Political Report #1460 - The Census, Skin Color and Social Analysis

by Esteban Morales Domínguez

Although it still causes many prejudices, misunderstandings and challenges, there is no choice but to pay attention to skin color. Above all, in its consideration within the media and national statistics.

Cuban society is a multiracial society, or rather, multicolored, mestizo. And that reality has to be registered statistically. Not by handling the Census as a simply numerical matter, but as a cultural demographic one.

It is about the fact that color is a legacy of slavery. It is not possible to avoid it, since it has marked Cuban society since its origins.

When the Spaniards arrived in Cuba, in 1492, they did it with white credentials and that is how they stayed. Those who came of their own free will did so in search of a fortune, which they often found.

But Spain is not White. Colonized by the Arabs for 800 years, it is impossible to consider it as such. Even when the Spanish do not assume that identity.

So, the colonizers of our Archipelago were not white. Their power did not consist in being white, but in having arrived with the cross and the sword.

They arrived in a territory of indigenous people, of low culture and they only used them to find gold. They exploited them mercilessly and their population mass did not last long, although we still have representatives of that original population in Cuba.

Chinese also came, brought by means of a system of contracts that turned them into slaves. The so-called “culíes” [coolies], who since then added their beauty to the population of the Island, becoming a part of our nationality. These three large groups were the ones that formed the Cuban population. Later, other Antilleans joined, although not in the magnitude of the first ones, also merging with our population.  

Abstract, Racial Mixing and National Integration in Latin America: The Return of Racial Differences in Mexico and Brazil

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Racial Mixing and National Integration in Latin America: The Return of Racial Differences in Mexico and Brazil
by  Eduardo Torre Cantalapiedra


The importance of racial differences in the configuration of Latin American societies has for decades been overshadowed by ideologies of racial mixing and social-class-based approaches to the analysis of the region’s societies. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century increased attention has been devoted to racial differences both in public policy and in social science research. Government affirmative action designed to reverse social inequalities due to racial differences in Brazil and the results of research on racial differences and racial mixing in Mexico indicate that, as Rodolfo Stavenhagen argued 50 years ago, racial mixing does not contribute to national integration.

Book, Haiti: From Revolutionary Slaves to Powerless Citizens: Essays on the Politics and Economics of Underdevelopment, 1804-2013

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Haiti: From Revolutionary Slaves to Powerless Citizens: Essays on the Politics and Economics of Underdevelopment, 1804-2013
by Alex Dupuy

This title focuses on Haiti from an international perspective. Haiti has endured undue influence from successive French and US governments; its fragile 'democracy' has been founded on subordination to and dominance of foreign powers. This book examines Haiti's position within the global economic and political order, and how the more dominant members of the international community have, in varying ways, exploited the country over the last 200 years.

Book, Haiti: From Revolutionary Slaves to Powerless Citizens: Essays on the Politics and Economics of Underdevelopment, 1804-2013

:::::: Book ::::::

Haiti: From Revolutionary Slaves to Powerless Citizens: Essays on the Politics and Economics of Underdevelopment, 1804-2013
by Alex Dupuy

This title focuses on Haiti from an international perspective. Haiti has endured undue influence from successive French and US governments; its fragile 'democracy' has been founded on subordination to and dominance of foreign powers. This book examines Haiti's position within the global economic and political order, and how the more dominant members of the international community have, in varying ways, exploited the country over the last 200 years.

Book, "Transnational Latina/o Communities: Politics, Processes, and Cultures" Edited by Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez

Transnational Latina/o Communities: Politics, Processes, and Cultures
Edited by Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez

and Anna Sampaio

with Manolol González-Estay

Political Report # 1051 This Morning, Hundreds of Thousands in the Dominican Republic Woke Up Stateless By Amalia Perez, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Featured Photo: Dominican Flag

Beginning this week, the Dominican government will move forward with the deportation of an estimated 210,000 allegedly Haitian refugees living in the Dominican Republic (DR). A large majority of them have lived in the Dominican Republic for generations, have never visited Haiti or spoken Creole, or were brought over from Haiti as children.[1] They will be rendered stateless under the DR’s draconian immigration laws, which targets and expels those “dark-skinned Dominicans with Haitian facial features” who cannot prove, with birth certificates or citizenship papers, they legally belong in the DR.[2] The Dominican government has been creating a stateless underclass out of those of Haitian descent for decades, however, the decision to deport them in massive premeditated quantities-despite fervent opposition by foreign governments and international legal and humanitarian bodies-is a decisive escalation from structural violence to physical violence at the hands of President Danilo Medina’s government. The prevalence of antihaitanismo, a pejorative ideology which “serves elite interests well and has even been accepted by the great majority of the Dominican people as part of their political culture”, has its roots in the era of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, whose regime infamously warned against “Haitianizing influences, whose consequences will always be extremely fatal for Dominican society.”[3] This ideology pulsed throughout the Parsley Massacre of 1937, in which the Trujillo regime murdered upwards of 20,000 alleged Haitians on the basis of whether or not they could trill the “r” in perejil, the Spanish term for parsley-a perverse semantic exercise that often proved morbid for native Haitian Creole speakers.[4]

Book, "Transnational Latina/o Communities: Politics, Processes, and Cultures" Edited by Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez

Transnational Latina/o Communities: Politics, Processes, and Cultures
Edited by Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez

and Anna Sampaio

with Manolol González-Estay