Raza: Caribbean Life

Johnny Colts

L. Roland

Film Analysis #4

29 November 2012

Raza

Living in the United States of America has allowed me access to many different products and opportunities, including the ability to travel all over the world. I was blessed with the chance to visit the Caribbean multiple times and to multiple different locations. I never however, got to go to a place as different and foreign as Cuba. After watching the film Raza and doing all the readings including professor Roland’s book, Cuban Color in Tourism and La Lucha, I was able to get a taste of what life is like in Cuba. I learned how varied one place could be from another. I drew many connections between the readings and Raza after watching the film, mainly the issue that some form of racism still exists in Cuba.

The entire film Raza was just a long collaboration of one interview after another asking different people about the issue of racism. When they were doing the interviews, they interviewed both people on the street and higher intellectuals and it was somewhat easy to distinguish the two through their different answers. You could tell whom the “lower class” of Cuba by their answer. Because of their lower education many of their answers did not give much of any evidence as to why there is racism. They just simply remarked “there is definitely racism still in Cuba”. I also noticed that the majority of these “lesser educated” interviewees were mostly much darker then the rest. It was interesting to see that a lot of the lighter skinned and white people they tried interviewing on the street either said there was no racism, that the blacks discriminate against each other, or they just refused to answer the question. This lead me to believe that there actually may be some kind of racism occurring between lighter skinned Cubans versus the darker skinned Cubans.

On the other side of the film were the intellectuals that they interviewed for the majority of the time. It was clear to see that there was...