Few subjects have been as difficult 10 explore dispassionately in contemporary Cuba as the subject of racial or ethnic ditlerences. On the one hand the revolutionary governmem of Fidel Caslro insists officially that ethnic differences no longer play an important role in public or private decisionmaking. The official position is that race is irrelevant - or at least of minor significance - in the construction of the socialist state, After 1959 the revolution sought to establish a state that deliberately privileged the lower orders of society, most of whom were black. In the rhetoric of the revolutionary government all forms of discrimination are legally prohibited (Lopez Valdes, 1973:6-14). Indeed, when the revolutionary Cubans finally wrote a new constitution in 1975 they made discrimination a violation of one's constitutional rights. Article 41 of the new Constitution of the Republic of Cuha declares that ‘discrimination because of race, calor, sex, or national origin is forbidden and is punished by law’ (1976: 13). This section mandated equal rights for all citizens. Formal institutional barriers to equality for any group were therefore removed by law. In practice, however, this constitutional equality does not exactly work itself out dearly or consistently. But matters of public policy and private action have always been highly contested and constitute an extremely ambiguous sphere of operations. Within the private domain the state is powerless 10 change the deeply held attitudes of some of its citizens, and these attitudes are especially important for matters of race and ethnicity. The degree to which citizens uphold the law is based on perceptions of self interest. When conformity brings greater reward than nonconformity, then citizens conform. At the same lime, intellectual traditions may not reflect daily conduct at the levels of public and private spheres (Helg, 1990).

While the government cannot regulate private racial and ethnic considerations in daily life, it subordinates these considerations 10 those of class and social justice. By promoting the goal of an egalitarian society, the government projected an ideal that its supporters were obliged 10 accept publicly. Elizabeth Sutherland observed in the 1960s after spending a summer traveling and working with the Cubans that ‘racism in the sense of the subordination of one racial group by another for the benefit of the oppressing group did not exist in Cuba’ (1969:140).