Spain's New "Law of Return" Lambasted in Racist Cartoon in "Granma"

Here it is, as published in Granma, official organ of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party: the graphic reaction of the Castro regime to Spain's new "Law of Return" which grants Spanish citizenship to the foreign-born descendents of Spaniards who emigrated to Cuba (and other countries) in the first half of the 20th century. This includes Fidel Castro's own children, of course, and nearly half of Cuba's population. In total, more than 1.2 Spaniards crossed the Atlantic in search of a better life in Spain's former colony. Most prospered in their adopted country and grew roots there until Castro robbed them of the fruits of their hard work and literally deracinated their lives. Many returned to Spain with only the clothes on their backs and 40 or 50 additional years to start their lives anew, or, rather, to end them as best as they could; but most remained in Cuba because their children and grandchildren had been born and raised there and they did not want to be separated from them in their old age.

In the 1990s, when most of the original emigrants were dead, the Spanish government negotiated on their behalf and without their consent a settlement of their claims for confiscated properties. The aggregate of Spanish assets in Cuba before 1959, consisting mostly of small businesses but large ones as well, far exceeded the $6 billion which the U.S. claims is owed to its citizens. Yet the Spanish government settled the claims of its nationals for $50 million (of which Castro didn't pay a cent). In effect, it transferred Spanish properties worth billions to Castro and robbed its own citizens for a second time.

Perhaps this belated "Law of Return" is a way for the Spanish government to make amends to those it wronged, or, rather, to their descendents. Spain did that before in 1924 when it promulgated the world's first "Law of Return" which benefitted the descendents of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. That law, intended as a symbolic gesture, saved 600,000 lives during the Holocaust. Spain's scions in the Americas at least did not have to wait 400 years to obtain some measure of justice.

The new law poses a dilemma for the regime: it means fewer mouths to feed but also fewer hands to work Castro's island-wide plantation, and, of course, the humiliation of being repudiated publicly by yet another mass exodus representing yet another generation of discontented Cubans. In such circumstances there is only one card which the regime can still play: the race card. It did so during the Mariel boatlift and this cartoon indicates that it is prepared to do so again.

The cartoon itself is obviously intended for Spanish consumption and plays on the xenophobic racism which is enjoying a revival not only in Spain but throughout Europe. The implication is that a great number (in the cartoon, all) of Spain's newly-minted citizens by way of Cuba will be black. No doubt a great many will be: Spaniards themselves saw to that by mixing freely with the island's inhabitants. That, of course, is the glory of Spain: its colonists assimilated native populations, as opposed to Anglo-Saxons who tended to decimate them.

Granma's caricature of blacks could not be more grotesque or instructive. Obviously, blacks are "the other" in Castro's Cuba, and it must really puzzle the island's political commissars, who segregate Cuban blacks in non-autonomous ghettos which they are not allowed to leave, why Spaniards would wish to import what they themselves regard as Cuba's "Black Problem." Notice, also, that most of those on line waiting to emigrate in the cartoon are male except for an old woman and child. The message to Spaniards is that they should not expect the mulatas that they love but only black males, which most of them do not love as well.

The caption in the cartoon is intended for internal consumption and can be interpreted in at least two ways. It could refer to the irony that Europeans, who abducted by force the black ancestors of Cuban mulattos, are now naturalizing and repatriating them based on their white ancestry. Or it could be trying to imply that before the Revolution only those who were compelled or expelled by the Spanish authorities ever immigrated to Cuba, and to remember that the authorities that once booted their ancestors could boot them, too.

The message that the cartoon actually conveys, besides the rampant racism, is that the regime continues to be afraid of its own people and resents mightily any government that would "smuggle" its to hostages to freedom by resorting to legal "sleight of hand." The "Law of Return" is Spain's version of the Cuban Adjustment Act exept that to take advantage of it Cubans don't have to risk their lives at sea. Freedom is now just an Iberia flight away.