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that Cuban reality seems less opaque, more translatable and accessible, even if, in the end, it is less real. “I
come from the future,” the Professor tells us, “and
economic equality, as a tool, did not eliminate racism
there.” We are before the strange case of a Marxisttrained professor trying to explain to a capitalist readership that the economy is not everything. He appeals
to his ‘future’ reality to establish his authority on the
subject, more or less like the Terminator.
Even if we agree with him on the essentials—that economic equality is not the panacea for eliminating racism—it is difficult to accept this attempt at translation
beyond its (definitely moving) insistence that someone might learn something from the Cuban experience. More than a leap forward towards the future, the
Cuban regime’s egalitarian gestures were an attempted bribe to large segments of the black population in exchange for them giving up their voices and
the spaces they attained only after decades of struggle.
Seduced by the ‘futuristic’ effect of Cuban statistics,
de la Fuente forgets Gayatri Spivak’s warning: anyone
who translates to English “must be able to confront the
idea that what seems resistant in the space of English
may be reactionary in the space of the original language.”9
This is not about Cuban racism having become impossible to translate because it is so exceptional. If it
were, that would be nothing more than the fulfillment
of another exceptional form of thinking: nationalism.
Its subtlety can be found throughout world history,
whenever different ethnic groups with lengthy histories of oppression came into contact. If anything is exceptional, it is the American example, with its contrasting, more or less extreme segregation till very recently, and its punctilious, theoretical guarantee of individual rights. This contrast has made the translation
of other experiences to the U.S.’s racial reality increasingly untranslatable. It is becoming a tricky
model to follow because it is not understood.
Let us be honest. Despite enormous social and cultural
differences, if over the last fifty years one racial reality
has something new to show the other, it is the U.S. that
has something to show Cuba—from ‘Black Pride’ to
‘Affirmative Action.’ There must be some reason why

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one of the more frequently read authors in Cuban dissident libraries is Martin Luther King, Jr., and why
Cuban courts use his books as evidence for charges (of
subversion or treason). Comparing this with the prestige that figures like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara
still have among African Americans does nothing
more than confirm an irrefutable fact: the Cuban Revolution (Castroism, or whatever people want to call it)
has not produced one, single, black political or intellectual figure dedicated to defending racial equality.
As soon as someone begins to question social inequalities ‘within the Revolution’—as is amply illustrated
by the cases of Walterio Carbonell and Roberto
Zurbano—he or she begins to be marginalized and definitively ‘left out.’
In summary, Cuban and U.S. racial contexts cannot be
‘translated’ if the essential issue of rights is left out.
When Martin Luther King, Jr. announced in one of his
early speeches that “We are here in a general sense
because first and foremost we are American citizens,
and we are determined to apply our citizenship to the
fullness of its meaning,”10 he was thinking that making the rights of blacks equal to those of the rest of
Americans was beneficial for the community he was
representing. Despite the real inequality between
blacks and whites in Cuba, achieving equality would
not be enough to ensure respect for the rights that the
entire society continues being denied. If this basic ‘detail’ is ignored, any translation is doomed to fail. So
much insistence on translation would seem to be suffering from a dependent or neocolonial perspective.
Yet, this is merely a reflection of and reaction to a
press and regime that only hears about these issues
when they are published in English.
Notes:
1- Zurbano, Roberto. “For Blacks in Cuba, the Revolution Hasn't Begun,” The New York Times, 23 de
marzo de 2013.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/opinion/sunday/for-blacks-in-cuba-the-revolution-hasnt-begun.html
2- La Jiribilla 621 (30 de marzo - 5 de abril 2013).