Garvey-Rodney-Marley: a Pan-African bridge over Cuba

Abstract

The race/colour question and its political implications in Cuba have been foregrounded recently. A cross-section of Cuban society has encouraged discourses on racial awareness and anti-racist epistemologies as direct or indirect, but positive, outcomes of the encounter with ideas of decolonisation promoted by Black movements and readings of Black Caribbean intellectuals. Through history and the multidisciplinary nature of cultural studies, this article explores regional intersections among Pan-Africanism, Caribbean social and intellectual thought, and some expressions of these ideas in Cuba. It focuses on identity, Black consciousness and the tangential impact of Pan-Africanism as a political ideology on Cuba in three different periods. The author argues that the ideas of Marcus Garvey, Walter Rodney and Bob Marley provide ideologically connecting points in the assessment of cross-cultural connections between Cuba and the Caribbean.

Keywords

Black Power Bob Marley Cuban Revolution Garveyism Pan-Africanism Rastafari Walter Rodney

Cuba, a space of historical transculturation in America, has often been challenged as a valid ground for Pan-African ideology. On the one hand, most progressive political activists and Black intellectuals in the Caribbean and other regions have expressed their solidarity with and have assumed Cuba as an example of all-inclusive emancipatory ideas, whereas newer generations generally ignore the sacrifices made by the Cuban people for the African anti-colonial/anti-apartheid struggles and liberation movements. And Cuba has a long history of Black activism in politics, culture and society. On the other hand, the largest Caribbean island’s revolutionary struggles, resistance and resilience have been effective because, among other things, the ideas of national unity and single ethnicity have always, and even now, been elevated over and above allegedly divisive discourses of racial diversity. This is what many social science scholars call ‘the raceless nature’ of Cuban history.

Despite these counterpoints, Pan-Africanism and revolution are certainly not incompatible ideas. Partisan intellectuals and politicians of both must be aware of solidarity with the Black world, have responsibilities with ‘mental decolonisation’ and be committed to the fight against the capitalist depletion of natural resources and the need to ‘rehabilitate the human spirit’.¹

These comprehensive ideas have been articulated in cultural, social and economic terms – with expressions of knowledge and respect of cultural roots and ethnic diversity, with demands for reparations and social justice, as well as action against racial discrimination and prejudice. However, when Pan-Africanism reaches the political arena, it is particularly contentious in the Cuban case. For example, the potential political outreach of Pan-Africanism is met with some reservations: on reparations, the Cuban government has expressed solidarity with other nations’ demands; the race/colour debate is considered an enemy-promoted narrative used to create divisions within our nation’s civil society where notions of preserving national unity and sovereignty are paramount. Though some Caribbean and African leaders have articulated the idea that Fidel Castro is the Blackest man they have met, because of his support for African liberation struggles and the revolutionary transformations of Cuban society, Pan-African ideologies have not been developed as part and parcel of Cuba’s intellectual and political tradition. This article poses some considerations anchored in history, to revisit past formulations and processes and to assess more recent sociocultural dynamics so as to explore regional intersections among Pan-Africanism, Caribbean social and intellectual thought, and expressions of these in Cuba.

One of the most important categories in this academic quest is that of ideology; its definitions are themselves ideological as they respond to the interests and ideas (i.e. philosophy) of a particular class or group either in power or subordinated to power structures. Let us assume the integrative distinction between political ideas and ideologies, which acknowledges ‘the close connection between the formulation of political ideas and the sociopolitical context in which they emerge . . . and the vital interrelationship and interdependence among ideas themselves’.² Denis Benn argues that political ideas is ‘a general category, involving a wide variety of formulations about sociopolitical phenomena’, whereas ideology is a ‘special category, seen as fairly systematic evaluative interpretations of the sociopolitical order’.³ I call it an integrative distinction in as much as the sociopolitical ideas, which formulate actions for the defence, criticism or promotion of values and interests, may be regarded also as ideological in nature. Therefore, this distinction merges its two elements. The Pan-Africanist ideology is an example of this as it covers both formulation and action and evaluative understanding or analysis of any given sociopolitical order. It has shaped the anti-colonial and emancipatory dreams and actions of all peoples of African descent in the African continent and in the rest of the world – mainly in North America, Latin America and the Caribbean − with a complex set of cultural, historical, social, spiritual, political and economic ideas. Therefore, Pan-Africanism is not an ideology of the past, supposedly overcome by the conflicts of post-coloniality and the complexities of the contemporary sociopolitical context; it complements the current worldwide activism against discrimination, violence and xenophobia. A Pan-Africanist icon such as Walter Rodney would have expressed today very open statements against the so-called war on terrorism that threatens ‘sixty or more dark corners of the world’;⁴ these are the underdeveloped and developing countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Garveyism, Black Power, and Rastafari are just three of these integrative Pan-Africanist conceptions which have guided the actions of other leaders and their followers over time in the Caribbean. I have chosen three pillars: Marcus Garvey, Walter Rodney and Bob Marley. Their ideas have had, at some point in history, a direct or indirect connection to Cuba by way of the popular acceptance (e.g., the widespread embrace of Garveyist ideas in the country). Walter Rodney’s support of the Cuban revolutionary process also embodies an analogy and interrelationship between two complementary sets of ideas (namely, a people’s revolution and Pan-Africanism). The conscious interpretations of Rastafari symbols and ideas (as happened in Cuba after the impact of Bob Marley’s music and reggae in some social groups) also conveyed anti-colonial, anti-imperialist and anti-racist concepts. In other words, Caribbean social, political and cultural thought has always, in one way or another, regarded Cuba’s history in its full essence, although some historians and cultural theorists and critics hold the view that Cubans have not reciprocally considered themselves fully part of the Caribbean.

Another commonality between these icons is their discourses about identity, freedom and emancipation. These aspects have been central to the ideology of Pan-Africanism. Some would argue that these are ‘heretical’ discourses because they involve ‘dialectical relationships between center and periphery, non-liminal or radical and liminal ideas, and normative and heretical belief systems’. These dialectical tensions are generated from a condition of ‘unfreedom, dread, and state of nonbeing among heretics’.⁵ Overcoming these negative conditions and achieving states of freedom and full professional realisation among collective interests are aims of these anti-hegemonic views willing to take on normative authorities regardless of the costs.

This article focuses on identity, assumed to be an individual or collective response or reaction to a sociohistorical and political context, determined by a social order or socioeconomic infrastructure that subordinates one group to another, given the definition of ideology stated above. This entails cultural, social and political expressions. Black consciousness is one of these responses to oppression and the need of emancipation, so analysing Blackness as a reaction to an imperative social order goes beyond the analysis of individual attitudes and ideologies throughout time; it is a diachronic approach to a system of ethnic and race relations. The tangential impact of Pan-Africanism as a political ideology and its direct, or indirect, presence in Cuba at different historical moments is the subject matter of this analysis. I argue that the ideas spread by Marcus Garvey, Walter Rodney and Bob Marley provide ideologically connecting points in the assessment of cross-cultural connections between Cuba and the Caribbean. The impact they had on identity is recorded at a grassroots level and shaped by the work of activists, so even if there is a focus on individuals, I do not intend to dismiss the socially and historically determined role of the people (social groups) in the construction of Black consciousness.

Garveyism in Cuba

Marcus Garvey visited Cuba at least once, from 28 February until 11 or 12 March 1921. However, his Pan-African philosophy had gained popularity before the visit, especially among the West Indian immigrants and the Blacks in general in the Eastern provinces by the late 1910s and the early 1920s. The more than fifty Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) branches existing all over Cuba organised meetings, provided information, held social activities and even raised funds for a possible repatriation to Africa. Garvey had not only acquired noteworthy status as an anti-colonial leader of ‘the Black race’, but also as a businessman and politician.

Proselytisation might not have been the real purpose of the visit. According to the meetings Garvey attended, the people he met, and the elitist places and clubs he visited, it is unlikely that he came only to proselytise and attract human and material support for the UNIA.⁶ Regardless of the actual aim of Garvey’s visit to Cuba (to set up contacts to boost his shipping business with the exports of Cuba’s rising sugar industry, fund raising for the UNIA budget, high level economic matters, etc.) hidden behind the proselytising mission, the fact is that his Pan-African ideology had a profound impact on grassroots people, who were at the same time those who least benefitted from these actual business objectives.

The construction of the nation (Cubanness), particularly during the first ten years of the neo-colonial republic (1902−1912), faced serious contradictions around the race issue. The nationalist tradition fuelled an imaginary racial integration and social inclusion. A conservative elitist understanding of this ‘nationality’ denied the existence of a race issue; whiteness was legitimised as the only condition for a stable progress, and immigration policies were racially controlled.⁷ The race question took deeper root through social, cultural and political actions (mutual-aid societies, recreational clubs, print press, etc.) among Blacks in general, since they could not have access to the new republican institutions, even if they had an economic and cultural level equal to the middle-class whites’.⁸

The economic and social infrastructure was defined by the increasing and overwhelming presence of United States’ capital and political interests in essential industries (mainly agriculture and mining) as well as the newly installed US naval base in Guantánamo, thus consolidating a military and economic hegemony in Cuba and the wider Caribbean. This context widened the racial and social divides between ‘the Cubans’ and ‘the Black Cubans’ – the latter being further relegated to a situation of inferiority by the invasion of this American (US) ideology of white superiority and Black fear, after having experienced the frustrated independence and marginalisation/exclusion from political life in the neo-colonial republic. Although Blacks were getting relatively higher levels of cultural instruction − illiteracy among them was still 74 per cent − access to the new republican institutions was limited for them,⁹ and opportunities of upward mobility were the privilege of a very few. In this context, the Blacks were the main activists in the struggles to fight racism, violence, rape and low wages. The repression and bloodshed in 1912 against the Independent Color Party members (ICP, 1908−1912) generated a tense racial environment which lasted several years; segregation in public spaces of several cities and towns provoked racial confrontations. Moreover, the USA-run agricultural corporations, in an operation sanctioned by the local republican authorities, imported cheap Black labour from the rest of the Caribbean. West Indian and Haitian workers outnumbered white immigration, mostly from Spain, which did not meet the needs of industrial capital. Black immigration (mainly to Eastern Cuba and Havana) during the first two decades of the twentieth century gradually integrated itself in the political, economic and social life; however, it also drove a wedge between different sections of Cuban society, i.e., the exploiters in power and the exploited. Even though president G. Machado (1925−1933) gained some popularity among his followers as a ‘pro-black president’¹⁰ − for some, politically-designed actions aimed at recovering the Black vote − the more radical sectors discredited this strategy which coincided with the increase of Black (West Indian) immigration to meet the demands for labour in the sugar industry.

The remarkable response to Garvey’s ideas and mobilisation project within this sociopolitical context was possible because of the already existing level of organisation, both socially and politically. All over the country there were hundreds of Clubs, Cabildos, Directorios and Associations of people of colour particularly in Havana, the central region and in the Eastern region where the sugar industry was most developed. Some of these civil society organisations had been the foundation of a Black political community since the early republican years, when politicians used them to lobby during their electoral campaigns. Other Black institutions drew from progressive ideals of ethnic identity which were ‘inventing Africa’, lobbying about repatriation¹¹ and consolidating a mutual-aid cultural community of their own. These organisations often published manifestos that explicitly stated their programme of action and aspirations for Blacks in different social strata. The Directorio (Directorate of Citizens of Colour) created in Camagüey, for example, explicitly declared that ‘as from today the colour race in Camagüey will no longer be a social element without leadership; on the contrary, assisted by the right afforded by our citizenship and in accordance with our own efforts, we are inclined towards giving moral, political and economic distinction to the individuals of our race’. In so doing, they called all the ‘citizens of colour’, regardless of their political affiliation (Liberal or Conservative), to agitate within their respective party guidelines for a practical guarantee of their rights.¹² These were the ‘heretic’ or radical voices of some Afro-Cubans who challenged the white elite that threatened to whiten Cuba’s social and political life. Therefore, the complex Cubanness in the making could not reconcile the envisioned nationality of racial plurality with the whitening homogeneity promoted by conservative forces.

Undesired and discriminated against by the whitening elite and underpaid by the sugar lords, the Black Caribbean immigrants had joined the Afro-Cuban radicals (whose political activity was shattered by the above-mentioned repression in 1912). Both faced the harshest aspect of the racial contradictions during these years.

The genius of Garvey’s ideology was the mobilisation of most Blacks and oppressed people in Cuba, regardless of language and place of origin. These sectors of the population later listened to Garveyism and believed in its solutions (effective or not, real or ideal) for their situations. Garvey reminded the Cubans that they would not be forgotten during the construction of the African state and would be respected as African descendants, regardless of the individual decision of being a citizen of the country of birth or residence.¹³ This effect soon waned, not only in Cuba, but in Afro-America − the US and other territories where the UNIA developed apace. Four years after his visit to Cuba, Garvey was a victim of the US government boycott against his organisation. He was eventually destroyed as a Black leader, sent to prison and expelled from the US – the country where he used to have the largest support for his emancipatory project.

However, some aspects of Garvey’s philosophy had penetrated the minds of many Black Cubans and West Indian immigrants. Despite the fact that Garvey declared that it was not his intention to take the Blacks to Africa, the idea of going back to Africa spread over most of Black America and material actions to bring it about were actually planned in detail more than once during the twentieth century. The significant support for the initial objectives¹⁴ of the UNIA in Cuba definitely left a mark on many Cubans and West Indian immigrants. Going back to Africa, at least spiritually, was then an ideal solution to many desperate people facing racial discrimination. However, soon after Garvey’s visit, the enthusiastic support gradually decreased and all hopes were shut down. Such traces of Garvey’s ideas of unity of the Black race were seen, for example, in Reyita’s testimony: ‘That love for the native land that my grandma instilled on me was very influential in my determination to enrol in the Marcus Garvey’s movement – to go to Africa − tired of being discriminated against for being Black.’¹⁵ Another example of the evident marks of Garveyism among the oldest Rastas in Jamaica was recorded by Barry Chevannes, who documented the experience of an immigrant who returned to Jamaica from Cuba, probably before the demise of the UNIA:

Garvey common over Cuba. Nothing but Garvey. Any time you hear a bell there is Salvation Army or a man talking bout Africa. Even the Cubans. I remember one day a Cuban man asked a Jamaican man what him is, and the man say him is English. The Cuban man say, ‘You English? You English?’ And the Cuban man laughed that day! Till I shame! Him say. ‘You is African, not an English.’¹⁶

As stated above, Garveyism in Cuba developed when the official discourse promoted a concept of nationality regardless of race. This is the foundational pillar of the Pan-African connection that started in the middle of a social context that promoted racial pride among some sectors of the Afro-Cuban population, both in the working and even in the middle classes.

Whether political activism, or the reinterpretation of Pan-African ideas in the Garvey movement, the objectives were not too far apart. The political protest was aimed at gaining legitimate representation in the national government, equal rights and social opportunities in the making of the republic. Whereas adherents of Garveyism promoted mutual aid, Black pride and challenged racial discrimination. But both played roles in ensuring that the race issue was taken account of in every discussion around Cuban nationalism during the early republican period and beyond, prior to the momentum of anti-colonial ideas and independence struggles in Africa and the Caribbean.

Walter Rodney and Cuba

Some forty years after the evident influence of Garveyism, the Guyanese Walter Rodney travelled to Cuba twice − in 1962 and in 1968. The Caribbean postcolonial context when Rodney visited Cuba featured political tensions created by right-wing or pro-US governments which followed the new post-independence, nationalist, left-wing governments in Guyana (Jagan-Burnham) or Jamaica (Manley-Shearer). The New World and other similar groups promoted progressive ideas of change in their respective radical publications, such as Abeng and Outlet, fighting against imperialism and creating consciousness in the intelligentsia.

Cuba was going through a period of huge and lasting revolutionary transformations in the economic, social, cultural and political arenas, despite imperialist aggressions and threats. The country was also the focus of attention of, and supported by, international progressive forces. Additionally, several events impacted the making of a new nation and the ‘new man’. Colonial history instilled a form of racism and racial prejudice in Cuban culture, which was re-constructed during the early twentieth century to favour the needs and hegemony of the ruling classes. During the early 1960s, the myth around the overnight elimination of racial prejudices and institutional racist policies soon emerged alongside the progressive ideas of revolutionary change, Che Guevara’s conception of the ‘new man’, and the construction of the first socialist system in the Americas.

However, in the early years of the Revolution, together with the popular manifestation of the African roots, there was a cultural policy promoting the expression of this constituent of Cuban culture through performing arts. The National Folkloric Group (created on 7 May 1962) and the Modern Dance Company, among others, staged many artistic representations of Cuba’s African ancestry. The Department of Folklore of the National Theatre was replaced by the Folklore and Ethnology Institute of the Cuban Academy of Sciences;¹⁷ a significant step to channel the growing interests of an important group of intellectuals in researching and promoting the knowledge of Cuba’s African heritage. These efforts had an immediate positive effect in terms of popular access to cultural production. For example, the Guiñol (Puppet) theatre, created not long before, staged for the first time ever several plays for adults and children about Afro-Cuban culture, such as Changó de Ima, La Loma de Mambiala¹⁸ and Ibeye Añá. Popular music, also joined this ‘Afro-Cubanist’ momentum with the creation of Mozambique, the most popular rhythm and dance movement during the whole decade of the 1960s, which initiated ‘a freeing up of body movements’ unknown before in Cuban popular dance.¹⁹

Cuban culture was, therefore, in line with the Pan-African ideas promoted in the Caribbean and other parts of the world by intellectual advocates. Part of this experience is what Walter Rodney would have witnessed during his first visit to Cuba in February 1962, when he was a doctoral student of African History at the University of the West Indies and came as part of a delegation from his university to a Latin American and Caribbean students’ conference. He definitely noticed that an ‘interest in the African revolution, in the African plastic arts and drama, and in the history of Africans in the New World is cultivated in Cuba today’, he said, ‘at a level that is far above the neo-colonialist Jamaica, which is 95 percent black’.²⁰

However, later in the decade, the contradictory cultural policy with respect to this earlier promotion of Afro-Cuban cultural heritage was soon noticed. The Jamaican novelist and journalist Andrew Salkey, for example, during his visit to Havana on the occasion of the World Cultural Congress²¹ in 1968, subtly – though sarcastically − drops the issue in his Havana Journal when he describes a buffet breakfast at his hotel:

… the Habana Libre . . . played it safely international: juices, eggs scrambled, fried, poached and boiled, bacon, toasts, rolls, coffee, tea. I, rather perversely, missed the Cuban national and Afro-Cuban touch. Mentioned the fact to [my colleague] John [La Rose] who recommended a quick change back to journalism.²²

Few others were more incisively critical in reference to signs of exclusion of numerous Afro-Cuban intellectuals and questioning the ‘all white’ composition of the Cuban delegation to the World Cultural Congress.²³

Rodney was one of the most prominent activists of the Black Power²⁴ movement in the Caribbean, which by 1966 had already begun to grow internationally. Therefore, as a new political ideology ‘under the stimulus of the revolutionary theory emerging out of the liberation struggles in the Third World, the Black nationalism, originally articulated by Blyden and Garvey, returned to the American scene in a new revolutionary guise’.²⁵ Rodney’s thought was a result of African anti-colonial and independence movements, which had tremendous popular support. The African independence movement, for example with Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s leadership during those early years of the Ghanaian Republic founded in 1958, was one of the several simultaneous processes to revert the socioeconomic and political colonial structures in the African continent, which is interconnected with the Civil Rights Movement in the USA and the support for the Cuban Revolution among various radical and left-wing sectors. As a young Caribbean who had been exposed to the ideas of British and bourgeois standards of success, Rodney was attracted to the Cuban Revolution as well as to the Rastafari movement; he sought to make his contribution to both in his small pamphlet The Groundings with my Brothers. Rodney was a fervent admirer of Fidel Castro and socialism;²⁶ therefore, he had saved the necessary space in his articles and speeches for his progressive ideas about Cuba. For him, Cuba was an example of independence from white domination – which Rodney called ‘imperialism’– and of how to bring down the walls between dominant and dominated.²⁷ In this way, he understood the Cuban discourse around national unity:

Black Cubans today enjoy political, economic, and social rights and opportunities of exactly the same kind as white Cubans . . . Having achieved their rights, they can in fact afford to forget the category ‘black’ and think simply as Cuban citizens, as Socialist equals and as men [and women].²⁸

Besides, the publication of his How Europe Underdeveloped Africa opens the first chapter with a quotation from a Che Guevara speech demanding the elimination of exploitation to eradicate underdevelopment and its consequences. In general, Cuba was very influential on his ideas, partly because of what he experienced, partly because of the literature that he had access to and actually got hold of while on the island.

Both Rodney’s anti-imperialist ideals and Cuba’s battle for full emancipation and the elimination of inequalities through a socialist revolution were common interests in Pan-African ideology. However, the emancipatory efforts in the field of culture to consolidate the revolutionary process and national unity, together with the strong anti-discrimination campaign, had an unwanted side-effect: it paradoxically led to the birth of the taboo (i.e., the silence over racial identity, prejudice and identification with African ancestries promoted by the civic institutions, clubs and mutual-aid associations of the pre-revolution years). In this regard, the 1960s’ context is best captured in the words of Fernando Martínez Heredia:

Racism, that infamous ingredient in the making of Cuban culture and essential part of the 19^th century domination system, has a history which cannot be isolated from our liberation struggles. The foundation and the capacity of social reproduction of this racism were heavily undermined by the same 1959 Revolution. However, anti-racism was soon relegated tacitly [author’s emphasis] to the background, and its objectives were subordinated to the accomplishment of the most generalizing goals of the same revolutionary process which intended to overcome racism. The Cuban intellectual tradition in those years was not solidly focused on this topic. This is the reason why Black Skin, White Masks was published in 1968; this was a very important event.²⁹

The publication of Fanon’s book in Cuba contributed to nationalist, revolutionary and Pan-African narratives of young intellectuals (artists, writers, academics and musicians) of that period.³⁰ However, the knowledge of ethnic roots and respect for diverse cultural heritage³¹ dangerously lagged behind as a result of ‘a significant gap in Cuban culture’ which could only be bridged by the ‘full assimilation of the ingredients of African origin and other non-hispanic components’.³²

The Black Power action, that Rodney advocated, urged for non-passive methods including different levels of violence to achieve anti-imperialist and anti-racist objectives. This appeal to violence for liberation purposes leads to a significant analogy between Rodney’s philosophy and the way the Cuban Revolution came to power. He made constant references to the revolutionary process, in conscious allusions to the implementation of violent means to exercise power and challenge the white-mulatto oppressive alliance and the ‘whitened’ Blacks of the ruling classes in the Caribbean. ‘If there is to be any proving of our humanity, it must be by revolutionary means. The Cuban revolution has already demonstrated in this hemisphere the role and achievement of Black people as participant in the people’s war against imperialism.’³³

Rodney was definitely a known person in Cuba, though by a very reduced number of contacts during his second visit from November 1968 to June 1969 after he was banned in Jamaica.³⁴ The Cuban newspaper Granma, although it covers the news of his banning and subsequent riots, provides incomplete information on the significance of his Pan-African anti-imperialist ideas. The brief report simply focuses on the resulting damage and the location of the riots, not on his ideology.³⁵ Nevertheless, it is to be understood, from his links to Cuba and admiration for the Revolution, that Rodney’s view followed his conception of power dynamics, as stated in his Groundings. It was based more on political and ideological grounds rather than constructed on a purely racial basis. This may help to explain why Rodney, being such an insightful Pan-African ideologist, failed to grasp, from an interpretative point of view, the racial dynamics in Cuba during the time of his longest visit to the country.³⁶ Other Black Power activists who travelled to Cuba around this time and later in the early 1970s might not have agreed with what Rodney said in Groundings where he defined ‘White Power’ as ‘the power of whites over blacks without any participation of the blacks’.³⁷ Therefore, according to him, Cuba had already eliminated ‘White Power’. However, in keeping with the sociopolitical situation in the late 1960s, Black Power was considered a divisive ideology if exercised in Cuba against the discourse of national unity of Blacks and whites. Eldridge Cleaver, for example, enjoyed life during his exile in Cuba until he started to organise a Black Panther chapter in Havana, then ‘the shit hit the fan’, wrote William Lee Brent, another Black Panther Party militant, in his memoire.³⁸ The Black Power movement was considered positive and progressive by Cuba, so long as it referred to Afro-American political activism. This is evident in the repercussions in Cuba’s printed press (Granma) of the Black Panthers’ activities in California and other cities in the United States. Brent, who had come to Cuba in June 1969, over the years of his exile, got to have a more objective understanding of the racial situation in Cuba. In a conversation with Huey P. Newton in Havana, Newton said that he heard the government was racist. Brent clarified:

I’d run into several racist Cubans, but I thought the wide racial mixing showed that the problem was more a lack of racial sensitivity than out-and-out racism. People referred to each other affectionately as chino, negro, blanco, without any overt racial overtones. Nevertheless, racism had existed before the revolution, and I didn’t think fourteen years was enough time to wipe it out completely.³⁹

Both were very active Black Panthers.

Nevertheless, the idea of publishing a Cuban translation and edition of Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa in Havana gained force in the late 1970s. The book was finally printed in 1981. The prologue presents it as a fair way to enrich ‘the knowledge of the African past’ and present. It highlights the connections between Rodney’s work and Marxism-Leninism. It provides Cuban readers the possibility of approaching Rodney’s social thought and radical, political activism that epitomise the heretical discourse looking for a radical transformation of the world from the condition of subjugation. However, the prologue warns readers of some ‘mistakes’ and ‘negative criticisms’, such as ‘his hyperbolizing discussion of the racial factor to explain some aspects of the European colonial domination of Africa’.⁴⁰ Was there any other way of rewriting the history of colonisation of Africa other than ‘hyperbolizing’ the culture of resistance that western historiography had silenced for so long? In other words, this makes it evident that the new Cuban intellectual tradition of the 1980s (contrary to that of the 1960s) was not ready yet for either an objective critical assessment of Rodney’s Pan-African ideology in its widest sense, or the possibility of its acceptance or promotion in the country.

In a nutshell, Rodney was a Pan-African icon in his own right; Cuba was very meaningful for his ideology and his radical Black Power advocacy, but this did not fully fit in Cuba’s sociopolitical context. ‘This question of Blackness’, said Rodney, ‘comes to the fore every time we attempt to come to terms with our condition, and sometimes it takes strange forms.’ One of these forms is ‘the religious beliefs of the Rastafarians’.⁴¹

Rastafari culture and Cuba

Rastafari culture is essentially a recent expression in Cuba. It started to develop in the very late 1970s, not only as a religion but rather in its cultural manifestation, leaving behind the social and political connotation it had during the 1960s in Jamaica. However, it was only in the mid-1990s that it became a socially visible phenomenon, though small-scale in influence, all over the nation.

Garveyism – one of its ideological roots in the 1930s − was highly accepted among Black Cubans and West Indian migrants, but half a century later it was not equally meaningful to the young and newly converted Cuban Rastas. The link in this cross-cultural connection was mainly reggae music, which caused some youth to think and interpret the associated iconography and symbols (the colours, the lion, the dreadlocks, the lifestyle, etc.) by either imitating them, transferring them to a new setting, or consciously readapting them to the national context. And these codes carried a racialised meaning: reggae was considered a ‘Black’ music; some young Afro-Cuban fans and sympathisers who started to discover a feeling of racial identity during the 1980s accepted it as their own and gradually identified with it.

Music in English, like rock and, of course, reggae, was very limited on the airwaves during the first two decades of the Revolution. However, soul, R&B and funk were popular in Havana during the 1980s. Motown giants and other African-American artists were often on popular radio and TV programmes. As a result, according to a Rasta informant, a Soul Fans Club was constituted in Havana and remained active for some time. Reggae was not played in the media as much as American music, so it was handed from person to person on cassette tapes recorded from original LPs or from the frequent reception of foreign FM radio stations in Eastern Cuba; it was also played in private and sometimes at secretly organised parties or gatherings.⁴² This means that the lack of media support did not prevent reggae music from becoming popular among those early enthusiasts in some suburban neighbourhoods of Havana. Moreover, reggae lovers were seen as the ‘moñudos’,⁴³ trouble-makers, far less in number than those listening to pop music. Therefore, since its beginnings in Cuba, reggae was associated with Blackness and marginality.

Some events in the sociopolitical context were also very influential. The diplomatic relations with newly independent Caribbean nations (Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago were the first to agree on 4 December 1972 to open embassies in Havana) contributed not only to breaking the political isolation imposed on the island by the US hostile policies, but also to expanding cultural exchange. Moreover, Cuba was solidifying a prestigious solidarity with various African countries in education, health, military and other fields by providing scholarships to high school and universities and also Cuban work brigades who provided technical assistance. But the discourse around racial identity and ethnicity was still a taboo and regarded divisive and against national identity, despite the continued defence by visual artists, musicians and writers of the African roots of Cuban folklore. Another parallel and determining process in this context was the ‘temporary immigration’ of Jamaican and other West Indian students after 1972, who came as a result of the fraternal ties with some countries of the region. These young men and women, mostly Black, brought with them not only the first reggae LPs and cassette tapes, but also an underlying knowledge and personal experience of the level of organisation of Rastafari in their respective countries. One of the Rastas in the early eighties recalls his relations to these Caribbean people:

Jamaicans came to take an annual course in construction jobs. They settled in Santiago de Cuba and here in Havana . . . I had the opportunity to share some of my time with them. Those years were to me a way to form a new impression about the Black people, different Black people, very different from the Cubans, despite the fact that we have very similar roots.⁴⁴

Based in the Isle of Youth, Havana, Cienfuegos and other cities, they soon mixed in with their Cuban classmates and enjoyed playing Caribbean music at festive gatherings.

Definitely, there was a cross-cultural exchange during the many leisure hours before, between and after classes in which both parties learned something new. Some Cubans not only listened, but also learned how to listen to reggae music, which conveyed the radical message⁴⁵ of political and mental liberation. In other words, they were not only able to incorporate ecologic lessons of respect of nature but also able to elicit lessons about the past and the present, about African roots and racial identity, about anti-racism and regional (Caribbean/Third World/North vs South) awareness, about opposition to the warlike ‘politricks’ of (neo-)colonialism and imperialism – none of which was visible in the homogenising cultural discourses in Cuba. Therefore, Bob Marley (through his music) also ‘visited’ Cuba before and after his death. By this time, the Pan-African ideas of Rastafari had started to expand globally. Within the African continent, Rastafari developed beyond Ethiopia. The music accompanied late independence processes in countries like Zimbabwe, and Marley himself became a world leader of revolutionary ideas. The movement kept growing as a strong force of opposition to white racism.

At the core of this message lay the African and Caribbean roots of Rastafari culture, which chimed with those of some Cuban fans and adherents. How did it wake up in Cuba? When a serious economic crisis in the 1990s forced Cubans to live under severe conditions, the government reoriented the domestic economy to international tourism and foreign investments. Cuban society was therefore more exposed to foreign sociocultural patterns, which led towards more intensive and extensive cross-cultural contacts. The foreigner, generally white and wealthy, increased the Eurocentric stereotypes that permeated the structure of social equality. The Afro-Cuban population (many of the Rasta-reggae enthusiasts among them) was most affected socially, psychologically and economically⁴⁶ by negative experiences of racial prejudices, marginalisation and other such things at the time.⁴⁷ These contradictions, which had lain dormant under the veil of the homogeneous and egalitarian Cuban nation, were more visible alongside the re-emerging discourse of cultural diversity which now positively relaxed the taboo around discussions on race.

This context contributed to a progressive but more dynamic evolution towards the identification of ethnic roots and racial identity. For example, the Rastafari world view and Marley’s (roots reggae in general) message induced some Cuban early ‘converts’ to understand, to explain for themselves (by mere imitation, and sometimes by religious or Biblical interpretations) the physical repatriation to Africa. An interesting reinterpretation of Garvey’s back-to-Africa discourse appeared in Cuban reggae when the ‘Special Period’⁴⁸ was still in full force in the late 1990s. Garvey was not as well-known as he was in the 1920s, but a song transgressively titled ‘Repatriation’ echoed not only one aspect of the most orthodox Rastafarian philosophy, but also suggested an unambiguous ‘return’ in difficult times.⁴⁹ Whereas repatriation was not then a major tenet of Pan-African ideology, this feeling quickly evolved among the majority into a politically oriented consciousness; a pride and knowledge of their African heritage. The lyrics of some songs were explicitly dedicated to Mother Africa, with sincere feelings of belonging and solidarity directed towards ‘her’ (personalisation of the continent) when the Cuban contribution in various fields to many African nations was unquestionably and increasingly acknowledged by progressive forces worldwide. In ‘Africa, la musa y yo’, for example, the singer proudly identifies himself as ‘100% Afro-Cuban’.⁵⁰

This ethno-racial affiliation presents itself in various ways: in the process of understanding the historical causes of and fights against prejudices, marginalisation and discrimination; in the search for paradigmatic figures, generally foreign, like M. Garvey, Malcom X, B. Marley; in the pleasure of preferring negro as a form of address instead of some euphemistic terms of endearment like moreno, mulato, etc.; or in the social relations with their peers. As I was told:

… in the years gone by, when I was in the school with the Jamaicans and the Africans . . . when we were just three or four, when we were caged in a cell simply for having ‘drelos’ in the head, when anyone could humiliate you with phrases like ‘Hey, that negro is crazy’ or countless others, we knew each other more, there was more love, more understanding of the idea of Rastafari in the world.⁵¹

In short, Chevannes’ approach to Rastafari⁵² fits the Cuban case perfectly. Rastafari played an essential role in the Pan-African understanding of the world and Cuba is not an exception, and what accounted for its growth is the real cultural revolution. As a part of this cultural revolution, one significant consequence of Marley’s ‘visit’ to Cuba manifested during and after the 1990s’ economic crisis. This involved the spelling out of racial sentiments through music (mainly reggae and hip hop, although visual arts and cinema also echoed the boom of various racial discourses), either imported or made in Cuba, precisely when the discussion about race was still a taboo. The mere introduction of the topic of Afro-centrism, among other ideas, in the social contexts briefly presented above, makes the reggae message heretical and an irreverent form of expression in the contemporary construction of Blackness.

Conclusion

These ideas and facts illustrate the intersection of foreign (Anglo-Caribbean) Pan-African and Black nationalist ideas in Cuba’s sociopolitical contexts at different historical times. In Cuba, whenever and wherever race is implied (in defining the nation, assuming ideologies or a political system), the cultural connection with the rest of the Caribbean is evident. However, Pan-Africanism has not always been fully influential in Cuban history and social life across time.

Therefore, the successful formation of UNIA branches in Cuba in the 1920s and their demise a few years after,⁵³ the attempt at creating a Black Panther Party in Havana in the 1970s, and the ephemeral existence of a Rastafari Common House in Eastern Cuba around 1997 as one of the few institutionalisation attempts of the Rastafarians in Cuba, were all examples of transnational reproduction of political organisations, cultural patterns and ideologies at different times. However, the construction of ethnic and racial pride, identities, otherness and affiliations: the foundation of ‘feelings of communities, togetherness, and similitude’⁵⁴ around the cultural influence of Garveyism; the connection between Black Power ideology and the socialist revolution as identified by Rodney; or the Rasta philosophy and reggae music made in Cuba can all be understood as contributing factors to ideological diversity in the expression of racial identity.

But going back to Benn’s distinction between political ideas and ideologies, two networks of Black consciousness are identifiable in this Pan-African bridge over Cuba – the connections of the sociopolitical ideologies of Garvey and Rodney, and the sociocultural spread of Marley’s Rastafarian message of Black emancipation. Garvey did succeed in creating a consciousness around Blackness in Cuba, but he did not start from zero. Cuban Blacks (‘men of colour’) had already expressed their disappointment with the homogenising social order of the newly born republic, by means of sociopolitical formulations against the misrepresentation of the political life of those Blacks who fought along the whites for independence. Therefore, the contribution of Garveyism to this existent consciousness was expressed in new idea systems, such as repatriation and Black pride, mutual aid and solidarity among groups organised to advance their own social situation. The other pillar of the bridge, nearly half a century later, did not find the same sociopolitical context. Despite the fact that Rodney’s relationship with Cuba has not been documented enough, the existing facts prove that his interest was not that of establishing Black Power networking as Cleaver and Carmichael attempted to; he would have similarly failed. However, he did not realise the complexities of the racial issue in Cuba during the late sixties, overshadowed by his clear and objective understanding of socialist transformation. He simply reaped whatever positive experiences of revolutionary changes and racial equality could be useful for his just cause against neo-colonial exploitation and imperialism in Jamaica, Guyana and other countries all over the Pan-African world. Finally, Bob Marley’s Afro-centric Rastafarian ideology broke into the minds of some youths for different reasons. His musical message boosted diverse interpretations of something new (overt ethnic or racial affiliations) among the younger generation of the late 1980s and the 1990s, who were kids or were not even born when the Revolution bettered the lives of most Cubans in the 1960s.

Except Garvey − whose movement did have a strong popular base at the time − the pillars of this bridge (these men’s ideas of Pan-African political action) are not anchored in Cuba; the bridge rather goes over the island in its transnational Caribbean/North American/Pan-African world route. Nevertheless, the ideas of these men have left their mark on identity among the population of African ancestry in different generations. And these ideas show how thinking along racial lines has always been present in Cuba’s twentieth and twenty-first centuries’ history. These ideas have contributed to discovering how politically, historically, culturally Caribbean we are with respect to the rest of the region, in as much as we understand how meaningful Cuba and the Cuban Revolution has been in the emancipatory actions of the radical wings of Anglo-Caribbean Black consciousness and nationalist movements in postcolonial years.

Footnotes

Samuel Furé Davis is Professor and Head of the English department, school of foreign languages, University of Havana. He teaches English Language and Anglo-Caribbean literature and has authored two prize-winning books, Cantos de Resistencia (2000) and La Cultura Rastafari en Cuba (2011), on dub poetry, reggae and Rastafari.

References

Campbell

Worrel

Pan-Africanism, Pan-Africanists, and African Liberation in the 21st Century: two lectures (Washington: New Academia Publishing, 2006), pp. 9−11, 41.

Benn

, The Caribbean: an intellectual history, 1774 –2003 (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2004), pp. xvii−xviii.

Benn, The Caribbean, p. xviii.

The phrase has been reproduced a zillion times from George Bush’s statements after the 9/11 events.

Roberts

‘Walter Rodney’s Heresy’, Philosophy Born of Struggle: Africana philosophy on the internet, 1 October 2004, http://www.africanaphilosophy.com (accessed 22 June 2007). See also A. Bogues, Black Heretics, Black Prophets (New York: Routledge, 2003).

Rodríguez

P. P.

, ‘Marcus Garvey en Cuba’, Anales del Caribe, no. 7–8, (1987–1988), La Habana: Centro de Estudios del Caribe, pp. 286–90.

See A. de la Fuente, A Nation for All: race, inequality and politics in Cuba (North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

Montejo Arrechea

, Sociedades Negras en Cuba, 1878-1960 (La Habana: Editorial Ciencias Sociales and Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de la Cultura Cubana ‘Juan Marinello’, 2004), p. 159.

Montejo, Sociedades Negras, p. 159.

10.

de la Fuente

, A Nation for All, pp. 92−94.

11.

Papademus

Black Political Activism and the Cuban Republic (The University of North Carolina Press, 2011), pp. 89−95.

12.

Céspedes

Montane

, et al., ‘Manifiesto al Pueblo Cubano y a los Ciudadanos de Color’ (22 August 1907), p. 2. Translated by the author.

13.

See examples of reactions to this statement quoted by R. Lewis, Marcus Garvey: Paladín Anticolonialista (Ciudad de la Habana: Editorial Casa de las Américas, 1988), p. 78.

14.

The initial objectives of Garvey’s organisation can be summarised in a few words: unity, pride, anti-colonialism and the creation of educational institutions at different levels. After the radicalisation of his thought and the declaration of the first international congress in 1920, these objectives were later reformed with a wider political dimension towards the right of Black people to have an independent African nation.

15.

Rubiera Castillo

Reyita, Sencillamente (La Habana: PROLIBROS and World Data Research Center, 1997), p. 23. Translated by the author.

16.

Chevannes

, Rastafari and Other African-Caribbean World Views (New Bunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), p. 25.

17.

Instituto Cubano de Etnología y Folklore de la Academia de Ciencias de Cuba.

18.

Andrew Salkey describes his impressions after seeing La Loma: ‘The play . . . was a satire of the manners of two sharply divided sections of Cuban social life during the Spanish colonial period: the folk ways of the Afro-Cuban society in confrontation with the island’s Spanish and creole aristocracy.’ See A. Salkey, Havana Journal (Middlesex: Penguin, 1971), p. 38.

19.

Personal conversation with the ethnologist R. Martinez Furé, 3 August 2007.

20.

Rodney

The Groundings with my Brothers (London: Bogle-L’Ouverture, 1968–1985), p. 51.

21.

This major event took place in Havana, 4−12 January 1968, with delegations from all over the world, featuring diverse cultural affiliations, a common support for radical causes and an interest to learn about the Cuban Revolution in situ.

22.

Salkey, Havana Journal, p. 33.

23.

Moore

, Castro, the Blacks and Africa (Los Angeles: UCLA Press, 1988), pp. 310−11.

24.

The sole mention of Dr Walter Rodney here does not mean the exclusion of other personalities who also travelled to Cuba at least once for several reasons and/or were sympathetic to the Cuban Revolution. Stokely Carmichael, Huey P. Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, among others, were Black activists whose actions abroad had been at times reported in the Cuban press, who had interactive contacts with the Cuban people and who were also influential in the Cuban sociopolitical context.

25.

Benn, The Caribbean, pp. 248−49.

26.

Rodney’s detractors and the intelligence services that followed him everywhere called it ‘communism’.

27.

Rodney, The Groundings, pp. 17−18.

28.

Rodney, The Groundings, p. 31.

29.

Martínez

, ‘Revolución cubana contra los colonialismos y necesidad de Fanon’, Cubadebate, 4 July 2012, http://www.cubadebate.cu/opinion/2012/08/25/revolucion-cubana-cont… (accessed 19 May 2017). Fernando Martinez Heredia was a historian and philosopher, an influential scholar and author of, amongst other things, serious studies of Antonio Gramsci as critical and theoretical reflections against dogmas and reinterpretation of Gramsci in Cuba’s new revolutionary context. Some of Gramsci’s texts were published and used in higher education during the 1960s until 1971 when new cultural policies ruled against them. This adds to the understanding of the role of social science at the time Rodney visited Cuba.

30.

Some of them are Fernando Martinez Heredia, Rogelio Martínez Furé, Alberto Pedro, Miguel Barnet, Sara Gómez, Georgina Herrera, Eugenio Hernández Espinosa, Inés María Martiatu, and many others. Their narratives were informed by a committed revolutionary perspective and critical approach to social sciences in academic circles and higher education in general. From their diverse artistic and literary vocabularies, they contributed to the knowledge of our African roots within the nationalist integrative official discourse.

31.

These are two of the objectives in the UN resolution proclaiming the year beginning on 1 January 2011 the International Year for People of African Descent.

32.

R. Martínez Furé, personal conversation. Rogelio Martinez Furé is a renowned ethnologist and expert in Cuban folklore and spirituality and African oral literatures.

33.

Rodney, The Groundings, p. 51. He used the same idea in his lecture at the Black Writers Congress in Montreal: ‘I would like to illustrate the ways in which, in fact − if there’s to be any proving of our humanity − [the understanding of the importance of African history in Black power mobilisation] will have to be done with three examples. The first is Cuba. Cuba has proven very concretely that the way of asserting that humanity is by revolutionary struggle. And when I say it has proven that, it has proven it to the black people in Cuba.’ W. Rodney, ‘African History in the Service of the Black Liberation’, 12 October 1968, http://historyisaweapon.com.

34.

His main contact in Cuba was Dr Armando Entralgo. According to Horace Campbell, Entralgo invited Rodney to Cuba to work on an African history text. However, while Rodney actually researched and wrote on the island, he found it difficult to recommend, work on and finish such a text in Cuba and went to Tanzania where he wrote How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

35.

‘Shearer accused Professor Rodney of being an unwanted immigrant and a serious danger for the national security. He denied the prohibition to enter the country being related to his attendance to the congress of writers in Canada.’ See ‘Tres muertos y varios heridos en ataque policial a manifestación en Jamaica’, Granma (18 October 1968). Prensa Latina (17 October 1968). Translated by the author.

36.

This partial conclusion could be confirmed or proven wrong by the examination of Rodney’s ‘long letters to [his wife Patricia] about his impressions of Cuba’ during the few months he stayed before returning to Dar-es-Salam. See R. Lewis, Walter Rodney’s Intellectual and Political Thought (Kingston: The Press University of the West Indies, 1998), pp. 115–16, Lewis quotes Patricia Rodney who affirms that such a book he worked on while in Cuba was Black Struggles, but the manuscript ‘got lost’ in Cuba. See Lewis, Walter Rodney, p. 115.

37.

Rodney, The Groundings, p. 31.

38.

Brent

W. L.

Long Time Gone (New York: Times Books, 1996), p. 174. Brent, a US Black Panther member, lived exiled in Cuba from 1969 after a hijack. Hijacking civil airliners was the way to escape life imprisonment in the US. And after serving a sentence in Cuba for piracy, he studied and worked for more than thirty years and died in Cuba. Walter Rodney had left Cuba when members of the Panthers started to arrive.

39.

Brent, Long Time Gone, p. 235.

40.

The prologue was written by Silvio Baró Hererra in August 1978. See W. Rodney, Cómo Europa Subdesarrolló a África (La Habana: Editorial Ciencias Sociales, 1981), p. 7. Translated by the author.

41.

Rodney, The Groundings, p. 9.

42.

At the same time, Cuba hosted a number of noteworthy cultural events in Varadero (the Annual Music Festival), in Havana (Carifesta, 1972), and in Santiago (annual Fiesta del Fuego or Caribbean Festival from 1980) which afforded visits and performances from then famous Caribbean artists, such as Yoruba Singers, Jimmy Cliff, Eddy Grant, several Steel Bands, and many others. Then rock, breakdance and disco motivated the youth. Rap and hip-hop musical styles followed with even greater effect from the early 1990s, when rap started to flood the international market. These musical influences came to be alternative lifestyles which developed together with other national musical styles of the sixties mentioned before, as well as the Nueva Trova (movement of troubadours who write and sing socially committed songs of love and political protest). Reggae was fused to Rastafari, so it came to Cuba with Rastafari. Therefore, with the new century, reggae in Cuba had become a growing musical alternative for Black urban youth.

43.

A derisive form of address to the dreadlocked people whose image or physical appearance was not initially welcomed in wider society. Similar terms (‘peludos’, ‘melenudos’) were used to refer to the rock fans who also inspired defiance with their long hair and clothing.

44.

Personal conversation with Ras Iriel on the occasion of the celebration in Havana of the 54th anniversary of Bob Marley’s birth on 6 February 1999.

45.

This refers to both the music and lyrics, although the text was barely understood since proficiency in English was not common in the 1980s. Only a few Rastas and reggae enthusiasts were really interested in learning some English; others, a majority, had access to the meaning through the translations made by the same Jamaican students to understand those songs that eventually helped them to shape their individual identity around Rastafarian beliefs. However, a decade later, language was not an obstacle any longer because of the boom of international tourism, the diversity of reggae music circulating underground in Cuba, and the growing significance of reggae as a new expressive musical style for social groups increasing in numbers of followers.

46.

These impacts have been studied by social scientists: the birth of the ‘jinetera’, the anti-Black racial stereotypes, representation of the Afro-Cuban sector in the media and other areas, etc. Both the national domestic and the personal economies were seriously affected, mainly of those who had no access to well paid jobs or family remittances from abroad.

47.

See S. Furé Davis, ‘Rastafari and popular culture in contemporary Cuba: a case study of Caribbean connections’, Caribbean Quarterly. Rastafari Monograph (2000).

48.

The ‘Special Period’ refers to the economic crisis precipitated by the break-up of the Soviet Union.

49.

‘Repatriation’, Insurrectos, Demo CD, 2001. Author’s collection. ‘Aceptemos este tren /Y demos paso a la vida /Mi saludo es para usted /Y no es ninguna despedida/Aceptemos el amor/Este amor /Tú y yo somos raíz del Creador /Aceptemos el amor /Este amor sin temor /Rastafari es León conquistador /Aceptemos el amor /Y nos veremos en casa /Hagamos la repatriación /Sin diferencia de razas.’ Let’s accept this train and give way to life. My salutation to you is no farewell. Let’s accept this love, you and I are the roots of the Creator. Have no fear in accepting this love. Rastafari is the Conquering Lion. Let’s accept this love and we will meet at home. Let’s do the repatriation regardless of racial differences.

50.

‘Africa, la musa y yo’, Untitled, Demo CD, 2002.

51.

Personal conversation with Papuchini, a Rastafarian, 2 May 2010.

52.

Chevannes, Rastafari, p. 39.

53.

The UNIA decreased, but an overwhelming number of Black societies and Clubs of different kinds and accessible to different social classes continued to exist until 1960.

54.

Bamyeh

, ‘Transnationalism’, Current Sociology 41, no. 3 (1993), p. 32.