Examining the educational legacy of Afro-Cuban teachers and activists

In
this book, Raquel Otheguy argues that Afro-descended teachers and
activists were central to the development of a national education system
in Cuba. Tracing the emergence of a Black Cuban educational tradition
whose hallmarks were at the forefront of transatlantic educational
currents, Otheguy examines how this movement pushed the island’s public
school system to be more accessible to children and adults of all races,
genders, and classes.
Otheguy describes Afro-Cuban education before public schools were officially desegregated in 1894, from the
maestras amigas
—Black
and mulata women who taught in their homes—to teachers in the schools
of mutual-aid societies for people of color. In the ways that Afro-descendants interacted with the Spanish colonial school system and its
authorities, and in the separate schools they created, they were
resisting the hardening racial boundaries that characterized Cuban life
and developing alternative visions of possible societies, nations, and
futures. Otheguy demonstrates that Black Cubans pioneered the region’s
most progressive innovations in education and influenced the trajectory
of public school systems in their nation and the broader Americas.
A
volume in the series Caribbean Crossroads: Race, Identity, and Freedom
Struggles, edited by Lillian Guerra, Devyn Spence Benson, April Mayes,
and Solsiree del Moral
Publication of this work made
possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan
grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities