Cuba: The Anthropology of Popular Opinion

Jorge Milanes Despaigne

HAVANA TIMES — No one in Cuba today is surprised to hear the various opinions that have traditionally surrounded the claim that “black people have bigger penises than white people,” so I assume no one will be too shocked by my comments on the subject below.

I release the delicate and moralistic from any commitment to read these lines. Although, no one really has to know that you read this, so, take advantage of this opportunity (it doesn’t come every day).

The issue of size here is not too dissimilar from the way one chooses a pair of shoes. You try them on and, if they’re comfortable…well…True, what I’m referring to is with you from the time you are born and grows over time, like our interest curves in life, with its ups and downs and new adventures here and there. Nothing in life in eternal, neither that which inspires you or that which you inspire.

When I was younger, the indirect and direct questions some women put to me were a source of both good and bad fortune. “You must carry a sword down there, right?” some would ask me tongue-in-cheek.

It was the stereotype doing its thing. They saw a tall black man and the rest was pure history and tradition (though there are always exceptions to the rule).

The myth of the healthy phallus comes to us from the times of slavery, when some women, defying the prevailing social taboos, would decide to satisfy their sexual cravings through secret relations with the strong and virile black slaves, whom they threatened to remain quiet about these.

Others contented themselves with looking and longing from a distance. They wouldn’t take it any further than that. White men, the masters, also slept with female slaves and later intimidated them to keep quiet. These women didn’t have to keep up any appearances before society, though some of them did occupy certain positions within the slave community. At any rate, they gradually created a new society, the Cuban society of today.

This opinion is no longer so widely held, but it remains as a result of certain noxious commercial tendencies, and some popular magazines and videos continue to depict black people in racist ways. It reflects latent or explicit opinions, and this sells, of course.

Societies today are far more integrated racially. Globalization pretty much imposes this and the myth has lost (and will continue to lose) some of its prevalence as a result of so much mingling among peoples.

This is also true of Cuba, of which our national poet, Nicolas Guillen, once said in his verses: “All of us mixed together, mixed together.”