BUCL and The Black Legend: Using Racism to "Liberate" Cuba

Quiero a la tierra amarilla
Que baña el Ebro lodoso:
Quiero el Pilar azuloso
De Lanuza y de Padilla.

José Martí (1853-1895)
Versos sencillos

I am going to do something now which I am sure nobody has ever done before and nobody will ever do again — I am going to compare Henry Gómez and Val Prieto to Thomas Jefferson. When he was drafting the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson included a paragraph attacking the English king for forcing slavery on the Thirteen Colonies. The hypocrisy of such a statement would have invalidated every truth in that document and Jefferson was prevailed upon to remove it. Of course, it was not the British Crown that compelled men like Jefferson and Washington to own thousands of slaves. And, indeed, the British abolished slavery in their territories a generation before the Americans did and without the necessity of a Civil War. Just like Jefferson overextended his hand in his criticism of Great Britain, so too have Val Prieto and Henry Gómez in their their campaign against Spanish "explosion" (i.e. exploitation) of Cubans. It is Cubans, not the Spaniards, who exploit other Cubans. Spanish exploitation would not exist in any guise if Cubans did not facilitate and encourage it. It is not Spain that handed Cuba to Castro on a silver platter. It was the U.S. government and media which installed Castro in power in 1959 and have maintained him there for 48 years, not Spain. If Val & Henry knew anything at all about Cuban history they would know that. Spain's relations with Cuba over the last 48 years have hardly been exemplary and there must be a settling of accounts when Cuba is free which will deprive Castro's entrepreneurial partners of all their ill-gotten gains, but the actions of individual Spaniards or even Spain's Socialists are nothing compared to the Bay of Pigs or the Kennedy-Khrushchev Pact, the Elián affaire or the "Dry Foot/Wet Foot" policy (to choose among hundreds of betrayals).

It was especially troubling to see Val Prieto raise the specter of The Black Legend in BUCL's Campaign Against Spain, accusing Spaniards of "forcing religion" on Cubans. The Black Legend, created in the 16th century by the English, purports that Spaniards are more cruel, barbarous and bloodthirsty than any other European people. No matter that Spaniards were the greatest agents of civilization and Christianity in history. No matter that the English Inquisition (yes, there was such a thing) burned more "witches" at the stake than did the Spanish Inquisition. No matter that Spaniards actually married the indigenous peoples they conquered and raised their "half-breeds" as their sons and heirs, unlike the English who, when they mixed at all with the natives, enslaved their own progeny. No matter that Americans murdered more Indians over 40 years in the enlightened 19th century than Spaniards ever did in 500 years of colonialism. Their language, their history, their culture, their customs and their religion, their pride and sense of honor, their courage and their indominable spirit, all these things the Spaniards bequeathed to us. Their faults are also our faults, and even their faults are more ennobling than the virtues of their detractors.

The "Black Legend" is not just an affront to Spain, but to all her descendents, including and particularly Cubans, who carry the largest quantity of Spanish blood of any Latin Americans, because we all have Spanish parents, grandparents or great-grandparents whereas others must go back 3 or 4 centuries to find any Spanish forebears, if, indeed, they have any. If we who are their closest relatives by blood will not defend the Spaniards against the "Black Legend," then who shall? Whatever the predations of Spanish capitalists in Cuba, or the shameless conduct of Spain's Socialist government towards Cuba, no honest Cuban can condemn his own relatives for it, no more than any honest Spaniard could condemn their Cuban relatives for Castro's wholescale robbery of 100 years of Spanish work and achievement in Republican Cuba prior to the Revolution.

The indigenous population added to our folklore but nothing else. Africans contributed greatly to our culture and indeed transformed it in immeasurable ways, enriching everything they touched, but, above all, they had the greatest share in forging Cuban independence, since they made up the majority of our Army of Liberation. All this said and duly acknowledged, the root of Cuban culture is still Spanish. To that tree many nations and cultures have been grafted over 500 years, but the root which nourishes it and us is Spanish. To deny that fact is to deny our history, indeed, to deny everything we are as Cubans. Spain is our motherland; we have no other and should want no other. Even the roots of our independence have their origin in Spain, in the Spain of Padilla and Lanuza, as Martí acknowledged in his famous verses; and, of course, Martí himself, the architect of our nationhood, was the son of Spaniards.

The greatest enemy of Spanish power in Cuba, Martí nonetheless wrote: "I love Spain as only those who have felt her whip across their backs can love her." Stop a moment to reflect on the spiritual greatness of that statement (so eminently Spanish in character). This is the reason that a Spanish historian called Marti "El Cristo de Cuba." For Martí did not only die to redeem his countrymen but the Spaniards who persecuted them as well. The Spain that Martí loved, a democratic and modern Spain, free of dogmaticism and provincialism, is the Spain that honors Martí over and above all the men who opposed him. That is why on the centenary of Spain's defeat in the misnamed Spanish-American War, in 1998, Spain did not issue postage stamps commemorating its 19th century politicians and generals who had pledged to fight "to the last soldier and peseta" to keep Cuba as a colony, but honored instead José Martí, who represents the highest expression of the Spanish character in Spain or the Americas, as Spaniards now realize and proclaim, for Martí was the liberator that liberated both oppressed and oppressor.

This Spanish spirit also lived in Maceo, who refused to be called black because he embraced both his African and Spanish origins. In fact, Maceo said that if the Americans ever invaded Cuba, he would fight alongside the Spaniards to repel them, and would then continue the war against Spain.

Shameless in conception and ridiculous in execution, BUCL's "Campaign Against Spain" should be abandoned immediately, not that it ever amounted to much. The only purpose which it has served is to demean those who conceived it and their sponsors and sow gratuitous confusion and division among our fellow Cuban bloggers, who should now demand the end of this cannibalistic exercise.