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Alejandro de la Fuente, (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press 2001)
BETWEEN 1868 AND 1959 Cuba had four revolutions. There were two anti-colonial wars for independence against Spain, the first from 1868 to 1879, and the second from 1895 to 1898. There were two more revolutions in the 20th century, one in 1933, and the other in 1959. Most of the existing literature discusses how these revolutions influenced the process of Cuban state formation and political economy. Yet until recently the scholarship on how the meanings of race have changed within the larger processes of national formation has been remarkably weak. This gap in the literature is surprising given the powerful influence of the African heritage in Cuba's history. Alejandro de la Fuente's A Nation for All goes a long way to fill this gap in Cuban historiography. The author's thoughtful, well written, and sophisticated analysis of the shifting meanings of race, class, and politics in 20th-century Cuba makes this book essential reading for Cuban specialists, Latin Americanists, and for anyone working on the problems of race and class.
The author begins his discussion with the years 1902 to 1933, which were the formative years of the Cuban republic. It was at this time that Cubans debated and literally fought over the interwoven meanings of race, citizenship, and democracy in a nominally independent country under US hegemony. A powerful rhetoric of racial equality had emerged during the wars for independence and Afro-Cubans demanded that an independent Cuba end racism. Such a demand made the political implications of independence frightening for the white upper-classes and for the US. Nationalist and anti-racist rhetoric insisted that there should be no whites, blacks, or mulattos, but only Cubans. Yet this sentiment existed precisely because Cuban...