Revita Reyita Sparknotes

The Twentieth Century in Latin American’s history has been a period of no longer whitening the population, but a constant fight for equality for Afro-Latinos and the rise of new political parties. In pervious centuries, the elite class of Latin America made enormous efforts to transform their countries into more of a European looking nation. Nevertheless, these countries lack the capital and conditions to attract European laborers and their families. These failures opened the way for new experimentation in building their nation as one unified population and industrializing new forms of political participation. Latin America wanted its citizens to form a new nation identities and embracing their racial mixing. Cuba and the Dominican Republic
Reyita included memories from all stages of her life, she told stories about her mother in slavery and how she was involved in the independence movement, the massacre of 1912, Fulgencio Batista and the formation of the popular socialist party. One of the main topics in Reyita memoir was race and how it affected her on an everyday bases. Reyita in the novel was proud of her black complexion however; Cuban society was constantly telling her that she should be ashamed. Even her own mother and other member of her family discriminated against Reyita. She saw her Afro-Cuban heritage, as being a disadvantage for her and did not want her children to stuffer the same discrimination as her, and decided to marry a white Cuban. For Reyita intermarriage was a prime move to climb up the social ranking in Cuba and she knew it was the only way to secure a better life for her
For much of the countries history, the national body has been defined as not black but more of a mixer of Indians and Spanish. Ginetta E.B. Candelario wrote, “In the place of blackness, officially identity discourses and displays have held the Dominicans are racially Indian and culturally Hispanic.” In the areas of large Afro-Dominicans, most of the population would say that they are not black or come from African heritage. The main root of this problem come from Haiti and not wanted to break all ties to them. “Haitians are textually depicted in gross caricature as embodying evil and uncivilized hypermasculinity: savage, animalistic, sexually violent, and devilish.” The Dominican Republic wanted to distance them as much from Haiti as much as possible and wanted to make an image of them being Hispanic, Catholic and