IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 2 ENGLISH | Page 58

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fter timid and exclusionary Migratory
Reforms were put in force in Cuba,
many members of our emerging civil society have had the wonderful opportunity to
broaden our horizons by visiting various locations
in the international political arena to share information about our identities and experiences with
difference.
Latin America has begun to listen to our emerging
civil society. This issue was already being addressed by other Latin American, civic organizations like the Centro para la Apertura y el Desarrollo de America Latina [Center for the Opening
and Development of Latin America], or CADAL
(in Argentina), the Instituto Liberal Peruano [Peruvian Liberal Institute], with its Aulas Abiertas
[Open Classrooms] project, as well as with the
Grupo Salinas’s [Salinas Group’s] Caminos de
Libertad [Paths to Freedom] project and the Red
Liberal de América Latina [Liberal Network of
Latin America], or RELIAL, both in Mexico. In
the United States, particularly Miami, the Plataforma de Integración Cubana [Platform for Cuban Integration] is also playing an importa nt role
in our ability to make connections with other organizations in the Black Atlantic.
Cuban civil society was demanding that a number
of us gain access to other scenarios that would allow us to build empowerment and citizenship for
the benefit of others in Cuba.
Categories such as ‘Afro’ and LGBTI have
moved to the very top of the worldwide, human
rights agenda. In Latin America, the Afro-descendant political community is beginning to play
an important role in places like Colombia and
Brazil. This has been going on since the 2001
World Conference Against Racism, in Durban,
South Africa, which proved that blacks are not
simply in style, but rather that Afro-Latin American politics are key to the hemispheric and global

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agenda. Yet, the emergence of Black Politics in
Latin America is a path that Cuban society had
not yet discovered.
The Colombian Caribbean is one of the places
with which the Citizens’ Committee for Racial Integration (CCIR) has been able to forge growing
alliances with diverse, Colombian civic society
organizations. The same is true for the Club de
Escritores Independientes [Independent Writers
Club], Partido Liberal Nacional Cubano [Cuban
National Liberal Party] and the Alianza Arcoiris
Libre de Cuba [Cuban Free Rainbow Alliance].
Thanks to the Corporación del Caribe Affirmativo [Affirmative Caribbean Corporation], or
CCA, we have been able to participate in various
exchanges and self-recognition and determination
exercises (its founder, Rolando Pérez Pérez, was
a Cuban gay man who was assassinated with impunity, on February 23rd, 2007, in Cartagena de
Indias). It is an intense learning experience to
study discourse of difference (and its grammar) at
these events. This is key to being able to negotiate
categories.
The CCA focuses on creating a LGBTI agenda
and shares that agenda with the Afro-Colombian
movement, being more than aware of the fact that
there can be a connection between being ‘Afro’
and LGBTI, as far as discrimination is concerned.
According to CCA Director Wilson Castañeda
Castro, they are different agendas that work well
together when combined.
Each one of the learning exercises has been a testing ground for participatory democracy that has
allowed us to broaden our social base through
training and education. Being able to visit the Colombian Caribbean as part of a process of agenda
creation between the ‘Afro’ and LGBTI platforms—both in Cuba and Colombia—also allows
us to have different experiences and deconstruct