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De la Fuente’s translation problems are not smaller
than Zurbano’s. The most obvious one is how to translate Cuban concepts such as “negro” and “negritud”
for a U.S. public without falsifying those concepts.
Anyone with a minimum but equal understanding of
racial realities in Cuba and the United States, as is the
case with a negligible minority that reads the New
York Times, knows that “negro” in Cuban Spanish
cannot be simply translated to “black.” He or she will
know that “negro” and “black” correspond to very different racist modalities.
‘Black’ is related to a Manichean racism that includes
all that is not ‘white.’ ‘Negro’ results from subtler racism that continues to see white people as the most ‘advanced’ definition of humanity, one that ‘benefits’
less obvious mestizos with the ‘honorific title’ of
‘whites,’ which confers a certain distinction—a degree of ‘advancement’—according to how great the
proportion of ‘whiteness.’ De la Fuente tries to rescue
this divide in racist thinking by excluding mestizos
from his Cuban calculations, so that the figures he presents are not affected by conceptual differences. This
measure will go on being inexact, regardless the fairness of its employment.
We should consider that the official proclamation of
racism’s disappearance in Cuba also announced the
end of any public discussion about it. Furthermore,
this false death has reinforced racism, as is the case
with so many other phenomena that tend to feed off
public silence. As Zurbano (or his translator) correctly
points out, “the black population in Cuba is far larger
than the spurious numbers of the most recent censuses.” This is result of that very same racism, which
declares whatever is convenient for it to be able to declare itself ‘officially’ white (or, mulatto, at the very
least), even if people’s skin color says something different.
This is certainly the case when Zurbano states “the
number of blacks on the street undermines, in the most
obvious way, the numerical fraud that puts us at less
than one-fifth of the population.” This also impacts the
monumental issue of translating Cuba’s race problems
for an American audience. If, instead of using the official, 2012, Cuban census figures (9.3% blacks vs.

26.6% mestizos),7 a more realistic count were taken,
blacks and mestizos would cease being considered a
minority, which is how their racial ‘peers’ are processed in the U.S. social and cultural imagination.
Professor de la Fuente’s use of the concept ‘economic
justice’ is no less complicated. In this case, it is not
exactly a problem of translation, although much of it
seems to be. What de la Fuente does not make clear is
what he means by ‘economic justice,’ except for perhaps indicating more or less equal access to consumer
goods and education. Although the notion that this
equality was ever achieved in a society that for decades has been controlled by privileges whose monetary value is impossible to ascertain is debatable, this
is not the only questionable aspect of his definition.
The problem is that this concept includes the word
‘justice,’ which is difficult to apply to a system that
has systematically denied its entire population basic
legal, social, economic, individual and collective
rights.
According to Kant, “any action or maxim that allows
the free will of each person to coexist with the will of
anyone else according to a universal law is just.” More
over, the Center for Economic and Social Justice tells
us that “the highest purpose of economic justice is to
free each person to participate creatively in the infinite
work, not just the economic kind, but also for the mind
and spirit.”8
It ends up being quite perverse to confuse the redistribution of goods and a supreme restriction on rights
with justice, even if said distribution and restrictions
are imposed with absolute equity. This would be like
assuming that equally distributing food, instruction
and medical care to a group of slaves is the same as
treating them justly. Everyone knows that when everyone is equally silenced, those who have more reason
to complain suffer more. An apparent equality will
only serve to highlight an ever-increasing inequality,
one that will become more and more difficult to distinguish.
Yet, I don’t think that Professor de la Fuente employs
the term ‘economic justice’ to confuse his readers. In
fact, the contrary is most likely the case. He does it so

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