“Ideals of a race” (1928-1931): black intellectuals and Cuban cultural avant-garde

Abstract

Ideals of a race (1928-1931) was one of the main black Cuban newspapers between the 1920s and 1930s. Circulating the island as a supplement to the newspaper Diário da Marina, the architect, politician, and journalist Gustavo Urrutia (1898-1958)'s black page reached an unprecedented audience for the genre's publications. Despite its undeniable importance as a space in which Cuban black intelligentsia presents its grievances and protests against racism during the First Republic (1898-1933), scholars say little about its contribution to the avant-garde artistic renewal movement known as “negrismo” blackness and Afro-Cubanism that began in the period known as the Critical Decade (1920-1930). In this article, we will highlight how black intellectuals who publish in Ideals of a Race (1928-1931) fit into the cultural vanguard movement of the 1920s and 1930s, and how they set their vision of the relationship among black/Afro-Cuban culture, black pride, and national identity.