Miami’s Forgotten Cubans: Race, Racialization, and the Miami Afro-Cuban Experience

265 Pages·2016·2.54 MB·English

by  Alan A. Aja (auth.)

Alan A. Aja
MIAMI’S
FF OO RR GG OO TT TT EE NN
CUBANS
Race,
Racialization
and the Miami
Afro-Cuban
Experience
Afro-Latin@ Diasporas
The Afro-Latin@ Diasporas Book Series publishes scholarly and cre-
ative writing on the African diasporic experience in Latin America, the
Caribbean, and the United States. The Series includes books which
address all aspects of Afro-Latin@ life and cultural expression throughout
the hemisphere, with a strong focus on Afro-Latin@s in the United States.
This Series is the fi rst-of-its-kind to combine such a broad range of topics,
including religion, race, transnational identity, history, literature, music
and the arts, social and cultural theory, biography, class and economic
relations, gender, sexuality, sociology, politics, and migration.
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/14759
Alan A . Aja

Miami’s Forgotten
Cubans
Race, Racialization, and the Miami Afro-Cuban
Experience
Alan A. Aja
Brooklyn College, CUNY
Brooklyn, New York, USA
Afro-Latin@ Diasporas
ISBN 978-1-137-57523-4 ISBN 978-1-137-57045-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-57045-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016946177
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Series Dedication
The 2016 publications in the Afro-Latin@ Diasporas Book Series are in
loving memory of Juan Flores, teacher, mentor, scholar, and friend.

Author’s Dedication
For Wendy and Liam, mis queridos.
For the Abuelos; Joaquín, Cubita (Ana), Elena, and Antonio, and mi
Abuela Kiki (Blanca Rodríguez Aja), who now rest in peace.
For my parents Loyda and Tony and mi familia in Brooklyn, Santa Fe,
Loveland, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Louisville, and Miami.
For those who nurtured my life trajectory and provided unconditional
support, from London to Austin to Boston to Buenos Aires to La Habana,
with specifi c dedication to my Afro-Cuban herman@s.
And for my former professor and scholarly ally for racial justice, Juan
Flores—1945–2014. Rest in Power.

F
OREWORD
The American Ideal of Racial Progress Is Viewed by How Fast I Become
White,” James Baldwin, T he Cross of Redemption
Of strange coincidence, on August 13 (of 2014), the same day my father, a
1967 arrival from L a Habana , Cuba, was born, I fi nished my fi rst prelimi-
nary draft of this book. 1 It is also the same day that Fidel Castro Ruz was
born (in 1926), the revolutionary fi gure that for so many Cuban Americans
is vilifi ed and blamed for the supposed struggle we have endured since our
entry into “e l exilio .” That the contrary is more true, that Cuban exiles and
their children, especially “white” Cubans like my family members, live better
in the USA if not the same as we did in Cuba, is a profound understatement.
In Miami, born and raised amid the occasional palm tree, small mani-
cured lawns, and Cuban-owned t ienditas (little stores) of Little Havana,
then following the paths of “spatial assimilation” into the expanding strip
malls beyond G uecheste (Westchester) and into the West Kendall suburban
developments, it was this mythology to which we clung. 2 In one of the
more critical books on the Cuban exilic experience, L a Lucha for Cuba:
Religion and Politics on the Streets of Miami , religious scholar Miguel de
la Torre (2003) argues that the supposed “struggle” we have endured in
Miami, the heart of the Diaspora, is best symbolized through the religious
expression L a Lucha (the struggle). This expression, embedded in the con-
tours of an ethno-nationalism and a transplanted m achismo designed to
reinforce intersectional structures of gender, race and class serves as means
to justify the power and privilege exiles and their children have accumu-
lated over time in South Florida. This “struggle” essentially undergirded
ix