IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 2 ENGLISH | Page 15

attempt to forcefully recycle what it considers social excrescence; and because it needs to strictly
control anti-racist criticism at a time in which archaic forms of capitalism are taking precedence
over growing racial marginality and marginalization.
The ‘third-world,’ State capitalism that is being
cooked up by the military elite in the power elite’s
kitchen is profoundly segregationist. For the second time in Cuban history, economic models segregate instead of integrate. Modern slavery in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were the first
version of this model. Post-modern slavery in the
twenty-first century, which has been designed
with global patience, complacency and complicity is updating that old model—and in a specific,
twisted way—in Cuba.
It will deepen racism in its segregationist forms.
What is coming down the pike in terms of raciality is quite terrible. Entire groups of Afro-descendants in essential population centers will be
marginalized from industrial zones or corporative

services, the places in which the Cuban elite associated with foreign capital incestuously circulates resources, power, status symbols, entertainment and aesthetics.
Given this past avalanche, and a cynical revisiting
of it, those in power need to neutralize this antiracist criticism, which could grow concomitantly
with the rise of State capitalism. The equation is
easy: the more State capitalism there is, the more
structural the racism is.
To reduce social criticism to heroic criticism, one
that is difficult to articulate, whose price is high
and reach is limited, the regime will use the penal
code in the way it was earlier in Cuba: a legally
backed, judicial order projected as protection for
society, but that is really designed to be a punishment for the transgressions of racial others. That
is the penal history of Cuba, legal codification as
a form of punishment against Afro-descendants.
Here and now, this practice is extended to those
unyielding others.

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