IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 6 ENGLISH | Page 149

Essential IDENTIDADES
Manuel Cuesta Morúa

T

he journal IDENTIDADES has
an impact. If the journal ISLAS
was a rich, dense space in which
to situate Cuba’s Afro-descendants at the
center of a reflection abandoned decades
ago, IDENTIDADES has done even

more to ensure that our concerns about
racial and ethnic invisibility are heard
beyond and more efficiently than they
were before. It also does this with
agility.

Presentation of IDENTIDADES at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras
campus
ISLAS did very well in its gathering of a
treasure trove of ideas about the multidimensional problems that affect Cuban
Afro-descendants. Yet, it was limited by
seeming focused (stuck) on a kind of
thinking that did not necessarily
guarantee its success and might only
interest only two types of readers: those
affected by the problem (and not really
all of them) and specialists in the area. In

a context in which the issue of race is
culturally, historically, and politically is
denied, creating a journal whose
intention was to singularly focus on that
one topic did not end up being strategic.
As such, the issue and its critical
consideration was not really accessible
to people used to thinking that racism in
Cuba was a thing of the past—if it was.

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