Politics, Peasants, and People of Color: The 1912 “Race War” in Cuba Reconsidered
I T was known at the time as "la guerra de razas" and "la guerra racista." It still is. White Cubans had been dreading it for almost a century. Its probability had been long presumed, contemplated with a mixture of apprehension and readiness. It was a spectre that loomed large over the then colony. It did not diminish in the early republic. In 1912, white Cubans' worst fears were confirmed: blacks rose up in armed rebellion. The long-dreaded race war had arrived or so it seemed. The perception of the 1912 uprising as a race war took hold immediately, and has held on since. It has persisted as one of the enduring truths of the historiography of the early republic. Inside Cuba and out, before the revolution and after, the historiography has displayed a remarkable adherence to lines first drawn in 1912.1