Many people would probably be surprised to read the phrase “Jose Antonio Aponte, leader of the Cuban Revolution.”
Cuba is participating in solidarity with the Latin American celebrations around the subcontinent’s bicentennial. However certain events that occurred 200 years ago here on the island itself are not well known. This was when a free black carpenter and artist (Aponte) became one of the first martyrs in Cuban revolutionary history.
He was one of the anti-slavery conspirators who organized a decentralized resistance network that encompassed much of the island. He was also one of those who hung a clear abolitionist proclamation on the door of the Palacio de los Capitanes Generales (the colonial seat of government).
At that time there were more blacks than whites in Cuba and the transatlantic slave trade was continuing. Therefore, for the white capitalist elite it was clear what to do about his message: Aponte was sentenced to death and his head was left to rot inside an iron cage that was put on public display in Havana at the intersection of Reina, Carlos III and Beloscoain streets (sorry, Simon Bolivar, Salvador Allende and Padre Varela streets!*).
In the racist imagery of subsequent periods there remained a phrase that was known even by schoolchildren: So-and-so is “worse than Aponte.” There still is no monument to that forgotten leader that they once promised would be erected on the spot where his caged head was exhibited.
A deeper look into the past
This past February 13, Cuban historians gathered at the ALBA Cultural House to present a couple of books (by US authors, notably enough) and talk about slave resistance, historical racism and the Aponte conspiracy on its bicentennial.
On the panel were doctors Maria del Carmen Barcia, Gloria Garcia, Gabino de la Rosa and Fernando Martinez Heredia. Oscar Zanetti presided.
How can traditional historiography — the product of social elites — turn its attention to oppressed groups? This problem was addressed by Professor Barcia, who mentioned important precedents highlighted by French and English historians.
While the elites and leaders were the favorite historical subjects of positivist thought, Aponte, according to this speaker, was constructed by white Creole intellectuals of the colony as the “black anti-hero.”
The studies by Maria del Carmen Barcia are among the most extensive and best attempts to delve into the archives of the rubble of the past to de-mask the lives of those who were voiceless.
Gabino de la Rosa probes through another type of rubble: he is one of the greatest Cuban archaeologists, specialized in studying the remnants of communities created by runaway slaves and those who resisted slavery.
According Gabino, the patterns of these communities change from the east to the west in Cuba. In the west we find the remains of temporary hideouts and shelters, mostly in caves. In the more mountainous east, what prevail are remains of “palenques,” truely self-organized and productive communities created by blacks who freed themselves from the yoke of slavery.
Gabino defends the thesis that in Cuba, unlike in Brazil for example, these communities didn’t survive past the colonial era. This wasn’t because their members were slaughtered (runaways usually didn’t let themselves be discovered by the authorities, they fled into the most inhospitable areas), but because they massively joined the struggle for independence starting in 1868.
Interpreting the Aponte conspiracy
Gloria Garcia questioned the traditional more restrictive concept of “political struggle” and delved into details of that movement, which she demonstrated as having an “unusual” level of maturity for its time.
This was discovered accidentally, due to the negligence of one of the conspirators.
The movement was decentralized, with multiple leaders. One participant noted that many social organizations in Africa also had this multi-centered character.
It seems that in the case of the Cuban movement of 1812, it too stayed away from congregant leadership since there were various ethnic groups enslaved on the island.
Eighty years later, Jose Marti organized the Cuban Revolutionary Party also with a multi-centered design and great freedom at the base level.
Gloria Garcia read the proclamation that Aponte posted on palace gate. The notice spoke of despotism and resistance to oppression.
What was the movement’s program?
Aponte, a talented painter, had a picture book that he had created (later it was seized by the police and doesn’t exist today, though we have descriptions of it). In it an Indian woman seems to have represented the Cuban homeland.
She appears as a homeland made up of people forcibly abducted from their own homelands… But in the vision of Aponte, there were already white people.
Aponte’s proclamation…could it have been our first Declaration of Independence?
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* Most people still use the colonial names of those streets, not the current “revolutionary” ones.
(II)As was mentioned in Part I, Cuban historians gathered at the ALBA Cultural House to present a couple of books and to talk about slave resistance, historical racism and the Aponte conspiracy on its bicentennial.
Fernando Martinez Heredia (the historian, social scientist and champion of Cuban historical versions of the new left), complained — only half-seriously — about how he was imposed on by the organizers of the meeting with a double task: making a presentation and giving two book introductions.
These books are translations of works by US authors (one of them is also Cuban) who addressed significant controversies concerning our history. These constitute true and amicable contributions to thought in a country where it’s still taboo in certain places to talk about racial identity, inequality or question some intellectuals and leaders of the past and present.
Fernando proceeded critically, claiming Aponte to have been a leader of “poor people’s politics” and the predecessor of a “popular nationalism” that included Marti and his libertarian, popular and disciplined conspiracy, and whose instrument was the Cuban Revolutionary Party (1892-1898).
The invasion began in the east (where “palenque” communities of escaped slaves were integrated for the first time into the “Republic in Arms”) and that moved toward the West, in the middle of the war of 1895, is for him “the highest point of the class struggle.”
As Fernando pointed out, the anti-colonial Liberation Army was the first multiracial army of the Americas at the level of command. The “Republic of Cuba in Arms” fighters rallied 50,000 soldiers and 250,000 active supporters, of whom 60 percent were “colored.”
It was a better ideal of coexistence than that provided by colonialism and scientific racism (so in vogue at the time), affirms Martinez Heredia, for whom democracy was a triumph of the Cuban revolutionary war.
Two valuable works
The two books, presented by Fernando, are both questions still posed to traditional historiography.
The first book, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation and Revolution, 1868-1898, by Ada Ferrer (New York University), from its first chapter (“A Revolution the World Forgot: the Cuban Anti-colonial Rebellions from 1868-1898”) celebrates the beginning of a revolution that the world forgot.
For Dr. Ferrer, those struggles aspired to nothing less than to realize the goal of the world’s first raceless nation. Its upcoming publication in Cuba by Ciences Sociales publishing house will be a contribution to historiography “from below,” according to the panelists.
The other book, from Santiago de Cuba’s Editorial Oriente publishers, is La rebelion de Aponte de 1812 en Cuba y la lucha contra la esclavitud atlantica (The Aponte Rebellion of 1812 in Cuba and the Struggle Against Atlantic Slavery) by Matt D. Childs (Florida State University).
When looking at the book, what struck me most was that it has a reconstructed picture on the cover of Aponte’s face. The edition is sponsored by ALBA, in its bicentennial program.
Waiting for Aponte’s return
We hope that both titles provide sufficient certainties as to stir the consciousness of Cubans in a time of change and uncertainty, and we must acknowledge the help of our North American friends in the difficult job of de-formalizing certain topics.
In the midst of World War II, when the fate of all of humanity was at risk of the appropriation of increasingly large portions of Europe and Asia by genocidal, exclusionary and racist regimes, some leftists here on this Caribbean island were able to honor someone still little known by history.
While still today — 50 years after the triumph of insurrection — Havana’s old palaces bear the proud names of their very rich and very white owners, one street in Old Havana holds the name of a craftsman, worker and black conspirator: Aponte.
The monument that official commission promised to erect in 2012 has yet to be seen. It is supposed to be situated at the point where Reina Street turns into Carlos III (forgive me! – Simon Bolivar and Salvador Allende streets): the statue of the victorious Aponte, recognized in the Yoruba tradition as Oboni-Oni-Chango, will be trampling the cage in which his head was condemned to rot.From an adjacent wall, a face of Karl Marx in relief seems to look at the site, while continuing to lead his lonely fight against the obscurity of rust and neglect.
If we want to continue to believe in freedom, equality and fraternity, we need to continue drawing from the darkness of that oblivion that fragments the precious pieces of historical memory: surnames and nicknames of the most humble. Because, according to Walter Benjamin, “Thanks only to the desperate will we be granted hope.”
About The author; Dmitri Prieto-Samsonov: I define myself as being either Cuban-Russian or Russian-Cuban, indiscriminately. I was born in Moscow in 1972 of a Russian mother and a Cuban father. I lived in the USSR until I was 13, although I was already familiar with Cuba-- where we would take our vacation almost every year. I currently live on the fifth floor of an apartment building in Santa Cruz del Norte, near the sea. I’ve studied biochemistry and law in Havana and anthropology in London. I’ve written about molecular biology, philosophy and anarchism, although I enjoy reading more than writing. I am currently teaching in the Agrarian University of Havana. I believe in God and in the possibility of a free society. Together with other people, that’s what we’re into: breaking down walls and routines.
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