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ABSTRACT
In Cuba, race, nation, and popular music were inextricably linked to the earliest formulations of a national identity. This article examines how the racialized discourse of blanqueamiento, or whitening, became part of a nineteenth-century literary narrative in which the casi blanca mulata, nearly white mulatta, was seen as a vehicle for whitening black Cubans. However, as the novels of Cirilo Villaverde and Ramón Meza reveal, the mulata's inability to produce entirely white children established the ultimate unattainability of whiteness by nonwhites. This article analyzes the fluidity of these racial constructs and demonstrates that, while these literary texts advocated the lightening of the nation's complexion over time, they also mapped the progressive "darkening" of Cuban music as popular culture continued to borrow from black music.
RESUMEN
En Cuba, y desde un principio, los discursos sobre raza, nación y música popular se vinculan a los conceptos de una identidad nacional. En este artículo se examina la incorporación del proceso discursivo del blanqueamiento a la narrativo literaria del siglo xix. Dicho discurso asignó a "la mulata casi blanca" el papel de agente homogenizador, responsable de fomentar el blanqueamiento del negro cubano. Sin embargo, como las novelas de Cirilo Villaverde y Ramón Meza revelan, el poder reproductivo de la mulata se ve limitado al no poder traspasar las fronteras raciales que establecian lo que implicaba ser "blanco" en Cuba. Este artículo analiza la fluidez que caracteriza estas construcciones raciales y demuestra que, mientras que estos textos literarios abogaban por el blanqueamiento de la futura nación, también señalan cómo la música cubana se fue "oscureciendo" progresivamente a medida que el elemento Afrocubano fue influvendo en la cultura popular.
No nos queda más remedio que blanquear y blanquear.
José Antonio Saco, 1835
Race, nation, and popular music were inextricably linked within the earliest discursive formulations of a Cuban national identity. As early as 1835, José Antonio Saco, generally recognized as the earliest "apostle" of Cuban nationalism, argued that miscegenation was the only viable means of incorporating Afro-Cubans into the eventual Cuban nation. In a letter to Gonzalo Alfonso, Saco suggested that if Cuba was to have a place in the world of nations it had no alternative "but to whiten and whiten." In the aftermath of Britain's 1833 abolition...