Bilingualism is becoming so entrenched in Miami that even delinquents are practicing it. The negritos that go out to mug people, los negritos, los negritos americanos, have figured out that Cuban women hide their rings and money in their bras. And now when they mug them and take their purses they say ¡TETA! ¡TETA! (TIT! TIT!)30
Negrito, the diminutive of “negro,” literally translates to “little black.” In Cuba, it can be used as a term of endearment within and across racial lines, but as Lane observes, it is impossible to separate this use from the way it has been used condescendingly toward black Cuban men.31 In this particular joke, there is little affection in the use of the term. Instead, “negrito” functions as a means to soften the very real and direct target of blacks not in faraway Alabama, but in Miami. Black uprisings in response to decades of institutional racism in Miami in the 1970s and 1980s would have certainly informed the telling and reception of this joke. Given the heightened discussion around black criminality due to the uprisings, the use of the diminutive “negrito” is an attempt to bring some playfulness to the tense topic of black crime in the early 1980s while simultaneously reinforcing commonly held attitudes about blackness.
I am also struck by Alvarez Guedes’s need to clarify that he is talking about “negritos americanos.” On the recording, it sounds as if he catches himself in some kind of error, reflected in a momentary stutter and in his repetition of “los negritos americanos.” Only four years had passed since Mariel and consistent with his larger practice of avoiding topics that have divided the Cuban community, he may have wanted to make sure that his audience knew that he was not referring to Afro-Cuban marielitos in Miami who faced discrimination from Anglos and white Cuban exiles. On the other hand, these “negritos americanos” are fair game and are quickly aligned with audience expectations about blacks being violent and out to victimize white Cuban women. In this joke, racist attitudes toward blacks in Miami at a moment of profound racial tension mix with the long history of equating criminality with blackness in Cuba.32 This joke in particular functions as a way to address that racial tension while simultaneously asserting whiteness by situating Cubans as victims of aggressive, unruly blacks.
Alvarez Guedes’s jokes about race relations in Miami dramatize a clear understanding of the racial hierarchy at work in the city and the nation more broadly, as well as where Cubans should belong in it—above blacks. As the years pass, this is what precisely what happens. Cubans in Miami make large gains in political and economic power, often to the detriment of the black community.33 Cubans eagerly claimed whiteness and its privileges as the organizing racial logic of exile. To do this, they forged a narrative about blackness through the perspective of US and Cuban racial ideologies while simultaneously cultivating whiteness as an essential component of exile cubanía. Adding to the pleasure of these jokes is a kind of comfort in knowing that although Cuba and the United States are very different, some things are consistent. Blacks are targets for humor in Cuba in a manner that aligns with racist humor conventions in the United States, as the joke set in Alabama suggests.
There are important differences between Alvarez Guedes’s treatment of blacks who are explicitly defined as Cuban in his jokes and “los negritos Americanos.” Black Cubans are often represented in the way they would have been in bufo routines: as wise-cracking, playfully sneaky, and articulating a desire to be white. But one joke in particular captures an important pattern that will play out as this book moves through the decades and I shift my focus to more recent migratory waves. The pattern lies in how groups that would normally be discriminated against or looked down on by white Cuban exiles (blacks, gays, more recent arrivals from the island) become protagonists in political rhetoric and popular culture forms when they can be used symbolically to criticize the Castro government.
A joke on Alvarez Guedes 22 titled “Vendiendo negros” (Selling Blacks) captures this practice. It starts with a prologue of sorts: “When the Revolution arrived, as you all know, they said it was to benefit blacks and yet they have been the most harmed. For example, young blacks are sent to Angola to fight and they are killed. So the truth is that blacks have been the most harmed in Cuba.”34 Alvarez Guedes goes on to explain that blacks leaving Cuba pose a real threat to the Castro government’s rhetoric of racial equality on the island. If they leave, he reasons, it must be seen as a condemnation by the very group the government claims to have helped the most. After these prefatory remarks, we get to the joke, which features a black Cuban man and his family at the airport waiting to leave the island for the United States. There, the black man faces constant harassment from a Cuban government official who is trying to dissuade him from leaving by criticizing US imperialism and the country’s treatment of blacks. In a final attempt to convince him to stay, the government official says, “ ‘Blacks in the United States aren’t worth a thing!’ To which the black man responds, ‘¿Quién te ha dicho a ti que yo voy a vender negros allí?’ ” (Who told you I was going there to sell blacks?)35
Racism against Afro-Cubans within the Cuban exile community is rarely, if ever, explicitly addressed in popular culture. But if racism can be used as a tool to detract from the narrative of racial equality under the Revolution and its policies more broadly, then it is fair game. To be sure, the Cuban Revolution has failed to address a multitude of issues involving racial discrimination as multiple scholars have pointed out.36 But to suggest that Afro-Cubans have endured the most harm under the Revolution is consistent with the general refusal within the exile community to acknowledge any accomplishments under Castro. White Cuban exiles who arrived before Mariel were quick to use the boatlift as proof of the failures of the Revolution. But the symbolic “victory” of Cubans fleeing the island during Mariel did not lead to better treatment of marielitos, especially black arrivals, once they settled in Miami. This population routinely suffered discrimination on the basis of race, sexuality, and a perceived lack of anti-revolutionary fervor.37
What this joke does is “sanitize” blackness for symbolic use in order to criticize the Cuban government. Small details matter. For instance, the black man in the joke is leaving the island with his family. He has not taken to the sea as other Cubans of color did during the chaotic boatlift. Instead, he waits for his flight to Miami at the airport—an orderly departure. Like the narrative of his white countrymen before him, this black Cuban male is leaving the island with a family unit because of government persecution, complete with a plane ride. Besides the anxiety about blackness, exiles found the number of single young men arriving during the boatlift troubling—a reversal of the narrative of family-driven migration and the sense of responsibility and wholesomeness that goes with it. In addition, the black man’s snappy comeback to the Cuban official’s warnings about racism in the United States seems to reinforce the conservative position that claims of racism are exaggerated and an excuse for those unwilling to work hard.38 The protagonist of this joke is simply a white Cuban exile of a different color whose race provides an avenue for attacking the Revolution in a way that is consistent with broader anti-Castro rhetoric.
The pattern of politically expedient critique also arises in how the exile community seized upon the Cuban government’s treatment of gays. Néstor Almendros’s 1984 documentary, Improper Conduct, captures the experiences of homosexual men sent to labor camps called Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción (UMAPs) (Military Units to Aid Production). Public figures in the exile community celebrated the film for its exposure of the repressiveness of the Castro government and as an opportunity to “shake up the conscience” of liberal supporters of the Revolution in Europe and the United States.39 Homophobia has a long history in Cuba before and after the Revolution. As Emilio Bejel points out in his study of homosexuality and nationalism: “Homophobic discourses articulated as part of modern national precepts have been publicly expounded by Cuban nationalist leaders from the earliest days of modern Cuban history. Their discussions have often defined the homosexual body, implicitly or explicitly, as a threat to the health of the body of the nation.”40 Of course, the powerfully ingrained homophobia in Cuba did not disappear when Cubans moved from the island to Miami. Although Improper Conduct was celebrated, attitudes toward homosexuality in the exile community were less than hospitable. Ricardo Ortíz and Susana Peña have shown that homophobia in Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s was mirrored in the exile context.41 Like jokes about race, jokes about sexuality combined common social attitudes from Cuba and United States to consolidate a narrative of white, heteronormative exile cubanía and the social privileges