By Devyn Spence Benson | AAIHS
Images of police officers violently targeting black protestors in Buenaventura, Colombia, restraining Black Lives Matter activists in Charlotte, NC, or responding to so-called riots in Ferguson seem to be ever present in the modern media. From Colombia to North Carolina, governments and news outlets repeatedly portray black political activism as dangerous, violent, and non-patriotic. Headlines label gatherings and marches by people of African descent as “riots” and out-of-control looting, even when the majority, if not all, of the action is peaceful.
Unfortunately, the idea of black politics as dangerous and threatening to the nation is not new, and it is not limited to the United States. If anything, history shows us that when blacks have spoken out against marginalization, disenfranchisement, discrimination, and inequality, the mainstream white media move quickly to delegitimize black activism as threatening, sometimes going so far as to call it “racist.” As Michel-Rolph Trouillot has shown, historical narratives play a significant role in “silencing the past” of black activism.
One hundred and five years ago in Cuba, President José Miguel Gómez ordered the massacre of over two thousand Cubans of African descent in the so-called “Race War” of 1912. Many of the murdered men were veterans who had fought in the island’s wars for independence from Spain (1868–1898). In addition to being former soldiers, most of these Afro-Cubans were members of the recently formed Partido Independiente de Color (Independent Party of Color, PIC). As historian Aline Helg explores in Our Rightful Share, Generals Pedro Ivonnet and Evaristo Estenoz formed the PIC in 1908 to protest black exclusion from national office and to offer a more progressive agenda for Cuban politics. The PIC enjoyed popular support from Cubans of African descent across the island, especially those who lamented their continued inability to find stable employment or enter certain public spaces despite their contributions to Cuban independence.
However, because the PIC’s success threatened to take votes away from existing political parties, both black and white Cubans participated in its persecution. Afro-Cuban Conservative Martin Morúa Delgado introduced a law in Congress in 1910 outlawing race-based political parties and targeting the PIC that was quickly passed. After President José Miguel Gómez banned the PIC and refused to allow the party to participate in the upcoming elections, Ivonnet and Estenoz led a nonviolent (albeit armed) protest against the Morúa Amendment in May 1912. In response, the Cuban army attacked the PIC (and unaffiliated bystanders), massacring over two thousand Afro-Cubans, many of whom were guilty only of being black.

The repression of the PIC highlights the ways that black politics in Cuba have often been conflated with fears about black political takeover. The party’s platform actually said little about racism. Instead, it demanded a better and more transparent government, improved working conditions for all Cubans, an eight-hour work day, and free university education. The mission statement did stress the need to eliminate racial prejudice in public office and in appointing positions such as the armed forces, diplomatic corps, and civil government. But, in many ways, the PIC’s goals were in line with those of Cuban independence leaders and progressives like José Martí and Antonio Maceo.
Contemporaries responded to the PIC and the 1912 massacre in ways that mirror some reactions to black political protests today. In Rachel’s Song, a testimonio by Miguel Barnet, the protagonist Rachel (a white cabaret performer) described PIC leaders as “drunks and vicious types” and claimed that they “burned sugar mills and whole plantations” during their protest. In addition to these mischaracterizations, Rachel further legitimized the state’s violence against the PIC by labeling the whole episode a “racist racket,” saying, “Now to speak truth, they [the PIC] were to blame. They threatened that this whole island would be colored territory, that Estenoz would be president and other monstrosities, that’s why the white fellows revolted.”
By July 1912, PIC leader Pedro Ivonnet had been captured and shot in Santiago de Cuba. Military men paraded his body around town before throwing it into an unmarked public grave. His execution ended the nearly two-month round-up of PIC members by the Cuban government. Only 12 members of the Cuban militia were injured in the conflict that claimed over two thousand black lives. But instead of remembering this as a massacre, accounts like Rachel’s worked for nearly a century to portray the massacre of 1912 as a “Race War” where Cuban leaders acted appropriately to extinguish the threat of black political activism. One good example of this narrative is captured in the political cartoon below where the author depicts black demands for equality as the knife that could kill Cuban nationalism—portrayed as a vulnerable white woman.
