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Because I located people to interview primarily through referrals, I interviewed those people whose roots in the Anglo-Caribbean were known by other community members. Thus, those people who might have had a parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent who migrated to Cuba, but who perhaps detached themselves from their origins or were unknown to others of Anglo-Caribbean origin, were not part of this study. Therefore, my findings cannot be generalized to all people of Anglo-Caribbean descent in Cuba.

41 The interaction had a sort of clandestine tone to it, as did many others in which the switch to English occurred as the speaker began overtly or even indirectly criticizing the government. It is not that such criticisms were never articulated in Spanish, but when they were in English, they took on a more serious tone. Aside from the use of English, three other issues of language need to be noted. The first concerns translation and connotation. For instance, the term racismo in Cuba generally refers to institutional discrimination on the basis of race; thus, when a Cuban says that there is no racism, he or she is often saying that the basis upon which the state—and therefore all public society— can deny access has been eliminated.

De la Fuente (2001a) argues that such circumstances served to reinforce the Negrophobia and racial prejudice that individual Cubans harbored, but which did not have the same systemic impact prior to the crisis. Indeed, the introduction of the tourist industry provides a prime example of how racial inequality functions in Cuba in the context of the crisis. 24 Although some have argued that the revolution worsened conditions for Black and mulatto Cubans, Carlos Moore’s (1988) indictment of Castro being one of many, evidence overwhelmingly indicates that the government’s redistributive and antidiscrimination policies succeeded in reducing racial disparities in key sectors such as health and education.