Insurgent Cuba: race, nation, and revolution, 1868-1898

Abstract

Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), xi + 273 pp.Ada Ferrer's Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898 takes us inside Cuba's thirty-year quest for independence. As her title suggests, Ferrer places race at the core of Cuba's conception of nation and political struggle. By charting the complex nationalist trajectories and the tensions between anti-racism and racism, Ferrer questions the very nature of the original and, consequently, the subsequent insurgencies, as well as Cuba's reputation as the ever-faithful isle. She skilfully demonstrates that the decades of struggle did not form seamless story about the persistence of racism (198). Rather, the wars and anti-racist ideologies they produced chart Cuban successes and failures in the face of centuries of cultural, economic and political tradition. Her work reveals that conflict, rather than consensus, reverberated across Cuba's revolutionary age.Ferrer's discussion of the Ten Years' War (1868-1878) highlights anti-colonialism and the boundaries of Cuban nationalism. In contrast to Cuba's western provinces, slavery in the eastern part of the island had ceased to be as pivotal economically or socially. As the war took shape, eastern leaders attempted to construct a definition of the Cuban nation. Ferrer explores their efforts to reconcile traditional master-class hierarchies with Enlightenment ideology and the importance of slaves and slaveholders to support the war physically and economically. In addition, she examines how free people of African descent and slaves actively appropriated and redefined separatist language in order to make sense of the revolution and their role in it as citizens. Her analysis is a balanced presentation of rebel leaders and former slaves in the context of the rapidly evolving goals and needs of the insurgent army.Ferrer succeeds equally in her discussion of the Little War (1879-1880) by highlighting the connections between this war and the previous one, as well as the distinctiveness of the new rebellion. For instance, she notes how guerrilla tactics and the widespread participation of free and enslaved people of colour made the Little War much like its more protracted predecessor. In the new insurgency, however, settlements of former rebels, established by Spanish authorities, fostered anti-colonial activities. Furthermore, former insurgents brought prior experiences of war with them. Slaves who had not joined the rebel ranks during the Ten Years' War now participated in the Little War, in part because their obedience and loyalty to their masters had not been rewarded, while their insurgent brothers had gained their freedom. During this era, opponents portrayed the war as blacker than the preceding one and as a threat to white rule by manipulating its image in the public consciousness and in government records (77). …

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