The Black Lector forging a radical revolution

This chapter explores the place of black Cubans in Cuba and the US during the 1880s and 1890s, as articulated through the life and works of Martín Morúa Delgado (1856–1910). The first black reader or lector in cigar factories in Havana, New York, and Key West, Morúa labored incessantly for worker’s rights on both sides of the Florida Straits. Reading Morúa’s life and works from the Latino Continuum allows the recovery of the political significance of this figure for literary and historical studies, especially since he interacted directly with José Martí—the founder of the Cuban Revolutionary Party in New York City. Juxtaposing Morúa’s and Martí’s literary works and translation choices allows us to understand more fully why Morúa was at odds with Martí regarding Cuba’s future and the role that Afro Latina/os had played and would continue to play in Cuba and in the Americas. While the translation of Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona (1884) by Martí and the publication of Martí’s novel, Amistad funesta/Lucía Jerez, speak to US expansionism and its effect on Native American populations, they did not engage Cuba’s most pertinent question at the time—the role of black Cubans in the upcoming wars of independence and in the future Cuban Republic. Morúa, aware of this absence, uses his two novels, Sofía (1891) and La familia Unzúazu (1901), to question the political intentions and social prejudices of Americanized Cubans like José Martí, Tomás Estrada Palma, and Cirilo Villaverde.