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takeover of the University of Havana’s School of Medicine “in an effort to wipe out the last vestiges of Batista control.”
The main story’s headline makes one wince today: “Cute Rebel Lieutenant Was Once Public Schoolteacher.” There was nothing frilly or flirtatious about the unsmiling officer standing guard outside the presidential palace or chatting with soldiers under her command. Booker reported that “the small woman-aided rebel army toppled the modern, 40,000-soldier Batista army and took over one of the richest countries in Latin America.”
“Typical of the women fighters who braved hunger and despair in the mountains is 22-year-old
Lt. Gladys Trava, one of the few Negro rebel women officers. A teacher in the Oriente Province, she joined the army 18 months ago when the schools in the area were closed because of repeated
air raids. Leading a 75-man
mostly male) unit, she tramped some 10,000 miles during the period while helping wounded, loading guns, guarding prisoners and shooting it out with government soldiers.” Booker reported that some women had even more dangerous jobs in “the dread suicide patrols, the units which laid mines, dynamited bridges, attacked arms-carrying trucks and sneaked into towns to kidnap leading Batista supporters.” Through photos and stories of people like 19-year-old Juana Rosa, who fought in the suicide patrol, and 114-year-old Genera Jiminez, a “rebel elder,” Jet brought Cuba into the mix of discourse at barbershops and beauty parlors.
Through the arrest, forced exile or execution of former comrades, through the failed Bay of Pigs invasion sponsored by the U.S. to topple Castro, and through ever tougher economic sanctions, this sort of coverage carried the day until April 1961, when Castro
announced that Cuba had become a communist satellite of the Soviet Union.
“That stymied the type of support that the press would be giving him,” Moore said, “because the African American press would not want to see itself be labeled in the United States as anti-American and pro-communist. So this introduced a new situation which led the African American media to disengage – although they were sympathetic, continued to be sympathetic – but disengaged from this overwhelming, over-enthusiastic, very candid embrace of the entire Cuban revolution.”
Though the Triumph of the Revolution did not usher in a racial utopia in Cuba, Castro retains a measure of respect – if not adoration – for his commitment to African states – e.g., Angola and South Africa – in their freedom struggles. Nelson Mandela, for one remained loyal until his death.
The traditional black press is less vibrant as a whole than it was 50 years ago; and, with the exception of papers like The Final Call or the Carib News, no more drawn to international news than the mainstream press. Issues of racial identity and racism in Cuba are more the forté of books and journals and websites like AfroCubaWeb than a steady diet of information in newspapers like the Afro, the Amsterdam News, the Tribune or even Jet, which in July rebooted itself as a digital publication.
Castro also used star power, including heavyweight boxing champ Joe Louis, center, to woo black support. (Photo courtesy of blackpast.org)