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committed any crime at all. All this happens
while the immense majority of this hemisphere’s
leaders—who are supposedly committed to freedom—look blithely on.
Many of us remember a time not too long ago,
like in 1978, when Cuba’s leaders ousted thousands of young people, mostly Afro-descendants,
from their homes, to improve the island’s image
for foreigners participating in the XIth World
Youth Festival, an ideological carnival. The image the government wanted to project would have
been ‘ruined’ by these undesirables. These innocent, young people endured all the excesses and
abuses of incarceration, a place where the illiteracy of prison personnel and their abusive cruelty
are the rule—and no one official is watching.
Facts like these make Cuba the latent shadow of
a past that humanity is bent upon eliminating.
This is the horrible reality that this country and its
citizens are enduring. It has created a feverish desire for an exile that defines us as a nomadic and
immigrant people that was not the case years
back. There used to be a constant stream of immigrants all over the world. Our current reality does
not reflect our history.
These structural inconsistencies, growing inequalities, and the lack of freedoms and civic guarantees assault the Afro-descendant population
with even greater fury. It has always had a historical disadvantage that officialdom’s emancipatory and egalitarian rhetoric has never resolved.
The greater the poverty, destitution, neglect, and

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marginality, the darker the skin of the population
affected.
Cuba needs people with open minds who are willing to listen to find quick and sure solutions in
concert with the dignity and integrity of all its citizens. The problem of race and challenges of integration should be studied carefully, and sensitively, because the State’s ignorance concerning
this population has been paramount. Now, as in
the past, it is attempting to squelch those of us
who demand safe spaces in which to think and act
civically unfettered by the trappings of creeds,
political affiliations, skin color, and other characteristics that define a group that wants to enjoy its
rights in the country of their birth and that belongs
to all. Cuba needs real freedoms, and open and
transparent debates about the problems that so
deeply wound our society, yet are not objectively
reflected in officialdom’s stale and vacuous rhetoric.
The government’s lack of sensitivity or disposition for dealing with potentially dangerous chaos
and rupture that threaten us demands great effort
from us. Yet, it also requires that the international
community become aware of the situation, and
take notice, so it, too, can redouble its commitment with Cuba’s democratic future. We must
identify and support groups and projects within
our emerging civil society that can contribute to
the reconstruction of our nation’s values and
structures. For more than fifty years, Cuba has
struggled and called for a shared justice and prosperity that has so often been promised and denied
us.