322 Chapter 14
“Without blacks Cuba would not be Cuba,” sententiously declared
Ortiz, with the same scientific and humanistic sharpness with which
he said:
“It would be trivial and erroneous to study human factors in Cuba by
races. Apart from the fact that many racial categories are conventional
and indefinable, we must acknowledge their actual insignificance to
understand Cubanness, which is nothing but a category of culture. To
understand the Cuban soul it is not races that should be studied, but
cultures......The contribution of blacks to Cubanness has not been scant. Apart
from their immense labor force which made the economic entry of
Cuba in world civilization possible, and besides their liberating pugnac-
ity which cleared the advent of the independence, their cultural influ-
ence can be noticed in the food, the cuisine, the vocabulary...but
especially in three expressions of Cubanness: art, religion and the tone
of collective emotive nature.”^2As to legal status, the institutionalization of a new political and
socioeconomic order in the country during the revolution gave unde-
niable backing to social conquests. A system of laws, codes and regula-
tions, whose highest expression is the Constitution of the Republic of
Cuba, condemned every expression of racism and guaranteed the
right of all citizens to education, health, culture, food and social secu-
rity.
It is well to remember that the racial problem in Cuba—as in any
other country—could not be solved through legal channels alone.
The outcome depends on diverse elements such as educational level,
group idiosyncrasies and others. Therefore more attention needs to be
paid to how “coercive legislation” complements other actions which
facilitate the full integration of all Cubans into the national project
regardless color of their skin.
- Fernando Ortiz, lecture delivered on November 28, 1939 under the title of “The
Human Factors of Cubannness.” Source: Fernando Ortiz y la cubanidad (Fernando Ortiz
and Cubanness) Fernando Ortiz Foundation, Havana, 1996.