Afro-Cubans
Afro-Cubans or Black Cubans are citizens of Cuba who have ancestry from any of the Black racial groups originating from Africa. The term Afro-Cuban can also refer to historical or cultural elements in Cuba associated with this community, and the combining of native African and other cultural elements found in Cuban society, such as race, religion, music, language, the arts and class culture.
African Origins
The ethnogenesis of Afro-Cubans began with the transatlantic slave trade, when enslaved Africans were trafficked to the island by European slave traders. Following the Spanish conquest of Cuba in the early 16th century, the Spaniards had begun to rely on the native Tainos for slave labour by the mid-1500s. However, the Taino population was unsuitable for this, due to the declining numbers. Thus, the Spaniards began importing enslaved Africans onto the island to work on plantations. This started Cuba's involvement in the Atlantic Slave Trade.The enslaved Africans brought to Cuba were mainly from West Africa, with a lesser but significant amount also coming from Central Africa. This includes all the territory from modern-day Senegal to modern-day Angola. Many of these enslaved people were obtained from wars and conflicts between and within African states. Others were criminals and debtors condemned to slavery. Between 702,000 and 1 million enslaved African people were brought to Cuba during this period.
Over 20 distinct African ethnic groups were brought to Cuba during the history of slavery on the island. Of these 20, the main 6 were the: Lucumi, Mandingo, Ganga, Arará, Carabali, and Congo.
These ethnic groups were brought to Cuba in large numbers at different periods, due to the political and civil conditions of their societies. Between 1760 and 1790, the Bakongo were the largest African ethnicity, making up 30% of the slave population. Between 1665 and 1760, the Kingdom of Kongo experienced a full-scale civil war, due to a succession dispute between two rival families, which made many Bakongo vulnerable to the slave trade. The Arará slaves arrived as war prisoners from Dahomey, captured by the Oyo during the war between the Oyo Empire and the Kingdom of Dahomey in the 18th century. Meanwhile, the significant Yoruba population in Cuba started to arrive in the mid-1700s, due to the increased warfare in the Oyo Empire, which led to its decline and eventual collapse. They were the largest imported ethnic group after 1850, making up 34.5% of all incoming slaves. The Carabali consisted of many ethnic groups from eastern Nigiera, which embarked from the Bight of Biafra. They included ethnic groups such as the Efik, Ekoi, and Ibo, etc.
Some of the African ethnicities of Cuba retained their own cultural identity and syncretised it with the Catholic religion of the Spanish. This led to the formation of Santeria, Palo, Abakuá, and Arará.
Demographics
According to the 2002 national census that surveyed 11.2 million Cubans, 1 million or 11% of Cubans identified as Afro-Cuban or Black. Some 3 million identified as "mulatto" or "mestizo", meaning of mixed race, primarily a combination of African and European. Thus more than 40% of the population on the island affirm some African ancestry.There has been much scholarly discussion about the demographic composition of the island. A study by the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami estimated the proportion of people as having some black ancestry is more likely about 62%. They note that complex attitudes toward racial identification, and the de facto racial hierarchy that has existed on the island, have influenced the lower figures of self-identification as black.
In Cuba, there are many terms to classify Afro-Cubans of varying portions of African descent, related to the historic Spanish casta system. In addition, in current society, classification may simply be made based on visible attributes; thus, a person who looks white is likely classified as white, especially if educated and middle class.
By contrast, in the contemporary United States, a 2010 Harvard study showed that the practice of hypodescent classification persists. That is, biracial persons are typically classified by others as belonging to the race or ethnicity with lower social status, even if their ancestry is majority European. They found that persons with up to 69% European ancestry and the remainder African or African-American were still being classified as 'black'.
A DNA study in 2014 estimated the genetic admixture of the population of Cuba to be 72% European, 20% African and 8% Native American.
Although Afro-Cubans can be found throughout Cuba, they comprise a higher proportion of the population in Oriente Province in Eastern Cuba than in other parts of the island. As the biggest city, Havana has the largest population of Afro-Cubans of any city in Cuba.
In the 21st century, many native African immigrants have been going to Cuba, especially from Angola. Also, immigrants from Jamaica and Haiti have been settling in Cuba. Most of them settle in the eastern part of the island, due to its proximity to their home countries, and further contributing to the already high percentage of ethnic blacks on that side of the island.
The percentage of Afro-Cubans on the island increased after the 1959 Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro, because there was mass migration from the island of the largely white Cuban professional class, who were subject to violence, takeovers and losing their businesses and property.
A small percentage of Afro-Cubans left Cuba, mostly for the United States. They and their U.S.-born children are known variously as Afro-Cuban Americans, Cuban Americans, Hispanic Americans, and African Americans. Relatively few Afro-Cubans resided in the nearby Spanish-speaking country of Dominican Republic and the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.
The Minority Rights Group International says that "An objective assessment of the situation of Afro-Cubans remains problematic due to scant records and a paucity of systematic studies both pre- and post-revolution".
Afro-Cuban descendants in Africa
During the 17th century, ex-slaves from Cuba and Brazil were transported to Africa to work for colonists as indentured servants or workers. They were taken largely to present-day Nigeria, the home of the Yoruba cultures, and Spanish Guinea home of the Fang and Bubi cultures.In the 19th century, the former slaves were taken to Africa under the Royal Orders of September 13, 1845. When there were an insufficient number of volunteers, the colonial government arranged a June 20, 1861, deportation from Cuba. In Spanish Guinea, the indentured servants became part of the Emancipados. In the area of present-day Nigeria, they were called Amaros.
Although the indentured workers were nominally free to return to Cuba when their tenure was over, most settled in these countries, marrying into the local African indigenous tribes.
Angola has had more recent immigrant communities of Afro-Cubans, known as Amparos. They are descendants of Afro-Cuban soldiers who were transported to serve as military in the country in 1975 as a result of Cuban involvement in the Cold War. Cuba's Prime Minister, Fidel Castro, deployed thousands of troops to the country during the Angolan Civil War to support a faction of society. As a result of this era, a small Spanish-speaking community formed in Angola of Afro-Cubans; they number about 100,000 persons.
Haitian-Cubans
language and culture first entered Cuba with the arrival of immigrants from Saint-Domingue at the start of the 19th century. This was a French colony on the island of Hispaniola. The violence associated with the final years of the 1791–1804 Haitian Revolution resulted in a wave of ethnic French settlers fleeing to Cuba, and often taking numerous African slaves with them. These refugees settled mainly in the east, and especially Guantánamo. There the French later introduced sugar cane cultivation, and constructed sugar refineries. They also developed coffee plantations for another important commodity crop.By 1804, some 30,000 Frenchmen were living in Baracoa and Maisí, the furthest eastern municipalities of the province. Later, Afro-Haitians continued to emigrate to Cuba to work as braceros cutting cane in the fields and processing it during harvest. Their living and working conditions were not much better than under slavery. Although many workers had planned to return to Haiti, most stayed on in Cuba.
For years, many Haitians and their descendants in Cuba did not identify as such or speak Creole, which is based in French and African languages. In the eastern part of the island, many Haitians suffered discrimination among the majority Spanish speakers.
In the 21st century, classes in Haitian Creole are offered in Guantanamo, Matanzas and the City of Havana, in an effort to preserve the traditional language of the Afro-Haitians. There is also a Creole-language radio program.
Religion
Afro-Cubans are predominantly Roman Catholic, with Protestant minorities. Afro-Cuban religion can be broken down into three main currents: Santería, Palo Monte and include individuals of all origins. Santería is syncretized with Roman Catholicism.Music
Since the mid-19th century, innovations within Cuban music have been attributed to the Afro-Cuban community. Genres such as son, conga, mambo and chachachá combined European influences with sub-Saharan African elements. Cuban music evolved markedly away from the traditional European model towards improvisational African traditions. Afro-Cuban musicians have taken pre-existing genres such as trova, country and rap and added their own realities of life in a socialist country and as black persons. Genres like Nueva Trova are seen as live representations of the revolution and have been affected by Afro-Cuban musicians like Pablo Milanes who included African spirituals in his early repertory. Music in Cuba is encouraged both as a scholarly exercise and a popular enjoyment. To Cubans, music and study of it are integral parts of the revolution. Audiences are proud of mixed ethnicity that makes up the music from the Afro-Cuban community, despite there being a boundary of distrust and uncertainty between Cubans and Afro-Cuban culture.African music and Afro-Cuban music mutually exchanged rhythmic patterns, melodies, and cultural elements, creating a dynamic musical interchange. African artists, particularly those from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola fused Afro-Cuban musical influences with their traditions, crafting distinct sounds. The result was an array of genres popular in West and Central Africa namely Congolese rumba, soukous, mbalax, semba, kizomba, and highlife.
Afro-Cuban music can be divided into religious and profane. Religious music includes the chants, rhythms and instruments used in rituals of the religious currents mentioned above. Profane music includes rumba, guaguancó, comparsa and lesser styles such as the tumba francesa. Virtually all Cuban music is influenced by African rhythms. Cuban popular music, and much of the art music, combines influences from Spain and Africa in ways unique to Cuba. For example son combines African instruments and playing styles with the meter and rhythm of Spanish poetic forms. While much of the music is performed in cut-time, artists typically use an array of time signatures like 6/8 for drumming beats. On the other hand, clave uses a polymetric 7/8 + 5/8 time signature.
Afro-Cuban arts emerged in the early 1960s with musicians spearheading an amateur movement bringing African-influenced drumming to the forefront of Cuban music. For example, Enrique Bonne's drumming ensembles took inspiration from Cuban folklore, traditional trova, dance music, and American Jazz. Pello de Afrokan created a new dance rhythm called Mozambique that increased in popularity after his predominantly afro-Cuban folklore troupe performed in 1964. Afro-Cuban artists Mario Bauzá and Frank Grillo, known as Machito, were influential figures in shaping the Afro-Cuban community and its music. Bauzá, a trumpeter and composer, pioneered the fusion of Afro-Cuban rhythms with jazz, giving rise to the Afro-Cuban jazz movement which gained considerable popularity in the United States, Europe, and the Caribbean in the mid 20th century.
Before the revolution, authorities considered Afro-Cuban religious music a lesser culture; religious drummers were persecuted and instruments were confiscated. After the revolution, Afro-Cuban music could be practiced more openly, but authorities were suspicious due to its relation to Afro-Cuban religions. The first revolutionary institution created for the performing "national folklore" was Conjunto Folklórico Nacional. Despite official institutional support from the Castro's regime, Afro-Cuban music was treated mostly with ambivalence throughout the second half of the 20th century. Audiences looked down on traditional and religious Afro-Cuban music as primitive and anti-revolutionary, music educators continued pre-revolutionary indifference toward afro-Cuban folklore, and the religious nature of Afro-Cuban music led to criticisms of the government's whitening and de-Africanization of the music. Religious concerts declined, musical instruments related to Santería were confiscated and destroyed, afro-Cuban celebrations were banned outright, and strict limits were placed on the quantity of religious music heard on the radio and television. These attitudes softened in the 1970s and 1980s as the afro-Cuban community began to fuse religious elements into their music. In the 1990s, Afro-Cuban music became a mainstay of Cuba's tourism economy. Members of religious groups earned their living by performing and teaching ritual drumming, song, and dance, to tourists visiting the country.
Rap was adopted in 1999 and solidified with the rise of hip-hop group Orishas. Cuban hip-hop focused on criticism of the Cuban state and the global economic order, including racism, colonialism, imperialism, and global capitalism.