“During the war years Spain sought, with considerable success, to divide Cubans along racial lines by portraying itself as the defender of white “civilization” and the rebels as black barbarians pursuing the goal of an Africanized, Haitianized Cuba. Once the rebels had been defeated, Spanish policy changed direction, making an open bid for Afro-Cuban support by gradually repealing the caste laws. Spanish officials did not act spontaneously but, rather, under pressure from a well-organized civil rights movement based in the social clubs, mutual aid societies, and civic organizations of the Afro-Cuban middle class. Under the leadership of journalist and political activist Juan Gaulberto Gomez, in 1887 these organizations formed an islandwide Directorio Central de las Sociedades de la Raza de Color to coordinate the civil rights struggle. Between 1878 and 1893 Afro-Cuban activists obtained government edicts outlawing restrictions on interracial marriage; segregation in public education and public services; and the keeping of official birth, death, and marriage records in volumes separated by race.”
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Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000
By George Reid Andrews

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