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Representations of Black Women in Cuba - Great Article !
Representations of Black Women in Cuba - Great Article !
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Racist caricatures for sale in Cuba (Credit: www.afrocubaweb.com)
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With the continued box oce success of the Fate of the Furious, we are
once again returning to the idea of Cuba as Americas playground.
The newest edition in the Vin Diesel muscle car franchise is one of the Submit
rst major U.S. studio movies lmed in Cuba since the two countries
broke diplomatic relations in 1961. The movie depicts Dom (Diesel)
and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) honeymooning in Havana and
incorporates a high-speed street race between two vintage American Categories
cars along the capitals famous seawall, the Malecon.
Select Cat
This image of Cuba as a tourist paradise lled with pristine 1950s
egory
Chevrolets and Cadillacs, white sand beaches, and exotic women has
enticed hundreds of thousands of North Americans to the island since
President Barack Obama eased travel restrictions last year. Most Archives
frequently, I hear soon-to-be Cuba travelers commenting that they
hope to see Cuba before it changes. As others have noted, this Select Mo
language of wanting to see Cuba before it changesusually in nth
reference to a Cuba stuck in the 1950s where cars from their parents
and grandparents adolescence roam the streetssilences both the
numerous economic and social changes occurring every day on the Tags
island and the fact that it is the very arrival of tourists (and in this case
U.S. movie producers) who are nancing most of the changes #AAIHSRoundta
travelers hope to avoid by getting to Cuba before the rush. Hidden
inside this language of a static Cuba also seems to be a desire for an
ble
island from the 1950s where tourists (and many white Cubans) #BlackLivesMatter
imagined black womens bodies as either overly sexualized prostitutes #comicsandrace
#WomenandPanAfricanismSeries
and cabaret dancers or as maids in upper-class hotels and homes.
More recently, since the post-1989 economic crisis, uneven economic Activism black
development has often seen black womens bodies resexualized or
(re)mammy-ed, as shown in the sales of tourist T-shirts with black feminism black
minstrel faces.
intellectual
Racist caricatures for sale in Cuba (Credit: www.afrocubaweb.com) history black
internationalism
In fact, one aspect of Cuban society usually ignored by the vintage car black lives matter black
craze is the now established antiracist movement in Cuba. While nationalism Black
North-American and Fast 8 watchers around the world admired Dom
navigating a smoking jalopy down the streets of Havana, many of Panther Party black
Cubas highest-prole black activists met at the Afro-Latin American
Institute at the Hutchins Center for African and African American politics Black Power
Research at Harvard University. Thirty Afro-Cuban activists joined with black protest Black
select U.S. academics from April 1415, 2017 to take stock of the
radicalism black radical
nearly twenty-year-old movements achievements, challenges, and
future goals. Spanning a variety of groups, including religious tradition Black
practitioners, hip-hop artists, community leaders, and intellectuals,
this was the rst meeting of its kind. As scholar-activist Toms women Brazil
Fernndez Robaina noted, We have to be aware that this is a
capitalism Caribbean
historical event.
civil rights Civil Rights
Previously, Ive written about an Afro-Cubana organization in Havana
Movement Cuba Donald
composed of black and mulata women. This month I want to oer the
documentaries of award-winning Cuban lmmaker Gloria Rolando, Trump Garveyism
one of the attendees at the Harvard conference last month, as a Gender Haiti imperialism
counter-discourse to the ways that black womens bodies are Malcolm X mass incarceration
imagined and represented in and by Cubas tourist industry.
music New York Pan-
Gloria Rolando was born in Africanism police
Gloria Rolando Havana in 1953. Growing up
brutality police
with the revolution, she
studied music at the Provincial violence Politics Racial
Conservatory Amadeo Roldan and later Art History at the University
Violence racism
of Havana. She has completed over a dozen lms and documentaries
reconstruction religion
about Afro-Cuban history. Some of her most well known works
include Eyes of the Rainbow (1997), a lm about U.S. Black Panther slavery slave trade
Assata Shakur; a three-part series on the 1912 massacre of members
teaching violence W.E.B. Du
of the Independent Party of Color, titled Breaking the Silence (2010);
Bois
and a history of the West Indian community in eastern Cuba, My
Footsteps in Baragu (1996).
Santa Clara that occurred when blacks tried to walk on a side of the By Kasturi
"Rumu"
park that had been barred to them and whites responded with
DasGupta
violence (throwing chairs and shooting guns) to stop changes they
feared would lead to interracial dating. Throughout the documentary,
Rolando recovers hidden pieces of Cuban history with special
Comments
attention to black womens lives.
story of the woman featured in Dialogue with my Grandmother. such comments from the
blog.
Rolando ends the documentary as it begins by sitting in a rocking
chair across from the empty chair of her late grandmother. She
challenges us as viewers to decide which Cuba we want to see. As you
CONTRIBUTORS
plan your trip to the island, will you only see the cars and the girls
aunted in the Fast 8, or will you remember the oft-overlooked hands
of the many women and men of African descent who built and
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continue to build Cuba?