BAD BLACK MEN AND COMICAL CHINESE


Partido Independiente de Color (Independent Party of Colour). Founded in
1906, by the black Liberal leader Evaristo Estenoz, this party claimed that
blacks had been 'robbed ... of all the fruits of victory.'6 According to Estenoz,
blacks had made up 85 per cent of the liberating army of the War of
Independence but had been 'rewarded' with the implementation of
segregationist and prejudicial policies, some imported from their Northern
neighbour, that resulted in a widespread discrimination.7 This perception
was exacerbated by the government policy of encouraging immigration from
Spain which resulted in an influx of white
settlers competing for jobs, who had no OWN"l_ !
knowledge of black people or their African S
ways. It would be logical to assume that it
was among these recently arrived white
settlers that ignorance and fear of the secret
African societies was most pronounced.
There might therefore be a logical
connection between this influx of Spaniards
and the growth of the racial stereotyping '.
explained above in relation to the film, La
hija del policia. As we have seen in relation Hl"'961',
to Fantoches 1926, this stereotypical attitude r
towards blacks was also shared by members
of the intelligencia and it is interesting to
note that two of the Minoristas who
introduced the race element into Fantoches,
spent many of their formative years in either
Spain or North America. Jorge Mafiach .. '. ,.
spent most of his childhood in Spain and
thereafter was educated in Massachusetts Fig. 3 Illustration from Los negros
High School and Harvard. HernAndez CatA brujos.
received his secondary education in Madrid.
Ortiz himself was educated in Spain and began his career as a criminologist
writing about black society. As Helg (1993) argues, there is no doubt that
Ortiz's early pseudo-scientific theories legitimised the popular stereotype
of the black as being a threat to society. His early books such as La ampa
afro-cubana: Los negros brujos (1906) and La hampa afro-cubana: Los negros
esclavos (1917) concentrate on an explanation of criminality based upon the
notion that it was an inherent characteristic of blacks.
 Los negros brujos written in 1905-6, has as its prologue, a letter praising
the work from the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso (1836-1909) who


6 Quoted in Atkins (1926: 312). For a brief review of the black rebellion see Thomas
(1971: 514-24).
7 See Thomas (1971: 514) for a full explanation of this grievance.