Phillip A. Howard

An insightful examination of the history of early Afro-Cuban mutual aid associations

In this ground-breaking work, Philip A. Howard traces the origins and evolution of Afro-Cuban benevolent societies from early African slave-based associations to the Pan-Afro-Cuban groups that emerged in the late nineteenth century. Relying on rich archival materials in Spain and Cuba, Howard illuminates the process by which African immigrants, both slave and free,
employed benevolent societies to retain their culture and identity, to protect their human rights, and eventually to facilitate their integration into post-emancipation Cuban society.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, first- and second-generation Africans in Cuba formed language-based religious groups called cabildos de naciones de Afro-Cubanos in the island's urban areas. Howard examines how cabildos reinforced African culture and mythology on the island and bred conspiracies to abolish slavery and to replace the existent colonial system
in Cuba with another based on racial and social democracy. He explains that as the associations became more demographically Creole or Cuban-born after the 1850s, new Pan-Afro-Cuban societies called sociedades de socorros mutuos emerged seeking to integrate Afro-Cubans into an increasingly industrialized economy and society and advocating a form of racial unity that precluded a separate African or Afro-Cuban identity or culture.

Howard's study is crucial to the understanding of the African experience in nineteenth-century Cuba and will be an indispensable resource for all students of African history in the Americas. To order ==>