IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 6 ENGLISH | Page 39

projects. To varying degrees of material
sustainability, one sees in their
postulates a greater and more successful
overcoming of the tradition of not
acknowledging other positions. This is
true even in the presence of still
persistent concerns stemming from the
very same situation of harassment
endured, and discrepancies with their
organic and alternative counterparts’
ideas. At their core, their efforts today
are to get beyond the minimalist notions
of liberal democracy that large sectors
within the opposition embrace, even
regarding social issues (racial, unionrelated, regarding women) and an
explicit rejection of intervention from
foreign states, especially of the U.S.
embargo/blockade.20 Proposals made by
the Comité Ciudadanos por la
Integración Racial [Citizens’ Committee
for Racial Integration] frame a struggle
for equality and against racial
discrimination within an agenda that
promotes dialogue, coexistence, and
pluralism as processes and scenarios in
which the Cuban nation can develop.
This development should involve Cuban
residents both on the island and in its
Diasporic communities, jointly with
other anti-racist struggles and actors
globally. To fulfill these objectives, and
a calculated point of convergence
regarding the notion of post-raciality, the
Committee promotes civic, social,
intellectual, academic or cultural actions
and projects concerning the rights and
needs of minorities or ethnic groups, on
behalf establishing equality and respect
as a necessary basis for social and

interethnic relations.21 The anti-racist
activists who are members of the
Committee and classified as political and
ideological oppositionists, who endure
the corresponding reprisals due to their
speeches and actions, propose as
freedom of expression and association as
essential to dialogue and any solution to
the problem. This would be the basis
upon which Afro-Cubans could fight
against racial discrimination and insert
into any government’s agenda the
economic, social, political, and cultural
demands of Afro-descendants. Juan
Antonio
Madrazo
Luna,
the
Committee’s Coordinator, points out that
the government has demonized the
conversation on race because (according
to it) it is part of the White House’s
agenda against Cuba, given that blacks
and mestizos have become an object of
interest for U.S. intelligence and other
agencies. Thus, official rhetoric in Cuba
does not conceive of autonomous
platforms wanting to expand the
conversation and put it in the public
agenda. Those groups who attempt this
are subject to different kinds of
repression; there is no political will to
allow the subject of racial discrimination
to be included in the agenda for public
conversation.22 According to Madrazo
Luna: “There have been many studies
done in Cuba about racial discrimination
over the last 20 years, about interracial
relations and racial prejudices. These
studies are valuable to areas like
sociology, psychology, genetics, and
anthropology, and are kept under wraps,
as if they were State secrets. That is,

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