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A second line is in effect a civil rights demonstration. Literally, demonstrating the civil right of the community to assemble in the street for peaceful purposes. Or, more simply, demonstrating the civil right of the community to exist.
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Up through and including Lincoln, American politicians nursed a fantasy of repatriating blacks to Africa.
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That now-archaic word “likely,” ubiquitous in slave sale advertisements, had a cluster of converging meanings: vigorous, strong, capable, good-looking, attractive, promising—in other words, likely to reproduce.
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Every farm with slaves was a slave-breeding farm. Raising slaves was mostly a cottage industry.
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That spirit of mockery characteristic of the guaracha was part of the mambo from the beginning.
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Slaves, whose legal status was comparable to that of livestock, were expected to provide a farm owner with marketable children.
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Music is so essential to the Cuban character that you can't disentangle it from the history of the nation. the history of Cuban music is one of cultural collisions, of voluntary and forced migrations, of religions and revolutions.
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When we speak of “branding” today, we should remember that it was at one time literal: with a hot iron pressed against human flesh.