IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 5 ENGLISH | Page 52

Outside academe, what began to take
front stage in the 1990s were emergence
of hip-hop and a broad spectrum of protest methods, like graffiti. For example,
lyrics denounced the fact that the police
requested IDs from blacks and mulattoes, but did so very seldom with
whites. Some representatives of this
movement that attracted mainly young
people were invited to academic events
that also attracted the attention of foreign specialists, and promoted a more
productive conversation.

tional economy: it is a good idea to go
the statistics for this task. For example,
according to the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), by February 1991 92% of public employees
were white; in 1997 black and mestizo
employees in tourism numbered only
1.7% of the total. Ten years later, the
situation had changed very little. In
1997, of the 196 directors and highlevel functionaries in the area of foreign
investment only three were black and
mestizo. In 2011, there were no Afrodescendants participating in foreign
commerce. A year later, they constituted 86% of those working in nonemerging areas of the economy. Within
this group, of every seven women who
work as street vendors, only one is
white.

Numerous, relevant, academic events
took place at the National Library: the
attendance was not remarkable, but it
was important for the groups interested
in the topic. One of them stands out
beyond the rest: the showing of
filmmaker Gloria Rolando’s “Roots of
My Heart” documentary about the Independent Party of Color’s history. Yet,
it ended up being transmitted in 2008 on
TV only once. This censorship revealed
the lack of interest the authorities had
for anything having to do with the issue
of race and the lack of any program to
fight discrimination. To summarize, the
regime’s debts along these lines has yet
to be taken care of.

Manuel Cuesta Morúa’s presentation
was important to understand how Cuban
economy and society work. He is a historian and President of the Progressive
Arc Party. He coined the term “ethnic
economy” as a response to the legacy
families that took power in the 1940s
and 1950s, by virtue of family ties. This
is how the Castro family owns the most
land in the country.
The analysis he offered clarified how
the elites destroyed incentives for the
masses. Cuesta Morúa explained that an
internalized “slave route” exists, and
that the vast majority affected by this
are Afro-descendants. For example,
many impoverished young people from
the east migrate to the west in search of
more touristy areas in which to practice
prostitution. As in the past and, in part,
due to their own actions, Afrodescendants hold the lowest possible

Pending debts owed to the 60%
The representation of blacks and mulattoes in numerous activities does not
solve the problem of racial discrimination, but it does help enormously. This
is something that needs to worked on
and improved, because the available
statistics ar e not informative.
The numbers for political participation
are paltry. The abovementioned Forum
dealt with numerous aspects of the na-

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