see I single out that incident of all the incidents I could have told you about.
I am not a child to be gathered up into a common dislike for whites. I already live with the evidence of white privilege and the arrogance and harm to persons like me it can breed. Therefore, I work out for myself that even those whites who are not actively racist find it most difficult to give up historic benefits of skin (you do not even have to work for some of them. All you have to do is show up), or to give up myths that whites created to help them live with their enjoyment of great power and access. But I need to walk away from a fear lying at the bottom of my sea like the anchors of that circle of boats, (bred by a colonial education and continued by a colonial television and the vision of white continuing to enjoy great access and power) that either I do not have the capacity to overturn the effects of this particular continuing harm, or that I will be prevented from, even in the apparently most favourable of opportunities.
The outcome of either position is another circle of boats, either around my own life as a black or that of whites. In other words violence. Is that where blacks in Cuba are? It would be good to hear from Pedro Sarduy. I do not give him the last word, but he is a poet like myself and apparently different from Nicolas Guillen or Josi Marti. I want to “read” his “poetry”. In fact, I would even say if he were to come to Barbados (I live in hope) that he should both give his analysis and read from his works. I have great faith inthe poet’s poem.
To my sight Iraida was a white woman - skin, hair, husband a member of the flight crew. She was also my circle of boats.
Guidance,
Margaret Kawamuinyo
Thanks a lot for your comments, Mervyn Claxton and Margaret Kawamuinyo.
Please visit my pages on http://www.afrocuabweb.com
And yes, I love Barbados. My last visit was Dic. 2006.
My first visit, was to Cave Hill campus in 1985.
I’d love to come back and show my PP presentation called
“Loma y machete”: To the Hills with Machete -The Symbolism of Race in Cuba Today”.
In the meantime, Love & Struggle.
Pedro
Dear Pedro Perez Sarduy
Thank you so much for your wonderful letter of reply to Carlos’ article on racism in Cuba.
I went to Cuba 25 years ago and felt free for the first time in my life of a British black woman, I lived with a Cuban family in Santiago when I found myself without a hotel. I had booked but the hotel said it was full with singers attending an International Concert season. The family that took me in was wonderful.
I am trying to make a Collage on Cuba and I want it to include the Orishas and also would like to get a picture and information of the black hero (was it Maceo?) I heard of a woman who wore her head cloth like a crown and when one son died she sent another until all her sonshad died in the liberation of Cuba. I believe she had 7 or 8 sons. I also think she may have lived in Santiago do Cuba.
Can you help me with this part of Cuba’s great history.
I also spent time with a dance company in Guantanamo - which was the most wonderful experience.
Catherine Coker
I am an AfroCuban who has lost respect for Carlos “jamaican” Moore from back when he chose to sifde with the imperialist against the country that fed and clothed him for yrs..Basically Carlos Moore is an opportunist who is only speaking in order to sell books which by the way he does not do well. This African hypocrite is a traitor to all that is Cuban..Had he chose to leave Cuba, like many others including some in my own family in order to maintain contact and provice the necssary remittances to help those left behind, perhaps i could have garnered some respect. However, what Carlos has done is put is tail between his legs and beg..Beg the White Miami Cubans who have kept thier feet upon the Afro Cuban from 1865- 1959 when they were run out of my country..And, who always disliked El Pichon, and yet Pichon is the only one decieved. Carlos, is not a lover of freedom
Soon it’ll be Twenty years since I wrote that Open Letter to Carlos, in modest response to the publication by UCLA, of his book Castro, the Blacks adn Africa”. I attended his “book celebration and Forum on Friday, February 9, 1990, 6:30pm at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. And the polemic is still valid! Thanks again for your comments. Love & Struggle. Pedro
Carlos i know that it has been yrs since we last saw one another and i am an elder now and still enamorado de ti..LOL i am the oldest daughter of Felipe Garcia Villamil and Dolores whom i learned was my father at age 12. Since that time i have achieved educ and remained a student of transformation for our country. Yet with a continuing love and respect for Fidel and Cuba…Yes, your lit is still polemic and valued. falsehood can /will never outrun truth
Peace and blessings