IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 5 ENGLISH | Page 146

What is Identity?
Which One is the Identity?
Luis Oleidys Machado Reinosa
Cuban Liberal Solidarity Party
Antilla, Holguín, Cuba

T

he concept of identity includes
many ideas that might already
be reiterated by countless people, pedagogues, politicians and sociologists, but my way of seeing identity is
that what you do to identify yourself is
what truly defines your identity: it is
what marks the difference between a
person or country vis-à-vis each other,
their different cultures, languages, customs and even politics.

has not been able to eradicate; ills that
have been affecting us for over fifty
years and should be totally eliminated
once and for all.
Cubans are identified by the way they
face life, despite the impositions on
them and the actions of a reduced governing elite that continues pushing its
utopic notion that anything is possible. I
still have a burning question in my
heart. If blacks, gays, poor people continue being mistreated; if all that is seen
are their defects, but never their virtues;
if they are never offered an opportunity
to hold leadership positions; if every
time our underclass tries to show that it
was the first to fight for freedom, justice, and dignity, how and why are they
marginalized?

It is a sensitive subject. One would have
to know Cuban history, the Cuban perception of life and things, the reasons
that influenced the way Cubans act or
do things. What has led them to be the
way they are is, perhaps, the struggle
for social emancipation, against racial
discrimination, and on behalf of social
inclusion. These could be some of the
reasons why human mentalities have
changed. Given their legacy or life experiences have caused them to encounter many unthinkable, difficult and, in
some cases, insurmountable obstacles.

How can we prove the theory that in
order to know where you are going you
have to know where you came from?
How can a minority with limited access
to being able to improve itself due to
the excessive requirements placed on it
by a totalitarian government be
acknowledged in a communist society?
How can one gleefully proclaim one’s
cubanidad, if one’s own better heeled
compatriots treat one disrespectfully

In their desire to raise their voices on
behalf of the truth, Cubans have shifted
their lives towards the light. This has
meant no more than reflecting upon the
twenty-first century errors this society

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