Racist or Revolutionary: Cuba’s Identity is at Stake

Posted By The Editors | December 18th, 2009 | Category: Hot Topics | 7 comments

By Ron Walters

The recent “Statement of Conscience” declaration from 60 well-known U. S. and Latin American black activists, scholars, artists and civic leaders to the Cuban government calling for the release of an imprisoned Cuban physician and human rights activists, Dr. Darsi Ferrer, and an end to racist practices in Cuba marked the first time such concerted criticism (PDF) has been leveled against the Cuban government since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959.

The document, which drew an immediate and sharp response from the regime top leadership, was the more notable because many, if not all of the signatories—defying not only the U.S. government and conservatives, but many white and black liberals as well—had, in the past, supported the Castro regime as being on the whole beneficial to the Cuban people and people in the African Diaspora.

Ferrer was imprisoned last July ostensibly for receiving construction materials that the government said was “illegally obtained merchandise.” That the evidence for such illegality was weak led some to suspect that the government’s real purpose was to keep Ferrer from taking part in human rights demonstrations on the island, where he is perhaps the best known of an increasing number of Afro-Cuban activists, professionals and intellectuals determined to break the code of silence on racism in Cuba and demand a dialogue, in essence, about the completeness of the revolution.

The Cuban government is especially sensitive to criticism about the extent of racism in Cuba because it has forged over the half-century of its existence a record as a progressive government—supporting independence movements in Africa, offering heath and education to African youth and technical assistance to their countries, and offering assistance to those damaged by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. It called the assertion that racial bigotry remains significant there a “delusional farce” and a “campaign” to suffocate our sovereignty and national identity.”

Yet, Cuba’s national identity is precisely what is at stake. The government cannot claim to be truly revolutionary and progressive while tolerating white elitism in its leadership and the oppression of its blackest citizens. Dr. Carlos Moore, an intellectual who has long campaigned to eliminate racism in Cuba, says that, “by denying the existence of racism in Cuba for 50 years, and by brutally preventing those who wanted to confront that reality from doing so, the revolutionary regime guaranteed a safe haven for the unfettered perpetuation and growth of a racist consciousness in Cuba.”

The import of this is that the chickens of racism are now coming home to roost publicly.

With this letter, black leaders in the Diaspora are coming to support the consensus of Afro-Cubans like Dr. Carlos Moore, Miami based writers and activists Enrique Patterson, Victoria Ruiz-Labrit, and others who are increasingly making public a dialogue that authorities within Cuban have marginalized for years. A telling comment by urban scholar Alejandro de la Fuente was that, “the ultimate irony is that the same government that did the most to eliminate racism also did the most to silence debates about its persistence.” Thus, an urgent question is whether this call by friends of Cuba to end the silence will sever their historic connection to and appreciation of the gains of the Revolution.

II.

One cannot understand the meaning of this rupture without realizing the role race played in the sharp difference between black American attitudes and white American attitudes toward Cuba in the twentieth century.

Black American support for the Cuban revolution was rooted in the long history of cultural collaborations between black Americans and Afro-Cubans that began during the Harlem Renaissance. The Afro-Cubanismo movement of the 1920s and 1930s between such figures as Langston Hughes and Mario Bauza continued through the 1940s with Dizzy Gillespie, Chano Pozo and others, even though mid-twentieth-century Cuba itself was, as anthropologist Sydney Mintz described it, “the most prejudiced country in the Hispanic-speaking Caribbean.”

In other words, Afro-Cubans were a significant fraternal part of the African Diaspora when the 1959 Revolution came along.

Despite racial subordination, Afro-Cubans have supported the revolution because they benefitted substantially from the social transformation the Socialist program of Fidel Castro produced. As one writer says, “the class based nature of the government’s program tended to minimize the racial tensions and the possibility of racial conflict.” This is a way of saying that before the revolution blacks in Cuba experienced raw racism from both Americans and their white Cubans compatriots who constituted the ruling class.

Some evidence for black progress under Castro is that, by 1981, the gap in life expectancy in Cuba between whites and blacks and mulattoes of one year was smaller than it was in the United States (6.3 years). Likewise, illiteracy was largely eliminated, and the graduation rates of blacks and mulattoes were even higher than that of whites, and out-pacing the large racial disparities that existed in the US. This impacted the occupational structure favorably in some employment categories: blacks and mulattoes occupied a position in the labor force that was virtually identical to their proportion (34 percent, at the time of the 1981 census) of the population. For example, in the medical industry, blacks occupied 35 percent of blue collar jobs and somewhat less (27 percent) of managerial jobs.

During the 1980s, the employment of blacks showed a somewhat favorable picture. But by the end of that decade, Cuba was hit with a crushing economic crisis which sharply increased black unemployment and economic privation. However, racial exclusion in employment returned, as did a general resurgence of racism with something of a vengeance in the late 1980s and early 1990s—the so-called “special period” of Cuban history when the Soviet Union fell and the economy suffered from the lack of economic support. The construction and tourist industries endured a particularly serious decline, leading workers in those fields to seek the lower-status and lower-paying jobs many black Cubans held – with the result that over the next decade many of the latter experienced a sharp worsening of their standard of living.

By 2006, a Cuban Center for Anthropology report found that blacks faced worse and declining standards of housing, fewer remittances from abroad, and less employment than whites.

As in other Latin countries, blacks in Cuba have been bunched at the lower rungs of the economic structure: the blacker the neighborhood, the worse the housing and conditions of social life. During my own trips to Cuba in the 1980s, Afro-Cuban intellectuals who felt free enough, would admit that the revolution had a long way to go to achieve racial equality—and that there were similarities of ill-treatment by police with blacks in the United States; that even though the race of prisoners was neither recorded nor published, in fact, blacks were disproportionately incarcerated; and that black Cubans were subjected to the same kind of racial profiling black Americans endure in the US and other countries. Perhaps this was the pressure that led to the 1994 race riot in Havana that was largely the product of the rage felt by blacks and mulattoes.

As mentioned, black Americans have been broadly supportive of the Cuban government. For example, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has long called for the elimination of the U.S. embargo and normalization of relations with Cuba. Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. included it as part of his 1984 Presidential campaign and made a highly-publicized visit to the island that year, returning with several newly-freed Cuban dissidents. .

During the early 1970s, African-American activists in such organizations as TransAfrica, the African Liberation Support Committee, the South African Support Committee and others expressed support for the regime largely because of its advances in social service and human rights and supporting independence movements in Africa.

Their positive view of Castro was strengthened in 1976 by his government’s aid to Angola when it was attacked by troops of South Africa’s then-white minority government. Castro sent a small contingent of his own army. He did so again in 1988 upon another South African incursion, and also sent 5,000 medical, educational and construction personnel to staff Angolan schools and hospitals and rebuild the country’s infrastructure of roads, bridges and other things damage by during the Angolan civil war.

Subsequently, Cuba would bring thousands of African youth to its own shores for higher education, and its medical infrastructure was widely copied in other developing countries.

However, there was always an undercurrent of tension in the black American support for the Cuban government. That tension stemmed from the demographic and political profile of the overwhelming majority of Cubans who had fled to the U.S. when Castro came to power. These were “white” Cubans who, as a group, had been associated with the American and Cuban landowners and business leaders who largely oppressed Cuba’s working class population before the Revolution. Most of them escaped to Miami, where they established an anti-Castro, anti-Communist alliance with the Republican Party and came to dominate that city’s politics. Thus, while 70 percent of those inside Cuba are, biologically speaking, some mixture of African descent, census data for the year 2000 show that 85 percent of Miamians of Cuban descent describe themselves as being white. And they have long been a deeply conservative, key voting bloc of the state and national Republican Party, championing issues that were anathema to black Americans in Florida and nationally.

III.

The Cuban revolution was based on Marxist ideology, which officially denigrates any consideration of race as chauvinistic. Cuba’s long dependence on the Soviet Union as a supplier of goods and an ally against the U.S. reinforced that ideologically-driven stance.

My own experience with the Cuban government confirmed the extent of this discipline. Once, while attending an anti-apartheid conference in Jamaica in the early 1980s, I proposed to have a meeting of all the delegates of African descent, and was strongly opposed by Cuban officials. It was only through the intercession of Jose Fanon, the widow of famed revolutionary, Frantz Fanon, that the meeting was eventually held.

However, it has long been clear that, despite Marxism’s assertion that racism is a central facet of capitalism and imperialism alone, Communism, too, was infected with the same virus. I’ll always remember, during a visit to Patrice Lumumba University in Russia in the 1989, the vigor with which African students enrolled there complained of racist treatment by their professors, government officials and ordinary citizens. And I do believe the accuracy of the assertions I’ve long heard that in their relationship with Cuba, Russians preferred to deal with white Cubans.

To be sure, those who made the Cuban revolution professed anti-racism and Castro has consistently denounced the practice of racism as “anti-nation.” He asserted that “the blood of Africa runs deep in our veins,” and reportedly said in 1959 that “there has always been a Negro standing beside every white man” as the definition of who was Cuban. But he also admitted in another speech that year that racism was pervasive. Moreover, his famous colleague, Che Guevara, said in a speech to university students in 1960 that “the university must be painted black, worker and campasino.”

Once in power, the Castro government would write as Article 42 of the country’s Constitution: “Discrimination because of race, skin color, sex, national origin, religious beliefs and any other form of discrimination harmful to human dignity is forbidden and punishable by law and in May 1961, the government eliminated racial segregation by nationalizing all clubs and associations.”

However, it’s commonplace throughout Latin America for countries to have anti-racism laws on the books which are widely ignored in practice. Clinton Adlum, a retired black American diplomat, said that the result of legislating against racism in Cuba was that, “there is no official racism anymore, but there is still a culture of racism.” Alejandro de la Fuente, the dissident scholar, called the belief that the Revolution would itself eliminate racism a “polite fiction.”

IV.

Fidel Castro missed a golden opportunity to bring anti-racist practices into accommodation with his professed principles. Now, as Castro recedes further from the national and international stage, I think the confidence and brashness of the younger generation to raise questions more openly than their elders is going to expand the debate over racism in Cuba, especially if the experiences of those throughout the African Diaspora—beginning with Afro-Cuban exiles—are used to help the government in constructing a truly non-racial society. Journalist Karen Juanita Carillo says that the “problem is going to be with those who are not used to taking orders and won’t stand for it,” a recipe that fits young revolutionaries everywhere.

As in other countries, the image of Barack Obama having seized the reins of the most powerful country in the world captured the imagination of Cubans of African descent. Victor Fowler, an Afro-Cuban interviewed by the Spanish press, said that, “I listen to Obama… I look at my skin, I look at my children’s skin, I cry and I smile.” This led Carlos Moore, whose most recent book is Pichon: Race and Revolution in Castro’s Cuba, to assert that the Castro regime is “nervous about the impact that a black president in the White House could have upon its own black population.”

It is quite possible that Ferrer and his colleagues both inside and outside of Cuba may feel that it is a strategic time to exploit the pressure that the Cuban government may feel in the expressed willingness by the new head of state, Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother, to begin talks with President Barack Obama on normalizing relations. And the Obama administration has taken some initial steps toward that target: easing travel restrictions of U.S. citizens to Cuba; allowing U.S. telecommunications companies to apply for licenses to operate there; easing limits on the kind and quality of humanitarian-related goods that can be sent to Cuba; and eliminating the limit on remittances from Cuban émigrés sent to relatives back home.

Those kinds of pledges Obama made during his 2008 campaign drew the endorsement of the powerful Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), which subsequently produced a document promoting policy changes in US-Cuba relations. The combination of the policy changes already enacted by the Obama administration and the push for further liberalization could place the Cuban regime under even greater pressure to change the racist practices that stunt opportunity for its majority black and mestizo citizens.

That is what should happen. Given that the human rights policies of China and other countries have been questioned by the United Nations, the U.S., and human rights groups, so such questions should become part of any negotiations on the normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba. In a speech before CANF during the 2008 campaign, Obama took the conservative political line and railed against the human rights injustice of dissidents being imprisoned in Cuba, as evidence that the people had never known freedom and democracy. He promised that as president, “I won’t stand for this injustice, you won’t stand for this injustice and together we will stand up for freedom in Cuba.” One has to ask, however, what is the nature of a freedom that is bounded by racism. This promise must encompass the true meaning of freedom.

In the meantime, the Cuban government’s rejection of the concerns expressed by African Diaspora leaders who’ve long supported their revolution only intensifies the sense that it’s not interested in reforming racial practices there. Perhaps government officials believe the push to normalize relations with the U.S. government trumps its longstanding relationship with black Americans. This would waste a tremendous opportunity to complete the goals of fundamental social change envisioned by those who made the revolution, and those who supported it after its initial success.

Roberto Zurbano, head of the country’s Casa de las Americas publishing house, said it best: “We made a revolution in this country, which is what sets us apart from other nations. It’s a tremendous opportunity that revolutionaries of any colour cannot let slip away, in the sense that we can create [an anti-racist] strategy, and it can evolve.”

In any case, I believe that African Americans and others in the African Diaspora still broadly support the original vision of the Cuban Revolution—assuring the well-being of working-class people. And they believe it equally important that relieving the special and disproportionate suffering experienced by Cubans of African descent become the chief order of business if the revolution is to advance, and Cuba’s relationship with the world community become more viable.

Ron Walters is professor emeritus of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, a well-known analyst of American politics, and the author of numerous books, including Freedom Is Not Enough: Black Voters, Black Candidates and American Presidential Politics.

Tags: international, racism

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Walter Lippmann December 28th, 2009 2:13 am :
Ron Walters’ discussion of racism in Cuba raises important issues, but misses many aspects of the Cuban treatment of these complex and difficult themes. Perhaps Ron Walters is unfamiliar with the considerable Cuban literature on race, racism and how they play out in Cuba today. Coming from the United States of America, where racism is a central facet of the social and political culture, and where ignorance of Cuban reality is maintained through a travel ban, that’s not surprising.

In my opinion, people from the United States ought to be careful to avoid thinking that the experiences and lessons of life in the US can be applied to every other country on earth without taking into account that country’s history, culture and experiences. I believe Ron Walters has made that kind of error here.

The United States didn’t elect its first Black president until 2008, in the third CENTURY after gaining its independence from the United Kingom. Cuba, which had and continues to have racial problems of its own, elected its first black president in 1940, at a time when the island had only achieved formal and juridical, but not practical nor actual independence, from the United States of America. Actual independence, I would argue, only began on January 1, 1959, with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

Though I am non-Black, and can’t discuss racism from the same personal experience foundation that Blacks can, I’ve attempted to follow these issues for many years. I’ve traveled to Cuba and stayed for extended periods of time. In addition, I direct an Internet-based news service, CubaNews, available at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/

Part of the work of the CubaNews list is to locate Cuban materials on these themes, and to make translations of them for the English-speaking public. Even as fierce an opponent of the Cuban Revolution as Carlos Moore has found himself citing my work and my personal website regarding these issues, as you can find in his recently-published autobiography, PICHON. (see the footnotes to the book)

Among the accomplishments of the CubaNews list has been locating and translating from Spanish to English articles on racism, which is a continuing problem, from the contemporary Cuban media. I’ll cite a few examples and hope that Ron Walters, and anyone else interested in these matters, will take a look at what Afro-Cuban authors have had to say about them. Citations below.

Thank you,

Walter Lippmann

Esteban Morales: Cuban Color
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs2809.html

Esteban Morales: Challenges of the Racial Problem in Cuba:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs2296.html

Esteban Morales: Anti-Cuban Subversion – The Race Issue
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs1516.html

Miguel Barnet: Preserving Memory:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs2091.html

David Gonzalez and Walterio Lord:
Some Quick Comments on Carlos Moore’s PICHON:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs2346.html

The Independent Party of Color:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs2080.html

The Teachings and Lineage of Walterio Carbonell:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs1911.html

Esteban Morales: Malcolm X – An Unyielding Revolutionary:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs1389.html

Fernando Martinez Heredia: Malcolm X Still Speaks to Us
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs2430.html

Fernando Martinez Heredia: The Meaning of a Centennial
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs2127.html

Fernando Martinez Heredia:
Social diversity is not a weakness of the nation,
but a very important element of its wealth.
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs1769.html

Alberto N. Jones: Unmasking the Promotors of Racial War in Cuba
http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs1533.html

There are many, many more, but these are a few to get an interested reader started.

Finally, Makani Themba-Nixon of the Praxis Project, one of the sixties signatories to the letter, has publicly withdrawn her signature. She issued a detailed explanation of why she did that which anyone following these issues should carefully read.

Thanks.
Barton Fink December 31st, 2009 10:04 am :
It seems odd that Lippmann invites us to discredit Walters on the basis of his national origin, which Lippmann shares. The specific content of Walters’s text is not taken up by Lippmann’s commentary, which instead strangely makes much of the fact that the United States did not elect a black president in the years immediately following the American Revolution. According to Lippmann, Walters cannot address the Cuban situation because he is an American, and yet this same disability could be applied to Lippmann himself. Moreover, if one reads the authors that he provides links for, one discovers that the allegations behind the Acting on Our Conscience petition are substantially correct. Are we forbidden to speak out against racism by some secret rule that demands our silence?
Walter Lippmann January 3rd, 2010 10:12 pm :
There is no such person as “Barton Fink” which is the name of a movie character played by John Turturro. Details about that movie may be found on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barton_Fink

“Barton Fink” gets his facts wrong in virtually every. My objection to Ron Walters’ comments is that they are not based on facts. For example, he claims that the evidence against Darsi Ferrer, arrested for receiving stolen property was “weak”. But he fails to say what the evidence was, or what made the evidence weak.

The bibliography which I provided demonstrates that in Cuba though the problem of racism remains a real one, the government of the island doesn’t pretend there’s no problem.

Since this, uh, “Fink” is obviously not a real person, there’s no need to discuss anything else he says at all. My real name is Walter Lippmann, and I write under my own name, not pseudonyms. I write about Cuba from some practical knowledge because I’ve been there often and know something about the topic. No such claim can be made by Ron Walters, and even less this “Fink”.
Walter Lippmann January 14th, 2010 1:22 am :
Neither Ron Walters nor the rest of the unfortunates who signed that petition denouncing Cuba for supposed racism have had a word to say about Haiti, not to speak of Cuba’s years-long commitment to assistance for the people of that country. Over four HUNDRED Cuban doctors are providing medical care in Haiti. The team has been in the country for ten years.

For a detailed background commentary, Fidel’s reflection:
Nothing can be improvised in Haiti (detailed, but not very long)
http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2009/ing/f240509i.html
==================================================

Cubans in Port-au-Prince Are In Good Health

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 13 (acn) All the Cubans working on collaboration programs in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, were reported to be in good health. Only two of them suffered minor injuries from the earthquake that hit that Caribbean nation on Tuesday.

The head of the education brigade, Adalberto Bravo Carbonell suffered a dislocation to his right knee and Alina Almeida Rivera, also member of the brigade, had a minor lesion on her right leg, as reported by the Cuban National News Program.

The Cuban medical brigade providing services in Port-au-Prince has already established a new hospital camp next to the one that was brought down by the earthquake.

The Cuban experts reportedly had provided medical care, including a few surgical
operations, to more than 800 patients up to Wednesday morning. Nine of the patients died including three children.

According to the TV news program’s report, a further medical brigade from Cuba will arrive soon in Haiti to help the people.

The group, created for emergency situations, is taking medicines, clothes, food, saline solution and plasma bags.
Walter Lippmann January 15th, 2010 11:08 pm :
As one of the eight prominent signatories to a letter of protest from Cuba protesting the letter signed by sixty Black figures in the United States, Esteban Morales takes the subject somewhat further in this interview just released in English translation today.

I’m surprised that Ron Walters hasn’t responded to the comments made previously on this issue. Can someone ask him to make some sort of comment or response? After he made a point of writing this long commentary, readers probably would like to know he he maintains his position or has modified it in any way in light of the responses it has garnered.
=======================================

Racism in Cuba: An Unresolved Issue
January 15, 2010
Patricia Grogg

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=18246

HAVANA TIMES, January 14 (IPS) – Racism is an unresolved issue in Cuban society. “It’s necessary to admit that the problem exists, to know its impact on the social system we defend, and to attack it at its roots,” said Esteban Morales, an economist, political scientist and author of articles and essays on the subject, interviewed by IPS.

As a researcher at the University of Havana’s Center for Hemispheric and US Studies, Morales understands Cuba and the US with equal depth. He responded to the fact that 60 [African-American] intellectuals —some of recognized stature and prestige— accused the Raul Castro government of persecuting and harassing people due to the color of their skin.

Morales believes those accusations “ignore” the reality of his country and “are being mounted as part of the same campaigns that (US) administrations have historically launched against the Cuban Revolution.”

“We speak of racism and say that it’s necessary to improve civil rights, democratic rights, but not only of blacks, but of the entire society. In that struggle we have allies at the highest levels of the country’s political leadership,” he affirmed.

IPS: In what respects did the social efforts of the Cuban Revolution fail by being unable to eliminate the disadvantages of its black population?

ESTEBAN MORALES: Despite the radical nature of the process that opened up in 1959, social programs —for years— did not take color into account. With the triumph of the Revolution, social policies treated all poor people equally, and no distinction was made with respect to blacks. However, this was something that should have been done, because the color of one’s skin is a strong variable of social differentiation in Cuba.

Whites came here of their own will, as settlers, with life goals that were often realized. Blacks were brought here by force and turned into slaves. These are different points of departure that cannot be forgotten, nor can they be avoided, and their weight is still felt today.

Even when everyone’s level was elevated, and blacks achieved a more favorable position over this past half century, the deep differences didn’t totally disappear. When the “Special Period” came (the crisis of the 1990s), we realized that those who suffered most from the crisis were in fact blacks.

Still, in today’s Cuba, it’s not the same to be poor and white as to be poor and black.

IPS: Nevertheless, in 1962 the Cuban government declared that the problem of racism had been resolved.

EM: That was an error of idealism and voluntarism made under the pressure of the political circumstances of the time. Starting from that moment, there began a long period of silence around the issue. This was justified by saying that to talk about those differences was to play into the enemy’s hands. Those who insisted [on the existence of racism] were considered racist and divisive.

The issue resurged with force during the Special Period; I would say with a virulence all its own, which is characteristic of something that is assumed to be resolved but really isn’t.

IPS: On more than one occasion it’s been said that people in this country are educated “to be white.” Do you believe it’s fair to consider these types of contradictions to be forms of “institutionalized” racism?

EM: It’s a certain form of institutionalization, but not through some directive or done in a conscious manner, but a form derived from flaws and errors in the educational process, in the teaching of history, in racial representativeness in our books. By not dealing with the root of the problem in schools, the consequences of slavery persist until today.

These problems do not have to do with institutions, but with aspects and problems of social life, with the dysfunctions and imperfections of our society. Racial consciousness is still lacking in Cuba. For whites this is not important, because they were always in power; but blacks must have a racial consciousness to struggle against racism and for their place in society.

Racial discrimination is a phenomenon that remains on people’s mind, in their families, in personal relationships, and occasionally in some institutionalized groups – which is not easily resolved.

IPS: What is your proposal for solving these deficiencies in education?

EM: The only way to solve this is through the strict monitoring of equal opportunities for all jobs, especially in the new economy, that’s to say in tourism and joint-venture companies involving foreign capital; in education and intensive cultural work.

In fact, we shouldn’t educate for any particular color, but what’s happening in practice is that our students are generally educated thinking that it’s better to be white, and that it’s a disadvantage to be black.

We have to solve problems of occidentalismo (Euro-centrism) in our education, to deepen the teaching of history —about Africa, Asia, the Middle East— and the racial representativeness of our bibliography. We should take the discussion about racial discrimination into schools so that when a young person goes out on the street and hears a racist epithet, they’re able to defend themself against it.

IPS: What do you propose in social terms?

EM: “We are all the same” was also a slogan under Cuba’s demagogic Republican (pre-Revolution) period. Equality is the aim, the goal, as long as inequality and difference are what trip us up daily.

As a starting point, it’s necessary to recognize the inequalities that exist in our society, though we’ve struggled to solve them to a point of verging on egalitarianism. They are an inheritance and, at the same time, a phenomenon that can be reproduced as a result of the dysfunctions of our social model, which must be improved.

Only by understanding these differences in depth and working on them, will we be able to arrive at true equality.

IPS: Do you think it’s necessary to have special programs and policies for the black population?

EM: In Cuba, a certain kind of affirmative action policy exists, though we don’t call it that. Based on the thorough investigation of the situation of the family, the problems of children, people with disabilities, and different social groups, we’re coming up with practices for taking affirmative action, because we’re connecting with people who have been historically less advantaged, those who are more vulnerable.

There is information that needs to be refined, and that can only be done by looking at discrete situations in terms of housing, employment, health care. In everything it’s necessary to keep color in mind, and when the study sample is larger, the more clearly it’s seen that blacks are on the bottom, mestizos are generally in the middle, and whites are on top.

IPS: Why isn’t there a deeper discussion on this matter, covered by the island’s press, so that everyone can recognize it?

EM: The debate is building strength in the intellectual and community environment, as well as in cultural centers, but it also has to reach the agencies of the State, as well as the political, social and mass organizations of the country. That’s what we’re demanding, because according to our studies more than 60 percent of the population of 11.2 million Cubans is non-white (made up of blacks and mestizos).

IPS: Do you believe that it [race] should also be a part of the political agenda?

EM: Of course it should. The fact that President Raul Castro raised the issue in his speech before the parliament on December 20 makes me think the matter could be on the agenda of the upcoming Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba. If this is not the case, I believe it should be.

In addition, there exist two commissions that are studying the problem from different vantage points: one at the National Library and the other within the National Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC). The Parliament should also have a commission to look into this matter.

If the legislature deals with the issues of religion, women, and youth, why doesn’t it look at the race issue, which I consider as being at the same level – but which has been the least addressed?

IPS: Is there a risk that the debate be interrupted for fear that it could create internal division, or that it could be manipulated against the Revolution?

EM: To the contrary, what’s actually being used in the campaigns of the enemy is our delay in having addressed the issue of race. What can divide us is our failing to discuss it.

What affects us politically from the point of view of our international and national image is to have a discourse that doesn’t correspond to reality, because until very recently we said there were no racial problems in Cuba.

A Havana Times translation of the original article published in Spanish by IPS
Steve Robert Marquardt January 18th, 2010 4:55 pm :
Cuba’s racial situation is certainly no better that that of the USA. Until recently, you could see evidence of institutional racism against darker skinned Afro-Cubans by going to the current Cuban government web site at http://www.cubagob.cu/ingles/default.htm and clicking on the “Government” tab and then in the left sidebar “Council of Ministers” and then “Members” to see only two (2) dark skins among the 50 top national leaders pictured there. Alas, this site has now been taken down.

Is Cuba today this a racial improvement over Batista, who himself was not white? Consider the following:

“His friends called him el indio [the Indian], and his enemies called him el negro [black man],” recalled his eldest son years later. . . When he first saw Batista, U.S. Military Attaché T.N. Gimperling believed he was achinado, meaning part Chinese, Indian, and Afro-Cuban. . . . His enemies assumed he was Afro-Cuban, and he was frequently depicted as having exaggerated African features in Cuban newspaper cartoons. . . It is quite probable, given the extent of intermarriage in the Banes region and the high number of former African slaves in Oriente Province, that Batista’s family was a mixture of Spanish, African and Indian lineages. “ — From pages 4 and 5 of Frank Argote-Freyre’s biography, “Fulgencio Batista: From Revolutionary to Strongman” (brackets in original text)

Castro’s revolution booted Batista’s black and red blood out of the President’s chair and restored white guys to power.

Today the prison population in Stalinist/Apartheid Cuba is 90% black while only 9% of the ruling Stalinist party is black.

“By all accounts, blacks are disproportionately represented among Cuba’s prison population. … De la Fuente [A Nation for All: Race, Inequality and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba, University of North Carolina Press, 2001] notes that in the mid-1980s, a brief period for which data exist, blacks were 7.6 times more likely than whites and 3.4 times more likely that mulattos to be declared socially dangerous, and they represented 78 percent of all prisoners jailed for this reason.” (Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba, by Mark Q. Sawyer (Cambridge University Press, 2006), page 118.

See also “Why Castro fears Obama administration” by Carlos Moore, Special to McClatchy Washington Bureau, Nov. 19, 2008. Last updated: December 15, 2008 02:56:04 PM. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/337/v-print/story/56074.html

P.S. I’ve been to Cuba, too.
jon jeter January 27th, 2010 3:16 pm :
I have no doubt that racism continues to afflict Cuba. But given the country’s progress in liberating poor people and Africans within its borders and and its unparalleled contributions to postmodern liberation struggles throughout the world (see Nelson Mandela, Hugo Chavez, Amilcar Cabral, Samora Machel, Evo Morales, Namibia, Angola et al), and, more importantly the virulent and even lethal strains of racism that poison Brazil, Columbia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Israel, France, the U.S. etc., why in the world would Professor Walters single out Cuba for such a public rebuke?

Or to put it another way, Israel massacred 1400 Gazans only a year ago; police and their surrogate death squads in Brazil summarily execute more than a 1,000 black men every year, and President Obama is bombing poor, darker-skinned peasants in Pakistan every week, and Professor Walters wants us to
be mad at Cuba?

This decontextualized argument is not for serious people.

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