Race Relations in Post-Independence Cuba: An Analysis of William Archer’s Through Afro-America (1910)
By Mika Sachs
In 1910, British critic William Archer (1856-1924) published a collection of observations from travels through the Southern states of the United States, Cuba, Jamaica and the Panama Canal. Archer, a well-known intellectual, shared his contemporaries’ fascination with what was commonly referred to as “the problem of the colour line” (Archer: ix). This question of race was high on the agenda of the finest minds of the white male world, eliciting responses that ranged from advocacy for complete racial segregation to promoting national whitening projects. Most intellectuals, however varied their opinions, agreed that race was to play a central role in the twentieth century.
Archer is mainly concerned with the “Southern states of North America” (Archer: 187), for whom he feels a kind of postcolonial paternal affinity as an “Englishman who is so far an Imperialist as to feel that he cannot simply wash his hands of the problems of Empire” (Archer: x). Out of the nearly three hundred pages of commentary, less than fifty concern themselves with non U.S. Afro-America. Yet his brief excursion through the Caribbean is not merely an adventurous detour. Even as Archer follows the recommendations of his “Standard Guide to Havana” and admires the paradisal beauty of the island, questions of race are never far from his mind.
As a U.S. protectorate, Cuba’s fate was in these years inextricably linked with that of its neighbor to the north, and the racial policies of the latter had significant impact on the young nation. Archer’s interest in the comparative study of the two is evident from his choice to present the viewpoints of U.S. Southerners residing in the country. The conversations the author records provide interesting insights into issues of race in post-independence Cuba, revealing white creole prejudice, prevalent European notions of scientific racism and instances of Afro-Cuban agency and resistance.
While Archer takes great pains to present the different approaches of his fellow writers and theorists on the subject of race, mentioning advocates of interracial mixing and intellectuals denying the very notion of race, his writing is soaked with the spirit of the times. His descriptions of Africans and people of African descent betray deeply entrenched notions of white superiority. As he travels through Florida, for instance, he comments on the “good-humoured, muscular animalism” of the blacks he encounters (Archer: 183). This type of imagery appears frequently throughout the travelogue, thinly veiled with claims to fair-minded neutrality. Similarly, Archer’s references to the apparent barbarism of racial segregation are immediately countered with descriptive passages emitting profound disdain for people of color, “people different not only in colour but in many other physical characteristics from you and me” (Archer: 7-8). There is no question as to where the author’s allegiance lies.
This question of allegiance arises repeatedly throughout the book, and therefore deserves further consideration. Archer, an Englishman, thoroughly identifies with the Anglo-Saxon north. It is in part the love of the mother colony for its child, now independent and running its own affairs. His allegiance is also infused with a strong sense of racial affinity, a plea to the shared origins of white Anglo Saxon Americans and the subjects of the British crown. The author openly acknowledges his “special sympathy for America and all things American” (Archer: x), and one of the stated goals of his literary and scholarly endeavor is to overcome the “little prejudices and ignorances” that “still interpose themselves between the two branches of the Anglo-Saxon” (Archer: xv). In continuously asserting the superiority of European, and particularly Anglo-Saxon, civilization over supposedly inferior brown and black races, Archer echoes the words of his contemporary, Madison Grant, an amateur scientist who less than a decade later wrote: “Speaking English, wearing good clothes, and going to school does not transform a Negro into a white man” (Jackson, Rubin & Weidman: 73).
Having identified the major biases underlying Archer’s depiction of race relations in the Americas, we can now turn our attention to his account of Cuba and examine how these aforementioned prejudices play out in the writing. The first and arguably the most significant is his choice to explore the “problem of the colour line” primarily from the perspective of one Mr. Ogden, an “American gentleman, resident for many years in Cuba” (Archer: 249). Mr. Ogden reflects in his commentary on the situation in Cuba more or less every racial bias of his home country. He begins by putting forth a flimsy pseudo-scientific theory of race, based on the testimony of an old lady, the daughter of a rich creole planter. According to her, slave ships reached Havana before continuing to the Southern states, thus giving the Cubans “the pick of the basket” and sending up north “only the lower class—the mere brawny animals” (Archer: 251). While Archer does not consider this a wholly satisfactory explanation for the differences between race relations in the United States and in Cuba, he does “commend it to the notice of students of negro ethnology” (Archer: 252).
Mr. Ogden’s observations grow more and more radical as the interview proceeds, culminating in his account of the 1906 revolution and President Palma’s dismissal. His version of the events, when analyzed alongside contemporary scholarly literature, can illuminate certain aspects of post-independence discourse and the role of the U.S. in Cuba’s internal affairs. Many academics have investigated at great length the participation of people of color in the wars of independence in Latin America, and specifically that of Afro-Cubans in the struggle against Spain in the late 19th century. Such studies highlight the active, politically conscious involvement of freedmen and slaves in nationalist movements across the continent. In Cuba, scholars have shown how “a multiracial rebel army under multiracial leadership” rejected racism and envisioned a democratic republic upholding principles of equality (Scott: 709). Blacks and mulattoes were attracted to the promise of a more just Cuba, “Marti’s ideal of a raceless society” (Miller: 53), and therefore voluntarily joined the rebel army in remarkable numbers.
Mr. Ogden, however, denies the black and mulatto rebels any kind of political agency. In doing so, he situates himself within a long tradition of white creole disregard for popular protest from the nonwhite sectors of the population. “The negro is susceptible to every sort of political machination,” he argues, reducing black insurgency to nothing but “a lot of niggers looting stores and carrying off canned salmon” (Archer: 254). This approach is not only emblematic of creole racism, but leads back to a basic assumption that guides both Mr. Ogden and William Archer in their analysis of Cuba. This is the assumption that Cubans are “no more fit for self-government than gunpowder is for hell,” and that they owe their liberation, and hence their gratitude and loyalty, to the benevolent United States (Scott: 716).
Through Afro-America provides a useful glimpse into the Anglo-Saxon approach to Cuba in its early days as a sovereign state. It reveals how notions of white superiority create a narrative that disempowers Cuba’s popular masses while elevating U.S. interventionism. Archer admires the way in which “the Republic has ‘taken up the white man’s burden’” (Archer: 249), and looks to his fellow Anglo-Saxons in North America to kindly guide the Cuban people forward. His perspective allows the contemporary reader to enhance his understanding of at least one of the central discourses the American occupation has sprouted: a racist, dismissive narrative of Cuban powerlessness and American heroism, a view that will have lasting implications for race relations within the country as well as for its relationship to the U.S.
****
Bibliography:
Archer, William. Through Afro-America an English Reading of the Race Problem. London: Chapman & Hall, 1910. Latin American Travelogues. Web. 12 Feb. 2012.
Helg, Aline. Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1995. Print.
Helg, Aline. Race and black mobilization in colonial and early independent Cuba: A comparative perspective. Ethnohistory [serial online]. Winter97 1997;44(1):53. Available from: Academic Search Premier, Ipswich, MA. Accessed February 16, 2012.
Jackson Jr, John P, Rubin, Gretchen, and Weidman, Nadine M. “The Origins of Scientific Racism.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 50 (2005): 66-79. Ethnic News Watch (ENW), ProQuest. Web. 16 Feb. 2012.
Miller, Marilyn Grace. Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race: The Cult of Mestizaje in Latin America. Austin: University of Texas, 2004. Print.
Scott, Rebecca J. “Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Cuba: A View from the Sugar District of Cienfuegos, 1886-1909.” The Hispanic American Historical Review 78.4 (1998): 687-728. JSTOR. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2518424>.
Whitebrook, Peter. William Archer: A Biography. London: Methuen, 1993. Print