IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 6 ENGLISH | Page 150

IDENTIDADES offers a much more
appealing and interesting focus. It does
so by taking on a name that has more to
do with something much more essential
than the previous journal’s name. The
ambiguity in the name IDENTIDADES
captures the essence of its focus. The
issue of race is still present in the
publication, but its treatment is less
harshly. It also shares space with other
issues and problems, and does so with in
a way that is organic and allows readers
to understand it and connect it to other
areas of our reality on a more global
level. It’s not only about Cuba, but also
Latin America, the United States and,
hopefully, Europe, Asia and the Middle
East, someday. These are places where
racism looks different, behaves at other
levels, and affects other identities. Issue
number 5 of IDENTIDADES is very
varied in content, but not a variety
publication. In it, racial inequality is
dealt with from the vantage point of civil
society. For example, civil society is the
focus of José Hugo Fernández’s article,
but also that of another article, by Juan
A. Madrazo Luna (National Coordinator
of the Citizens’ Committee for Racial
Integration), although his is centered on
inequality via images, or postcards from
Havana, as he calls them. Other views of
race and poverty come to us via the
video work of young editor Surelys
Vega Isás, and Eric F. Toledo Acevedo
(who is white). They captured brief
stories and present them to us through
their own experiences. Another articles
artfully contrasts the black and white
world of dominoes with the racism

present in Antilla, located in the heart of
one of the eastern provinces where
racism does not let up. Without
forgetting its focus, IDENTIDADES
continues opening up to other important
realities, and I’d like to stop here and
focus on one of them: the importance of
democracy and, more specifically,
deliberative democracy as a model and
tool for deepening the democratization
of
societies.
In
this
sense,
IDENTIDADES has taken a lead within
any political conversation on the topic. It
is the first Cuban publication that has
dared to open its pages to a discussion
about democracy’s political definition
and citizen participation, one that is hard
to find in Latin America or around the
world, but not in the United States. In
addition, it is doing so in collaboration
with one of its renowned, U.S.
promoters, Professor Robert Cavalier,
from Carnegie Mellon University, in
Pittsburgh, PA. Cavalier is currently
working on the advantages of the
protocols of deliberative democracy for
the conversation about constitutional
reform that is taking place in Cuba. The
way I see it, IDENTIDADES took a bold
and polemical step when it opened itself
up to an issue that has not yet become a
topic in Cuba, but that I consider crucial
to Cuba’s democratic future. If the
problem of democracy in our country is
structural, and not due impairment, then
it is better to start not where other
deficient, global democracies are ending,
but rather by deepening and proposing
anew democracy itself, if it is to prevail
as the least bad way for human affairs to

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