The Sparks of Civil Society in Cuba: Afro-Cuban Cultural Production, Art Collectives, and
renewed historical and cultural ties between Afro-Cubans and Afri-
cans (particularly in Angola, as many Cubans’ descendants came from
that region) and resulted in the desire among many black Cubans to
emphasize this African connection after their return home.
Grupo Antillano was composed of artists, historians, and cultural
scholars and intellectuals. Group director Rafael Queneditt explained
that members of Grupo Antillano were interested in specific socio-
political issues: “For example, no group member was on the faculty of
an art school, and that was part of the impetus to organize confer-
ences and exhibitions—to help the public understand what ‘black
consciousness’ meant and that Afro-Cuban artists were active in the
Havana art scene” (Bettelheim, 2005: 36). The group’s first exhibition
in 1978 was sponsored by the newly-formed Ministry of Culture.
However, assertion of an explicitly Afro-Cuban identity was seen by
the government as problematic in light of the leadership’s insistence
that a Revolutionary national identity supersede any other group iden-
tity. Art historian and group member Guillermina Ramos Cruz asserts
that the government withdrew its support because the group’s Afro-
Cuban and African cultural focus was considered divisive (Ramos
Cruz, 2000: 148-9).
In fact, Cuban artists across generations have addressed and incor-
porated issues of race. From the art of Ramón Haití Eduardo, who
has for many decades been making African-influenced paintings and
sculptures and claiming a black identity, to the work of Alexis
Esquivel, whose performance “La Soga Maravillosa” (“The Amazing
Rope” 1999-2001) made direct reference to racial segregation in con-
temporary Cuba, artists have worked toward expression of the cultural
history as well as social realities of black Cubans. But artists who insist
on addressing race have often been isolated because of their subject
matter and official disapproval of raising the issue of racism or racial
discrimination in Cuba.
In terms of an Afro-Cuban movement, by the mid-80s, the with-
holding of government support combined with the official silence