With the triumph of the Revolution on 1 January 1959, one believed that this would include conditions of equality for the descendants of Haitians and their inclusion as residents and citizens of Cuba. One believed in the possibility of integration that the Revolution would produce, but in reality, that has not been produced. We developed the Festival of the Caribbean in Santiago, a Festival that puts us in contact with those factors [traditional cultural practices of marginal populations] so as to complete the process of equality, making contact with culture bearers and other elements of our patrimony, giving them the same dignity and their rightful place as being part of our traditional popular culture and national patrimony.- Joel James FigarolaIt is through our work and efforts at our institution [Casa del Caribe] that all Cubans, including the descendants of Haitians, recognise the power and importance of their culture and collective identity to our cultural patrimony.- Jose MilletIntroductionAMiDst the sweLteRing JuLy heAt, oRDinARy cuBAns, state officials, researchers and tourists assemble along the peripheries of the main plaza in Santiago de Cuba's city centre, awaiting the start of the annual Festival del Caribe (Festival of Caribbean Culture). A group of bata drummers invokes the spirit of Elegua, the Yoruba-Lucumi god of chance, to open the weeklong event. But as they finish, the familiar sights and sounds of Afro-Cuban folklore1 disappear and are replaced by a procession of Haitiano-Cubano folkloric troupes with their own distinctive aesthetic and performative registers. Singing in their Spanish-inflected Kreyol to the accompaniment of bamboo flutes, polyrhythmic drum patterns, and piercing scrap-metal horns, the descendants of one of Cuba's oldest immigrant communities inscribe their presence into the landscape.As they twirl their ritual banners and flags and move en masse through the city streets, the display of ethnic and cultural difference enacted through performance often triggers the curiosity of bewildered spectators. Who are these people? Is this Cuban? Are they Cuban? Do these Haitians live in Cuba? These are some of the questions often asked in the crowd by perplexed onlookers trying to make sense of this performance of difference in a context of a revolutionary state that once professed a unified national identity (see Figure 1).2What gives me pause about the increased open display of new identities and specifically new ethnicities in Cuba is not so much that they are being exhibited for public consumption in an ever-expanding tourist market. Rather, I am interested in examining why certain identities are being mobilised to specifically articulate what Rogelio Martinez Fure calls Cuba's pluricultural heritage.3 Within the eastern provinces, Haitian-heritage communities, which initially developed in isolated rural hamlets relatively outside of the gaze of the state, have been the subject of increased state intervention, which over the past thirty-two years has steadily contributed to building and expanding Santiago de Cuba's folkloric economy. Moreover, as I will argue, through the efforts of regional institutions such as Casa del Caribe, Haitian-Cuban cultural practices are finding a space within the national imaginary.The display of black bodies and their expressive forms as signs of national cultural difference represents a longstanding exhibitionary practice within the cultural politics of Cuba.4 Commencing in the 1920s and continuing with a renewed sense of urgency following the 1959 Cuban Revolution, and again in the post-revolutionary context of the 1990s to the present, we see a continual deployment of black cultural traditions dismissively dubbed 'folklore' in staged presentations.In her examination of the intersections of Afro-Cuban religious practice and the formation of a revolutionary national identity, Christine Ayorinde accurately notes: Folkloric studies in Cuba . …