Who Are the Black Revolutionaries?: Resistance in Cuba and the State Boundaries That Endure

The tension between Black Power and the Cuban state necessitates a wider definition of what it means to be a Black revolutionary. This chapter not only asks who are Cuba’s Black revolutionaries, but what have been the boundaries since 1959 in which they have had to live, act, and dialogue? Cuba demonstrates that a socialist state in the Western hemisphere will not yield a Black liberation movement any more than a capitalist one. The author argues that the state has left little options for fighting structural racism in Cuba. For this reason, scholars need to consider a wider ideological space and net to include Black revolutionaries as those outside of Cuba as well as Cubans that remain in private spaces, outside of the public sphere.