José Manuel Arenas

The New Afro-Cuban Cultural Movement and the Debate on Race in Contemporary Cuba  12/4/2008 Journal of Latin American Studies: "The image of the black predator has also been important to Manuel Arenas, who ridicules the association between race and crime, so important to some of the rap musicians mentioned above. In his Cuidado hay negro and Cuidado hay perro, two pieces included in the first Queloides exhibit, Arenas ridicules fears of blacks while discussing the deep roots of this racial discourse in the history of the Cuban nation. In Cuidado hay perro he inserts a fighting runaway slave (or a member of the 19th-century Liberation Army), to illustrate that current racial fears are nothing new in Cuban history. The historical context is reinforced by a text included in the painting : ‘Deve esperar un mejor momento’ (‘He must wait for a propitious moment’). This inscription makes reference to one persistent thread in Cuban nationalist discourse: that blacks must be patient and mobilise only if the moment is  propitious (which never is). Arenas further ridicules these historically grounded racist fears in Cuidado hay negro, where the dangerous black male is the painter himself.