Chapter 5 illuminates how Afro-Cubans present a challenge to the exclusionary racializing frames discussed in the previous chapters, and to African American-Latino divisions more broadly. Focusing on in-depth interviews with post-1980 Afro-Cuban immigrants, the chapter forefronts their voices in the Miami scenario, and extends the intellectual conversation beyond it. Analyzing Afro-Cuban stories about their experiences navigating identity and community belonging among white Cubans and African Americans in Miami, and African Americans and Mexican Americans in Los Angeles, the chapter demonstrates how they strategically undermine fixed notions of race and ethnicity and create spaces for coalition. The chapter argues that listening closely to these Afro-Cuban voices allows greater insight into how people situated “in-between” confront dominant racial frames. Furthermore, their negotiations of race help resist “color-blind” celebrations of multiplicity as they also make visible the cost of being raced by challenging the stigma attached to black identity.
Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in Cuban Immigrants to Texas who Traveled through the Darién Jungle, Panama