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Been examining the deviant constructions of Black men as sorcerers, child abductors, rapists of white women, and cannibals within Cuban history. Let's take a look!
Text: Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912 by Aline Helg
Text: Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912 by Aline Helg
"In a country such as Cuba, where white women were less numerous than white men, the image of the black rapist galvanized white males into the defense of their wives and daughters, especially during wars and rebellions" (p. 18).
“The murders mixed the traditional imagery of sorcerers, demons, and black males who raped white virgins, kidnapped and killed children, drank human blood, and devoured human flesh" (p. 111).
"Country brujos are very bestial; when they steal children they ride horses to seize their victims and they carry large baskets in which they put them in order to cover them with bags and suffocate them rapidly’” (p. 111).
"Finally, sexual intercourse between white women and black men was occasionally attributed to brujeria. The men were supposedly brujos who bewitched women so that they could rape them.
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Such an interpretation associated black brujos with black rapists and thus restored the morality of white women who had sex with black men” (p. 114).
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“Nevertheless, voluntarios and security forces were eager to show successes in their fight against the ‘black plague.’ Rumors of rapes of white women, in particular, galvanized them into the defense of ‘the fatherland and the honor of [their] wives and sisters.’ In Palmira,
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after the spreading of such rumors, people allegedly demanded ‘the effective application of the theories of ‘Judge Lynch."...Thus, any Afro-Cuban coming face to face with a patrol was a potential victim; all blacks were considered potential rebels or rapists” (p. 216).
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