It’s easy to see what’s behind that perception.
Alicia Centelles, an Afro-Cuban radio journalist in Havana who was part of that group of journalists – and whom I have known for more than a decade – once told me that before Castro ousted Batista, her mother, a mulatto, wasn’t allowed to teach in Cuba’s schools because of her color.
“That all changed after the Revolution,” Centelles told me. “My mother was able to get a job at my school.”
Memories of a time when black Cubans had no rights at all, as well as a time when they saw blacks in the U.S. struggling against de jure segregation, have had the effect of causing Cubans like Centelles, whose piece, as well as one by her daughter, Patricia, appears in this journal, to see racism as a practice defined only by what a government does.
Centelles wasn’t denied a job by the state because of the color of her skin, and Patricia wasn’t denied an education at the University of Havana because of her dark skin. So for them, Castro’s revolutionary promise has been kept.
But the problem is that the Cuban government isn’t doing enough to hold its foreign corporate partners – those who are building the country’s tourist industry – to that promise.
And the fallout from this is causing many black Cubans to break their silence about the kind of deep seeded racism that can’t be eliminated by decree.
Pushing back against racism
In 2008, a group of Afro-Cuban activists formed the Citizens Committee for Racial Integration – whose name alone refutes Marti’s ideal; that no one is black or white, just Cuban.
Its national coordinator, Juan Antonio Madrazo Luna, told The Washington Post last year that “The Afro-Cuban population is at the bottom of the social pyramid,” and that, “despite the egalitarian rhetoric of the government, African descendants remain excluded from the most promising jobs.”
Also last year, Roberto Zurbano, editor and publisher of the Casa de las Americas publishing house, lamented in an article in The New York Times that while all Cubans still have a strong safety net of free housing, health care and education, black Cubans are still falling behind as the economy becomes more market-driven. According to a recent article by the Inter Press Service News Agency, a Cuban chapter of the Regional Articulation of African Descendants from Latin American and the Caribbean, or ARAC, was formed in 2012. It seeks to battle attitudes in Cuba that contribute to racism, such as bigoted songs, jokes and epithets. The group wants to establish a dialogue with institutions whenever it finds racism.
Also in 2012, Cuba’s ruling Communist Party announced that fighting discrimination and prejudice would be one of its major objectives. Before that, in 2011, the Cuban parliament actually debated the long-taboo topic of racial discrimination.
Esteban Morales, an Afro-Cuban economist and researcher on race relations, told the Inter Press Service that, “It is true that Fidel and Raul [Castro] have raised the issue [of racism] on several occasions. But they were individual speeches, and aside from these exceptions, the official media denied the existence of the racial problem, which has been growing and can no longer be ignored on the political front.”
Also Gloria Rolando, an Afro-Cuban documentarian, produced a film titled “1912: Breaking the Silence,” which delves into the massacre of the Independent Party of Color. She hopes the film will inspire a dialogue among Cubans about the country’s racist past.
Breaking the silence 21st century style
A growing number of Afro-Cubans no longer believe that national unity hinges on them being silent about racism. And yet others, like Centelles, still see racism as a
U.S. problem and not a Cuban one.
Those Cubans who share Centelles’ view likely are measuring it from a historical perspective. They believe that the dignity of being able to get an education and health care, which few, if any, Afro-Cubans were able to access before the Revolution, trumps any discussion of whether they ought to be able to make more money by waiting tables or cleaning hotel rooms for tourists.
They still adhere to the idea of national unity first, mostly because they believe that the mostly-white Cuban exile community, which had no problem with the segregation imposed on them during the Batista regime, would impose a worse fate on them if they regained power in Cuba.
But other Afro-Cubans are breaking their silence, because they see the country changing. They see racism as an unresolved problem that, if not dealt with, will cause them to be locked into a new, Cuban underclass – one that could do great damage to Jose Marti’s dream of a colorblind nation. g
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