IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 2 ENGLISH | Page 35
The roots of black indigence
There are no statistics available in Cuba on crimes
involving racial discrimination. Neither is there
awareness about the social impact of feeling marginalized or discriminated against. According to
Madrazo, Cuban anthropological studies reveal
the reasons that create socio-economic disadvantages for blacks. “The race problem as regards
indigence looms on a national scale. Those provinces whose population is fundamentally white
have a high incidence of black indigence. Indigence is the result of an extensive crisis that drags
down underprivileged population groups, among
which are black people.”
Cuesta Morúa agrees with the fact that increased
social differences negatively impact the black
population: “There is a growing tendency in
Cuba, an increasing Latin Americanization that is
directly connected to social inequalities. The
more it increases, the more obvious racial differences become at all social levels. Indigence sums
the result of structural racism in Cuban society.”
Repression as a social policy
It would not be difficult for any observer living in
Cuba to identify the threshold of discriminatory
feelings. Four out of five people that the police
stop on the street to ask them to show their IDs or
to search are black. Far from promoting social
policies for the elimination of poverty, the government represses the public manifestation of its
consequences.
This solution is based on the police arresting indigents, imposing fines on them, the confiscation
of the items they sell, and committing them to
psychiatric hospitals. According to the authorities, street indigents “are crazy.” They are even
described as alcoholics who invade the city’s
business districts with their black market merchandise.
For more than half a century, the Cuban government has considered indigence and racial discrimination as vestiges of the capitalist system
the revolution dismantled. That constant view to
the past is the most indifferent way to find a solution for the social problems that are causing
the Cuban nation to disintegrate today.
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