IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 7 ENGLISH | Page 128

This lack of civic culture and rights generally keep Cubans from knowing how to value
and use the limited spaces and rights we do
have. As far as elections are concerned,
despite an understanding that the physical
act of voting does not imply election, despite
the deceitful blackmail of public nominations by a show of hands and the lack of
diverse options among them candidates,
many Cubans disdain the right to register
into the voting rolls and the option of exercising or not their votes, unless they are
pressured or threatened. The same goes for
the right to participate in scrutinizing the
process. The broad lack of knowledge about
these rights have allowed the Cuban government to pressure citizens into offering
major support in plebiscites through the
useless act of voting, erasing from voter
rolls many citizens who refuse to participate
in the electoral farce, and offer carte
blanche for the fraudulent manipulation of
ballot counts. All us Cubans need to recover
or reconstruct these references and values
that even in a system quite far from being a
democracy that allow the exercise of powers
and rights, put into unquestionable evidence
the regime’s anti-democratic inconsequence,
and turn the ill and its discontent into frontal
and explicit demands and opposition. Given
the current situation, the situation of socially
complex sectors, like the LGBTQ and Afrodescendant population groups, is truly worrisome. Cuba’s Afro-descendants have traditionally have been victims of exclusion and
disdain at the hand of hegemonic powers
that have always prevented the natural development of those who are considered inferior because they are different. The LGBTQ
community, which is not such a small minority in Cuba, and the Afro-descendant
community, which is demographically, historically and culturally significant, have
suffered the rigor of accepted discriminatory

practices that impose fracture and deep polarization on our coexistence spaces. When
we undertake these analyses, we should not
lose sight of the fact that the modern, sociological concept known as multidimensionality, which, when one analyzes traumas, disadvantages and exclusions, explains how
black people, women, single mothers, homosexuals, the handicapped, and peasants
endure high levels of discrimination and
suffering. Africans and their descendants
have been the object of the most heated disdain and exclusion from the very beginning
of our history. Despite the role played by
Cuba’s Afro-descendants in the economic,
political, social and cultural construction of
our country, our society became a veritable
society of castes, in which even the most
talented, politically correct, hard-working,
and even successful Cuban black or mestizo
would never be considered a first-class citizen. The situation worsened because with
the Revolution we Afro-descendants lost our
voices and spaces in which to associate and
from which to project ourselves c