

































Counternarratives of Nationalist Anti-Black Images: 
Normalizing and Extolling Blackness in Contemporary Art of the 

Hispanic Caribbean 
Liza Girgis
University of Toronto
Department of Spanish and Portuguese

This article examines contemporary art of the 
Hispanic Caribbean as a counternarrative to the 
antiblack aesthetic ideals in the region. By exploring 
beauty standards on these islands through quotidian 
language and images that portray beauty, the prolif-
eration of whiteness as the epitome of the aesthetic 
is exhibited in modern day Dominican Republic, 
Puerto Rico and Cuba. This article follows the work 
of scholars who have theorized and evidenced that 
the post-independence narrative has dominated the 
islands’ perceived racial identities, marginalizing 
blackness and praising whiteness. We add that this 
discourse has also impacted its peoples’ daily beauty 
rituals, as most of them facilitate the ‘whitening’ of 
one’s appearance. Present-day art that extolls 
blackness and questions the exclusion of people of 
African descent on the islands thus serves as a 
powerful truth reveal; contrarily to the official 
history, negritude is not rebellion, rather it is the 
region’s nature and beauty. In other words, this 
research seeks to explore how this art portrays 
negritude as the face of the Hispanic Caribbean, 
normalizing and celebrating the appearance of the 
majority of its people. 

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Hispanic Carib-
bean, blackness, beauty 

standards, anti-black nation-
alism, racial identities, 

counternarratives  

B I O

After graduation, I travelled to the Caribbean and South America. Then, I decided to 
return to the university to complete my MA. I am interested in the cultural production of 
the diaspora of the Hispanic Caribbean and how it maintains an ongoing dialogue with 
cultural production of the islands.

© 2021 Liza Girgis
Caribbean Studies Students’ Union, Canada - https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/

                       This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 
                       To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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    Néstor E. Rodríguez, Divergent Dictions: Contemporary Dominican Literature (Mexico: Siglo XXI Editores, 2005), p. 43. 
    Ibid., p. 22. 

       

 

1
 

…jamás podrán cuantificar 
el aguacero eterno detrás del pecho
detrás del alisado, del maquillaje
ese aguacero que no para
que deja todo sin rostro y sin artistas… 
Anamú y Manigua, Mayra Santos Febres, 
1991.

Contemporary artists from the Dominican 
Republic, Puerto Rico, and Cuba have 
been portraying blackness in their work to 
reinclude the islands’ African ancestry in 
the present-day imaginary of the nations. 
This art represents resistance to the official 
discourse of national identity, which is 
inherently antiblack. In reality, the latter 
has caused unquantifiable psychological 
and physical harms as these populations 
are mostly of African descent. The extract 
from Santos Febres’ poem above may help 
us begin to imagine this pernicious effect 
on society, and it tells us that the Hispanic 
Caribbean is in need of a racial identity 
re-education program. To begin, although 
Santos Febres writes for Puerto Rico and 
the histories of the three islands are 
distinct, similar antiblack sentiments have 
emerged. But how did this originate? 
Firstly, colonialism has had an essential 
role in generating these ideas but under-
standing the influence of this past is not 
sufficient to grapple with racism’s perdur-
ance on the islands today. In reality, the 
independence movements from Spain, as 
well as the politics that followed are worth 
exploring. Hence, we must distinguish the 
three national imaginaries that have been 
materialized because they have reflected 
diverging versions of antiblackness. First, 
in the case of the Dominican Republic, 
this nation shares the same island as Haiti, 
which has provoked anti-haitianism, and 

antiblackness until today. In fact, 
Haiti—as the first African descended ruled 
nation in the Americas—represented for 
many nascent Latin American countries 
the threat that a black republic could rule 
over the white elites. Thus, repressing 
blackness as modern identity became a 
necessary defense mechanism to protect 
white interests. Additionally, the compet-
ing Spanish and French empires on 
Hispaniola generated tensions; although 
most Dominicans are of African descent, 
the Spanish leaders had to form a narrative 
to oppose the French. In consequence, 
blackness became the enemy and the 
scapegoat: Dominicans were Catholic and 
Hispanic, as opposed to the black Haitians 
who practiced “barbaric” voodoo.  Herein-
after, as scholars have observed, this 
racism did not end with independence. 
Today, antiblackness persists in the 
Dominican Republic, and this is because 
these sentiments were crystalized during 
the two major dictatorships of Trujillo 
(1930-1961) and Balaguer (1966-1978). 
.Rodríguez writes that the result of these 
dictatorships—regimes which not only 
violently opposed blackness but invested 
resources to erase it from Dominican 
imaginary — is that a Europeanising 
discourse has ruled. Dominicans are 
“interpellated as ‘Hispanic-Taíno’, despite 
the fact that, culturally and ethnically, the 
vast majority would be more accurately 
described as possessing African and 
Hispanic origins.”2 Today, “in a country 
where the dominant part of the population 
is composed of mulattos and Blacks, the 
vast majority does not think of themselves 
as such, but prefers to use the phantasma-
goric category of the indio [literally 
‘Indian’; a reference to the original 

2

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103

    Ibid., p. 6-7. 
    Amaryllis López, "Se dice pelo bueno: Black Affirmations in Contemporary Puerto Rican Literature,” (Bridgewater State 
University, 2020), p.4.
    Ibid. 
    Fabienne Viala, “Daniel Lind Ramos and the Visual Politics of Race in Puerto Rican Art”. Aica Caraïbe du Sud, no. 4 
(2015): p.4, https://aicasc.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/viala-en.pdf.
    Ibid.
    López, “Se dice pelo bueno: Black Affirmations in Contemporary Puerto Rican Literature,”p. 4.
    Ibid., p.5.
 

   

 

3
 

indigenous population] to refer to their 
racial condition.” Consequently, many 
Dominicans cannot identify with their 
African roots. 

Meanwhile, in Puerto Rico, we have a 
similar “Christianised whiteness” that was 
used to define the nation. An island 
perpetually colonized by two hegemo-
nies—Spain and the United States— 
unable to free itself, resisted to the second 
colonizer by exalting its Hispanic heritage, 
marginalizing indigeneity and blackness 
even more. Hence, this impossibility to 
become an independent state engendered 
an inner patriotism, a constant remember-
ing of the idiosyncrasies of Puerto Rico. 
One of these was the islands white, 
indigenous and black racial makeup; 
extolled in a disproportionate manner. As 
Viala notes, in both Puerto Rican conver-
sations on identity and in cultural produc-
tion there is this “overrepresentation of the 
taíno.” One significant example is the seal 
of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture 
which displays and represents:
…the myth of a harmonious miscegena-
tion…– Spanish, Arawak and Black – are 
equally represented but with attributes that 
connote and denote, their different impor-
tance in the Puerto Rican imagination. 
The visual message of the seal is that 
Spain brought culture, language and 
civilisation; the indigenous Caribbean 
people encountered by the Spanish 
conquistadors are represented as possess-
ing a religion, and therefore a soul... But 

the black slaves are remembered only as a  
working labour force for the plantation.

Although this myth of trigueño Puerto 
Rico has “included” all racial components, 
it has dehumanized the African presence 
as a labor force. Additionally, one could 
argue that the indigenous and the black 
characters on the seal are equally margin-
alized since both are shirtless. However, 
Viala argues that the Taíno man is holding 
a cemí—a religious artefact—while the 
African man carries a machete, thus 
indigenous people are given this power to 
educate and tell the story, while the black 
people are workers in Puerto Rican 
imaginary. In other words, these characters 
are literally holding what modern day 
Puerto Ricans pass down to the subsequent 
generations as racial identities. Conse-
quently, although Puerto Ricans claim 
their African heritage, many do not claim 
their blackness. López writes that this 
paradox also stems from the fact that the 
nation was built on “colorblindness.” “As 
Lloréns states, the process of blanquea-
miento and mestizaje…has allowed Puerto 
Rico to view itself a…post-racial paradise. 
Thus, affirming a Black identity in Puerto 
Rico is seen as challenging the racist 
narratives that protect this ‘post-racial 
paradise’ ...Black Puerto Ricans are 
expected to negotiate and conceal their 
Blackness for the “good” of the nation.” 
Therefore, this pride of being a mixed 
nation leaves no room to affirm blackness 
in Puerto Rico because if the island’s 

3

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104

    Ibid., p.7.
    Helg, Aline.  “Race in Argentina and Cuba, 1880-1930: Theory, Policies, and Popular Reaction,” in The Idea of Race in 
Latin America, 1870-1940, Edited by Richard Graham (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press,1990), page # 47.
    David Luis-Brown, “‘The Coming Unities’ in ‘Our America’: Decolonization and Anticolonial Messianism in Martí,Du Bois, 
and the Santa de Cabora.” In Waves of Decolonization: Discourses of Race and Hemispheric Citizenship in Cuba, Mexico, and 
the United States, Edited by Donald E. Pease ( Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008), p. 69.
    David Booth, “Cuba, Color and the Revolution,” Science & Society 40, no. 2, (1976): p. 155-157, JSTOR.   
 

   

 

10 

particularity is its racial mixture, negritude 
alone is un-Puerto Rican. As Lloréns 
observes, “Puerto Rican society tends to 
accept only ‘folkloric’ depictions of 
Blackness.”

On the other hand, Puerto Rico’s neighbor, 
Cuba, seems to put African descended 
cultures at the foreground of the national 
stage, as images of Afro-Cuban culture are 
prolific. Yet, this does not necessarily 
mean that blackness is invited in Cuban 
discussions of national identity. Cuba 
possesses a similar racial imaginary to 
Puerto Rico; that of a racially heteroge-
nous island.

Like Puerto Ricans, Cubans racially see 
themselves as a white, indigenous, and 
black nation, however there is a grand 
difference: Cubans do not focus on 
mestizaje as a national identity like Puerto 
Ricans. José Martí—the father of Cuban 
independence— “[professed] that [being] 
Cuban means [being] more than white, 
more than mulatto, more than black.” In 
other words, Cuba was built on Martí’s 
rhetoric, which “privileged national unity 
over racial grievances.” The story has thus 
told Cubans that to achieve freedom, they 
must unite into one body, and consequent-
ly, discussing race means compromising 
liberty. Additionally, like the Dominican 
dictatorships, the Cuban revolution has 
had an important role in crystalizing the 
independence narrative. In fact, scholars 
have compared Martí’s writing with 
Castro’s speeches, because 

the revolution sought to liberate Cubans, 
ending racial inequalities:

There were two types of racial discrimina-
tion, Castro explained. One was that 
which took place in recreational and 
cultural establishments; the other…affect-
ed a man's right to earn a living…discrim-
ination in work centers. Discrimination in 
both areas had to be brought to an end, 
and in the future the public educational 
system would be used to ensure that blacks 
and whites were educated together in a 
spirit of brotherhood…In these two 
speeches in the early months of 1959 Fidel 
Castro not only identified the aspirations 
of his movement in relation to domestic 
racial discrimination but also established 
the limits beyond which it could not go. 
Henceforth he referred to the color 
problem in his speeches only in passing 
and implying that, with the campaign to 
end discrimination in workplaces and 
social centers completed, there was little if 
anything that remained to be done.

Booth demonstrates the eloquence of 
Castro’s discourse in this epoch; by stating 
the projects of the revolution would end 
racial inequality, he echoed Martí and 
established a fixed imaginary of racism 
and of racial equality in Cuba. In other 
words, by declaring the end of racism, the 
revolution guaranteed that Afro-Cubans 
would be incapable to voice the different 
perduring types of discrimination they 
faced. In fact, detecting black marginaliza-
tion after the revolution remains extremely 

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105

 convoluted in Cuba, because of the 
revolution’s exaltation of Afro-Cuban 
cultures. 

Rejecting blackness has thus become un 
mal necesario, a necessary sacrifice for 
most Dominicans, Puerto Ricans and 
Cubans to be accepted by their compatri-
ots as nationals. Meanwhile, those who do 
exalt their blackness—whether in conver-
sation or physically—are often considered 
foreign or rebellious. 

This nuance between resistance and 
rebellion has made antiblackness loyalty 
and law, while blackness is misbehavior 
and chaos. Amidst the power of this 
discourse, cultural production from these 
islands has questioned the racism in the 
official narrative and its fallacies. In fact, 
one of the ways artists are rewriting their 
national identities is by foregrounding 
their blackness.

The visual aspect of art is impactful in this 
context because one of the main ways 
negritude has been erased from these 
identities is by bombarding its nationals 
with images of white people and their 
Spanish heritage as the ideal. Indeed, by 
marrying the national with their African 
ancestry, these artists are not only reinsert-
ing negritude in the narrative, but they are 
inviting their people to see the beauty of 
their blackness. For once, the latter is 
portrayed as positive, thus normalizing 
and exalting nature. Now, before grasping 
the positive impact of this art, we must 
first understand how the antiblack rhetoric 
rules images and consequently beauty 
ideals in contemporary societies of the 
Hispanic Caribbean.  

What and who is considered “beauti-
ful” in the Hispanic Caribbean? 
By analyzing quotidian conversations in 
the Hispanic Caribbean, we may answer 
this question. First, when discussing a 
person’s aesthetic, skin is one of the 
primary determiners of beauty. For 
instance, when comparing and deciding 
who is more attractive between two 
people, the one with the lighter complex-
ion has the tendency to be portrayed as 
more beautiful. In fact, soft words to refer 
to lighter Caribbean peoples’ skin such as 
crema are used as well as the adjective 
blanquito/a. Indeed, the use of the diminu-
tive ito/a is affectionate, exalting white-
ness. In the Hispanic Caribbean, white 
people are depicted as possessing a 
flawless, angelical beauty; this veneration 
for this “rare” type of aesthetic is both 
harmful and convincing, because most of 
the population of the region is of African 
descent. The diminutive ito is also used in 
negro/a and moreno/a as an affectionate 
term, but we cannot ignore that black skin 
is often portrayed as a deficiency, as 
excess: él/ella es demasiado prieto/a 
(he/she is too dark) tends to be the reason-
ing behind why one considers a darker 
skinned person less attractive. Conse-
quently, to evade this negative connota-
tion, many African descended people of 
the Hispanic Caribbean refer to their skin 
and racial identity with black euphemisms 
such as caramel, canela, or they prefer to 
identify themselves as mixed by describ-
ing themselves as mulato/a, or trigueño/a. 
Often, many steer with either their nation-
ality dominicano/a, puertorriqueño/a/, 
cubano/a, the taíno counterparts taíno/a, 
quisqueyano/a,  boricua, or their Hispanic 
heritage, referring to themselves as 
Spanish or Hispanic. Now, black (negro/a 

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106

 and moreno/a) exists in this vocabulary, 
but in the Dominican Republic and Puerto 
Rico, it is mainly used when describing 
African Americans and Haitians. Further-
more, the adjective moreno/a is significant 
because it has a double meaning: it can 
describe either one who is brunette with 
brown skin or one who is black. The latter 
definition is used as a black euphemism in 
other parts of Latin America. For instance, 
in countries like Mexico, moreno/a is used 
to describe people of African descent, 
because it is considered “rude” to refer to 
black people as black. In other words, 
even if moreno/a is a euphemism for black 
and even if moreno/a can also refer to 
someone who has brown or caramel skin, 
some people of the Hispanic Caribbean 
use the adjective to distinguish the African 
diaspora from themselves. 

The necessity to steer clear from blackness 
is subconscious and it does not come from 
nowhere. It is a reflection of the nationalist 
expectations imposed on the nationals of 
the islands. But how can these countries 
maintain such an influential antiblack 
discourse, if the majority is of African 
descent? In order to preserve this white 
ideal, antiblack discourse has colonized 
the African descended people through 
images and language, impacting their daily 
routines. People of the Hispanic Caribbean 
are bombarded by images of whiteness, 
and in consequence whitening one’s 
appearance is a necessary step to look 
presentable. While this psychological and 
physical harm seems clear, it is so playful-
ly embedded in quotidian life and 
language that it goes unnoticed. For 
instance, African descended women who 
keep their natural hair are often told—in 
both a joking and serious manner— so, 

you didn’t brush your hair today? Hence, 
Afro-textured hair is perceived as uncivi-
lized and unkempt, and this sets the 
expectation that hair straightening is 
considered basic grooming, like shower-
ing. Moreover, Afro-textured hair is 
synonymous with bad hair: pelo malo, and 
encaracolado are interchangeable expres-
sions that characterize blackness as evil 
and unkempt. Other nicknames to refer to 
the Afro connotate unbrushed hair: 
pasa(Cuba) and pajón (Dominican Repub-
lic). From a young age, African descended 
girls from these islands get their hair 
straightened by their family members. To 
put it another way, without teaching them 
the vocabulary, this ritual sends the youth 
a message: their pelo is malo. 

I wanted to evaluate the strength of this 
linguistic repudiation towards blackness 
by seeing if the younger generations in the 
diaspora had these same beliefs. Indeed, 
there is a large population of Dominicans, 
Puerto Ricans and Cubans in the United 
States, so it could not be ignored. I inter-
viewed Cuban American kindergarten 
teacher Katelyn Alfonso in the Bronx, NY, 
as the majority of her students are 
four-year-old Dominicans and Puerto 
Ricans of African descent. When we met, I 
asked if she witnesses any of this 
discourse in the children and she stated 
that many of her female students wear 
wigs and have their hair straightened every 
day for school. When one student com-
plained her wig was itchy, Alfonso advised 
her she didn’t need to wear it, but the 
young girl replied, “I can’t, mami says I 
have to look clean for school”. Naturally, 
this antiblack rhetoric has affected her 
male students also, she observed, as they 
did a self-portrait activity and none of the 
African-descended young boys used 

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107

    Abigail Henry. “Former Miss Universe Puerto Rico Kiara Liz Ortega wins reality show Mira Quién Baila,” Angelopedia, 
Accessed April 29th 2021, https://www.angelopedia.com/news/Miss-Universe-Puerto-Rico-2018-Kiara-Liz-Ortega-
Delgado-Mira-Quien-Baila-Winner/50661.
    Jennifer Marcial Ocasio, “Is Puerto Rico ‘racist’? Online comments about new Miss Universe spark discussions.” Orlando 
Sentinel, December 10th, 2019.https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/os-puerto-rico-miss-universe-20191210
-qsdvlsvu2fffbbvu4sxfm6jpmy-story.html (Accessed April 29th 2021). 
   Marcial, “Is Puerto Rico ‘racist’?”.
 

       

 

14

darker colors to draw themselves. For 
example, one boy portrayed himself with 
straight hair, and Miss Alfonso told him to 
draw his curly hair. He looked at her, 
puzzled, then laughed. Alfonso reassured 
him: “draw yourself—even if mami will 
be mad— this is you.” These examples are 
a representation of this antiblack rhetoric 
that is impacting young Hispanic Caribbe-
an children across the borders today. 

Looking from an outside perspective, I 
also analyzed trends in international 
beauty pageant winners. I found that it is 
an insightful way to explore the beauty 
ideals of a nation; this being a world 
competition—like the world cup or the 
Olympics—the country wants to send its 
“best” contestants; in this case, whom they 
deem is the most beautiful. Moreover, 
these contests demonstrate how a nation 
wishes to be imagined by the gaze of the 
world. In terms of race, we see that most 
winners of Miss Universe have been white 
with light features; even in countries 
where most of the population is of African 
descent. In fact, in the case of the Hispanic 
Caribbean, it is curious to see that amidst 
the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and 
Cuba’s pride of being racially mixed, the 
winners have mostly been of European 
descent. First, in the case of the Domini-
can Republic, only about six women of 
visible African features have won since the 
first competition in 1927. Meanwhile, in 
Puerto Rico, Miss Puerto Rico 2018—Ki-
ara Ortega—was only “the third woman 
with noticeably mixed (African and 
Indigenous) features to win Miss Universe

Puerto Rico after Alba Reyes in 2004 and 
Zuleyka Rivera in 2006.”  In fact, this 
means that no woman of visibly African 
descent has won in Puerto Rico, and 
therefore we have evidence that whiteness 
is considered the epitome of beauty on the 
island. This is indicative of beauty 
standards in Borinquen since consuming 
Miss Puerto Rico and Miss Universe is 
extremely important to Puerto Ricans; 
because the island is 4th in the world—af-
ter The Philippines, the United States, and 
Venezuela— for the most Miss Universe 
titles, winning the pageant is paramount. 

Indeed, the outrage exclaimed by multiple 
Puerto Ricans on social media when their 
own blonde and green-eyed Madison 
Anderson Berríos was the first runner up 
in Miss Universe in 2019 reflects this 
passion. It also reveals antiblack senti-
ments, as the winner Zozibini Tunzi, of 
South Africa was crowned: “Messages like 
‘I can’t believe that the black woman 
won,’ ‘So many women with beautiful hair 
and the bad hair won,’ ‘Shaka Zulu’s 
cousin answers well’, and ‘She looks like 
a monkey’ crammed social media outlets.” 
Marcial writes that this reference to Shaka 
Zulu— “a 19th century military leader”— 
was from a representative of the Puerto 
Rico Department of Education.

Finally, in the case of Cuba, it is more 
difficult to quantify the trends in the 
pageant winners due to the island’s 
political and economic situation. However, 
in the years that Miss Cuba was prominent 
(1952 to 1967) no Afro-Cuban woman has 

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108

    Ernesto McCausland, “Celia Cruz reflexiona sobre la vida,” YouTube, 9.21 minutes, September 7th, 2012. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAi-ZxvR6-Y
   David Booth, “Cuba, Color and the Revolution,” Science & Society 40, no. 2, (1976): p. 144, JSTOR.

       

 

17

won the contest. Moreover, although not a 
contestant at this year’s Miss Universe, 
Cuba made an appearance. Held in Holly-
wood Florida, Cuban performers danced to 
Celia Cruz’s Bemba colorá. An Afro-Cu-
ban artist and Cuba’s pride, Cruz was one 
of Cuba’s most significant musicians. She 
was known to exalt the sweetness of her 
blackness through her catch phrase 
¡azúcar! Does this mean that the island 
was and is proud to be black on the 
international stage? This question does not 
have a short answer. Celia Cruz’s success 
is undeniable, but the Afro-Cuban 
performer’s beginnings were rough as she 
was told time and time again that she was 
too black to perform. In an interview, a 
journalist asked her what she thought 
about her day’s beauty standards and 
Cruz,—referring to her refusal to go under 
the knife— stated that toda la vida he sido 
fea, desde que nací y el público me ha 
aceptado así; amidst her “ugliness” she 
succeeded in her career and the audience 
has accepted her the way she looks. In this 
context la guarachera de Cuba was not 
referring to her blackness but it is interest-
ing to see her refusal to conform to her 
day’s beauty ideals, which were and 
remain white focused. I argue that Celia 
Cruz’s success does not signify the end of 
racism on the island. In fact, Booth has 
written that exceptional talent has been 
one of the ways Afro-Cubans have man-
aged to be accepted as the representatives 
of Cuba since the early days of the island’s 
independence. Fast forward to 2021, 
intentional or not, the choice of song is 
meaningful to explore the question of 

antiblackness in Cuba today. First, bemba 
is a pejorative word used to refer to big 
lips, specifically those of people of 
African descent. The song’s chorus is Pa' 
mi, tú no eres na' /Tú tienes la bemba 
colorá (You mean nothing to me/ You have 
big colored lips). It seems Cruz was 
imitating the antiblack discourse in her 
country. Second, in the verse she sings: 
Baila tu rumba/Canta tu son/Tu guarachita 
y tu danzón… /Dance your rumba/Sing 
your son/your guaracha and your danzón. 
This verse can be interpreted as a voice of 
encouragement from another Afro-Cuban 
telling their black counterpart to exalt their 
blackness amidst the racism. Yet, with the 
use of the imperative, we can also interpret 
it as a white voice ordering an Afro-Cuban 
to perform their musical genres. 

Regardless of Cruz’s intention, we can 
observe that Afro-Cubans have only been 
accepted to represent their nation as 
performers but never as the island’s face. 
Amidst the seriousness of this topic— like 
most of Celia Cruz’s performances— 
Bemba colorá takes on a playful tone; a 
mirror of both the casual pejorative 
language to refer to the appearance of 
people of African descent in the Hispanic 
Caribbean and the lack of seriousness and 
commitment in terms of discussing race in 
Cuba. Perhaps it is precisely this playful 
discourse that has made space for cultural 
producers like Celia Cruz to exalt their 
blackness and remain in Cuban imaginary.

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109

    “Jorge Pineda: Recent Works,” AfricanaH (blog), October 19th,2016, https://africanah.org/jorge-pineda-recent-works/#:~:
text=Jorge%20Pineda%2C%20(b.,%2C%20Spain%2C%20in%20February%202013. 

       

 

19

As we can see, not all people from the 
Hispanic Caribbean have followed the 
antiblack rhetoric. Beyond the musicians 
and intellectuals who have advocated for 
normalizing blackness through their 
words, some prominent figures of the 
region are affirming their negritude 
through their physical appearance. The 
natural hair movement—initiated by 
African American women during the civil 
rights movements—has revibrated in the 
Caribbean. Since images of white people 
have been the only ones to describe 
professionalism and beauty, just the simple 
act of wearing natural hair has been a form 
of resistance in the region. For instance, 
after years of getting Dominican blow outs 
to appear on television, Afro-Dominican 
journalists Marivell Contreras and Edith 
Febles began to wear their natural hair on 
television; a defiance statement but also a 
positive message to their viewers, normal-
izing negritude. Additionally, in 2014, 
Dominican-American Carolina “Miss 
Rizos” Contreras opened the first natural 
hair salon in Santo Domingo. In addition, 
natural hair salons and black hair products 
are becoming available in Puerto Rico and 
Cuba. It is clear that if images of black 
people and beauty services are accessible, 
it is becoming more difficult to believe the 
fallacy that blackness is unnatural and 
ugly. These counternarratives we see in the 
media and in contemporary life of the 
Hispanic Caribbean are a form of a 
re-education campaign, providing African 
descended people of these islands with the 
tools to affirm their blackness and to 
unlearn that their negritude must be erased 
for them to be beautiful. 

Now, we have seen how images and 
language have been powerful tools to exalt 
whiteness and taboo blackness. Fortunate-
ly, contemporary artists of the region are 
joining this project, changing the visual 
and linguistic narratives available for their 
compatriots in the Dominican Republic, 
Puerto Rico and Cuba. I argue that since 
visual arts are both a reflection of the 
national and synonymous with the aesthet-
ic, they have had a grand role in question-
ing the absurdity of antiblackness and 
promoting pro black beauty ideals in the 
Hispanic Caribbean. These cultural 
producers are seeking to include the black 
subject in both the official narrative and in 
daily life by portraying their negritude as 
both nationalistic and beautiful. 

The Dominican Republic  
Jorge Pineda is one of the leading Domin-
ican visual artists today. A world renown 
queer creator from Barahona, the Domini-
can body and its negotiation with black-
ness is central to his work:
Pineda understands reality as [a] perma-
nent interpretation…as a mask behind 
which there is no definitive face but rather 
a game of successive maskings. What 
Jorge Pineda does is open up the possibili-
ty of mining the control exercised over 
us… through the path of an over-identifi-
cation with it…In a certain measure he 
projects… the constitutional lacking of the 
subject which is simultaneously an exces-
sive presence of the ‘impossible’… It’s not 
the moment of the disappearance of the 
veils or of the lifting of the theatre curtain, 
but rather that of the acceptance of the 
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110

     Fig. #1, Pineda, Jorge. Mama, Painting, 2016, (Lucy García Arte Contemporáneo, Santo Domingo), 
https://africanah.org/jorge-pineda-recent-works/#:~:text=Jorge%20Pineda%2C%20(b.,%2C%20Spain%2C%20in%20
     Fig. #2, Pineda, Jorge. Me voy, Installation, 2005, (Hunter East Harlem Gallery), 
https://wmuprintmaking.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/jorge-pineda-visiting-printmedia-artist/. 

       

 

20

In other words, Pineda sees identity as an 
excessively dramatic performance which 
attempts to cover the truth. We can 
observe this question of overconsumption 
or over-identification with the mask in the 
multiple layers of clothing that worn by 
the characters in Mama (2016).

In this image we cannot see the characters’ 
skin colors, nor do we have any indication 
of their physical appearance. We simply 
observe the distinct colors and materials 
worn by the mother and her child. The 
layered clothing demonstrates the intrica-
cies and the multiple masks that are 
utilized to hide this racial identity. It also 
appears the parent is connecting her 
thoughts with her child’s in order to 
proliferate some message. Regardless of 
what the latter may be, what is certain is 
that the Mama in Pineda’s piece is 
attempting to pass down her mask to her 
progeny. In fact, Pineda’s characters tend 
to be young subjects in a constant process 
of negotiating their negritude. Me voy 
(2005) is another example of this. 

A child of African descent is standing in 
the corner; as we know, in childhood this 
space is that of punishments. I could not 
help but think of the children in Miss 
Alfonso’s class, who are taught that 
exalting blackness is misbehavior. Indeed, 
the purpose of the punishment in the 
corner is for children to reflect on their 
mistakes, and in this process we see black 
scribbles leaking from the hands of the 
boy. The character is also portrayed in 3 
dimensions whereas the black scribbles 
are painted on the wall, meaning that they 
no longer form a part of him. In this case, 
the title, Me voy (“I’m leaving”) could 
signify that he is walking away from the 
reality of his blackness. Thus, the use of 
young characters in Pineda’s work 
suggests that this disconnect with negri-
tude is not inherent but is learned over 
time. Once more, Pineda evokes charac-
ters who work to intricately hide their 
blackness. Let us see other artists who 
reflect on the outcome when this veil is 
removed.  

20

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21

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111

     Fig. #3, Llano, Kilia. Untitled, Mural, 2018, (Hotel in Las Terrenas Coco, Honey and Hill), 
https://www.facebook.com/1045059695552454/posts/finalizado-el-mural-comisionado-por-el-nuevo-hotel-en-las-terrenas-
coco-honey-an/2277746068950471/
     Fig. #4, Llano, Kilia. Murales de mi patria (series), Mural 2016, (Megacentro RD, Santo Domingo), 
https://dominicancult.blogspot.com/2016/02/mural-by-kilia-llano.html.    

       

 

22

Kilia Llano is one of the most prominent 
Dominican visual artists today. A muralist 
from Santo Domingo, Llano is interested 
in depicting the Dominican body through 
urban art. She affirms Dominican negri-
tude by painting African descended 
subjects as part of and in harmony with the 
Dominican landscape. By drawing her 
people as black in the landscape, she not 
only resists the dominant Taíno-Spanish 
racial identity, but the artist affirms that 
blackness is natural rather than something 
that should be hidden. For instance, in the 
untitled piece below (2018) we see a 
Dominican woman who is in the forefront 
and the centre of the island. 

She is happy to be entrenched in what 
appears to be honey, and thus blackness is 
depicted as sweet, positive, and as the 
nature and the essence of Dominicanness. 
The colours and her smile depict that 
negritude is beautiful, rather than some-
thing that leads to rejection from the 
nation and the rest of the world. In fact, 
this mural was commissioned by a new 
hotel in Las Terrenas Coco, Honey and 
Hill, which means that the gaze of foreign-
ers will fall on this image, and Dominican 
identity appears to be reshaped on the 
international stage.  

Meanwhile, the second image below 
(2016, also untitled) is a part of the 
Murales de mi patria collection. The work 
can be found at Megacentro, a large 
shopping mall in Santo Domingo. This 
mural audience is regular people—espe-
cially families—and this quotidian experi-
ence is a way to normalize blackness in 
Dominican life. Indeed, in the painting we 
have a young Afro-Dominican girl who 
has the island’s flag painted on her face. 
This affirms that first, blackness is a part 
of Dominican identity, providing the 
nationals with a sense of pride for their 
negritude as part of nationalism. Second, 
by depicting a child, the youth who see 
this image can identify themselves and 
begin to portray themselves as black. 
Moreover, it is essential to observe that 
Llano draws these characters with their 
natural hair, —whether curly hair, 
Afro-textured hair or styled in 
braids—normalizing Afro-textured hair as 
a hairstyle rather than a supposed lack of 
maintenance. 

23

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22

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112

     Fig.#5, Arroyo Pizarro, Yolanda. Illustrations by: Brittany Gordón Pabón. Pelo bueno, Book, 2018, (EDP University 
Press, Puerto Rico), https://latinosinkidlit.com/2020/10/26/book-review-pelo-bueno-good-hair-by-yolanda-arroyo-pizarro-
illustrated-by-brittany-gordon-pabon/
     Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Pelo bueno. (Puerto Rico: EDP University Press, 2018), p. 10.  

  

       

 

24

Puerto Rico 
Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro is an Afro-Puerto 
Rican author who seeks to show the youth 
of her island that they must not disguise 
their blackness to be beautiful. Her 
children’s book Pelo bueno (2018) 
provides a significant number of counter-
narrative images, as the pages are replete 
with colorful depictions of two black 
females happy with their natural hair.

Specifically, by juxtaposing pelo bueno 
with an image of a happy girl with an 
Afro, Arroyo literally turns pelo malo on 
its head. In the story, as the abuela is 
styling her granddaughter’s hair, the latter 
tells the former that children at school 
have called her hair texture malo. The 
abuela then tells her that her pelo is not 
malo, because it has never done any harm 
to anyone 25 This simple reflection of the 
adjective malo demonstrates that this 
process of unlearning that blackness is 
ugly begins with questioning the everyday 

Simply put, the Afro-Puerto Rican author 
reminds the youth that—amidst the fact 
that their pelo is not malo—they may hear 
their appearance is bad or unkempt, but 
they must remember this is a fallacy. 
Additionally, by writing a children’s book 
Arroyo reminds us that it is important to 
re-educate young African descended 
people in the region with positive images 
of blackness before hating their natural 
hair becomes unquestionable. 

López argues that storytelling also 
permits this unlearning process: 
The grandmother goes on to style her 
grandchild’s hair into a crown, saying that 
she now is “a queen like the queens from 
our African ancestors” … By mentioning 
Juana Agripina, an enslaved woman who 
legally defended and fought for her 
freedom in nineteenth-century Puerto 
Rico, the grandmother honors the beauty 
and history of resistance of Afro-Puerto 
Ricans. These new styles allow the grand-
child not only to see her natural hair in a 
new light, but also to be introduced to a 
more varied representation of history that 
includes images of the strength and beauty 
of African queens and women warriors.

As López states, Arroyo advocates for the 
essential role of storytelling of black 
heroes to children in order to reinsert 
blackness in contemporary Puerto Rican 
imaginary. In other words, in remembering 
black Puerto Ricans as individuals, rather 
than recalling them as slaves, there is the 
possibility of young Afro-Puerto Ricans to 
see themselves as black rather than just 
having black ancestors. As we have seen 

25

24

26

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113

     Amaryllis López, "Se dice pelo bueno: Black Affirmations in Contemporary Puerto Rican Literature,” (Bridgewater 
State University, 2020), p.22.
     Susan Canning,  “Daniel Lind-Ramos.” Sculpture Magazine, September 9th, 2020. 
https://sculpturemagazine.art/daniel-lind-ramos/ (Accessed April 30th 2021). 
     Fabienne Viala, “Daniel Lind Ramos and the Visual Politics of Race in Puerto Rican Art”. Aica Caraïbe du Sud, no. 4 
(2015): p.6, https://aicasc.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/viala-en.pdf. 
     Fig. #6, Lind-Ramos, Daniel. Con-junto, Installation, 2015, (Marlborough Gallery), 
https://sculpturemagazine.art/daniel-lind-ramos/.         

 

26

with Miss Alfonso’s students in the Bronx, 
the antiblack discourse begins at an early 
age with families from the Hispanic 
Caribbean, hence Arroyo’s work is funda-
mental for the next generation of Puerto 
Ricans of African descent. 

Daniel Lind Ramos is another Afro-Puerto 
Rican cultural producer who questions the 
underrepresentation of the island’s African 
heritage. A painter and sculptor from 
Loíza, —the region of the island with the 
largest concentration of Afro-Puerto 
Ricans— Lind Ramos places African 
elements in the foreground of his art, 
arguing that blackness is inherently Puerto 
Rican. The artist builds his installations 
from everyday materials such as “graters, 
casseroles, coconuts, machetes, palm tree 
trunks and branches…as well as found 
materials such as [stereo speakers], 
trombone parts, rebar, brooms, brushes…-
bongos, cymbals, a music stand…basket-
balls, and even…shoes… [His installa-
tions are] filled with percussive rhythms 
and harmonies seen and nearly heard.” 
(Canning 2020, para.5) Indeed, by com-
bining both everyday objects and African 
instruments, the sculptor is “merging the 
political, the mythical and the everyday 
life in the manner of chronicle of the 
unsaid, [unmasking] the multiple compo-
nents of Caribbean identities hidden 
behind the national delusions of his 
island…”  (Viala 2015, 6) Simply put, he 
resists the idea that his island’s African 
legacy is of the past. For instance, in his 
piece Con-junto (2015) below, Lind 

Ramos not only remembers the legacy of 
the African presence in Puerto Rico but 
heseeks to normalize blackness as a large 
part of modern Puerto Rican identity.

The title of this artwork delivers this 
message. First, the word conjunto in 
Spanish signifies something that is joint or 
combined, but Ramos has divided it. This 
tells us about the paradox that the harmo-
nious mix of mestizaje has created a 
divide and has subsequently excluded 
blackness. It also shows us that Puerto 
Rico has space to include its African 
legacy. Through the words con (with) and 
junto (together) Lind-Ramos suggests a 
potential of unity within this divide. All in 
all, Con-junto tells the audience that 
negritude is so prominent on the island 
that it cannot be forgotten in Puerto Rico’s 
imaginary of mestizaje. 

27

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28

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29

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114

     Fig. #7, Diago Durruthy, Juan Roberto. Rostro sin nombre, Painting, 2018, (Cernuda Art Gallery, Chicago), 
https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/aia-reviews/juan-roberto-diago-afro-cuban-paintings-1202674786/. 

  

       

 

30

Cuba 
Juan Roberto Diago Durruthy is an 
Afro-Cuban painter and sculptor who uses 
photographs, metal-welding, and paint to 
portray the black legacy and the perduring 
racism on his island. Unlike the bright 
colors we see in the works of the Domini-
can and Puerto Rican artists mentioned, 
Diago prefers to use light blue, grey, 
black, and white tones to reflect the 
otherness of the black body and the 
exclusion of the Afro-Cuban experience. 
Additionally, like Pineda’s subjects, the 
black characters are blurred, as faces 
without faces are recurring figures in 
Diago’s work. Namely, the artist mirrors 
the absence of their voice in nationhood 
by painting them without a mouth, ears, or 
a nose. In fact, although they possess eyes, 
they do not have eyeballs, hence the 
Afro-Cuban subject is presented as a body 
without a vision or a soul. For instance, 
one of Diago’s most famous works is 
Rostro sin nombre (2018) or “nameless 
face”. Hence, the title of this piece brings 
attention to this erasure of the black 
subject in modern Cuba. The face is both 
the center of the image and invisible, 
drawing on this paradox of inclusion-ex-
clusion of Afro-Cubans in the official 
identity of the island. 

Overall, by presenting black people with 
blurred features, Diago demonstrates how 
the official discourse has omitted the 
recounting of individuals who built Cuba. 
Moreover, the tiles indicate that the 
Afro-Cuban is the foundation and a large 
part of the racial mosaic, but this subject is 
relegated to the bottom of the landscape; a 
place where the Cubans walk over every 
day. This work is thus criticizing the 
official discourse which appears to include 
the African legacy of Cuba but has relegat-
ed blackness to the past, like in a museum. 
Finally, the abstract nature of Diago’s art 
presents a subject who is melancholic 
because he is an invisible protagonist. In 
other words, Diago argues that the 
Afro-Cuban is in centre stage in the 
performance of cubanía yet this subject is 
not given the chance to speak.

Born in Matanzas in 1959, María Magda-
lena Campos Pons is a world renown artist 
based in the United States. Like the 
cultural producers we have seen, the 
Afro-Cuban artist is interested in portray-
ing blackness in photography, sculpting 
and audiovisuals. Similar to Diago’s art, 
Campos’ pieces are abstract, yet the 
latter’s signature is using her body as her 
canvas. We see this method in Freedom 
Trap (2013) where she portrays with her 
face the paradox of Cuba’s revolution; an 
ideal of freedom which turned into a 
prison.

As we have seen, the freedom theories of 
both the independence movement and the 
revolution go hand in hand with the Cuban 
dream of racial equality. In fact, Campos 
presents the disillusion of the latter; 
painted white, with her face caught in a 
net, the artist showcases that the imagined 

30

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115

     Fig. #8, Campos Pons, María Magdalena. Freedom Trap, Photograph, 2013, (Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco), 
https://www.facebook.com/gallerywendinorris/posts/10156870626070378/. 

  

       

 

31

racial paradise of Cuba libre washed 
blackness away from the national mosaic, 
closing the doors for Afro-Cuban libera-
tion.

Here, we have a double trap; the net—per-
haps referring to the lack of agency of 
Afro-Cubans in official discourse —and 
the position of her face mimicking that of 
a mug shot—reflecting the myth of 
criminality imposed on people of African 
descent— a symbol of the perduring 
racism on the island. 

All in all, Campos portrays the prison in 
which the official cubanía has trapped 
Afro-Cubans. It is a life sentence because 
it is a marginalization portrayed as 
freedom.

To conclude, it is evident that cultural 
production has served as a tool to rewrite 
the antiblack narratives in the Hispanic 
Caribbean. These artists from the Domini-
can Republic, Puerto Rico and Cuba are 
proliferating new images of national 
beauty ideals available to their audiences 
and are showcasing the damages of the 
racist fallacies propagated in official 
discourse. After centuries of trauma 
caused by whiteness being proliferated as 
the epitome of the aesthetic, blackness is 
finally being recognized as beautiful to the 
youth, an essential target audience for the 
future of the islands. These artists are 

providing children with images in which 
they can identify themselves, and proudly 
imagine themselves as black. As we have 
seen, masking this reality has suffocated 
nature, provoking self-harm in daily life in 
this region. Further, these cultural produc-
ers are redefining what the nationalist 
discourse named rebellion by calling it 
nature. In other words, the pro-black 
images we have seen are counternarra-
tives, but it is not enough to name them 
resistance pieces. Beyond dropping the 
antiblack veil, the primary intensions of 
these contemporary artists from the 
Hispanic Caribbean are to normalize 
nature in the Dominican Republic, Puerto 
Rico, Cuba and in the rest of the world.  

31

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116

Alfonso, Katelyn Alexandra. Personal interview. April 1st, 2021. 
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Canning, Susan.  “Daniel Lind-Ramos.” Sculpture Magazine, September 9th, 2020. 
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Fig. #1, Pineda, Jorge. Mama, Painting, 2016, (Lucy García Arte Contemporáneo, 
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          %20Pineda%2C%20(b.,%2C%20Spain%2C%20in%20February%202013.
Fig. #2, Pineda, Jorge. Me voy, Installation, 2005, (Hunter East Harlem Gallery), 
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          printmedia-artist/. 
Fig. #3, Llano, Kilia. Untitled, Mural, 2018, (Hotel in Las Terrenas Coco, Honey and Hill),
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          comisionado-por-el-nuevo-hotel-en-las-terrenas-coco-honey-an/
          2277746068950471/. 
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          roberto-diago-afro-cuban-paintings-1202674786/. 
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