¿Y Tu Abuela Donde Esta?

Now, as you all know, I am very orgulloso about my Cuban heritage. From the music to the cuisine to the literature, my little island punches way above its weight. One would expect Mexico to be a cultural titan in Latin America, not an island of 10 million people in the Caribbean. 

But to say that my island has been star-crossed is an understatement. 

First off, there was the whole eradication of the indigenous Taino, a result of European diseases and slavery. To make up for the absence of manpower, the Spanish first imported Guajiros from Venezuela—which is why although, as I said, the native Taino had been wiped out, Cuba still has an indigenous heritage. Of course, that wasn't enough labor; so, African slavery was next. Slavery didn't end in Cuba until 1886. Therefor Cuba has its own lovely racism to work though, which it has to date failed to do.

Then, for most of its independent history, it has been either a satrapy of the United States, or a satellite of the Soviet Union. After the 1959 Revolution, Cuba could have charted its own course; instead it went from one paternalistic overseer to another.

Then, of course, that Revolution ushered in mass emigration from the island to the US. Those emigres were virulently anti-Communist. As a result of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Cuban-American voters have a large antipathy towards Democrats. Racism plays a large part in that antipathy, as most Cuban emigres are a lighter shade, por supuesto, and the Democratic Party's taking on of Black civil rights was not met very kindly by my people. (I mean, they were recent refugees, while Black Americans had been here for four centuries. They could have just, you know, not been ungrateful assholes.)

So it was no surprise that yesterday Donald Trump received a rapturous greeting when, after his court date, he went to Miami's Little Havana and soaked in the adulation at the iconic Cuban restaurant, Versailles.

My friends, there's a reason I never have and never will visit Miami. I don't like my people much. They never fail to embarrass me. This country took us in when we fled dictatorship. But too many of us don't actually like democracy much. Too many of us are just more poultry for Colonel Sanders. The fact that an Afro-Cuban like Enrique Tarrio could help found the Proud Boys is not shocking to me. He is as dark as my nephew's old nanny, also Cuban, and she considered herself white. 

This is what we as Democrats have to remember in regards to racism in Hispanic culture: it's very complex, and doesn't align with this country's black/white dichotomy. It's why years ago you had student riots in Los Angeles schools between Latin and Black students. Lumping everyone non-white under the rubric of "people of color" releases more smoke than fire. It's, at best, an approximation, and hides many glaring truths. Like the fact that a dishwasher just off the plane from Havana considers himself superior to, say, a Black doctor. 

The title to this piece is also the title of a poem by Puerto Rican writer Fortunato Vizcarrondo. In it, the Black narrator keeps mockingly turning his interlocutor's racism by asking "And your grandmother? Where is she?" No one in the Spanish Caribbean is a "pure blood." You can read the poem here.

So, no. I'm not shocked at the reception Trump received from people who we think should know better. Because the fact is that they don't see themselves as "the Other." They will always think of themselves as the "good ones". And that, sadly, is very American.

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