We are ready.

Before the 1959 revolution, they say that Cuba resembled very much the American South. It was hot and humid, with small town centers, cafes and diners, white-washed homes. Protestant churches were big, many coming directly from mission groups from the US, like the Baptists. Baseball was the national game, and sandlots were filled with kids who idolized Joe Dimaggio. And there were big sugar plantations and mansions with ornate moulding, shading white families from the sun, while black workers set fire to the cane, cleaning it for harvest, stomping through the smoke with rags over their faces.
Slaves had still arrived in Cuba until the 1880's. In 1898 the island came under US control, and with investment came US culture, language, and Jim Crow values. In the half-century under US rule, Cuba was funneled toward the rigid US conceptions of race, and communities became increasingly segregated. As merchandizing and mass media became cultural drivers, it became "bad" to be black, and in the spirit of Social Darwinism, white Cuban pundits declared that Cuba's hope for a positive future would be in an overall "whitening" of the population.
But Nicolas Guillen wrote "Motivos de son," and his words came into the people like the beat of a drum. In just eight short poems, the entire publication not seeming more than a brochure, he brought the idea of being black together with the idea of being good, and together with the idea of being Cuban. It was a sensation. He idealized the full lips and corse hair of a mulatto girl, brought forth with song and color the thick speech of afro-cubans, and struck out at the petty quaffs of the dominant culture.
Guillen became the literary voice of the revolution before Che became its gun and Fidel became its pumping fist. In this poems he created a concept that Cuba could be a mixed-race culture, that the essence and power of Cuba could in fact be its mix of races, instead of race serving as a criteria for division, fear, and hate. People had hope, and they took to the streets just as the Civil Rights Movement took to the streets in the US. They called for change. They called for hope. The change was already coming, through music and art and literature.
Then Castro's guerrillas showed up in the Sierra Maestra, Batista fled the country, and suddenly there was a chance to implement a drastic political, economic, and cultural change that took the search for equality to the extreme. Guillen's work became required reading in schools, his poems became mantra, and this poet who tried to find his voice as a mixed-race Cuban became the voice of a revolution.
It's hard to say if the Cuban Revolution was "good" or not. Many people were killed, oppressed, and misplaced. The island became a cage, as politicians turned the waves into walls. Fifty years later, Cuban people are equal: everyone is just as poor as everyone else. One can't say if it was "good" or not, but one can say without doubt that something wonderfully unique occurred in Cuba. Instead of marching on with the US along a path of racial division, they forcefully created a different reality.
Maybe it doesn't need to be so forceful in the US. Maybe we can rally around Barack Obama for President, and feel that this man is American, truly, and for the first time see Americans of color as Americans, as true Americans, and look around and see that we are surrounded by people of color, that we are ourselves people of color. Many different colors. And all American! We are fifty years late, but maybe Cuba was fifty years early. Maybe we're just ready now. We don't need guerillas or to overthrow a government. We have our words, we have our Constitution, and we are ready. We are ready.