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his panel was proposed to emphasize
the term ‘man,’ not in its anthropological conception, but in its humanistic one. This is the underlying view and
gives ethical sense to Martí’s words.
All humanism assumes the ability to see
what is properly human. But, there is no visibility where there are no institutions. The
primary one is precisely the word that defines, that conceives and describes, but also
covers up.
Our purpose was to show how Martí’s axiom
has served to cover up and erase a problem
we consider to be essential: its institutionality. Having been erased from academe, cultural conversations, politics, symbolic creation, and laws, what results is another level
of non-institutionalized institutionality in the
attempted Cuban conversation: the social
poverty of race.
Thus, in “Palabra dada, palabra tomada”
[Words Given, Words Taken Away,” Kenya
C. Dworkin y Méndéz establishes the direct
relationship between self-control and externally imposed control on the subject of racism and well-known, nineteenth-century
novelists and contemporary intellectuals of
both races in Cuba. “Desigualdades desde
otras Postales Habaneras” [Inequalities on
Other Havana Postcards], by Juan Antonio
Madrazo, deal with those contrasts between
what defines Havana Azul and Havana Sur,
through photography. The former has nascent, high-rise condos, marinas, and VIP
residences far from social problems, with
private security guards, golf courses, apartments for foreigners, convention centers, and
neighborhoods that are turning into free trade
zones. On the other hand, Havana Sur, is a
city of boundaries and exclusion, so one
world does not know the other. It is the Havana’s underbelly, a deep Havana, far from
the beautiful one, a part of the city where
people have to face life with sometimes

shocking courage. This is where there are
volcanoes waiting to erupt.
“Afro-Descendants in Emerging Sectors of
the Cuban Economy: Realities and Perspectives,” by Guillermo Duarte, focuses on the
subject of the political pact the enemy elites
made during the independence war, which
served to create a permanent economic obstacle for Cuba’s Afro-descendants. Manuel
Cuesta Morúa, in “The Institutionalization of
Woes in the Ethnic Economy,” discusses the
political reconstruction of the post-1959 extractive model, to impede in the creation of
inclusive institutions that would facilitate
people overcoming the negative, inherited
ethnic economy.
The panel concluded with a video presentation titled “El Moro: The Price of Disdain,”
by Eric Toledo and Surelys Vega. The images of crumbling housing and the social environment, as well as their consequences,
which were expressed through testimonies
given in one of Havana’s peripheral zones,
El Moro, in Mantilla, are very revealing and
illustrative of the other subjects discussed by
this panel’s members.
The panel’s final focus is that it is only
through the institutional visibility of Afrodescendants, not only through writing, but
also economically, that these spaces can be
embedded with Martí-like ethics, and a progression to a post-racial era can occur. This
is the only way we can truly talk about a Cuban nation. What we have today, till things
change, is a State-nation, and not a nationState. A nation-State is only possible through
institutionalized diversity and plurality.
Finally, the comments by Marifeli PérezStable, and the question and answer period
afterwards, reaffirmed our intention in presenting the panel. It also served to encourage
us to continue this work, a project that is
drawing an increasing number of Cubans,
regardless their social position or skin color.

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