Maria Antonia Carrillo

Before the Cuban Revolution, Afro-Cuban women were afforded little respect and few opportunities. About the best an Afro-Cuban woman could hope for was a life as a domestic servant to a wealthy white family. One of the things the revolution changed was to open doors for minorities and peasant women, particularly in terms of receiving an education and then acquiring meaningful and rewarding employment.

Judy Maloof is a professor of Spanish at the University of New Mexico. In 1992 she traveled to Cuba to interview a diverse group of women to learn more about the continuity of women's political activism in Latin America. In this excerpt, she interviews Maria Antonia Carrillo of Havana. Carrillo served in the Mariana Grajales platoon during the Cuban Revolution and eventually became the director of an AfroCuban dance troupe. She relates how much...