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For Cuban Blacks, a Touch of
Marginalization or Social Exclusion

Race, class and gender in Cuba and the world

Veizant Boloy González
Attorney and journalist
Cubalex. Center for Legal Information
Havana, Cuba

T

he 2012 Population and Housing Census in
Cuba documented that of the 11,167,325 inhabitants of Cuba 7,160,399 are white,
2,972,882 are mestizo or mulatto, and only 1,034,044
are black. The percentages are: 64.1% white, 26.6%
mestizo or mulatto, and 9.3% black. According to
these data, the black race is showing signs of disappearing since the 1981 and 2002 censuses.
Critics on the left and defenders of the Cuban revolution are certain that miscegenation is the dominant
tendency and that Afro-Cubans are still the luckiest
blacks in the Caribbean, thanks to the Revolution’s
1959 triumph that saved them from the poverty in
which they lived and made them equal to their white
compatriots.
Yet, after years of marginalization, the problems of
Cuba’s Afro-descendants today still persist. They
have not yet been resolved. The process of excluding
blacks continues throughout society, yet what is
shown to the world through sporting and musical
events seems to hide what is really happening.
The subtle changes that have taken place in Cuban society have not really, concretely, benefited them—not
given their reality. Time has seen the emergence of
new kinds of poor people, the Revolution’s poor.
Some see this as a reality, objectively; others, as a generational debt due to the lasting effects of historic conditions.

The lack of equal rights is nothing new. Things were
exactly the same prior to 1959, and even prior to the
creation of the Republic. There never was any kind of
legal defense against this; to this, one must add the
imposed, socialist model of slavery that systematically violates human rights, principally those of
blacks. There has been no process of historic redress.
The situation is getting worse in densely populated areas. Many of their inhabitants were born after the Revolution’s triumph. Groups of families, a great many of
them black and mestizo, are suffering the worst social
realities, lowest income, greatest poverty and greatest
impact on their material wellbeing, quality of life and
subsistence.
A lack of employment, or poor employment, is decisive under these circumstances, a situation that is
shared by many other Cubans regardless of their skin
color. Naturally, it is income that determines whether
or not someone can escape this insecure and impoverished condition.
Yet, it is not necessarily possible to attribute the uncertainty and defenselessness that characterize social
exclusion to a lack of decent work. Is there a job in
Cuba that is decently paid? Only positions connected
to the system’s unbridled, totalitarian politics. This
seeming arbitrariness grows and works together with
a lack of political will for doing anything about an

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