Thanks, Azizi. Lots of good info there. Like I say, I based my observations simply on what I saw among the people I was around when I was there, and the general political and social talk in informal discussions among us (we did a lot of that). They were a church-based community, doing a lot of useful social work, and they were very idealistic people. I saw no evidence of prejudice among those people or in their dealings with other Cubans of different races.

I heard a lot of talk about gender issues, financial issues, poverty issues, educational and economic issues, political and travel issues, but none about racial issues. People usually talk about whatever it is that they are most concerned about.

The tension between so-called "pure blooded" Spaniards and other Latin Americans has, of course, been a major issue in all the Latin American societies ever since Cortez and Pizzaro landed with their conquistadors and their priests and their torturous religion and their greed for gold...

My own grandfather, a man from Prague, Czechoslovakia, was clearly prejudiced in both a class and racial sense, having come from a time and a class which encouraged that sort of prejudice. He served as a European trade official for decades, dealing with all of Latin America, and while he respected the "pure blooded" Spaniards in the elite (they being the people he normally did his business negotiations with), he made no secret of the fact that he despised mestizos, mulattos, Blacks, Amerindians, and anyone who wasn't solidly "white" as far as he was concerned. He also despised Asians. I have no idea what he thought about Jews, but I have to wonder...

I found my Grandparents' attitudes in this respect extraordinary, but all I could do was shrug...they were in a different mindset, and they were thinking in terms of a bygone era. You could not change their minds about it.

I think my Grandfather would have preferred it if Latin America had all remained under the control of Imperial Spain, Portugal, England, etc...he would not have liked Simon Bolivar's comment. ;-)

I couldn't disagree more with his attitudes, but here's the funny thing....as a person, I'd have to say that he was a very nice, gentle, non-confrontational man, an honest business person in his dealings with others, and basically quite a good man. He simply had no idea that he was prejudiced when it came to all those various groups of people. He thought he was seeing it all as it really was. That's what he had learned from his upper class peer group in Prague and Vienna when he was young, and he went on believing it for his whole life.

Amazing, ain't it?