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From the Editor

T

he topic of racial discrimination
and understanding the realities
that Cuban Afro-descendants
have to face day to day demand a basic
fact as a point of departure: the regression in civil rights that began in 1959
that primarily affected the Afrodescendant community.

A lack of freedom of expression, assembly, and association has impeded
their political and civic participation,
and this in a context of many cultural
prejudices that see cultural backwardness or harm to Cuba’s assumed national unity in the creation of specifically
black organizations.

From that point on began a rise in the
destruction of all the civil rights platforms that blacks had won and created
in their struggles prior to 1959: the closing of the cultural and mutual aid associations that had flourished in Cuba,
through which they fought against racial
discrimination using different avenues;
the prohibition of meetings for exchange of ideas and a search for solutions; the closure of the black press, and
the denial of access to a regional and
national media of which the government
took strict control.

These are the conditions under which
Cuban Afro-descendants have had to
deal with the dual challenge of organizing themselves to fight against discriminatory practices and face the climate of
intolerance and violence imposed by a
government that not only decreed discrimination as a thing of the past, but
opposes any and all attempts to discuss
the subject in an independent manner.
Thus, demanding the most legitimate
rights is considered a counterrevolutionary attitude, with all its political and social consequences. The government has
opted to activate its repressive mechanisms as its response to this growing
anti-racist movement. They act against
the peaceful actions of independent
movements and forcefully block their
activities. Frequently activists are denied entry into official spaces where the
topic is discussed at an intellectual level, all behind closed door. Yet, those
who are truly affected by the problem
cannot share their criteria there. Arrests

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