Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898

by Ada Ferrer

In the late nineteenth century, in an age of ascendant racism and imperial expansion, there emerged in Cuba a movement that unified black, mulatto, and white men in an attack on Europe's oldest empire, with the goal of creating a nation explicitly defined as antiracist. This book tells the story of the thirty-year unfolding and undoing of that movement.

Ada Ferrer examines the participation of black and mulatto Cubans in nationalist insurgency from 1868, when a slaveholder began the revolution by freeing his slaves, until the intervention of racially segregated American forces in 1898. In so doing, she uncovers the struggles over the boundaries of citizenship and nationality that their participation brought to the fore, and she shows that even as black participation helped sustain the movement ideologically and militarily, it simultaneously prompted accusations of race war and fed the forces of counterinsurgency.

Carefully examining the tensions between racism and antiracism contained within Cuban nationalism, Ferrer paints a dynamic portrait of a movement built upon the coexistence of an ideology of racial fraternity and the persistence of presumptions of hierarchy.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, 19th Century, School, Academic

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Ada Ferrer is Julius Silver Professor of History and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University, where she has taught since 1995. She is the author of Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868–1898, which won the 2000 Berkshire Book Prize for the best first book by a woman in any field of history, and Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution, which won the Frederick Douglass Prize from the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale University, as well as multiple prizes from the American Historical Association. Born in Cuba and raised in the US, she has been traveling to and conducting research on the island regularly since 1990.

Reviews

[Evan Stein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uninterestingly written and very repetitive but I understand the significance of this book in how it discusses race when it came out, especially within South America

[Rhuff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ada Ferrer's reconstruction of the Cuban independence wars traces the attempt of democratic patriots to construct a united republic on the diverse social foundation laid by Spanish colonialism. Their attempt did not succeed; but Ferrer does, in her resurrection of a subject still as divisive in the Cuban present as it was in the anti-colonial wars. My main critique of her book is its repetitious rewording of the same points in virtually every long paragraph. Better self-editing would have reduced the text by a third without loss of content. But she unquestionably establishes how the vision of a raceless society was betrayed by the hard realities of class as well as color. The white elites of the period, for all their liberal-democratic rhetoric, would simply not surrender their privileges of "civilization" - education and property - to aspiring "usurpers" from below, however useful the latter's flesh and blood to the "cause of all."

Modern Cuban historians, in Havana or Miami, take Cuban "racelessness" and the pronouncements of Marti at face value, but the betrayal of this ideal was plain in the face before the American invasion of 1898. For Miami, white Cuban racism was a myth invented by Spain and exploited by Castro; for Havana, it was a Yankee imposition "solved" by the revolution of 1959. Ferrer demonstrates that neither was truly the case, though Spain and the US exploited racism for their own ends. The pitiful attempts by Antonio Maceo to deny the blackness of his insurgency lends tragedy to the betrayal of the liberal republic. But Marti's own upper-class patronizing also (unwittingly) aided the bloody climax of the issue in the 1912 "war of color", the last battle of Maceo's vision.

As added indicator of the "incorrect path" where this inquiry leads, recall that the revolutionaries of 1933 and 1959 were nearly all led by the "white and civilized." Between that time Batista emerged as leader in apparent fulfillment of Maceo's legacy, revered by many of color as "our golden mulatto". The bitterness of those early years lasted deep into the republic, alienating those who were "supposed" to be "for" the next round of revolution. Castro and his "new republic" have been accused of the same white liberal paternalism as were Jose Marti and Maximo Gomez; while black nationalists of the 1960s, originally passionate about the revolution, have echoed the same complaints as their predecessors of color: that Cuban anti-racism is merely a patronizing cloak for white privilege, even under Communism (see especially Ruth Reitan's "Rise and Decline of an Alliance: Cuba and African American Leaders in the 1960s".)

It's also tempting to draw other parallels and differences with that next successful revolution in Cuban history. For Fidel Castro, the purge fell upon the right: that is, on those same privileged classes and North American allies whose judgment determined the fate of the first republic. This was one of his many revolutionary "acts of repudiation" in claiming the mantle of Cuban history. The United States and the elites of Havana held the guerrillas of the Sierra Maestra and their threat of red socialism in the same fear and contempt directed, in the 1890s, toward insurgents of another color. It's therefore interesting to speculate the outcome of the independence war, if the Maceo brothers had lived and taken its insurgent leadership, as did the brothers Castro sixty years hence. Would the Maceos have fulfilled their opponents' fears, maybe declaring all true revolutionaries were by definition "colored" regardless of race? And fought US troops as fiercely as they had Spain's?

Regardless, the sensitivity of this issue for Cubans of all persuasions, on or off the island, remains acute. Whatever future awaits Cuba in a time of transition, this legacy confirms William Faulkner's adage that the past is not only present, it's not even past.

[Kiki · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 🌟

A detailed look at the 19th century wars Cuban fought for an Independence that ended in USA occupation (for a time). Ferrer pulls from a wealth of material, including first person accounts to look explicitly at how class, race and (to a much more limited extent) gender shaped the insurgent movement in particular.

There are instances in which her "neutral" tone implicitly enforces an Eurocentric take but readers ought to find it easy enough to sift the good. Written in an accessible English. As always, the end notes wrecked my TBR.

It was inspiring to read how black military and civilian leaders owned and expanded on the high minded anti racist ideals the white devils tried to ginal out of or use against them. Caribbean history is wonderful. Take a look, it's in a book etc. 🌈.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every time I read Ferrer's work, I know I am going to get a lot of information and a clearly presented argument. In this case Ferrer uses the oft ignored Ten Years' War in Cuba to show how revolutionaries fought Empire by fighting racism.

[Evie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this book. Ferrer is an excellent writer and this book is very detailed. I think anyone could get something out of this book, whether they know a lot or very little about Cuban history, this book reaches all audiences.

[D]

school

[Krystalrose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book on Cubas history before and during then Spanish Amaerican war. Ferrer details the lives and influences of Cuban revolutionist Antonio Maceo and Jose Marti.