The race of
color, which has made much head of recognition of its rights, make yourself
resentful that by wanting to practicethem,you have earned the mockery and
disdain on the social, while in politics you have seen an infamous accusation
that tends to put it off as a race, in the reckless expositions of the Liberal
Party manifesto, which at the moment it begins its life presents it to general
consideration as a dangerous fraction by the solvent ideas attributed to
it?....
What is going
to happen to all this?... If we Cubans were Democrats, everything would be
settled; but we're not Democrats. And the worst part is, we're not autocrats
either. We are shameful aristocrats, refugees in an ideocracy as inconsistent
as indefinable. It dazzles us and attracts us with uncontrastable force the
brightness of high social hierarchies; and as in the blood we have no true
representation, and it is almost total our darkness in arms as manifests our
current decline in money; not being able to present another enforcer than that
of the most dismissed classes of the European people, we have thought of the
institution of an ideological aristocracy, informed by the superficial and
exotic wisdom that we boast and the concern of color, not race; which would be
materially impossible in a society like ours, where most white families cannot
place the portrait of Granny in their gallery.
We hate the
domination of Spain; we are equal to the classes we have seen practically in
full inferiority; and seeking the concentration of power in our hands—in the
hands of the group that everything has wanted to represent among us—we will
compromise with everything, with everything! The most irritating humiliations
must seem tolerable adversity that will allow us sooner or later to master
everything. The pride of a first-class citizen will comfort us from our
secondary situation in national life. We will prefer all mixtifications rather
than consent to the establishment of social equality.
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