Sharing Strategies for Racial Uplift: Afro-Cubans, Afro-Puerto Ricans, and African Amer-
people in Cuba, even if he did not support independent political orga-
nizations, as Helg asserts. Indeed, Helg’s criticism echoes the criti-
cisms that historians have leveled against Washington, and assumes
that an emphasis on education and socioeconomic progress is some-
how less valid than efforts to improve the political arena. Juan Gual-
berto Gómez was facing a different problem that Washington
however—Washington turned to education and labor because the
political question of suffrage was impossible, whereas Gómez turned
to education and labor because suffrage had already been won.
Since Afro-Cubans had won their suffrage rights, and even had
some Afro-Cuban representatives in the government, it is not unusual
that Gómez should shift his attention to the areas that were perhaps
in need of more improvement. In the fields of education and labor,
Afro-Cubans were still notably suffering from lack of access and dis-
crimination. Because of American ownership and consolidation of
Cuban land and the sugar industry, all Cubans had been left with rela-
tively few avenues for upward mobility. The public sector became a
major employer of
Cubans, but here Afro-Cubans were also squeezed out, in part
because of their lack of education.
Despite a desegregated public school system that was taken advan-
tage of by Afro-Cubans, the school system did not suffice to serve the
Afro-Cuban population, particularly at the upper levels. In addition,
education alone did not help access to jobs—political connections
were needed to penetrate the patronage system of public offices (De
la Fuente, 2001). Despite his own participation in mainstream Cuban
politics, Gómez was aware enough of the disadvantages facing his son
and other black Cuban children that he reached out to an African
American who was creating solutions for similar problems facing
blacks in the South. It is not, therefore, that Gómez had abandoned
the Afro-Cuban cause, as Helg suggests, but rather that he was pursu-
ing a different strategy for racial uplift.