Jean Stubbs – författare

From the forewords: "At a time when Cuba is undergoing immense economic and social changes, race becomes a kind of cultural litmus test for the national identity. . . . This anthology illustrates fully that it is possible to be both revolutionary and black in Cuba."—Manning Marable, Columbia University

"The authors of Afro-Cuban Voices, also key actors in the new, unfolding dialogue about race in Cuba, make a seminal contribution through a forthright critique of ‘racial blind spots’ in official history and present-day racial discrimination."—James Early, director of cultural studies and communication, Smithsonian Institution

From the series editor: "A courageous attempt to deal head-on with the issue of race in Cuba today. . . . Pérez Sarduy and Stubbs [seek to] put a human face on this debate, and do so well. The book will be received with relief by some and with frustration by others. Controversial it will undoubtedly be, since—as with most things Cuban—strong emotions are a given assumption. It will be an admirable beginning for the series and, it is hoped, will spark a much-needed debate in the United States on many aspects of the ‘Cuban question.’ It is about time."—John M. Kirk

Based on the vivid firsthand testimony of prominent Afro-Cubans who live in Cuba, this book of interviews looks at ways that race affects daily life on the island. While celebrating their racial and national identity, the collected voices express an urgent need to end the silences and distortions of history in both pre- and postrevolutionary Cuba. The 14 people interviewed—of different generations and from different geographic areas of Cuba—come from the arts, the media, industry, academia, and medicine. They include a doctor who calls for joint U.S.-Cuban studies on high blood pressure and a craftsman who makes the batá drums used in Yoruba worship ceremonies. All responded to four controversial questions: What is it like to be black in Cuba? How has the revolution made a difference? To what extent is that difference true today? What can be done? Exposing the contradictions of both racial stereotyping and cultural assimilation, their eloquent answers make the case that the issue of race in Cuba, no matter how hard to define, will not be ignored.

A volume in the series Contemporary Cuba, edited by John M. Kirk

This is the story of Cuban tobacco, whose agricultural and industrial development was fashioned as deftly as a Havana cigar around overseas trading interests. It traces the nineteenth-century growth of a strong tobacco oligarchy, peasant grower class and urban salaried work force, alongside slave and indentured labour, and examines how a prestigious manufacturing country was transformed into an exporter of leaf. Visibly poor peasant agriculture concealed foreign and home capital which, while creating some large plantations, used and even propagated a most extreme form of sharecropping. Well into the twentieth century, an increasingly embattled industry catered to dwindling luxury markets and an unstable, fluctuating home market with but a few relatively large, on the whole family, concerns and a proliferation of small sweatshop and outwork production.

Jean Stubbs penetrates the finer socio-political aspects of the radically changing nature and composition of peasantry and proletariat, including the interlacing of race, gender and skill, to take a closer look at areas of class action and national and class consciousness, be it through reformism, anarcho-syndicalism, revolutionary nationalism, socialism or communism.

This new edition expands on the 1985 original with a new Foreword and Preface, and other source material.

Esta es la historia del tabaco cubano, cuyo desarollo agrícola e industrial se torció tan habilmente como un Habano en torno a los intereses comerciales extranjeros. Traza el crecimiento decimonónico de una fuerte oligarquía tabacalera, clase campesina, y fuerza obrera urbana asalariada, al lado de una mano de obra esclava y bajo contrata, y examina cómo un prestigioso país manufacturero se transformó en exportador de la hoja. Detrás del cultivo de pobres vegueros se escondía el capital extranjero y nacional que, a la par de crear grandes plantaciones, empleó y hasta promovió al extremo la aparcería. Bien entrado el Siglo XX, una industria cada vez más asediada abastecía los restringidos mercados de lujo y un mercado nacional inestable y fluctuante, con unas pocas empresas de cierta envergadura, mayormente familiares, y una proliferación de chinchales y trabajo casero.

Jean Stubbs penetra los más finos aspectos socio-políticos de cambios radicales en el campesinado y proletariado del tabaco, incluyendo como se entrelazan raza, género y oficio, para indagar más sobre la acción y la conciencia de clase y nacional, sea a través del reformismo, anarcosindicalismo, nacionalismo revolucionario, socialismo o comunisimo.

Esta es una nueva edición española del libro que se publicó por primera vez en 1989, con un nuevo Prefacio y un Prólogo por Oscar Zanetti Lecuona.

This edited collection provides an in-depth analysis of the imperial, colonial, and postcolonial history of tobacco from 1780 to 1960, which was one of the major periods of change in the global tobacco economy. It brings together case-studies from known and lesser-known tobacco regions of the world to interrogate tobacco’s ‘second globalisation’, a concept little employed by historians thus far, but one which encapsulates tobacco’s central role in Europe’s imperial expansion beyond the Atlantic and the social, political, and cultural transformations of global capitalism taking place during the period. The collection fills a gap in the study of commodities of empire, which has examined tobacco primarily for the early modern Atlantic world, or for single empires during the later period. It invites comparison across borders, encompassing political, economic, and sociocultural history, and, with a particular emphasis on trade, knowledge, and labour, juxtaposes micro-histories with a macro-historical perspective. Together, the studies in the volume testify to the importance of tobacco in new places and among new players, challenging the confines of national and imperial historiographical frameworks. They demonstrate the rising dominance of new powerful forces, including transnational corporations, but also a wide range of actors in conflict and negotiation within territorial and imperial confines. By systematically taking into account the agency in Europe’s apparent peripheries and the Global South, they critique a simple assumption of the dominance of the West. 

Chapter 11 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.