Role of AfroCubans in the War of Independence
What distinguished the final War of Independence (1895-1898) from the earlier Ten Years' War (1868-1878) and the short-lived Guerra Chiquita (1879-1880) was the war's success throughout the majority of the island, the final ousting of the Spanish through the American intervention, the espousal of an egalitarian ideology by a radical multiracial military leadership, and the iconization of the war's two most revered heroes: Jose Marti and Antonio Maceo. As has been documented, the aims of the liberation were modified when elite Cuban planters joined the insurgent cause beginning in 1896 and brought their social agenda to bear on the civil wing of the separatist cause (Perez 1983:125). The liberation army under Maximo Gomez, however, sought to eliminate the very socio-economic basis of Cuban society by razingl the sugar plantations as a means towards creating a more egalitarian society. While the division between the civilian and the military was in fact a deciding factor for the final outcome of the war and led to the intervention of the United States, the tension between the two wings has gathered too much attention at the expense of examining how class and racial conflicts before the final war were the source of later divisio
Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. After 1896, white planters from the central and western regions together with the autonomists allied with the separatists. Doctors and lawyers from the white elite joined the movement and revaluated their negative views of black insurgents. The Ten Years' War was never successful in becoming an island-wide revolt and part of the reason for this may be attributed to the effectiveness of Spanish propaganda that the Oriente blacks were planning a race war to establish an independent black republic. In the early 1890s Afro-Cuban journalists claimed that blacks were too weak and passive to effect a war against white rulers, whether Spanish or Cuban (Ferrer 1995:254). "Social Aspects of Cuban Nationalism: Race, Slavery and the Guerra Chiquita 1879-1880. Ferrer (1991:40) states that blacks were not united during the Guerra Chiquita, that some served in the Spanish Army, edited pro-Spanish newspapers, and acted as spies against the Afro-Cuban rebels. The source of this vision can be located in their struggle for liberation from slavery itself and their participation in the failed rebellion of the Ten Years' War. White separatist writers such as Ramon Roa, Manuel de la Cruz, Jose Marti, and Manuel Sanguily focused on countering Spanish propaganda by characterizing the Afro-Cubans' role in the Ten Years' War as a positive one. Before slavery was outlawed in 1886, over 100,000 former slaves had already gained freedom through self-purchase, flight, legal means, and individual arrangements.
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Acceptance Essays
