He replied candidly: independence was “by no means an easy enterprise.” The principal obstacle, he said, was white anxiety. “[Among] the whites… some [were] eternally wavering on account of the risks of the enterprise, and others hesitating out of a fear of a servile war with the negroes and mulattoes if Cuba became free.”1 While García’s words were meant to explain the recent defeat of the Cuban cause, they also revealed something about the momentous challenge that lay ahead. To succeed, the independence movement would have to change the way people thought about race.
