Delgado, Martín Morúa (1856-1910)

Martin Morua Delgado with Daughters Arabella and Vestalina.
Image Courtesy of Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division,
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture,
The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Born in 1856, Martín Morúa Delgado gained prominence as an Afro-Cuban writer and Cuba’s first black Senate president after the country’s war for independence against Spanish rule in the 1890s.  Son of an African-slave mother, Ines Delgado, and Spanish father, Francisco Morúa, Martín Morúa Delgado espoused both anti-slavery sentiments and exemplified ideas of success through meritocracy among Afro-Cubans.
Unable to obtain a formal education because of economic demands, Morúa Delgado was thrust into the work force and became a self-taught Cuban.  He became a prolific reader and was fluent in several languages.  Beginning his literary career in 1878, Morúa Delgado published a newspaper, El Pueblo.  Through it, he opposed slavery and sought the integration of blacks into mainstream Cuban society and culture.
In 1880, Delgado left Cuba for Key West, Florida in the United States where he spent the next ten years working as a literary critic and translator and publishing his magazine Revista Popular.  While in the United States he wrote the essays "Duty Calls" and "Cuba and the Colored Race."  While the former is a brief account of Cuba’s social history and call for revolution against the Spanish, the latter focuses on the historical plight of Afro-Cubans and their desire for freedom from slavery.
Upon returning to Cuba, Morúa Delgado published two novels, Sofia and The Unzuazu Family.  Again, he explored issues of the cruelty of slavery and its subsequent psychological impact not just on individual Afro-Cubans but also on Cuban society as a whole.   He focused especially on the complex interpersonal relationships among Cubans, which had been often built on a foundation of mixed-race relationships.
Becoming a major political figure in post-independence Cuba, Morúa Delgado was one of two men of color elected to the country’s constitutional assembly under United States occupation.  In 1901 he became the country’s first elected Afro-Cuban senator (1901).
As part of the Afro-Cuban intellectual/political elite, Delgado symbolized a social mobility that very few black Cubans were able to achieve because of social and legal barriers.  Although a believer in racial equality, Morúa Delgado opposed independent, black civil rights organizations.  Instead he worked through his political party, the Liberal Party, in establishing patronage networks among Afro-Cubans.  As the first black President of the Cuban Senate (1909), Morúa Delgado introduced a bill that banned black political parties because they discriminated against white Cubans.  The Morúa Amendment would later be cited as inciting Cuba’s “Race War of 1912.”  Morúa Delgado would go on to become Minister of Agriculture, passing away in 1910 while serving in that office.
Sources:
Jorge Cantera and Carolina Hospital, A Century of Cuban Writers in Florida: Selected Prose and Poetry (Sarasota: Pineapple Press, Inc., 1996); Aline Helg, “To be Black and to be Cuban: The Dilemma of Afro-Cubans in Post-independence Politics,” in Darien J. Davis, eds., Beyond Slavery: The Multilayered Legacy of Africans in Latin America and the Caribbean (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007); http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/race/Delgado.htm.
Contributor(s):
Escamilla, Luis
University of Washington
- See more at: http://www.blackpast.org/gah/delgado-martin-morua-1856-1910#sthash.0X0zzdf6.dpuf

Racial Classifications in Latin America

In the history of Latin America over the last 500 years or so, the relationships among three races have been a key factor.  In the beginning, there were the various indigenous groups.  Then came the European colonizers, who later brought black slaves from Africa.  The relationships among these racial groups have at times been tumultuous --- war, slaughter, subjugation, slavery, exploitation, miscegenation, ...  
The administration of the vast colonies was placed in the hands of nationals of the European empires.  These administrators were rewarded estates for their efforts, and naturally inheritance rights became a significant issue.  As a male may have multiple children with multiple women, the rights of these apparent heirs have to be defined, particularly when some of the mothers were not pure Europeans.  Under Spanish rule, the following detailed caste system was instituted in Mexico at one time.

1. Mestizo: Spanish father and Indian mother
2. Castizo: Spanish father and Mestizo mother
3. Espomolo: Spanish mother and Castizo father
4. Mulatto: Spanish and black African
5. Moor: Spanish and Mulatto
6. Albino: Spanish father and Moor mother
7. Throwback: Spanish father and Albino mother
8. Wolf: Throwback father and Indian mother
9. Zambiago: Wolf father and Indian mother
10. Cambujo: Zambiago father and Indian mother
11. Alvarazado: Cambujo father and Mulatto mother
12. Borquino: Alvarazado father and Mulatto mother
13. Coyote: Borquino father and Mulatto mother
14. Chamizo: Coyote father and Mulatto mother
15. Coyote-Mestizo: Cahmizo father and Mestizo mother
16. Ahi Tan Estas: Coyote-Mestizo father and Mulatto mother

To us, this does seem to be a obsessive-compulsive behavior of an extreme sort.  Today, the overt caste systems have been overturned by legislation, but that does not mean that social prejudices and economic exploitation are not present.  Even though overt racial oppression is no longer permissible by law, people may still hold personal opinions about members of other races based upon preconceived notions.
Now much of this is premised upon one's ability to classify people into the appropriate racial categories based upon physical appearances.  Unfortunately, this is difficult as there is not a clear-cut situation when any individual can be unambiguously classified into one (and only one) of a short list of racial classes.  A simple classification scheme based upon color --- white, black, brown and yellow --- ignores the various shades.
One way to derive a classification system is through self-definition, which presumably applies to others too.  In 1976, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) conducted a study to ask people to identify their own skin color.  Here are the 134 terms, listed in alphabetical order:

1. Acastanhada (cashewlike tint; caramel colored)
2. Agalegada
3. Alva (pure white)
4. Alva-escura (dark or off-white)
5. Alverenta (or aliviero, "shadow in the water")
6. Alvarinta (tinted or bleached white)
7. Alva-rosada (or jamote, roseate, white with pink highlights)
8. Alvinha (bleached; white-washed)
9. Amarela (yellow)
10. Amarelada (yellowish)
11. Amarela-quemada (burnt yellow or ochre)
12. Amarelosa (yellowed)
13. Amorenada (tannish)
14. Avermelhada (reddish, with blood vessels showing through the skin)
15. Azul (bluish)
16. Azul-marinho (deep bluish)
17. Baiano (ebony)
18. Bem-branca (very white)
19. Bem-clara (translucent)
20. Bem-morena (very dusky)

Casta (Das lateinamerikanische Kastensystem)

Casta (Lateinamerika)
Casta (span./port. für Kaste) war eine Bezeichnung in lateinamerikanischen Ländern für die Nachkommen von Verbindungen unterschiedlicher Bevölkerungsgruppen, hauptsächlich aus Nachfahren von Afroamerikanern, Europäern und indigenen Ethnien.
Die zum Teil sehr komplizierten Unterscheidungen sind Ausdruck einer ebenso feinen sozialen Abstufung, die in der Regel mit sozialer und rechtlicher Diskriminierung verbunden war, vor allem je größer die indigenen oder afroamerikanischen Anteile in der Verwandtschaft waren. Dementsprechend haben die Bezeichnungen der „castas“ in der Regel auch herabsetzenden Charakter. Rechtlich waren sie etwa in Mexiko den Indios untergeordnet, deren Rechte geschützt wurden. Heute sind diese Bezeichnungen kaum noch gebräuchlich. Sie spiegeln das soziale Gefüge der Gesellschaften Lateinamerikas wider, wie es bis weit ins 20. Jahrhundert hinein bestand.
Heute wird der Ausdruck „Mestize“ (wenn überhaupt) für die Bezeichnung von Menschen benutzt, die entweder nicht ausschließlich europäische oder nicht ausschließlich indigene Vorfahren haben.
Das lateinamerikanische Kastensystem