1
Race and "Creole" Nationalism in Cuba: Historically Contextualizing a Social
Mechanisms Approach
Steven E. Laymon
Columbia University
## email not listed ##
September 2004
CONCEPTS AND CONTEXTS
The creole nationalism described by Benedict Anderson in Imagined
Communities, which served as a flashpoint for continental liberation, was an ambivalent
force in Cuba (Anderson 1991; Ferrer 1999). While the rest of Spanish America gathered
forces to sweep the Spanish from their continental empire, peninsulares continued to rule
in Cuba. The liberation of Cuba, and wider national autonomy for Cubans, was not won
for several more generations. The mechanisms Anderson associates with new world
nationalism were represented in Cuba. However, Cuba’s particular historical experience–
which in important ways differed from the experience of Spain's continental colonies–
resulted in a different context and a different outcome.
In Anderson’s treatment of creole independence movements, he finds conflict
between new-world-born elites and Spanish authorities was sharpened as Madrid
simultaneously tightened control over colonial trade and contemplated more humane
policies for the treatment of slaves and indigenous peoples. These shifts built on existing
resentments about the limits to upward political and social mobility experienced by new-
world-born elites. Seeking to control their own economic fate and fearing that populations
of color would be encouraged by official compassion to voice escalating demands for
greater social inclusion, creole planters drew together to overturn Spanish rule.
Convention