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The Black Man's Contribution to Cuban Culture
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Extract
The well-known ethnologist and investigator, Fernando Ortiz, has recognized that “without the black, Cuba would not be Cuba,” a statement that makes clear the tremendous importance of the African contribution to present-day Cuban culture.
It is a known fact that the aboriginal base of Cuban society was quickly destroyed by the first Spaniards to reach the island, thereby creating the necessity for a new slave population, a new race: that of the blacks of Africa. They came from various regions but primarily from near the mouth of the Niger River.
The cultures which they brought were varied: some elementary and others sufficiently developed, like the Dahomeyan and Yoruba, which manifested a degree of complexity that made them comparable in many aspects to European culture of the Middle Ages. They had agriculture, trade, centralized government, mutual protection social organizations, highly developed oral folkloristic literature (they lacked writing), and a degree of development in certain branches of art—such as music.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1977
References
1 Ortiz, Fernando, “Por la integración cubana de blancos y negros” (On the Cuban Integration of Blacks and Whites), Los mejores ensayistas cubanos (The best Cuban Essayist), ed. by Salvador, Bueno (Havana: Organización Continental de los Festivales del Libro, 1959), p. 31.Google Scholar
2 Lachatañeré, Rómulo, in his study entitled “El sistema religioso de los lucumís y otras influencias africanas” (The Religious System of the Lucumís and Other African Influences), Estudios Afrocubanos, Nos. 1–4 (1939), p. 44,Google Scholar believes that slaves came to Cuba from six groups: the Lucumís, the Congo, the Carabalí, the Mandinga, the Ewe-tshi and the Hamito-Ne-groid.
3 In this connection, Berta Montero de Bascom tells us in her article “Influencias africanas en la cultura cubana” (African Influences on Cuban Culture): “Having been in Nigeria helping my husband … in investigation among the Yorubas of southeast Nigeria, it is possible for me to assert without any doubt whatsoever that they are the closest kinsmen to the Lucumís of Cuba. Not only I but any Cuban who travels through Yoruba lands can immediately observe points of similarity between our black Cubans, probably descendants of Lucumí slaves, and the inhabitants of Nigeria who comprise the Yoruba tribe. These similarities are readily apparent in their mode of behavior, gestures, features, the women’s hairstyles, their way of cultivating the land, their food, etc.”
4 The artificial increase of the colored population as a consequence of the slave trade can be seen by comparing the 1827 figures (393,333 blacks to 311,051 whites) with those of the 1841 Census in which the colored population numbered 585,333 and the white 418,291. These latter figures show that 58 per cent of the island's population was black.
5 Ortiz, Fernando, “La cubanidad y los negros” (The Cuban Character and the Blacks), Estudios Afrocubanos, 3, Nos. 1–4 (1959), 3.Google Scholar
6 “Transculturation” is a neologism created by Fernando Ortiz which was approved and accepted by Malinowski, Bronislaw, as is made clear in his “Introduction” to Ortiz’s work, Contrapunteo del tabaco y el azúcar (Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar), (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1947).Google Scholar
7 Ibid., p. xv.
8 Factors that intervene in the retention of the African character are extensively studied in Herskovits’, Melville book, The Myth of the Negro Past (New York: Harper Brothers Publishers, 1941).Google Scholar In Chapter V he treats the problem of acculturation and considers the greatest or least retention of African customs to be dependent upon such factors as the climate and topography of the region in which the immigrants settled, the proportion of blacks to whites in the region, and the contact between blacks and whites. If this is applied to Cuba, all of the factors were favorable to an ample retention, which is what has happened.
9 The cabildos were religious associations of black people who came from the same region. In El Monte (Havana: Ediciones C. R.), p. 24, Lydia Cabrera explains the nature of these cabildos in the following way: “They came to be a ‘temple,’ a school of languages and of the traditions of each African group, and effective mutual aid societies since the members of each cabildo were obligated by a religious pledge to help one another in all the adverse circumstances of life.”
10 It should be noted that the black populations of Missouri and Louisiana (especially in the region around New Orleans) retain more African traditions than any others in the United States. Herskovits, M. (in The Myth of the Negro Past, pp. 245–251)Google Scholar explains this by the type of white population encountered in these regions, one with a French Catholic majority.
11 Cabrera, Lydia, “Los orishas en el exilio” (The Orishas in Exile), (speech delivered at the XXX Congres of Applied Anthropology, Miami, Florida, April 17, 1971).Google Scholar
12 In addition to the Babalawos, other personages of great-importance but of a lesser category exist. These are the iyaloshas and the babaloshas; both have the ability to foretell the future through a system employing snails (diloggun) and both also make sacrifices, but only of fowl. The greatest sacrifices are left for the Babalawos.
13 In this connection we have copied Hilda Perera’s note from her book Idopo (Miami: Ed. Universal, 1971), p. 34: “It is interesting to note that the Mayor of Miami, Steve Clark, recently attended a feast in honor of Saint Barbara held in this city (Miami).”
14 Mañach, Jorge, Indagación del choteo (Inquiry on Bantering), (Havana: Ediciones de la Revista de Avance, 1940).Google Scholar
15 Cabrer, ., “Los orishas en el exilio,” p. 10.Google Scholar