CR: The New Centennial Review

CR: The New Centennial Review 3.3 (2003) 27-46

Reformulating Nationalism in the African Diaspora
The Aponte Rebellion of 1812

Lena Delgado de Torres
State University of New York, Binghamton

MY AIM IN THIS PAPER IS FIRST TO PROVIDE A CRITIQUE OF NATIONALISM AND citizenship in the African Diaspora (Lemelle and Kelly 1994), using the lens of Aníbal Quijano's (2000c) world-historical theory, "the coloniality of power," and historical evidence from the longuedurée (Braudel 1970) period of Cuban Independence and Emancipation, when Cuban nationalism was born and defined. Secondly, it is to give a historical account of the Aponte Rebellion of 1812, and the ways in which it defined citizenship and nationalism in the African Diaspora ¹ during the Age of Revolution (Hobsbawm 1962).

My unit of analysis is coloniality, a term borrowed from Aníbal Quijano (PC1, PC2, 2000a-c, 1999, 1992, 1989, 1980, 1977, 1975, 1971). It is the expression of global (or at least American) ² social relations within the last five hundred years of historical capitalism. In short, I understand coloniality to be a set of social relations between colonizer and colonized that are internal to Europe itself: relations expressed through gender/sex and intra-ethnic difference. These relationships are reproduced continually throughout the world (or, again, at least the Americas)—sometimes in the guise of formal [End Page 27] colonialism, but also in the relationships between social bodies which occur on a global and local scale—and thus may be considered transnational.

My object of analysis is the Aponte Rebellion (Franco 1963, 1977; Howard 1998, 73-79), a Black insurrection that took place in La Habana, Cuba in 1812, and its place in this early period of Cuban nationalism. If one considers Aponte emblematic of a segment of the free colored class in this historical setting, how did he respond to the colonial relationship between and within Cuban and Spanish societies? This relationship denied him full citizenship rights in the Cuban colonial state through the social and economic division of race, prompting him to rebel in the interest of Cubans, but especially Blacks. The Aponte Rebellion and the many Black insurrections that followed throughout the nineteenth century constitute early moves by Afro-Cubans towards national liberation, within the parameters of a Cuban nation, before the formal Independence period of the Ten Years' War (1868-78), the "Guerra Chiquita" or Little War (1879-80), and the final War of Independence (1895-98). During this nationalist period, the Cuban citizen became gendered and racialized, as the road towards nationalism was defined by white men leading the fight for independence, and Black women, especially slaves, were increasingly measured against a standard of bourgeois femininity which had excluded them during their formal enslavement.

Theoretically, one can make the case that Aponte imagined his citizenship as multiple—as an imagined Afro-diasporic identity and part of a specific Afro-Cuban cultural and politico-religious community: identities that supported his position in the colonial society. His overwhelming desire was to abolish slavery and gain entry into the colonial Cuban society that negated him. This multiplicity and yearning for full citizenship, which occurs throughout the African Diaspora, forces a redefinition of the nation, as we see how Black people in the Americas define themselves both within and outside of the territorial boundaries of the nation-state. The Aponte Rebellion occurred amidst a period of growth in the Cuban economy—at the beginning of the great sugar boom, when large amounts of African slaves were brought to the island—and can be seen as a resistant response to the growth of capitalism. How does the Aponte Rebellion reflect the imagination of nationalism and citizenship by Afro-Cubans in this time period? [End Page 28]

Cuba is not detached from the world economy, but is enmeshed in a complex set of relationships within this system, prompting a reformulation of the unit of analysis to include these larger global structures. The Afro-diasporic context adds another layer of complexity to these relationships, mainly in the...